DISCLAIMER: This story is based on characters and situations created and
owned by… no, wait, scratch that. This story is partially based on actual
historical figures and events, and partially based on my own hours of twisted
fantasies produced by seeing Tombstone one too many times. No money is
being made and no offense is intended.
Posted By: Elspethdixon
Ships: Morgan/Louisa, Wyatt/several people
Notes: Not part of "Gunslinger." This thing has been sitting
half-completed on my hard drive for months, waiting for me to finish it and
give it a title (anyone who knows which line in the Iliad the title
comes from gets massive geek brownie points). Now, here it is for your reading
pleasure, in all it's AU-ish, character-death-laden glory.
Not My Fate
If he were honest
with himself, he would admit that he had known all along things would end up
like this. It wasn’t as if they weren’t guilty of murder; they were in fact,
guilty of it several times over, and last he had checked, “those bastards shot
my brother” was not an admissible defense in any but the most informal frontier
court.
Bat had tried his
best to keep the two of them from being extradited back to Arizona to face
trial, using every legal trick he could think of—he knew what it was like to
watch a brother die, and thoroughly understood even it he didn’t entirely
approve. In the end, though, even Bat Masterson’s best efforts had failed in
the face of the clear-cut evidence against them.
Morgan Earp and John
H. Holliday would hang tomorrow morning for the murders of Frank Stillwell,
Bill Brocious, Ike Clanton, Johnny Ringo… the list went on. And the worst part
of it was that none of it had really been worth it anyway. None of the killings—executions,
really—had brought Wyatt back, and now Louisa was going to be a widow, and
Virgil and James would lose yet another brother.
Not for the first time, Morgan wondered if things would have gone differently
had he died instead of Wyatt, that night in Tombstone…
He had been over at
Virgil’s house, planning their departure—there would take Louisa, Allie, and
Maddie to Tucson and put them on a train out of there, with Virgil to guard
them, like Wyatt had suggested, while Morgan and Wyatt took care of things in
town—when the messenger had come bursting in, babbling something about Doc and
Wyatt and blood.
Morgan was on his
feet and out the door after him in a moment, ignoring the pain as the movement
pulled at the stitches in his back and side. It was funny, how he knew
instantly what had happened, knew it deep down in his gut, a sick, hollow
feeling that made his heart beat slower.
They had ambushed
Virgil on the street, damn near blowing his arm off, tried to shoot Morgan in
the back while he played pool, the bullet missing his kidney and sliding across
his ribs only because he had chosen just that moment to twist aside and try to
knock the nine ball into the corner pocket. They had broken into Mayor Clum’s
house and shot up his wife. Of course they would go after Wyatt next. Three
Earp brothers, three targets, and the fact that the Cowboys had missed on the
first two wouldn’t have stopped them from trying again.
Morgan should have
seen it coming.
They all should have
seen it coming.
When Morgan reached the
doorway of the Oriental, time seemed to stop for a moment, as he took in the
table, knocked onto its side, the deck of cards, scattered across the
floorboards like fallen leaves, the two men on the floor in the midst of them.
It was a familiar
scene, something Morgan had beheld at least three times before, one of them
only a few weeks ago, but this time, the players were reversed. This time, it
was Doc Holliday who knelt on the floor with Wyatt cradled in his arms,
and Wyatt who was coughing up blood.
And Morgan had simply
stood there, struck motionless with horror. Stood there while onlookers crowded
in, drawn off the street by the whisper of murder. Stood there while Behan and
his minions materialised out of nowhere to shake their heads knowingly and mouth
satisfied platitudes. Stood there while his brother died, shot through the
chest and breathing out pink bubbles of blood.
Only when Josephine
Marcus appeared in the doorway beside him did he break out of his stupor,
stepping in front of her and turning her away to that she could not look at
what was inside the room, would not see…
It was useless, of
course. She had seen everything the moment she reached the threshold, just as
Morgan had. Just as Maddie did when she arrived moments later, hair disheveled
and a robe hanging open over her nightgown, the pupils of her eyes huge with a
dose of laudanum that wasn’t nearly powerful enough to block out the shock of
seeing her husband dead.
She had sobbed Wyatt’s
name and flung herself through the doorway, not even noticing Josephine where
she stood still and white-faced, tears leaking out of her dark eyes until her
stage make-up smeared, only to be brought up short a few feet away from her
husband’s body, as Doc looked up at her and snarled something low and vicious.
Morgan didn’t hear what it was, and he never asked.
Two days later, right
before the funeral, Maddie had overdosed on laudanum. Louisa found her lying
motionless on the bed she and Wyatt had shared, little glass bottles lying
empty around her. They buried her next to Wyatt.
Doc got blind drunk
the night of the funeral, and wept the first tears Morgan had ever seen from
him. He’d been dry-eyed when Morgan had found them, and had stayed that way
while Josephine and Maddie—and Morgan—cried, staring with a face empty of
expression at Wyatt’s blood covering his hands, his waistcoat, the floor, had
stayed that way up until they had lowered Wyatt’s body into the ground and
piled the earth back in on top of him. Then, at the wake, he had proceeded to
fall apart utterly, sinking back the better part of a bottle of whisky and
sobbing incoherently in Kate’s arms, mumbling over and over that it wasn’t
fair, that Wyatt wasn’t supposed to die first.
