Chapter Text
Tilly Jackson had once been used to weather like this.
This sticky heat, the kind that leaves a thin film of moisture on the skin. Scrub at it all you want with a washcloth and a half decent soap, as soon as you dry off it’ll be right back like a second skin. The air back home had sometimes been thick enough to breathe. Thick enough to drown in.
West Elizabeth shouldn’t be like this.
But the storm had been rolling in for days now, building like it had some real spite behind it. They’d be feeling it soon. She best hurry and get the clothes down before the wind tore them from the line.
Tilly Jackson has been running with the Van der Linde gang for some months now. Seven, eight? She’s not quite sure. The fear of the first few blended them together. Only snippets of those few cut through.
The glint of a knife.
She’d been peeling potatoes with it.
That was what the Foreman gang kept women for. Cooking. Washing. Keeping things running so the men could keep stealing and drinking and killing. And then, when they decided, for the other thing.
She’d been dragged into a tent that day. Almost forced into the last role this world seemed determined to carve women into. It hadn’t mattered that she was barely twelve. That she could still pass for a boy if it weren’t for her skirts. That her body hadn’t caught up with what they wanted from it.
Her mind had frozen with fear
Her body didn’t need her mind to survive.
Instinct alone moved her hands.
She could still smell the iron, feel the bastard’s warm blood splattering onto her hands as it spurted from his sliced throat. The weak, gurgling sound of shock as he looked at her. He’d been close enough that she could see the way his pupils dilated with fear, saw the bloodshot whites of his eyes as they rolled in fear and shock.
He’d died with that shocked expression. Shocked as he was brutally reminded violence wasn’t something only men could wield.
That night, she’d fled. She’d felt dizzy with her new freedom. She was a bird who sprouted wings and could finally fly away. There was only one place she wanted to go. Home. To fall into her mother’s arms, to press her face into the familiar crook of her neck and let the brittle shell of womanhood crack away. To be a little girl again. To be safe.
The journey back to Louisiana had given her time to hope.
She arrived to find nothing waiting for her.
Only an unmarked grave in a pauper’s field. No headstone. No flowers. Just a patch of dirt among dozens like it. All that was afforded to a woman like her mother, once enslaved, who’d clawed a life together with her own two hands. She deserved a grave covered in the most beautiful of roses yet she’d been forgotten the moment she was gone.
In that instant, Tilly’s wings turned to smoke. Reality set in.
Reality settled in hard and final. There was no going back. The girl she’d been had been lost the moment she was taken. Now there was only this: Tilly Jackson., all alone and most likely being hunted down by Anthony Foreman for the murder of his brother.
Besides, only a fool would believe a girl could truly be free. Especially not a girl like her. Not one who had blood on her hands. Maybe it was better her momma hadn’t lived to see her like this. She’d died knowing Tilly as her sweet little girl, and would never have to reckon with what the world had forced her to become.
Untethered, Tilly had walked red dirt roads without direction. Her mind too tired to hold grief properly. Her feet eventually found an old path, worn smooth by memory, hoping, once again foolishly, that something familiar waited at the end.
Her old house was occupied.
A man, his wife, and their young daughter. She watched from hiding as the father left early each morning, smoking on the porch her momma had once stood on, laughing with neighbors as they passed. He returned sun-worn and bent by fieldwork, yet smiling all the same when his family ran to greet him.
Tilly had never known her own father. Or maybe she had, once, and time had stolen him away. Her mother used to speak of him fondly. Of the good. He was a good man. Strong. Steady. They’d been freed with nothing but stubborn hope, and together they’d built something real. When Tilly grew up, her mother had said she should choose a man like him.
She’d never asked how he died.
The new woman scrubbed laundry in her momma’s old tin washtub. Hung it on the same line, with one old post replaced, but still standing. Folded it neatly and packed it into a sack, handing it to the girl to deliver. The child walked the same dirt road Tilly once had, her hand wrapped around her mother’s, headed for the market. At night, the smell of supper drifted through the air to where Tilly hid. Close. So close to her own momma’s cooking it made her chest ache. But not the same. That exact scent was gone forever. Her mother had never gotten to pass the recipe on.
She watched them, day after day.
New life has filled the house. And still, she was haunted, lingering like a ghost. The ghost of a little girl clutching her mother’s hand lingered there, stubborn and bright, even though they were both long dead. The place had forgotten her. Or maybe it had only ever belonged to who she used to be.
Weeks. Months. Maybe years. It all felt like one long blur of walking and watching and surviving.
Now here she was, living among outlaw men again.
