It’s not just the utter desolation of a house left to the prairie winds and the whims of teens trying to show off for girlfriends and boyfriends, chests puffed, adrenaline and hormones running like a river in flood, creeping into the abandoned shell of the house the demons attacked. They can sweep and dust and mop and vacuum; Wynonna backs the truck up to the front porch and together she and Waverly load it with trash, with broken furniture, with the chair that shattered the night Willa went screaming through the window and Daddy died.
Gus refuses to come, and Wynonna really can’t blame her. She can’t even explain why it’s so important. It’s not just the protection on the land, although it’s nice to feel like there’s one scratched out piece of earth in this godforsaken place where the revs can’t come, no matter how hard they try. She can’t even rightly say that she missed it. All the good memories she has of the homestead are paired up with bad, with that one worst memory of all hanging over them the way storm clouds sometimes settle, low and menacing, over the prairie.
It could be that she and Waves needed some time together after everything that went down. They’ve had time, unloading furniture and putting up curtains and sitting out by the firepit in the evenings, and things still aren’t quite right. But they're getting better.
Probably it’s sheer bullheadedness that sees them through it. There’s something they have to do, so they do it. Besides that, it’s a good excuse, gives her a way to keep a little space between herself and Doc, herself and Dolls. She and Waverly make beds and stock the fridge while the thin red line Augie Hamilton left on her throat heals into a memory, one with just as cold a sting as that razor blade.
Also, even she has to admit that there's something about the wide, sad, lonesome sweep of the prairie under that deep blue autumn sky, arcing high, slashed here and there with long, trailing clouds, like strands of wool caught on a brush. The way she feels, wrapped in a blanket as she sits on the porch with a steaming mug of coffee and her eyes on the distant line of the horizon, is too complicated to be called happy or peaceful, but there's something in this place that calls to her. That digs in its claws and kneads at her like an avaricious cat with a mouse it keeps letting go only to drag back again. This place will never release her, but, goddamn– it's pretty.
The fresh wind has the beginning of winter's bite to it as it tugs at her hair, brushes color into her cheeks, and she's lifting her coffee to her lips when – wrenching her back into reality – her phone starts vibrating in her pocket. By the time she's finished talking to Dolls – or, more accurately, being talked at by Dolls, her coffee's gone cold and she's dragging the door to the house open, making a beeline for her room and Peacemaker on the little bedside table there.
Purgatory PD picked up a call, says Dolls again in her head. Someone out on the prairie. They might be heading out in the direction of the homestead, Wynonna. I'll be there soon.
She's got a piece of toast stuck into her mouth as she buckles the gunbelt around her hips, and when Waverly asks what the hell is going on, she mumbles, incomprehensible around her breakfast: ]
Gottagobye!
[ Her jacket cold against her back when she tugs it on, the seat of the old blue and white Ford cold under her ass when she gets in, turns the key to kick the ancient truck's engine into life.
No revenant creep is coming near the homestead ever again. Not while she's still breathing. She sends the truck out along the drive in a screech of dirt and rocks and guns it, squinting, peering as she gets closer to the location Dolls had pinpointed for any break in the smooth fields of dry autumn grass. Any motion. Any sign of anyone at all. ]
It's the only way to explain something so impossible, isn't it? There is no logic, no reason, to the fact that someone could be one place and then abruptly another — from air so sharp and so cold that each inhale is pain, to a soft wind barely blanketed with a subtle nip — more crisp and clean than achingly sterile. From one vast, solid, frozen sheet of ice to earth that yields gently beneath the heavy step of his boots.
From a pure white abyss to.... a field, and it, too, stretches out — perhaps just as endless as what he'd known just before, but... different. So different. For a flickering moment, he's back at the farmland his father had managed for a time, in Scotland. He was only six when they moved there, and they didn't stay long — memory is warped by the dizzying haze of early childhood, but some things stick. The smell of flat, open earth, and of grass, and the way the wind sounds through it. Nothing else sounds that way. It's calm, peaceful, slower. Time seems to slow down.
Perhaps there are other explanations — or only one of them, but that isn't something that Edward Little even begins to entertain. That he might be... dead, that this is some sort of afterlife, something beyond. It's not so much that he holds disbelief in his heart, but more that his sense of faith so easily overlooks anything of the divine and holds firmly to what's right in front of him, instead. His faith is in his standing — his job, his role, his responsibility. Nothing truly guides him except his own heart, and what it values, which is his duty. Not for a moment does he consider that he might have died. Oh no, this must be real, but he's unable to make sense of it, and he walks slowly, eyes held wide: confused, stunned.
He tries to think of what he does know. What he remembers last. It was three months since Carnivale happened (that horrible night, speaking of dreams; to look back upon it is like looking back upon a nightmare.) There are forty men left, and Captain Crozier had finally given the order to abandon ship. It took much preparation; it's what those three months were spent doing, and all while their captain quietly continued to recover from his... bad spell. They had to gather their strength, and ready themselves for the possibility they likely would not return. They had to pack, and it's so much that they've taken with them — so much to drag behind lashed to sledges, and a few bearing whale boats, making them all the heavier. It is an arduous journey awaiting them, frightening and unknown, but necessary. He is to lead a team out ahead.
And now he is here.
A solitary figure stepping through the grass, the fingers of one hand clasped tightly around the strap at his shoulder, securing his shotgun to his back. There's nothing else on his person, only layers of wool, a cap, and a pair of fingerless gloves; he could have stepped right out of time.
