ancient eldritch creature (born in the 1900s). writer (billy the kid, coriolanus snow, alex nilsen; billinea, bonneybaird, snowbaird). lucy gay (bri).
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NEW: stills from tom’s next collaboration with Quinn
#i love how quinn hasn't said his name but we're all like “you made the mistake of showing us his elbow--”#lucygay says
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ahhh omg you're the sweetest thank you so much <3 <3 <3
in my life, we'll always go on - billinea
love was when i loved you, one true time i hold to. in my life, we'll always go on. near, far, wherever you are, i believe that the heart does go on. once more, you open the door. and you're here in my heart, and my heart will go on. you're here, there's nothing i fear, and i know that my heart will go on. (my heart will go on - celine dion) the ending of billy the kid, and the beginning of his story. tw: death
She sees his face, rendered almost unfamiliar by the stillness of death, as if someone has sculpted his statue and laid it out on a table, ringed by candles.
Their flickering glow weaves shadows over the cheeks and forehead that were, only days ago, kissed by the sun, by her lips. His eyes are closed, his long lashes fanning out; she had teased him once about those, saying there were undoubtedly countless women who were jealous of how long and thick they were.
He’d laughed and said, “Are you?”
When she had admitted, yes, a little, he just laughed again and told her that her eyelashes were perfect. Everything, he said, about her was perfect — he’d bidden her to shut her eyes, and he’d kissed her lowered lids, breath fanning her lashes. He’d peppered more kisses all over her face, down her jaw, her neck.
She studies his lips now, thinking how she would have expected them to be set in a scowl. Angry at being defeated, at having the life he had worked so hard for ripped away from him.
From them.
She pictures the bullet like a stray nail in a doorway, catching at the seams of an old coat as you pass by. Tearing, destroying, the sound catching at your heart as you realize, too late, what has happened; as you come to understand, looking at the damage, that you will not be able to fix it.
And now she’s imagining his green coat, thick and warm, his scent clinging to it. Where is it? Was he wearing it? Is it stained? Ruined?
Does he still need it? What if he’s cold?
Or maybe that’s just her. She is frozen, rooted to the spot. She could very well just stay here forever, unmoving, a monument to grief. Why not board this room up and just leave them both here? She is equally as uninterested in the world as he is. Since he is no longer in it, what meaning does it hold for her?
He was all she had left.
She is aware of women around her, the ones responsible for this makeshift wake. Her gratitude sits at the back of her throat, choking her. A part of her is also grateful that none of them are trying to offer comfort. She’s sure she would quite simply dissolve under the weight of their pity, no more substantial than dew melting away under the warming sun, or a spiderweb under a careless hand. Their silence makes her all the more certain that she cannot be trusted to even speak.
She would not wail or weep, though she can imagine it so vividly that maybe it isn’t so far beneath the surface after all. Her mouth stretching into a rictus of pain like a criminal on the rack, a howl working its way out of her like the child she’ll never have. Tears streaming down her face, rivers of grief pouring into the ground, churning up muck and unearthing tiny, wriggling creatures that might be living below.
But no — in this moment, she isn’t worried about crying.
Instead, she fears that if she were to open her mouth now, revenge would come out. With her teeth bared, she would not be able to stop herself from snarling. Fom reminding Pat Garrett that the only thing separating humanity from animals is a thin skin of propriety, the bulging belly of a raincloud which only needs a shift in the wind to wreak havoc.
A dread wind is blowing, and she does not care about being proper anymore.
She takes a step closer to the table where they have laid him out. The candles are starting to burn low, puddles of wax gathering on the wood, but she does not need their light to look at him. If she closes her eyes, she’ll see him as a point of light in that blind void, so full of life that it escapes him in fits and starts.
Fingers tapping on his thigh, inches from the holster riding on his hip.
Getting to his feet with the startling, smooth grace of a cat, only to walk aimlessly from one spot to another.
Idly winding a lock of her hair around his finger, loosening it before wrapping it round again, sometimes rubbing his thumb against the strands like he’s trying to draw the scent from a flower petal.
How is it that she will never feel his touch again? Hear his footsteps, his voice, his laugh? How is that the heartbeat that lulled her to sleep like a lullaby is irrevocably stilled?
How is it that the man she loved more than life itself is dead, and yet she is still alive?
If her heart had stopped in the same moment, her body hitting the floor in tandem with his like a pair of marionettes both cut from their strings, it seems to her it would only be fair. It would make sense. They were meant to be together forever — and yet how could that be so, now he’d been taken away from her?
She watches her hand float upward from her side and land on his cheek, like a creature entirely independent from her. She registers, dimly, that his skin is cool and waxen, as her fingertips drift from his cheek to his temple, moving to gently smooth away the dark curls.
She leans down, heedless of the candles, and kisses his forehead.
