you did your worst, you tried your best

[pacificator]

Who: Wynonna Earp & others

What: October catchall for closed & open starters

When: Throughout October

Where: Multiple locations 

 

Content Warnings: General Wynonna warnings of alcoholism, mentions of past traumas and violence including accidental patricide and child abduction, others tbd. She's so very fine, y'all.

 

 

Comments

[pacificator]

[ The blankness of her expression says, more clearly than words ever could, what the fuck is the Riot Act? before she shakes it away and gives him her best doe-eyed Disney Princess look, complete with batting lashes, at what he says next. ]

You don't, huh? Well a girl can hope.

[ Not that she can imagine straight-laced Edward Little ever being unruly, not in the way she knows the word. It conjures images of cowboys and roughnecks slinging back shots and then slinging punches at a bar; breaking chairs, smashing glass. Unruly is Doc and his stories and lies and that smile that rucks up the corners of his eyes.

Definitely not Edward Little, still giving her that faintly alarmed look when she comes too close — except then he leans forward to reach past her, and he's much too close for much too long of a moment. For a second she feels the ghost weight of him against her, heavy as cordwood under her arm, against her side and hip.

Frustratingly, she's the one to step back, gaining some distance, first, as her hands slide into the back pockets of her jeans and she twists as she walks, looking back at him. ]

Just kidding. The most unruly thing about you right now is your hair. Well, and those pajamas. Which is not to say I don't like them, just that I thought you might burst into flame if you let modern clothing touch your skin.

[ It's easier by far to ramble as he goes to take care of the tea, shuffling around in those plaid pants while she turns to face the couch and considers it for a long moment before shucking off her jacket and settling at one end, the charms on her two necklaces — ring and beads and key — all gently jangling against each other as she moves. Her coat she slings over the seat of the next chair over, freeing up her hands to take the cup of tea he offers her. It's hot and it smells nice, and she's really gotten a whole hell of a lot more used to drinking tea now that she lives with Tommy.

And this is far from the first time she's sat alone in a cabin, in front of a fire, with Edward Little, but somehow it always throws her, just a bit. If she could just figure him out, if she could just figure out what he wants, what's going on behind those big sad basset hound eyes, she'd be able to get a handle on this. Right?

But every time she thinks she's figured him out, he does shit like this: invites her in for tea, fixes his gaze on her face, and asks her with absolute wholehearted sincerity, how she is.

And just like every time, she finds to her horror that she wants to tell him. She wants to tell him about the memories March saw, about her birthday passing unmarked and how she worries about Waverly back home because she's been gone so long. She wants to shake him and say how the hell can you think about my recovery, you almost died, I almost lost you, I don't know what I'd do if I lost you.

The tea is warm in her hands as she licks her lip and swallows, shakes her hair back with a smile. ]

I'm fine, Little. You know me. I'm always fine.

[ Her expression shifts, watching him; the smile dims; her glance drops to that unmarked spot where she'd desperately tried to staunch his bleeding, reddening her own hands in the process. She looks back up at him. ]

How are you? Really?

[fidior]

[ He was just thinking he knew her behaviours and mannerisms and how familiar they are and now here he is immediately unsure how to read her again — the doe eyes, the reply. 'a girl can hope'

She's teasing him, he understands that much, and maybe that's enough for the moment, that he understands that much. It flusters him the way it always does, but it also bemuses him, too. He finds the line of a smile at the corners of his mouth, and one might almost think it to be a fond expression as he fixes the tea, moves around, purposefully but slowly.

(When she teases him, it means she's enjoying him. He knows this, underneath all the things he can't quite understand, the things she says and does that make him feel as though he's in the wrong time period, which— isn't quite inaccurate.)

He remembers a time she wasn't like that, a time she was hurt with him, and he wants to keep this. She's his— friend.

He moves to sit beside her, polite at the opposite end of the sofa but not distant, one leg turned in slightly, body turned towards her. Now he really does smile, even if it's a little shyly. ]

We found them in this home, when we moved in. Someone's clothing, from before. They're... strange pieces. But comfortable.

[ The night clothes he's more accustomed to are... very different. Wynonna's incredibly fortunate not to have to be subjected to seeing them, actually.

He's staring up at her now. Something shifts — his smile fades at the same time hers does, maybe a beat or two after.