There's a— sound. It comes closer, but so suddenly and so loudly and so foreign that Edward doesn't really have time to process it. And he's slowed, numbed, mind a strange fog as it struggles to grapple with what's true, what's real. He doesn't react to that sound, not at first. He has no thought to try and get away from it. Nothing happens until it's suddenly right there in front of him, and then he's freezing — eyes saucer-wide, body paralysed where he stands right in the path of the oncoming roaring thing. ]
[ It seems like it should be easy, spotting someone moving around on the prairie, a lone figure on the wide and lonely windswept plains, but the prairie rolls in gentle undulations of golden grass that sometimes grows to a knee, sometimes to mid-thigh. It's as easy to get lost out here as it is in the woods. People have disappeared here, before. She sometimes wonders if Willa was one of them.
There are parts of the prairies where the road dwindles away to nothing but two worn grooves in the feathered grass, more suggestion than actual lane and certainly nothing so formal as even a dirt road, but Wynonna sends the old blue and white Ford barreling down through them anyway, stalks of grass flattening in her wake, struggling back to wounded half-mast as the truck barrels away. She squints, narrowing her eyes against the morning sun as she scans the horizon.
The sun was in her eyes. That'll be her excuse, later. The truth is she has no idea where the guy springs from: one second, she's driving into the open prairie, and the next some idiot is standing in front of her, frozen like a deer caught in headlights. A spike of adrenaline stabs through her, cold and startling, and Wynonna slams her boot on the brake, hauling the wheel to the side to send the old truck slewing to the right and missing the guy by inches. The truck screams with the effort, ancient metal doing its best to pull apart, and the only thing that saves her from rolling is the grass that gets tangled in the wheels.
Even so, the truck rocks onto the two right wheels, tilting alarmingly, and her fingers are bloodless where she grips the steering wheel once it slams back down again, bouncing on the winter tires Gus never bothered to take off. Silence falls as the engine switches off, and for a moment all she can hear is the rush of blood in her ears, the hummingbird panic of her pulse thrumming in her throat, in her chest. Once she's sure she's not about to die of a heart attack, she pries her fingers from the wheel and grabs the door handle, reaching for Peacemaker at her hip even as she's slithering out of the driver's seat to land on legs that would really prefer just to collapse into water while she thanks the good whatever that she's not dead in a burning truck right now.
But it seems like some of Dolls' training has managed to infiltrate her defenses; when she turns to the guy she almost hit and raises her right arm, Peacemaker is as steady as a stone-cold preacher. She eyes him along the barrel, cold and narrow, the still-rising sun turning the blue-gray of her eyes nearly as clear as glass. The wind tugs at her hair, the fringe of her coat, the edges of his, as she stares him down. And he's... strange. What the hell is he wearing? ]
So. What's a guy like you doing in a place like this?
[ Whatever the hell a guy like him might mean. She can see him clearly now, he's wearing some kind of uniform: a long wool coat, blue under the pale morning sun; a cap over what looks like an unruly head of hair; truly unfortunate muttonchops that look like they're attempting to eat his face.
More importantly, he's carrying. Wynonna tips her chin at the butt of the gun she can see poking up over his shoulder, and flicks her glance back to meet his eyes. ]
[ At times, it feels like trudging through water, when the grass is especially high and thick. If he closed his eyes, it might sound almost like ocean waves — not the harsh swells of icy cold water, but the kind that came before. He enjoyed being on the sea, once. The vast openness was once a freedom, not a limbo.
He doesn't understand what he's looking at. What's coming. Something in his mind thinks beast, monster, creature; he's been hunted by something, pursued — is it Tuunbaq? No, something's different, something's strange, and he doesn't move. He's too stunned. Maybe a second or two later he'd finally scramble for his gun, heave it clumsily into his hands, take aim, try to shoot, but then the thing's swerving past him — barely, its presence so close and fast that it almost knocks him back off his feet. He stumbles back, gasping, wide-eyed and horrified and unbelieving of what he's seeing as it screams and rocks, unsteady — what... is this? Some sort of machine?
Yes, it's... parts put together, like a locomotive, but there's no.... tracks, no railroad, this isn't.... what is this?
He's gaping, heart pounding desperately, lungs working frantically for breath and finding little of it in his shock as he shirks back, one hand up in front of his face, terrified of the sight and reeling from the fact he'd almost made collision with it. It's impossible for the mind to process anything — and then the thing's opening up and something's coming out of it, and Little, fortunately, isn't a man prone to screaming, instead stricken into complete and utterly terrified silence.
It's a— a woman. A woman, which is a fresh shock all in itself, and it takes him a weird few long beats to even realise she's pointing a weapon at him. His mind is a roaring dizzying rush, confused and overwhelmed, and he's just gaping at her with saucer-wide eyes, somehow managing to stand upright against the wind that nudges insistently, again and again, and the way his body shakes in response. It would be too easy to tip right over where he stands.
Finally, he sees it. Belatedly, brain slow to process it, the barrel of a gun fixed to him like one single black eye, unblinking and unyielding. She aims a weapon at him! Finally, Little reacts, a complete contrast to the woman's strange, frightening calm — his hands tremble uncontrollably as he struggles to remove his own gun from himself, a truly piteous display of fumbling and shaking and several failed attempts. The strap slips from his spasming fingers once, then twice; he hits himself in the side with the shotgun as he tries to remove it — she said slowly but he's working fast and messily. It's only once he manages to unhook it from his side and has it in his hands (upside down) that his panicked pace drops to a crawl, and, eyes still huge and fixed on her with terror, he starts to lower it to the ground.