A part of her, the part curled up in a distant corner of her mind like a frightened child, expects something to happen, hopefully lifting its head.
True love’s kiss. How many fairytales had her mother read to her as a little girl? The stories where the pure of heart triumphed over evil, where no one — at least, no one good — really died, but merely fell into a deep, enchanted sleep. Had their story been like this, he would open his eyes now. He would look at her, blinking blearily, confused but here. Hers.
And yet, they are not Snow White and Prince Charming. They are Orpheus and Eurydice, except where he has gone, she cannot follow. She knows anyway that she would, if in Orpheus’s place, turn around; she would not be able to stop herself. Just for a glimpse of his eyes on hers, one last time.
She remembers the way he looked at her the first time they ever spoke. He’d seemed almost stunned, as if the wind had been knocked out of him. But there had been admiration, too, for her wit, for her tenacity. She remembers the soft glow that kindled in his gaze as she said, yes, he could see her again.
She hadn’t known it then, but understood later, how much it meant to him. That slender tendril of hope, of possibility, upon which hung the knowledge that she didn’t care about the things she’d heard of him. She was determined to get to know him based on the man in front of her, rather than the one painted onto a wanted poster.
And she had. She came to know him so well that she is not, in truth, surprised that this is where his journey ended. He could no more have turned his back on the injustices in Lincoln than a fish could climb into the sky, although there had been voices begging him to do so. To run, to wash the blood and dirt of this fight off his hands and leave it to others.
Oh, to know the edge of the sword is just as keen on both sides — that he would not be the man she loved if he’d just run away, though if he had, he might have lived.
She knows, too, that he did not share in her faith, though he’d always respected it. And she had certainly understood that he didn’t believe the way she did. After all that he’d suffered, it would be far too easy to doubt there was anyone up there looking out for him.
She had lost track of God’s grace after her family had been killed in their own home. How, she’d wondered, could such a thing happen, if there really was a loving, caring creator with a plan for them all? But not a single sparrow can fall to the ground without God knowing — and yet, her mother and father, her brother, had all fallen and it seemed to her then that God simply did not care.
And then she had discovered that spark within herself, fanned into a flame as she and Manuela had marched through the streets with the other women of Lincoln. They had all been determined to save those they loved, trapped in poor Alexander McSween’s burning house. She would have fought tooth and nail to get to Billy, to protect him however she could.
She had believed this fire to have died along with her family, along with her faith. But fighting for Billy, fighting for what was right, had shown her this was not true. Perhaps it is difficult to say which part of her fed the other — fire and faith, faith and fire — but she knew who had rebuilt them both within her.
She’d told him, not long ago, that she knew now she had something to live for.
You, she thinks, her hand still resting on his forehead, like a mother checking for a fever.
But —
“What shall I do without you?”
She speaks out-loud, softly, her words bruised and full of hurt, a confession she can hardly bear to make. One that she could have only made to him, for she’s aware he had asked himself such a question over and over again. She tries to imagine what he would say, how he would answer her now.
His voice comes to her like the refrain of a beloved song, warm as a shot of whiskey gilding her throat, husky and soft, intimate in her ear.
“Well…seems to me you’re the only one who can take care of somethin’ real important.”
“What’s that?”
Even without her eyes closed, she can imagine the way he would look at her, one corner of his mouth coming up like the first pasqueflower pushing through the last patches of snow.
“You’re the only person left who can tell everybody how I really was. They’re all gonna think I was nothin’ but some — some crook, no better’n scum like Ollinger or Murphy. They’ll think I had that gun in my hand just to serve myself, but you know it was more than that.”
Here, she thinks, he would glance up at her, half-sheepish, half-expectant, as if feeling badly that he’d perhaps been presumptuous but hoping he’d been right.
“Don’t you?”
She sighs. “Of course I do.”
It occurs to her, vaguely and possibly a little too late, that she must seem utterly insane. To anyone standing there, it looks as though she’s having a conversation with — with — well, with someone who cannot really answer her. But when she looks around, she finds the women who created this makeshift wake have left her alone with her ghost.
She really will have to thank them, when sorrow is not burying everything else.
“So…I need you to help me. You gotta tell ’em the truth. You can’t let me die like this.”
Her lips part, but her memory-forged specter shakes his head.
“It’s just my body layin’ here, you know that. The important parts of me, they’ve gone on to someplace better.”
She manages a small smile. “You don’t believe that.”
“Sweetheart, I’m not talkin’ about heaven.” In her mind’s eye, she sees his callused fingers caress the folds of her blouse that rest above her heart. “I mean right here. With you.”
“My love,” she whispers.
He smiles back at her. “My Dulcinea.”
There is a gathering silence, and then he says: “Promise me.”
She finds she cannot speak anymore. But she nods.
And then the silence is complete.
