Sadie

Valentine hadn't changed much.

Still smelled the same. Horse manure, cheap whiskey, and the kind of desperation that clung to a town like mud on boots. The main street was alive with its usual noise; cowboys arguing outside the saloon, a dog barking at nothing, the distant clang of the blacksmith working through the afternoon heat.

You almost missed her.

Almost.

She was leaned up against the post outside the general store, one boot propped back against the wood, arms folded across her chest like she owned the whole street. Her brown duster hung open at the front, the bandolier across her chest catching the last of the afternoon sun. Dirty blonde hair pulled back loose, a few strands escaping to frame her face beneath the brim of her hat. The scar above her right eye caught the light.

Sharp eyes found you before you'd even fully registered her.

A slow smile pulled at the corner of her mouth.

"Well I'll be damned." she said, pushing off the post.

Her voice carried that familiar rasp, low and unhurried, worn down smooth like river rock, with that drawl underneath it that she never could shake and never seemed to try.

"Didn't figure on runnin' into you out here."

She fell into step beside you naturally, like no time had passed at all, thumbs hooked into her belt. For a moment she just walked, squinting down the street with that look she got when she was weighing something up.

"You got plans?" she asked, cutting a sideways glance at you. "Anythin' real important?"

She didn't wait for an answer.

"'Cause I got wind of somethin'." Her voice dropped a touch, not conspiratorial exactly, just private. "Couple o' boys been runnin' a operation outta an old mill about four miles east. Stolen goods, stolen horses, got a wanted poster on the lead man worth about four hundred dollars." She said it plain, the way she said most things. "Alive. Which is the annoyin' part."

She stopped walking and turned to face you fully, and up close you could see the faint freckles across her nose and cheeks, the way her sharp eyes held something warmer than the rest of her expression let on.

"I ain't askin' for charity," she said, and there was an edge of pride in it that was pure Sadie. "I can handle it myself, always have. But two guns make it cleaner and I got no patience for messy." A beat. "Fifty-fifty split. Every cent."

The offer hung between you in the cooling afternoon air.

She held your gaze steady, jaw set, expression unreadable the way she'd learned to make it. But there was something else there too, something underneath the business of it all—a quiet kind of wanting that had nothing to do with the score.

She looked away first, which wasn't like her.

"Been a while," she said, quieter now, her eyes trailing down the street to nowhere in particular. "Since we worked a job together."

She said it simply. No elaboration. Sadie Adler had never been the type to dress a thing up in more words than it needed.

But the way she said it meant more than it sounded.

She glanced back at you from beneath the brim of her hat, and for just a fraction of a second—before the hardness settled back into place—her expression was almost soft. The kind of soft she didn't show many people. The kind that cost her something.

"Missed havin' somebody worth ridin' with," she admitted, low enough that it barely cleared the noise of the street.

Then, like she'd said too much, the corner of her mouth pulled back into something drier.

"Don't go gettin' a big head about it."

She turned back toward the street, squaring her shoulders, all business again—or close enough to it.

"So whaddya say?" The rasp was back, steady and sure. "You ridin' with me or not?"

Cold. Quiet. Dead.

Just how she remembered it.. Colter.

The kind of dead that had nothing to do with bodies and everything to do with the absence of warmth, of sound, of anything living that wanted to be there. Snow sat heavy on the rooftops of the few structures still standing, and the wind came off the mountain in long, bitter sheets that cut straight through clothing and settled deep.

Sadie hadn't said much on the ride up.

That alone was unusual enough to notice. She'd been the one to suggest it. Casually, offhand, the way she suggested most things she'd actually been thinking about for a long time. Just somewhere she wanted to see. No big reason. She'd shrugged when she said it, like it was nothing.

But she'd been quiet the whole way.

Now she stood at the threshold of the largest remaining structure, the old house at the far end, one hand resting on the doorframe. The hinges groaned when she pushed it open. Inside it was dark and smelled of pine rot and cold ash, but the walls still stood and the roof held, and out of the wind it was almost bearable.