Slowly, slowly, he crouches, sets it there in the grass, and he might not be able to find footing again after, but somehow he does. But when he stands again, he does feel faint from nausea, and he swallows against it. Now that both hands are free, he can hold them both out in front of himself. As he does, his eyes flit for a moment back to the... thing, the wayward... machine which might as well truly be a monster for how foreign and terrible it is.
Then back to her, the person who'd crawled out of the thing, and he swallows again. Again. Words don't come easily, but he says all he knows to, and it's— almost absurdly polite, in the face of everything. ]
Madam. [ She's dressed unlike anything he's ever seen, a fact he can make no sense of and observes with more horror... and her hair is free and loose and wild (also deeply terrifying, to him,) but she is a woman. ] I assure you, I mean no threat. I believe I might be— might be lost.
[ He simply stares at her, eyes huge and blank, like she's speaking gibberish, like she's not holding a large and extremely impressive gun on him, and for a long moment they're caught like that: him, frozen like a panicked rabbit; her, wondering what the hell she'll do if it turns out he's faking, if he decides to swing that shotgun over his shoulder and take aim right back at her. The hem of his long coat flaps in the wind, smacking at his legs, and the grass rustles around them, a wild and lonesome sound. The realization that they're alone out here, the only two figures standing in this golden grassland, locked in a bewildering detente, is sudden and acute. Her heart hammers in her ears; her breath comes steady but shallow.
Impossible to say what breaks, exactly, but something does, and the man in front of her shifts abruptly into panicked, awkward motion. It's her turn to be startled, her heart lurching in her chest, a sick cold rill of adrenaline sluicing through her veins as he attempts to remove the shotgun from his shoulder. Tension flickers in the muscles of her throat, but Peacemaker never wavers, and her finger doesn't curl around the trigger. But in the end he doesn't even try to keep the gun; he finally sets it down, slow and careful, and lifts his hands as he straightens. She can see his Adam's apple bob as he swallows.
Madam. Another shock. Her eyebrows push high at the accent that comes rolling out of his mouth, along with a surprisingly rich voice, clear despite his obvious alarm and nerves. What the hell is an Englishman — an Englishman clinging desperately to manners, no less — doing in the middle of the prairie in the Ghost River Triangle? I mean no threat, he tells her, but how can she believe him? How can she believe anyone who might tell her that? Her existence is all threat, these days. No one is safe. No one can be. His hands might shake, his face might be pale and strained, but it could all be an act. This could all go south in the blink of an eye.
She takes a breath, furrows her brows at him in her best approximation of Dolls' signature frown, then tips her chin up in a sharp gesture. ]
Step back. Away from the gun.
[ I believe I might be lost, he'd said, and she's inclined to believe it, because one single fact has made itself clear amid this storm of confusion that's swirling around them both. Only one, but it's a big one: he's no revenant. No fiery glyphs trace their way up Peacemaker's barrel; none cut themselves, burning, into his temple and cheek. Whatever else he might be, he's human.
Which, ironically enough, maybe makes this more complicated. ]
What are you, some kind of re-enactor? What're you doing out here alone?
[ Questions clamor in her mind, each fighting for dominance. If he's one of those weirdo re-enactors, shouldn't he be with a bunch of others? Shouldn't he be wearing a recognizable uniform? How did he get out here? Was he heading toward the homestead?
[ Again, it's with an almost comical and willing obedience that he does what she says — steps back, away from the gun, boots heavy against the grass, leaving imprints in its blades as he moves one, two, then three steps away. He feels too distant from his own body; someone else moves him, wills him to stand upright, though the dizziness is only more unrelenting as the seconds tick by. He feels as though he'll be sick any moment, those coils waves of nausea unbearably tight and slick.
She asks questions he doesn't quite know how to answer. what are you, what are you doing out here; he doesn't know, he doesn't know. None of it makes sense.
Until one does, and he latches onto it as desperately as a man dying of thirst and squeezing whatever drops he can.
'Who are you?']
First Lieutenant Edward Little, of Her Majesty's Royal Navy. [ The title doesn't exactly come out confidently, but rather with the natural, ready flow of someone who's spoken it many times, as natural as a surname, as a birthdate, as the basic facts that constitute a person's physical appearance: my hair is brown, my eyes are brown. A thing that comes without needing to think, or remember, wound into the foundations of his bones. ]
I serve aboard Terror, madam.
[ As if she, this impossible woman in this impossible clothing pointing this impossible weapon right at his face, would be familiar with such a thing (he hopes desperately that she is.)
But speaking is... a strain on a body that is already immensely strained, the stress of it likely to knock him sideways. He tries to keep his composure, but there is none really to be kept; he's lost all of it when the mechanical beast she'd been steering nearly struck him, and—
—he falters, stumbles, abruptly looking extremely pale and extremely sweaty, eyes fluttering and lolling back a little. ]
[ ...For sure not a demon. She's never seen a rev yet turn that shade of clammy, fishbelly white. If it's an act, it's a good one: the guy looks the way she felt after that one night in Tijuana and an unlabeled bottle that definitely wasn't tequila. It's pathetic enough that she finally lowers Peacemaker, sliding the barrel of the old Buntline back into its holster as she casts a wary, disdainful look at him. ]
I am not catching you if you faint.
[ First Lieutenant Edward Little. Only one of those words makes sense to her, but something else niggles at the back of her mind as he stumbles through his introduction — that other part to it, the part where he said I serve aboard Terror.
Terror. HMS Terror. She can't put her finger on why it sounds familiar, but she's pretty sure she knows someone who can. ]
Okay, okay! Jesus, dude, get a grip.
