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boogiewrites · 6 years

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Who We Were & Who We Are Now 11

Characters: Forrest Bondurant x Tawny Barrett (OFC)

Word Count: 4100+

Summary: Forrest defends Tawny in a fight. Tawny defends herself and helps Forrest with the biggest fight yet, the one for his life.

Warnings/Tags: Fluff. Canon-typical violence. Graphic violence/gore. Language. Fighting. Drinking. Unwanted sexual advances.

A/N: Memories are in italics!

Positive feedback is MUCH appreciated! Reblogs, likes, asks and comments feed me to write more! Let me know if you’d like tagged in my work.

My Masterlist.

The sun's setting and you're busy handing out drinks and food. As usual, on Friday nights Forrest sits in his office counting money and scribbling away in his ledger to get away from the noise.

For good behavior Jack is out with Junior, they'd found some girls they'd gotten sweet on and taken off. You hoped the girls would keep them straight and out of too much trouble. You'd rather him be sleeping around than gambling anyway. Whatever mistakes he made were his at this point, you'd done your part of warning and informing him.

As the sun sets the station is busy. It's the usual in and out, the dinging of the pumps that Cricket helps man, seeing to cars and answering your calls for assistance yelled out of the screen door. He had a car that he was trying to doctor up for Jack he'd given as his reason for staying in tonight, that boy was so good-natured you were thankful he could be an influence on Junior as well.

But your current problem and the opposite of being good-natured were the two men that had sat together directly in the middle of the bar all night. You'd ignored their dirty looks and suggestive glances, their rotten teeth spewing their sexually aggressive words at you.

You weren't a stranger to this, working at the bar in the city, you just hadn't run across it much here. But by their accents and suits, you could tell these guys weren't exactly from around here. Maybe not from the city but...not local at least. You whisper to Cricket if he knows the men, he says no, so you begin to become suspicious of their motives. They'd been looking over their shoulders all night, not moving from their spots and keeping you busy with requests.

As the crowd thins, those there for the food now full and gone, the ones there for the drink drunk and making their way back to their homes, these men stay. The old group of men that always play cards, now larger than usual due to it being the weekend, are still in the back walled off part of the open space, lamp hanging directly over their heads, keeping their eyes hidden with the brims of their hats as they pretend to have poker faces this many jars in as they play.

To say you're growing impatient with these men would be an understatement. One reaches over the bar as you turn to move the cast iron skillet from the stove to cool off for the night, pinching you on the butt. You swing around quickly, slamming your hand on the bar top.

"Fuckin' excuse you?" you ask, chin down, eyes burning into his.

"Aw, toots, c'mon. You've been taking care of us all night how's about we take care of you a lil bit?"

"I'll only say this politely because my mama raised me right, unlike you sons of bitches, but if you touch me again you're gonna regret it."

"Calm down there, baby doll." the other interjects, waving his hand in the air to falsely diffuse the situation.

"I ain't your fuckin' baby doll." you spit at him. "You can change your damn tone or pay up and get out."

"Why don't you get us another jar there sugar?" the original culprit says, pushing a strand of hair off your face as you snarl at him.

"You've had enough." you say, leaning forward, fearless and staring him down.

"Now you turn that sweet ass around and get me another jar and I won't cause you any trouble tonight ya little hellcat."

You inhale slowly, trying to keep your cool. "How about you turn your mangy ass around and get the hell out of here."

He reaches out and grabs your wrist tightly, slamming it down on the bar top, pulling you across it partially and the stink of him hits you hard, making you gag slightly. "That ain't no way for a little lady like yourself to be talking to a man like me baby doll. You turn me down again and I'll bring all kinds of trouble down on that pretty little head of yours Tawny." you don't know how he knew your name, but sends up a red flag. Something wasn't right, them being there wasn't right.

"And you can let me go or I'm going to yell for my boss and he'll break your fuckin' necks. That's your choice."

You see him reach for his pocket and you've been in this situation before. You grab the empty jar on top of the bar top as he pulls out a knife to threaten you. You slam the jar into the side of his face, forcing him to let you go. You hurt yourself a bit in the process, some cuts on your fingers, but this was much preferred to the alternative. He drops the knife, you grab it and step back, holding it out at the other man as his hands on a gun in his waistband, you can see the hesitancy to pull it on you in his eyes.

"Alright, you get the hell out of here!" you hear Forrest's deep, aggressive voice boom across the room.

You hadn't noticed in your scuffle, but Cricket had gone and told Forrest there were men hassling you. Forrest stands with him just a foot behind, whispering what had gone down as Forrest rose from his chair and made his way out of the office.

