#wri.

[deputystakes-a2]

( @kenneld ) in the driver’s seat, ashley sits—one hand gripping the steering wheel, white-knuckled, as the other wrestles a crumpled pack of cigarettes from his breast pocket. this here’s whitetail territory—different than the desert skies, yet his state of mind’s no different. this, to ashley, was not about the faith, nor the resistance of the people. this was about men in power giving orders—this was about his sainthood and the worship it demanded; the sacrifice. cherry glow. puff of smoke.   “ all the good angels are mobbin’ us with warnings. ”

[deputystakes-a2]

@shaltkill said,   oh, i’m gonna put a hole through his hat.

jukeboxes that somehow work and health department papers that were undoubtedly forged.      smoke and sin in the air,  thick enough to suffocate.      guns on hips,  sharp smiles,  the smell of blood on the first four knuckles—  these are the kinds of promises made to people like him.

outside,  ashley graves claims breath after breath of fresh air,  but he is not saved.      the figure,  tall and dark beside him,  has a cigarette pinched between his fingers.      this is how they meet—  obscured by smoke and the ravenous darkness.      they haven’t seen each other’s true faces.      truth is,  one of them will likely die before they ever get the chance to reveal such wounds.

            ‘ you’re really gonna shoot a fed? ’      he chokes on the disbelief that digs its way out of his throat—  smoke leaves in wisps as he bites down on laughter.      ashley liked to joke that he was one bad day from diving off the deep end.      a dead fucking federal was the last thing he needed.      ‘ i think you’ve forgotten that these aren’t your fuckin’ stomping grounds. ’

[deputystakes-a2]

@shaltkill said,   i hated my father.

the nights were getting darker, and everything was happening at the wrong end of a very long tunnel.   

            ‘ didn’t care much for mine, either. ’   ashley grins, his laugh accompanied by wisps of cigarette smoke.   ‘ i planned on killin’ him for the longest time, but — ’   there’s something distant in his eyes.   something cruel.   ‘ someone beat me to it. ’

[deputystakes-a2]

NEEDLESS STREET  /  ACCEPTING.

@tengallon said,  “you made sure we survived.”  (hm. slayer verse.)

            “i reckon that’s my job,”  a crack in the mask,  a grin on his lips, “keepin’ your sorry ass outta trouble.”

they’re back in the barracks now,  just the two of them,  sweating bullets in the residual heat.  from under ashley’s sleeves crawl his tattoos — eternal reminders of his feats,  trophies engraved into skin.  ( * not memories — history. )  hidden on his back lies the reaper.  this is what raylan gives his thanks to.  this is what the corps gives its thanks to.  this is what puts raylan in debt to him,  and ashley doesn’t want that — too often has someone been left owing,  owing,  owing him until the debts eventually grow too great,  and must be paid for in blood.  unlike his god,  this is not what ashley demands.

“but i don’t need your thanks.”  not physically spoken,  but clear as day in raylan’s eyes.  there’s gratitude,  which permeates the softness — soft,  where ashley’s gaze was cold and unforgiving.  shades of gray and blue,  he was all storm.  the grin falters,  and fades.  there and not there in the blink of an eye.  “don’t want it.”

[deputystakes-a2]

UNPROMPTED  /  ACCEPTING.

@deputyfangs said,  “did you ever get to the end of the dream?”  ( re “in the dream i am always posthumous” )

miles to midnight.  it’s dark out — as july fades into the far distance,  autumn falls upon them.  night descends over the hills even faster now.  days become weeks.  weeks become months.  and ashley keeps waking up from the same old dream.

in the dream,  he dies.  ( this is where it all begins. )  he dies the hero,  receives the medal,  he loses his life on that beach.  for good.  in the dream,  he bleeds out under dry desert sun.  in the dream,  christian bears the marks of the enemy.  in the dream,  the bullet misses,  thus ending the task his life had been set upon.  the bullet misses,  and he’s as good as dead.  dead and gone.  dead as a fucking doornail.  in the dream,  dirt showers over his grave,  and no one is saved by the preacher man’s words.  in time,  it would play out as scripted.  there were hungrier things in these wilds.  in time,  ashley would give up,  and a dozen hawks would descend.  in the dream,  he is always posthumous.  there’s a certain victory in seeing things through to the end.

slim fingers wrapped around the neck of an ice-cold beer.  christian wrapped up in a quilt,  ashley in a flannel.  seconds slowly tick closer to midnight, and closer still as ashley stares into the vastness before them.  the dark.  the sky.  the dark,  which cannot harm him.  

            “some nights.”  a smile.  an honest to god smile,  the kind that graced his lips a lifetime before he’d ever heard the howling of the dogs of war.  “but god always wakes me before i get to see the other side.”