"We oughta stay the night." she said, stepping inside without looking back at you. "Nearest town's hours out. Ain't worth the ride in this cold."

She moved through the space slowly.

Didn't touch anything. Just looked. At the walls, the floor, the empty hearth. Her expression stayed even, that familiar set to her jaw, eyes moving slow and careful. But she'd stopped in the center of the room.

And she stayed there a moment longer than made sense.

Then she got to work.

She found a few dry boards stacked against the far wall, half-rotten but enough. Broke them down without a word, stacked them right, struck a match. Crouched in front of the hearth and coaxed the flame until it caught properly, spreading pale orange light across the old floorboards.

She sat back on her heels and looked into it.

"I was different when I first come through here," she said quietly. "Weren't myself. Couldn't hardly put one foot in front of the other without it bein' an effort."

She turned one of her hands over slowly, looking at the calluses, the old scars across her knuckles.

"Don't recognize that woman much anymore."

She said it plainly. Like she'd needed to say it out loud to make it real. To close something.

The fire had grown enough now to breathe warmth into the immediate space around it, but the rest of the room sat heavy with cold. Outside the wind pressed against the walls in long, slow waves, and the snow had started again, you could hear it, faint and constant against the roof.

Sadie pulled her bedroll out and laid it down close to the hearth.

Then she paused.

Looked at your bedroll. Looked at hers. Looked at the cold pressing in from every corner of the room that the fire hadn't reached yet.

"Might as well put 'em together," she said, very casually, already reaching for yours before you'd answered. "Fire's only gonna do so much. Practical thing to do."

She arranged them with her back to you, her movements efficient and matter-of-fact, like it was purely a logistical decision and she dared anyone to suggest otherwise.

But she'd done it quickly.

And when she laid down and pulled the top blanket over both of you, settling onto her side facing the fire, she was closer than strictly necessary for warmth. Close enough that you could feel the tension in her slowly - very slowly, begin to ease.

The fire popped softly.

Colter groaned around you both in the wind.

After a long quiet she spoke again, her voice low and almost lost beneath the sound of the weather outside.

"Glad you came with me," she said. "Wouldn't have wanted to do this part alone.."

She didn't explain what she meant by this part.

She didn't need to.

Valentine's saloon was loud the way it always was on a Friday. Piano off-key, boots on floorboards, the clatter of glasses and the low roar of men who'd worked hard all week and were hell-bent on forgetting it.

You'd been there long enough that the noise had become something like wallpaper.

Sadie sat across from you at the small corner table she'd claimed the moment you walked in, the way she always claimed things. Without asking, without ceremony, like the world naturally arranged itself around her decisions. Her duster hung off the back of her chair. Her hat beside it. Dirty blonde hair loose around her shoulders, the way she only wore it when she wasn't expecting trouble.

She was on her third whiskey.

You knew because you'd been counting, and because with each one she'd leaned a little further across the table, her sharp eyes a little darker, that dry smile coming slower and meaning more. The top button of her shirt had come undone at some point in the evening. You weren't sure when. You'd noticed immediately.

She caught you looking.

And she didn't look away.

"You know what your problem is.." she said. Not a question. Her voice had gone rougher with the whiskey, that low southern rasp thickening at the edges, dragging across every word like gravel. "You sit there all quiet and you look at me like that--" she tilted her glass toward you slowly "--and you act like I don't notice."

She set the glass down.

"I notice."

She stood up without another word.

Unhurried. Deliberate. Like she'd already made her decision three whiskeys ago and was only now getting around to acting on it. She moved through the crowd without touching anyone, slipping toward the narrow hallway at the back of the building where the lamplight died and the noise of the saloon fell away to a muffled roar.

You followed.

The back hallway was dark and close, smelling of old timber and cold air seeping in beneath the door at the far end. She was already waiting in the shadow between the last doorframe and the wall—and the moment you came around the corner she moved, one hand snatching the front of your shirt and walking you backward until your shoulders met the wall hard enough to feel it.

She pressed herself against you without hesitation.

