Who: Willa & Bode Where: Various locations around the Dog Park for vignettes; 10-15 miles SW of the Dog Park for the larger log What: A handful of shorter vignettes over the past week; then driving out looking for hay & feed/bringing back a trailer to house Willa When: Various days & times the last week; late Morning of Thursday, September 5
14 august
It was nearly ten o’clock when the door opened and Bode stepped back inside. Willa had already washed in the little bathroom, dressed, and taken up residence with her legs stretched out across the hanging swing, cradling one of the few books she'd found in close-enough-to-plain sight. She looked up at him over her shoulder and smiled. "This one likes me," she said, shifting the book to reveal the tiny tabby curled in the crook of Willa's lap.
“Annie takes to everyone,” Bishop remarks with a laugh. “She’s an attention whore like that.” He adds while moving about the trailer, grabbing a couple of items here and there and shoving them into a bag. He won’t take everything he needs back to Marshall’s, but a few of the essentials will be nice. “See you found my stash of books,” he glances at her while he says this, trying to clear whatever tension still remains in the air between them.
"Mmmm. I'm a thief now, I probably should have told you when you offered to let me stay."
Bishop laughed. “You can steal the cat, but the book stays.”
"Deal." Willa closed the book and set it on the windowsill, scooping Annie up for a kiss instead.
He turned then, leaning against the stairs while meeting her gaze. “Look, I’m sorry about last night.”
Wary, Willa let the cat go and pulled her knees up, wrapping her arms around her legs. "Why?"
Sighing, Bishop knows he should have expected her to question the apology, still a part of him had hoped she'd just take it at face value. "Because, although I didn't mean to, I lead you on," sober now he can look back at last night with complete clarity. "I might have been drunk off my ass, but I was sober enough to know what I was doing."
Her shoulders shrugged away his apology that addressed her like she was an innocent who had been wronged by someone who shouldn't have taken advantage. "You stopped it. I mean, we both wanted to, but nothing happened, so there's nothing to be sorry about. Being with someone doesn't mean you stop wanting anyone else, it just means you don't act on it, and we didn't. You didn't lead me on," she insisted, further emphasizing the words with a one-handed air quote. "And you didn't cheat."
Lowering himself down to sit on the stairs up to the loft, Bishop leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees as he takes in Willa's reply. "I nearly did," his reply is blunt, honest. "I've never been the cheating type and that ain't changing, but we've got a lot of unresolved shit between us." Or maybe it's just him. With her here just feet away from him, he's wise enough to know he never dealt with the regrets that came along with the demise of their relationship, he just shoved them into a dark corner of his mind and ignored them until now.
She got up from the swing and moved to where he'd left her boots the night before, settling on the floor to pull them on. "Look," she offered, and her tone was plain as though she was just explaining a fact of life, "I get it, you're not a cheater, I'm not a homewrecker. Whatever shit we have to work out, there's still always going to be an awareness of how good the sex was, so there's always going to be some... small, primitive part of us that wants to go at it, and... I kind of like that." Willa shrugged, helpless and unashamed. "I like that we're both tempted, and I like that we're both better than giving into it. So you don't have to apologize," she finished, standing back up. "But I would like breakfast, if you still feel like you have to make it up to me."
"You know it's not just the memory of how good the sex was," Bishop's standing up from his spot on the stairs and moving towards the door as he points this out. "There's always going to be a part of me that cares about you, Goldilocks." He could deny it, pretend like everything between them was just boiled down to residual physical attraction, but it's not. He might be shit at relationships, but even he knows you can't spend four years with someone and not have them forever etched into your heart. "If breakfast is all your requiring I think I'm getting off easy, but I ain't going to argue." There's a laugh that bubbles up out of him as he shoulders the bag of stuff he had come to retrieve before pushing the door to the trailer open, Bishop steps in front of it, holding it open and motioning for Willa to step outside. "After you."
Her stomach twisted at his assertion that he wanted more than a reminiscent romp, that he shared the same unexpected feelings she had spent the better part of a restless night trying to deny. It wasn't something that Willa was ready to address, and so she paused beside him in the doorway, using the shield of her dry humor to deflect the potential seriousness of the conversation to a later date, even if she knew Bode could easily spot what she was doing. "See for me, it was all about your dick..."
