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Daisy came to lying with her back arched uncomfortably against the seat of a saddle. Her bleary eyes saw an inverted, snowy hell, and the blood rushing to her head made it all spin like a little toy top off its kilter. It took a little longer, in her disoriented state, to realize the world around her moved forward at a slow, shifting pace. Longer still to recognize, with an appropriate amount of horror, that she had no idea where she was.
A large stretch of white mountain ranges covered nearly as far as her eye could see. Whatever horse she'd been haphazardly flung across tentatively jostled and crushed ice as it walked along. Even the warm coat she had donned that morning wasn't enough to shelter her from the Wyoming cold. Daisy felt herself tense up and shiver. She could feel her teeth begin to chatter aloud as a thin string of bloody saliva dribbled out of her mouth and stained the immaculate ground. Perhaps it wasn't only the angle at which she'd been lying that caused her head to spin. Her left eye throbbed harshly in tune with the rest of the pain in her body. She groaned hoarsely at the feeling and attempted to shift herself into a sitting position, though she quickly found herself lacking the strength to do so.
All at once, the world stopped moving. "You awake?"
It was a man's voice, no doubt, aged and gravelly. It was jovial, too, with just the right amount of condescension men were in the habit of applying when handling the fairer sex. Though, if this was the man who had knocked her out and dragged her into the middle of butt-fuck nowhere, perhaps the docility of his tone was unintentional. She turned her head to see her wrist shackled to an ample loop on the horse's saddle. She tested the strength of the chains with what little energy she had regained.
"This how you treat all your women?" Daisy chided, she made no effort to hide the sardonic venom that drenched every syllable.
"Only the ones with $10,000 bounties on their heads." A tall, lumbering figure stepped out from in front of the horse and into her line of sight, both reins firmly in hand.
"...John Ruth, as I live and breathe." Daisy murmured and grinned with a hint of of-fucking-course etched into her features. Ruth's eyes met hers, twinkling with a bit of pride at the mention of his name -- the cad. "So you've heard of me?" A grin split down the side of his face, exposing a row of square, white teeth that rivaled the hue of the snow around them. "Don't flatter yourself." Daisy spat, her wide smiling lips twinging in disgust as she struggled again to lift herself properly onto the horse. "Every bushwhacker from here to Mexico knows that name by reputation, Hangman. That and by that mangey scruff of a rat's-nest on your face." She chuckled, letting her body fall limp again. Ruth feigned offense and ran a gloved hand down the side of his graying mustache. "Girl, you should know I don't hold too many reservations about hitting a woman."
Daisy laughed wildly, arms swinging about. "Oh, you're a charmer."
"I'm only telling you as a courtesy, which is already a mighty lot more than you deserve."
"And I suppose I deserve the rope, John?"
"Just like I'll deserve my $10,000 for delivering you to it." His tone was far too conversational for her taste. She was no stranger to the prospect of her own death, of course. She and Jody had been wanted criminals for decades, one step ahead of the law since she was 13. But some time had passed since she'd outsmarted the last bounty hunter intent on bringing her in, and Daisy feared her 'harmless ingenue' charms were fading with her youth.
With some effort, she finally hoisted herself up onto the saddle.
"C'mon John, you don't really want to see me hang. Bet I can be a real nice girl when you get to know me." Her voice sang out in a high, giddy tune. She batted her lashes and scrunched her nose as she said that, quickly wincing and blinking at the tender sensation above her left cheekbone shortly after. She brought her free hand up to it, prodding at the pain. "Fucker, I think ya' gave me a black eye." Ruth grabbed her hard by the wrist and pulled her down towards him. His face had dropped, suddenly grim and stern. "And I'll give you something worse if you think yer' wounded woman act is gonna soften me up enough to take pity on ya'." The smell of tobacco was a live thing in her nostrils. She felt her eyes go slightly wide as she struggled against his hand. Her teeth clenched. She pried herself away and cradled her arm close to her chest. It could have been the lingering imprint of his fingers, or the slight pain fading from the skin, but she suspected she'd find a bruise there soon. Perhaps one of many before they would reach their destination. C'est la vie, she reasoned. This bastard wasn't the first to play rough with her.
