tinstar | Slingin' from the hip, never the heart.

"Athena," he implores with a bob of his head, a rare enough occurance on it's own. "You-" He sighs again and rubs at his forehead.

"You've already been through a lot. These idiots, they're.. They're not worth the trouble that they'll bring you. Let me.. sort it out. Where they can't use you against me, where they can't disable me by threatenin' you."

That takes the wind out of her sails, even though it’s also weirdly comforting to know that he cares enough for it to be a risk. Of course he does, she scolds herself, but it’s one thing to know and another to know.

Still: he’s planted the seed.

Which means as soon as she has a moment at Ava’s, she’s sneaking into Raylan’s trunk.

So, to buy the time she’ll need there: Athena glares at the ground, not feeling a quarter of the anger or resentment she’s pretending at. “Fine. You can take me to Ava’s place.”

In the Village, Raylan would have throw himself onto the fire if it would save Athena and that hadn't changed with the change of scenery. He still remembers tucking a very drunk young girl under his arm and making sure she got home safely. He remembers finding her coming out of the tunnels, terrified and panicky. It was everything for him to keep her away from more of the same or worse.

So he's relieved when she agrees, no matter the amount of dissatisfaction he was witnessing. She could be dissatisfied. She would at least be alive to do so.

"Thank you. Now that you're up, you.. wanna brush your teeth or anythin' before you go?" Personally, he always had to piss when he first got up and Ava's house was about 15 minutes away. If they weren't going to sneak out, he could at least make sure Athena was comfortable as she could be.

If she knew what he was thinking, she might even stay at Ava's. Keep herself out of harm's way.

Maybe. If she could handle the idea of him facing Boyd and those people on his own.

As it is, she (sullenly) brushes her teeth and (sullenly) brings her backpack with the most important of her belongings. There aren't many, but she's too far back into the feral attitude of being ready to move at a moment's notice to leave them behind.

She leans her forehead against the window as Raylan drives, letting the glass cool her skin. "...What're you going to tell him, anyway?"

He was glad to see her take the offer and the time to sort her morning business, resisting the urge to start and have a cup of coffee while he waited but she didn't take long and they were in the car quickly.

It was a cool, overcast morning, one that didn't bode well in the too open areas they were driving through.

"I'd tell him to get outta town if I thought he would listen. But I'll be tellin' him that anything he might do or conceive to passin'ly consider in seriousness will answer to me." He glances over. "It means I'd put my badge and service weapon down, put my skills to use."

Raylan was often accused of being a good man. Not a soft man, but a good one. Except when he was not.

Athena stares at him, wide-eyed. “Y…”

It’s not the fact that he would do what he’s implying, really, though that’s a little scary. It’s the fact that he’d do it for her.

Athena bites her lip, closes her eyes, then groans in frustration at her own stupid unwillingness to disobey these days when someone says something like that.

“…I was going to hide in the trunk.”

She lifts her head away from the window to look at him. “When we got to Ava’s. I was going to pretend to go to the bathroom and then hide in the trunk so I could come with you.”

He was driving so he had to keep his eyes on the road, but he glances over at the groan and the sigh that came with her words, eyebrows lifting a little. He nods slowly and as she finishes, huffs a breath and a smile of approval.

"Never let anyone tell you that you wouldn't fit in here." The whole no other Gifted people here being an aside.

"I know you're scared to let me outta your sight, darlin'. Worried that somethin' might happen to me? But I've been dealin' with Boyd since we were in Elementary. Some of the rules for us are... Well.. Different."

She nods slowly, trying to accept that, knowing it's probably true, but hating it just the same.

Raylan pulls up into Ava's driveway, slows, and Athena's stomach clenches as the front door swings open and Boyd saunters out--clothed once again--in the lead of several armed men.

"Uh. Fuck."

Raylan's expression turned dark as Boyd saunters out and he cuts the car off with a thinning of his lips.

"You can open the door and step out but don't step out from behind the door itself. If I tell you to move or do somethin', you do it." There was no ask if she understood, just Raylan sliding out of his car, right hand sliding up to rest on the butt of his gun, jacket folding behind him as he popped the snap closure.

"Boyd!" He greeted, stepping around his own car door and ambling up in front of the car. "I was just comin' to see you. Guess you saved me a drive. We should have a Talk."

Athena does exactly what Raylan says this time, standing behind the open door of the car and trying not to shrink in on herself when Boyd and the rest of them turn glares and weapons her direction. A couple of them look afraid. A couple look plain old hateful. She can’t tell what Boyd thinks, and that makes her skin crawl.