A quirk of his eyebrow and that trademark smirk are the only indication that he knows what it is Willa's trying to do here. Heavy conversations will happen at some point, but if she doesn't want to venture into one now, Bishop isn't going to push her. "You always did say it was my best asset," he replies, closing the door of his trailer behind her and stepping down off the stairs. "Nice to know some things never change."
1 september
"So it's because you don't want anyone to fuck me?" Willa says by way of a controversial conversation starter once there's no one clustered around him, her face curious and deeply amused in the orange glow of the fire. "Tents are for loose ladies, and she's mad because this must mean you want exclusive rights to my pussy again?"
Heaving a sigh, Bishop turns to face Willa. He’s not going to back down from this conversation, even if he wishes she could have picked a better place to have it. “You’re free to fuck whoever you want,” he answers. “That ain’t why I offered you my trailer and you know it.” They might not be together anymore, but it had really just been the hospitable thing to do, giving her his trailer until she found her own. “Not all the bitches stay in tents, but the new ones usually do. So yeah, maybe she got the wrong idea, but I’m working on correcting that and it ain’t really any of your business, is it?”
Willa takes a step back, a hand raised in defense against the nerve she seems to have struck. "Damn, I was just messing with you," she insists. He's under her skin again and she doesn't like it, but with that response, at least the feeling must be mutual.
“Guess it just ain’t something I find particularly funny,” Bishop replies. “And you have to admit it’s real messy talking about my current relationship issues with my ex.” And God knows he doesn’t need to make things any messier than they already are.
"I wasn't -" Willa shook her head, upset that her privileges for snarky banter seemed to have been revoked along with everything else she had lost. "I was joking, Bishop. But I'll leave you alone," and go fuck whomever I want, she finished inside her head before turning on her heel and walking away.
"No," Bishop reaches out for her, grabbing her arm to keep her from walking away. "Fuck, I'm just a little edgy," and the fact he was admitting that to her said a lot about him. He was not a man prone to giving away how he was feeling. "It ain't every day you have to figure out how to live with your ex, and as you can already tell I ain't navigating it well."
Willa's glare was fierce and strong and held onto him the same way his hand held onto her, even though she refused to get baited into the rest of this conversation tonight. "Let -" she said, voice dark and low, "go."
Bishop knows that look and he's familiar with the tone in her voice, there won't be anymore said between them right now, not unless he wants to have one hell of a blow up with his ex. Considering he's already given the camp enough to talk about, wordlessly he releases Willa's arm and lets her walk away.
september 3rd
“So how exactly are you going to feed those things?” Bishop asks as he drops down into the chair beneath her, the sun just beginning to rise over the Texas wasteland. He had always been a morning person, and it came as no surprise to him that Willa was one of the few souls he found awake before the sun, even if she had yet to get out of bed. “Because if you don’t figure out a way to keep ‘em alive, I guarantee at the next Chapel we hold there will be talk of how to turn ‘em into steak.”
"I don't know," she yawned. Willa had opted for pretending that the night before last simply had never happened, and was silently pleased that Bode seemed to want to take the same approach. "I didn't know this place was still such a fucking wasteland, still." Cal had told them all how Austin had been burned, but the gas had first been dropped two years ago. There was something strange about it; the earth always tried to find a way to renew, and two years should have allowed for more than the meager portions of pale autumn grass that Willa and the girls had been able to find in the area around the compound. "Look and see if anyone nearby had feed stored up and didn't live long enough to use it, I guess."
Having never been much of a farmer, Bishop can make no claims to knowing how or why the land hasn't recovered yet. He always figured it was something about the gas, that it scorched the earth so badly it wouldn't recover. "Guess I've always figured it's going to stay a wasteland," he answers. But, Willa's plan to search for stores of hay that might have been stockpiled is a good one. Though, Bishop had no clue if they'd actually find anything.
"Do you know of any ranches nearby?" She was the Texas native after all.
"No," Willa sighed, stretching as best she could in the cramped loft. "Ranches need land to run off, but there's at least a dozen or so stables for show riders around the area, and that's better for what we need anyhow."
Standing up from his seat, Bishop peers up into the loft where Willa's still laying. "How exactly is it better?" He wasn't familiar with stables much, horses had always been Willa's world, he's simply been along for the ride. "Do they stockpile more hay or something?"
