Chapter Text
The world pitches, rolls, shifts like the docks in the tide. The wind tumbles across the openness, pulling with it the heat and dirt to lay them back down across the road rutted with tracks. The sun lays fat above the horizon, air dancing where it crosses the dark line that separates a sea of blue muted mass of browns and green. Somewhere in that blue, drifting among the heat already building in the day, comes the call of birds reading for another day of survival.
Leather groans and metal creeks, ground slipping past his view in an unfocused and washed out brown blur. The sides of the horse rise and fall, the pattern falling neatly between the plod of hooves and the pounding soreness of his legs. Across the road beside him follows his shadow, pulled long across the dust and dirt to flicker across the scrub brush and long grass at the edge of the road.
He swallows, throat working through saliva thick with the dust of a hundred miles. His lips part, peeling, burning, cracking. At his leg his single canteen bounces with each pace, ringing at it strikes buckles and bone. The world seemingly is, always has been, and will ever be the same mile of road that falls away behind him only to rise up again ahead. Sisyphus was given a far less cruel punishment, he reckons, for at least he could see end of his journey.
The steady and slow pace, the heat of the morning soaking into his shirt, the wind rolling across his back all lay a weight in him that pulls him into a fitful state somewhere between consciousness and sleep. It’s in this state, mind shifting the landscape around him to the wide Hudson bay and back that the ocean stills and his sea legs fail him.
The water rushes up to meet him and for a moment he smiles, ready to taste the salt and scrub himself in the sea. The sea is neither kind nor caring, turning itself back into the hard packed road that pushes back against his fall. His shoulder screams, hand going numb for a second as the nerves fizzle and spark. He presses his forehead into the earth, palm pressing down as he lifts himself to a sitting position. The sun burns down from between the horses’ legs and neck, giving him little option but to squint into it as he takes in the steadiness of the animal in front of him.
“Thank you,” he croaks, words sharp, bitter, calloused. He tucks a leg under himself and moves into a crouch, checking for the familiar weight at the small of his back. His palms brush at the dust in some attempt to clear it away, as if an hours worth of riding won’t recoat him. “Nothing out here for miles and you decide this is where you want to-” he stops, eyes finally looking past the horse to the wooden posts on either side of the road. Outwards from these posts curves a fence of rough cut wood, two lengths of rough cut timber a piece nailed to a post. Beyond that fence, rising out of the grasses, are neat rows of wood sided buildings. “Alright,” he grumbles. “Maybe you’re not so bad afterall, Blackjack.” He gives the horse a pat, dust kicking off his hand. “Well Percy, time to make friends,” he tells himself.
It takes throwing his full weight forward to remount Blackjack, his foot slipping, once then twice before he slips it over the saddle. His legs protest at the saddle pushing back into them once again, but there, within a quick trot is a town, a real bed, a drink. Blackjack voices no complaint at the quick snap of his reigns, taking off in a pace that jars Percy’s bones and starts an ache in his head.
The road turns into a street that passes through the center of the town to branch off in clean lines at evenly spaced intervals. The wind carries the same dust that clouded him on the road down the streets, laying it over the windows and fronts of stores. Voices carry, shouted greetings and calls, life that isn’t the calling of birds or the howls of coyotes bringing a weary smile to his face. Percy guides Blackjack to down the sparsely littered street, pushing the horse towards a hitching post where a handful of horses wait tethered and drinking from a trough. He swings free of a stirrup, letting gravity pull him from the saddle as Blackjack closes the last few feet. One hand holds the reins, the other plunging into the trough to pull a handful of water up and over his head.
It rushes down his back, soaking his shirt, trickles trailing down his arm and leaving rivulets of dust across his skin. Days of riding in the saddle, of sleeping on and under a thin blanket, of moving unceasingly, all wash away. Blackjack snorts beside him, nuzzle shoving Percy to the side to take a drink himself.
