A/N: This is an imagined prequel to the Al/Trixie pairing, set some years before 1876, the "Deadwood" years. This picks up a few years after "Miseries and Familiars" ends.

I own nothing, all is HBO's, David Milch's , or history's creations. Some fictitious characters are based on composites of historical figures.

Warnings for violence, graphic description of violent facial wounds, pimp/prostitute dynamics, language, implied euthanasia, casual sex (non-explicit), abortion.

Making Their Way

Chapter 6

Trixie yawned and stretched in the late morning light. The bed was empty beside her. She looked around the room, saw no sign of Al, and snuggled back under the covers for a few more winks. She was almost asleep again in the warm blankets when she heard the key rattle in the lock. Trying to get on her feet before Al got in the door, she was distracted until she heard, "So, what do you think?"

Her hand covered her mouth as she gaped at a clean-shaven Al.

"What on earth…I haven't seen you like that in years!" She walked around him, looking at lips fuller than she remembered. "You look ten years younger."

"Good. That's what I was going for."

She wished she had a cigarette handy. "What's the deal with that, then?"

Al brushed off his coat and straightened his cravat. "The deal is, you're gettin' your ass over to Sunny's to get the late morning rush while I get an account opened at the First Bank of Denver."

He handed her a few bills. "Get your meals at Sunny's, and don't look for me until late. Don't spend this unless you have to. That's your laudanum money too, so slow that the fuck down, best you can."

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For the next six weeks, Trixie felt like she and Al shared a room in shifts. He was out the door in the early morning, hours before she left for work. There were late nights that he woke up enough to see it was her coming in the door, check her earnings, and go back to sleep without saying a word.

One evening, sent home because the rain and the cold were keeping customers at their own hearths, she came in while Al was still up. He still had his young clean-shaven look, but the circles under his eyes were wearing some of the new off.

She shook the rain off her shawl by the stove.

"Hell, I've about forgot how to talk to you, it's been so long we were in the same place and both awake."

He sighed, laying his head against the back of the damask chair. "I bet your memory returns real fuckin' quick, my luck."

She rolled her eyes. What a charmer.

"You mind pouring me a drink and maybe telling me how your fuckin' day went?"

"I'll hand you the fuckin' bottle and you can pour us both one." His eyes closed, he grabbed the neck of the bottle and extended it towards her, almost hitting her in the face.

"Goddamn it, Al, watch what you're doing! You almost busted my nose with…"she sniffed, taking one deep breath, then two. "Is that…why the fuck does your hand smell like pussy?"

He opened one eye. "Do I have to answer that to get a drink in a fuckin' glass?"

She took the bottle and started to pour two shots. "You doing that thing with a doctor again, doin' his lady patients?"

"I am." His eyes were still closed. She put a glass into his hand.

She thought she'd never get used to the idea that women would pay for something they could do themselves. Maybe the well-to-do were different. She shook her head. No telling why they couldn't get their men to do for them, either, men who must think enough of them to pay for…well, to buy their women a kind of whore, if you get right down to cases.

The idea of Al in that role made her uneasy. She knew he'd done it before, but it didn't seem to fit at all with the man she knew. She figured maybe he saw it as just another kind of con.

She took a sip and enjoyed the burn. "You makin' any money at it?"

He put his feet up on the bed and reached in his pocket. She gasped at the roll of bills.

"$250 today, and another job waiting tonight."

She looked out the window at the cold drizzle and the street lamps reflecting on the wet pavement. "Must be a widow, you going out at night, or a woman sure that her husband ain't comin' home."

He rubbed his eyes. "Different kind of job." He got up and stretched, then started changing into rougher clothes. He took his main knife out of its leather sheath and started honing it with spit on a small whetstone.

Trixie got quiet. She used to like to pretend that this side of him didn't exist. One day, she found it didn't matter one way of another to her, as long as it wasn't her neck.

"Muscle job?"

He frowned at her as he put his boots back on. "None of your concern."

She wrapped her arms around herself, chilled. Shitty Denver weather.

"See if you can rustle up a sandwich for when I get back."

"Okay, Al."

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He was not nervous. He had been cutting throats too long to be nervous. The rub of it was that he had also been steering clear of the law for a long time, and this was shoving too many angles together at once. So he was…feeling the need to be very careful, but not nervous.

Pearl LaRue had hidden her tears behind a heavy black veil. Her rage and umbrage had kept her slightly shaking as Al was escorted to her office in the plush Market Street parlor house. Elegant women in vividly colored low-cut silk gowns walked the room, straight-backed and gliding, greeting the men and guiding them to settees to discuss the night's arrangements. Fresh flowers brought by rail from California filled tall crystal vases. He had felt decidedly out of place as he walked to the upstairs office, noting that Pearl would have an unencumbered view of the main parlor as soon as she stepped out of her door. Handy arrangement.

He stood until she sat down after greeting him. She raised her veil and laid it carefully over the brim of her hat. Her eyes were red and swollen.

"Mr. Swearengen, at the end of our last conversation, I had one of my men check your background."

He waited.

"You did some…work in Cincinnati for a man with whom I am familiar. A man who is close-mouthed, so I couldn't discern the nature of your work. I do, however, know that this man does not brook anything less than the highest quality of his hires."

He nodded.

"The fact that you are here and in good health tells me that you were satisfactory to him."