"Ranchers who grow their own hay set balers to make 'em as dense as they can. More likely to have mold, if they got wet since they were put up. And show stables are usually top of the line when it comes to feed barns; they'll have more variety in what's stored, considering they had people paying out the nose for personalized nutritional care. Maybe we can go look tomorrow?" Willa suggested. "You must have a pickup, somewhere?"
"We've got a few," He answers with a nod. "I'll grab a couple patches and we'll head out." Bishop doesn't explain how many 'a few' is, nor does he give her any room to argue the extra company. They'll need more than one truck and its protocol to take back up with whenever leaving camp. He hopes they won't run into any trouble, but his hope and what could happen are two very different things.
4 september
"'Council Meeting' like you're going to be hungover in the morning, or like we might go then?" she feels awkward asking in the first place, imposing upon him even further, and Willa's hand toys with her hair. "Or is it out of line to see if I can get someone else, if you don't want to go? It's just - if I find bales that are ninety pounds plus I'm not gonna be able to lift 'em on my own."
“No, Council meeting like we’ve got serious shit to discuss,” he corrects her, scrubbing a hand over his face. Bishop’s just barely been back in camp for less than a couple of hours, he’s worn out and simply trying to get his bearings before the meeting that night. “You ain’t going on your own, and you don’t have to find someone else. I’ll go with you, but I’m going to drag along a couple of prospects as well.”
"All I need is a hundred pounds, maybe one-fifty. I'll feed them good for a couple days so they travel better, and then I'll be gone." It hurts that all she seems to do now is make him frustrated, more than she would want to admit. The failure of the investigation Willa can confidently pin on Olinger's omission that women were kept not because they were underestimated so much as to be fucked, but the failure to make Bode happy is hers alone.
Bishop looks at her for a long moment. “So you’re planning on leaving?” He can’t mask the slight hint of disappointment that edges into his voice. Even if things won’t ever go back to how they were between them, because they’ve changed and moved on. He can’t deny that he hates the idea of Willa going back out into the world. At least here he knows she’s safe.
Willa looks away from Bode, toward the open door of Marshall's trailer and her escape. "Yeah," she claims, uneasy to bring Teagan up again. "I gotta let you get back to normal with your girl, and that ain't gonna happen for her if I'm still around -- I'm not trying to talk to you about her," Willa adds, interrupting herself before he can, "but she and I talked, and if she's gonna get me voted out anyhow, I'd really rather go on my own terms."
Bishop can't claim to be unaware of Teagan's mistrust of Willa. In truth he's still wondering why she traded the Capitol and Cal for coming to find him. "When you came to camp, were you looking to start things up again?" It's a question he'd been wondering this whole time. "And T's got a real protective streak when it comes to the Dog Park, she's wary of you and she might try and get you voted out. But there's no telling if that vote would pass or not."
If an officer - the Queen of Spades, Vic had called her - made it clear she wanted Willa gone, who was really going to vote against that? She sighed, meeting his eyes and addressing his first question instead of jumping into an argument about who around here liked her and who didn't. "Yes," she answered, chewing on the word like a tough steak. "I didn't know what I was going to find, 'cept for you, and I'm not lookin' for that now," Willa clarified, drawing a line across the air with the blade of her hand to make it definitive that she wasn't staging an attempt to sabotage his new relationship. "But Nate said you were alive, and yeah, I was holding onto some regrets, so I figured..." Willa's lips pursed, and she quoted her father, a phrase uttered often enough that Bode would be familiar with it too. "You can't know if you never ask, can't succeed if you never try. Please don't say shit that's going to make this even more embarrassing for me. Please just say 'okay Willa, we'll go out in the morning and get hay for the cows.'"
Even though he had his suspicions, hearing Willa confirm she had ridden out here with a hope of them getting back together, it still derails his thoughts for a moment. How many times back in Harlan had he thought about that very scenario? Of course it had never been more than a fleeting thought, chased off by the truth that he felt she had saved them both from misery by walking out their front door. Still, hearing her say it now conjures up those same feelings, brief as they might be. "Maybe in another life things would have gone differently," Bishop finally replied, the barest of sad smiles turning up his mouth as an audibly humiliated groan escaped her lips. "Think we've both got regrets, darlin'," he adds. When she spouts off a phrase her dad always said, he can't help the way his smile loses some of its sadness. "But that's all I'll say on it. We'll go out in the morning and get hay for the cows."
