A/N: This story was largely inspired by the song Roll Away Your Stone by Mumford and Sons. I do recommend listening to the song as you read and hopefully it will make as much sense to you as it did to me.-J
The decision was easy to make when it came down to it. Really it had been building for a long time and this was just the last straw. This had been a horrible few days where nothing was happening the way he wanted it to. Looking at Jesse was like someone gave him a way to look back over the years and see himself at that age. He had tried the things he wished someone had said to him when he had been in that all fired of a hurry to grow up. He quickly learned that Jesse didn't listen any better than he probably had.
So he was saddled with the boy while he sought Dobbins. It's possible and actually really likely he handled things wrong at first. He'd meant what he said when he told Jesse that understanding where he was coming from was why he didn't want the boy along with him on this trip. But he realized now those words had to sound like some of Teaspoon's confusing pearls of wisdom to the kid.
Riding with Jesse didn't slow him as much as he thought it would but the kid's questions wore on him more and more and it wasn't Jesse's fault for that, it was his own. He hadn't thought about these things in some time. Not that he ever completely forgot or anything but he really had convinced himself he could be something else and he was on his way until the past came to remind him who he really was.
When he had first arrived in Sweetwater he had been so full of all that had come before that he frankly didn't care from one day to the next if he lived or died. He was fast, faster than pretty much anyone he figured and he knew the chances of dying being called out were slim but he didn't care all that much. It didn't take long for things to change in subtle ways. When he faced Longley he felt some fear. It shook him a little at first because fear was something he hadn't felt in a good long while. When you've made yourself into something near to indestructible and you don't care if you're destroyed anyway then fear isn't a common visitor. He figured it out later. He'd hurt Emma if he died. The simple act of his life and well-being suddenly being attached to another made him fear. He fought it for a while thinking it made him weak but in time came to realize the greater strength of men like Sam and Teaspoon. Living by the gun required little from him really. Being a man, he had come to understand had nothing to do with taking the easier road or with letting something like guns fight your battles for you. Being a man was more than the instinct of kill or be killed and more than the pieces of metal he strapped to his hips that had become at times more family and friend to him than the people around him who tried to love him.
He'd spent so much time conflicted, or pretending he was. But he wasn't really at all. He was scared. He knew exactly what he wanted or, if not exactly then generally. He wanted to cast Wild Bill aside and the guns too. He only feared that there wouldn't be enough left to matter if he did.
So much had happened in such a short while and so much more was right on the edge of happening. War was coming and everyone had seen it coming from the day they learned of President Lincoln's election. Jimmy had his opinions on the matter but certainly none of the powers that be would care about the political musings of someone like him.
Jesse had pressed him for an explanation as to how he had been able to be so used by Dobbins and he had told him that he'd been looking so hard for the good in someone that he hadn't seen the bad. This was true. And it clouded his view of people and life for far too long. He had gone too far the other way, looking for the bad no matter how much good there was to see. He missed the good in so many people. Things started changing for him a little in Sweetwater.
He'd never trusted the judge or Brad and had only trusted Clara because she was a girl. He supposed it was for the best that he hadn't searched too hard for good in them. Sure he might've missed some good in Brad but there wasn't enough in the judge to be worth the search. He didn't trust a soul the day he stood along the fence meeting that crazy old coot Teaspoon either. He didn't even want to trust Emma but she was kind and a woman besides. So he'd see what was good in her and not look for the bad and really there wasn't any real bad in that woman. He didn't trust this Teaspoon fellow or any of the other young men standing along that fence that day. He had no reason to and he knew if he wanted to he could find something bad in each of them. But something was different with them and he'll never know what it was exactly but he didn't care about the bad or he knew it to be like his own and brought more of desperation than evil. Maybe with these young men it was the first time he understood that there were circumstances that tempered things or maybe it was how quickly they rose to defend him, how quickly they rose to defend each other and how quickly they rose to defend what they believed in.
They had tried to save him from himself and he resisted until it was too late and he had sealed his fate. The only one who could save him now was himself and he knew that as much as he lamented things, he'd had the power all along to change the things he didn't like. The power but not the courage.