[deputystakes-a2]

@tengallon said, you don’t have to pretend you don’t care around me.

when the hostility dissipates, he’ll only be left with his grief. ( it’s that time of the year, again. his mother’s funeral. mother’s grave. dead flowers, withered, like mangled hands reaching to pull him into the deep, dark earth. his time has not yet come. and yet, his gravestone stares back at him. waiting. ) when the hostility dissipates this evening, in the sanctuary of his spartan apartment, he’ll be left with nothing but his tears and his sobs, ugly and visceral, ricocheting off bare walls.

either the chief deputy remembers, or raylan’s using his gut feeling against him. someone notices something, some subtle shift in behavior, a glaring crack in the carefully constructed mask that was deputy marshal graves.

ashley knows that raylan means no harm. he knows that raylan isn’t waiting to strike once the walls fall down. ( he knows. he knows. he tells himself that he is no longer the lamb. he tells himself that he is no longer the hunted. he tells himself that jeremiah is dead, dead and fucking gone, stolen away like his mother was. bled dry and gutted. he knows. ) still, ashley won’t look raylan in the eye. the mask keeps cracking, fracturing; becoming unstable. so what, his eyes glisten in the streetlight. so what, his jaw sets as to delay his betrayal to himself. fingers dig a crushed pack of smokes from his breast pocket. so what. “you keep this shit up, the office is gon’ think I have a heart.”

[deputystakes-a2]

@sunbentsky said, “good aim, but what happens when you run out of bullets and you’re in the middle of fucking nowhere? can’t just make more of ‘em. can’t throw your rifle far enough either, i’m guessin’.” (from jess - the humbling river version)

the chosen are blurs of red and white to his naked eye. ( they go down in quick succession—dropping without a sound, ceasing to exist as they vanish into the bushes once again, forevermore. ) jacob’s training and conditioning couldn’t save them. their god couldn’t save them, nor their father.

“i’ll figure it out.” what he means is, he’ll burn that bridge when he gets to it. what he means is, he survived being pinned to a mountainside by the enemy sniper. for three days and three nights, they exchanged fire. ( in restless dreams, he can feel the gravel bite into his skin as he crawls through the underbrush. his eyes burn with exhaustion, with stinging sweat, unforgiving as he struggles in the desert twilight. he counts his bullets, his breaths; the beat of his heart, which has not yet failed him. ) what he means is, running out of bullets would not kill him. running out of time, however—such was a thought he rarely entertained. fear was the mind killer. fear inflicted panic, inflicted trembling hands, inflicted death. fear had eventually seized the peggies, which he picked off, one by one. pratt’s voice had trembled with it as he spoke his address under the watchful eye of the eldest herald.

ashley’s eyes remain not on jess, but instead, the absence of bodies. of enemy hunters. hear: his heart, beating true. hear: his heart, beating, thriving on the feeling of being something someone wants to kill. crossed wires. ( there are bloodstains on his copy of the king james. ) “y’ever hear the verse—if god be for us, who could be against us?”

[deputystakes-a2]

@deputyfangs said, put the gun down, please.

( just because you caught me / does that make it a sin? ) ashley does not know what his hands do to his gun, nor how they twist around the grip, but he knows that they shake. tremble, tremble. unceasing like the blows of his father’s fists. unceasing like the sunday sermon ashley attended the morning after, burst blood vessels in his eyes. red seeps into his peripheral vision. someone in the room weeps.

christian stands like a deer in the headlights. his words are careful, his movements are calculated, but he’s no longer the hungriest thing in the room. ( this is where their chief goes wrong — he assumes that ashley had his fill of blood in the corps. the chief assumes that the sergeant died when the corps disbanded. he didn’t. ) two deer in a clearing. the hunter with the rifle tucked against his shoulder. the hunter with the blood in his teeth. blood under his nails. blood staining his skin. a pair of amber eyes pins ashley where he stands, pistol held in vice grip. the brown eyes of the scientist are shut tight enough to hurt. to ache. ashley knows what he’s thinking of, what the scientist believes — he believes that god will strike down those who trespass against him. he believes that god has a plan for him. he believes that divine intervention may still occur, unaware of the presence he already finds himself in. unaware of the fact that god has already intervened. unaware of the fact that it is him against god, it is him against the reaper. fucking death dealer.

“he deserves this.” the sergeant’s voice. he flicks the switch. the tremble ceases. graves remembers long days, long needles, he remembers the cruel indifference of the doctors around him, watching him and his fellow slayers twist and writhe, their senses bathed in hellfire. biblical vengeance: justice comes riding in on a white horse. ( wherever ashley went, hell followed with him. ) “i fucking deserve this.”