[DRB]: Reagen's Last Letter
[DRB]: Reagen's Last Letter
Dated: 9/14/1899 (2024)
Dear Reagen.
I found your last journal entry.
Following everything recently, I've been taking a step back. Keeping my nose clean, so to speak-- Trying not to get another warrant. It's left me feeling... isolated. Deep in thought too. Often to my own detriment. It's not really the boredom that gets to me I don't think. Just the silence.
So, I started cleaning your old house. Gave myself something to busy my hands with. And anyway, I thought maybe it was time to make it livable and not just a place I go to shiver at your ghost. I didn't make it far before I found it: Your last journal entry. Would've been written just hours before you died, I think.
You know, yesterday Swisher asked me if I've ever killed anyone. No sir, I told him.
Then, he asked me if I've ever seen anyone die. Watched the life fade out of them before my very eyes. A very different question.
There was one day that we were in Tumbleweed with some of the group -- not long after you'd picked me up and first put me into debt. You forced me stick up the butcher, but the man wouldn't entertain it. So you took out your shotgun, and blew off his head.
I was standing close enough that his blood got all over me. I think I screamed. Probably cried too.
The gang had me step away to clean up, but I could hear you arguing with them from across town. She has to learn, you said.
I guess I always hoped if I found anything you wrote, it would reveal a softness to you that I always wanted to believe was there. For what its worth, I think you did care. But your journal has showed me you cared the way I always knew you cared -- like a barbed wire fence.
Something made you crooked when you were young. Convinced you that that was the only way to survive. Maybe I should be grateful that you wanted me to be crooked, because it means you wanted me to survive too. And yet, what sticks with me most is just a bitterness I can't let go of. She has to learn, you said.
I wore a lot of different clothes while I was on the run. New hats, new jackets. Kept my mask down even when it bothered me greatly to show my face to a world of strangers and dangers. I was more recognizable with one on than I was without.
After so long in disguise and on the run, I've been desperate to put my old hat and mask on. The same mask I once lamented feeling like I had to wear-- I've been desperate for its familiarity and comfort. For what minor but poignant control it gave me over my own life. My own face.
Mask up, mask down, it's all the same now. I don't recognize the girl in the mirror any more than I recognize the girl in the mask. I can finally go home without fear, but none of the houses feel like home the way they used to.
I could have been gentle, Reagen Lynch. I could have risen with the sun to collect eggs from the chickens and check on tomatoes in the garden. I could have spent evenings chasing the dog because she got into a mud puddle in the pig pen and is trying to track it into the house. I could have laid my head every night on soft pillows and dreamed the way normal people dream.
Ronnie thinks that things must all happen for a reason, even bad things. Why was it you I met that day, Reagen?
She needs to learn, you said.
"I won't apologize for everything I did to you," you wrote, knowing I was most likely to find it. "Maybe I went about things wrong but... Those were lessons needing learning."
"You probably hate me for it all. And you probably should. I won't blame you for that. But I hope it gave you the strength you need. The strength to defend yourself. Defend yourself from people like me. From people like Pike."
Maybe. Just maybe.
The path ahead of me diverges. I'm not sure how much longer I can walk before either I have to make a decision or a decision is made for me. Who is Filly Maddison?
Did you come into my life to bring me here, Ray? Did you teach me something I'm supposed to utilize? You used me from the second you met me. Law has used me too now. They'll try again given the option.
I'm the little bird, the runt, the milk-toothed dog. Edges and angles and soft spots that all bring pain to people who care about me regardless of which side of the badge they stand on.
And yet, ever the weak one.
The ones who care for me the most aren't using me. Not Ollie and Kelly and Alice. Not Whitman either. They each want what's best for me, but they can't make that choice.
The path diverges all the same. How tight is my window? How many breaths do I have before something has to give? How sure am I that I'll still be breathing once it does?
How many steps left, Reagen? Five, four, three,
two,
one...?
...I'm scared to count.
-Filly