All of her. The full warm length of her body flush against yours, her chest to yours, her hips settling forward with a deliberateness that made her intentions plain as daylight. Her hand stayed twisted in your shirt. The other planted flat on the wall beside your head.

She looked at you for exactly one moment.

Then her mouth found your neck.

She didn't ease into it. Her lips parted against your skin and she tasted you. Open-mouthed, hungry, dragging slowly up the column of your throat before her teeth caught the soft flesh just beneath your jaw. Not hard. Just enough. A slow, rolling bite that she soothed immediately with her tongue, her breath spilling hot against the wet mark she'd left behind.

A low sound came from somewhere in her chest.

"God," she breathed against your skin, and it came out ragged, like she'd been keeping it caged all evening and it had finally gotten loose.

Her mouth moved again, back down your neck this time, slower, more thorough, like she was learning the geography of you. Her lips dragged. Her tongue traced. Her teeth grazed your pulse point and she paused there, feeling it against her mouth, and made another sound. Quieter, deeper, that had nothing polished about it.

Her hips pressed closer.

Her free hand left the wall and found your waist, sliding beneath the edge of your jacket, fingers spreading wide and warm against your side like she was staking a claim.

"Been sittin' across from you all evenin'," she murmured into your throat, her voice so low it barely cleared the distant noise of the piano, "watchin' you sit there all calm like you ain't been drivin' me crazy."

She bit down again, your jaw this time, softer, dragging her lips across it slowly before finding the spot just below your ear. She stayed there. Her breath came in slow and deliberate, like she was steadying herself, like the want of it had gotten bigger than she'd anticipated.

Her body was flush and warm and insistent against yours.

"I ain't a patient woman," she whispered directly into your ear, her lips brushing the shell of it, her voice dropping to something raw and private that no one else in the world was meant to hear. "Never have been."

Her teeth caught your earlobe.

Her hips rolled forward once. Slow. Pointed.

"So here's what's gonna happen," she breathed, pulling back just far enough to look at you. Eyes dark, lips parted, color high in her freckled cheeks, every careful wall she kept around herself nowhere to be found. "You're gonna stop bein' so damn composed--"

Fingers tightening at your waist.

"--and I'm gonna stop pretendin' I been thinkin' about anythin' else."

She searched your face in the dark.

Her chest rose and fell against yours.

"Well?" The rasp had gone rough as raw timber, barely a whisper. "Say somethin'."

Strawberry was quieter than most towns.

Prettier too, if you were the type to notice such things. Nestled up against the mountainside with its clean storefronts and window boxes and the kind of townsfolk who looked twice at the dirt on your boots. The kind of place that made you feel like you'd tracked something unpleasant in from outside just by existing in it.

Sadie didn't seem to notice or particularly care.

She came out of the sheriff's office counting the bounty money with the focused satisfaction of someone tallying up something they'd earned the hard way, which you both had. Three days of tracking through muddy creek beds and dense hillside forest, sleeping rough, eating worse - and the man had fought like the devil himself when you'd finally cornered him outside Owanjila. Sadie had a bruise forming along her left cheekbone to prove it.

She'd broken his nose in return, which had improved her mood considerably.

"Four-eighty.." she announced, splitting the bills without looking up, holding your share out to the side for you to take. "Not bad for three days of absolute misery."

She tucked her half into her breast pocket and finally looked up, taking in the main street of Strawberry with a slow, squinting survey. The sun was low and honeyed behind the mountain ridge. Lanterns were beginning to flicker on along the storefronts. Somewhere down the street something was cooking that smelled considerably better than anything either of you had eaten in days.

Her eyes settled on the hotel.

The Welcome Center sat at the end of the main drag, clean-fronted and respectable-looking, with warm light in every window.

She was quiet for a moment.

"You know," she started, in the particular tone she used when she'd already arrived at a conclusion and was working backward to justify it, "that ride back to camp is long."

She wasn't looking at you.

"And we're both filthy." She said it practically, like a doctor diagnosing something. "And that hotel's got baths."

A pause.