She relaxed every muscle in her face, grinning wide and playful like a cat. It was a familiar act, though not one she enjoyed performing. Playing the whore was as demeaning as it was beneath her. Slowly, she leaned in close. "Well, 'softening' you up isn't exactly what I had in mind."
The punch came so fast that her eyes barely detected the first hint of movement. She was knocked back so far she nearly fell off the horse again. A low groan fell from her bleeding lips in surprise more than anything else. A dull aching followed suit as the feeling of sharp knuckles against bone resonated in her brain. She had to drag her bloodied tongue across the ridges of her teeth just to make sure they were still firmly seated in her mouth. Daisy glared her twitching eyelid and curled lip back at John from over her shoulder. She hollowed her cheeks, gathering a small puddle of blood to spit back in his face; only to change her mind and swallow it instead. She'd force the metallic taste of her rage down in her stomach for the time being. Even she knew better than to tempt fate while she was seeing double.
Ruth sighed, satisfied. "Let's keep moving, slut." The horse began to trot onwards, led by John who pulled it swiftly by the reins.
It was an incredible thing just how much nothing someone could be surrounded by. Most towns were only a matter of miles apart, to Daisy's recollection anyway. These past few weeks in which she had been separated from her brother's gang had her drifting between shabby homesteads and small townships. She'd always run off before its few members had the chance to memorize her face, of course. She'd been careful too, exceedingly. In the end, getting captured must have been an act of God, if there was such a thing. To her, there was no other way her rotten luck could have landed her in chains, which she found herself fiddling with often. She ran a finger down each link, tracing its outline and inspecting the welding that held them together. She pursed her lips in idle fascination. It was either that or watch white hills roll by and wonder if they were even following the right path. The trail they trod was snowed over to the point of obscurity. The Bountyhunter's confidence be damned, Daisy couldn't see anything resembling proof that another person had stepped foot along this invisible road.
She strained her eyes high up to watch the grey skies turn a dusky blue. The chill had been getting worse for hours, and she hated to think it would get colder still. She bit a tag of hanging skin from the side of her thumb. It bled, but she didn't notice. Blood was all she was able to taste.
Eventually, a mixture of curiosity and boredom won out against her better judgment. "Where're we headed?" She asked. Her eyebrows knitted together in contempt, and her icy hands tucked themselves under her shoulders.
After a moment of contemplation, Ruth replied. "Red Rock." He said definitively.
"Red Rock!?" Daisy shrieked. She threw her hands up in the air and let her mouth fall agape. "But that's hell and gone from-"
"From that one-horse foxhole I pulled you out of, yeah, it is. Can't exactly say I'm thrilled about it either."
"You can't expect to get there on foot y'know." She blurted out, shaking her head. "Unless you want us both to freeze to death." She cupped her palms together and frantically breathed into them, savoring the small morsel of warmth it generated. "Won't get that money then, John, no you won't. We'll be dead up here in the mountains before ya' can see me hang."
"Shut yer' trap, woman, or I'll shut it for you." His voice bled irritation, and his threats, promise. There was something about the way he spoke that commanded authority and demanded obedience; and she did obey, for a time. Something innate about those voices rarely failed to pry compulsive submission from Daisy like pried teeth; though abuses never stopped her from testing every limit. Her tongue was accustomed to licking wounds one moment and matching her opponent's vigor the next. She could double down on hostility and put her callouses to good use. Her resolve allowed her to live as long as she had, but morbid curiosity forbade her from living as long as she could.
John spoke again before she had the chance to goad him on. "We'll get to the next city over and hire a stagecoach. That sorry excuse for a town you holed up in hardly had enough folks in it to fill a Sunday mass, more or less to find a halfway decent driver." He stopped again to turn and face her and drew the lapels of his winter coat closer together over his chest. "And believe me, sister, I'm getting you there alive whether you prefer it that way or not."
