Chapter 24: Undertow

A/N: Scenes of violence and suggested violence in this chapter, some graphic, but never gratuitous.

"I was surprised to find you working in the saloon," Danny told me, running his hands down the length of my legs as he held me on his lap. It was too intimate, too casual and I was trembling. "You seemed to think yourself above all that."

Despite my absolute mandate to myself that I must be calm, fury bubbled up and I spat, "You cost me the job I wanted...I didn't have so many choices."

I fidgeted, tension in every muscle and sinew. The agony of waiting for Danny to do whatever he planned to do was like a great pressure on my chest. I knew this was part of his fun, the drawing out of the dread for me, the anticipation for himself. I also knew Jimmy would not dare to try to free himself with us sitting quietly by the fire. Danny was going to have to be distracted somehow, and I wasn't sure if I was ready to get on with it or not.

"You were wasted on the Express."

"Is that what you told that man you sent after me tonight?" I asked without real heat.

"You were his reward for helping me get Hickok here ready for our time together. Or so I told him. I figured you'd be able to fight him off or get one of your guards to do it for you. Didn't matter either way to me."

"And then you killed him? And Atticus? Atticus was just doing his job. He didn't deserve to die that way."

I saw Jimmy straighten in surprise out of the corner of my eye. He hadn't known about Atticus, I guessed. I wondered just how many hours he had been tied to that chair.

"My new friend got a little greedy when you didn't turn out to be as accommodating as I let on. Started threatening to talk. I cut his throat to make it more difficult for him to do so. Dead men are better at secrets, I've discovered."

"But Atticus?"

"Interrupted me when I was having a talk with your little blonde friend about giving you the message. Actually seeing me cut the big man's throat seemed much more convincing than just finding old John in the alley. My ears still hurt after all that screaming."

"So much bloodshed...for what? For this?" I murmured almost to myself, bewildered. "Why?"

"Because you drew on me and once I saw you were a woman, killing you for it seemed too easy."

I was sorry I asked, felt everything in me recoiling from the monster in front of me speaking in such reasonable tones about murder from behind such a handsome face.

He watched my eyes. "Good. Now I can see your fear is back." He leaned close to my neck. Breathed deeply along my skin. "Smell it." And then his tongue swept up my throat. "Taste it even, like I did that first day in the tack room. It was so hard to let you go. To wait for you so long has been so hard to me, truly."

He said it like a compliment. I tried to keep my breathing calm, but I could feel the beginnings of panic, and all my resolve to meet Danny stoically and endure him without fighting back was quickly dissolving. I didn't think I could do this, bear this, despite my bravado with Jimmy.

"If you really aren't a whore, this night is going to be very...educational for you. Hell, Wild Bill might find it educational too. At the very least he is going to learn how far you bend before you break. My guess is very, very far. I've put considerable time into this on that belief so I certainly hope you won't disappoint me."

I heard Jimmy's sharp intake of air during this speech from Danny, but could not bring myself to look at him. My skin crawled into chills.

It was on the tip of my tongue to ask him not to hurt me, self-preservation instincts rising in the face of his frank admission that he wanted to see how much I could stand...to what end exactly I wondered. Did he mean to break my body, my spirit, or both? I didn't know the answer, couldn't guess, and didn't want to.

I did not beg, or plead in the end. We were far beyond it anyway.

Jimmy had not yet arrived where I was. "You don't have to do this...you can take out your revenge on me. You could be the one to kill Wild Bill. What kind of man hurts a woman half his size? What satisfaction could there be in that?"

Danny chuckled. "Told you it was gonna be educational, Hickok." He was unperturbed at having his manhood questioned. In an easy motion Danny stood with me in his arms, but let me down suddenly. I almost fell, but regained my footing. I hugged my arms around myself, miserable, embarrassed, and terrified. I was also freezing, I felt like my veins ran with icy water, thin and biting.

"On your knees."

"No!" Jimmy bellowed, and I took a step backwards, ready to bolt, though there was nowhere to go.

"Don't make me put holes in your friend, Sugar. Do it."

And without waiting for my submission, which I would have given with Jimmy threatened, he yanked my hair back hard with one hand and drove me down with the other hand hard on my shoulder.

My knees hit the wood floor with a painful thump.

Danny chuckled. Stood above me. "That's a sight. You kneeling there in the firelight, just waiting for me. Hickok, tell me you ain't thought about her just like this in your dreams."

I flinched.

"Never like this." Jimmy's disagreement was a hoarse whisper, choked with emotion. "Don't...don't hurt her, Danny. There's no need to hurt her. I started this fight with you...let it finish with me."

"I know. I seem to remember you getting spitting mad over me just talking about a girl in town I had my eye on. A stranger to you. I wonder what this must feel like, you seeing me with a girl you...what would you call it...love? Do you love her Hickok?"