She hadn’t let her guard down. Not completely. No matter how often they said they were different, how gently they spoke, how carefully they tried to mind their manners around her. All men had the capacity to be the same. Some just took longer to show it.
People didn’t take in little girls out of kindness alone. There was always a reason. Especially men like these. Outlaws, dangerous, wanted. Men with bounties. Trust was never something given freely. It was something girls like her paid for.
No matter how freely Miss Grimshaw moved through camp, as though she owned it. Her stern voice alone was enough to straighten backs, grown men falling silent like chastened boys. As if her place there was fixed and irreplaceable.
No matter how Annabelle’s absence lingered over the camp like a bruise that never faded. She’d been killed by the O’Driscolls. True monsters, Mr. van der Linde would say in a low voice with a fury that made her nervous. Tilly had never known a woman’s death to matter so much. To be heavy enough to start a blood feud, to justify endless violence in her name.
No matter how fondly Mr. Matthews had spoken of his wife, Bessie, how his face softened when he said her name. She’d once ridden with the gang herself, before illness drove her away and back home. Still, whenever he returned from town with a letter, he brightened like he’d received a truly valuable gift.
But recently, he’d come back from town a different man. A broken man. A single letter clutched and crinkled in his hand. He’d left the gang for a few months, he’d come back rangy and quieter.
Men like these broke, too.
There were no men in camp now. Mr. Dutch Van der Linde, Mr. Hosea Matthews, and Mr. Arthur Morgan were off on a job. Robbing some rich fool who, according to Dutch, would do more good dead than alive. Hosea had laughed and said that was almost always the case.
A cough from the nearest tent pulls her from her thoughts.
She isn’t completely alone. Though the fact that there are no men still stands. The source of that cough would take offense to that distinction.
John Marston.
Tilly had been shocked when she’d first seen him, a smaller shadow amongst the grown men. Another kid her age. She’d assumed he must belong to someone. Someone’s something or other. Dutch’s son. It made sense. They shared the same black hair that curled at the ends, the same dark eyes that could go wild with anger. The parts that didn’t match, she figured, must’ve come from his momma. He wasn’t, though he’d seemed pleased she had thought so.
Later, once the sky was dark enough that it was easier to whisper truths, he would quietly admit that he used to imagine he really was Dutch and Annabelle’s. Just in his head. Just sometimes.
No, John wasn’t anyone’s son. He was just another stray Dutch had picked up. He’d been with the gang longer than she had by a year, but he was still wild, part of him was still half-lost in the edges of society. He’d scream and kick if someone tried to comb his hair, but insisted on keeping it long. Rarely washed it, let it go greasy and tangled, much to Ms. Grimshaw’s fury.
A week ago, shouting had torn her from sleep. She’d sat up in her bedroll, barely awake, already irritated. Same source as always. Marston and Morgan arguing.
John had saddled up and swung onto his pony, a gelding named Lucky Penny. The little thing had been bought with the purpose of teaching him how to ride. John had been growing quicker than they’d expected, shot up like a weed now that he had some proper food. It was clear he’d outgrown Penny.
“Them lanky legs of yours are damn near plowin’ the ground,” Arthur had laughed, dodging John’s kick. “Yer draggin’ the poor thing down.”
Dutch smiled then. The kind of smile that meant work for everyone else.
“I think Arthur’s right,” he’d said, smoke curling from his cigar. “It’s about time our John here got himself a real horse.”
Excitement had replaced John’s anger, until Dutch kept talking. “Arthur, why don’t you take the boy out and break one.”
The two of them tried to argue back, but it didn't matter. No arguments did once Dutch decided something.
Two days later, the storm came.
It came fast. One moment the day was clear and bright, the next it rained so heavily it forced Tilly and Ms. Grimshaw out of their shared lean-to and into the nearest shelter: John and Arthur’s shared tent.
She hated it.
Tents were enclosed. Trapped. Nothing good happened in men’s tents. Even Arthur Morgan, kind as he seemed, was still a man. The tent smelled like man and her instincts screamed. Laying in the dark, she’d see movement from the corner of her eye. Malcolm reaching for her, the glint of his belt, the whisper of a voice taunting her. She buried her face in the blanket to avoid seeing anything at all and got a faceful of dried sweat and dust. She barely slept, the night spent with her instincts screaming at her to run and cursing Marston and his unwashed sheets.
The pair returned the next day, soaked and grinning. John had a new horse. A mare. White and brown, spotted. A Tennesse Walker, according to an exhausted but quietly pleased Arthur.
John crowed about his accomplishment all day, between coughing and sniffling. After one coughing fit that lasted a bit too long, Hosea had cut him off with a hand to the forehead. Everyone politely ignored the way he flinched back.