[ She eyes him for another long moment, then turns half away as she reaches for the phone in her pocket. It's not to give him some privacy so he can throw up with a little dignity, more just that this whole situation is truly epics levels of bonkers, and if she's not going to shoot him, then she needs to figure out what else she can do with him.
Dolls picks up on the first ring; she can hear the rush of wind past his voice. He must be in the car. I'm on my way. ]
I know, but it's not what we thought. It's not a revhead.
[ She glances over at First Lieutenant Edward Little, eyebrows lifting. ]
Pretty sure it's something a whole lot weirder. The only demonic thing about this guy is how hellishly bad his facial hair is. Hey—
[ She pitches her voice a little lower, even though the guy is locked in such a panic spiral he might not be able to hear her anyway. ]
[ Dimly, he registers that she holsters her weapon, and that is a relief, but one he's just barely able to feel much joy in, because his world is spinning. What is happening? How is it happening?
He understands less than half of anything this peculiar, volatile woman does or says and when she turns away from him and begins speaking to someone that isn't there, somehow holding conversation, Edward groans.
He turns, leaning forwards towards the grass, a gloved hand against his knee while the other arm goes outwards to try and keep some sort of balance. He doesn't feel well. Oh, he doesn't feel well. Head dipped down, he feels his cap, already knocked askew, slipping off and hitting the ground, but he doesn't dare reach for it or else he might not come back up.
It doesn't matter, anyway. His stomach revolts even as he stands there, and he's giving a dry heave, stumbling forwards, only he doesn't realise he's stumbled closer to her... trackless locomotive(?) unknown machine thing until he's a mere couple of feet away from it. The startle of realisation makes him jolt with a half-shout, and he abruptly flinches back as though he's just stepped up to a lion, terrified. ]
No—!
[ He wobbles, already dizzy, and then all but collapses into the grass, eyes wide, chest heaving with panic. ]
[ She catches the motion out of the corner of her eye, and she's already turning when the guy cries out in a panic at the sight of her truck and just— drops like a marionette with its strings cut. ]
...I gotta call you back. Yeah— he just fell over. Yeah.
[ She lifts the phone from her ear and ends the call, then slides the device into her back pocket as she takes the few firm steps needed to come to the guy's side. His cap has fallen off, she realizes, and the prairie wind tugs playfully at his head of dark, mussed, softly waving hair. ]
Hey. Little, right?
[ First Lieutenant Edward Little. She's not saying all that. Hell, she doesn't even call Dolls by his rank unless she's making fun of him.
For a moment, she considers reaching down to grab his arm and haul him back to his feet, but that seems like a no-go for at least a solid half-dozen reasons; mostly coming down to the fact that even if she did get him standing again, he'd probably just fall right back over. Wynonna looks down at him for a long moment, then hunkers down into a crouch by his side, hands loose between her knees and her arms resting on her thighs. The same breeze tugs strands of her hair across her face; she shakes her head and blows at them to get them out of her field of vision so she can study this strange man who has somehow all but fallen into her lap. As if she doesn't have enough problems.
This close, she can tell that he's pale not just from shock and fright, but probably from either a lack of sun or some kind of underlying health issue. Despite his neat uniform, he looks ragged and tired around the edges; his hair needs to be trimmed, his sideburns are out of control. There's a heaviness to his expression, like he's been awake for too long but can't find a way to sleep. His chest is rising and falling too fast with breath that's too shallow and too rapid. He looks about as threatening as a baby bird. ]
Little, you gotta calm down. Take a breath.
[ She demonstrates, taking a long, slow breath that bellies out her diaphragm, holding it for a moment before she exhales slow and controlled. She's not exactly the best at managing her own spirals of panic, but she knows the tools, even if she rarely uses them. ]
I promise the truck won't hurt you.
[ She still might, if he turns out to be a danger somehow, but right now she just ducks her head to try and catch his eyes with hers. Right now, his eyes are wide with terror, but they're big and meltingly brown and behind his blind panic there's something soft and wounded.
Despite herself, her tone softens; just a little beneath the exasperation. ]
I don't know how the hell you got lost out here, but you're pretty lucky somebody called it in. This isn't any kind of place to go wandering around.
( It doesn't seem real, none of it seems real, but that insistence by his mind is countered by all of the ways it very much is real, from the loud sound the... thing had made, to its bright lights, to the feel of wind rippling across this impossible landscape. He can smell it too, out here — something dry and clear and clean, something so very different from the ice. Fresh breeze, not cutting, not cruel. Just— quietly alive.
And then there's her. She's very much real, even if he doesn't at all understand how that's possible, and his breaths are progressively becoming not enough. Each attempt seems to draw more and more air out of him instead of push it in, and it's too tight, too painful. He's starting to gasp louder now, giving pained little wheeze-sounds, gloves bare at the fingers, allowing them to feel the dry soil beneath his grasp.
When she crouches down close to him, he's tensing again, shirking back as though afraid — later, he'll berate himself for how rude that is, but in the moment, his body's gone straight towards the outer circles of panic-mode, and he doesn't understand anything.
But it also means that he latches, unthinkingly, onto anything too, and when the woman tells him to take a breath, shows him how, he immediately does with an almost comical obedience, eyes rolling over to stare at her, wide as saucers and petrified but listening to what she says. He breathes in, first attempt shattered by another gasp of sharp pain, but the second one helps a little. It's not full panic yet, thankfully, just. Just a baby amount. There's still time for a true nervous breakdown.
The truck? He meets that claim with a blank, oblivious stare, before grasping onto the woman's next words with a fresh wave of alarm. "This isn't any kind of place to go wandering around", she says, and Little turns his head to stare fully at her, shuddering around the breaths he's still labouring to take. )
What is this place? If I may ask — Where are we, madam?