It isn't proper, really, to burden a lady (...or anyone) with his feelings (though much less so a lady.) It's impolite, and thoughtless, and too free, too open, too much. But he's shared those sorts of feelings with Wynonna before, and... it didn't feel too anything. It felt like just the right amount. He inhales, and it's a full-bodied thing that lifts his shoulders and some of his spine until he exhales and everything falls again. His eyes drift to his own cup, warm against his palms. ]

I feel.... strange. Physically, I'm fine— everything's fine. But Miss Marsh.... It's taken so much out of her. She's fallen ill from it. I would almost rather be worse off than I am.

[ A thin smile, aimed at Wynonna as he looks up again. (It isn't proper to say what he does next, either, but he doesn't even consider that much, this time.) ]

You always survive, but you aren't fine. How could you be, after that? [ It isn't a challenge, voice soft, non-confrontational, just— concerned. After a moment he adds, even more quietly. ]

You might have died, trying to help me. I'm so sorry. You didn't deserve that.

[pacificator]

[ She'd so much rather go back to teasing him about his soft and rumpled pajamas than talk about... any of this. She hasn't talked about it with anyone at all, not really, not even March or Tommy. She doesn't want to look at or think about the sick, tight knot of fear that hasn't budged from beneath her breastbone.

Abruptly, she takes too large a swallow of her tea, wishing it were something a thousand times stronger, and sets the cup down on nearby table. The liquid does nothing to wash away the tightness in her throat, in her chest. Nothing can. It feels like a rock tucked neatly up under her ribs, immovable and cold. She feels like a piece of barbed wire, strung too tight along a lonesome stretch of frozen prairie; rusted and dangerous to the touch. Even in keeping people safe, all she does is hurt them. ]

You would have died.

[ She can't look at him. She wants to get up and pace around. She wants to shift into wolf form and run, run away, lose herself in the immediacy of the physical. The words are like ashes in her mouth as she watches the fire without seeing it.

For a moment, she lets herself feel it: the panic and pain and the core-deep fear that drove her; the heartsick emptiness of loss. In her nightmares, she weeps as he dies, over and over again. And not just him: Kate, March, Tommy, Bigby... sometimes it's Willa she's trying to keep from bleeding out in the snow. Sometimes it's Daddy. But over and over it was Edward, limp and cold and pale and gone.

She swallows against an aching throat and finally looks back over at him. ]

What was I supposed to do?

[ It's almost childish in a way she almost never is, anymore. She hasn't really been a child since she was twelve and Peacemaker cracked under her hands for the first time. Daddy, Willa, Shorty... she can't lose anyone else. She won't lose anyone else. She can't lose him, too. ]

That guy tried to kill you. I wasn't exactly thinking all that clearly.

[ No; she'd watched him fall and it had set something off in her, slipped some leash on her sanity. She barely remembers what she did to the Forest Talker; it's lost in a haze of red and black. She only remembers what came next, the fear and the exhaustion and the way she tried to bully him onwards, refusing to let him slip away. ]

And even with everything, no matter what I did, you still would have died, if it weren't for Kate. I wasn't enough.

[ She has the wrong power. She can't heal. She could kill the man who killed him, she could defend this house, but her hands aren't made for helping. She looks down at them now, uncurling her fingers from her palms, remembering how brilliantly red they were with his fresh blood. When she rubs her fingers slowly together, the pads of her index and middle fingers circling gently against her thumbs, they aren't slick and wet, but she remembers when they were.

He's right. She isn't fine. How could she be?

But what else can she do, except keep going? ]

[fidior]

[ His own tea might go cold a second time. Little keeps it in his hands to have something to hold onto, but he can't manage even a sip as he listens.

'What was I supposed to do?'

It's the question he's asked himself, in regards to so many of his own dark empty places. Back even before here, when he started walking off across the shale and there were men left behind, rotting and alone. Then, when he took a young man's life in order to save Kate's. He doesn't remember any logical reasoning to the action. All he remembers is knowing if he didn't act, she'd die. What was he supposed to do?

'You would have died.'

