Chapter Text
It’s nigh on midnight, moon bright in the sky, clear enough that every breath becomes frozen vapor but not nearly cold enough yet to crack spittle. Camp isn’t quite normal enough for caroling or midnight service or nativity scenes, but what it does like is a reason to try to find some semblance of joy.
Lanterns that may or may not be lit each night are festively dressed in bright red ribbons, as are the circled green boughs hanging from most every doorway in town.
The snow that had been falling all day, settling over the town like a blanket of peace had ended at this time of the night, and even the good lord would forgive Reverend Matthew Mason for thinking that Deadwood was a little touched by heaven in the moonlit snow. Of course, the attempt at a midnight service was a bust.
Matthew closed his eyes and sent up a quick prayer that it be nothing, that it be none of the weirdness that had begun his time in Deadwood. The snort and jingle of bells above him had him running back into the church for his long gun, wishing any one of his people had come with him tonight.
The fresh snow in the moonlight, lamp lit, glittered like so many small bits of glass, ramping up the unreality of the eldritch entities on the roof above. Had he needed to describe it to someone else, he would have said “deer” but the deer were not really deer at all- glistening skull and rib bones peeking through furred skin, shaggy and too heavy for the South Dakota winter. Their antlers were twisted into arcane symbols, mirroring each other. The breaths and snorts of the beasts shimmered like auroras, green shimmers rising from all eight snouts, reflecting off the silvery, barely audible bells along their harnesses.
This, to say nothing of their burden- a slick, practically oil-like carriage on silver runners— a sleigh befitting the eldritch deer drawing it. Piled on the back were red sacks seemingly full of packages. At first peep at the roof, the driver is nowhere to be seen.
Matthew happens to be a rational man of God with some sort of self-preservation instincts and a blessing that acts a bit more like magic than he’d like. So, the first thing he does, in awe of what’s above him on the roof, is swear as though all his priestly trappings are forgotten and he’s back in his cavalry soldier past. Oh, and he levels the gun at one of the leading eldritch deer.
The glint of the barrel draws the attention of the disturbing creatures and eyes like coals bore into the Reverend’s soul.
Darkness and the dealer’s hands… watching dead men rising in morning fog that refuses to touch them… his mother and sister’s faces in the doorway as he walks out for the last time… tumbling into an empty grave… fog that refuses to touch him… being filled with the sparking energy he’s begun to doubt comes from the Lord… watching Aloysius Fogg direct Clayton Sharpe out the door of the Gem… holding a rag to a preacher’s gut… and the susurrus of “Let’s play a game” fades as the crack of a Colt rings in his ear.
***
Mrs. Arabella Whitlock does what she can to both damage and salvage her husband’s reputation. She spends more time than she ought to outside his home; a reclusive man, he doesn’t spend barely any time outside of it, and there’s no love lost between the two of them. She doesn’t really desire to spend much time in his presence. That he doesn’t hurt her is more than enough most days, that he doesn’t restrict her is a boon of almost laughable proportions. She helps the bumbling Reverend Matthew Mason with his church and sermons, never mind that she obviously believes in the gospel little to none. She goes into the Gem and drinks alongside a Clayton Sharpe, gun-for-hire. She goes off to the Bella Union and flirts alongside an Aloysius Fogg, known bounty hunter. She visits shops for herself with Mrs. Miriam Landisman and no-never-mind given to who sees the two married ladies speaking to each other in soft voices that maybe ought be reserved for bedrooms and schoolchildren testing the limits of their hearts. But she’s kind to most everyone, and so most everyone in town likes her well enough to overlook that she’s a replacement wife that her parents sent to make up for her sister taking ill of plague and dying on that recluse she can barely look at. Most of the time, standing or sitting beside one of those aforementioned by name, she can be herself: sliding her deck of cards out of her pocket to thumb through and make her choice of next move or casting a careful eye into teacups to search for meanings in the dregs. She’s the first of them to reach for the thrumming power they all share in any bad moment, and the most willing to deal with consequences for the games she does play.