[ He pulls in air just like she shows him, and though the first one doesn't seem to take, the second one goes down okay, shifting his shoulders and chest and back under that enormous coat he's wearing. She doesn't see how he got here, and she has no idea where exactly he thinks he's supposed to be, but she can at least answer his questions, the poor bastard. A breath huffs out of her, almost a laugh, but it's wry and more than a little pitying. ]
Welcome to the Ghost River Triangle. About as far as you can get from heaven on earth.
And you can drop the 'madam.' My name's Wynonna.
[ He looks a little steadier. She pushes up to her feet, brushing her hands off on her jeans before she leans to hold one hand out to him, offering to help him up. ]
Wynonna Earp. Yes, that Earp; yes, that Wynonna, depending on what you might have heard and who you heard it from.
[ Maybe he doesn't know the Triangle, maybe he's lost, but even an Englishman has probably heard of Wyatt Earp... maybe. Either way, she waits to see if he'll let her haul him to his feet and tries to figure out what the hell she should do with him. ]
You look like you could use some water. Or maybe a stiff drink.
[ Maybe she should have waited, brought Waverly out here with her. ]
You hungry? Hurt? Miraculously and suddenly aware of how the hell you got way out here?
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
– rain won't fall from an empty sky
Easier said than done.
It’s not just the utter desolation of a house left to the prairie winds and the whims of teens trying to show off for girlfriends and boyfriends, chests puffed, adrenaline and hormones running like a river in flood, creeping into the abandoned shell of the house the demons attacked. They can sweep and dust and mop and vacuum; Wynonna backs the truck up to the front porch and together she and Waverly load it with trash, with broken furniture, with the chair that shattered the night Willa went screaming through the window and Daddy died.
Gus refuses to come, and Wynonna really can’t blame her. She can’t even explain why it’s so important. It’s not just the protection on the land, although it’s nice to feel like there’s one scratched out piece of earth in this godforsaken place where the revs can’t come, no matter how hard they try. She can’t even rightly say that she missed it. All the good memories she has of the homestead are paired up with bad, with that one worst memory of all hanging over them the way storm clouds sometimes settle, low and menacing, over the prairie.
It could be that she and Waves needed some time together after everything that went down. They’ve had time, unloading furniture and putting up curtains and sitting out by the firepit in the evenings, and things still aren’t quite right. But they're getting better.
Probably it’s sheer bullheadedness that sees them through it. There’s something they have to do, so they do it. Besides that, it’s a good excuse, gives her a way to keep a little space between herself and Doc, herself and Dolls. She and Waverly make beds and stock the fridge while the thin red line Augie Hamilton left on her throat heals into a memory, one with just as cold a sting as that razor blade.
Also, even she has to admit that there's something about the wide, sad, lonesome sweep of the prairie under that deep blue autumn sky, arcing high, slashed here and there with long, trailing clouds, like strands of wool caught on a brush. The way she feels, wrapped in a blanket as she sits on the porch with a steaming mug of coffee and her eyes on the distant line of the horizon, is too complicated to be called happy or peaceful, but there's something in this place that calls to her. That digs in its claws and kneads at her like an avaricious cat with a mouse it keeps letting go only to drag back again. This place will never release her, but, goddamn– it's pretty.
The fresh wind has the beginning of winter's bite to it as it tugs at her hair, brushes color into her cheeks, and she's lifting her coffee to her lips when – wrenching her back into reality – her phone starts vibrating in her pocket. By the time she's finished talking to Dolls – or, more accurately, being talked at by Dolls, her coffee's gone cold and she's dragging the door to the house open, making a beeline for her room and Peacemaker on the little bedside table there.
Purgatory PD picked up a call, says Dolls again in her head. Someone out on the prairie.
They might be heading out in the direction of the homestead, Wynonna. I'll be there soon.
She's got a piece of toast stuck into her mouth as she buckles the gunbelt around her hips, and when Waverly asks what the hell is going on, she mumbles, incomprehensible around her breakfast: ]
Gottagobye!
[ Her jacket cold against her back when she tugs it on, the seat of the old blue and white Ford cold under her ass when she gets in, turns the key to kick the ancient truck's engine into life.
No revenant creep is coming near the homestead ever again. Not while she's still breathing. She sends the truck out along the drive in a screech of dirt and rocks and guns it, squinting, peering as she gets closer to the location Dolls had pinpointed for any break in the smooth fields of dry autumn grass. Any motion. Any sign of anyone at all. ]
no subject
It's the only way to explain something so impossible, isn't it? There is no logic, no reason, to the fact that someone could be one place and then abruptly another — from air so sharp and so cold that each inhale is pain, to a soft wind barely blanketed with a subtle nip — more crisp and clean than achingly sterile. From one vast, solid, frozen sheet of ice to earth that yields gently beneath the heavy step of his boots.
From a pure white abyss to.... a field, and it, too, stretches out — perhaps just as endless as what he'd known just before, but... different. So different. For a flickering moment, he's back at the farmland his father had managed for a time, in Scotland. He was only six when they moved there, and they didn't stay long — memory is warped by the dizzying haze of early childhood, but some things stick. The smell of flat, open earth, and of grass, and the way the wind sounds through it. Nothing else sounds that way. It's calm, peaceful, slower. Time seems to slow down.