Wynonna saved him. If she'd hesitated, or tried anything else, he would have died. Edward meets her eyes as she finally looks back up, and all the desire he feels to make her understand, to make her understand that she has to be safe, feels foolish and unfair, because he knows he'd have done the same for her. Maybe it was there before, when he'd stepped into the middle of the fight in the street. In retrospect, he could have easily been killed, if things had gotten worse. He was out-numbered, out-muscled, out-everything, but he hadn't even considered walking away. Not when he thought she was in trouble.

But Wynonna's next remark has him startled, feeling like the wind's been knocked out of him a little. He exhales again, a quick breath of surprise as he stares at her. She thinks she wasn't enough. She saved his life, drug him through the snow while she was bleeding from her own wounds, and she thinks she wasn't enough.

(He knows what that's like, too.)

This, finally, is what has Edward setting down his tea, too. With a soft clink, and then he turns towards her. ]

You were the only reason I reached Miss Marsh at all. If you hadn't been there... done what you had, I— ....yes, I would have died.

[ He draws a breath as he finally voices that truth. And then another, voice quiet and thoughtful. There's no alcohol this time to help fuel things he ordinarily might shy from voicing, but he needs her to know. ]

You have always been a source of strength. Might I admit something to you now? Your proximity even makes me feel stronger. It may sound strange, but that is how I feel.

[ He almost smiles again, something fond and sad. ]

You were enough. You are enough. I am so grateful for you. That you were there then, and... that you are here, now.

[pacificator]

[ She doesn't look up at him for a long moment, her glance still dropped to her hands, but her brow puckers and smooths and twitches into a frown again, her lips pressing together and her throat working. You were enough.

She's never been enough. Not for anyone, not for anything. The only reason Dolls cares is because of Black Badge. The only reason Doc stays is for Wyatt and his own revenge. Even Waverly — who is maybe the only person in any world who loves her completely, without reservation and without apology — thinks she shouldn't have been the Heir. She was never meant for any of this. You are enough.

But maybe only Edward Little, who has his own worries and sorrows and regrets, can understand it. Maybe only he really knows how much it means to have someone, anyone — but especially someone whose good opinion, whose respect, for whatever reason, she craves — say those words. To tell her she's enough. That he's grateful for her. And not just then, when she'd tried so hard to save his life, but now. He wanted her to come in. He wanted her to stay. He'd said please, like he knows exactly how much she's always needed someone to wish she were around. To want her nearby.

Her throat is tight, and it aches, the way it does when tears collect behind her eyes. She doesn't cry much, never has, and has swallowed it down time and time again here; it's too cold, and tears won't make anything easier. But Little's sincerity, the way he opens his heart to her like he can't imagine her simply taking aim at his most vulnerable point, tugs, as it so often does, at her own softer feelings, the ones she stows as deeply and distantly as she can.

She doesn't cry now. There's small curve to her lips when she looks over at him, taking in the way he watches her. ]

Bet you never could have imagined saying that to me when we first met.

[ But the teasing tilt to her lips and in her glance fades after a moment. Right now, despite all the ways they're different, he reminds her of Doc, who so often flummoxed her with sudden and wholehearted sincerity. He feels... stronger when she's around? She's the biggest fuck-up Purgatory has ever seen, and it's not like she's going to win any 'most helpful person' sashes here. But he means it, and because he means it, something in her own head and chest slips into place, a realization clicking like a seat belt.

It's not like with March, who makes her feel like all he ever wants her to be is herself, the best parts and the worst. She thinks Little does like her for her, now that they know each other, now that they've spent a year in and out of one another's company, but being with him makes her wish she were the person he sees in her. The person he believes her to be. He's helped her navigate her way through the thorny paths of her own thoughts, the waiting traps of her self-loathing.

And, in his own gentle way, he bolsters her. Supports her. If he were to be ripped away, she thinks she'd lose her balance all over again. ]

You make me stronger, too.

[ Certainly her fury and heartbreak at seeing him fall had sent her into a murderous frenzy, and she's pretty sure she could have taken out almost any number of Forest Talkers. But it's not just that, is it? It's this. He makes it safe for her to say things like this, to bare her own heart — warily, and only a sliver at a time — to him in return. He lends her a different, quieter kind of strength. ]

You're... important. To me.

[ That feels like far too much, and not nearly enough, but her eyes and mouth are still soft, lacking most of their usual edge, as she looks at him over her shoulder. ]

I'm really glad you're okay.