He still wasn't sure he had the courage but he was nearing a point where what he stood to gain was so far greater than anything he stood to lose that the choice was becoming clearer and clearer. He'd been pondering things since Ike died and maybe before then even. Seeing how a man born free like Noah could be put in chains for crossing some invisible line in the dirt made him sick and like he wanted to just clear away from so-called civilized society altogether. There are men who did just that. They walked away from it all. The land could give you all you needed if you let it and sometimes he had half a mind to go that route but, as much as he liked to protest to the contrary, he really did like to have people around. And as a man he fully appreciated the company of a woman. Being a hermit was not the answer but it maybe was getting close to one.
Then they had lost Ike and that was a hole that was still being felt deep in everyone. He had seen Buck retreat inside himself and knew that there was a part of him that wouldn't ever come out again. How God could see fit to take the gentlest and kindest among them and do him like that was something that Jimmy would work over in his head for years to come. Near as he could figure, Ike had never harmed a soul in his short life. He had the chance to kill one of the men who had harmed his family and had not. Jimmy understood and respected the choice but knew he wouldn't have been able to make the same one. He knew it made Ike a better man than he and yet Ike was gone and Jimmy remained.
He'd just come to question so very much. Nothing made sense anymore. Most days he felt so shaken that he thought maybe nothing would again. He was haunted daily by Elias Mills. And it wasn't the kiss he had shared with Lou that haunted him so either. Well, it wasn't only the kiss that haunted him. And that kiss wasn't anything more than the act of a man desperate to feel something, anything that wasn't condemning him to solitude. Lou had tenderness for him and she said he was a good man and he wanted so to be a good man. He knew that he had done things before he ever signed on with the Express that meant he wasn't a good man but he thought maybe he could atone for those things if he did enough good. But then he couldn't ever seem to tip that scale to more good than bad. And that kiss only proved everything he had said. He let his guard down, let himself care and Lou got hurt for it. She wasn't hurt bad but she could have been and that was just something he couldn't allow. He couldn't for her or anyone else. Lou kept insisting that there would be some magical creature who would know what he was and what pain he would eventually visit on her and would be fine with it. Maybe if Lou hadn't turned to Kid when Elias was hanged he would have thought she could be that. Maybe. But she did turn to Kid and right then he wasn't sure who he was more jealous of, Kid because he had Lou or Lou because she had someone to comfort her. He needed comfort as much and maybe even more than the next person and yet he never seemed to have it. Of course that was his choice. He pushed people away for their own good. He knew that it was for their own good too. He told Lou there wasn't any sense in caring for people when you were just going to hurt them. Really it was that seeing people in danger he caused was hard enough but when it was people he cared about it hurt. It physically hurt him.
His hypocrisy didn't escape his notice either. He had torn into Kid more times than he could count about making decisions for other people instead of letting them figure out their own best interests. But isn't that just what he was doing? Deciding for every person out there whether they'd met him yet or not, what was best for them. Of course that was really only the lie he told. He was really protecting himself with little thought to the others. He knew what he could and could not bear and that was all that made his choice. Lou had called him out for his fears and he knew she was right. She apologized quick but that's what it was. No man would have gotten away with saying something like that to him but she could. Hell any woman could. He didn't want the life Mills had. He didn't want the loneliness. He didn't want to think that someday his own child wouldn't even know him if he walked onto her front porch. He didn't want it but it's what he sought earlier and it's what he had now. Unless he could change something. Teaspoon told him he had choices. Emma told him he had choices. He had made so many of the wrong ones in his life. He just hoped it wasn't too late to make a right one.
He tried to think to when things had started seeming more complicated for him. He supposed the whole strife between states was part of it. He hated hearing Kid's point of view and even understanding some of his points of view. Slavery would always be a sticking point for him but he understood now that there were other issues at play and those that wanted to make this a one issue conflict were oversimplifying and maybe even selling something.
