A/N: A little introspective thing because 4x11 has me in all my Epitaph and Tombstone feels. A look at how the OK Corral might have played out in the Wynonna Earp 'verse.
He did not shoot Billy Clanton.
(Not this Billy Clanton, this boy who looks at him with a firm set of his jaw as if he is wondering what and why, the story of all that they were hidden behind his eyes.)
He shot Tom McLaury, shotgun blast into his chest, the recoil almost knocking him, the smoke in his nose, in his throat, burning his lungs, and he choked and gagged on it and the pain that seared through his hip as Morgan fell beside him, Virgil stumbling, Wyatt (Wyatt) never flinching, and his hand closed around his pistol and there was Frank McLaury screaming his name, aiming at him, his mind a blank haze as he levelled his pistol, and pulled the trigger.
(When he shoots, things die.)
He did not see Billy Clanton fall.
Morgan, pale and gasping in the dirt, thick blood spreading beneath his shoulders. Virgil, leaning on his cane, the cane Doc threw him before it started. His own leg buckling, hand closing around Wyatt's arm.
(Kate, running, Kate, blood streaked down her face, glass in her hair, Fly's Photography Studio—)
Wyatt dropping away, and he could feel himself speaking, his mouth working, could feel himself saying something, but what did he say, what did he say?
He did not shoot Billy Clanton.
That bit he knows. That bit, he has never questioned.
So why did Margot Clanton want him? Why did she deem him their greatest enemy?
He wonders which Clanton she claims as an ancestor. Not Billy, surely. There were sisters, married, left, he never knew them, heard of them. And Ike was killed, a shootout they said. Word reached him not long—not long before the witch found him.
Likely these Clantons are come down from Phin.
He always wondered about Phin, the impression of him a haze in his memory as so much else of those years is. And apparently he was not there, the night Virgil was shot, so why then was Wyatt so sure it was him?
So much of it, circling back and around, those thirty seconds in Tombstone, the smoke blinding. Clantons and Earps and McLaurys and him, in the crux of it all.
No McLaury has come looking for him since the inquest.
Kate had wanted him to go to Colorado. If he had not spent most of that summer flat on his back, trying not to choke on the blood boiling out of his lungs—
If he had not been arrested for that stagecoach robbery— All because he chose to leave town to play cards—
If Wyatt had not tried to make deals with Ike Clanton—
What was Billy Clanton even doing there? What were any of them doing there?
He only came from Tucson because Morgan said Wyatt needed him, and if Wyatt needed him—
He would have gone to Hell if Wyatt asked it of him.
(He did go to Hell to save Wynonna.)
Thirty seconds, still bringing them to here, still trying to tear them apart.
He will not let that happen.
Whatever it takes, this has to end.