“Fool boy,” Hosea said. “You’re running a fever.”
He’d tried to escape the bitter medicinal teas and tonics Hosea forced down his throat. They were all made by the man himself. Once they settled into a new camp he’d go out to pick ingredients: ginseng, elderberry, willow bark, ingredients that Tilly couldn’t tell apart from the poisonous stuff. He said that his mom had taught him how to make them. There weren’t any stores where I grew up, he told Tilly as he ground up the herbs. He’d instructed her to sit close and watch the process, that learning how to make these tonics would serve her well one day. Even if there were, we wouldn’tve had the money anyways. There were quite a few of us kids. We made our own medicine, and hunted and ate whatever animals were able to be caught. Why once, we hunted down an absolute beast of a raccoon, thought it was a bear with how loud it was. Arthur would sit nearby scribbling in his notebook pretending he wasn’t listening to the older man’s stories.
After his return from wherever it was he’d gone there were no stories. Just the scraping of herbs being grinded down. Not even Arthur could bait him into telling any tales.
John’d tried to refuse the tonics. The boy was a shockingly picky eater for a former street rat, current nomadic outlaw in the making, whining about food being too mushy or too dry. He’d rather skip a meal than eat something that he didn’t like. Probably the reason he was so damn skinny. Hosea soon scared him straight with the threat of the cold turning into something more dangerous. Threats of fluid pooling in the lungs. Of drowning from the inside. That fear stuck, John went still at the mention of it. He finally downed the liquid with a plugged nose and immediately gagging and screeching about how gross it was. Despite that, the fever got worse, and he was confined to his tent.
Despite being bedbound, John’d thrown a fit when he learned there’d be a robbery without him. Even Ms. Grimshaw would be going.
“You wouldn’tve been part of this job anyway,” Arthur scoffed, not looking up as he cleaned his rifle with gun oil and a rag. “Yer just a boy.”
“You were doing jobs when you were my age!”
“Well,” he lifted the rifle, blue-green eyes clear in the polished metal, “you ain’t me.”
John had been stewing in his fury and fever since. Tilly would only see him when she’d bring him a bowl of stew that had been left pre-prepared by Ms. Grimshaw, reheated over the fire, and to refill the bucket of water at his side. A light tap with the toe of her boot to his leg, listening for his muffled grunt to make sure he was still alive. With that confirmed she’d quickly leave, throwing a reminder for him to replace the wet rag on his forehead over her shoulder, and escape the suffocating heat of fever and smell of stale sweat.
Tonight, she was alone by the fire.
She ate slowly. That was a habit she’d had to relearn. When Dutch found her that day, shambling along the roadside, she’d been starving. Truly starving. She remembered the way she’d devoured the first bowl of food she’d been given. Too fast to even taste it. She’d only gotten a hint of the original sweetness once she’d thrown it up a mere hour later, with Ms. Grimshaw holding her skirts up from behind to keep them from being splashed as she retched and sobbed.
She had been too close to death, Ms. Grimshaw had said, handing her a metal cup of water to swish and spit out.
Now, months later she could eat without fear of losing it all to nausea. The fire was warm in front of her. Breeze cool on her skin. Peace, fragile and rare. With the Foreman’s boys, there had always been fear. The women would eat far from the fire’s warmth and light, scared to make themselves known. Now she shut her eyes and enjoyed the breeze.
The wind had begun picking up as she washed her bowl. A light drizzle began soon afterwards. By the time she was changed into her nightclothes and huddled up in her bedroll, the rain was coming down hard, wind blowing it under the lean-to. Even buried in her own and some of Ms. Grimshaw’s stolen blankets, she felt water beginning to seep through.
She lay there for god knows how long, eyes shut trying to convince herself that she was already asleep and staying as still as possible to prevent more water from coming in. After what felt like hours, more hours than the night should last, she sat up, looking over to the tents. At this rate, she’d be soaked and wake up sick. Then both her and John would be sick with no one to take care of either of them. Wrapping herself in her blanket as a hood over her head, Tilly dashed across camp, sliding through the mud past the washed-out fire, smoke barely visible through the rain. She slipped through the tent’s gap, slight enough to not have to bother with the ties.
“John?”
No response. She tries to squint at him through the dark. She reaches for the crate between the bedrolls, blindly grasping for the box of matches she knows is there.
A strike, a spark and then a groan. Agonized, John curled in on himself, away from the light.
“Ow.”
His voice sounded warped and muffled.
Tilly stills, then reaches over to touch his forehead. He flinches when her rain-cold fingers touch his burning skin.