“Raylan,” Boyd says amiably, his gaze still steady on Athena’s face. “Surely I would be mistaken if I presumed to think you’d leave that thing alone with Ava while the two of us had a Talk.”

Athena tenses at the thing part, but doesn’t speak up this time.

"You call that child a Thing again and we're gonna have more than the few issues we got now," he assured, somehow in a singsongy manner that sounded light to the ear and yet was dripping with warning.

"Ava knows what it is to suffer the cruel hand of a Bowman. And I know she wouldn't inflict harm onto a young woman looking for refuge. I trust Ava to be a good and sound person, however questionable her tastes. She in the house?"

Had Boyd left her alive? There was no real telling.

"I'd like to see her."

The teenager in Athena wants to protest Raylan calling her a child. The scared kid in her feels warmed and protected by his declaration. Boyd keeps watching her for another long moment before slowly turning his attention to Raylan.

"Your concern is touching, but unwarranted. And unnecessary."

The way Boyd says it makes Athena very aware of the fact that Boyd is being both insulting and sarcastic, but she has no idea over what.

Boyd half-turns his head to call over his shoulder, his eyes still on the town car and its passengers. "Ava?"

Edited 2022-06-19 00:49 (UTC)

Mmhmm. Boyd could say that all he wanted but they both knew Raylan didn't trust him as far as he could throw the man. His eyes dart towards the house door as Ava comes out, looking like sunshine in her summer dress and lightly curled hair.

"Yes Boyd?" She asks, eyes falling on Athena, darting over to Raylan and back again as she comes down the steps to join them all.

"I promise Athena, I won't let anythin' happen to you. I've got some fresh baked cookies, if you're interested?" The ask came with a thumb over her shoulder towards the house. "While the menfolk talk."

Raylan looked over at Athena and nodded. "If you hear shots fired, you get low and find your way towards the back door okay?"

Athena doesn't like this. She doesn't like it at all. She doesn't want to walk past Boyd, she doesn't want to go into that house without Raylan.

Still, she bites her lip and nods at Raylan's directions. She might not be able to make herself run when it comes right down to it, if something goes wrong, but she'll try for now. She follows Ava inside uneasily--and gets a little thrill as two of the men who were there for what she did move away when she gets close. Good. They should be scared.

Boyd doesn't move, though. He just watches. Watches her edge up the stairs, meets her eyes when they're level. His smile is small and somehow terrifying and Athena sticks closer to Ava the rest of the way into the house.

As soon as they're out of sight, Boyd turns his attention back to Raylan. "You came here for a reason. A babysitter?"

"Good girl," he says with a little nod, eyes moving off Boyd only long enough to meet hers with another reassuring nod. Ava would protect her; he had no doubt about that. If he projected enough confidence, maybe it would let her borrow some.

It was tense while the women went inside, but Raylan could breathe a little easier with them more secure from the situation.

He lifts his chin as he starts.

"I've come to make sure you don't make another stupid mistake like you did last night. I know you've been cookin' up plans. You're gonna trash 'em, right now. Now you know y'all had what was comin', rollin' up to the house like that," he admonishes, head tilting a little to the side.

"Don't be a sour loser, Boyd. Let it be."

Boyd regards him with cold impassivity. “What is she, Raylan? How is it she can do what she did, and what else is waiting beneath that teenage veneer?”

"She's somethin' we're not, that's all. A young girl tryin' to survive in a messed up world more likely to hunt her than not. I know you and your daddy never much got into pigs, but go on - ask Limehouse what happens when you push a pig into a corner and make it defend itself?"

Not that Athena was a pig, but pig could eat a man if he wasn't careful and Athena had the potential to be a Maneater.

"Science ain't caught up to her yet, that's all."

There’s a different kind of something starting in his eyes now. Less hostile. Somehow even more calculating.

Also, most dangerously, fascinated. “People talk, Raylan. Even some of my people, a drink or two too deep. Maybe folks won’t believe them, but they’ll be curious. Particularly if you keep that girl around.”

"You let me worry about them. She's been in the county for less than 48 hours, Boyd; I'm tryin' to find her people. I don't particularly give a shit what you think about who I've got under my roof, but you go a-huntin' or set your boys to a whisper campaign about it, we're gonna find ourselves with a big damn problem."

Boyd knew how unflinching and unrelenting Raylan could be. Raylan liked to think that Boyd respected it, in his own way.

"And my badge ain't gonna be in the way." He wasn't kidding about laying down his job to get something done - he'd done it before, he'd do it again.

Don't make him do that, Boyd.

Boyd's smile slides in like a knife and he spreads his hands, benevolent. "All's I'm saying is, if she's here for the duration, she could do worse than being under the protection of Boyd Crowder and his people."

