𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑲𝒊𝒅 & 𝑰 - A Billy the Kid western romance

Disclosure

Milo observes us from a window inspectingly. The reflection of the colourful outside obstructs his image in the glass. The environment is very rarely as beautiful as today. Under a bewitchingly purple sky, Billy and I mount our horses. 

Dove's light body moves swiftly below me as my hips sway along in the saddle. Dust swirls up around the eight hooves hitting the ground rythmically. The sun is setting, and the air holds just the perfect amount of warmth. We talk, for the first time, freely. There are no filters in place, no unpleasant tension between us. There is nothing either of us is trying to conceal or hold back. Enough has been said, to finally allow the tranquility to sway between our bodies.

"Thank you for accompanying me, Venus" He says with a breathy, low voice.

His voice. I don't think he will ever understand what his voice does to me. 

His broad shoulders move as he laughs at something I've just told him, only I've forgotten what it was, since my brain is preoccupied with taking in his image. He sits grand upon his tall horse, wearing his usual coal black hat. I've never heard him laugh before, he has never smiled in front of me, either. His laughter make my insides flutter. It is all a brand new feeling. Today is a good day for me, for us.

He remains talking in his low voice, recounting memories from his childhood, things he has never unearthed to anyone prior. A sudden seriousness snaps my attention back to his words, as he reaches a fragile point of his up-bringing. The point after which nothing ever got better. His voice tender, he shares the death of his father. I knew of it happening, but not more. Their journey from New York out to Santa Fe was hard on his entire family. It had held a danger none of them were prepared for. 

His father fought a mental battle, commencing during their migration. It proved more strenous than he could manage, and he passed following their arrival. Remaining were his mother, his brother and him, Billy, suddenly man of the struggling family. 

"There is one thing that he told me that really stuck with me. He had already given up on the inside then. It rings in my head every night", he shares gently. An hour since we sat up, It has gotten darker. Stars are now speckled across the sky, which has acquired a striking plum colour. We dismount by a few scrawny trees, allowing our horses to graze, as he continues. "He asked me to look up toward the stars, claiming that they shone as bright as I did" He maintains a silence momentarily before continuing. "I wonder what he would have said about me if he knew of the things I would come to do in my life". 

His father's death was the first domino, setting off the spiral that would eventually turn a polite, well-mannered, young boy into a mass-murderer. 

"Billy, your father wouldn't think ill of you. Please, do not pour the blame onto yourself, for you will drown. Claiming it does you no well.  You were only a child when your life was shredded before your eyes, leaving you little choice apart from turning to crime to keep your loved ones afloat. The burden simply isn't yours to carry. You never intended to harm anyone Billy".

"But I have." He intercepts. "I have harmed people." Silence hangs in the air but my mind is hollow of reasonable responses, because he is right. His statement is incontestable. 

"You have yet to truly comprehend that everyone around me dies. Initially only my father, then my mother. She did everything in her power to support my brother and I. We burdened her. Her mind was indestructible, but where the mind prevails the body fails- She fell ill with consumption. Shortly after my brother followed. He succumbed to the same illness."

A part of me is utterly shocked that Billy is opening up to such a degree. There is nothing I desire more in the current moment than for his continuation, so I prove my active listening, but avert from wording an interruption.

"A close friend of mine was shot over a game of poker, for the crime of being foreign. The crime of being Mexican. And then there's Jesse Evans. I made his acquaintance and he rapidly became the sole leg I could stand on. We made some poor choices. Crimes. Petty crimes, in the beginning. I am not sure how it spiralled into what they have become today. Jesse and I were soon recruited by Murphy's gang. Since there was no substance to my life the choice became easy, but there was no worse mistake I could've made. Murphy initially only had us do some cattle thieving, some further horse theft, but soon we were sent to terrorise those who did business with Tunstall. Threaten them until the point they gave in and contained their business to only Murphy, who paid not enough for a week's living. Eventually I was approached by Tunstall's men. They were being outplayed, and beginning to make out their defeat ascending from the horizon. I couldn't stand the horrors we were causing innocent lives, so I converted. Tunstall was an honest, fair englishman, and paid fairly. My decision provoked Murphy's men, of course. It was treason".

My ears absorb every frequency of his now somewhat frail voice.

"Some part of me won't split from Jesse, despite his many attempts at my life since then. He has never been able to bring himself to shoot me, leading me to believe he faces the same issue. We were too close. He was like a brother to me, and I was stripped of him in a manner I'm not used to".

Following his unification with Tunstall's gang, Tunstall began to lead a kind of fatherly role toward Billy. In accordance with Billy's curse, Tunstall was eventually assassinated in cold blood. Radical corruption meant that the law would do him no justice, and Billy swore to revenge him, wipe the Earth's surface clean of the filth that had taken Tunstall's life. If Billy will ever be able to fulfil his promise to murder Jesse, too, is an issue only time can resolve.

The severity of the man before me's fear of attachment dawns on me like a sunrise. His mind locks him away from ever caring much for anyone. It truly has only ever caused him pain. He is more broken than he would ever let on to any outside witness.

I wish we had met years ago. We needed each other long before now.

"Billy, listen to me. None of those deaths were your fault. There was nothing you could've done to save any of those people". I continue, "A harsh world has treated you unfairly, pushing you to do things you never wanted to or thought yourself capable of".

"If I allow myself to love you, I will never recover. It can't happen, Venus". He abruptly discloses.

Always on the verge of almost. Never quite nothing, never quite complete.

Always those puzzle pieces doing their best to fit, refusing to accept that they may not even be from the same puzzle.

His words catch me off guard. He hadn't listened to what I just said, busy sinking in his own thoughts. "What?" I breathe shortly. Why is he doing this to me, again?

"It would entail handing my enemies my head on a silver platter. If they get a hold of you, I would do anything. Anything. I would kill for you. Perhaps it has lost meaning, considering my past, but it would be the first time I do it willingly. The first murder I wouldn't regret. The first that wouldn't haunt me, if it meant that you stayed with me. Loving you is like handcuffing myself and handing them the key".

Author's note: While Billy's life as depicted in the series by MGM+ lies mostly in coherence with today's historical accounts of the real Billy's life, In reality, Joseph McCarty (Billy's brother in the series, by some historians believed to have actually been his cousin) lived until 1930 although he had a tough life as a drifter, eventually passing away alone at the age of 67 in Denver, Colorado. He was most likely killed off in the series to ease Billy's fade into the criminal world.

(This needs polishing but it's already been too long so if you're reading this somewhat early I will probably rework it and make it flow more fluently sometime in the near future. Just wanted to finally get this chapter out of my drafts and work through my current writer's block, let me know what you thought <3)