Chapter Text
“What about a surprise party,” Veronica suggested, glancing at her list of ideas.
Heather raised an eyebrow. “For our boyfriend with an anxiety disorder? Spectacular idea.”
“Okay, right.” She sighed. “What do you suggest?”
“I don’t know. Nothing?” Heather shrugged. “He’s not that into his birthday.”
“Everyone is into their birthday,” Veronica insisted. “He just says he isn’t because he doesn’t want to make a big deal about it.” She crossed her arms, expecting Heather to argue.
But Heather relented easily. “I think you’re right. I never pushed him on it because… well to be honest I didn’t care enough to, but I think it would be nice to try to do something. I just don’t get why you want to make it a big deal.”
“What do you mean?”
“Parties and everything. Do any of us even like parties?”
Veronica frowned. “We do! Sometimes.”
Heather gave Veronica a look. “Isn’t there something a little more low-key that we could do? Maybe we should just go out to dinner? Or what about finding an arcade with a bar—”
“Stop whatever you’re doing!” JD burst into the door so fast it slammed into the wall, startling both Heather and Veronica.
When her heart had settled, Veronica looked at JD mildly. “Did you see a dog on the way home from work again?”
Heather snorted, but JD barreled into the room, leaving the apartment door open in his haste. “I found a time machine.”
“JD, people drive DeLoreans. That’s a real car that some people actually own. They aren’t all time machines.”
JD’s fervor turned to irritation. “That’s not what I meant. This is like a… damn it, Heather it’s a time machine.”
“What does it look like?” Veronica asked cautiously, wondering if JD had somehow accidentally done a bunch of drugs.
“Oooh, yeah, who got it right?” Heather asked. “Is it like the TARDIS? Or a time displacement sphere? Or—”
“It looks like the time sled,” JD said, dragging his fingers through his hair. “It’s weird and kind of steampunk-y, but it’s not fake. It’s humming and glowing and… shit it’s not like we have anything better to do, come on!”
More worried than excited, Veronica grabbed her coat and followed her partners out of the apartment. Heather was practically skipping, seeming to believe this was some kind of prank, but JD looked too excited for Veronica to believe that.
His cheeks were flushed and his eyes bright, almost manic. She had only seen him like this on rare occasions when something—usually something that pissed him off—got him worked up into a pacing frenzy.
It was almost frightening to see him like this, charging into the snow as though his life depended on it. He led the way towards a small park across the street from their apartment, his coat flying behind him. He didn’t seem to notice that it wasn’t buttoned against the frigid air.
“JD!” Veronica called out to him, wanting him to stop, wanting to figure out what the fuck was up with him, but he didn’t turn around. She and Heather had to run to keep up with him.
They were all wheezing a little when they arrived in a small thicket, but Veronica stopped breathing altogether when she saw what was in the center of it.
If she had seen it in an art museum, she would have laughed at it, while simultaneously enjoying the bright copper and bronze gears that wound together across the whole thing, which looked like a tree that had grown up mottled and twisted before falling over, only to be turned into a steampunk sleigh by an overzealous high schooler. There was an energy coming off the machine, almost like a low hum that Veronica could barely hear but couldn’t forget.
It was a time machine. JD’s sureness made perfect sense to her suddenly, because the machine was so strange and perfect and right out of her imagination that—had she seen it alone—she never would have believed that it was real.
She still didn’t quite believe it was real even as she was stepping inside the larger, tree-trunk portion of it. Veronica ran her hands over the smooth walls, that felt almost like wood, though there was a wrongness to it, something not quite natural that made the hair on her arms stand up.
“Is it… magic?” Heather said very cautiously, as if she was expecting one of them to make fun of her.
JD shrugged. “Any sufficiently advanced technology—”
“Jason,” Heather said sharply.
“Yes. I think… magic is probably the simplest way to explain it.”
Heather appeared accept that answer more easily than Veronica could, and her eyes brightened. “So how do we make it go?”
“I was just thinking that,” JD said, equally excited.
“Wait, wait,” Veronica interrupted, knowing that the two of them exchanging that particular look could get them all into significant trouble. “Do we really want to do that? What if we succeed and end up in the past? What if one of us gets dysentery? What if we get stuck? And that isn’t even thinking about the butterfly effect—”
“Veronica, it’s a time machine. Just let this happen.”
Though his words weren’t really reassuring, his attitude was. The concept of all of this happening was already so weird that it hardly seemed necessary to dwell on details. Taking a deep breath, Veronica forced herself to relax. Whatever happened, it was bound to be a hell of an adventure.
Heather was fiddling with some of the gears the same way she played video games, by smashing buttons and moving levers at random and hoping for the best.
When the machine gave a sudden jolt, Veronica clutched the side. “Heather what did you do?”
Heather shrugged while JD stumbled forward towards the dashboard-looking thing. He leaned over Heather, palms flat on the wood while he watched her. The machine continued to jerk and move like it had been parked on top of a mechanical bull.
“Where should we tell it to go?” Veronica asked.
“How do we tell it to go somewhere?” Heather said, still hitting the controls at random.
JD ignored Heather. “I want to go somewhere cool. Shit, let’s go be cowboys!”
“Cowpeople!” Veronica corrected, just as a loud humming filled the small space and the gears in the walls began to glow and spin. “And why do you get to pick when we go?”
“It’s my birthday!” JD snapped, and the machine began to shake violently.
Veronica lost all sense of orientation. Time, direction, and perception of her own body faded as the machine quaked until, at some point that might have been later, if later existed, the steadied and slowly Veronica regained a tenuous grip on reality.
“We’re here,” JD said, his eyes bright.
“Where’s here,” Heather asked, glancing out the door.
“More importantly,” Veronica interrupted, glancing at the remote landscape, “When is here?”
***
Heather was the first to step out of the machine and onto the ground, which felt both real and solid, something she’d been a bit concerned about. She doubted her brain would summon something this elaborate if it were having a meltdown, but the idea wasn’t outside the range of possibility. In fact, it was far closer to the range of possibility than what was actually happening.
Because in front of her, just a little way away, was a small town. It could not have been more quintessentially western if a tumbleweed had bounced past while a harmonica wheezed in the background.
“Holy shit,” JD said. It was the first time he’d been still since he’d entered the apartment earlier. He stared at the town, his eyes wide and childlike in their gleeful fascination.
Veronica joined them on the dusty ground, shedding her coat. “Fucking hell…”
“What are we waiting for?” JD asked, and before Heather had a chance to list of the many things they should think about before they interacted with other humans, he took off running towards the town.
Of course, Veronica immediately ran after him, so Heather ran after both of them, huffing in exasperation as she avoided choking on the dust they were kicking up.
By the time she caught up with them, JD had done the mandatory dramatic entrance into the saloon and was caught in a stare down with the locals.
“My name’s JD,” He said, puffing out his chest and attempting to look bold.
The two men facing him glowered, and one stepped forward to inspect JD. “Which side did you fight on?”
“What?” JD froze.
Heather wracked her brains, wondering where they were and what the right answer was. She could guess based on clothes that this was the late eighteen hundreds, but if they were on the wrong side of the Mason-Dixon line, a wrong answer could cost them their lives.
“Slavery,” JD said slowly, glancing around the room, “Is bad.”
The man frowned, though Heather wasn’t sure if it was in confusion or disgust. “What? I asked you what side you fought on. Or are you some duty-shirking pacifist coward?”
“Aw, leave him be, Jeff, can’t you see he’s just a kid?” The other man stepped forward. “Just ignore him, he can be touchy.”
“Of course I’m touchy,” Jeff said, pulling away from the friendly hand the man had put on his shoulders. “I didn’t hear anyone ride in. Where’d you come from?”
“We… sort of, got a lift,” Veronica said.
Jeff frowned at the suspicious answer. “What does that mean? Are you with Bud? One of his bastards maybe?”
JD, Veronica, and Heather flinched slightly, though of course there was no reason to believe that JD’s dad was a part of this madness.
The other man seemed taken aback by Jeff’s suggestion. “That was rude.”
“What? Look at him! He looks like a bastard.”
“He’s not wrong,” Heather muttered.
Overhearing her, both men laughed.
Her confidence slightly restored, Heather stepped forward. “I’m Heather Duke, this is my… brother, Jason Duke, and my… maid, Veronica.”
Veronica glowered at her, deeply unamused, but Heather ignored it. “We’re not staying long, but we heard it was a nice town and wanted to see it.” Her best charming smile didn’t seem to faze either man.
The nicer one stepped forward and held out a dirty, work-roughened hand. “I’m Joe Simmons, nice to meet you Miss Duke, Mr. Duke.”
Now JD was glaring at her, and Heather had to stifle a laugh, but he recovered quickly. “Mr. Duke was my father, please, call me JD.”
Joe nodded.
Heather was barely holding her shit together as the temptation to laugh got harder and harder to fight.
Despite their strange behavior, neither man questioned them further. “I hope y’all enjoy your stay. You let us know if you need anything.”
Heather nodded. “Thank you.”
“Who’s Bud?” JD asked.
Jeff and Joe exchanged a heavy glance. “That’s none of your concern,” Jeff said finally.
“Let me guess,” JD said, “Some evil rich bastard that owns half the town and is holding it hostage?”
Another glance; Heather was starting to feel like these men could have whole conversations without ever speaking a word. “Yes,” Joe replied.
“What’s it to you?” Jeff said, his hand twitching towards his hip like a man who was used to holding a gun.
JD smiled at Veronica. “We’ve met a few like them and seen other towns in the same situation. We’d like to help out if we can.”
“Are y’all detectives?”
“They look a little young for that,” Jeff noted, his suspicion back on display.
But JD took it in stride. “Not exactly, but we do some investigation. We’re… agents of fairness.”
“We could use a little of that, I’ll tell you,” Joe said.
Jeff remained tense. “How’d you get into that?”
“It’s a calling,” Veronica replied.
Her steady, even, almost challenging tone somehow convinced him, and Jeff stepped back, relaxing. “Well then, we’ve got a problem for you.”
He led them towards the back of the saloon, where a woman was sitting, looking at what appeared to be a map of the town. He pointed to a house at the far end of it.
“That house belongs to Bud Williams.”
One of the men hissed like the name was a curse. The woman hushed him.
“Like you said, he owns half the town and he wants to own the rest,”
“He wants to own the people too,” The woman remarked bitterly.
Ignoring her, Joe continued. “We’ve got to find a way to make him know that he’s not welcome here.”
“Burn his house down,” JD said immediately.
“Jason!” Heather hissed.
He shrugged. “What? I’ve always wanted to try arson, and look! No consequences!”
Veronica dropped her head into her hand. “We’re all going to die here, one hundred and fifty years before we were even born.”
They were getting odd looks from the group, but Joe wasn’t paying attention to them. “That’s not a bad plan.”
All three of them replied “Really?” At the same time, but with vastly different tones.
“He can’t stay if he doesn’t have a home to stay in,” The woman said. “But if we get caught—”
“No one will talk, and we’ll do it at night so no one sees us.”
“This could go south,” She said, shaking her head.
“I thought you wanted him to stop bothering you, Tallie?”
Her mouth opened, then closed slowly. “Alright, what do you need?”
***
Tallie owned the saloon, and she offered to furnish them with what they needed. The Molotov cocktails were—surprisingly—Veronica’s idea.
JD had never loved her more.
Generously offering them dozens of bottles of moonshine, Tallie led JD to her cellar to get them while the others got the horses ready for their ride.
“How’d you end up here?” JD asked.
Tallie laughed, a pretty, breathy sound that revealed slightly crossed front teeth. “You’ll be a bit shocked, but I was ordered.”
“Ordered?”
“In the mail. The town was new and there weren’t many ladies about, so he put an ad in the paper and I answered. He paid for me to come out here. We were married for three years when he up and left one night. I’ve been keeping the saloon in absence while I wait for him to come back.” Something about her comically grim tone led JD to believe that Tallie didn’t think her husband would ever return.