Daisy breathed silently for a moment, letting the dense, cold air draw deep into her lungs. Their gazes locked easily, she noticed, like two suns trying to shine the other out of the sky. It was a game of defiance that came as easy as breathing, and Daisy felt she was obeying the deepest core of her nature by refusing to blink. She wanted to smile at her boldness, she had always considered her pride a virtue.
In the end, John Ruth turned his back first and continued to walk along the snow; leaving Daisy with bared teeth and indignation smoldering behind her eyes, begging to be stoked. His indifference wouldn't stand. Daisy needed more.
“I’ll kill you first.” Her voice trembled with all the composure of a caged animal. Her fists clenched hard around nothing, though they had become weak and numb from the cold. She stared daggers into the back of Ruth’s head, looking up through her lashes. A thought formed like a splinter in the forefront of her mind, and she grasped, with two hands, the chain that bound her to the horse's saddle. He turned as Daisy began carefully wrapping the frigid iron around her palm. John’s eyebrows rose high on his head. “That so?” Daisy’s eyes flashed down to his feet as he took a single step closer to her. Come on you son of a bitch.
“Yeah.” The word rumbled deep in her throat. “I’ll kill ya’!” She barked. John came closer still. “How would you do it?” He asked, amused. Closer still. Daisy hid the chain near her lap. “I’ll wait till’ you’re sleepin’, or when you least expect it. I want your guard to be down when I pull that pistol outta your coat.” Closer still. “And you’ll blow my head off?” Ruth chuckled. Daisy smiled so wide the split in her lip reopened and caused her cheeks to ache. “No, oh no, 'cause I’d want it to hurt.” She growled like a dog, cruel and wild. Ruth frowned, considering. “My knees then?” Daisy shook her head and gestured down with her eyes, between his legs and back up again. “Somethin’ worse.”
He paused for a moment before laughing heartily as he prepared his fist for another strike. “That’s some imagination you got, I’ll give you tha-” Close enough.
Daisy’s hands swung fast and circled John’s throat with the shackle. The metal bit its icy jaws into his skin. A tumult of coiled fear and hatred released itself into the air as she threw her head back in an uproar of savage joy. She watched as his face flushed with red and veins raised and pronounced themselves like great rivers on his forehead. He struggled and thrashed this way and that in a feral attempt to free himself, but Daisy was able to hold him firm. He groaned and wheezed and coughed, his hands grasping desperately for the chain. Daisy’s smile, if it were possible, widened when she saw his eyelids become heavy and begin to drop. Convinced of her victory, she could no longer hold back a symphony of manic laughter.
A sudden splash of red was all she saw before the butt of a gun jammed hard across her temple. Her vision faded into a darkness as black as night.
Daisy awoke to John screaming and cursing, and the sky’s light still only beginning to fade. She reasoned she had not been gone from the world long, but the pulsing agony in her head made her long for that departed oblivion. Shrill, discordant howls of ‘bitch’ and ‘whore’ (prefaced with the occasional ‘fucking’ or ‘God damn’) rung like churchbells inside her skull. She could feel the vibrations of herself whimpering in pain, some silent tears even sneaking by her eyes that, mercifully, went unnoticed. Half of her face was pressed down into the snow, though not the side that had been struck, leaving both the left and right of her head in two vastly different worlds of hellish pain. Suddenly, the Earth spun around her again, and she felt herself being pulled up by the hair of her scalp. Everything felt hazy and moving and deafeningly loud. Every sensation was tenfold what it should have been, and yet not enough to pull her from that confused, torturous stupor. All she could do was relinquish control of her body, flopping lifelessly against what felt like the soft shoulder of John’s coat. Somewhere far away, the sound of jingling and snapping filled up her senses, and the cold sting of metal against the bottom of her jaw followed her back into the maw of the abyss.
