Who: Teagan and Willa Where: Inside and Outside Teagan's trailer, respectively. Dog Park! When: Backdated to September 2nd, sometime after this What: Smug bitches manage an introduction without killing each other? Bode, you clearly have A Type, son.
Four days have passed, and while she has no more interest in meeting her replacement than she had on the first night, her conversation with Vic had been illuminating enough for Willa to take the walk from Bode's house to Teagan's trailer. It doesn't matter that she isn't - in her opinion, at least - the one at fault, not if she's the one who can fix this when she knows Bode's stubborn ass is exceptionally gifted at entrenching during fights. Honor seems to matter an inordinate amount to these people, given how backwards Willa considers their judgment of what constitutes honorable in the first place, but if she wants to stay put in the park she's going to have to be the one to smooth whatever ripples have spread from her arrival.
She knocks on the door of the trailer and waits until it's pulled open, revealing what strikes her in the moment to be the closest thing to an evil twin doppelganger she could possibly find. There's no question she has the right trailer, at least. Battling an inappropriate urge to laugh (at the situation, at Bode, at karma), Willa swallows. "I thought maybe it was time for us to talk," she offers, not making a move as Bode's new love stares her down.
A step up, looking down at Willa, Teagan hardly thinks anything about her - there’s no conclusion that they are similar in looks or anything else. There is no warmth here, no consideration at all, just a deadpan sense of obligation and, maybe something just under her skin, a feeling that there’s something fishy about this one.
Briefly she wonders if Bishop had sent her as some stupid attempt to get her to talk to him but she ain’t ready. He needed to cool off and when she finds out he went back to the trailer with her she’s needed to cool off too. No matter how hard he’s been fighting to see her, all the words he’s been using to get her to give him a minute none of it makes a lick of difference. Teagan won’t see him until she’s good and ready and seeing this lady standing here at her home ain’t doing nothing to cool her off.
Teagan has been training for hours, worked in a spar with Sarge and is now looking forward to her turn at the showers. She’s bloody knuckles and sand specks where it had stuck against her sweat soaked skin. Maybe she looks crazed with her hair in braids and tangles. Mascara running.
A finger is held up - one moment - it tells the other blond wordlessly - and she leaves the open doorway to fetch a towel. Willa is not welcome in her trailer.
"If this is a bad time…" Willa offers when Teagan vanishes from sight, though she still doesn't make a move one way or the other.
“I’m gonna take a shower after.” she explains at her return and she thinks to herself to get the stink of this fucking conversation off of me as much as the aftermath of her sweat soaked exertion punching bags for hours. “But let me make myself clear Lady Heifer- I don’t know you and no matter what you say to me, what you tell me, I’m gonna have to let your actions here at the Dog Park speak louder. You understand?”
Lady Heifer. Her eyebrows raise and her lips curl up in an obvious expression of amused surprise, despite the obvious depth of loathing conveyed by Teagan's words, and perhaps ironically, actions. "My actions," she says, because she doesn't in fact understand what the other is implying she's done to speak so loudly without saying a word. "Coming to see him, or coming to see you?"
Little Miss aint gettin’ it. She doesn’t mean Bishop. Bishop’s a man and men get all tangled when it comes to their hearts. Teagan’s not blinded by her looks or the milking cows she’s trotted through the gate.
When it comes time, she’ll have issue with Bishop’s actions just her and him. Right now she’s talking about Willa’s actions.
“Why are you here? To make sure the man you left behind was surviving without you?” Teagan goes for it, sometimes-as the boxer she is- it’s good to get a good jab in, see what sort of counterattack the other one shares, “Why aren’t you staying at the capitol with your DoR brother? I heard they have luxuries or do you prefer slumming it. It’s funny, Bishop must know him too right? So, why does this all feel slippery to me somehow?” This here is pure conjecture but a fair set of questions she feels. Demi wouldn’t lie to her and women’s intuition is a powerful thing, a mother’s intuition even more so and one doesn’t just simply lose that even after they lose their kid.
It's a barrage of accusatory questions; nothing she didn't expect to be hit with exactly, even if it is surprising that Teagan knows Cal. Is this one the pretty blond, shooting her brother and his men? Willa's own intuition says yes, given the blatant hostility she's facing now and the battered, beaten state of the woman she's holding her ground against.
