Chapter Text
Not far from the Cumberland Gap, Jesse wakes.
It’s the sway of the train that rattles him back to alertness. Back to the faint smell of creosote and the wide, black expanse of starry sky that passes him by from a thousand miles away. Jesse feels small under it. All the smaller for the huffing, desperate churning of the old train’s engine.
He’d hitched a ride a few hours earlier, slipping into the back of the old freighter carriage and bedding down for a nap. He’d been headed West anyway, and there are worse places to hang one’s hat for a few hours that an empty lumber car heading into Kentucky under cover of night.
An old church passes him by. Or he passes it by. There’s a worse way to spend a night.
Jesse’d know. He’s tried it once or twice.
Not had much choice since the mess with Zurich. Even before the news broke, and they broadcast the pictures of the only solid pieces of headquarters that remained, Jesse’s had a target on his back. Only, now it’s fair game.
He wonders, as the last of the church graveyard disappears, if maybe the night’s he’s spent hiding in old churches and sleeping behind pews has done him some good. If he’s got some holy friend somewhere.
Doubtful, of course. There’s been just as many close calls. Jesse has just as many awkward silences with God. But it’s a nice thought, all the same.
Still, the train is safe and dry. He’s covering more ground this way than he has in a while. By now, they should be way past Virginia. They’ll hug the stateline for a few more hours. By the time they get to Franklin, it’ll be light. Then he can make his own way to the safehouse at Guthrie.
That’s what the note had said, anyway.
Jesse had found it in the Roanoke safehouse, two weeks back. One of the old ones they used to frequent in the Blackwatch days. He’d never used it himself, before, but when he’d gotten inside, it was clear somebody had. And recently. Censored papers were all over what little floorspace there was. The mattress had a speck of blood on one side, too copper to be so old.
And in the dust on the bolted metal desk of the room somebody had taken the time to write something.
omrv tg qa ibvpekl
Another remnant of the blackwatch days: a vigenere cipher. The code was clearly meant for somebody who knew how to read it, and how to destroy the evidence of it --and Jesse does that, after drawing out a double-entry grid to decode it.
They only ever used to use 5-letter words. He tried the obvious ones, first: limit, omaha, yukon . The word he was looking for was cinch .
The dust said ‘ meet me in Guthrie ’.
So that’s where Jesse’s headed.
He’s got no indication of who he’s hoping to meet there. He’s hoping an old agent. Somebody with their ear to the ground, so he knows where’s safe. A face to call home, even just for a bit, would be nice. Jesse doesn’t think he’s even spoken to another human being in a week, maybe more. He’s starting to lose the directions for how to go up. A friendly face would sort him out right.
It’s equally likely it could be a trap. Jesse’s thought about it plenty, and he thinks about it again as he feels over the weight of this gun at his hip. He’ll cross that bridge when he comes to it. But Guthrie’s as good a direction as any.
Jesse’s not even sure it matters where he roams anymore. Nowhere is any safer than anywhere else. Back East, they say it’s safer out West, and out West say it’s safer back East. If he could just sit still for a minute, he might be able to figure it out.
For now, though, Jesse just stares out of the open carriage door and watches the sky in it’s infinite stillness. How it extends far beyond where his eyes can see. How it wraps the world up, endless and blue, holding onto stars as salient as veerey lights. Jesse used to look up at it, sometimes, no matter where he was stationed, and dream of the day he’d have some terra firma of his own to watch it from.
He remembers one night most of all. Stationed down in Mexico, standing outside in the middle of the night because the heat was so intense. Mexico: wonderful place for raising horses. He always thought, one day, he’d settle down in the shadow of some great valley in his own place, and look at the same stars, older, wiser, and free.
But there’s no valley, here. No horses. No dusky, summer heat. And they must be a million miles from Mexico, too.
Jesse doesn’t have anything he’d wanted.
But he’s got Guthrie.
He’s got Guthrie, so he pulls his hat over his eyes and lets himself drowse, safe in the knowledge of his destination. It isn’t much, but it’s enough.
It’s enough for now.