Something Pretty

AL

Greetings to those of you fond enough of fuckin' Deadwood to come seek out fan fiction on the internet. I don't like the internet much myself, never got an email with that wasn't saturated with the stink of bad news to be completely fucking honest.

SETH

Anyways, this here is a piece of fan fiction that talks about what all of us in Deadwood were doing and thinking and the like the day that George Hearst…

AL

Cocksucker

SETH

The day that George Hearst left town. The young lady responsible would like to make the disclaimer that she owns absolutely nothing, these characters are all real people but as imagined by David Milch and HBO she'd also like…

AL

Loopy cunt would also like us to say that she's sticking with the version of these fucking personages presented on the HBO show which was cancelled after three fucking seasons! Three seasons while those HBO cocksuckers lets their…

SETH

See, this is exactly why I did not want to do this with you. We were also asked to say that actual history has been somewhat disregarded in favor of the fictional account offered in the television program. The people here are being treated as fictional characters rather than real people.

AL

And if you don't fucking like it you can just write a fucking history paper or some such because this is fucking fan fiction. You hoopleheads should just be lucky that everything is capitalized and this won't feature long sex scene written by some hopped up teenage girl who desperately needs to get her snatch wet.

ALMA

No need for language like that Mr. Swearengen. Also this is Deadwood fan fiction, the readers expect more. I would like to say that though this will include a lot of very bad language and of course sexual and drug references, since some of us seem not to be able to keep our minds out of the gutter.

AL

What's a gutter?

ALMA

There will be no violence or sex scenes

AL

And no Mary fucking Sue's neither!

ALMA

Language, Mr. Swearengen. There will be no original characters, the ones already present are simply too good.

E.B.

Will there be slash? Sorry to ask just no one seems to have thought to include me in the briefing that you all seem to have. In essence E.B. was left out.

SETH

There will be some mild slash

E.B.

Yeah but who?

AL

Not you! That's all I know

ALMA

Our readers will simply have to continue to go through the rest of this to find out. So without further ado, Chapter 1

AL

Here's hopin' you fuckin' like it!

Chapter 1

The Delayed Departure

One could feel the tension in the Gem as Hearst walked in with the armed men, it was so palpable and oppressive it almost made it hard to breath. Seth stood fixed to the spot as they advanced, not knowing what would happen but ready for whatever it was. But the worst thing was that this wasn't a situation where he was just waiting for a reason to do the thing he wanted to. This was a situation where he had to do nothing. It was like when he was younger and he could sense a beating was coming but all he could do was keep out of his father's way, knowing that all that would do was postpone the inevitable. He hated that feeling, not being able to strike back waiting to be hurt. Sometimes he wondered it the anticipation wasn't worse than the actual pain. Terror and anger existed for a reason, to make you run or fight, when presented with danger humans weren't meant to do neither. These were the things that his instincts told him, but he couldn't listen to them now, he couldn't.

Dan watched Al ascend the stairs as he had done countless times in the past and hoped to do countless times in the future. He didn't care what Al had said. He heard anything, any noise at all coming from that room he would charge in and fight those cocksuckers with everything he had. 'Right or wrong' he thought 'you go with your feelings' and his feelings were telling him that if Al had to die for this he, Dan would die too and take as many with him as he could. He recalled his conversation with Trixie, which felt like it belonged to a different century not last year. They had talked about how they'd rather burn down the Gem than seen it compromised. Well what was it now if not compromised? A voice in his head (and Al's too he'd bet) was telling him to set light to the whole fucking town rather than letting Hearst just own the place. He didn't know if he could keep living in a Deadwood that didn't belong solely to itself, that was no longer the place he'd helped to build. He half hoped this would all come down to a battle and all the ambiguity would be blasted away if only for a short time.

Silas stood resigned. He'd do what Al said because it was the prudent thing to do. Thinking over the options again the course of action being followed was the only one to follow. Of course a lot of trouble might have been circumvented if the whore responsible for the actual shooting had been killed. But he could tell that for Al that was not an option and that anyone who tried it might run the risk of meeting the same fate themselves.