The sky had darkened in earnest when her eyes flew open. The sky was all she saw. It filled up every inch of her vision as if a great navy canvas had been stretched across her face – a night freckled and carelessly splattered with sterling silver stars. India ink teased at the horizon and waited patiently for its turn to usurp the last semblance of its color. She was so taken with the sight, she hardly noticed the gun barrel forcing her head to look up. Instinctively, she went to raise her hands up by her sides.
“...John?”
“Not a fucking word, tramp.” Ruth's voice was raw and tired against her ear. At least he wasn’t yelling anymore, Daisy didn’t think she could process anything above a whisper. They seemed to both be on the saddle now, with the back of Daisy’s craning head resting against his chest. Despite the uncomfortable position and the developing kink in her neck, the warmth between them was welcome. Mentally, she let out a self-deprecating laugh. She was so cold, even the body heat of the man who wanted to trade in her corpse for a pile of cash was a blessing. But not her corpse, she remembered, she was to be delivered alive. Unless, of course, he’d changed his mind.
Daisy decided to gamble against that assumption. All in. Her last chip, her life, or what little was left of it, was on the table. She opened her mouth to speak again. “I’m sorry.” The words were whispered softly, quite possibly the first soft thing she had said in months. She didn’t know how sincerely she meant it, but it was the only thing she foresaw wouldn’t get her hit or killed. Ruth sighed. “Go fuck yourself, Domergue.”
“I can’t do nothin’ from here, you can put yer’ gun down.” That earned her a sharp jab against her jaw. “I said shut up.”
“Alright, alright.” She sounded terrified. She wondered if she really felt the terror to match. Her hands were still raised above her hips in surrender. Her eyes strained down to see her right arm now cuffed to John's left. She closed her eyes, imagining herself somewhere else, somewhere warm.
Unbidden, unconscious, the words passed again through her lips. "I'm sorry." She repeated. It was barely a whisper, trembling out into the night air in a puff of frozen breath. Her eyes squinted closed as a hot tear rolled down her red cheek. "I'm sorry."
"Stop that." The gun pointed harshly against her tender pulse. She nodded faintly against it. It could have been the impending execution, or the fact she was unaccustomed to helplessness, hell, maybe a screw had just been knocked loose in her brain – whatever the cause, Daisy couldn't help but offer up the words in grim supplication. It was a parasympathetic plea for mercy given life by the oldest ambition known to God’s creatures. Daisy supposed that that was a basal low she had stooped to, if not in the past, then certainly now. The shame of it punctured her to her core. She had always dreamed of dying with dignity.
“I’m sorry.”
“...Fuck you.”
They made camp in a shallow valley shortly after. John had kept the gun trained on her the entire time and now tried to maintain its trajectory while attempting to light a flint-and-steel fire with one hand. Daisy shivered to the side, sitting atop the icy ground with her knees drawn close to her chest. Her body was still reeling from the lack of warmth at her back.
"John."
There was a brief pause in his efforts, but he said nothing to her. She groaned weakly in frustration. “I could help you.” Spite and fear mingled together in an odd tone. Her eyes followed a wayward spark that missed the tinder and fizzled out in the snow. "John-"
“Like hell you could.” Daisy bit the inside of her cheek. "I'm freezing my ass off same as you. You're not gonna get very far if I don't help." She shifted onto her knees, inching closer to him. John cursed and grumbled but made no move to stop her. The metal barrel glinted in the faint moonlight. Daisy lifted her hands carefully. "I'm just gonna reach into my coat pocket, you promise not to shoot?" She tried to force a docility into her voice, she even tried to smile. The wound in her lip reopened. "I'm not promising you shit." He turned and glanced down at her with a flick of his eyes. "You got a weapon in there?" Daisy shook her head and shifted her right side towards him. John sighed and dropped the flint. "Keep yer hands up. Don't move." That was easy enough, his pistol was still only about an inch from her head. Daisy's eyes wandered away as John shoved his unchained hand unceremoniously inside of her coat. His search was rough and forceful, but there was no intention of violation behind it. Daisy was grateful for that, at least, how her kidnapper was more indifferent to her body than other men when given half the chance. But that spark of intimacy was too strange to process considering the circumstances. She packed it down inside of her just as quickly as it had come. Soon enough, John pulled away with a box of matches firmly in his grip and Daisy let out a shaky exhale. "Told you." She shrugged. "I'm just tryin'a help."