“John,” she hissed, “you’re practically boiling!” The only response a small grunt that turns into a cough. Tilly grabs him by the shoulders and guides him to sit up and breathe easier, feeling a little grossed out at the warm sweat soaking his shirt. John makes a frustrated sound, something like a whine between coughs and squirms, reaching up to keep his eyes covered.
“Hurts”
“What hurts?”
No answer. When the fit passed, she helped him back down, dunked the rag in lukewarm water, wrung it out, and pressed it to his forehead. A small noise of discomfort.
She leaned back on her heels. His face was twisted up, pressing a palm to his forehead.
“Your head hurts?” A miserable mm-hmm.
She snuffed the lantern, sitting on the bedroll beside him. She would stay awake. Keep watch as she should.
Eventually, just to get a little more comfortable, she laid down.
.
.
.
She awoke later with no notion of how much time had passed to a low rumble. Sweat clung to the back of her neck, to the bend of her knees.
Something was wrong.
Groaning, she pushed herself up from the warm bedroll and groggily tugged the tent flap open, loose ties coming undone. The sky was wrong. Black clouds marred with streaks of sickly green, the kind that clung to your knees when you fell on wet grass. The rain had stopped. The air was still. Not a cricket chirped. Not a cicada screamed. The world held its breath.
Dread settled in her chest, shapeless and thick, as she pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders. Instinct kept her still, like the creatures outside, silent and waiting.
Lightning cracked. For a heartbeat, the world was black and white like a developing photo. And in that flash, she saw it: a rope of clouds twisting, clawing its way out of the sky.
Darkness swallowed everything.
Another flash
It connects with the ground, a cloud of dust thrown up into the air as it does.
She knew then. She’d never seen one in person, but she’d heard the stories. Towns ripped away. Livelihoods vanished. Families ripped apart. It was a tornado.
Frozen for a moment, she spun back toward the bedroll, practically throwing herself onto John, shaking him as hard as she could and shouting his name. He lets out a miserable noise and curls in on himself.
“John, wake up! I-It’s a twister! John, there’s a twister outside!”
That forces him fully awake and sitting up.
“What?” He rasps.
“C’mon.” She grabbed his too-warm hand and pulled him to unsteady feet. They staggered to the tent flap. Lightning lit the world again. There it was, fully visible, spinning closer. The same awe she felt was mirrored in John’s wide grey-brown fever-bright eyes.
“Does… it look different? From the first time you saw it?” he asked, voice rough.
“Huh?”
“Hosea said, if a tornado doesn’t look like it’s moved at all, it’s coming right at you.”
“I… I ain’t sure… don’t think it’s moved.”
They waited, silent, while lightning struck three more times. It stayed in the same place each time, maybe a little bigger the last time.
“Shit.”
John staggered back inside, grabbing his boots. Fever-addled, he collapsed onto the tent floor. Tilly held out her hands, but he waved her off, stupid stubborn teenage boy pride too strong.
“Go. Put your shoes on.”
“What?”
“We gotta get outta here. The storm’s coming straight for us.” Her stomach twisted at his words. To see it was one thing. To see that thing off in the distance and feel an unattached dread. It was another for its threat to be spoken into reality.
John pulled a coat on, a hand-me-down from Arthur. It sagged on his arms, still too big. She pulled on her shoes. They hadn’t gotten around to buying her a coat, though they swore they would once it started getting cold.
John stood, taking a second to shut his eyes and sway. Then, he starts across camp to the horses, Tilly following at his heels, blanket held tight around her shoulders. It had begun to whip in the wind.
John grabbed his saddle and swung it up onto his horse's back. He tried to do up the straps and huffed in annoyance as he remembered that they were adjusted for Penny, too small for this new, bigger horse. Now he’s forced to waste precious time adjusting them, Tilly shifting from foot to foot behind him. He tries his best, never having done it before. It’s just like doing up a pant belt, isn't it? Fever made his hands weak, sweat slick and rain soaked. How tight was too tight? Arthur was the one who had done it for Penny, John too excited to pay attention to how. Arthur wasn’t here now. Dutch and Hosea and Ms. Grimshaw weren’t either. Fifteen years old, John Marston is the oldest person here. Only by maybe one and a half years, but still older nonetheless. A glance back and he sees Tilly looking back over her shoulder watching the storm advance with wide eyes, knuckles pale from her grip on her blanket. For the first time, someone’s relying solely on him.
Once he’s pretty sure he’s done the saddle up right, he goes over to the other horses. Two big ol’ shires they used to pull the wagon. He undid the first one's tie to the tree, then slapped her on the rump sending her running.
“What are you doing?” Asked Tilly.