5 september
"I dunno," she sighs, flipping back and forth between the spiral-bound pages that make up Austin and the surrounding area in the road atlas that Willa had found in the side pocket. "I know there were a least half a dozen southwest of the city, so... 290 and we'll go for fifteen minutes, see what we find?"
Bishop’s gaze is focused on that road ahead of them, glancing every so often in the rearview to make sure the second truck is still following them. The cattle need to be feed and with Willa still being a new face in camp, he didn’t feel all that comfortable sending her out to find feed with just a couple of patches or prospects in toe.
“At this point any plan is a good one, right?” He comments, looking over at her. “Those cattle of yours will need to be fed, or you might just have to relent and let Rodeo butcher ‘em for steak.” Which still doesn’t sound like a half bad idea to him, but he’s not going to be the one to try and convince Willa that turning her cattle into food will be less of a headache than trying to keep them alive.
"If I can't find alfalfa then they'll be my parting gift to you," Willa promises, resting her elbow on the window and her palm on her cheek as she watches the scenery go by. "Pepper and Betsy, not Juniper. You can do whatever you want with them." She refrains from continuing, from outlining ways in which the Hellhound camp could be substantially more sustainable if only they would bother to try their hand at simple gardening or husbandry work, rather than shooting people for MREs and canned goods. Bode is doing her a favor, and Willa is doing her best to play nicely in return. This time, criticizing how a band of raiders chooses to live isn't her place.
He cocks an eyebrow, glancing back over at her in the passenger seat. “Still got it in your head to leave, huh?” Bishop had hoped that maybe sleeping on it might have swayed her opinion. He knows he shouldn’t care, not when he’s got Teagan. But it turns his stomach still to think of her heading back out into the world. “I thought the folks around camp might have won you over by now...”
Her smile is tinged with sadness, and Willa presses her fingertips to her lips before touching them to the shaved patch on his head, the chastest way she can think of to express the affection that wells up at his roundabout way of asking her to stay. This time, unlike the night at the gates, she doesn't ask him to say it out loud. "It's hard for me too," she insists, and leaves it at that.
There’s a long pause as he brings his gaze back to the road, the only indication that he was still thinking over things was the tick in his jaw. “You know it wouldn’t be hard to find you a trailer and haul it back,” He’s looking at her out of the corner of his eye now. “We’ve got the hitch on the truck.”
Willa laughs, a genuine throaty laugh at the dogged pursuit of the hound from hell. "That'll solve all of our problems," she agrees, and though there's sarcasm, it's sweet. Bode's grinning out at the highway, weaving between the occasional abandoned car the same as if he's passing them while going twenty-five over, and once again it's like she's been transported back in time and space, this time to the road between their home and the cabin, like this is the last summer weekend by themselves before hunting season takes over and Willa can't stand to go.
"I'll make you a deal," she says, smothering how much she wants the memory to be true with the weighty blanket of reality. "We find nothing, I'm gone and you get the cows. We find alfalfa, and I'm taking them with me. We find a trailer that isn't infested with something, and I'll stay."
None of this is easy. Bishop hadn't been lying when he told her days earlier that he was still figuring out how to navigate having her around again. Which is why he doesn't push, instead he looks over at her briefly as they reach a clear stretch of road. "Deal." He agrees, that familiar smirk toying at the edges of his mouth.
"So, have any idea what's out this way?" He motions with one hand towards the side streets crossing the highway. "Or do we just close our eyes and pick one?"
Unsure, Willa shrugs. "Drive until there's land enough someone might keep a horse on, I guess," she suggests, "then see if we can spot any barns or pastures or signs for stables." And then, not more than three minutes later, Willa shouts "Stop!" in that sudden and obnoxious way of someone who gives terrible directions, pressing her palm on the window glass as she turns to look at what they've just passed. "Feed station," she says in a wistful and sheepish tone, pointing over her shoulder. Could it really be that easy?
"Jesus Christ woman, how many times have I told you not to do that to me?" He's hitting the breaks before she's even finished shouting at him. The scene a familiar one. Bishop lost track of how many times she would do this to him while they were traveling, and the following response was always the same, so much so that there's no thought put behind the words he had directed back at her. It had just been purely instinctive and reactionary, a shout of familiar words he's said to her a million times before.