She watches as a water droplet strikes a candle flame, making it bob and hiss. It is followed by another, then another, and she wonders, as she touches her own damp cheek, how long she’s been crying.
Dulcinea sinks to her knees, reaching up to hold onto the edge of the table as though it’s the only thing that can keep her from floating away. Small, shuddering sobs slip from her lips, as she bows her head, her eyes squeezed shut. And so she does not see the last of the candles go out, guttering into darkness in pools of their own spent heat.
She does not get up until they come to take him away.
She is the one who arranges almost everything — except it is Manuela’s idea, to bury him alongside Charlie and Tom O’Folliard, her idea to add one word above their names.
Pals.
“Charlie would have liked that,” she says, her eyes shining, and Dulcinea smiles at her as she slides an arm around her waist.
“Billy would, too.”
There are days, certainly, where she cannot get out of bed, where she is weighed down with the longing to simply turn her face to the wall and wait for the deepest threads of the dark to weave themselves around her. But — sometimes it is the next day, sometimes it is longer — she gets up.
She tells everyone who asks about the man she loved.
William McCarty — Billy Antrim — William H. Bonney — Billy the Kid.
Depending on who is posing the question, the name changes. But the man, the true sense of him that she will always, always carry with her, stays the same.
Someday, there will come a morning when she does not have to rise anymore. There is no way of knowing how far away it is, but it will come. That morning comes for everyone. And when it comes for her, she will see him — really see him — again.
Until then, she will hold him in her heart, and share each heartbeat with him, as she shares him with everyone else.
Just as she promised.
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just asking, could you do a reader x brother's best friend billy teaching her how to kiss cause she's never done it and wants to go on a date with some guy? and initially billy is all like "no, then I'd be your first kiss" but she's all like "but you're the one i trust most with something like this"
omg cute i love!!
yes i will definitely put this on my list, thank you! <3
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Was this what it felt like to finally meet a gentle man?
nooooOOOOooooooooOOOOOO 😭
A Dog's Purpose
Billy the Kid x fem!reader
Warnings: Animal abuse, animal abandonment, mentions of dog fighting and blood.
Summary: After a long day of working with Tunstall and the Regulator's at the ranch, Billy comes home to find his girl had brought home an injured and abandoned mastiff.
The sun was beginning to set, painting the sky an array of bright oranges and yellow as it dipped beyond the horizon, eventually stealing its light with it and leaving the starry night behind. A silhouette, Billy, dismounted his horse and removed her tack, leading her to the stables. Once he knew that his mare had settled, Billy entered the small cabin him and his girl shared with a soft sigh. It had been a long day working alongside Tunstall and he couldn’t help but feel exhausted.
But instead of the usual greeting of a smiling woman walking over to him and hugging him, welcoming him home with a kiss, he was met with utter silence. A chill ran down the outlaws spine as he stood at the door and listened carefully for any noise, and then he heard it.
A small sob coming from the kitchen.
He inhaled deeply, his hand resting on his revolver while he slowly made his way towards the kitchen. Billy’s mind raced with the worst case scenario. Had Jesse or one of Murphy’s men broken into the cabin? Has someone hurt her? Was she a hostage?
He turned the corner, expecting the worst only to see Y/n in shambles, trying to patch up a wounded mastiff. He relaxed, his hand moving away from the revolver and his face softened.
“Sweetheart, what’s goin’ on?” Billy questioned, gently kneeling next to his darling. Watching as she tried to clean the sad dog’s wounds. It looked like he had been a fighting dog of sorts.
“They just left him to die,” Y/n hiccuped, “I watched them throw him out the door, he lost a fight and they just tossed him to the side.”
Billy felt his heart squeeze. Bloodsports were absolutely disgusting. He was an outlaw, sure, but he wasn’t a cruel man. His Ma and Pa raised him to love and respect animals, and he believed that the lowest of the low hurt the innocent. He reached out, his calloused hands gentle and careful as they wiped away her tears, cupping her face.
“Shhh, sweetheart. You did the right thing bringin’ him here,” he reassured. His blue eyes were soft as they met hers. “We’re gonna take care of him together.”
He then looked down at the bloodied mastiff, sighing as he got a good look at the droopy mutt. Some of the injuries definitely needed to be cleaned and stitched. And from the welts along the animal’s body, he took a guess to say that this dog had probably never felt a gentle hand until now. He reached out, allowing the dog to sniff his hand before he slowly ran his hand over the dog’s head in a long, gentle stroke.
The mastiff leaned him, exhaling loudly as his tail thumped against the wood. Was this what it felt like to finally meet a gentle man? Y/n sniffled, watching the scene with a sad smile. It was absolutely heartbreaking to know this was probably the first time that this dog had ever felt a gentle touch, the first time a man has ever been kind to him.
But he was safe now, with them. He would never have to worry about fighting or live in fear again. That wasn’t his purpose in life.