"They've been hasslin' her all night. She tried to cut him off, he's been getting real mouthy and tried to get handsy with her. He grabbed her, she hit him, pulled a knife on her I reckon 'cause that ain't one of yours." he says quietly.

Forrest sees the broken pieces on the bar top, the bleeding on the man's temple, your bloody hand shaking around a knife in defense and his jaw clenches. A fire roaring up within him at the thought that someone dared to even think about harming you, and in the place he owned.

"You pull a knife out on her?" You see a fire in his eyes you haven't before.

The man approaches him, hand on the side of his still bleeding face. "I'm trying to give you business and she won't sell to me."

"Well you ain't getting a god damned thing, get out." his voice so low it almost comes out as a growl.

"Ain't no fuckin' hillbilly gonna talk to me like that." he barks, draws his arm back to hit Forrest, the other man rising from his seat.

You know the other man has a gun, and lucky for you he's using the hand closest to you pull it out, letting it hang at his side, his hesitancy being his undoing. You grab the gun from him, seizing your opportunity to take firepower out of the situation and making it a level playing field. Well, as level as it could be against Forrest and his brass knuckles.

As soon as there's a punch thrown, the men in the back bolt for the door. Certainly, not the first time something like this had gone down here, they knew to get the hell out of Forrest's way. If they weren't there, they could see anything. And that's how they wanted it.

Hitting the man with the glass in his face, now split open from the brass pushing it in even deeper, he falls back over a table, smashing a chair as his limp body thuds against the floor, a poof of dust escaping as he comes to rest.

The other man moves towards Forrest, fists up and ready to fight before Forrest's eyes have left the man on the floor, he gets one solid hit on your protector, a sick crack to his brow bone, but he doesn't slow in his retaliation, the pain fueling him, he grabs the man by the shirt and shoves him up against a thick load-bearing beam, knocking off his hat and punching him over and over and over until blood poured from his face. One more good solid thwack to the temple to send him to the floor just like the other man in a hurry.

Forrest's bloody hands shake slightly as he moves his eyes to yours. It'd all happened so fast you're still stood in the same place behind the bar. You blink slowly, your eyes wide but not fearful, he nods, a noisy exhale from his lips as he moves quickly to pull the bodies out of the station and into the dark of the parking lot like they weighed nothing, being sure to not be easy on them as he swings them out into the cold night.

His eyes dart around the now empty station and seeing as no one was around to witness, you see his chest heave one final time before he recognizes he can stop being in defense mode.

He walks over to you, face looking much like a scolded puppy, eyes apologetic and posture slumped. His marked up hands reach out across the bar, gently taking the gun from your own bloody hands.

When you feel the warmth of his fingers around yours, you let out a sigh, letting go of the tension you held in your body that you hadn't even realized was there with a heavy sigh.

"You ain't hurt are ya?" he says quietly, a furrowed brow studying you.

"No, I...I don't think so." you shake your head, looking at the hand that had delivered the opening blow to the man now unconscious in the road. "Not too bad anyway." your lips frown as you hold your wrist of the injured hand. Seemed to just be a few cuts, nothing that wasn't superficial.

His eyes grow sadder, the anger fading as he takes your delicate bright red fingers into both his own big paws. He sees the bruises already forming around your wrist, the little gashes in your perfect porcelain skin. He grunts, lips pursing as the guilt started to hit him.

"I'm sorry 'bout this." he says softly, hands still holding yours.

"I've seen worse," you say softly, trying to be comforting amongst the chaos. His eyes shoot to yours with question. "I worked in a bar in the city for years, Forrest. I was there when it transitioned to a speakeasy." your head tilts as you nod slightly to sell your point. "I'm not a stranger to being witness to violence."

The words break his heart. A good girl like you shouldn't have to deal with things like this. What was wrong with people? ---- With Cricket sent home with a hug and a thank you from yourself. A grunt, nod and appreciative pat on the back from Forrest, you find yourselves alone.

He'd help you wash your hands in the sink first, demanding you be seen to before him, the rough pads of his fingers drawing little hisses from your lips as they worked to free the one piece of glass stuck in your skin. You return the favor, washing the knuckles of brass and then the ones on his hand.

"I'm sorry, Tawny." he says quietly, forcing it out like the words had been sitting in his throat for too long.

"You've said that three times now, hun, you ain't gotta keep sayin' it," you say sweetly, a small shake of your head as you wipe away to the dried blood from his face. "You don't have anything to be sorry for. You helped if nothing else." you say, patting his chest as you move to the table where the medical kit sat. You sit down and watch him walk over to you, shoulders still low as he speaks and eventually sits in the chair a bit too hard in his solemn mood, making it squeak across the floor.