He supposed the first time he started seeing the world wasn't what he always thought it was had to have been when he met Alice. He scoffed at their way of life but then he had learned to live among them. They had a problem and it was one that he usually would have drawn the Colts to solve but he had taken them off and had to use his head. He had discovered that he wasn't as stupid as he thought or as he had been told he was. He had solved the problem and the Peacemakers were right, it was a better way. He hadn't even had the time hardly to enjoy the victory when it was made clear to him he couldn't stay. Maybe a part of him had known it all along but it was the same things escorting Elias Mills had brought up to him. His choices would always threaten his happiness and the lives of those he cared for.
Since then everything seemed upside down. Ike died while vile and evil people lived. He went back to visit Celinda and found the people running the Vigilance Committee were nearly as bad as the people on the other side. It's one thing to believe in something and for the record he still adhered to the basic beliefs of the Vigilance Committee but when you are fighting to have a group of people seen as human beings it sort of tears away your own credibility when you do not treat the people on the other side of the issue as human beings. Seeing how the Burke's ran things really shook the foundation of all he'd thought was true. He couldn't even comprehend anything and the violence was only going to get worse. With the violence he knew as many people who never signed up for the fight would get hurt as the so called soldiers for the cause.
Having Jesse along on this trip had actually helped clarify things for Jimmy in a way that he couldn't have done on his own. The boy had made him confront things he had done and actually, though he hated admitting it, helped him to make them right. He had overheard the conversation between Jesse and Leland's widow. Jesse wasn't pleading to save the boy for the boy's sake but for Jimmy's.
"He needs this."
Those were Jesse's words. Jimmy had known Jesse looked up to him but thought it was just the guns and the legend that he idolized. It wasn't until he heard those words and saw how earnest Jesse was when he said them that Jimmy saw the lad for what he was. Or maybe it was that he saw himself through Jesse's eyes at last. Jesse cared for him as a brother, as a person. Jimmy sometimes forgot that Jesse didn't have family besides their ragged little group either. His brother was a sorry excuse for the word and there wasn't much of anyone else for him. It made Jimmy feel bad for every time he had brushed the boy aside. No wonder he was becoming exactly what Jimmy had. He saw now that the damage had been done what the kid had really needed and wanted from him. He scolded Jesse for being fascinated with death but it was just the only thing he knew to talk about with Jimmy and he didn't understand what it had done. If only he had sat down and talked to him earlier. If only he had told him that every wound you visit upon an adversary is mirrored on your own soul. If only he hadn't been so scared of revisiting his own past then maybe he could have saved that young man's future. Jimmy wondered how he could feel so young and yet so old at the same time. He was too young to take the burdens he'd shouldered, he saw that now but didn't when he had reached for them and he felt sometimes as if he must be a hundred years at least.
He shook his head at the things he had seen, even the things he had done. He had shot an innocent woman in the street. He had seen a child gunned down. Not only had someone lied and made an unfair legend out of him but someone else had used that to make his own life more memorable and had created even more for him to live down. He hated even telling people his name anymore.
He had good reason for that too. Just on this trip to get Dobbins he was reminded why he hated divulging something so simple as his name. He could have moved on from that horse trader and surely found another but Jesse had to open his big mouth and say his name and everything went downhill from there. Of course Jesse wouldn't see it that way. All he could see was what Jimmy himself would have seen at that age. That causing fear could make people do what you want. Jimmy now knew fear wasn't real respect, not even close but he could see that nothing was going to get that point to Jesse.
He had hoped that being on that trip and seeing the guilt that plagued him that Jesse would understand. Maybe event that he would see how easy it was for good people to get hurt when you are in such a hurry to make a name for yourself. He had hoped Jesse would see it wasn't worth it. Jesse was a good kid at heart. He really was but he had poor role models that included Jimmy and he'd lived some pain and had certain philosophies drilled into him from his earliest ages, just as Jimmy had.