“He needs a name,” Billy spoke, his voice soft in order to not spook the nervous dog while Y/n continued to patch him up.
Y/n looked up, tilting her head a little bit. She had been so focused on trying to fix up the poor dog she hadn’t even thought to give him a proper name, “I think you should name him.”
Billy felt a bit stunned. He had thought that since she was the one who found him and brought him into their home, she should be the one who named him. But he nodded. It wouldn’t be of any use to tell her that she should name the dog. She was too stubborn to let up.
He thought for a moment, looking into the dog’s deep eyes. They told a story, this dog had seen many horrors in his life, and it didn’t feel right to give him a ‘tough’ name. He didn’t need to be scary or feel scared, not ever again.
“I say we name him Scully,” he finally said after a moment, stroking Scully’s fur.
Y/n smiled, nodding in agreement just as she finally finished up stitching the last of Scully’s wounds.
“Welcome home, Scully.”
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TOM BLYTH as Billy the Kid, S01E03: Antrim
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I think maybe wedding and THEN second baby bc getting married while visibly pregnant could be kinda a interesting plot point considering the time period yk
oooooh yes yes yes i agree
not to mention they already have kathleen so having two children out of wedlock and a past as an outlaw hmmmmm yes.......
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not trying to pressure you or anything i’m just curious: would you ever write a billinea wedding fic for your series?
oh i don't feel pressured at all 💕
i am, actually!! i'm planning on writing a wedding and dulcinea giving birth to their second baby, although i haven't decided which order yet (what do you think??)
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in my life, we'll always go on - billinea
love was when i loved you, one true time i hold to. in my life, we'll always go on. near, far, wherever you are, i believe that the heart does go on. once more, you open the door. and you're here in my heart, and my heart will go on. you're here, there's nothing i fear, and i know that my heart will go on. (my heart will go on - celine dion) the ending of billy the kid, and the beginning of his story. tw: death
She sees his face, rendered almost unfamiliar by the stillness of death, as if someone has sculpted his statue and laid it out on a table, ringed by candles.
Their flickering glow weaves shadows over the cheeks and forehead that were, only days ago, kissed by the sun, by her lips. His eyes are closed, his long lashes fanning out; she had teased him once about those, saying there were undoubtedly countless women who were jealous of how long and thick they were.
He’d laughed and said, “Are you?”
When she had admitted, yes, a little, he just laughed again and told her that her eyelashes were perfect. Everything, he said, about her was perfect — he’d bidden her to shut her eyes, and he’d kissed her lowered lids, breath fanning her lashes. He’d peppered more kisses all over her face, down her jaw, her neck.
She studies his lips now, thinking how she would have expected them to be set in a scowl. Angry at being defeated, at having the life he had worked so hard for ripped away from him.
From them.
She pictures the bullet like a stray nail in a doorway, catching at the seams of an old coat as you pass by. Tearing, destroying, the sound catching at your heart as you realize, too late, what has happened; as you come to understand, looking at the damage, that you will not be able to fix it.
And now she’s imagining his green coat, thick and warm, his scent clinging to it. Where is it? Was he wearing it? Is it stained? Ruined?
Does he still need it? What if he’s cold?
Or maybe that’s just her. She is frozen, rooted to the spot. She could very well just stay here forever, unmoving, a monument to grief. Why not board this room up and just leave them both here? She is equally as uninterested in the world as he is. Since he is no longer in it, what meaning does it hold for her?
He was all she had left.
She is aware of women around her, the ones responsible for this makeshift wake. Her gratitude sits at the back of her throat, choking her. A part of her is also grateful that none of them are trying to offer comfort. She’s sure she would quite simply dissolve under the weight of their pity, no more substantial than dew melting away under the warming sun, or a spiderweb under a careless hand. Their silence makes her all the more certain that she cannot be trusted to even speak.
She would not wail or weep, though she can imagine it so vividly that maybe it isn’t so far beneath the surface after all. Her mouth stretching into a rictus of pain like a criminal on the rack, a howl working its way out of her like the child she’ll never have. Tears streaming down her face, rivers of grief pouring into the ground, churning up muck and unearthing tiny, wriggling creatures that might be living below.
But no — in this moment, she isn’t worried about crying.
Instead, she fears that if she were to open her mouth now, revenge would come out. With her teeth bared, she would not be able to stop herself from snarling. Fom reminding Pat Garrett that the only thing separating humanity from animals is a thin skin of propriety, the bulging belly of a raincloud which only needs a shift in the wind to wreak havoc.
A dread wind is blowing, and she does not care about being proper anymore.
She takes a step closer to the table where they have laid him out. The candles are starting to burn low, puddles of wax gathering on the wood, but she does not need their light to look at him. If she closes her eyes, she’ll see him as a point of light in that blind void, so full of life that it escapes him in fits and starts.
Fingers tapping on his thigh, inches from the holster riding on his hip.
Getting to his feet with the startling, smooth grace of a cat, only to walk aimlessly from one spot to another.
Idly winding a lock of her hair around his finger, loosening it before wrapping it round again, sometimes rubbing his thumb against the strands like he’s trying to draw the scent from a flower petal.
How is it that she will never feel his touch again? Hear his footsteps, his voice, his laugh? How is that the heartbeat that lulled her to sleep like a lullaby is irrevocably stilled?
How is it that the man she loved more than life itself is dead, and yet she is still alive?
If her heart had stopped in the same moment, her body hitting the floor in tandem with his like a pair of marionettes both cut from their strings, it seems to her it would only be fair. It would make sense. They were meant to be together forever — and yet how could that be so, now he’d been taken away from her?
She watches her hand float upward from her side and land on his cheek, like a creature entirely independent from her. She registers, dimly, that his skin is cool and waxen, as her fingertips drift from his cheek to his temple, moving to gently smooth away the dark curls.
She leans down, heedless of the candles, and kisses his forehead.
A part of her, the part curled up in a distant corner of her mind like a frightened child, expects something to happen, hopefully lifting its head.
True love’s kiss. How many fairytales had her mother read to her as a little girl? The stories where the pure of heart triumphed over evil, where no one — at least, no one good — really died, but merely fell into a deep, enchanted sleep. Had their story been like this, he would open his eyes now. He would look at her, blinking blearily, confused but here. Hers.
And yet, they are not Snow White and Prince Charming. They are Orpheus and Eurydice, except where he has gone, she cannot follow. She knows anyway that she would, if in Orpheus’s place, turn around; she would not be able to stop herself. Just for a glimpse of his eyes on hers, one last time.
She remembers the way he looked at her the first time they ever spoke. He’d seemed almost stunned, as if the wind had been knocked out of him. But there had been admiration, too, for her wit, for her tenacity. She remembers the soft glow that kindled in his gaze as she said, yes, he could see her again.
She hadn’t known it then, but understood later, how much it meant to him. That slender tendril of hope, of possibility, upon which hung the knowledge that she didn’t care about the things she’d heard of him. She was determined to get to know him based on the man in front of her, rather than the one painted onto a wanted poster.
And she had. She came to know him so well that she is not, in truth, surprised that this is where his journey ended. He could no more have turned his back on the injustices in Lincoln than a fish could climb into the sky, although there had been voices begging him to do so. To run, to wash the blood and dirt of this fight off his hands and leave it to others.
Oh, to know the edge of the sword is just as keen on both sides — that he would not be the man she loved if he’d just run away, though if he had, he might have lived.
She knows, too, that he did not share in her faith, though he’d always respected it. And she had certainly understood that he didn’t believe the way she did. After all that he’d suffered, it would be far too easy to doubt there was anyone up there looking out for him.
She had lost track of God’s grace after her family had been killed in their own home. How, she’d wondered, could such a thing happen, if there really was a loving, caring creator with a plan for them all? But not a single sparrow can fall to the ground without God knowing — and yet, her mother and father, her brother, had all fallen and it seemed to her then that God simply did not care.
And then she had discovered that spark within herself, fanned into a flame as she and Manuela had marched through the streets with the other women of Lincoln. They had all been determined to save those they loved, trapped in poor Alexander McSween’s burning house. She would have fought tooth and nail to get to Billy, to protect him however she could.
She had believed this fire to have died along with her family, along with her faith. But fighting for Billy, fighting for what was right, had shown her this was not true. Perhaps it is difficult to say which part of her fed the other — fire and faith, faith and fire — but she knew who had rebuilt them both within her.
She’d told him, not long ago, that she knew now she had something to live for.
You, she thinks, her hand still resting on his forehead, like a mother checking for a fever.
But —
“What shall I do without you?”
She speaks out-loud, softly, her words bruised and full of hurt, a confession she can hardly bear to make. One that she could have only made to him, for she’s aware he had asked himself such a question over and over again. She tries to imagine what he would say, how he would answer her now.
His voice comes to her like the refrain of a beloved song, warm as a shot of whiskey gilding her throat, husky and soft, intimate in her ear.
“Well…seems to me you’re the only one who can take care of somethin’ real important.”
“What’s that?”
Even without her eyes closed, she can imagine the way he would look at her, one corner of his mouth coming up like the first pasqueflower pushing through the last patches of snow.
“You’re the only person left who can tell everybody how I really was. They’re all gonna think I was nothin’ but some — some crook, no better’n scum like Ollinger or Murphy. They’ll think I had that gun in my hand just to serve myself, but you know it was more than that.”
Here, she thinks, he would glance up at her, half-sheepish, half-expectant, as if feeling badly that he’d perhaps been presumptuous but hoping he’d been right.
“Don’t you?”
She sighs. “Of course I do.”
It occurs to her, vaguely and possibly a little too late, that she must seem utterly insane. To anyone standing there, it looks as though she’s having a conversation with — with — well, with someone who cannot really answer her. But when she looks around, she finds the women who created this makeshift wake have left her alone with her ghost.
She really will have to thank them, when sorrow is not burying everything else.
“So…I need you to help me. You gotta tell ’em the truth. You can’t let me die like this.”
Her lips part, but her memory-forged specter shakes his head.
“It’s just my body layin’ here, you know that. The important parts of me, they’ve gone on to someplace better.”
She manages a small smile. “You don’t believe that.”
“Sweetheart, I’m not talkin’ about heaven.” In her mind’s eye, she sees his callused fingers caress the folds of her blouse that rest above her heart. “I mean right here. With you.”
“My love,” she whispers.
He smiles back at her. “My Dulcinea.”
There is a gathering silence, and then he says: “Promise me.”
She finds she cannot speak anymore. But she nods.
And then the silence is complete.
She watches as a water droplet strikes a candle flame, making it bob and hiss. It is followed by another, then another, and she wonders, as she touches her own damp cheek, how long she’s been crying.
Dulcinea sinks to her knees, reaching up to hold onto the edge of the table as though it’s the only thing that can keep her from floating away. Small, shuddering sobs slip from her lips, as she bows her head, her eyes squeezed shut. And so she does not see the last of the candles go out, guttering into darkness in pools of their own spent heat.
She does not get up until they come to take him away.
She is the one who arranges almost everything — except it is Manuela’s idea, to bury him alongside Charlie and Tom O’Folliard, her idea to add one word above their names.
Pals.
“Charlie would have liked that,” she says, her eyes shining, and Dulcinea smiles at her as she slides an arm around her waist.
“Billy would, too.”
There are days, certainly, where she cannot get out of bed, where she is weighed down with the longing to simply turn her face to the wall and wait for the deepest threads of the dark to weave themselves around her. But — sometimes it is the next day, sometimes it is longer — she gets up.
She tells everyone who asks about the man she loved.
William McCarty — Billy Antrim — William H. Bonney — Billy the Kid.
Depending on who is posing the question, the name changes. But the man, the true sense of him that she will always, always carry with her, stays the same.
Someday, there will come a morning when she does not have to rise anymore. There is no way of knowing how far away it is, but it will come. That morning comes for everyone. And when it comes for her, she will see him — really see him — again.
Until then, she will hold him in her heart, and share each heartbeat with him, as she shares him with everyone else.
Just as she promised.
#billy the kid fanfic#billy the kid 2022#billy the kid fanfiction#billinea#tom blyth#reposting this at a not-ungodly hour lol
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in my life, we'll always go on - billinea
love was when i loved you, one true time i hold to. in my life, we'll always go on. near, far, wherever you are, i believe that the heart does go on. once more, you open the door. and you're here in my heart, and my heart will go on. you're here, there's nothing i fear, and i know that my heart will go on. (my heart will go on - celine dion) the ending of billy the kid, and the beginning of his story. tw: death
She sees his face, rendered almost unfamiliar by the stillness of death, as if someone has sculpted his statue and laid it out on a table, ringed by candles.
Their flickering glow weaves shadows over the cheeks and forehead that were, only days ago, kissed by the sun, by her lips. His eyes are closed, his long lashes fanning out; she had teased him once about those, saying there were undoubtedly countless women who were jealous of how long and thick they were.
He’d laughed and said, “Are you?”
When she had admitted, yes, a little, he just laughed again and told her that her eyelashes were perfect. Everything, he said, about her was perfect — he’d bidden her to shut her eyes, and he’d kissed her lowered lids, breath fanning her lashes. He’d peppered more kisses all over her face, down her jaw, her neck.
She studies his lips now, thinking how she would have expected them to be set in a scowl. Angry at being defeated, at having the life he had worked so hard for ripped away from him.
From them.
She pictures the bullet like a stray nail in a doorway, catching at the seams of an old coat as you pass by. Tearing, destroying, the sound catching at your heart as you realize, too late, what has happened; as you come to understand, looking at the damage, that you will not be able to fix it.
And now she’s imagining his green coat, thick and warm, his scent clinging to it. Where is it? Was he wearing it? Is it stained? Ruined?
Does he still need it? What if he’s cold?
Or maybe that’s just her. She is frozen, rooted to the spot. She could very well just stay here forever, unmoving, a monument to grief. Why not board this room up and just leave them both here? She is equally as uninterested in the world as he is. Since he is no longer in it, what meaning does it hold for her?
He was all she had left.
She is aware of women around her, the ones responsible for this makeshift wake. Her gratitude sits at the back of her throat, choking her. A part of her is also grateful that none of them are trying to offer comfort. She’s sure she would quite simply dissolve under the weight of their pity, no more substantial than dew melting away under the warming sun, or a spiderweb under a careless hand. Their silence makes her all the more certain that she cannot be trusted to even speak.
She would not wail or weep, though she can imagine it so vividly that maybe it isn’t so far beneath the surface after all. Her mouth stretching into a rictus of pain like a criminal on the rack, a howl working its way out of her like the child she’ll never have. Tears streaming down her face, rivers of grief pouring into the ground, churning up muck and unearthing tiny, wriggling creatures that might be living below.
But no — in this moment, she isn’t worried about crying.
Instead, she fears that if she were to open her mouth now, revenge would come out. With her teeth bared, she would not be able to stop herself from snarling. Fom reminding Pat Garrett that the only thing separating humanity from animals is a thin skin of propriety, the bulging belly of a raincloud which only needs a shift in the wind to wreak havoc.
A dread wind is blowing, and she does not care about being proper anymore.
She takes a step closer to the table where they have laid him out. The candles are starting to burn low, puddles of wax gathering on the wood, but she does not need their light to look at him. If she closes her eyes, she’ll see him as a point of light in that blind void, so full of life that it escapes him in fits and starts.
Fingers tapping on his thigh, inches from the holster riding on his hip.
Getting to his feet with the startling, smooth grace of a cat, only to walk aimlessly from one spot to another.
Idly winding a lock of her hair around his finger, loosening it before wrapping it round again, sometimes rubbing his thumb against the strands like he’s trying to draw the scent from a flower petal.
How is it that she will never feel his touch again? Hear his footsteps, his voice, his laugh? How is that the heartbeat that lulled her to sleep like a lullaby is irrevocably stilled?
How is it that the man she loved more than life itself is dead, and yet she is still alive?
If her heart had stopped in the same moment, her body hitting the floor in tandem with his like a pair of marionettes both cut from their strings, it seems to her it would only be fair. It would make sense. They were meant to be together forever — and yet how could that be so, now he’d been taken away from her?
She watches her hand float upward from her side and land on his cheek, like a creature entirely independent from her. She registers, dimly, that his skin is cool and waxen, as her fingertips drift from his cheek to his temple, moving to gently smooth away the dark curls.
She leans down, heedless of the candles, and kisses his forehead.
A part of her, the part curled up in a distant corner of her mind like a frightened child, expects something to happen, hopefully lifting its head.
True love’s kiss. How many fairytales had her mother read to her as a little girl? The stories where the pure of heart triumphed over evil, where no one — at least, no one good — really died, but merely fell into a deep, enchanted sleep. Had their story been like this, he would open his eyes now. He would look at her, blinking blearily, confused but here. Hers.
And yet, they are not Snow White and Prince Charming. They are Orpheus and Eurydice, except where he has gone, she cannot follow. She knows anyway that she would, if in Orpheus’s place, turn around; she would not be able to stop herself. Just for a glimpse of his eyes on hers, one last time.
She remembers the way he looked at her the first time they ever spoke. He’d seemed almost stunned, as if the wind had been knocked out of him. But there had been admiration, too, for her wit, for her tenacity. She remembers the soft glow that kindled in his gaze as she said, yes, he could see her again.
She hadn’t known it then, but understood later, how much it meant to him. That slender tendril of hope, of possibility, upon which hung the knowledge that she didn’t care about the things she’d heard of him. She was determined to get to know him based on the man in front of her, rather than the one painted onto a wanted poster.
And she had. She came to know him so well that she is not, in truth, surprised that this is where his journey ended. He could no more have turned his back on the injustices in Lincoln than a fish could climb into the sky, although there had been voices begging him to do so. To run, to wash the blood and dirt of this fight off his hands and leave it to others.
Oh, to know the edge of the sword is just as keen on both sides — that he would not be the man she loved if he’d just run away, though if he had, he might have lived.
She knows, too, that he did not share in her faith, though he’d always respected it. And she had certainly understood that he didn’t believe the way she did. After all that he’d suffered, it would be far too easy to doubt there was anyone up there looking out for him.
She had lost track of God’s grace after her family had been killed in their own home. How, she’d wondered, could such a thing happen, if there really was a loving, caring creator with a plan for them all? But not a single sparrow can fall to the ground without God knowing — and yet, her mother and father, her brother, had all fallen and it seemed to her then that God simply did not care.
And then she had discovered that spark within herself, fanned into a flame as she and Manuela had marched through the streets with the other women of Lincoln. They had all been determined to save those they loved, trapped in poor Alexander McSween’s burning house. She would have fought tooth and nail to get to Billy, to protect him however she could.
She had believed this fire to have died along with her family, along with her faith. But fighting for Billy, fighting for what was right, had shown her this was not true. Perhaps it is difficult to say which part of her fed the other — fire and faith, faith and fire — but she knew who had rebuilt them both within her.