Perhaps there are other explanations — or only one of them, but that isn't something that Edward Little even begins to entertain. That he might be... dead, that this is some sort of afterlife, something beyond. It's not so much that he holds disbelief in his heart, but more that his sense of faith so easily overlooks anything of the divine and holds firmly to what's right in front of him, instead. His faith is in his standing — his job, his role, his responsibility. Nothing truly guides him except his own heart, and what it values, which is his duty. Not for a moment does he consider that he might have died. Oh no, this must be real, but he's unable to make sense of it, and he walks slowly, eyes held wide: confused, stunned.
He tries to think of what he does know. What he remembers last. It was three months since Carnivale happened (that horrible night, speaking of dreams; to look back upon it is like looking back upon a nightmare.) There are forty men left, and Captain Crozier had finally given the order to abandon ship. It took much preparation; it's what those three months were spent doing, and all while their captain quietly continued to recover from his... bad spell. They had to gather their strength, and ready themselves for the possibility they likely would not return. They had to pack, and it's so much that they've taken with them — so much to drag behind lashed to sledges, and a few bearing whale boats, making them all the heavier. It is an arduous journey awaiting them, frightening and unknown, but necessary. He is to lead a team out ahead.
And now he is here.
A solitary figure stepping through the grass, the fingers of one hand clasped tightly around the strap at his shoulder, securing his shotgun to his back. There's nothing else on his person, only layers of wool, a cap, and a pair of fingerless gloves; he could have stepped right out of time.
There's a— sound. It comes closer, but so suddenly and so loudly and so foreign that Edward doesn't really have time to process it. And he's slowed, numbed, mind a strange fog as it struggles to grapple with what's true, what's real. He doesn't react to that sound, not at first. He has no thought to try and get away from it. Nothing happens until it's suddenly right there in front of him, and then he's freezing — eyes saucer-wide, body paralysed where he stands right in the path of the oncoming roaring thing. ]
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There are parts of the prairies where the road dwindles away to nothing but two worn grooves in the feathered grass, more suggestion than actual lane and certainly nothing so formal as even a dirt road, but Wynonna sends the old blue and white Ford barreling down through them anyway, stalks of grass flattening in her wake, struggling back to wounded half-mast as the truck barrels away. She squints, narrowing her eyes against the morning sun as she scans the horizon.
The sun was in her eyes. That'll be her excuse, later. The truth is she has no idea where the guy springs from: one second, she's driving into the open prairie, and the next some idiot is standing in front of her, frozen like a deer caught in headlights. A spike of adrenaline stabs through her, cold and startling, and Wynonna slams her boot on the brake, hauling the wheel to the side to send the old truck slewing to the right and missing the guy by inches. The truck screams with the effort, ancient metal doing its best to pull apart, and the only thing that saves her from rolling is the grass that gets tangled in the wheels.
Even so, the truck rocks onto the two right wheels, tilting alarmingly, and her fingers are bloodless where she grips the steering wheel once it slams back down again, bouncing on the winter tires Gus never bothered to take off. Silence falls as the engine switches off, and for a moment all she can hear is the rush of blood in her ears, the hummingbird panic of her pulse thrumming in her throat, in her chest. Once she's sure she's not about to die of a heart attack, she pries her fingers from the wheel and grabs the door handle, reaching for Peacemaker at her hip even as she's slithering out of the driver's seat to land on legs that would really prefer just to collapse into water while she thanks the good whatever that she's not dead in a burning truck right now.
But it seems like some of Dolls' training has managed to infiltrate her defenses; when she turns to the guy she almost hit and raises her right arm, Peacemaker is as steady as a stone-cold preacher. She eyes him along the barrel, cold and narrow, the still-rising sun turning the blue-gray of her eyes nearly as clear as glass. The wind tugs at her hair, the fringe of her coat, the edges of his, as she stares him down. And he's... strange. What the hell is he wearing? ]
So. What's a guy like you doing in a place like this?
[ Whatever the hell a guy like him might mean. She can see him clearly now, he's wearing some kind of uniform: a long wool coat, blue under the pale morning sun; a cap over what looks like an unruly head of hair; truly unfortunate muttonchops that look like they're attempting to eat his face.
More importantly, he's carrying. Wynonna tips her chin at the butt of the gun she can see poking up over his shoulder, and flicks her glance back to meet his eyes. ]
Put the gun down. Slowly.
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He doesn't understand what he's looking at. What's coming. Something in his mind thinks beast, monster, creature; he's been hunted by something, pursued — is it Tuunbaq? No, something's different, something's strange, and he doesn't move. He's too stunned. Maybe a second or two later he'd finally scramble for his gun, heave it clumsily into his hands, take aim, try to shoot, but then the thing's swerving past him — barely, its presence so close and fast that it almost knocks him back off his feet. He stumbles back, gasping, wide-eyed and horrified and unbelieving of what he's seeing as it screams and rocks, unsteady — what... is this? Some sort of machine?
Yes, it's... parts put together, like a locomotive, but there's no.... tracks, no railroad, this isn't.... what is this?
He's gaping, heart pounding desperately, lungs working frantically for breath and finding little of it in his shock as he shirks back, one hand up in front of his face, terrified of the sight and reeling from the fact he'd almost made collision with it. It's impossible for the mind to process anything — and then the thing's opening up and something's coming out of it, and Little, fortunately, isn't a man prone to screaming, instead stricken into complete and utterly terrified silence.
It's a— a woman. A woman, which is a fresh shock all in itself, and it takes him a weird few long beats to even realise she's pointing a weapon at him. His mind is a roaring dizzying rush, confused and overwhelmed, and he's just gaping at her with saucer-wide eyes, somehow managing to stand upright against the wind that nudges insistently, again and again, and the way his body shakes in response. It would be too easy to tip right over where he stands.
