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This wasn’t what Bunny had planned.
He never intended to get another person mixed up in all this trouble, told himself it would be him and him alone who dealt with the past that seemed to catch him no matter where he tried to run to next.
But then he was standing outside of Armadillo Springs as flames licked at its walls, the pistol holstered on his belt still faintly smoking, and a girl was grabbing his hand.
He forced himself not to flinch away or, worse, reach for the old knife hidden in his boot as her soft, smooth skin touched his scarred and calloused palm.
“C’mon, we can’t be standing around here! It’s dangerous.” Her voice had an easy, southern drawl buried under layers of panic and something he thought might be close to grief.
“I-I…” It was only now that Bunny glanced around and realised that he was one of the last people still by the town’s walls.
Or, at least, the last of those not trapped inside.
The hand still wrapped around his gave a firm but gentle tug, and that same panicked voice spoke again. “It’s not safe here! We have to go-”
Bunny forced himself to think. He couldn’t see Billy or the other Kids anywhere amidst the billowing clouds of smoke surrounding the town, and any half-decent Sheriff or Bounty Hunter would stop a lone, pistol-wielding stranger leaving the ruins of an obvious outlaw raid.
But he wasn’t alone, now, was he?
Not another person caught up in my trouble. Never again.
Bunny turned to the girl holding his hand. Her hair was almost the same colour as the baked red sand underneath them. Or the fire eating this town alive right before their eyes.
“Listen, we need to get a ways away from all this smoke choking up our lungs. I think I saw some horses ‘round the other side of the wall. I’ll go grab ‘em, you stay back from the flames, alright?”
Her eyes flickered, scanning his face for something that apparently, she found. “I…alright. Be quick.”
Bunny nodded, and started off into the smoke.
He considered running a hundred times over as he slashed the rope tethering a tall bay horse to a fence post just outside of town, and a hundred more as he swung himself into the saddle on its back.
He could’ve run.
He should've run, should’ve left this girl who would stop and risk her life to make sure a total stranger was getting away from the fire, who would grab his hand without a moment’s hesitation and try to tug him away from the flames. He should’ve trusted that the world would take care of a girl like that, that he wasn’t needed at all.
But Bunny knew enough of the world to know it wasn’t too kind to people who were kind themselves, and he had seen enough to make him not believe much in such things as trust or blind faith anymore.
He could stand there and pretend that it was for purely selfish reasons that he turned that horse back to where he left the girl, that he needed her to get him out of town without too many questions being asked, but at the end of day, he held out his arm to help her into the saddle behind him and pressed his only canteen of water into her soft hands because the world could stand to have a few more kind people running around in it.
…Maybe that was why he told her to keep her eyes fixed on the horizon as the familiar sound of a gunshot rang out across the plains and Armadillo Springs burned itself down to ash behind them.
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Missy was…different, different to any other person he had met.
The desert was a cruel place, one where sand got in your clothes and your hair and your eyes and the sun never stopped burning a hole the back of your neck until it set and you found yourself longing for its warmth.
The desert specialised in making hard, prideful people, people who had long since sold whatever compassion or care they once had for a promise of gold and fortune, and the frontier doubly so.
Bunny himself was a prime example - a boy once as loud and naive as any other, morphed into a young man who didn’t even flinch at the knockback of pulling a trigger anymore.
But Missy…she didn’t let the sun and the sky and vast, empty plains mold her into that kind of person. She refused to let anything, anyone, try to change who she had decided she was going to be, and that was one of things Bunny liked - no, admired about her the most.
It had been three weeks, now, since they rode away together, and he kept telling himself he wouldn’t put her in danger much longer. Tomorrow, he would say. Tomorrow I’ll steal a horse from some outpost for her, stock the saddlebags with stolen supplies, and point her in the direction of the nearest town. It’ll hurt, to see that look of betrayal in her eyes, but it’s the only thing he could do. She was far too good for a life like this.
And she’s far too good for a man like me.
Tomorrow, he’ll do it. Not today. Today he said he’ll show her how to check that the water they scoop from old wells is good for drinking.
Today it’s too hot to be sending her out. Tomorrow will be cooler.
She looks so happy today, he can’t possibly break that kinda news. He’ll wait till tomorrow to tell her, that’s what he’ll do.
He had gone through dozens of excuses by the time the moon marked their first month travelling together. His excuses grew weaker and weaker by their second, and as the new moon rose on their third month, he had stopped making them at all.
Missy wasn’t going away any time soon, and it took him a long time to realise that he didn’t want her to, either.
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“Don’t talk while you chew, Bunny.”
“What?”
Missy pulled a dried up piece of carrot out of her pocket and held it out to Temper. “Don’t be talking while you're chewing your food. It’s not polite.”