Meanwhile Mr. Blazanov stood with his ear pressed to the door of Al's office while Merrick paced back and fourth below.

"I can't hear anything, I cannot…eh…I don't know if they are not talking or if I cannot hear." Blazanov begun pacing as well "What did Mr. Swearengen mean about "going" for Mr. Hearst with his knife?" He walked down the stairs as the other man replied;

"My dear Mr. Blazanov if you think that Al tells me anything that is going on, ever, you misunderstand the nature of our relationship. But I suppose he is having some kind of negotiation now with Hearst that might break down and if it does he hopes to take the brunt of the man's fury and thus spare us all a battle that in all likelihood we will not be able to win." While he had been talking he begun rummaging around his printing equipment. Blazanov was about the respond but then he realized why his friend sounded so distracted and instinctively reached out and grabbed his arm.

"Mr. Merrick, if there is a fight. What do we do?" Merrick stopped what he was doing and looked at the Russian standing above him. Why did Mr. Blazanov have to get mixed up in this? This wasn't his fight or his town or even his country. He tried to choke back the rising outrage at this whole unfortunate mess and his whole unfortunate country that he had once had believed in so fervently. America shouldn't be like this, it should have more to offer people like his friend. The idea that the telegraph operator had come to these shores seeking a place where he was allowed to live his life and had merely wandered into another version of the same nightmare where the powerful were able to bend everyone and everything to their will made him sick. All he said was;

"I believe we have both been designated non combatants"

The telegraph operator smiled at his friend who always wanted to tell the decent truth.

"You have not answered my question."

"Oh my dear…my very dear friend" Merrick put his hand on his shoulder trying to be reassuring, even though the only thing he could thing to say certainly wasn't "I have no idea what to do"

In the office Al took out his knife with the utmost caution. Mentally as he opened the coffin he ran through all the ways that he could knife Hearst. But another thought interrupted the comforting familiar calculation. He'd said earlier that he would speak for the others once he got to heaven. If the worst happened what was waiting for him? Would he just stop being Al all of a sudden? The world ends when your dead he had always thought to himself but was there another one waiting? Would it be better? He supposed he had always deep down believe in Heaven and Hell but he'd always tried to keep that as buried as possible, knowing he'd find out a lot sooner if he thought too much about the right and wrong of things. He'd often wondered in his youth how Hell could possibly be worse than his life as it was. In fact many a freezing night in Chicago he'd thought about the prospect cheerfully because there at least he could count on being warm. Did he stand a chance of getting into Heaven? He tried to pull his thoughts back to the here and now but a sudden rush of emotion caught him as he thought about the prospect that he might just have seen everyone he knew for the last time. Fuck it; he was going to miss Trixie, Dan, Johnny, Adams and Jewel. Would they be all right with out him? Silas could probably survive anything but he wasn't so sure about Johnny or the gimp. For that matter what would become of Wu and Merrick, and the Doc…hell he even worried about that maniac bishop downstairs. He thought of Alma, he supposed she had the now ex Sheriff to look after her just as Trixie had her Jew but…he would have liked to have gotten to know her better, that was part of it…but he felt…he wasn't sure, just the idea of being eternally and absolutely separated from her struck him with a kind of despair. But now the danger had passed. Hearst had felt the blood on her neck without looking at her face. He never had and never would, in fact Al wondered if he ever really saw anyone. But he was leaving now and Al was alone with the corpse and the knowledge that he had one a battle but surrendered the war.

He walked out to meet Seth and Charlie who stood outside the office door. Charlie shouted to Hearst about the body, then reminded him of the other one in the jail cell. He didn't know what he wanted probably just for Hearst not to notice or to care, just to remind himself how sick the man really was. But his refusal to make any kind of denial about the second body brought back to Charlie the absolute injustice of the situation. Hearst could have said "Yeah I fucking killed him with my bare hands, fuck you what are you going to do about it?" and the answer would have been nothing. The world had changed so much in just a few years. He wanted so badly to go back, back before Bill had been shot back before amalgamation and capital had started to wreck havoc with everything, back when a man could settle his own business.