Inside, sitting at the kitchen table with Ava, Athena fidgets and resists the urge to run back outside. She can still hear the murmur of voices, but they're calm voices, so that's... more something than not. Even if Raylan is the master of threatening with the gentleness of a feather.

She looks at Ava. "He's okay, right? You think he's okay? Do you have a gun or... something...? We can help."

"I wouldn't, little lady." A soft voice comes from a corner before Ava can answer, and a man steps out, gun raised. It's not pointed at Athena. It's pointed at the blonde woman. Athena freezes. The stranger smiles.

"Good girl. Now, see that little stack of cloth napkins on the table? You’re going to roll one of those up and put it in your mouth. Then you’re gonna tie another one about your head to keep it there. Then I'm gonna move this gun from her to you, and we're gonna take a little walk to the front porch."

The man looks at Ava. "If you think I won't shoot this girl to keep you in line, you don't know me half so well as I thought, Ava Crowder."

He smiles at Athena. “Her, though, I wouldn’t have shot. Boyd would kill me. Up.”

Boyd is in the middle of speaking as the front door opens and Athena—gagged, hands behind her head—gets pushed out onto the porch. Whatever Boyd was going to say, he stops, raising his eyebrows.

Every other man pulls their weapons, and most of them get fixed on Raylan.

“Well,” Boyd says, tone as soft as ever. “An unexpected piece has been placed back on the board. Thank you, Carl.”

Edited 2023-07-03 17:29 (UTC)

Raylan was seething, a million sharp words clattering behind the vice grip of his jaw, painfully aware of where every man was standing and working out his odds of how many he could shoot before being gunned down himself.

"She can do a hellva lot better too, Boyd, now-"

That's when Carl comes out with a gun to Athena's head and Raylan's vision goes red. To hell with the odds, he pulls his gun and starts firing. First is poor Carl who doesn't get but half a sound out of warning before Raylan is blowing his head off and Boyd's next, getting shot in his other shoulder as Raylan darts forward in his crouched stride. The men on either side of the porch start firing, and Raylan pops the closest, gets shot in the arm himself and swings around to put down the offending gunmen.

"Get back inside Athena, right now, right now," he commands, one hand locked around her arm as he hauls her unceremoniously to her feet and into the door. The front door is shut and locked behind them, and Raylan strides into the kitchen, gun still raised and turning on the first face he sees. Ava.

"Who else is in the house, Ava?"

"I-I don't know Raylan, I swear it."

The look he gave her could have melted stone. "Athena, you get under that table and don't move an inch until I give you the all clear. Ava, you go with her and I swear to god, anythin' happens to this girl, I will put you right next to your daddy in that graveyard."

There's something warm and wet on her face, something thick that has pointy bits in it. Her ears ring with the sounds of guns going off, and she's on all fours, and then Raylan has her arm and he's dragging her inside and the door is closed, and there's a guy with a hole in his head on the other side.

Athena hasn't recovered by the time they're in the kitchen. She looks at him for a moment, uncomprehending, before her brain cycles up enough to realize what Raylan is going to do.

"No--there's too many, Raylan, I know you're good, I'm sure you could take any of them alone, but there's at least a half-dozen waiting for you and you just... just killed one of theirs."

She grabs a fistful of his shirt tight enough to make her knuckles hurt. "Don't you fucking dare go out there and get killed."

Her grab at him was the only thing that stopped him from continuing to walk away and he lowers the gun for a second to settle a hand over the wrist of the hand gripping his shirt. He knew she loved him. She knew she only wanted to keep him safe and that it didn't matter what else happened.

Except not being safe was the only way to keep them both safe.

"Athena. I need you get under that table because I am comin' back and I need to know that you're in a safe spot. Ava will keep you safe." Ava would keep her safe to keep herself safe, if nothing else. "But I need you to go now and I need you to be quiet. Go," he says, pulling her hand off him. "Go."

He knew it was scary. She had to hold on until he could calm her down without keeping an eye out for the bullet coming for both of them.

She wants to argue. She wants to ignore his instructions. But her limbs are locked up with a feral kind of terror and then he’s out of reach and Ava is dragging Athena down under the table as shots and cries ring out outside.

It feels like it goes on forever. Forever.

The voice that calls out makes Athena’s stomach drop through the floor and into the molten center of the earth.

It’s Boyd.

“Olly olly oxenfree, Athena. I would say I’ve got something that belongs to you, but I’m pretty sure he belonged to me first.”

Slingin' from the hip, never the heart. | Open Post

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Wanna take a stab at writing some Boyd?

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject