Hannibal could smell the sweat coming off Caesar, a foamy outline of the saddle that rested nearby on one of the slate boulders. Hannibal himself felt not unlike the battered saddle: every memory from the last forty-eight hours rubbed him raw, his nerves left flayed and exposed, his body in need of oil and attention in all the sore places he’d tried to ignore. The town would spend weeks fixing the jail with what was left of it.
In this part of the West, a man’s name was currency, and Hannibal’s had always been gold. Now, with the gossips and the drunkards and the tattle mouthed children already whispering of his arrest, he wondered if, by morning, his name would be worth less than a pinch of sawdust. She was caught in the crossfire of it all. Though truthfully, she had no way out of it ever since they were called an ‘item’. Their fortunes had become so entangled that he could hardly remember where his ended and hers began.
He unbuckled the halter, ran his palm down Caesar’s trembling nose, and whispered the old words in Lithuanian that his mother used to coo to sick animals. While a fire was out of the question, he lit a lamp on low light just enough to be able to sense any threats of slithering creatures with fangs. “I think your luck is my luck, m’dear.” He slipped one of his pocket squares out from his slacks, wiping down the sweat that had collected on Caesar’s backside.
“You’re in it for the long haul,” he teased, glancing over his shoulder as he worked his way down the muscled flanks. He owed her his freedom; how she shackled her own to him now. He dropped the rag and settled himself on a flat rock, exhaling through his nose as if to expel the last of his optimism. “Might have been easier if you just put a bullet between my eyes,” he said, and in the quiet snap of the phrase, he heard the echo of her last lover’s demise. A story she never told twice, and never needed to.
❝ our luck had to run out sooner or later. ❞ @a-ofspades said. They had travelled nearly two days without stopping, running as far from the law as possible. It was hard to gauge which towns knew of their existence, and which would be the first to be alerted of their escape. Well… Hannibal’s escape. But people had started associating her face with his before he had been caught for his less-than-socially-acceptable pallet. They had to know she was the one who got him out. Their horses were exhausted from the journey, Caesar seemingly irritated at the fact that he hadn’t had the time to properly reunite with his rider. Annie had taken care of her companion’s steed during his brief time in the jailhouse; she could tell how agitated the whole ordeal had made him, his nose pressed into Hannibal’s side as the newly-appointed outlaw attempted to pull some items from his saddlebag. They finally found a place to rest, just before sunset—a patch of dirt in the middle of nowhere, far from any traversable road, with enough rocks and brambles to cover their whereabouts for the night. It was risky to light a fire, so Annie didn’t, despite the slight chill in the air. Maybe that chill came from her adrenaline finally falling. She sat on a rock, removing one of her boots that had found a few stray pebbles inside, her body aching from the tolls of extended travel. She glanced at her companion, a satisfied smirk across her face. Her mood refused to dampen despite everything. Truthfully, she was entirely pleased with herself. “Your luck, anyway. I’m just starting to test mine, it seems.”