The bit in the horse's mouth clicks as he sucks in his own drink. Percy gives Blackjack a pat and space, wrapping the reins around the post. The building he’s posted up his horse in front of looms over him, two stories of overlapped wood siding washed with white paint. A pair of doors, narrow and cut short, hang as a divider between the world and the interior. White lettering across the front read Dare’s Saloon , and while he’s piecing together that wording an eruption of laughter breaks through the gentle wind and soft music that fills the street. Percy stands there a moment longer, the building unmoving, the weight at his back starting to pull like an anvil. He glances down the rows of wooden porches, tucked neatly under roofs of wooden slat for those downpours that are inevitable across the rolling planes. Townsfolk go about their business, only the closest of which watch him with heavy eyes and pursed lips.
With nothing but the dust and the sun in the street he steps onto the porch, keeping one hand at his side, open and relaxed, as he pushes his way into the saloon. In the shifted darkness of the interior sits a strange scattering of tables, crowded with men hunched over drinks and cards or leaning easily. All of this is buried under a cloud of smoke that he chokes and sputters on, pushing down on the tension in his fists and bile in his throat. The noise draws eyes, and the eyes draw pointed looks. The men at the closest table, attention previously on a separate table and a game of cards, now cast their attention to him. Slowly they search him, each starting at his hip, then moving upwards until they have thoroughly weighed him.
To most he must be only what they find, travel worn and dirtied clothing, without a belt or holster or hat or any trappings that he’s more than a weary man in a new place. Their interest satiated, or lost, most turn away. Whatever conversation that was lost with his entrance picks up without the loss of a moment’s thought or breath. Percy is left free to pick his way between the tables and find an open space at the bar.
In the narrow mirror that runs behind the bar stands a man with dirt covered face, sunken eyes ringed with bags, and course black stubble. The man stares back at him with hard eyes and hung head, looking back at the stranger who stands in his spot. Percy has to run a hand over the stubble, feel it bristle under his fingertips before he can feel himself in the man in the mirror.
“You looking for something?” A woman's voice pulls at him but his eyes stay taking in his own gaze. “Hey, you need something?”
Percy turns, blinking, to find the bartender staring down at him. Her hair is pulled back with a cord but it still falls in fiery tendrils across her shoulders and forehead. Her head cocks to the side, eyes running him over. Her hands rest on the bar, paint splattered and scrubbed off all the way up to her elbows where her rolled sleeves begin.
“A drink,” Percy forces out, voice heavy and rasp.
The woman grins, careless and open and true. She slides one hand off the bar, turning her shoulders to gesture at the bottles stacked behind her.
“We’ve got all the whiskey you can drink.”
Percy feels a bubble of bile creep up his throat. He shakes his head, swallowing hard and running his dry tongue over parched lips.
“Not whiskey, water.”
She laughs now, full and heavy. “If you want water there’s a well in the center of town. Or the horse trough, but it looks like you already got into that.” She scoops a bottle off the shelf and glass from under the bar, pouring the yellowish brown contents from bottle to glass. “A whisky on the house. It’s mostly water anyways,” she adds in a whisper. “Enjoy.”
Without waiting for him to take the drink she slides the bottle back on the shelf and makes her way down the bar, pulling glasses or refilling them as their owner gestures. Percy hovers his hand around the glass, fingers flexing but not curling around the glass.
The smell is there, buried in the back of his mind like a splinter he’s found again and dug at. The cigarette smoke pours into his lungs, the whiskey chasing it, the shouts of men gambling and their course, burning, sharp laughter rake across his spine. Percy squeezes his eyes shut, pushing back the memories, holds against the walls squeezing in on him from saloon to apartment.
A crack comes from beside him, Percy jumps, turns, fist balled and eyes snapping wide open. The man next to him grimaces, looks at Percy, frowns, eyes Percy’s whiskey. A glass, not a gunshot. A bar, not his apartment. Strangers, not Gabe. As reality filters back in he feels the glass ringing against his fingers. No, the glass stays, his fingers ring, fluttering like stalks of grass in the wind. He grabs the glass, pulls it up and swallows the liquid.