"You came back here to get away from all this. A good woman like you deserves better." the words make your bottom lip pout out at how heavy they sound coming from him.

You've never been called a good woman before. You'd never had anyone tell you deserved anything except 'what was comin' to you' and that means nothing but nastiness. You finish with the turpentine on his brow, sitting and holding your hand on his cheek.

"There ain't so escape from life while you're livin' it, Forrest." you're sure to make sure he looks into your eyes as you speak. You hated seeing this guilt on his face. "This is life here." you shrug. "Life ain't easy no matter where you go." you say, just a touch of assertiveness to your voice.

He grunts in response, a thoughtful look coming across his face.

"I've been to where the grass is supposed to be greener Forrest. It ain't. It's just different grass." you huff out a laugh, dropping your hand from his face. "I tried it elsewhere. Here's home. I'd rather have violence here than violence anywhere else and I don't wanna be nowhere but right here. You understand?" you reach out and put your hand over his, driving your point home.

He nods and grunts. You rise, you run your hand across his shoulders, a slow back and forth as he looks up at you, eyes wide and resembling a puppy's for a moment with you framed in his line of vision.

"I'm gonna take the boxes to the barn alright? That'll finish us up here. We both need to rest." you bend down and press a kiss to the top of his head, hoping it expressed your sentiments better than your words did.

His eyes shut as you lean close, he smells the floral scent that haunts him as he walks up the stairs at night, that lingers after you're gone. You take the kit and set it back in his office before you head out.

"I'm gonna have a smoke before bed, Tawny. You go on up after you're done, ya hear?"

"I hear you, hun." you say with sweet tone, knowing he means well. He needs to be alone to think and to be honest, so do you. ---- You're chewing on your lip as you make your way back thru the back door of the station. You'd made a few rounds in the barn, looking for the culprit of some knocked over barrels and vegetables that were scattered about. You figured it was raccoons that were the culprit, as their little thumbs allowed them to be much more mischievous than a common opossum. You kind of hoped it wasn't raccoons though, you thought they were rather humorous and didn't want to kill them, you hadn't missed that part of country life in the city. You weren't reminded of the food chain so often there like you were here.

You let the door bang behind you, turning to lock it as you call out, "Forrest? You still up hun?" You hang your coat up by the door in the hallway, walking towards his office as you saw the light was on. It flicks off as you approach, heavy footsteps headed your way. "I think we go raccoons or somethin' out in the barn. You want I should get a catalog and order some traps tomorrow? We don't have any big enough..." your voice trails off as your eyes grow wider as you realize the silhouette of a large man approaching you was not Forrest.

"I'm afraid your hun ain't here to save you this time." a deep voice slithers through the dark room and sends chills down your spine. You feel a man slip his hands around your waist and chest and you seize up at the touch.

Unfortunately for them, this wouldn't be the first time you'd fought greasy ill-intentioned hands off of you in a life or death situation. You'd made the mistake of being helpless before, and by God, you'd taken the precautions to make sure it never happened again. They didn't count on you being one of those tough country girls. You were about as far from the fainting over an insult, limp-wristed breed as they came.

As the taller man, the one whose gun you'd taken away saunters towards you, the grip around your body grows tighter from the other man. Okay, Tawny...keep your head level...you can do this. You can't be a Bondurant and let someone get the best of you, and you weren't about to take that chance.

You start to struggle against the man behind you, testing his strength as he lifts your feet off the floor to try to control you. You use this to your advantage, kicking your feet up and off his legs to kick the other man in the chest and face as he tries to close in on you. A good solid hit from your heels lands on his face, taking the pointed spike to the eye. He moves to protect himself, hunching over as you bend yourself in half, then rearing back hard and fast and head-butting the man holding you in the forehead. It hurts like hell, and by the nasty crack of a noise, it made you knew it was worth the pain. You scramble away, hitting the floor first, and hard before barreling yourself into a chair forcefully in your hurried attempts to create space between you and the men.

You move to get the knife off the counter, running back around to the tables on the other side of the room so you'd at least have the big wooden slabs for protection. The man you'd kicked, having enough time to recover lunges across the table for you. You grab a salt shaker off the table and smash it into his hand as it slams down on the table top, barely missing you. This hurts you both in the process, but again, worth the pain and creates a distraction. The other comes to your side as the man with the freshly bleeding hand shouts and squeeze his wrist. You shove your glass shard filled hand into his face as he approaches, adding more shards to the collection you were working on embedding in his face tonight.