For a while after Jesse killed Dobbins and they brought Seth Leland back to his mother, Jimmy truly had hope that Jesse saw the bigger picture. Killing only lead to more killing and some of the people killed might be not very nice people like Dobbins but just as many would be perfectly decent folk like Sam Leland and then other perfectly decent folk would suffer like his widow and little boy. He thought maybe the taking of a life would affect the kid and maybe it did but not in the way Jimmy had hoped. When Jesse asked if he'd get to stop feeling guilty well Jimmy wasn't sure how to answer. Sure it felt good to get that little boy back to his ma but she shouldn't be a widow in the first place and that was still his fault. Worse than trying to come up with an answer for that was asking Jesse if he was going to start feeling the guilt. No, he wouldn't. Jimmy should have known as much. He hadn't truly felt guilt killing Longley. He had felt something and it hadn't been a good feeling but guilt wasn't it at all. Jesse had just gotten to play hero to his own hero and that's what would stick with him more than the feeling of taking another human life.
It had been somewhere close to a week since they had returned. Jesse had been quiet for part of the way but the closer they got to Rock Creek the more steam his mouth picked up. If he had felt bad at all about killing, he had gotten over it.
Jimmy'd thought long and hard about what to do. He knew he couldn't go on this way. He didn't like who he'd been and wasn't happy with who he'd become. He tried to be a good role model. He tried to protect his family and the people he cared for. He tried to do the right thing but he was dogged by choices he made when he was still too young to appreciate the consequences. If he stayed Jesse would keep getting the wrong messages no matter how hard he tried to teach him right. His family would always be in danger and he'd still never get to make those real, human connections he so desperately longed for.
Jimmy sat on the edge of his bunk memorizing every detail of the place. He listened to the breathing and snoring of the young people around him. Seeing them relaxed with sleep was sometimes the only reminder he got of how young they all still were. He worked with all his might to commit every shadow, every creaky floorboard to his mind. He studied the faces of his friends, his family. They slept much as they lived. Kid was making a heavy imprint in his pillow sleeping and dreaming with the same conviction he applied to every waking moment. Cody was bold and sprawled across the mattress hanging his feet over the edge a reminder that he was meant to be larger than life and would never fit into any boundaries others wanted to establish for him. Lou who had become more woman every passing day still only allowed herself a true girlhood when she slept. He could see she'd been twisting her fingers in her hair as she fell asleep and her hair was still wound around the digit. Noah released his scowl for sleep but still carried an air of a proud man. He was at ease as was his right to be. Only in sleep was Buck free of the pain he felt for his fallen brother. His chest rose and fell with every deep breath and a small smile played at the corners of his mouth. Jimmy quickly stood and dressed before he lost the nerve for what he had to do.
Once dressed, he took one last look at the sleeping faces in the bunkhouse. Part of him was sad he wouldn't get to say a real goodbye to them but more of him was grateful it had to be this way. They were better off and he knew it. So was he for that matter. This was the only possible choice and the only way it would work. He quietly closed the door behind him and went out into the dark of pre-dawn to saddle Sundance. He made a decent distance before the dust from the trail got into his eyes and he had to stop for a bit.
The sun beginning to peek its way through the windows caused the first stirrings from the inhabitants of the small bunkhouse. They stretched and yawned and rubbed sleep away from their eyes. It took a while before anyone even noticed his absence.
"Where's Jimmy?" Lou asked through a yawn thinking perhaps he was away on a run and she had just forgotten.
The rest shrugged and someone suggested maybe he was in the outhouse and they all nodded in agreement that he was probably just taking care of his business. They continued getting around and starting to head out to get to whatever chores needed getting to before breakfast and that's when Buck's eyes happened upon the table. None of them had taken notice before of the empty peg by the door where Jimmy's Colts normally hung but they all stole a glance over to it when they saw those same pistols crossing each other on the table. There was something deliberate and final about the way they were laid there. Every one of them saw the note beneath the guns but the message was sent just in their presence on the table and the way they had been placed there.
They looked to each other with fear in their eyes and looks both of understanding and puzzlement. Rachel came in followed by Teaspoon as they normally did to assemble for breakfast.