"Has she family ought be notified?" asked Seth

"I don't notify fucking family" spat Al.

"Especially not hers"

Al gave him the address of her sister. 'He thinks I don't care. That's good, let him think that, let him think I do this sort of thing for fun. Let him think I'll sleep easy tonight. It'll make them all feel better, just to let me be the bad guy. I'm so good at it.'

Sol walked down the stairs his gun heavy and awkward in his hand. He felt the wrongness as keenly as everyone else but he was relieved that it was done. Now the man himself was gone the battle was lost life could go on. They could focus on the town again and think about the future. Unlike the men in the Gem who worried about change Sol had plans for the future. He wondered if he'd ever persuade Trixie to marry him and they could share the house openly. When he had talked about taking care of Sophia he Of course he felt bad about the girl who had been killed he knew it wasn't fair, but he could not bring himself to even think the alternative. He loved Trixie too much to care about what was fair. "I won't be able to talk to Seth for a while after this". He knew that though his friend seemingly accepted the arrangement he would have rather seen Trixie dead rather than a girl who had done nothing. That and he and Trixie had never gotten along anyway, which was strange because they had so much in common. That was probably it. He'd often entertained a theory that people who were extremely different were in many ways better able to deal with each other. Those who were too similar simply saw their worst selves reflected back at them in stark relief. When he opened the door he found Trixie sitting in the dark, waiting, the suffering in her expression unmistakable. Suddenly the future seemed less clear to him, how do you ever live with the knowledge that someone else has died in your place?

As Hearst left the Gem the two men at the window of the Pioneer took notice. Merrick broke away from Blazanov and strode towards the door.

"Mr. Merrick what are you going to do?" the response Blazanov received only made him more nervous.

"I'm not afraid of that cocksucker and I won't let him leave without alerting him to that fact" It was the truth too, at this point he was simply too angry to feel any fear. The bitter disillusionment that had been brought on by the days events would eventually give way to despair, he'd been through this before, but now he was furious. But of course when he came within hearing distance all he could say was;

"I wonder if the other day you took my not publishing the news that you'd been shot for a failure to observe or better yet judge correctly that I thought suppressing the news would better serve the camp."

He almost wanted Hearst to hit him or yell at him or something, just to show that he'd noticed that the beating hadn't rendered him submissive. He knew what he'd just said wasn't much of an insult but he didn't know what else to do. For the first time in his life he didn't just want something to stop he wanted to hurt this man, to give some back. But of course that wasn't an option, he just had to stand there and listen as Hearst told him how futile any effort of his really was and was ever going to be.

Cy Tolliver stood on the roof of the Bella Union watching everyone down in the street. The stupid whore was bent over the stupid dope fiend. He heard over and over again that it was a tough thing to kill someone else at close range, to watch the life leave their eyes and the blood pump out. Ten years ago countless drunken veterans with lost looks in their eyes and the tattered remains of uniforms had reminisced on what it was like to kill someone else, how hard it was. Even after the blue and grey had ceased to signify victor or defeated the occasional drunk would try and corner him and reminisce, the occasional john would explain why he scared one of the girls by screaming bloody murder in his sleep. Hard? Horse shit. It had been easy, hell it had been fun, he'd been wanting to do that to Leon for a while but now his only regret was that he'd have to find someone else. But that might be good too, maybe his new dealer would be able to stay sober. His thoughts returned to the initial source of his irritation and he glared at Hearst as the man ascended his carriage. 'Motherfucker thinks he can just come into my damn town and tell me I'm managing his "non mining concerns"…I'll show that cocksucker, I'll show everyone…murders fucking Ellsworth, makes it clear that this camp doesn't stand a chance of being civilized and thinks he can get away with it…I'm going to fucking shoot him. I'll be the man who shot George Hearst.'

"If I'm quick about this Janine, maybe me and Mr. Hearst will get to hear the lord judge Leon." The prostitute looked up at him in terror as he pulled his gun out.