It’s a muted burn, something still unpleasant but washed in the memories of times he’s trying to forget, not soaked in them. Whatever water was in the drink is lost to the hot weight that settles in his gut, burning a hole as it sloshes about. He pushes the glass back across the counter.
The room around him, the noise of life and others pulls him back from the haunting memories. He swallows down the last of the traces of whiskey in his throat and turns to the room. His side presses into the bar, an arm propped on it to help his legs that tremble and ache. He glances over the room, finding a weight fading away as he takes in the scattered dress and state of the men at the tables. At one in particular his gaze stumbles, taking in the five figures crowded in with another few sitting close by, picking out the long black braids that tumble down the smallest of the figure’s back. They sit tall, brown leather vest fitted over a cotton shirt, a bright beaded belt holding the shirt at their waist. Her waist, Percy realizes.
Her hands move smoothly across the stack of chips she picks from to toss into the center of the table. Across from her a man grins, yellow teeth still bright against his dark stubble and darker clothes. He too tosses chips, those he has left, into the center and flips his cards. Not a bad hand, Percy pieces from the hours of unwanted absorption brought upon him by proximity and confined space. The woman flips her own cards, the corner of her grin barely visible from where he stands, but there sure enough. The man’s brows furrow, face dropping, hands curling on the table.
“You’re a fuckin’ cheat,” he shouts, cutting through the other conversations, silencing the room.
“You’re a poor loser,” she throws back.
“I should have known not to play with a woman, let alone your kind.” The man stands, chair sliding back, legs screeching across the uneven floors. “I’m taking my money back,” he growls.
“I won it fair,” she says slowly, voice hard like iron. “You’re pissy because you lost to a woman, I were a man-“
“If you were a man, and had the iron to back it, we’d be taking this outside,” he barks.
“Ha, like you have enough iron to back anything,” her words roll off of her lips smoothly, but with the force to pierce home.
His eyes go wide, face going dark red as every muscles in his neck tenses. Before he can open his mouth, before a breath can be taken to speak up Percy feels a bark of laughter break free and echo in the quiet of the room. The eyes of every man whip to him, including the offended man.
“The fuck you laughing at?” Spit flies from his mouth. “You have any say in this?” The man’s eyes drop to Percy’s hip and snap back up. “You’re lucky you’re not carrying iron or I swear I’d put lead in you.”
Percy feels the weight at his back go cold, burning into the small of his back. He shifts, twisting to put his back against the bar, to cover himself.
“Looks like he does,” a slurred voice next to him says. “Tucked in his pants.”
The muscles in the man’s face relax, his hands moving to the belt slung low about his hips, his head tilting back slightly.
“Well then, why don’t we step outside and you can show me your piece. Seems a shame to keep it hidden.” There is victory in his voice, an absolute resolution that the outcome is inevitable.
“I don’t see a need for that,” Percy says, eyeing the man and those closest to him.
“You don’t know how to use it?”
“I do,” Percy says evenly.
“Then I don’t see the issue. We step outside and you show me what you can do with it, if you don’t shit your pants, and if I don’t draw first.”
“Dylan,” the voice of the bartender cuts across the room. “You played a bad hand, you’re not shooting anyone over this in my saloon.”
“Oh it won’t be in your saloon,” Dylan says proudly. “And it ain't over a hand of cards, this is over my honor as a man.”
“I didn’t insult you,” Percy counters.
“No, but you laughed, and that’s what matters.” Dylan steps towards him. “You ain't from here but you think you can walk in and laugh at me ? No sir, you have something to learn.”
“I don’t owe you shit,” Percy growls, “and the only thing you can teach anyone is how to be an arrogant ass.”
“Big man with your words, let’s see if your gun back ‘em.” Dylan’s hand rests on the handle of his pistol, finger sliding over the leather of his holster.
Doors bang open, light flashing into the room for a second, then disappearing and reappearing.
“Dylan,” a hard voice makes him jump, the tension in the room rippling to a frozen stillness.
“Sheriff,” Dylan draws.