"Be a waste of money, gettin' two separate rooms." She said it with a completely straight face. "Practically irresponsible, when you think about it."

The irony of it hung in the evening air like smoke. Sadie Adler, who had once wrestled a bounty off a moving horse and slept on frozen ground without complaint, suddenly deeply concerned with fiscal responsibility.

She turned to look at you then, and before you could respond, she pressed on.

"And seein' as they'd have to heat the water twice--" she gestured vaguely, as if the logistics of it were genuinely troubling her, "--two baths seems like a terrible waste of perfectly good hot water."

There it was.

Said with the same straight-faced, matter-of-fact delivery she used to discuss trail routes and ammunition counts. The same tone she'd use to explain why it made more sense to take the mountain pass than the valley road.

Saving water.

Sadie Adler, renowned bounty hunter, wanted to share a bath in the name of water conservation.

She held your gaze for a beat - and there it was, just barely, the faintest color rising in her freckled cheeks that had nothing to do with the bruise and everything to do with the fact that she knew exactly how transparent she was being and was choosing to barrel through it anyway.

"Practical decision," she added quietly, her rasp dropping lower. "Both of 'em. That's all I'm sayin'."

She turned toward the hotel and started walking, boots quiet on the boardwalk, her duster swaying behind her.

"Well?" she called back, not turning around, though her chin tilted just slightly in that way she had - like she was listening harder than she looked. "You comin'? Or you gonna stand out there bein' all wasteful."

She pushed the hotel door open.

But she held it.

Waiting.

You smelled it before you saw it.

..Could Sadie actually be cooking something?

Something that had probably started out with good intentions and somewhere along the way taken a hard turn in the wrong direction. It wasn't quite burning. It wasn't quite cooked. It occupied some unfortunate territory in between that the nose couldn't easily categorize.

Sadie's camp was small and practical, the way everything about her was - a bedroll, a fire pit, her horse tied off in the trees, a few essentials hung and stored with the efficiency of someone who'd learned to live lean. She'd set up just outside of Flatneck Station, far enough from the road to have quiet, close enough to civilization that it didn't feel like the edge of the world.

She was crouched over the fire when you arrived, her back to you, stirring something in a battered pot with the focused concentration of someone defusing a explosive.

She hadn't heard you come in.

"Almost ready.." she said, without turning, having apparently sensed you anyway. "Just--" a pause, some vigorous stirring, "--just sit down somewhere."

You sat.

She ladled whatever it was into two tin bowls and straightened up, turned around, and crossed the camp to hand yours over with an expression that was trying very hard to be neutral and not entirely succeeding.

You looked down at the bowl.

It was brown. Thoroughly, committedly brown. There were things in it that might have once been vegetables, now softened past any recognizable form into something approaching surrender. The smell was - well. It was present.

Sadie settled cross-legged across the fire from you, bowl in hand, and took a spoon to it with the expression of someone bracing for impact.

A long silence followed.

"Pearson made it look easy." she said finally, staring into her bowl. "Used to make this.. stew thing. Back at camp." She turned her spoon over slowly. "Dutch always said it was the best thing about havin' him around." A pause. "I watched him make it twice."

She ate a spoonful.

Her jaw worked.

She said nothing, which said everything.

"I mighta got the order wrong," she admitted, her rasp going a little flat. "Some of the ingredients. The--" she gestured vaguely at the pot "--the proportions."

She set her bowl down on her knee and looked across the fire at you with an expression that was caught somewhere between defensive and genuinely, quietly mortified - and underneath both of those things, something more honest. She'd done this deliberately. Planned it. Had probably been thinking about it for longer than she'd ever admit.

Sadie Adler, who could track a man across three counties and bring him in breathing, had spent the better part of an afternoon attempting to cook you dinner.

"I wanted it to be good," she said, and the simplicity of it landed heavier than she probably intended, her voice dropping to something lower and more unguarded than usual. "Wanted to--" she stopped, jaw tightening slightly, like she was editing herself in real time "--figured you deserved a decent meal for once. Somethin' that weren't hardtack and jerky eaten off a saddlebag."

