oom: stables, outside milliways

[docscurlock]

It's been more than a few days since the last time Doc actually spoke to Katherine - and the way that they left each other has been biting at his insides, even through the battle and everything else that's gone on since the night he came back in half-frozen to death. Since then, he's gotten the sneaking feeling that she's trying to avoid him. He

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[docscurlock]

"They are my family. That boy is my blood and Yen was my wife. And you...I'm not okay with not ever seein' them again, but I just...what sort of life could I have given them, Kate? Always on the run, or stuck somewhere in Ol' Mexico, or freezin' half to death up in Canada? Yen's got her family in New York. Fourteen brothers and sisters, an' her mama. She's got a man that's able to take better care of her than I ever could have and they don't get stared at walkin' down the street."

Doc shakes his head.

"And there ain't a day go by that I don't wish I could go back to Tallapoosa and see my mama or my pa, but they don't want to see me. I'm dead t'them, Kate. They may not be dead to me, but I'm dead to them. You can't...you can't live the live I do and not be able to ignore that pain, 'cause if you let it sink in your bones you'll run yourself into the ground without even realizin' it

[ikissdhimbck]

"So you can't provide for them the life you think they deserve. You can't take them from their home, and you can't go back because of the things you've done. But I know you, Josiah Gordon 'Doc' Scurlock! 'I'm a stubborn son of a bitch and I'm a fighter.' 'You give up in a world like ours, you're just as good as dead.'"

She pauses, catching her breath. Her heart is beating a million miles per second, and her chest is heaving with the effort of just keeping it inside her ribcage without letting her lungs explode.

"You can still see them. You can still be with them! You can go back, and see if your boy is in a good school, or if her new man is treating her right, or if they need money, or you."

Her voice echoes off the walls, and she reins it back in with a choked little gasp.

"And I don't want to keep you from that. I wouldn't. I'd... hell, I'd make you go," she murmurs, stepping further back from where he's standing. "But ... I don't want to wonder where you are, Doc. I don't... I don't want to..."

You will not cry,

[docscurlock]

There are a thousand things that run through his head at her words, but it's her last sentence that strikes him the hardest, cuts him to the core and leaves a icy feeling in the pit of his stomach.

If she can go home, that means that her door is back.

Which means the reason she was here...

(The Landlord making her wait until the truth came out? So she could go back to Green Lake knowing what the right choice was? It's your fault.)

She's got a friend back there, a gentleman...

Probably treats her better than you do.

Doc rubs slowly at the back of his neck with one hand, eyes on the ground in the space between the two of them. He swallows, hard, pushing his emotions down and burying them in his stomach. Cold. He's so damn cold and it's not the weather.

Do you want me to come to Green Lake, in ten years time?

Or do you want me to stay the hell away from you.

"Y'gonna come back or am I gonna have t'go out and find y'gain in ten years?"

[ikissdhimbck]

The quiet that hangs between them after she speaks her last words, fills her belly with a dark dread. And a guilt.

(You never told him. You never said a word, and now your door is back, and you both know why.)

She thinks of a brown eagle feather, tucked away in a little leather journal, back in her home in Green Lake. She thinks of a schoolhouse, whose roof does not leak, and whose desks do not lean or wobble. She thinks of a lake, with a little rowboat filled with onions, and the glimmer of fireworks off its glassy top...

She isn't supposed to be here. This place. Milliways. It makes things seem normal when they are not.

It surprises her when she hears him speak, and even more so when she hears his words. She's startled he even has to ask, but the last two words of his question are the ones that really baffle her.

"...What?"

[docscurlock]

Doc's quiet a few moments, before he looks up at her.

"We're 'bout ten years apart," he says. "Your world and mine. I know the bar brings folk from all over in together, but maybe if...maybe if I went out and waited until I'd caught up to you...we could be together and it wouldn't be so strange. Wouldn't have to worry 'bout the timeline so much."

His hand is still on the back of his neck, and his breath is coming slow and even. He's upset - his stomach in knots and twists, heart beating with a dull thud in his chest - but his voice is steady enough.

"I just...maybe it would help..."

If I could make it ten years without going back...maybe she'd realize I was tellin' the truth.