“Get your hand off your gun.”
Percy pulls his eyes away from Dylan only when his hand lifts a foot from his weapon, shifting quickly to the figure that stands in front of the still swinging doors with a rifle in her hands and eyes that make his stomach drop.
Any man with sea salt in his blood would snap at the chance to tell you there are times when the ocean is not meant for mane to sail, and you can see those times in the clouds that suck the color from the water. Percy’s listened to the stories and the warnings enough to rasp the tales of caution in his own voice, and he can tell here in this landlocked state there is a storm that is not meant for men to handle in her eyes.
“There’s nothing here but a personal grievance, Sheriff,” Dylan says calmly.
“I very much doubt that,” the Sheriff remarks, voice laced with just a hint of twang. “Every time you and your boys ride into town it seems I’m inevitably called in to ride you out.”
“The grievance is real, Sheriff. The injin cheated and he insulted me.”
“I didn’t cheat,” the woman snaps, standing too, hand reaching for her belt.
“Piper,” the Sheriff warns, “step back.”
The woman, Piper, takes a step back from the table, hand still at her side. Percy keeps his eyes on the Sheriff but his attention on Dylan, already cursing this town and this man.
“Why don’t you and your boys leave, Dylan. You seem to have run out of money anyways.”
“Can’t just do that Sheriff.”
“I believe you can, or the Deputy and I can hog tie you and let your horses carry you back to where ever it is you hole up at night.”
Dylan bores his gaze into Percy, jaw working back and forth.
“I have every right to challenge him, he’s carrying iron.”
“That so? Rachel, what’s you take?”
“Dylan lost a hand, remarked he’d challenge Piper and she insulted him. The New Yorker laughed, but if Dylan had a right to challenge anyone that laughed at the stupidity that comes out of him he’d have right to challenge God himself.” Rachel says all of this calmly, cooly, and without regards to the fact she has outed him as an outsider, Percy throws a dark look at the bartender.
Dylan growls, showing that Percy isn’t the only one happy with something that was said.
“So Piper insulted you then. Piper, you have a gun on you?” The Sheriff waits.
“No,” Piper says, a note of regret in her voice.
“Anyone care to lend her one?” The saloon is silent except for the strained breathing of a few of the patrons. “Then it seems you have no one to actually challenge, no money, and no reason to stay.” There is no grounds for anything other than acceptance in the Sheriff’s voice.
“Well then,” Dylan says darkly, “I guess we’ll be on our way.”
There is a moment when the tension is pulled and strained, ice ready to break under them and throw them into the storm and currents. Dylan reaches down, wraps his fingers around his jacket which hangs across the back of his seat, and pulls it free. With that the tension shifts, and slips away, carrying with him and the others that file out the door.
A greeting is shouted from outside, met with the clamoring of men, the rustle of leather and metal, then finally the sharp snap of reins and hooves pounding against dirt. With a quarter of the room empty the air seems less restrictive, less thick, and Percy takes an easy breath. One that freezes in his chest when the Sheriff turns back to him.
“You, outside,” she orders.
Percy’s muscles tense with the itch to run, to break for the doors and Blackjack and carry on another hundred miles but the Sheriff is there, rifle in hand, between him and those doors. So he nods, pushing away from the bar and taking slow, even steps towards her. She steps backwards through the doors and out into the street, Percy following a step behind. Another man stands in the street, a rifle in hand with the butt of it resting on his hip. His gaze is no less hard but it lacks the storm in his eyes, instead there is only the vacant weight of judgement.
“What brings you to New Athens?” The twang is there again in her voice, clinging to the ending of her words.
“What?” Percy swallows, turns to her, eyes furrowing.
“Why are you here?”
“Looking for work,” Percy answers, eyes flicking between hers.
“Why?”
“Why?” he repeats.
“ Why ?”
“Need the money,” he says dumbly, unsure of what words she’s waiting for.
The Sheriff huffs a laugh through her nose, head shaking slowly. She lets one hand fall from the rifle, swinging it to her side and shifting her weight over the opposite leg.