"Getting kind of a late start on your chores aren't you?" Rachel said smiling brightly but then she saw the stunned faces of those she had been entrusted with and followed their eyes to the guns on the table. Teaspoon saw it too and just shook his head.
He didn't want to but he knew he had to be the one to step forward and pull the note from under the infamous pistols. He sat down at the end of the table while the rest sat where they could. Rachel lowered herself into the chair at the opposite end. Buck sat on his bunk. Cody made it the step to the side of the table while Noah sat on the table sure to be a ways away from the guns. Kid pulled Lou down to sit next to him on his bunk keeping an arm tight around her shoulders.
They all just stared at Teaspoon as if he held all the answers and in a way he did because he held the note from Jimmy, the note that gave whatever answers their friend wanted them to have at any rate. He cleared his throat but it wasn't to test his voice or command attention as might normally be the case. He was making sure the lump that had settled there was gone.
"Dear everyone," Teaspoon began, "I thought about writing letters to each of you but you know I ain't that good at writing and it's not like we have secrets anyway. I wish there'd been a different way to do this but the choices I made before limit the ones I have now. I been doing a lot of thinking for a while now and it's time to make a change. The world's gone plum crazy and instead of making it better, I'm one of the people making it crazier. As long as those guns are strapped to my hips they will twist everything I do even with the best intentions into something evil. I heard for a while now from too many of you and Emma to boot that there was someone out there for me. I wondered and maybe I think that's right but the problem is that the way I live ain't no way to ask someone else to if I ever met her. I ain't strong enough to keep seeing folks I care for in danger because of me. I used to think that was weakness but maybe it's a kind of strength after all. I don't know. I do know that I had no choice but to leave and to leave the guns behind. They're better known than I am anyway. I can change how I look and even how I'm called if I want but those damn things are always going to tip me off. It's time I let go of them anyway. They came from a past I don't want to be chained to anymore and it's time to cut the tie. I don't care what you do with them really. You all can figure that out for yourselves. I won't be needing them anymore anyway."
Teaspoon didn't like the sound of that but kept reading anyway.
"I can't tell you where I'm going but I will be safe, safer than I been ever I think. And I'll be happy. It's a different kind of life and I don't think I would have thought much of it when I was Jesse's age but right now it looks about as close to heaven as I can get here on the earth. I might even see fit to take myself a wife and live a kind of normal life. I think I might like that a whole lot. I hope you understand that I can't tell you where I'm going and I couldn't tell you that I was. There'll always be that one more person who has a grudge or something to prove and thinks fighting me is going to fix things for them. I'm doing this as much for them as me. That road is no way to solve your hurting. Really just keeps the hurt alive longer and adds more to it. I don't want anyone to hurt any of you to tell them something and I can't risk any of that following me. I need a clean break from all I done wrong and I'm sorry that it means I got to maybe hurt the ones who been so good to me. I heard someone once talk about burning bridges like cutting a tie so you can't go back somewhere and that sounds like a sad thing but when where you're going to is good and right then you won't need to go back. I care for every one of you and I won't ever forget you but it's time for me to go now."
Teaspoon paused and dabbed at his eyes, "He signed it, 'Your friend, JB Hickok'."
Rachel was weeping, Lou clinging to Kid for comfort while the rest looked to each other feeling helpless. Finally Cody spoke up.
"Well, why're we sitting here? We can go get him. He's only got a few hours head start on us and Buck could track him easy. He can't draw on us without these."
"No, Cody," Teaspoon sighed, "The man has a right to make his own choices. He always has and this might be the first time he really thought one out. Besides Buck has a run today."
The nearer Jimmy drew to his destination the slower he rode. At this rate he wouldn't be moving at all very soon. He was afraid and he knew it and he had spent the ride analyzing all the reasons he was afraid starting with the most obvious among them. What he thought he was running to might not be there to be found anymore. The last time he had been there he was wanted. He was begged to stay but that had been months ago and those same feelings might not still be there for him. He thought of her smile, her laugh and how it might feel to arrive and discover that she had found someone else in the time he had been gone. He loved her. He had loved her then and determined that wasn't enough. He had been a fool and he almost deserved to find her with another. But could he stay if she no longer held those feelings for him? He thought of all his time spent there and what it had taught him and what he still felt he had to learn. Yes, he could stay if for no other reason than he had been called 'family' while there and he only had one other of those, the one he had just walked out on. Somehow even if she had moved on, he would stay and he would make his life there where he had a chance of a life at all.