"Okay," Willa begins, trying to follow the order of everything that's been asked of her by touching the fingertips of her right hand to her thumb in turn. "I came to see Bode. I was at the Capitol with my DoR brother whom yes, Bode knows, when I found out from Nate that Bode was alive, and now that I came out here, I'm not really welcome to stay with my brother again, considering he hates y'all and thinks he's the boss of me, which he ain't. I do not enjoy slumming it, but I would not call this place a slum and, like you told me -- I don't know you, so I don't know why you think it's -" Willa had to take a breath, "slippery, other than we're all pretty much programmed to hate someone who we think is a threat, but I think you're wrong on that one because he loves you now, and I'm not trying to change that."
What else, her face clearly asks even if her words don't. It was easy to answer because none of it was a lie. Small fragments of omissions perhaps, but there wasn't any difficulty searching for her story, because there frankly isn't anything she needs to keep straight.
“Ain’t you a smug bitch. You aint a threat to me. But see, I knew you’d give me a story. I knew you’d have some count off your fingers type answers. That’s what I mean ‘bout your actions ‘round here. Tell me you understand? Your words are shit. You could be tellin’ any fucking thing you need to say to be here. I don’t know you and Bishop don’t, not anymore. The world’s changed. We’ll all just have to see.” and there are reasons Teagan has an inkling, but reasons she can’t rightly give out. Like why the fuck, if her brother hates Hellhounds so much, enough to kick his sister out of his life for wanting to visit an ex, is Demi making ice cream with him and milking the cows.
Maybe Demi hasn’t said anything about her connections here, but she’d bet he knew more because according to her best girlfriend, he’s like family to Demi and her oldest fucking friend in the world - “A really good guy”. Demi’s not that good at keeping things to herself when it comes to people she loves. She’s all passion that one and the girl is dealing with so much right now T can’t fault her for having someone to confide in.
"You asked, I answered," Willa laughs, shrugging her shoulders helplessly. There's nothing that's going to make them like each other, and that isn't what Willa is aiming for, anyhow. A part of her itches for the fun of taking the bait so clearly laid at her feet by an equally smug bitch who doesn't know a threat when she sees one, but the high road is the only way through this place, considering Teagan's bullish claim on the low. "I dunno what actions you think prove it; I guess you can ask whoever it was 'told you about my brother if they heard any part of the fight we had when I was leavin', or you can set someone you outrank to watch me and see Bode ain't comin' around 'cept to get clothes and shit. But I get the feeling that no matter what I do or say, you're probably gonna just hate me 'til I'm gone, and then say my leaving proves you were right all along?"
It probably would be the low road if Teagan wasn’t looking out for her family. If her hostility was merely only pettiness for a woman that obviously still holds some real estate in her lover’s heart. She wonders if this woman with the pointy face and the cold eyes considers Bishop family. She wonders how this woman could have left him. Teagan wonders many things.
“Your past actions are as telling as your blithering excuses for knockin’ on the gate. You ain’t nothin’ ‘round here. You’re a headache.”
Letting Teagan's insults strike their mark, Willa nods. Her lips purse with something else to say, a sarcastic retort on using 'blithering' in a sentence, but the wave of irritation ebbs and flows, and what's left behind is the silt that is truth; she had left Bode, and now she was back and making trouble. "Yep," she says finally, in passable agreement, even if Willa wears her regret like a flag, rather than the hairshirt Teagan seems so eager to dress her in. "I made a mistake, because I didn't realize how few people in our lives are going to love us back the way we love them, and I took it for granted because I was scared of what my life would be like if I didn't have any conditions on how I loved him, so I left. And now most everyone who I've loved and had loved me back is gone or dead, so when I heard he wasn't I came out here since I couldn't just let that go, with what I know now. Only now he loves you, and you love him, and you're busy makin' the same fucking stupid mistake I made six years ago, pushing him away because there's something in his life that you fuckin' hate to pieces, but he can't quite bring himself to break away from."
Teagan drapes the towel around her shoulders and looks at the other woman with pity. She can’t quite bring herself to polish it up so it resembles sympathy. There’s a sheen of something in her depths that isn’t just pure, out and out hatred but Teagan’s as stubborn and competitive as they come so she can’t let go yet. There’s a deep satisfaction knowing Bishop loves her in a way he never loved Willa. Bishop is family, they’re equals, officers, soldiers together. They’ve gone through the worst of times, lost men they loved and celebrated such transcending times that to lose the other would be devastating.
