Work Text:
At first, Billy figured it was a coincidence, that they ended up washing their clothes at the same time. She kept showing up every Saturday at dawn, however, just as the sun takes over the sky and melts molten red on the surface of the water.
Billy has always thought of this place as his river. You have to walk almost two hours, far from town, far from everyone, and that's exactly where you'll be - far. Far from old men telling you you are a good-for-nuthin,' lazy excuse for a barber, and saloon-obsessed idiots making fun of you for inventing tools that actually work perfectly (they just require creativity and artistry to be handled).
The river is a narrow stream, slithering through stiff blades of grass and rippled, red rock. Billy likes it a lot, because it's peaceful, and it's his. He never thought that someday he'd like it to be someone else's too, but Billy has always been terrible at predicting his life.
He's known who she was from the start - hard not to, what with all the 'Wanted' posters plastered all over town. She's the most feared outlaw in the region. They call her Lucky Penny, for the way she leaves a penny on each of her victims' open eyes. No one knows her real name, where she comes from, what her story is. All they know is that no man has ever wronged her and lived.
Billy must have been scared the first time he saw her; he isn't sure anymore. Mostly, he remembers being struck by how beautiful she looked. Her hair was red, the red of rocks and rising sun, and it fell in light, tangled strands on her shoulders. She was wearing pants and a shirt, like a man, and there was a gun strapped to her left thigh. Hanging from her right hand was a small woolen bag; the fingers of her other hand were undulating rhythmically, as though running on imaginary piano keys.
She lay the bag on the grass, untied its rope and took a small, broken plank out of it. Every one of her movements was smooth, purposeful, but also unhurried, almost considerate, like someone would catch a snowflake.
She froze when she saw him, her hand immediately jumping to her thigh. She relaxed quickly, though, and to this day Billy isn't sure why. Maybe it's always written all over his face that he is so incapable of willingly harming anything or anyone that he will change sides of the road not to step on a crumb-carrying ant. Or maybe it was the fact that he, too, was using a broken plank as a washboard (though she probably hadn't aggressed her parents' house to get it) - whatever it was, she seemed to decide he wasn't a danger to her, and he didn't end up penny-eyed.
Today the sky is dappled with tiny, foamy clouds who look exactly like cuddling sheep if you squint your eyes and tilt your neck to the right, which Billy does. She lifts her head at that, following his gaze, then sends him a quick, barely-there smile, mouth quirking up at one edge, and resumes her washing. She arrived only minutes ago, and is still working on her blue shirt, scraping with soap at red stains.
Billy has blood on his shirt too, but that's because the last guy he'd been shaving yesterday had stupidly turned his head when he should have kept still (well, in all honesty, Billy may have inadvertently tickled his ear with his sleeve, but still, this was technically the guy's fault, and it was just a small cut anyway). No matter how hard he scrubs, though, the blood stubbornly remains there. He half considers asking her how she makes it go away, but that would be breaking the quiet.
They never talk. They know they are both here for the silence, the steady rocks, the shushing stream. Sometimes, she comes with almost nothing - no bag of clothes, just a few coin purses rattling around her belt. At times like these, if the weather's right, she'll take off her shirt, wash it in quick, energetic strokes down the water and then lay it to dry on the grass. She'll lay on her back next to it, waiting for the world to give her back her stage outfit. He never watches when she does all that - or only out of the corner of his eye. He is tempted to stare, sure, but he doesn't think he refrains out of any sense of propriety or politeness. This here - this is a place to feel home, a place to feel like your skin is of this world. He would never take that away from her. They just let each other be.
At other times, the atmosphere is charged, like there is suddenly more weight to the fabric clinging to her silhouette, more substance to the shadows printing her every move into the ground. More truth to the rumors and posters and the gun strapped to her thigh.
Most times, like now, he wishes he could ask her where she walked from this morning, who was it that drenched her shirt in blood, what thoughts she's shaking off with the small one-shouldered shrug she often gives. Once or twice, he thinks he's caught a gleam of wistfulness in her eyes, but she never let it linger on her face. She doesn't look troubled today, though. She rarely looks troubled here.
Billy figures many people would puzzle at that; her quick smiles, the way she crosses her legs under her with one hand securely over her calves, as if they might fall off at any instant. They'd wonder how it all adds up with her drive, her gun, her coins. Billy doesn't. He understands not fitting in anywhere, feeling bound by skin and square wooden walls ; wonders what it was that made her abandon the life she had before. Wonders what it would be like if he did the same.