Before he could ask another question, Tallie continued. “And what about you? You show up just in time for some madness with two strangely dressed women in tow. You’ve got a story, Mr. Duke. I can smell it.”
“Heather, Veronica, and I are travelers. I tend to always end up where the chaos is.”
“Where are you from?”
“Ohio,” He answered truthfully, then searched his brain to make sure that Ohio was a known state at this point in history. Tallie didn’t react oddly, so he assumed it was.
She just nodded and handed him another bottle of moonshine. “That should do you. Are you sure you want your sister and her maid in the middle of all this?”
“Heather and Veronica can take care of themselves,” JD answered confidently.
Shrugging absently, Tallie led the way back upstairs and out to the front of the saloon, where Veronica, Heather, Jeff, and Joe were standing with five horses.
They had changed into less conspicuous clothing, though JD had no idea where they’d gotten it. Heather had retied the green shirt she was wearing and added a wide belt with an empty holster to her jeans, with a hat to complete the look.
“Are you ready?” Veronica asked, she was smiling, finally getting into the spirit of their strange adventure. Her high collared, ruffled Victorian shirt and riding pants seeming to have gotten her in the mood for their western adventure. He had known she would come around eventually, though he hadn’t expected clothes to be what did the trick. She tossed him the extra hat she was holding.
He set it on his head and touched the brim, smiling at her. “Miss Sawyer.”
Veronica rolled her eyes, fighting a smile and blushing just enough to let him know that she was into it. “I also got you this. Happy birthday.” She held out a small, shining metal badge.
“I’m the fucking sheriff,” He muttered gleefully, pinning it reverently to his coat.
Heather rolled her eyes, unamused. “Folks, we have a house to burn down, can we get on with this?”
“Of course, darling,” Veronica turned her smile on Heather. “I’m ready when you are.”
Both of them took hold of their saddles and swung up with more ease than JD was expecting, especially in Heather’s case. Veronica clearly wasn’t scared, but Heather sat on her horse with a sense of comfort and confidence.
She looked down at him. “JD, have you ever ridden before?”
He shrugged. “No, but I’ve ridden a motorcycle; It can’t be that different.”
It was, in fact, shockingly, painfully different and also significantly more difficult, JD found quickly. Joe was attempting to give him friendly pointers, but JD felt like he had no balance and he sat awkwardly atop his horses back, not sure that he could have steered if his horse had chosen to go any direction besides the one his companions were going.
“Just try to sink your weight down a little more and put your heels down,” Joe said for the hundredth time.
“You’ll have to forgive my brother,” Heather said. “He prefers not to ride.”
“Don’t know how the hell you get around then, but I suppose rich city folk can take carriages,” Jeff said.
“Who said we were rich?” Veronica asked, and JD could see her picturing their little apartment, which hopefully they would see again someday.
Jeff looked at her sideways. “They travel with a maid. They pay you, right?”
JD, like Veronica apparently, had completely forgotten their ruse. “Yes, of course.”
“Shit, Jeff, don’t you see their eloping? They’re just as godless as we are.” He said it with a friendly, intimate kind of humor, like their godless relationship was an inside joke of theirs.
Oh.
He couldn’t fight the smile that split his face. Fuck you, Dad, I was right. Cowboys do love other cowboys.
“I don’t know what kind of man brings his sister along when he elopes,” Jeff said.
“If she’s his sister, I’ll eat my hat,” Joe said.
None of them argued, each exchanging glances as they silently argued over who would best be able to explain their relationship.
“It’s alright,” Jeff said, giving them the friendliest smile he’d shown. “The west is a place for runaways. It’s a good place to be whoever you’d like.”
JD would have liked to continue the slow, meandering ride towards Bud’s house, but it was getting dark fast, and they had a plan to execute. Conversation dwindled as they kicked their horses faster and the house grew larger in front of them.
It was ostentatious and very flammable up close, and JD smiled as he readied his cocktail, pulling a lighter out of his coat pocket. “Ready?”