Seth stood on the boardwalk in front of the Gem unwilling to budge and inch. Even breathing was difficult since doing nothing was costing him every ounce of energy he possessed. He tried in vain to keep the image of his father out of his head. Of course it was at this moment Alma road past with Sofia in a mule cart. The sight of Alma would have been enough to distract him but Hearst just had to go and tip his fucking hat as if he hadn't just bullied her out of her gold claim, as if he hadn't humiliated her, as if he hadn't had her shot at, as if he hadn't murdered her husband in cold blood. Seth strode out towards him telling Charlie to stand back.

Cy aimed the pistol at Hearst's head, he had a clear shot and he was sure that the main street was within range of his firearm. This was it, he'd shoot Hearst then himself, this was it…but a voice in the back of his head piped up

'Cy, you know if you shoot him his people will raze the camp to the fucking ground'

'And don't I fucking know that? Why else would I shoot my fucking self?'

'What happens once you're dead Cy?" Now the voice sounded like Joanie.

'What do I fucking care?' he thought to himself, but all of a sudden he could no more pull the trigger than he could bring Leon back to life. He tried to keep saying to himself that it didn't fucking matter what happened, he'd be dead but he just couldn't do it. His impotent fury resolved in his grabbing Stupid and pointed his gun at her head. That's what he'd do, he'd shoot her then he'd kill himself and fucking end it.

Seth stared up at Hearst and simply stated exactly what was on his mind.

"You've looked at your last body. You're done tipping your hat here! Get out before I have to drag you out by your ear"

He knew this wasn't really an option, but he wanted the man to leave assured that he may own the mines but he sure as hell didn't own Deadwood.

Panic gripped Janine as she felt the cold gun barrel against her head. She'd been in dangerous places before but never like this, so completely at the mercy of a lunatic. As she begged she acted on instinct and pulled down he already revealing top to let her breasts hang out. It had always been her experience that men seemed to get distracted when they got a look at certain parts of a women's body. She and Cy stood there like that for what seemed to her like a century but was probably less than a minute before he removed the gun from her head.

Hearst finally departed leaving Seth and Charlie and Merrick and Blazanov standing in the street.

"Mr. Merrick, your statement had me worried. I thought you might do something…what was that word you used the other day? Injudicious. It is thanks to you that I am often told I speak better English than many Americans."

"That has nothing to do with me, you're very bright you'd probably learn quickly no matter who you talked to." Merrick sighed "Yes everyone had cause to be worried there…fuck it this is me we're talking about. I'm about as ineffectual as…I don't know what's the most useless stupid thing you can think of?"

"Do not talk like that" said the telegraph operator softly.

"Why shouldn't I? I won't even have a job soon. That man is going to have his people start another newspaper here."

"You did fucking good" Charlie was always quick to reassure

"I did fucking nothing" Seth responded not wanting reassurance. He stared across the thorough fare and saw Sol with Trixie. He was glad she was still alive, Sol deserved to be happy. He on the other hand, well he wouldn't be able to sleep tonight. He used to think he didn't swim in that shit and now he found himself drowning in it.

Up in his office Al had just resumed scrubbing the floor after a talk with Johnny. He hated doing this but a man cleaned up his own godamn messes. Al shook his head.

"Wants me to tell him something pretty."

JOHNNY

That there was the end of Chapter One. There'll be a Chapter Two along sometime soon.

SOL

We hoped that you liked it and that you review or favorite. Or if you didn't like it leave some constructive criticism!

TRIXIE

Wait, wasn't that just the end of "Tell Him Something Pretty" with a little extra dialogue and thoughts and things? And ain't fan fiction supposed to be its own story?

MARTHA

According to a sight called "Wikipedia" (which seems more reliable than those unfortunate schoolbooks I have to read the children) fan fiction is "a broadly-defined term for fan labor regarding stories about characters or settings written by fans of the original work, rather than by the original creator." So yes this counts, besides the next few chapters will be "original"

DAN

Well thanks for fuckin readin anyway!