Chapter Text
Out upon the long stretches of the wild west, which seem to gallop on forever, a wasteland. An empty, desolate, wasteland, the horizon soaked in orange. Cactus split the scene, dust clouds drifting across the lawless place. Westward expansion had made this area a rushed job of humanity, the only symbol of its place out here by a few train tracks and hoofbeats. Besides that, in the grave distance, there is something. Sun, the color of egg yolk, sits low in the sky. Its warm beams dance on the sands of this very town.
Messina.
An oasis of society within the dead zone of the west. What truly makes this area lawless is not the destruction of the rules or the breaking and entering nor the shootouts. No, what makes this town lawless is the clan of bandits that lie within it. Their infamy rules the west, the bandit gang capable of most anything. Bank heists, duels, or orchestrating conflict, nobody would guess these threats would end up within the group.
However, everything changed when an attempt was made on the leader's life; the assailant, his own brother. Angry and frustrated he was with Don Pedro’s leadership, and that ire was seen in full that fateful night. But before he could shoot, his plans were foiled. A smoking gun pointed at the sky, and another was pointed right at the brother’s temple. Despite the leader’s mercy, nothing could slack the bitterness the brother of a villain felt.
The boy who had foiled his plans, Claudio, is whom the villain set his sights on next. An eye for an eye was the way the world worked after all. The anger he felt would be paid back tenfold. With a trick of words and sight, the brother convinced Claudio of his fiancée’s impurity, an impurity that never existed. With both Claudio and the leader, Don Pedro, convinced, the wedding became a public shame of the clueless fiancée, Hero, and her family. The outrage upon the reveal of the villain’s involvement was high. Thus, the leader condemned him, finally, after all his breaking of their group's brotherhood.
That brings him here.
Our villain, Don John. With an uneven piece of metal, he’d poke and prod at the ropes tied around his hands. He’d twist his wrists uneasily to try and break that ever present grip the rope has on him. As he’d pull, there’s a burning sensation on his skin. These ropes were too damn tight; it felt as if no matter how much he tried or pulled, struggling would only make it worse. The feeling of rope burn died out rapidly as Don John ceased his pitiful fight.
Pointless. It stung still.
Whether that was his loss to his brother or the rope burns, who knows. Who cares? He was the only one here. He’d been the only person here. Well, besides that waste-of-breath sheriff and his shit-kicker deputies. Not even Don Pedro came by here to see him since his arrest. He remembered the last time they talked. That night, he swore he saw pride in Pedro’s eyes, proud he was finally being put away. That piece of shit.
This little piece of metal, fashioned from a break in the cell wall, revealing the foundation of the sheriff’s department. This was all he had here. He had a single cot, a metal shank, and these damned ropes. His eyes reached the metal shank again. Perhaps if he… Don John planted the metal piece into the ground, driving it in with a calculated eye. With it set, he began to find the weak points in this rope, searching its tangled mess for anything he could use. There, a weak point in its knots. It looks worn, easy to break. He’d attempt to spread it out more, only pulling the ropes tighter in the process. With a sharp exhale, the villain would grit his teeth.
Why was this so damn difficult?
He had been able to break out of many jail cells, easily. The longest time he had been in the slammer was two days before Conrade pick-locked the door and got them the hell out of there.
Even before that, he had been sat in numerous jails, all of which he cased and broke. Don John could fit or shove his way out of handcuffs. These weren’t handcuffs. On many occasions, he had leveraged his way out of a cell, threatening another inmate or a knocked-out guard. However, it’s impossible to have leverage when your hands aren’t free and you know nearly nothing about the enemy. Or, he’d spread a rumor, an easy way out. Cause a conflict large enough to get the guarding officers distracted long enough for him to escape. The fault here was, there was no one else in Messina’s jail.
It was just him.
When Don John fled town, being caught by the sheriff’s department, he hadn’t considered just how quiet it would be. But, no one was there with him, only the distant noise of the town and the, more annoyingly, chatter of the sheriffs only a few rooms away.
Those sheriffs were loud, therefore he’d assumed they would at least be around, yet they never were. One could gather by how they screamed and yelped when they caught him, they were just afraid of him. All of those little ruffians who never spoke clear English. The way they talked sent Don John into a tizzy, yet they bragged at length about how they could read and write! He recalled how he snapped at them, being pulled along with their trite remarks which he hated. With a certain vagueness, he’d said something like “I suppose the reason you all are sheriffs is because you couldn’t pass a single class”. There was genuine heartbreak in all of their eyes at that. Don John would still cackle at their helplessly ignorant expressions… what a joke, those damn “sheriffs”, if you could even call them that.
Then, there was that one.
The leader of the idiots, the supremely inept “Master Sheriff Dogberry”. With a name like that, who could take him seriously? The only thing that kept Don John from laughing when they met, was the reality of his arrest looming over him. That man walked as if he was attempting to break as many items around him as humanly possible. It was a shit-show to watch, quite frankly. A man so obsessed with being correct, yet never in the right (or right mind).
Obsessed, huh?
It seemed Don John and that buffoon might’ve shared something. A certain awareness of “The Prince of Bandits”. O’ how Don John loathed that title... It was a blight upon his work as a bandit. His brother was awarded a title befitting royalty, meanwhile he was tossed “Bastard”. For as long as his envy had existed, his eyes had always scanned for every crack, every trait, and every weakness in Don Pedro’s persona. After a while, he was sure he had his brother’s mind in his own. Perhaps that only made John’s rage worsen, the voice of his brother in the back of his mind like a plague.
Meanwhile, Dogberry had a plague in another way.
Don John didn’t exactly understand it. Dogberry was always talking on and on about the man as if he were some sort of saint, a god. When Dogberry talked about Pedro, he could practically hear the cries about “Princey” from the other room over, said with such admiration it made Don John want to hurl. But, in prison, there is not much to do but wait and bite your time and down your bile, so the villain just listened to the incessant yammering of the dim-witted sheriff.
He hated that.
Being stuck here, unable to do nothing. Not able to bite a hand that fed nor call for help, loneliness was his only friend. Helpless, he simply racked the rope over the thin piece of metal, part of it finally catching. He chuckled, a small grin forming. With a quick draw, he pulled the rope, hearing a snapping noise. However, not the snap he had hoped for. The rope was perfectly intact. The metal, now split.
“...God– DAMN IT!”
With startling quickness, the bandit stood, kicking the fractured metal across the room in a huff. It hit the opposing wall with a resounding clank! It’s as if he failed a mission: the blood was pounding in his ears, his pulse quickened. Another failure for Don John, the Bastard. Laughable, wasn’t he? Once, a highly revered, feared cowboy, the “Quickdraw of the Bandits”, whose stare stopped men in their tracks. Now, a bastard, sat in a solitary jail cell, breaking his nearest means of escape from this dump.
He cannot stay here. He is wasting away, rotting in this hot, sticky place.
No matter what, at that moment, Don John realized something. Whatever happened, he refused to die in Messina, refused to spend another week in this cell– no– another day in this cell. If he cannot break, leverage, or manipulate his way out of this, he would bargain. As before, he would bargain with emotions, gamble with verbiage.
O’ right. He would get out of here.
And, that idiotic sheriff would help him.