She picked her bowl back up. Took another spoon of it with grim determination.

"It ain't terrible," she said, chewing slowly.

A beat.

"It ain't good, neither." She pointed her spoon at you across the fire. "But it won't kill you. Probably."

The fire crackled between you. Somewhere in the trees her horse shifted and huffed.

Sadie was quiet for a moment, looking into the flames rather than at you, the firelight catching the bruise that had faded on her cheekbone, the loose strands of hair around her face, the way her expression had gone softer now that she thought you weren't studying it.

"Next time," she said, quieter, almost to herself, "I'm takin' you somewhere with an actual cook."

She glanced up.

And despite the bowl of catastrophic stew sitting between you, despite the smell still drifting from the pot, there was something in her eyes that was almost shy - warm and unguarded and very deliberate, the way she only looked when she'd stopped pretending she didn't care.

"Least the company's decent," she muttered, dropping her gaze back to her bowl.

The corner of her mouth pulled up just barely.

Just enough.

She didn't say much on the ride back.

That was how you knew she was angry.

Sadie talking was Sadie managing. Sadie quiet meant the thing she was feeling was too big to fit neatly into words yet, and she was waiting until it settled into something she could work with. She'd pulled you out of the Valentine's saloon by the back of your collar with the focused energy of someone removing a problem from a situation, gotten you onto your horse, and ridden the whole way back to camp without a single word beyond a sharp exhale through her nose that communicated volumes.

Now you were sitting on a crate outside her tent in the firelight, and she was crouched in front of you with her medical kit open on the ground beside her, and the silence had shifted from angry to something more concentrated.

She took your chin in her hand first - tilted your face toward the light without asking, her thumb pressing gently below the cut above your eyebrow to get a better look. Her jaw was set. Her eyes were sharp and clinical.

"Three of 'em.." she said flatly, threading the needle with the patience of someone who'd done it a hundred times. "You picked a fight with three men."

She didn't wait for an explanation.

"Hold still."

The first stitches were efficient. Practiced. Her hands were steady in the way that only came from having done difficult things often enough that the hands learned to work independently of whatever the rest of you was feeling. She tied it off clean, cut the thread, moved down without ceremony to the gash along your jaw.

Cleaned it. Dressed it.

Her fingers were careful there - more careful than strictly necessary, tracing the line of it slowly before she pressed the cloth to it, her eyes tracking the damage with an expression that had started to lose some of its hard edge and was becoming something quieter underneath.

"This one's gonna bruise," she murmured, more to herself than to you.

She moved to your split knuckles next, taking your hand into both of hers and working the cloth across them with a thoroughness that made you think she was glad to have something to focus on. She cleaned each one. pressed the bandage flat.

And then she didn't let go of your hand.

Not immediately.

Her thumb moved - just once, slow - across the back of it. Feeling the knuckles, the tendons beneath the skin. She caught herself and reached for the kit instead, businesslike.

Your shirt came next.

"Off," she said, already reaching for the hem without looking at you, "need to see if anythin's cracked."

She pressed two fingers to your ribs methodically, working across them, watching your face for the wince that would tell her what she needed to know. Professional. Thorough.

But her hands slowed somewhere around your side.

She wasn't pressing anymore. The tips of her fingers were moving in something closer to a trace—following the line of muscle beneath your skin with a light, unhurried touch that had nothing clinical about it. Up across your ribs. Along the plane of your stomach.

She wasn't looking at your injuries. She was looking at her own hand.

Like she was watching it do something she hadn't entirely authorized.

She drew it back. Cleared her throat.

"Breathe in," she said, her voice coming out a shade rougher than before.

You did.

She pressed her fingers back to your ribs - properly this time, focused. But her other hand had come to rest flat against your shoulder, steadying you, and it stayed there longer than steadying required. Warm and still against your skin.

"Nothin's broke," she said quietly. "You got lucky."

She sat back on her heels and looked up at you, and the firelight caught her fully - the loose strands of hair around her face, the fading bruise at her cheekbone, the way her sharp eyes had gone soft at the edges in a way she hadn't gotten around to hiding yet.