Heather turned her horse and took her share of the bottles, putting rags into the top and getting them ready. “I’ll go around back and throw mine. I’ll be able to ride out faster if someone comes out.”
“I’ll go with her,” Jeff offered.
No one looked happy about splitting up.
“Heather,” Veronica whispered. “Are you sure?”
She smiled. “Don’t worry. I can handle this, just don’t have any fun without me.”
“We’re burning down some asshole’s house with Molotov cocktails, on horseback, while in the past. How can we avoid having fun?” JD asked.
Heather shrugged. “Do your best.” With one final tip of her hat and a kiss blown to Veronica, she trotted off.
Jeff pulled his horse next to Joe’s and kissed him quickly before he rode off after Heather.
“Let’s do this,” Veronica said, possibly too eagerly. She kicked her horse and lit her bottles, tossing them towards the house.
“Did you miss completely?” JD asked, trying to trot alongside her but not quite managing to control his horse, who was prancing nervously now that there was fire on the ground.
The house was burning anyway—Heather and Jeff must have done their job—and JD quickly did his job, lighting his bottles and tossing them directly into the window where he saw a set of shockingly ugly curtains burst into flame.
A man came running out of the house, screaming at the top of his lungs, and half a dozen men poured out of the nearby barn, shouting at them.
Veronica shouted something, but JD couldn’t hear it around the roar of flames, shouting, and scared horse sounds.
The last bottle had shattered against a wall, and JD wheeled his horse around, kicking it into action and holding on for dear life as it galloped away.
“The bastard hired goons!” Joe shouted, tossing a glance over his shoulder. “Probably thought we’d try something.”
JD could hear hoofbeats approaching behind them, and—despite his poor balance and general terror—risked a glance over his shoulder.
Heather and Jeff were gaining on them, leaning over their saddles and urging their horses on. The rush of relief that shot through him made JD dizzy, but he kept his grip and tried to keep up with the others.
“Angry mob, six o’clock,” Heather shouted as she came up alongside him.
In the distance, JD spotted a soft, familiar light. It was the unmistakable glow of their time machine. “We can lose them this way!” He shouted, pointing.
Joe and Jeff followed him as he steered his horse wildly towards the light, Heather and Veronica just behind them.
They managed to outpace their pursuers, and JD dismounted in relief just in front of the machine. “You guys go, we’ll distract them.”
“What the hell is that thing?” Joe asked, barely paying attention to JD.
“It’s our ride,” Veronica answered, leaping nimbly off her horse as Heather did the same.
“Your…”
“Yes,” Heather answered. “We’ll use it to distract the mob while you two get back to town. If you get there fast enough, you can pretend you were never at Bud’s house at all.”
“But…”
“Go,” Veronica said. “Protect your town in case he comes back. If we can visit you again, we will!”
JD hoped they could come back someday. “Thank you, Jeff and Joe,” He called, waving.
The men looked confused, but they waved back. “Good luck to you!”
The mob was behind them, arriving in a cloud of dust.
“GET IN THE TIME MACHINE!” JD shouted, shoving them towards it.
“The horses,” Veronica hesitated.
Heather pushed her. “They’ll find their way back, I promise. They know where they get fed.”
Accepting this, Veronica stepped into the machine and Heather and JD followed her as the mob surrounded them.
JD could hear gunfire and he looked towards the dashboard, not sure how to make it go.
“When to next, birthday boy?” Heather asked, breathless and laughing in terror.
But Veronica pushed past him and started mashing buttons, placing her hand directly onto the smooth almost-wood surface. “I have an idea!”
The spinning and shaking started again. Outside, JD could hear the mob shouting and shooting to no avail.
The machine took off, all orientation vanishing completely and leaving JD feeling lost and confused and not totally existent for possibly many minutes, or just a few seconds.
He felt them land, but the machine continued rocking steadily as JD’s ability to perceive time and space returned.
“Veronica,” Heather said slowly, “What did you do?”
JD didn’t bother asking. He poked his head out of the machine and then retreated immediately. “You should look out there.”
They did, taking in what he had seen.
Veronica smiled wickedly. “Let’s be pirates.”