She got up again and handed him a large book of photographs, beautiful women in graceful poses.

"Please turn to page 15."

"Ava Marteen." He looked at the photograph above the name. A young dark-haired woman with brown eyes that looked almost black in the picture. She had a slight smile in the posed shot, a hint of dimple in her left cheek. A filmy scarf with flowers had been draped over her half-reclining nude form. High forehead and Grecian nose, she looked like a living cameo.

"Pretty girl."

"Follow me, please." Pearl went to a bookcase that slid on tracks to reveal an entrance to a back hall.

Al raised an eyebrow at this but followed the madam to four plain doors at the end of a narrow hallway.

"Occasionally, when a girl is unwell, she recuperates away from the public areas, with the doctor coming and going without…bothering the customers."

"So, she's sick?" He stood outside of the last door with Pearl, hands clasped behind his back, wishing she would get on with her purpose.

"Not exactly." She walked over to the narrow bed, motioning for Al to follow. "I wanted you to understand fully the nature of the job I have for you."

She turned up the small oil lamp by the bed. The figure on the bed was female, and had long dark hair, and there the resemblance to the picture ended. Bandages covered her eyes and sections of her face. Here and there he could see the edges of black silk stitches, some running from forehead to chin. The room felt hot and close, and he thought he could smell a whiff of putrification.

"What happened to her?"

"We had problems with this particular trick in the past, getting rough with the girls once in a while. I would talk with someone in authority over him, and he would stay away for a month or two, then come back with apologies and swearing it was the drink, or bad opium, and would behave for a time."

"Why'd you let him come back? Why didn't you have someone do for the cocksucker after the first time?"

Pearl sighed and sat on the straight-back chair next to the bed, absently stroking Ava's arm as she talked. "He's the son of the Police Chief's cousin. The Chief considers him like a nephew. I've heard rumors that his father is in an asylum somewhere back east." She looked up at Al with a cynical smirk.

"And of course, the man himself is also an officer."

She turned back to the girl in the bed. "And Ava is a whore. Just a whore, for all her education and genteel ways." Al could see her throat shaking now. "So, any notion of justice…" her voice trailed off. She cleared her throat.

"If she lives, the doctor says she might have the use of her left eye. The right one was…very damaged. And then the other cuts…The concern, of course, is to attempt to fight infection in the…around the eye area. He's been applying carbolic acid dressings, but I believe he's surprised she's not yet succumbed."

The bandage around her right eye was stained with brown and yellow patches. The darker yellow patches looked wet.

Pearl took another deep breath. "After he cut her, he beat her in the sides, breasts, and between her legs. Kicking, actually, the doctor thinks. He was gone before another girl looked in on Ava. The girls were having an evening of singing at the piano and no one heard anything. She usually kept a Derringer with her," she nodded at the tiny gun on the nightstand, "but it didn't do her any good."

The little lady's gun looked like a toy, gleaming in the oil lamp's flame.

"It's awful close in here. You think we could talk outside?"

"Certainly." She stood, giving a final pat to Ava's arm, and they left. Al thought he heard a muffled whimper from the bandaged figure.

"She on anything?"

"We give her opiates as the doctor suggests. In another day, he'll tell me if there is any hope, or if he sees signs of worsening infection. If he does, at that time, he will provide as much opiates as…as she needs."

After the sickroom, the narrow hall felt almost light and airy. Pearl has ceased any trembling and walked back to the hidden door to her office, back straight and shoulders square.

Al was ready for this to be over. He thought of other whores he had known, dead and alive. And the one in his suite of rooms here in town. He felt his pulse speed up as he asked, "does this cocksucker ever…has he been known to frequent Sunny's on Holiday Street?"

"I don't believe so. Sunny's is a step or two…they cater to a more workingman's trade. This man feels himself of a higher station."

The whore-murderer."

"The whore-murderer, yes. He also sees himself above other policemen, probably above the Chief."

Al tapped his upper lip, missing his moustache. "Not well-loved, even by his own?"

She turned thoughtful. "That is my impression, yes."

"Tell me about my fee."

Pearl looked down at her desk, then met his eyes. "Fifteen thousand dollars; five thousand now, ten thousand after you notify me it's done. You will need to make your own arrangements for your protection and whatever you need to leave town, if that's your plan."

Al tried not to show his surprise. "Fifteen thousand dollars. That's a lot of money. Not that I'm arguing, but I have to say, I've done more for less."

She turned to look out the window into the dark. When she turned back to him, she had replaced the veil over her face.

"Ava was my sister's daughter—my niece. She wanted to work a year or two, lay some money by, then go out to California and act on the stage." He saw a glittering steak behind the veil. "She had a lovely voice."

She touched a finger to the tear track, then handed him an envelope. He felt the thickness and did her the courtesy of not counting it in front of her. Another envelope had pages with address, description, taverns and sporting arenas he frequented, and a penciled note that he would be at a prize match near the train yards tonight. The madam rang a small brass bell.

"Emilee will escort you out by the back way. I need to prepare a subterfuge to explain to my sister why we could not wait until she arrived to bury her daughter. Ava would haunt me forever if I allowed anyone who cared for her to see her like that."

"Mrs. LaRue, my condolences on—"

"Thank you, Mr. Swearengen. There is only one condolence I wish for at this point." Her eyes turned back to her desk as a willowy blonde came to escort him out.

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