“Men come West for one of two reasons, they’re looking for something, or something is looking for them. Which are you?”
Percy blinks at her, at the sharpness of her words and the edge that cuts through the stilted pretense. New York may have those who will give you a cold shoulder, a trait he can’t claim he doesn’t carry, but this is a level he can’t say he’d find in the streets of Manhattan.
“Looking for something,” he says.
The Sheriff tilts her head back, looking down her nose at him. “What’s your name.”
“Percy Jackson.”
“Well Mister Jackson, you’re full of shit, but if you’re willing to work and not cause trouble I can’t make you leave.”
He opens his mouth to protest, closes it, looks at the deputy and the tilt of the Sheriff's head. He decides to let the argument die.
“I’m Sheriff Chase, that’s Deputy Grace. As long as you’re here you’ll abide by what we say. Clear?” He nods. “Good. Beckendorf is looking for help,” she jerks her head down the road. “Rachel can set you up with a room until you find a more permanent residence,” she nods back inside the saloon. “Welcome to New Athens, Mister Jackson.”
She steps off the porch, a single long braid trailing behind her. Her head turns, glancing back at him over her shoulder with the shadow of the saloon falling across her.
“And Mister Jackson, keep the gun in your room or get a god damned holster.”
She crosses the street, the deputy following behind her in her wake, and leaves him there at the doors of the saloon.
Wind pulls at her braid, swinging the rifle in her hand, and laying a fine coat of dust across her clothing. Boots scuff behind her, the heavy, slow gate the shadow that follows her through this town in every waking moment. It's the sound of another set of eyes, a fast and steady hand, and another waiting rifle covering her back.
This morning that gait presses along another weight, something that sits heavy between herself and the deputy. On a morning spent flipping through news papers and telegrams, or spent shuffling through town passing out tilted greetings she'd let that tension sit until it has risen and boiled over. On a morning she's already sent Dylan and his gang riding, with a stranger standing at the heart of her town armed with a gun he has no good right to, she can't exactly afford to drag that tension around.
“Something you need to say Grace?”
“No, Sheriff,” he responds, curt and direct.
She turns, a half dozen paces from the decency of her office, letting the sun and God's eyes fall across them.
“Deputy,” she throws out the title, letting it fall to the dirt between them, “is there something you want to say?”
There's a twist to his lips that starts at the scar and ends at the corner of his mouth. For all his time mounted and in uniform they never seem to have broken him of the last sliver of Independence. Obedience he still has in abundance, but there's no hesitation to the apt but blunt observations when the door to her office closes. Jason Grace may have served in the worst hell the States have ever seen, been bred and molded for war, but he is nothing if not his own man.
“A stranger rides into town, starts a ruckus, nearly gets himself shot by Dylan, and you let him walk away with a gun in his waistband,” Jason shakes his head. “You know something I don't?”
“Plenty of things,” Annabeth doesn't take a breath before letting the comment slip.
“Oh then good,” Jason says flatly. “Another gun is loose in the town but you know things.” He covers the ground between them in a few long strides. “Is he running towards something, or away from something?”
Annabeth sets her jaw, staring up into the lightning etched eyes of her partner. The sun warms her back, the wind pulling the sweat and heat from her shirt. A lie wouldn't cost her much now, but the interest would be steep. The truth though isn't any stronger than a thatched roof, and has as many holes in it. Jason's her deputy, the choices she makes, that she's just made, are his to deal with too.
“He's running from something.”
“You have no problem with that?”
“I have a gang of desperate men that keep losing their money at Rachel's tables, all of them armed, all of them itching and dancing to pull a trigger. But Mister Jackson, he had a chance to draw, to put action to Dylan's words and he didn't. He's running from something, and that will make him steer for safe waters. He’s going to play it safe.” Annabeth glances down the street, nodding to those passing by. “Dylan though it's running towards something, and that something is a fight.”