The corner of John's mouth pulled to the side in irritation, but he held the box in his teeth and struck a match against it nonetheless. "You're playing some kind of game, that's for fucking sure." He nursed the kindling carefully with his free hand.
The soft orange glow flickering in front of him suggested the beginning of an unspoken truce, which Daisy tested by shuffling forward and putting her palms near the flame. The barrel continued to follow her forehead with every awkward stumble. "I don't think you're being very fair with me." She said civilly. John laughed mirthlessly at that. "Yeah? Well, I think you're an old whore who's causing me more trouble than she's worth."
She would have said something to that, but she stifled it before it could slip out. “You could take your finger off the trigger, at least. If you’re gonna put a hole in my head you should mean to do it.” Her eyes focused acutely on the pistol in her periphery. “Makes me kinda nervous.”
Though it did not help his mood, John relented and reluctantly returned his gun to its holster. He pulled his coat tightly over his side, hiding it from her view completely. “You try anything else and I’ll be delivering a carcass down in Red Rock by week’s end, get me?" Without warning, he yanked the chain that shackled them both together, and Daisy’s body lurched forward into his with a start. She nodded repeatedly and fell backward onto her ass when he let her go. When she stabilized again, she was slouching back with an arm supporting her from behind. She looked at him intently but said nothing. Something like pity flashed for a moment in his bright eyes. Doubt teased at the corner of his mouth. He turned his head away before Daisy could think anything of it.
They sat in silence for a time and watched the fire, tending to it tentatively. John pretended not to shiver when a gust of chilled air brushed through the glen. Daisy unabashedly shook like a leaf. There was solidarity in the way they took turns sheltering the flame from the wind. Not freezing to death was a social effort, after all, and the quiet was a mercy to them both. For now their cares were reduced to a small pile of burning wood and smoldering ash. They were two beasts who had run themselves ragged in the endless struggle of gnawing at each other's throats. An invisible and infinite common enemy was biting through their warm winter clothes.
When Daisy asked about the possibility of sleep, she was surprised to have little intention of taking advantage of it.
“Well, I’m keeping my eyes open, that’s for damn sure.” John’s voice was impassive, but weary. His head rested on his hand, propped up on his knee. "If you wanna, I can't stop you." She gazed emptily into the fire, rubbing her hands together. The chain jingled quietly. "Don't know. Maybe I'll try. Maybe I can't. Maybe it's just too goddamn cold." She was weary herself, and her voice clearly shook with more than just a few weeks worth of running and hiding. John hummed in a low rumble of amusement and recognition. "Yeah… It is fucking cold." There was something to him, Daisy thought, that familiar tiredness that spawned from years worth of suppressed exhaustion. It manifested in his sunken eyes, the woodcut wrinkles that warped the untainted image of what must have been a once handsome face. The firelight presented their flaws in stark detail, and made him look unlike himself. Daisy idly watched the contoured highlights fade and reappear with each flicker. She developed a fascination, not an attraction (though the two so often went hand in hand) with the image of him she intuited. She assumed the story of someone who had been running far longer than he ever expected, to have run so far so fast, the notion of rest was no longer a possibility in his mind. He would run until he died, and Hell would be the only suitable place for him. Careworn wrinkles would be the only reward for his efforts, and he would run even farther and faster to escape the misery that would follow. She would relish in that thought if the story wasn't hers as well. She blinked and it washed the thought away. Without realizing, she had somehow begun to shift closer to him.
"Have you ever seen frostbite?" She asked, absentmindedly. The thought had crept up suddenly and slipped its way through her teeth without permission. She returned her attention to the fire, looking emptily into its brightest parts. "Sure," he said, after a moment, "once or twice."
