DISCLAIMER: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by Buena Vista Pictures, Paramount Studios … 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 and Gunfight at the OK Corral one too many times. No money is being made and no offense is intended.
Posted by: Elspethdixon
Rating: PG
Pairing: Wyatt/Josephine, Wyatt/other

Keepsake

Josephine would probably never have found the watch at all, if she and Wyatt hadn't been moving house. As it was, she still nearly missed it, tucked into a drawer behind a blue shirt Wyatt never wore. She had been moving automatically, pulling clothing out of drawers and folding it away in trunks with the ease of long experience, her mind already busy planning how the nightstand and bureau would fit in their new bedroom, and wondering how best to pack the stained glass lamp. If she wasn't careful with it, it wouldn't survive the trip across San Francisco to the new house, and they would end up unpacking a crate full of broken glass. When she reached into the bureau's top drawer and found something hard and round, her first instinct was to simply toss it into the nearest trunk and move on.

Josephine was never sure what sixth sense made her give pocket watch a second look. It was small, and clearly hadn't been wound recently, as she couldn't feel it ticking, and anyway, it didn't look like the sort of thing she had ever seen Wyatt wear. Its engraved silver case was too flashy, more like the sort of thing Bat Masterson or Doc Holliday had favored, and it was a terribly old-fashioned design, besides. Still, the worn metal of its case gleamed brightly, as untarnished and well polished as if it were new.

There was something naggingly familiar about it, and Josephine stared at it for a long moment before finally deciding that it must be some old watch of Wyatt's, one with a broken spring, or worn-out gears. Something Wyatt kept around and in reasonably good repair even though it no longer worked, because he had carried it for years and could be charmingly sentimental about things like that sometimes.

Josephine smiled, thinking of the hurt expression Wyatt's face would have worn when he unpacked all those boxes and found his broken watch gone. He was lucky she had insisted on packing their things for the move herself. A housekeeper would have sold it to a junkman.

She shrugged slightly, and turned to tuck the little pocket watch into the corner of the box where Wyatt kept his ugly, over-sized revolver, something else he refused to get rid off. It would just fit in the corner there…

She hesitated before closing the box, and picked up the pocket watch again, snapping the silver cover open to see what time it had stopped at, and a lock of blonde hair fell out to land on the floor by her feet.

Maddie's hair. That explained why Wyatt had never gotten rid of the broken watch, as well as why he kept it hidden in the back of a drawer. His first marriage had ended badly, with anger and hurt feelings on both sides, and he had always felt partly responsible for Maddie's death. Josephine had always been of the opinion that the other woman had brought herself to an early grave purely through her own actions, and that the only blame lay with the laudanum she had accidentally poisoned herself with. Wyatt, though, was not so sanguine about it, and it only made sense that he'd never been able to bring himself to have her hair made into a broach or mourning ring.

Josephine picked the lock of hair back up, and peered at it closely for a moment—ash blonde, a little darker than she remembered Maddie's hair being, but perhaps the intervening years had discoloured it—before slipping it back inside the pocket watch and closing the cover. The hands, she noted, had stopped at twelve-thirteen. She laid the watch carefully in the box beside the Colt Peacemaker, alongside the weapon's disproportionately long barrel, and closed the lid.

The box with the gun and the watch then went into a trunk, on top of a stack of folded clothing, and Josephine returned to the problem of the terribly breakable stained glass lamp. It had been horribly expensive, and finding someone to replace the little panes of colored glass should any break would cost almost as much as buying it had in the first place.

By the time the lamp was safely packed, and Wyatt came in to help her carry things out, Josephine had put the watch and the lock of hair out of her mind.

It wasn't until that night, as she lay in bed next to Wyatt in their new bedroom, unpacked boxes still stacked around them, that the watch returned to her thoughts. It really had looked familiar, she thought—and, unbidden, her mind called up an image of long, thin fingers holding it, letting the watch case spinning idly on the end of its chain. Not Wyatt's fingers. Not Wyatt's watch.

That lock of hair had been darker than Maddie's, that particular shade of dull blond that was almost brown in the right light, and she was almost certain there had been a thread of grey in it.

Maddie Earp had carefully plucked out any grey hairs the moment they appeared.

She had not been the only blond Wyatt had seen go to an early grave…

Josephine pushed the memory of an ill-tempered, arrogant gambler who'd worn a silver pocket watch to match his ivory-hilted gun out of her mind, and went to sleep. When Wyatt woke her, his unshaven face scratching her neck as he kissed her good morning, she decided once again that the hair had belonged to Maddie.

Still, she never mentioned finding the watch.

^_~