“Letting them loose, we can't take them with us and they deserve a chance to escape too” Explained John as he did the same with the other who'd already started panicking as the wind got stronger. He hesitated before shooing Penny away as well. He hoped they’d be safe on their own.
He swung himself up onto his new mare, taller than he was used to, the effort causing his vision to flicker in and out. His fever had refused to break since yesterday, but he was managing to push it to the back of his consciousness with adrenaline. Arthur wouldn’t let himself be slowed down by a little fever and neither would he. Taking a second to adjust, he held his hand out to Tilly and helped her swing up behind him. One final look back over the camp and he kicked the mare into a run. He’s not quite sure where they're going, just anywhere out of the storm's path.
The rain picks up as they race down the plains. Soon, it's impossible to see more than a few inches ahead. John ducked his head against the wall of rain. Tilly huddled up against John, fists gripping the sides of his coat, face pressed between his bony shoulder blades. Fever radiated from him, heat pressed against her cheek contrasting the cold rain pounding on her back.
“Look!” shouted Tilly pointing a finger over John’s shoulder, water dripping down from her arm into his coat collar and adding to the discomfort he already felt, “are those lights?”
John brought a hand up, shielding his eyes to see through the curtain of rain. He could just barely make out the orange flickers through the grey. Was it actually lights or just a shared mirage born of desperation, he didn’t know, but he turned and rode towards it as hail began to fall, hissing as a chunk of ice struck his temple. His headache instantly worsened. Tilly lifted her blanket, fighting the wind to shield their heads. As they rode, the silhouette of a building became clear.
It was a church, its crooked and rotting steeple cutting through the dark. John threw himself off the horse, boots sliding a few inches in the mud as he landed. He quickly helped Tilly slide off. Blue and white lit up the field as a few yards away a tree was split in half by lightning going off like a gunshot. The mare reared, eyes rolling with fear. John quickly pulled Tilly back to avoid its hooves as it took off running, disappearing into the rain.
The church cellar doors were old, planks warped by years of abandonment. Tilly tried to pull them open. “It’s stuck-!” she shouted, voice torn apart by the wind.
John came up next to her, nearly losing his footing on the slick ground as it trembled beneath them. He took one of the handles and they both yanked. Pain flared white-hot behind his eyes from the strain, but adrenaline kept him upright. The latch screeched, rust giving way with a sound like a scream, and the doors burst open.
Wind roared immediately down into the dark below, sucking at them like the mouth of some waiting thing.
“In- go- go!” John barked, the words scraping out of his throat.
Another flash of lightning- too close, far too close- lit the world in violent white. For an instant Tilly saw the tornado clearly now, no longer distant. It was wider now, a stovetop shape.
She didn’t need telling twice.
Tilly ducked down the steps, skirts clutched in one hand, the other scrabbling against the stone wall as she descended. John followed, slamming the old doors shut behind them. Impact boomed through the cellar. Dirt rained from the ceiling. The doors shuddered as if pressed by a monster.
Then silence.
Tilly’s breath came in sharp, painful gasps. She pressed her back to the cool dirt wall, chest heaving, hands shaking so badly she had to lace her fingers together to stop them. The cellar smelled like damp earth and old rot. Somewhere, water dripped steadily.
After barring the door, John let himself fall back against the wall and slide down to the floor, head down, wet black hair plastered to his face.
A sound like a freight train tore through the earth above them. The cellar groaned. Dirt sifted down in steady streams now, coating their hair and shoulders. Something heavy crashed into the church above, adding to the cacophony of old wood splintering, glass shattering. Tilly flinched hard, hands flying up to cover her head.
John reached for her blindly and caught her shoulders, shoving her down. “Cover your head!”
She obeyed immediately, curling in beside him, knees drawn tight to her chest. The door shook violently and John lunged, grabbing the handles and pulling, terrified that it’d be ripped open by the wind.
The roar grew deafening.
Tilly forced her eyes open.
John’s face was pale beneath the grime, lips cracked, sweat plastering his hair to his forehead. He looked awful. But his grip was steady. He caught her eye. “We’re gonna be okay,” he shouted over the roar, like he needed her to believe it to believe it himself.
Another crash overhead cut through his words. The sound of the tornado peaked, an unholy scream, then slowly, gradually, began to fade.
Minutes passed. Or hours. Time didn’t exist underground.
Eventually, the shaking softened. The roar dulled to a distant howl, then to wind, then to rain.
Silence crept back in. Their soaked clothes became cold and they began to shiver.
Neither of them moved for a long time.
John’s grip on the handles loosened. His shoulders sagged, strength bleeding out of him now that there was nothing left to fight.