[ikissdhimbck]

She listens as far as 'we could be together' before everything comes together in her head with a rush.

"Oh, god damn it, Josiah!" she murmurs, her voice tight and watery as her hands travel to her hair. She turns away from him, doing nothing more than trying to catch her breath and still the pounding of her heart.

He would wait for me.

"What are you gonna do for ten years, all by yourself, huh?" she asks, voice cracking over the lump in her throat. Her brow is creased deeply when she turns back to face him. "How could you even consider..."

[docscurlock]

"When I'm considerin' every damn thing I can think of to make this work, how could I not?"

He lets that hang between them for a few seconds, before he closes his eyes and rubs at them hastily, in an effort to quell the urge for them to water. "I don't know. I'm just...I'm tryin' to make this right and I'm doin' a shit job of it but I don't want to give up."

I don't want to give up on us.

"And maybe that ain't fair t'you, to be so damn stubborn but I..."

He trails off with a shrug and looks up at her.

[ikissdhimbck]

"Mind your tongue," she snaps at the vulgarity, for lack of any better response to make. Her head and heart are reeling.

She shrinks under his eyes when he looks up, clutching the cuff of her jacket like a little kid waiting for punishment.

[docscurlock]

Doc opens his mouth to say something but instead closes it, and sighs softly.

"I do apologize for swearin'," he murmurs, before he moves - he needs to move or he's going to go crazy - and paces a few steps away before he turns back, and then settles against the wall again. "Heat of the moment n'all."

She looks like she's ready for him to yell at her which confuses him.

[ikissdhimbck]

She shakes her head softly, as if to accept his apology, but she doesn't look up again.

It's quiet.

So quiet.

"Doc, I... I can't marry you."

Beat.

"...Right now."

Not until I know where I stand.

Not until you know where I stand.

"But I... I want you to ask me again. Sometime."

She glances up, looking lost.

"But I don't want you to wait ten years."

[docscurlock]

He keeps his eyes on hers, and then nods slowly, understanding.

"Alright."

Despite the feeling in his stomach, the way he's wanting to curse himself for not being honest, the feelings running through his body and through his heart, he smiles, just a little.

(He's still got hope.)

Doc nods again, a little stronger.

"Alright. I will ask you 'gain sometime."

[ikissdhimbck]

"All right."

She manages a small smile in return, nodding her head. She looks down and away, pulling in a deep, deep breath.

"And I-I... 'course I'm gonna come back. I'm gonna come back, Doc, I just need..."

To go home.

"...time."

[docscurlock]

"S'understandable. You've been gone an awful long time."

She misses her students.

She misses her friends.

She misses him.

Doc can understand that.

"You think you'll leave today?"

[ikissdhimbck]

There's something in his voice. She can't pinpoint it, but when she looks back up it's there on his features, too. Something.

Guilt twists her belly, but she doesn't look away.

"I don't know," she whispers, shaking her head somewhat numbly. "Perhaps. I haven't given it a great deal of thought."

She can't hold his gaze for long. Especially not when she opens her mouth, and murmurs haltingly:

"There's something... something I should... tell you, though. Something... before I leave."

[docscurlock]

Doc nods. "I don't plan on goin' nowhere for awhile," he says. "So if y'ain't ready to say it, right this moment, that's alright."

There is paperwork he could be doing, or he could clean the tack room again and take some stock out to the back paddock...

He looks away, so that she doesn't feel his eyes on her, and focuses on the growing light of morning outside the barn.

[ikissdhimbck]

She isn't sure what to say to that.

She isn't sure what she means to say at all.

Her heart is racing, and it's suddenly cold where she's standing, by herself, an icy maw stretching between their bodies.

"I just don't know what's waiting for me when I get home," she murmurs, wrapping her arms around her body for some warmth and some comfort. "I left in the middle of everything. The schoolhouse is..."

No. Don't make this what it isn't.

She sighs.

"I find my thoughts wandering while I'm here," she continues, eyes alighting on the same doorway he's watching, the light of day casting a beam on the dirt at its entrance. "Thinking about folk there, that I've left behind. Some I'm afraid to see. Some I'm... not."