Annabeth turns, pacing her step, her twist, with time to let Jason keep up. Without pause he follows, stepping onto the porch of their office in time with her. Under the shade of their roof she pulls her hat, running an arm over her forehead and pushing away the free stray strands of sweat slicked hair that cling to it.
“You could run them out and keep them out,” Jason offers.
“They haven't done anything wrong.”
“The shit that bastard's said to Piper is enough-”
“Your girl started this fight,” Annabeth cuts off. “And if Miss McLean wants to deal with his words that's between herself and Dylan. Not you .” Annabeth adds.
“She's not my girl,” Jason mutters, eyes fixed on her but a tinge of color coloring his cheeks.
“Well then it's good to see you so caring about the citizens of our town. Maybe spread that concern around.” Annabeth turns, grabbing the handle and swinging the door of the sheriff's office open.
Her rifle is set against the wall, butt down, muzzle nestled in it's crook. She shifts her belt and sits, setting her hat down on the thick layer of papers that blanket her desk. Jason sits on the edge of his own, arms crossed over his chest.
“I don't like sitting here waiting for them to pick the fight. Not men like Dylan. I know his kind, I'm not happy to say I rode with them, but I did. They won't wait until a time when we're ready.” Jason's voice is low and level and edged with an energy Annabeth doesn't care to place.
“We're not at war, Jason. You aren't judge, jury, and executioner. If Dylan and his boys are going to start a fight we'll never be ready. As hard as you are, you aren't a dozen men.” Jason scoffs at this. “Jason, I mean this as kindly as possible, but you should think on why you're willing to fight Dylan without cause.”
“He's a bully, a racist, and a coward. Given the chance he'd burn the town and do things I'd never speak of. Just because he hasn't done anything yet, doesn't mean he won't.” Jason leans back, pulling his shoulders square. “That's all the cause I need.” There is no qualm in Jason's voice, only the ring of absolute resolve.
That fact lets a bullet drop into her gut, the lead heavy and uncomfortable.
“So you think it's right to hang him for something he'll do eventually .”
“I think a man who lives by the gun needs to be prepared to have one used against him. But would I hang him? No, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't make it clear he's not welcome here.”
Annabeth feels the same, time old question rise to her lips. The same one that rose the day he walked into her office, Stetson in hand still in uniform, and has risen every time she’s seen those military colors in his words. She swallows it though, not willing to give a chance at having to explain her name, for it's only fair that is she asks her question, he gets to ask his.
“So what are you going to do, Deputy?” Annabeth sits straighter in her chair, pressing her shoulder blades back into the hardwood backing.
Jason pushes off his desk, walking around it to sink into his own chair, a hand resting on his holster. “Absolutely nothing. You're the Sheriff, and I'm here to back what you say.”
Obedience in plenty.
Annabeth lets her shoulders fall, turning her eyes down to the papers across her desk. She pushes a few of them aside, moves some closer, ignores the majority of them. They are all already in her memory, at least enough of them to matter or to recall later when she needs them. But to piece together the wording as a whole, line by line, word by word, letter by letter is something that would turn her hairs gray and drive her running into the wilderness barefoot.
“Then it seems it’s settled, we wait. If Dylan and his boys decide to do something stupid then we’ll be here.”
Annabeth filters through the newest of the reports and telegrams, picking out the charges, the rewards, the state. She tosses a handful that are out of date already, setting aside others she’ll come back to later. As she picks over the heavy black font she finds a week old description that makes the bullet in her stomach melt and boil away, the charges read like a string of horrors, a stampede she saw start and still can’t find herself to accept or run from. It is the only solid detail provided though that starts a ringing in her head like a train hitting its brakes. A scar on his left side, running from eyebrow to jaw, but without marring his blue eyes.
She thinks his name in the same voice she screamed at him in. It takes her only a heartbeat to grab the paper, strike the match, and toss them both into the pot iron furnace in the corner. She stands, watching the paper burn, hearing Jason shift in his chair as he peers around her, his gaze falling onto her back. The only thing she’s thankful for, is that there was no image of Luke included.