Bunny paused mid bite of slightly stale bread and cold meat. “Why not?”
She shrugged. “Just is. Manners, good company and all that.”
“Oh, well, I do apologise, Missy. I’m not the most…uh, informed on these kinds of things.”
The fond smile she sent his way made him want to swing her around and around in his arms. Instead, he just scooted a bit closer to her place by the embers of yesterday’s campfire.
“Say, these manners things seem to matter an awful lot to you, don’t they?”
Missy glanced at the far-distant hills sitting on the horizon. “I suppose so. I was always raised to believe in that sort of thing. Treat people with respect because they’re people, not because they’re rich or pretty or powerful, you know?” She sighed. “I know it’s probably not the winning philosophy out here, though.”
“Well, not for most folks, no, but I think it's a fine way of seeing it all, Miss.”
She smiled, and he couldn’t help but see the lingering sadness there. “You do?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I do.”
“Well, alright then.”
He grinned. “Alright.”
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“Missy, c’mere! Let me show you something.”
Bunny carefully pried the wire noose from around the rabbit’s neck. “Our traps caught something.”
Missy looked up from the rip in one of Temper’s saddle blankets that she was carefully darning. “Really? What is it?”
“Rabbit. Pretty big one, too.”
“Well, what d'you say we make with it?”
He blinked away the memories of late night dinners and faces lit by flickering campfires that threatened to drown out his mind. “We…I used to always make rabbit stew after a long day out in the sun.”
The sun. Sure.
“Oh, that sounds mighty fine, just that I wouldn’t know where to start with cooking that.”
“What, you telling me you’ve never made rabbit stew before? What exactly did y'all eat in that town of yours?”
“Armadillos.” Missy deadpanned.
Bunny grinned. “Oh, sure thing. C’mon, it’s really not that hard. I’ll teach you how to make it.”
She bumped her hand against his. “Well, I appreciate that, Bunny.”
“You’re welcome, Miss.”
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He had to tell her. He couldn’t sit there by the fire any longer, every word coming out of his mouth built on a thousand little lies.
My Mama died when I was born, and my Pa not too soon after.
Ah, I’m from an old town out west. You wouldn’t know it, it’s not even on any maps.
I sold my great-aunt’s old ring at the market back there, that’s how I could afford these supplies.
I’m not much of a shot. Didn’t manage to teach myself until a few years ago.
And he couldn’t keep lying to her. Not to Missy. So, one evening, as the last few rays of light were just beginning to fade from the sky, he tapped her shoulder as she was standing up to go say goodnight to Temper.
She insisted on doing that, every night. Said it was polite to Temper. He pretended he was annoyed by it, but they both knew he really thought it was sweet.
“Hey, uh, Missy? You got a second?” His voice sounded hoarse and rough in his throat. He cleared it, once, twice, three times.
“Yeah, what is it?”
“I, ah…I got something to tell you. Something important.”
She finished stroking Temper’s muzzle and turned to face him. He realised with a pang that the usual smile was gone from her lips.
“Well, alright then.”
“I…I haven’t been entirely honest with you, Missy. About my past.”
Tell her. Tell her.
“When….before we met…I…”
The words wouldn’t come out. How could he tell her? How could he stand there and watch the light, the joy fade out of his eyes like she was dying?
He couldn’t. He had to.
For the first time in a long time, Bunny was truly, deeply afraid.
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Missy wasn’t stupid. She had had her suspicions for months now, chose to wait and let Bunny decide how he was gonna say it, when he was gonna say it.
But it was clearly eating him up inside, trying to find the words, so she looked him right in the eyes and told him
“I know.”
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“You…what?”
Missy smiled, softly, sadly. “I know, Bunny. I’ve known for a while, now.”
“Oh.”
She knew. She knew and she didn’t turn away from him.
She knew, and she still smiled at him like he didn’t have decade old blood staining his hands.
“You don’t understand, Missy. The group I was part of…” His throat felt like it would close around his words, trapping them inside.
“You’ve heard of Billy and the Kids, right?”
“Yeah. Everyone has.”
He tried to pretend that his hands weren’t ever-so-slightly shaking.
“Well, I was the kid. The first one.”
He watched as her eyes widened a fraction of an inch. “You were Billy’s kid?”
This is it, Bunny. The point of no return.
A part of him was screaming to run far from here, to shut his mouth or tell her it was a joke, he was lying, that the past he had tried so hard, that he had nearly managed to outpace was, had never been his in the first place.
But she deserved to know the truth.
She deserved the world, and while he couldn’t give her that, he could give her the one thing he had left.
He could give her honesty.
“I was.”
The words felt like blood dripping off his tongue. Like poison.
“And, Missy, there’s more. We…Billy and the Kids were the ones who burned down Armadillo Springs.”