He felt apprehension as the small community came into sight. It had changed since he had been there and yet in many ways it was frozen in time and always would be. He could see the people dressed in black going about their lives. The men worked in the fields and the women took advantage of whatever work could be done outside during the heat of day. He could see them turn their faces appreciatively toward every welcome breeze. Most of the faces he did not know and they eyed him warily. They had yet to come when he had moved on the last time. But one face took note of him and even offered a small smile. Jimmy pulled Sundance alongside this man and dismounted. The men studied each other for a few moments and Jimmy felt the other man's eyes go to where his guns had once been.
"I gave them up," Jimmy offered.
"But why have you given them up is the question."
"It was time," Jimmy replied, "It was past time."
"You left behind much sadness when you went away, James."
"Took a good amount with me too."
Jacob nodded his understanding.
"I thought I was doing what was right but I doubt that decision more and more every day," Jimmy tried to explain, "I know she might've moved on or might be too hurt to ever want to even see me again. But I ain't just here for her. I'm here for me too, for what this place is and what it is for my, well, I guess my soul."
Jacob guided him to a porch and nodded for Jimmy to sit.
"You have had a long ride. You should sit and have something cold to drink."
Jimmy sat and waiting while Jacob disappeared into the house. He turned when he heard the door opening again. He thought it would be Jacob coming back out but jumped to his feet when he saw her. Alice. She looked uncertainly at him and he at her. Jimmy could see the moisture forming in her eyes.
"It is true then?" she asked, "You have come to stay?"
"It's true."
She walked closer, nearly brushing against him and looked up at him with those big eyes searching him, looking for his secrets. He had none from her or at least none he wanted to keep from her. He brought his hand up to brush her cheek but stopped just shy of making contact.
"My memories didn't do you justice," he said, "You're even more beautiful."
That is when the dam burst. Alice threw her arms around him holding him tight and crying.
"I thought you were gone forever," she sobbed.
"I thought I was too," he said wrapping his arms around her and feeling a little misty himself, "In more ways than one."
Just a quick note from me before you read the beautiful poetry of Mumford and Sons. I never liked how the show ended for Jimmy. They could have left him with a decent woman or they could have left him to be alone looking to live his true history but to match him with the doomypout was inexcusable in my eyes. I loved the chemistry he had with Alice and felt he really could have been happy there. If anyone else agrees and has not read my friend 's story Derailed, may I recommend it to you now...it is still in progress but it is brilliant and at least rights that wrong.-J
Roll Away Your Stone – Mumford and Sons
Roll away your stone, I'll roll away mine
Together we can see what we will find
Don't leave me alone at this time,
For I am afraid of what I will discover inside
You told me that I would find a hole,
Within the fragile substance of my soul
And I have filled this void with things unreal,
And all the while my character it steals
Darkness is a harsh term don't you think?
And yet it dominates the things I seek
It seems that all my bridges have been burned,
But, you say that's exactly how this grace thing works
It's not the long walk home
that will change this heart,
But the welcome I receive with the restart
Darkness is a harsh term don't you think?
And yet it dominates the things I seek
Darkness is a harsh term don't you think?
And yet it dominates the things I seek
Darkness is a harsh term don't you think?
And yet it dominates the things I seek
Stars hide your fires,
And these here are my desires
And I will give them up to you this time around
And so, I'll be found
with my steak stuck in this ground
Marking its territory of this newly impassioned soul
hide your fires,
these are my desires
And I will give them up to you this time around
ADD:And so, I'll be found
with my steak stuck in this ground
Marking its territory of this newly impassioned soul
But you, you've gone too far this time
You have neither reason nor rhyme
With which to take this soul that is so rightfully mine