Author's Note: I can't wait for August, when we'll finally get season three and all the answers we've been waiting for (well, we can hope, at least). To pass some of the time, here's a fic that's been bugging me since the season two finale. I'm having fun writing it so far, though I'm not exactly sure where it'll end up, but that's the excitement of the whole thing! HoW belongs to AMC and all that good stuff. The titles of each chapter are lyrics to the song "Little Habitats" by Joman. If you like what you're reading, please drop a review and let me know what you think. :)
A Dark Debt
One: The Walls That Surround You
I am gone from the world now and there is nothing holding me back from entering the next. I only know this because I am wandering through a fog that covers everything and gives no indication of day or night. All is calm, quiet. I am naked but unbothered by the fact. I feel no pain in my flesh nor in my heart. I suppose I could call this heaven. Either way, it's more than enough for one such as myself.
My feet can't grow tired anymore. There is no cold and, best of all, no hunger. I only felt these things minimally back at Hell on Wheels, but once you see them or are ever subject to them, you never forget. And I am glad that before I left the earth I was able to once more know the touch of someone who genuinely cared. He wasn't shy of the truth and in that came his ability to keep an open mind to all matters. Even me, I had eventually found, which brought endless comfort in the darkening days that had followed and lead me here. I remember waiting for him at the dance, thinking we would never meet again. But he returned somehow and after that we were always dancing. Now I am a little sad. He will find my body... and then what? If anything, perhaps the burial will be by his own hand.
My meandering continues through the haze and I wonder if Robert also took this road to the other side. There is a tiny, joyful swoop in my stomach and I imagine his face, determined and full of adventure. Full of life, even as life was leaving him by the day. My first love, my American surveyor. The one who dared to dream bigger than the seemingly endless world ahead of him. I feel a sigh escape me. And yet, I failed him. I am here now because of my own foolishness and selfish means. If we ever cross paths again, I hope that he knows I tried. I hope that he will be able to forgive me.
Just then I'm halted and all thoughts banish themselves for a lone figure who appears in the distance. I am curious but a feeling of dread creeps up my back. Just when you think you're alone...
I draw nearer and I can see that this phantom is a man by his broad shoulders and stance. Though he is sitting cross-legged on the floor of this place, his presence looms. His hair is long and his skin earthen, and I spot the feather behind his ear and the way the buckskin falls about him. Then my heart, as if it were still alive, pounds drums unholy inside my chest. One white eye stares at me from the depths of the mist, searing right into me. I feel small, coming undone at the sight of the brave who I had slain no more than a year ago.
He stands to meet me, tall and menacing and vengeful. He says as much as I do: nothing. But this time, so unlike the others, his hands do not reach for my ankles. I open my mouth to gasp and he is upon me, breathing life and smoke right into my shriveled, dead lungs.