"Twenty-four." It's the answer she always gives, no matter how many times he's actually expressed frustration at her ineptitude when it came to the duties of serving as navigator.
He pulls a U turn, passing the truck with the other two patches in it and motioning for them to do the same. It doesn't take long for Bishop to come upon the feed station, pulling into their parking lot and killing the engine on the truck. "Would they store the hay in back?" Again, places like this are Willa's domain and not his.
"Probably," Willa agrees, though she's already unbuckling her seatbelt and checking the safety on her pistol before opening the door. The main store looks small enough that Bode's probably right, considering the wealth of outbuildings set further back from the road. "We can look around, see what we find."
Checking out the main building was the first stop on their list of places to scope out, so as they disembarked from the truck Bishop made a motion towards one of the other patches, a kid in his late twenties who went by Zeke, to go around the back and check for an entrance there. As he did that, Bishop, Willa and the remaining Hellhound, a prospect that the majority of them had taken to calling Mush 'cause the kid was so damn mushy and romantic when it came to women, moved towards the main doors.
As they approached it was apparent that the place had sat untouched until now, the glass doors covered in a film of grime that made it near impossible to see into the store. Reaching out for the handle, he gave a tug and was met with the resistant of a locked door. Gritting his teeth, he cast an annoyed look in Willa's direction before motioning for both Mush and Willa to stand off to the side while he pried the doors open. God knows what might come out once the doors had been opened.
"Can you hand me one of those?" Bishop asked Willa, waving his hand towards what looked like a bin of farrier files that had been left just to the right the doors. A crowbar would have been more effective, still, he had a feeling this would suffice.
Once the file had been handed over, he went to work on leveraging it just right, pushing against the door until the old rusty latches gave way and both doors popped open. Hesitantly Bishop eased one door open, a flurry of feathers and talons coming at him as a rooster made its escape. "Fuck," The Chaplain jumped back, cursing under his breath and quickly composing himself before stepping inside the building, stopping just inside the doorway to let his eyes adjust to the dim light in the feed store.
Willa shouts at the sight of a rooster - both in alarm and delight - and hastily stows her gun before pulling off her jacket, tossing it atop the bird before lunging to grab it. "Chickens!" she exclaims with a wide grin at both of them, before passing the squawking, writhing lump to Mush. "Roll up the windows, put him in the cab until we find the rest."
The stench of the feed store is exactly what you would imagine, with two years of chicken shit and half a dozen carcasses of unknown provenance that must be decomposing in corners or under shelves. Willa pulls her handkerchief from her pocket and covers her mouth, though underneath she's still smiling. "I want everything," she said, words muffled even though a spark is still clear in her eyes as she walks through the aisles full of supplements and grooming products and tack. "But you should bring the chickens back, set up a coop at the park. Dog food?" Willa suggests, pointing at an aisle full of large sacks of premium kibble, sending two hens running down it. There are dogs in the Dog Park along with the cats, but what she needs most is food for the cows. "No hay inside, you're probably right, we should look out back."
"What the fuck died in here?" Zeke hollers, having made his way through a second entrance. "This place stinks, I'm not staying in here."
Watching Willa is like watching a kid in a candy store, her wide smile infectious as they move about the place. He makes a mental note of all the items she's pointed at for retrieval, at one point he even mutters "Are we taking the whole damn store with us?" In what feels like a flashback to a different time. If it weren't for the stench and decay, this could have been just another weekend trip to the local feed store in Harlan.
It's not though, that spell is broken by Zeke entering in through the back. "You damn well are," Bishop answers, his tone tinged with the authority he holds over the other man. "I expect you and Mush to get everything you can out of this place and load it all up," he pauses while motioned towards the roaming chickens. "That means those damn critters as well." And with that last statement he's moving around the endcap of an aisle, catching Willa's eye and motioning for the both of them to slip out the back in their continued search for hay.
The feed store's lot isn't particularly big, and Bishop immediately rules out two of the out buildings, both logically far too small to house any sizable store of hay. So, he zeroes in on the last place, prying open the locked door and giving a 'whoop' of success when he's met with the sight of what looks to be hundred pound hay bales, one stacked on top of each other. "Jackpot," he says, turning to smile at Willa. "Do you think they've got a larger loading door round back?"