“Why are you still here? You won’t be happy here. So why are you sticking around?”
"Yeah, you don't actually know what makes me happy, Teagan," Willa counters. Her tone isn't belligerent, but undoubtedly she's more of an expert on her own happiness than Bode's new girlfriend.
“You’re right. I don’t.” and she shrugs easily, because Teagan doesn’t care to ask what would make this other woman happy. She doesn’t care to know.
“And I’d only hate you if you cause a lick of harm to myboys. You know, I can’t say Bishop was thrilled you came stalking up to the front gate. That should tell you something ‘bout you bein’ here.” She isn’t sure how much more of a conversation she really wants with Willa. It’s not very cozy and the more she stands here, the dirtier she feels.
Willa silently ponders if Teagan gave the third degree to everyone who came through the gates, or if this was due to her defense of Bode and loathing of Cal. Vic had suggested that there could be a place for her here, Rodeo had seemed interested in having her - and Juniper - around, and whenever she's made attempts to leave Bode has put his foot down. "I guess I'll have to talk to Bode about it," is the most tactful way Willa can frame to phrase her response, steering clear of assuming she still knows anything about her one-time love, regardless of what's happened between them the last few days. "I just came to make sure you understood this was hospitality on his part, and that I'm not trying to win him back. I thought before I got here that maybe there would be something, but there's not anymore."
Teagan has absolutely given the third degree to everyone that had come through the gates - even the ones she’s brought herself. She’d nearly killed Marcus because she wasn’t sure about him and he’d turned out to be a prospect who is now, at this moment sponsored by her. Willa can think this is all about a fit of jealousy on Teagan’s part and that might be what’s pushing her suspicions but she’s protective of this place, of the people that are part of it, of the people that she’s been voted in and tasked to watch over. Teagan’s an officer first and foremost over being in a relationship with him and she takes that role seriously.
“Yeah. Maybe you should talk to the Chaplain, see what he says about it.” Teagan says resolved, knowing that for now, Willa was set on staying here. The Treasurer isn’t sure what she thinks about Willa coming and knocking on her door, isn’t sure if it was some asshole move or if the woman had astonishingly thought that it was a generous token on her part. “But sooner or later, we’ll take a vote. That’s what it comes down to ‘round here. “
She’d have to go to Demi. Maybe her best friend could find out more about Willa Davidson.
"Oh," Willa says, and this is clearly news. "I didn't realize it was…" what exactly? Democratic exclusivity, rather than a monarchy of chaos? Olinger hadn't mentioned anything about a camp-wide vote on whether or not she would be allowed to stay; only that women were sheltered without much scrutiny. With a sigh, Willa smiles a smile that does little to mask unspoken disappointment. "Well then I guess you won't have to put up with me very long if you don't want to."
Willa has it right in some ways about women.. Teagan just doesn’t know how Willa will contribute and that’s what a woman has to do to stay. If she’s not bitching, then what is she going to do? Everyone has to contribute - being an ex girlfriend doesn’t cut the mustard. Bringing cows might help but what are they going to eat? There’s no grass out here. They live on a patch of blister gassed dirt. Teagan is left confused. “Anything else I can help you with, darlin’?”
The last word stings. Even though the inflection is different coming from Teagan, it's either a sign of Bode's influence on her or the two of them being so in sync that their vocabularies of pet names have merged. "No," she replies, even and measured. "I just -- I'll let you shower. It was good to meet you. Sorry if it wasn't as welcome for you."
It takes some of the heat out when the woman seems sad, regretful even and Teagan is gonna say something. She means to. She really does but she can’t. She’s so on fire that even some heat leaving doesn’t extinguish all the suspicion and resentment she’s feeling. There’s just something “off” and she can’t put her finger on it. It’s always been a good trait of Teagans, her instincts, her gut feelings. It’s what’s kept her alive.
“Yeah. ‘Kay.” she says, grabbing the towel and moving off for a shower and some drinking time alone.
Left alone, Willa turns, unsure what comes after. "Okay," she sighs under her breath, heading away from the trailer and toward the resource hangars, toward the friendliest face in the park which presently happens to be her horse.