You see the tiny rivers of fresh bright blood run down his face as your fingers dig into his eye socket and hook into his lip. You grab his wrist with the same hand quickly, wanting to make sure he understood the punishment for having touched you with this hand, you slam it against the edge of the table with another sickening smash and crack of delicate bones being misplaced as his teeth grit and he screams and spits at you, slapping at you with his other hand, hitting you in the face, trying to choke you with wild clawing and scratching but you remain vigilant. You bring his hand down again, another shout, but this time you bring the knife down with it.

The bloody scream so close to your own ears makes them ring even after the fight is over. You stab it into his hand again, but this time horizontally, taking his two smallest fingers off. This is finally enough to make him retreat, the other man looking on in shock with one good eye in horror as his partner cries and holds his wrist, shoving you into the floor to get out the building. You can't understand what he's spewing at you, but there are swears and cross words said you did understand, but they hold no weight to hurt you further.

"Fuckin' come on! We got who we came for, leave this crazy bitch, she took my fucking fingers!" he screeches, the other man quickly following suit. You sit in the floor among the displaced chairs you were shoved into. You hear their car leave, the lights bouncing down the drive and you gasp for breath. The exertion and adrenaline hit you move quickly to stand, your hands are shaking terribly, you were beat up, you could feel it, but more importantly you were alive.

As soon as your brain registers that you have all your limbs, can move them and aren't bleeding from the head from that headbutt, your mind screams. Forrest.

In your fear, a delayed reaction to the bloodshed you'd just seen, you stumble clumsily out of the station, bending over at the waist over the railing and throwing up. You gasp and with wild eyes, you take in the scene around you. It's silent. The night dark, snow lightly falling in what would at any other time be a serene scene makes your stomach churn again.

The only thing you see is Forrest's truck and no sign of him anywhere. "FORREST?!" you scream out like a banshee into the echoing darkness. Your hand that isn't full of glass slams against the truck hood to stabilize yourself, but no amount of bracing could've helped for what you saw lying on the ground before you as you rounded the font of the vehicle. "FORREST?!" you scream out again, the most desperate and gut-wrenching sound that had ever come out of your body. Your knees buckle on sight, falling to the ground, your bloody hands covering your mouth as you try to scream but it's choked out by a building sob.

You crawl towards him, whispering his name over and over as if it could help somehow. You want to throw up again but fight the urge as you kneel over him, hands vibrating with emotion as they delicately touch him, trying to process what had happened and what you needed to do next. His hands are tight around his throat, and his eyes open, bleeding like a stuck pig into the freshly fallen snow.

They'd cut his throat and left him for dead. If he died, you would hunt down those sorry excuses for humans and kill them in the same fashion. The rage from the thought of someone hurting him clears your head in a funny way. Forrest Bondurant can't die, you thought to yourself. He can't and you won't fucking let him.

"Forrest baby are you still with me?" you choke out, sniffling and finding his eyes, feeling for a pulse in his wrist and by some miracle, it's there. "Oh fuck. Oh thank fucking God." your chest heaves as you try to remember to breathe. "I'm taking you to the hospital," you say, as if it mattered, you didn't know if he could hear you. You'd read about miraculous things... mothers lifting cars off of children to save them, and now you should be added to those stories as you pick the big man up from under his arms and somehow manage to get him into the truck. "You can't die Forrest." you say to no one but yourself, propped him up in the seat next to you, you figured the blood wouldn't leak out as badly that way. "You can't fucking die on me, I need you." you sob, one hand on his knee as you drive that beat up old vehicle better than Jack could've ever dreamed of handling the newest, fastest car. You talk to him as you drive, mostly incoherent streams of thought, but sometimes it made sense. You kept squeezing and patting him, in case he was aware that you were there. "I'm here Forrest. I'm here sweetheart. We'll be there soon I swear. I can fix this. We can do this. Just please stay with me Forrest." you rasp out.

You park the truck just out of the light of the porch of the hospital. It occurs to you that you can't go about this in a normal manner. "You Bondurant's and your fuckin' legends." you groan, putting on a hat you found in the truck and pulling it low over your face, using a spare sweater to mask your small frame, you pull Forrest onto your shoulder, thankful for your working woman thighs to carry him with strained steps to the door. Lucky for you, a man is smoking just inside the door and they panic, dropping the cigarette and moving to pick him up. He yells for help, and you slip away back into the darkness. You see the man come out a few minutes later, looking around for whoever brought him, scratching his head in confusion and ultimately going back inside.

If he lived, he'd die as a man who walked 20 miles from Blackwater station himself with a slit throat. Seems like the least you could do was let him keep his story for himself if he did turn out to be mortal. But for once, you sure as hell hoped the rumors about the Bondurant's were true.

Ch. 12

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