"Know what happens?"
"Yeah, skin goes red, swollen with blisters, it gets ugly." That was an invitation enough to continue with her train of thought.
"Mm, skin can go black and die, too. Real black, you'd think it was coal dust." She fought a nostalgic smile. "Y'know, I remember being told my fingers and toes would shoot off if I got frostbite, you ever heard that before?"
John's eyebrows strung together in confusion. "You mean you'd need to amputate em'?" Daisy let out a tired laugh, uncharacteristically devoid of her usual malice. "No, no, and they wouldn't just fall off either, they'd shoot right off your body, ten yards at least. Blood everywhere. God, that's what I think about every time." She mimed a sudden explosion with her hands and mouthed the word 'Kaboom'. John chuckled quietly. "That's one hell of a story, whoever told you that one was full of shit."
"Well, it worked," she smirked, "as a girl, I never set foot outside while it snowed." They both tensed as another gust of wind blew by. Daisy could feel her mouth become taught and shaky. "And h-hell, did it snow. My kid brother loved it and I'd be in the doorway screamin' 'get back here!' while he ran around and played in it. Not a care in the goddamn fucking world." She wrapped her arms around herself and rocked gently through her shivers. "And when we ran away, it was late one night, you see, and it was s-snowin', hell, might've even been a blizzard. I was terrified, my brain was all black skin and shootin' fingers – not my brother though. No matter how many times I told him about how mama said we'd lose our hands and feet like that to the c-cold, he wasn't afraid." The winds were making it hard to speak, and she couldn't stop her teeth from chattering. Daisy fought to push semi coherent words through her clenching and trembling jaw. "Never had m-much of a brain in him, if I'm honest. We d-didn't make it two miles from home before we couldn't carry ourselves no more. I held him, he h-held me, we made it t-through into the morning living off each other's warmth." Daisy looked up, there was something unreadable in his face.
John gave her the matchbox to hold while he prepared to strike another. Together they added more kindling to the fire and walled their hands around its sides. "That's when I found out your fingers and toes don't really s-shoot off, I guess. Jody still got away with most of his." A laugh writhed in her throat and shuddered its way out in a broken collection of high pitched wheezes and sounds. Daisy was still shaking violently as the winds died down. She was barely able to keep herself upright anymore. "I'm so f-f-fucking cold, John." Her voice was prayer-like and desperate.
In the end she didn't need to ask him to open his arms, draw her close and wrap some of his fur coat around her. In return, she didn't ask him why he did it. John took both of her hands between his own and breathed hot air over and into them. Wordlessly, weakly, she relaxed into his body, settling with her head tucked securely below his chin. There was no great kindness in his face or in his nature, nor was there any great thankfulness in hers. Between them was something akin to acceptance. John would keep her on his leash and Daisy would be dragged along like a starving hound. John would be the one to turn her in and Daisy would get what was coming to her. There was enough sense in that.
Daisy could imagine the moment her neck would break in vivid clarity, but for now she sat with a shred of cherished comfort. She imagined the arms that held her trembling frame belonged to someone else. She imagined such charity was motivated by affection rather than obligation. Daisy Domergue wished for many things, and reconciled with the inverse that was the reality of each fantasized situation. But in the end, there was still the warmth, and it was simple, and she closed her eyes against it. Briefly there was respite, and her mind sunk back into a gentle dark.
Distantly, a hand stroked her matted hair and gently twirled its lengths in loops around gloved fingers. In the morning, she found a new braid running down the side of her head. The notion was sweet and sickly and festered silently in the pit of her stomach. Like a coin, she turned it back and forth in her mind and said nothing. Neither of them dared mention the previous night, traveling in silence until they reached the nearest town. Somewhere along the road, she had taken the braid out, and tried her best to ignore the possibility of its implications. In retribution, Daisy prodded once again at her black eye and twice scabbed-over lip. One thing, perhaps the only thing, was for certain: this was going to be one long fucking trip across Wyoming.