Her hand was still on your shoulder. She hadn't moved it.

"You do somethin' stupid like that again," she said, her rasp low and very deliberate, "I'll leave you to patch yourself up."

She said it with the particular firmness of someone who knew it wasn't remotely true.

Her hand finally dropped from your shoulder - slowly, her fingers trailing just slightly before they fell. She busied herself closing the kit.

"Sit there a minute." she muttered, not looking at you. "Make sure you ain't gonna keel over before I let you sleep."

She settled beside you on the crate rather than across from you. Close enough that her arm pressed warm against yours.

She didn't move away.

The Heartlands at night were something else entirely.

During the day it was just land - wide and windswept and amber, the kind of country that made you feel small in a way that was more honest than uncomfortable. But after dark it transformed into something quieter and stranger and harder to name. The grass moved in slow, silver waves. The distant outline of Emerald Ranch sat black against the horizon, lamplight in its windows tiny as fireflies from this far out. The wind had dropped to almost nothing.

And above it all.. the sky.

It pressed down vast and impossible, the kind of sky that cities would never know, thick with stars from one edge of the world to the other. Not scattered - crowded, layered, spilling across the dark in ribbons and clusters and the long pale smear of the galaxy running corner to corner like something spilled and left to dry. Orion stood broad-shouldered above the western ridge. The Dipper hung low and familiar to the north. Somewhere between them, a shooting star traced a clean white line and was gone before you'd fully registered it.

Sadie was lying on her back in the grass with her arms folded beneath her head, looking up at all of it.

She'd been quiet for a while - the comfortable kind, the kind she only allowed herself around very few people. Her hat was beside her in the grass. Her boots already off, her duster spread beneath her like a blanket. The firelight from the small camp you'd made caught the line of her jaw, the curve of her throat, the freckles across her nose and cheeks.

She looked unhurried in a way she rarely did.

Looked almost at peace.

Then she spoke.

"You see that one?" Her rasp was low and easy, one hand lifting to point a lazy finger skyward. "Right there. Them three stars in a line." A pause. "Orion. Jake showed me that one." She said it plainly, without grief, just the clean fact of a memory she'd made her peace with. "Said hunters oughta know their sky."

She dropped her hand back beneath her head.

Silence settled again, warm and easy.

Then something shifted in it.

She turned her head and looked at you - and the ease in her expression hadn't gone, but it had changed quality. Become more deliberate. Her pale eyes moved over you with the same slow, unhurried focus she'd been giving the stars, and her mouth curved at one corner in a way that had nothing lazy about it underneath.

She sat up.

Her hands went to the buttons of her shirt without ceremony—not rushed, not performing, just decided—working them open one by one from the collar down with the same practical efficiency she applied to everything, shrugging it off her shoulders and letting it fall into the grass behind her. The rest followed. Quietly. Deliberately. Until there was nothing between her and the night air and the distant starlight but herself, and she didn't flinch from it.

She lay back.

And looked at you.

"You've been good to me.." she said, her voice dropping to something lower and more private, the rasp of it thickening in the quiet. "Real good." Her eyes stayed on yours. "Ride after ride. Job after job. Never once complainin'."

She let that sit a moment.

"A woman oughta reward that kind of dedication," she murmured. "don't you think?"

Her chin tilted - not quite a command, but close enough to one that the distinction barely mattered.

"Start below, then, work your way up."

She said it the way she said most things she'd already decided - quiet, direct, without apology. Her eyes never leaving yours.

"Take your time." The drawl had gone thick and slow as warm honey. "I ain't goin' nowhere."

Her hands settled at her sides in the grass, open and unhurried. Above her, the galaxy stretched its full impossible width across the dark, and the wind moved through the Heartlands in one long, slow breath, and the nearest living soul was miles off across the plain.

Just the stars. Just the dark. Just her watching you with those sharp pale eyes gone soft at the edges.

"Well.." she said, barely above a whisper.

Her chin lifted a fraction.

"Go on, then."