She’d told him, not long ago, that she knew now she had something to live for.
You, she thinks, her hand still resting on his forehead, like a mother checking for a fever.
But —
“What shall I do without you?”
She speaks out-loud, softly, her words bruised and full of hurt, a confession she can hardly bear to make. One that she could have only made to him, for she’s aware he had asked himself such a question over and over again. She tries to imagine what he would say, how he would answer her now.
His voice comes to her like the refrain of a beloved song, warm as a shot of whiskey gilding her throat, husky and soft, intimate in her ear.
“Well…seems to me you’re the only one who can take care of somethin’ real important.”
“What’s that?”
Even without her eyes closed, she can imagine the way he would look at her, one corner of his mouth coming up like the first pasqueflower pushing through the last patches of snow.
“You’re the only person left who can tell everybody how I really was. They’re all gonna think I was nothin’ but some — some crook, no better’n scum like Ollinger or Murphy. They’ll think I had that gun in my hand just to serve myself, but you know it was more than that.”
Here, she thinks, he would glance up at her, half-sheepish, half-expectant, as if feeling badly that he’d perhaps been presumptuous but hoping he’d been right.
“Don’t you?”
She sighs. “Of course I do.”
It occurs to her, vaguely and possibly a little too late, that she must seem utterly insane. To anyone standing there, it looks as though she’s having a conversation with — with — well, with someone who cannot really answer her. But when she looks around, she finds the women who created this makeshift wake have left her alone with her ghost.
She really will have to thank them, when sorrow is not burying everything else.
“So…I need you to help me. You gotta tell ’em the truth. You can’t let me die like this.”
Her lips part, but her memory-forged specter shakes his head.
“It’s just my body layin’ here, you know that. The important parts of me, they’ve gone on to someplace better.”
She manages a small smile. “You don’t believe that.”
“Sweetheart, I’m not talkin’ about heaven.” In her mind’s eye, she sees his callused fingers caress the folds of her blouse that rest above her heart. “I mean right here. With you.”
“My love,” she whispers.
He smiles back at her. “My Dulcinea.”
There is a gathering silence, and then he says: “Promise me.”
She finds she cannot speak anymore. But she nods.
And then the silence is complete.
She watches as a water droplet strikes a candle flame, making it bob and hiss. It is followed by another, then another, and she wonders, as she touches her own damp cheek, how long she’s been crying.
Dulcinea sinks to her knees, reaching up to hold onto the edge of the table as though it’s the only thing that can keep her from floating away. Small, shuddering sobs slip from her lips, as she bows her head, her eyes squeezed shut. And so she does not see the last of the candles go out, guttering into darkness in pools of their own spent heat.
She does not get up until they come to take him away.
She is the one who arranges almost everything — except it is Manuela’s idea, to bury him alongside Charlie and Tom O’Folliard, her idea to add one word above their names.
Pals.
“Charlie would have liked that,” she says, her eyes shining, and Dulcinea smiles at her as she slides an arm around her waist.
“Billy would, too.”
There are days, certainly, where she cannot get out of bed, where she is weighed down with the longing to simply turn her face to the wall and wait for the deepest threads of the dark to weave themselves around her. But — sometimes it is the next day, sometimes it is longer — she gets up.
She tells everyone who asks about the man she loved.
William McCarty — Billy Antrim — William H. Bonney — Billy the Kid.
Depending on who is posing the question, the name changes. But the man, the true sense of him that she will always, always carry with her, stays the same.
Someday, there will come a morning when she does not have to rise anymore. There is no way of knowing how far away it is, but it will come. That morning comes for everyone. And when it comes for her, she will see him — really see him — again.
Until then, she will hold him in her heart, and share each heartbeat with him, as she shares him with everyone else.
Just as she promised.
#billy the kid 2022#billy the kid x reader#billy the kid fanfic#billy the kid fanfiction#william h bonney fanfiction#tom blyth#billinea#tw: death
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NEW: new/old look at tom for billy the kid season 2 shared by billythekidMGM on X
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would you ever write a dark billy fic? one where he’s a villain with no redemption? no worries if not <3 i just love villains haha!
i personally don't see billy like that so probably not, but!!
i could definitely write some coryo fics in that vein for sure lol
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prompt for a billinea drabble: they spend a day riding their horses through the prairie, then they come home to kiss and cuddle.
i'm working on this, i swear!!
and i saw someone else ask for more vampire billy, which i promise will also be coming.
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OUGHHH SEDATE MEEE
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drabble prompts?? spare drabble prompts please??
#lucygay says#billy the kid 2022#alex nilsen#coriolanus snow#lucy gray baird#snowbaird#bonneybaird#billinea#poppyalex#billy the kid x reader#alex nilsen x reader#coriolanus x reader#tom blyth
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tom via his insta :)
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yummy
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