Finally, he sees it. Belatedly, brain slow to process it, the barrel of a gun fixed to him like one single black eye, unblinking and unyielding. She aims a weapon at him! Finally, Little reacts, a complete contrast to the woman's strange, frightening calm — his hands tremble uncontrollably as he struggles to remove his own gun from himself, a truly piteous display of fumbling and shaking and several failed attempts. The strap slips from his spasming fingers once, then twice; he hits himself in the side with the shotgun as he tries to remove it — she said slowly but he's working fast and messily. It's only once he manages to unhook it from his side and has it in his hands (upside down) that his panicked pace drops to a crawl, and, eyes still huge and fixed on her with terror, he starts to lower it to the ground.
Slowly, slowly, he crouches, sets it there in the grass, and he might not be able to find footing again after, but somehow he does. But when he stands again, he does feel faint from nausea, and he swallows against it. Now that both hands are free, he can hold them both out in front of himself. As he does, his eyes flit for a moment back to the... thing, the wayward... machine which might as well truly be a monster for how foreign and terrible it is.
Then back to her, the person who'd crawled out of the thing, and he swallows again. Again. Words don't come easily, but he says all he knows to, and it's— almost absurdly polite, in the face of everything. ]
Madam. [ She's dressed unlike anything he's ever seen, a fact he can make no sense of and observes with more horror... and her hair is free and loose and wild (also deeply terrifying, to him,) but she is a woman. ] I assure you, I mean no threat. I believe I might be— might be lost.
[ ....That would probably be it, Edward, yes. ]
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Impossible to say what breaks, exactly, but something does, and the man in front of her shifts abruptly into panicked, awkward motion. It's her turn to be startled, her heart lurching in her chest, a sick cold rill of adrenaline sluicing through her veins as he attempts to remove the shotgun from his shoulder. Tension flickers in the muscles of her throat, but Peacemaker never wavers, and her finger doesn't curl around the trigger. But in the end he doesn't even try to keep the gun; he finally sets it down, slow and careful, and lifts his hands as he straightens. She can see his Adam's apple bob as he swallows.
Madam. Another shock. Her eyebrows push high at the accent that comes rolling out of his mouth, along with a surprisingly rich voice, clear despite his obvious alarm and nerves. What the hell is an Englishman — an Englishman clinging desperately to manners, no less — doing in the middle of the prairie in the Ghost River Triangle? I mean no threat, he tells her, but how can she believe him? How can she believe anyone who might tell her that? Her existence is all threat, these days. No one is safe. No one can be. His hands might shake, his face might be pale and strained, but it could all be an act. This could all go south in the blink of an eye.
She takes a breath, furrows her brows at him in her best approximation of Dolls' signature frown, then tips her chin up in a sharp gesture. ]
Step back. Away from the gun.
[ I believe I might be lost, he'd said, and she's inclined to believe it, because one single fact has made itself clear amid this storm of confusion that's swirling around them both. Only one, but it's a big one: he's no revenant. No fiery glyphs trace their way up Peacemaker's barrel; none cut themselves, burning, into his temple and cheek. Whatever else he might be, he's human.
Which, ironically enough, maybe makes this more complicated. ]
What are you, some kind of re-enactor? What're you doing out here alone?
[ Questions clamor in her mind, each fighting for dominance. If he's one of those weirdo re-enactors, shouldn't he be with a bunch of others? Shouldn't he be wearing a recognizable uniform? How did he get out here? Was he heading toward the homestead?
But, in the end, only one really matters. ]
Who are you?
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She asks questions he doesn't quite know how to answer. what are you, what are you doing out here; he doesn't know, he doesn't know. None of it makes sense.
Until one does, and he latches onto it as desperately as a man dying of thirst and squeezing whatever drops he can.
'Who are you?' ]
First Lieutenant Edward Little, of Her Majesty's Royal Navy. [ The title doesn't exactly come out confidently, but rather with the natural, ready flow of someone who's spoken it many times, as natural as a surname, as a birthdate, as the basic facts that constitute a person's physical appearance: my hair is brown, my eyes are brown. A thing that comes without needing to think, or remember, wound into the foundations of his bones. ]
I serve aboard Terror, madam.
[ As if she, this impossible woman in this impossible clothing pointing this impossible weapon right at his face, would be familiar with such a thing (he hopes desperately that she is.)
But speaking is... a strain on a body that is already immensely strained, the stress of it likely to knock him sideways. He tries to keep his composure, but there is none really to be kept; he's lost all of it when the mechanical beast she'd been steering nearly struck him, and—
—he falters, stumbles, abruptly looking extremely pale and extremely sweaty, eyes fluttering and lolling back a little. ]
I'm— First Lieu— HMS Terror....
[ Yeah, he's about to throw up. ]
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I am not catching you if you faint.
[ First Lieutenant Edward Little. Only one of those words makes sense to her, but something else niggles at the back of her mind as he stumbles through his introduction — that other part to it, the part where he said I serve aboard Terror.
Terror. HMS Terror. She can't put her finger on why it sounds familiar, but she's pretty sure she knows someone who can. ]
Okay, okay! Jesus, dude, get a grip.
[ She eyes him for another long moment, then turns half away as she reaches for the phone in her pocket. It's not to give him some privacy so he can throw up with a little dignity, more just that this whole situation is truly epics levels of bonkers, and if she's not going to shoot him, then she needs to figure out what else she can do with him.
Dolls picks up on the first ring; she can hear the rush of wind past his voice. He must be in the car. I'm on my way. ]
I know, but it's not what we thought. It's not a revhead.
