[DRB]: Dear Reagen
Dated: 8/12/1899 (2024)
On a familiar mountaintop high above the world, Filly Maddison brushed snow off of a plaque and sat down to rest nearby, watching the clouds move through the valley beneath her. As she’d often done this week, she withdrew some loose scratch paper and began to write:
Dear Reagen,
This place holds more memories than I can bear sometimes. I still remember returning here from my first bank robbery, the way all that adrenaline gave way to laughter and calm. I still remember sitting around the fire, someone strumming away at a guitar while the others divvied up the loot. That might’ve been the first night Bad Omen’s company felt like something more than just my personal prison.
I still remember returning from my second bank robbery. Me and Pike had gotten separated from the others and had the entire chase team hot on our heels leaving Blackwater. We’d solemnly agreed to lead them as far away from you all as we could before we got caught. By some miracle, we managed to shake them at the river and return home.
I remember the way you cried out in triumph as you spotted us coming down the ridgeline. The way everyone cheered knowing that all of us had made it out.
I remember hiding out here, alone in the cold, the night I first tried to run away. I remember getting Pike’s telegram, breaking into tears over the words “love, Dad” written on it.
I remember sitting on the bed, waiting for everyone to get home after I left you all in Rhodes. I remember Pike bursting through the door and the way both our faces fell the longer we waited. The more we realized no one else was coming.
I remember him getting the telegram about what happened to you.
I remember burying you by the side of the house.
We weren’t more than ten feet away from your grave as Pike released me from my debt.
It’s been a long time since then. Even reminiscing, I’m struck over and over by how often names and faces crop up in my memories that aren’t around anymore. Exiled, left, vanished, killed… I found a picture someone took of that first bank robbery, you know. I’m the only one in it who’s still around.
Somehow, someway, I’ve outlived and outlasted everyone who’s ever hurt me. People who put me in debt, who gave me work but no pay, who drugged me to the point of addiction and overdose, who put a gun to my head, who put a lockpick and a gun in my hands, who manipulated me, who claimed my best interest but only bent and bent and bent— but never broke me.
Pike cared about me, but not in a way that mattered. He left, and yet I remain.
You cared about me, but always in ways that hurt me. You died, and yet I remain.
Horace cared about me, but not more than he ever did himself. Now he’s gone.
And yet, I remain.
Marred, changed. But after all of it, after everything, still Bad Omen. After all this time, still… me.
I’ll never be able to look back on the past without some amount of anger and pain for the path you set me on. I’ve tried to understand you, blamed myself for your death, loved you, and hated you in equal measure. Same as I’ve done for everyone who cared about and hurt me. Easy answers to simple questions are a luxury I have never been afforded— not about you, and not about Bad Omen.
These past few weeks on the run have been fraught with questions, conversations, and musings. I’ve burned more letters than I care to admit, and I might burn this one too once I’m done with it.
I tell myself there’s other lives I want to lead. I dream of peaceful days and civilian busywork, cows in the field and flowers in my hair. But… if I really wanted it that bad, wouldn’t I have it by now? More than that— don’t I already have a lot of that?
I spend days on the roof of the house watching my friends tend to their livestock. I tuck pencils behind my ear while I pack up orders people have placed with me. I pick fresh flowers every morning to weave into my hair. I have my days of peace.
…but when the peace draws too long, I find more and more that I don’t know what to do with myself. My hands start to twitch for my picks. The hair on the back of my neck stands on end when I hear the whistle of a train.
If I’m a dog, I’m the kind that chases wagon wheels. I wouldn’t know what to do if I ever got what I think I want.
If I am a bird, I think I’m more like a paper crane. To leave would be to unfold myself, but I’d always bear the creases. Some part of me would always crinkle and bend in the memory of what I’d been for so long.
There’s still merit, I think, to chasing wagon wheels. To putting something on the horizon, even if you never get it. There’s merit to thinking one day I might unfold and refold myself into something else, creases and all. There’s merit to believing one day I’ll walk away before it’s too late, even if I’m not planning on doing it any time soon. I think I’d like to grow up. To grow old. It doesn’t sound so bad.
I was wrong about a lot of people who ended up hurting me, people who are gone now. Maybe I’m wrong to believe things will be any different with those who remain. Fool me once, as they say. Maybe I am foolish. …But I don’t think I was ever made to love or trust with anything less than my whole heart.
Maybe I will be hurt again. I don’t know that I won’t be— I can’t know, really.
All I have is faith.
Faith in my family. Faith in myself.
Faith that even if it all goes to Hell, at the end of the day I will still remain.
Bent, marred, changed.
But still me.
Rest easy, Reagen Lynch. I’ll be back tomorrow.
—Filly