For a long moment, the plains around them fell silent. Far overhead, a vulture made large, swooping circles around their camp.
Then, all of a sudden, Missy nodded. “Okay.”
“What?”
“Okay.”
He frowned. “Missy, you’re not saying-”
She slipped her hand into his like it was the easiest thing in the world to touch the flesh of a man like him.
“Nothing I can do will change the past. I can’t stop you and the Kids from raiding my home, and I can’t stop whatever happened to have you end up throwing in your lot with Billy.”
She took a single, shuddering breath.
“Like my Mama always used to say - there’s no use tryna fix what’s already good and done.”
Bunny closed his eyes.
“I…I was nine. When Billy took me in. Everything was normal, as it was, and then, all of a sudden, people started screamin’. My Pa hid me under the dining room table. Told me to stay put, stay nice and quiet till he could come find me. I heard…I heard a bang, and…there was no screaming no more. Billy found me when he came to raid the house. Guess he felt bad for the kid alone in an empty house, tryna hide his tears from the stranger at the door, ‘cause he shoved the pistol back into his holster and offered me water out of his own canteen. I don’t…even back then, I was old enough to know there wasn’t really much of a choice.”
He couldn’t hold back tears then, and he couldn’t stop them from running tracks down his face now, either.
“Billy killed my Pa, Missy. I spent a long time tryna pretend like he didn’t, but in Ardmillo Springs…in your home…”
She deserves the truth. She’s the best damn thing in your life, Bunny, and she deserves to know the whole truth.
“Remember when we first met, and I told you to block your ears and don’t stop looking at the horizon, no matter what kinda thing you heard?”
“I do. I remember, Bunny.”
“Billy had been following us. There was one more bullet in my gun and all I could think about was the look on my Pa’s face when he told me he would come find me as soon as he could.” He was crying, now, well and truly crying. “That was all I could think about as I lined up the shot. As I pulled the trigger.”
He looked up. Missy was crying too.
He forced himself to take in a breath. “And I ain’t telling you all this ‘cause I’m tryna get you to forgive me, Missy, I ain’t ever gonna ask you to forgive me after what we did to your home, but -”
She squeezed his hand. “Bunny. These last months, this last year, it’s been the happiest year of my life. And you, Bunny, were always the best part of it. And I want you to keep being a part of it. I want to wake up next to you in the mornings, and talk with you by the fire until we can’t hold our eyes open any longer, and dance with you in the circle of cactus by the old well. I don’t…the past doesn’t have to take away that future.”
Her hand moved to cup the side of his cheek. “Bunny, look at me. You killed people before?”
He sucked in a breath. “Y-yeah. I have.”
“You robbed ‘em?”
“Missy.”
“You robbed ‘em?”
“Yes. We did.”
“And are you planning on doing any of that again any time soon?”
He made a sound somewhere in between a laugh and a sigh. “No, Missy, I ain’t. I ain’t ever doing those things again.”
She took a step back. “Alright. Then this is me, formally forgiving you, Bunny. I’m sorry what happened to you happened, and I’m sorry what happened to me happened, but most of all, I want to ride off into that sunset over there with you by my side.”
Bunny didn’t say anything, but pressed his forehead against her and let his eyes flicker shut.
Later, with the steady thud of Temper’s hooves on the stand echoing beneath them, he summoned up the courage to ask “Missy?”
“Yeah?”
“Ealier, you said you had known about my…past for a while. How long?”
She titled her head in consideration. “Since the first day we met.”
She gave a laugh at his stunned silence. “What, you think I normally make a habit of inviting random strangers to ride off with me? I figured the law would be onto you sooner or later, and I knew I could get you out of town without arousing much suspicion."
“You…you will never cease to amaze me, Missy.”
She wrapped an arm around his waist in reply.
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“C’mon, Missy, dance with me!”
Bunny held out his hand, smiling when Missy took it with a laugh. The moon was a tiny crescent in the dark sky above them, the ground illuminated by the warm glow of embers under a fire that he found the wood for and Missy lit with her grandma’s flint and steel.
“You don’t know how to dance, you told me!”
He grinned, eyes bright and shining. “You can teach me.”
“Well, alright, then. Let’s dance.”
They didn’t own any fiddles out here in the desert, and even if they did, they wouldn’t know how to play them. But they hummed their own music, and it was guided by the light of the stars above that they danced.
And when at last dawn was beginning to paint the far-distant hills with her burnt orange hues, Bunny swept Missy into his arms and swung them around in a circle until they both tumbled to the ground, dizzy and giggling and most of all, next to each other.
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In this world, people were born in the sand, they killed in it, and then they were buried in it, but for the first time in his life, Bunny thought that maybe all that would be worth it if it meant he could dance in the sand with Missy every day of his life.