[ She glances over at First Lieutenant Edward Little, eyebrows lifting. ]
Pretty sure it's something a whole lot weirder. The only demonic thing about this guy is how hellishly bad his facial hair is. Hey—
[ She pitches her voice a little lower, even though the guy is locked in such a panic spiral he might not be able to hear her anyway. ]
— Have you ever heard of the HMS Terror?
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He understands less than half of anything this peculiar, volatile woman does or says and when she turns away from him and begins speaking to someone that isn't there, somehow holding conversation, Edward groans.
He turns, leaning forwards towards the grass, a gloved hand against his knee while the other arm goes outwards to try and keep some sort of balance. He doesn't feel well. Oh, he doesn't feel well. Head dipped down, he feels his cap, already knocked askew, slipping off and hitting the ground, but he doesn't dare reach for it or else he might not come back up.
It doesn't matter, anyway. His stomach revolts even as he stands there, and he's giving a dry heave, stumbling forwards, only he doesn't realise he's stumbled closer to her... trackless locomotive(?) unknown machine thing until he's a mere couple of feet away from it. The startle of realisation makes him jolt with a half-shout, and he abruptly flinches back as though he's just stepped up to a lion, terrified. ]
No—!
[ He wobbles, already dizzy, and then all but collapses into the grass, eyes wide, chest heaving with panic. ]
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...I gotta call you back. Yeah— he just fell over. Yeah.
[ She lifts the phone from her ear and ends the call, then slides the device into her back pocket as she takes the few firm steps needed to come to the guy's side. His cap has fallen off, she realizes, and the prairie wind tugs playfully at his head of dark, mussed, softly waving hair. ]
Hey. Little, right?
[ First Lieutenant Edward Little. She's not saying all that. Hell, she doesn't even call Dolls by his rank unless she's making fun of him.
For a moment, she considers reaching down to grab his arm and haul him back to his feet, but that seems like a no-go for at least a solid half-dozen reasons; mostly coming down to the fact that even if she did get him standing again, he'd probably just fall right back over. Wynonna looks down at him for a long moment, then hunkers down into a crouch by his side, hands loose between her knees and her arms resting on her thighs. The same breeze tugs strands of her hair across her face; she shakes her head and blows at them to get them out of her field of vision so she can study this strange man who has somehow all but fallen into her lap. As if she doesn't have enough problems.
This close, she can tell that he's pale not just from shock and fright, but probably from either a lack of sun or some kind of underlying health issue. Despite his neat uniform, he looks ragged and tired around the edges; his hair needs to be trimmed, his sideburns are out of control. There's a heaviness to his expression, like he's been awake for too long but can't find a way to sleep. His chest is rising and falling too fast with breath that's too shallow and too rapid. He looks about as threatening as a baby bird. ]
Little, you gotta calm down. Take a breath.
[ She demonstrates, taking a long, slow breath that bellies out her diaphragm, holding it for a moment before she exhales slow and controlled. She's not exactly the best at managing her own spirals of panic, but she knows the tools, even if she rarely uses them. ]
I promise the truck won't hurt you.
[ She still might, if he turns out to be a danger somehow, but right now she just ducks her head to try and catch his eyes with hers. Right now, his eyes are wide with terror, but they're big and meltingly brown and behind his blind panic there's something soft and wounded.
Despite herself, her tone softens; just a little beneath the exasperation. ]
I don't know how the hell you got lost out here, but you're pretty lucky somebody called it in. This isn't any kind of place to go wandering around.
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And then there's her. She's very much real, even if he doesn't at all understand how that's possible, and his breaths are progressively becoming not enough. Each attempt seems to draw more and more air out of him instead of push it in, and it's too tight, too painful. He's starting to gasp louder now, giving pained little wheeze-sounds, gloves bare at the fingers, allowing them to feel the dry soil beneath his grasp.
When she crouches down close to him, he's tensing again, shirking back as though afraid — later, he'll berate himself for how rude that is, but in the moment, his body's gone straight towards the outer circles of panic-mode, and he doesn't understand anything.
But it also means that he latches, unthinkingly, onto anything too, and when the woman tells him to take a breath, shows him how, he immediately does with an almost comical obedience, eyes rolling over to stare at her, wide as saucers and petrified but listening to what she says. He breathes in, first attempt shattered by another gasp of sharp pain, but the second one helps a little. It's not full panic yet, thankfully, just. Just a baby amount. There's still time for a true nervous breakdown.
The truck? He meets that claim with a blank, oblivious stare, before grasping onto the woman's next words with a fresh wave of alarm. "This isn't any kind of place to go wandering around", she says, and Little turns his head to stare fully at her, shuddering around the breaths he's still labouring to take. )
What is this place? If I may ask — Where are we, madam?
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Welcome to the Ghost River Triangle. About as far as you can get from heaven on earth.
And you can drop the 'madam.' My name's Wynonna.
[ He looks a little steadier. She pushes up to her feet, brushing her hands off on her jeans before she leans to hold one hand out to him, offering to help him up. ]
Wynonna Earp. Yes, that Earp; yes, that Wynonna, depending on what you might have heard and who you heard it from.
[ Maybe he doesn't know the Triangle, maybe he's lost, but even an Englishman has probably heard of Wyatt Earp... maybe. Either way, she waits to see if he'll let her haul him to his feet and tries to figure out what the hell she should do with him. ]
You look like you could use some water. Or maybe a stiff drink.
[ Maybe she should have waited, brought Waverly out here with her. ]
You hungry? Hurt? Miraculously and suddenly aware of how the hell you got way out here?