Jimmy didn't respond and I knew he was weighing the effect of his answer one way versus the other in terms of the consequence to me.

"Answer me. Does she mean so much to you that you'd trade your life for her honor?"

"Yes," Jimmy said with simple conviction and I watched my own tear fall and make a shiny drop on the dusty floor before my knees. I still could not bear to look at Jimmy, to see him see me this way, to read what was on his face.

"Then this is going to be a very frustrating night for you," Danny promised and came to stand above me.

A strange thing had happened to me with Wicks. I had tried to explain it to Jimmy yesterday...had it only been yesterday? But I had failed in finding the words. I had never spoken of it before then, had by long habit tried not to think of it.

As things had unfolded that night, I had felt as if I sank somewhere deep inside myself, far, far below the surface. I felt occasional sympathy pains for the girl above, the girl I had been just a few minutes before, could feel her struggling, knew she must be terrified, but I was too far in the abyss to have anything but a vague understanding of the storm raging above at the surface.

I was now sinking, sinking back to that place from which I had not been able to rise for years, the current of detachment pulling me down and down and down like an undertow.

So it felt like someone else Danny reached down and grabbed by a fistful of hair, someone else that watched as he fumbled with his belt, someone else that recoiled as Danny revealed himself, brushing against her face with hard, hot skin, and a harsh warning not to bite.

Could it matter? I wondered. After everything the girl above had been through, could this really matter? There had been so much cruelty in her life, what was this one small indignity? What would be the harm in submitting? In parting her lips and accepting what was likely to happen whether she fought or not?

Did it matter? The enraged roars coming from Jimmy from up on the surface seemed to indicate it mattered to him a great deal.

Then, I was rising, because I had people who loved me and people who had taught me my own worth, and they lived at the surface.

So, when Danny twisted my hair even more brutally and tried to force himself past my lips and tightly clenched teeth, I bit him. Hard.

The world exploded in front of my eyes and I blinked in confusion as everything in the room tilted, realizing only after my face hit the hard floor that it was me that had fallen over after Danny struck me, and that I was looking at my discarded boots and the fire as I lay there stunned.

I heard Danny howling and cursing and I was pretty sure what I had just done had rapidly accelerated the evening's schedule. I gathered myself and leapt to my feet, and without thought, I was fleeing blindly, running from the man who wanted to end me.

I heard his footfalls behind mine, the weight of him vibrating up from the floorboards underneath my bare feet. I had been heading for the door but he was closing the distance too fast for me to get away, so I turned deeper into the house, though I knew it was all dead-ends.

There was a stairway and I started up it, the long-ago memory of a dark closet under different stairs with dust raining down on my head in my mind's eye.

I screamed as if burned when his weight hit me mid-back, and we both fell forward. I hit the stairs hard, Danny on top of me. He was livid, grabbing me by the hair again, dragging me back against him.

"You'll die for that," he whispered in my ear and I screamed and tried to claw my way out from under him, as he urgently pulled at his clothes. He was trying, I realized, to take me from behind, though I wasn't sure how he could manage that after I had bitten him so hard. He seemed to realize it was not likely after a moment and bellowed in rage.

His hands came around my throat, his weight collapsing against me as he seemed to abandon the thought of rape. Instead, his hands tightened on my throat until I could not draw breath, and all the blood in my body seemed to trap itself in my temples and behind my eyes. I wondered if my face would just split along the seams, saw the edges of my vision start to grow dark. As seconds stretched into eons, the pain grew worse. I strained for the tiniest bit of air, of relief.

And then it was as if Danny was launched off of me, and my head banged a stair riser as his hands suddenly released my throat. For a second, I could only lay there, gasping, wheezing, and choking like someone nearly drowned. But as the blood stopped beating in my temples I became aware of sounds of a mighty struggle in the foyer below.

Jimmy had freed himself and was now locked with Danny, who had turned his fury fully on Jimmy. I saw the flash of the knife between them as they grappled and growled and snarled like two wild things in a fight that I knew would be to the death.

I was light-headed as I stood on the stairs, my feet made no sound as I traveled down them.

I had happened to glance down in my mad flight away from Danny and as I leapt the first stair realized my gun had come to a rest just beside the staircase.

I had not had the time before to be able to pause and grab it. Now I picked it up, cocked the hammer. Danny and Jimmy broke apart suddenly, and I realized Danny now held the knife. I saw blood on Jimmy's torso through his shirt, pulled open in the struggle.

Danny moved towards Jimmy, but he turned in surprise when I screamed his name.

I saw his eyes go wide in shock and then fear as he looked first at the gun and then at my face.

I did not offer him surrender, did not give him the opportunity to ask for mercy. I pulled the trigger.

He folded almost silently to the floor, and I sank to my knees where I had stood, watching the life blood leave him.