It being Christmas Eve didn’t mean all that much to her, other than her husband had actually requested she stay home. They’ve spent the whole day in separate pursuits in the same room: a puzzle and a bottle for him, a deck of cards and a teapot for her. Evening arrives and she goes to make her way out for the midnight service and finds that her husband has taken the chair and a cigar he’d received from her parents for the holiday and blocked the door.
***
Mrs. Miriam Landisman was never one to be nostalgic. Memories detracted from the moment, and the moments she lived in were often enough too dangerous to be thinking of the past carelessly. Any moment could be the last one she lived in, especially out here. Miriam spent more time alone than with people, ever since… but that is remembering, nostalgia for the time when she’d had a husband who was hers and hers alone, and who cared for her more than any other. But, then again, the whole world had changed again for her recently, and so she was bent over in the light of the fireplace, furiously making stitches into the stocking she held. The stitches are on instinct, not following language or shapes that she knows, at least not in their whole. It is the fifth such stocking. Her hope to have had this finished by Christmas Day is nearly dashed, but she doesn’t slow the stitches, even when she finds she’s pricked her finger and has stained the interior of the sock.
Wind down the chimney causes a flicker of the firelight, almost completely out and for a moment, Miriam could swear that the darkness makes no difference in her being able to see the stitching, like she can see no matter if it’s dark or light. The wind has calmed by then, so calm that she can hear bells tinkling outside. Two more stitches and she tightens the knot as she hears a gunshot in the street.
***
Aloysius Fogg was the sort of man who did his best to be inconspicuous. He didn’t back down from the chance to be seen, oh no, but he did take note of the ones who noticed him. He didn’t hide as man of the shadows, but rather as a man of fog- someone you see but cannot know. And yet, somehow he’d been becoming known to a select few. There’s nothing he could think of but how much it meant to be known by anyone after so long. Which is why he’s so keen on actually settling for once. Why he’s created a space for the group that actually did know him, not out of the guilt he has for hurting them (and he did, he knew he did), but out of something else: trust, love, connection, a shared dream. He made sure it was out of the way, he made sure it was defensible, he made sure the space was as much a home as he could hope to build. As much as it happens to be nearly midnight, the joy at hanging the wreath on the door urges him to climb on his horse and follow the trail of moonlit snow into town to gather those he wants to give this to: a place in his life. He rides just a little faster.
***
The effort one would have to go through to find Amos Kinsley is more than it’s worth- the bounty on his head had been claimed, and naught but a scant few in the town of Deadwood knew that the man who sat in the corner of the Gem Saloon most nights was walking about after the name that’d been baptized into him had been shot and buried. Most of the camp had only ever known him as Clayton Sharpe to begin with.
This was a night like most nights, for all that it was Christmas Eve. The Gem still had liquor to sell and there were plenty in camp like Clayton that cared not at all for the religious trappings of the night, and who’d relegated all plans of any sort for celebration to the following day. Sharp eyes and sharp ears took in all the grumbled revelry as it died out into the hour before midnight. Pockets are picked and bets are won and lost around the room, and now it’s nearly empty all around the building instead of just the tables surrounding his tucked-away corner. The sipping of his last drink of the night before sliding out into the shadows and crossing over to the Bullock Hotel feels more like burning passion than purifying memories, a welcome change from how he’d come to look at his time drinking. It wasn’t like there was any sort of regular schedule for it, but he had rarely had to drink alone more than two nights in a row since he took that job for Swearengen, excepting the time he hadn’t been in camp. Clayton’s eyes, unfocused now, keep watch on the door for any of the people he’s begun to claim as his. His ears, though, find there’s a sound to be concerned over, and he looks up to the ceiling. A jingling that shouldn’t be coming from above him is making itself known in a way that spikes his nerves and quickens his breath. The final slug of his drink he swallows with the sort of practiced air of a man who’s had to leave quickly but can’t be seen to have that need. By the time he’s out the door, the smooth, familiar stock of his Colt is resting easy under his gloved palm.