The sight of Bode getting so excited is almost as enjoyable for Willa as what he's excited about. Whether or not it's still fit to feed the animals she can't say at a glance, but Willa turns him loose with an amused "I dunno Bode, I ain't ever been here before. Look and see," before she walks into the building to survey the pallets of various feed bags stacked side by side. There's enough to make it worth a trip from Richland even, and the deep, tall haylofts up above look more than half full. The clucking of chickens is in this building too, but before she can hunt them down she hears Bode calling for her. Even without the sound of gunshots she's conditioned to come straight away with her gun drawn in case he's found himself facing a gaggle of geeks, but once she's rounded the back corner of the barn, she stops in her tracks.
The trailer is small and clearly vintage with its turquoise and white midcentury paint job, thoroughly caked with the added patina of two years in the harsh elements without a wash. He's won their bargain, unless this place has been overrun by chickens as well. "Don't bust the door down," Willa insists, protective of the little home on wheels as though she already owns it. She catches up to him, dropping down to the ground and looking at the underside of the rig. "Look for a hideakey first."
Finding the trailer had all but clinched his win when it came to the deal he and Willa had made. Bishop was a competitive man, always had been, so the fact that fate had seen fit to drop a trailer into his lap, well, he would milk that for all its worth.
"I ain't about to go destroying your new home," Bishop fires back, hand reaching out to try the door while Willa reached around underneath the trailer for a hideakey. "I'm not idiot enough to go and ruin this win for myself." He adds while trying the door, which doesn't give.
After another handful of minutes the spare key was located and both he and Willa entered the trailer, finding it empty sans cobwebs and spiders. "Well, are you staying at the Dog Park now?"
Why do you want me to stay? The question burns in her mind, but she won't let it out of her mouth. If Bode even knows, Willa still isn't sure he'll give her an honest answer, or if she would rather have the lie. By now she can admit to herself - though no one else - that even though she's come to him to do her job and put an end to a criminal threat to the people of Austin, she would let him go, if only he would run. Using him like this hurts her just as much as she expects it will hurt him if he ever has to find out, and for a long moment, Willa considers backing out of their bargain, going to the Capitol and telling Olinger that her past is too much of a compromising situation for her to function the way she knew she ought to in this investigation. The pause has taken long enough that it won't go unnoticed, and Willa accounts for it before answering. "Bode. If we brought this all back with us, the trailer and the hay and the feed and the chickens; if we could turn it into something good, something better than survival rations, would they stop? Would Cal be safer, if I can make this work?"
The last Chapel is still weighing on Bishop’s mind. The Hellhounds Chaplain is still trying to figure out in his own mind if they really can scrub their image clean, turn themselves around and stop being the outlaws that Austin knows them to be. A large part of him wants to think that they can give up selling Prax, give up being Austin’s most wanted. Still, he has his doubts. They’re all criminals in their own rights, not prone to living on the right side of the law. His own foray into that kind of life had ended in a broken relationship and a hell of a lot of regrets. Yet, Willa’s question sinks in and he wants so badly to say yes, to assure her of Cal’s safety. Not just for her, but for himself. It’s a constant source of concern for him that his friend’s life is constantly in perrell because of the Hellhounds, because of him. He may not have ever raised a hand to threaten Cal’s life, but, as an officer he knows he’s thrown his weight behind decisions that have endangered Willa’s brother.
“We’ve got a lot going on right now, talks of changing our ways, plans even,” Bishop turns in the small trailer to look at Willa. “All of that doesn’t guarantee Cal’s safety, though. Fuck, I wish it did. He’s capitol, much as that fact pains me, and we’ve got a lot of bad blood between us. Only person who can tell you whether turning the Dog Park into a farm will guarantee Cal’s safety is Rodeo, but, if I have any say in things darlin’, it sure as hell will.” Because Bishop would like nothing more than to know that Cal won’t end up like so many Department of Resources agents before him.
Willa nods. She wants to know more about this change of plan, but if Bode says it's Rodeo who makes the decisions, it's Rodeo she'll have to win over, and Rodeo whom she'll have to bring down. A faint smile forms on her lips as the plan forms in her mind. "Does he like fried chicken?"