Kate had left the
next morning, without giving a reason or saying good-bye to anyone except Doc,
and once the gambler’s hangover had worn off, he and Morgan had gone hunting.
Frank Stillwell had
died first, shot through the gut by Doc’s ivory-handled colt. Morgan had put a
bullet in his brain afterwards, to spare him the agony of a drawn out death.
After the shoot-out at the O.K. Corral, he had felt shaken, guilty. This time,
when he pulled the trigger, he felt nothing.
After him had come
Curly Bill, his chest blown open by a shotgun borrowed from Virgil, who
couldn’t do any shooting himself with his arm still in a sling, but who had
given Morgan the weapon with a grim reminder to watch for the recoil before he
and Allie had taken the train to California. Virgil didn’t believe in
vengeance, but he didn’t make the smallest attempt to stop Morgan and Doc from
seeking it, either.
Doc had shot Johnny
Ringo, the bullet taking him right in the temple, and had looked almost
disappointed that the other man, supposedly a deadly gunfighter, hadn’t even
managed to get off a shot in his direction first. He’d killed Ike Clanton, too,
getting him in the belly with a knife. Ike, whom Morgan had always taken for a
coward, had died with surprising bravery. Rather than beg for his life as expected,
he’d all but dared Doc to kill him, looking him straight in the eye while the
knife went in. Most likely he’d known that begging wouldn’t have helped.
Ike was the one who
got them caught, in the end. Morgan and Doc had left him for dead, bleeding out
from a severed artery, but when Behan found him, he’d had just enough strength
left to identify his killers as Morgan Earp and “that goddamn crazy lunger.”
Morgan had been the
one who suggested that they flee back to Kansas—by that point, Doc really hadn’t
cared whether he was caught or not—but the escape attempt proved futile in the
end, and they ended up right back where they started, in Tombstone.
In Tombstone, in
jail, waiting to hang in the morning.
Morgan sat motionless
in the jail cell, the same one he had helped Virgil lock rowdy drunks into only
three months ago, and stared down at his hands. There was blood on them now,
enough blood that it really ought to be visible in some way, a dark stain
around his nails and in the lines of his palms. Instead, they looked as clean
as they had when he had arrived in town all those months ago.
“You should ask to
say your farewells to your wife.” Doc’s voice was a hoarse whisper, worn away
by coughing. His consumption had worsened dramatically in the past two months,
as if Wyatt’s presence had been the only thing keeping him going all of these
years, and losing him had robbed Doc of the strength and will to fight the
disease that was slowly destroying his lungs. He had actually fainted once
during the trial, rising from the witness chair only to slump into a heap on
the courtroom floor. Behan’s pet prosecutor had accused him of doing it as a
bid for the jury’s sympathy, and Doc had glared at him with sunken eyes and
told him to go to hell.
Louisa had never
fainted, not even when they had announced the verdict. She had stayed silent
and straight-backed throughout the entire trial, her blue eyes glued to
Morgan’s face.
“She wouldn’t want to
see me,” Morgan said. He looked away from his too-clean hands, shifting his gaze
to the jail’s tobacco-stained floor. “Not after everything I’ve done. Wherever
she goes now, she’s going to be a murderer’s widow. Every paper from here to
San Francisco’s run articles about us; she’ll never escape the scandal.”
“She understands,”
Doc said. “She was there when-” he broke off, coughing, and then continued,
“when Wyatt was—when the Clantons and McLaurys were gunning for us. She was
there when Frank Stillwell and his friends attempted to assassinate you. Don’t
underestimate the fairer sex’s facility for anger.” The corners of his mouth
twitched upward in the ghost of a smile. “Before we left to go after Curly Bill
and the others, the lovely Miss Marcus gave me twenty dollars and told me to
spend it on bullets.”
“Louisa’s not like
Josephine. She’s… softer, more sensitive.” Morgan spread his hands, lost for an
appropriate adjective. “She shouldn’t have to come in here and-“
“If it were me,” Doc
interrupted, “I’d want to say good-bye.”
And Morgan did,
desperately, selfishly, even though he knew he shouldn’t drag his wife into the
jail to say his good-byes to her from inside a cell. Shouldn’t subject her to
that extra little bit of pain. “In a few minutes,” he said wearily. “You got
anyone you want to say good-bye to?”
Doc was silent for a
long time, slumped back against the cell wall with his eyes closed. When he
finally spoke, his voice was even softer than before. “I said my good-byes when
I came west. There’s only two people I’d want to bother with anyway, and since
one’s back in Georgia and the other’s under six feet of dirt, what’s the
point?”
There wasn’t much one
could say to that. “I’m sorry I got you into this, Doc,” Morgan offered, after
the silence had stretched for a long moment.
Doc attempted a
laugh, but it turned into a cough. “As I recall, the whole thing was my idea to
begin with.” He smiled again; it didn’t reach his eyes. “I never did want to
die in bed.”
Morgan, who had
always rather hoped that he would die in bed, preferably with his and
Lousia’s children and grandchildren clustered around him, sighed, and went to
ask Deputy Breckenridge if he could see his wife.
“Then let me die at once, Achilles cried,
despairing, “since it was not my fate to save my dearest comrade from his
death.”
--Homer, the Iliad.