That is, he's a God-fearing man, to an extent. Knows quite a bit about sin, about vices, about how many of those Ten Commandments he's broken, time and time again. He knows there's a Heaven, that there's a Hell, and that he's most certainly destined for one of those – three guesses as to which. And that one day, when the right bullet finds him, he'll take that plunge.
Turns out, it's not one bullet but a half dozen that do him in. But at least he got to blow something up.
Death had been— terrifying. Painful. About the worst thing he had ever experienced, but— he wasn't alone. He had Emma holding his hand, shepherding him through to the other side, and that was a blessing. That was a miracle in itself, that a miserable bastard like him would warrant the attention of a kind woman like Emma Cullen.
The angel ushering warriors to their afterlife. Valkyries, he remembers. They were called Valkyries.
But remembering is— hard. He feels a flash of it, every now and again, like his mind focuses long enough that he can think, that he's actually Josh Faraday, and then he's gone. Like he's a droplet on a window pane, collecting bits of himself as he's pulled downward, splitting when he hits some imperfection. It's— it's hard. It's difficult.
Then sometimes, it's not. Sometimes, there's a flash, and he sees a sun-drenched street, sees men and women alike, carrying tools and wood. Bandaged men, the freshly wounded, hobbling around the porches of buildings and doing their best to pitch in, hammering planks to walls, painting over scorch marks with pristine white paint. Sees children laughing and playing and suffering the lectures of their school-ma'am. Sees a familiar flash of red hair. He wonders if she smiles, these days, if she—
And then he's gone.
It's probably three months later before he's aware again, that he's Faraday again, and he finds himself standing against the wall of a familiar saloon, the mood somber but so much lighter than he had ever seen it before. He spots a fresh bottle of gin sitting on a table and feels a peculiar sort of longing, like he hasn't had anything to drink in ages, though he feels no thirst. A woman with a pitcher passes directly in front of him, and he asks, "How much for a drink?"
She ignores him completely, and before he can complain, he scatters.
It happens faster and faster, after that; instead of three months, it's two months later, appearing in an empty field, where men and horses and a wagon stood. Then one month later, near a dead tree, where he remembers talking about nightmares and reaching a silly agreement about names, of all things. Then two weeks, sitting on one of the chairs on the saloon's porch – completely disregarded, though he speaks to the other patrons, louder and louder and louder, but he disappears just as he's about to start hollering. Then one, standing in front of the church and thinking, "What the hell is happening?" The preacher's steps crunch in the gravel behind him, and he turns, reaches out to grab hold of the man, except—
Faraday's hand passes through him, and the preacher continues forward, none the wiser.
And he's gone once again.
A few days later, and he finds himself up the path from Emma Cullen's house at around sundown, sitting in the dirt with his face buried in his hands, because— he doesn't know what this is. He doesn't know what he is. It feels like some terrible dream, and if he just waits, maybe he'll finally wake up from it. ]
[ it's almost surreal how easily rose creek falls back into its own sense of normalcy. they won their freedom from bogue, dumped his body in an unmarked, unmourned grave (even if that's more grace than he deserved), and moved on. oppositely, the men who gave their lives have been properly buried, added to the exponentially larger cemetery of the town — while the four of the seven whose bodies were laid to rest were given a well-honored place on the hillside, their names carved into wooden crosses in a gesture of reverence.
they wouldn't be forgotten — not by rose creek, and certainly not by emma.
she still goes to faraday's grave almost every sunday after church, leaves all four a handful of flowers and dusts off the markers to keep them clean. it's the least she can do, she rationalizes, because while they deserve so much more, it's everything she can offer.
she so often and so vividly relives that day, the fight, and her last moments with faraday, usually at night when she's trying to fall asleep, because she truly has traded her old ghosts for new ones. matthew— matthew has seen justice, and she no longer feels haunted by his memory, even if occasionally she'll wake, reaching for the empty half of her too-big bed. but despite that, she doesn't feel plagued the way she had, because she's had her righteousness and she's had her revenge.
and then there's faraday. joshua. the final minutes together when he'd given her his name and used her own while he slowly bled out in the grass— she sees that often in her dreams. she knows that she can't feel responsible for his death, because it's not like she's failed him, that she could have truly prevented it, but he had been there in rose creek because of her and her quest for justice.
she'd gotten it, certainly, but at quite a price.
sometimes, she thinks she catches glimpses of him outside of her dreams. it's quick, brief, and always not-quite-there, but there's still a short moment that her heart leaps in excitement — and then she turns to look, and quickly realizes that it must be her overactive imagination.
faraday is gone, after all. he died right in front of her, she helped put him in the ground, and she knows there's no coming back from this.
life goes on, like it has to, like it always will, but she still wishes things could have gone differently.
it's been nearly half a year since rose creek took on bogue, nearly half a year of living with her new ghosts, and in the falling evening light, emma comes home to find a strange figure sitting on the ground near her house. she pauses mid-step, frowning as she pulls a small shawl tighter around her shoulders. she can't see his face, obscured as it is by his hands, but there's something familiar about him in the dying light. ]
[ He waits, and he waits, and he waits, for something to happen, for some spark of inspiration that would make this whole ordeal finally make sense. Surely there must be some reason for it. Maybe it is a dream, maybe he just needs to wait for a sign, or maybe he just needs to wait for consciousness to retake him, to put this whole nightmare behind him.
(Because that’s what this must be. A nightmare. Gregarious and talkative bastard that he is, he can imagine no greater hell than one where he is completely and utterly ignored.)
So he waits. The sunlight wanes. A quiet breeze sets in, brushing through the tall grass and the tree leaves. And he waits.
And then there are footsteps approaching, the soft sound of boots on dirt.
Faraday is slow to react – because he recognizes the voice. Emma. It would figure, really, that the next one to ignore him would be the woman who helped to ease his final moments, who did him the kindness of reminding him he wasn’t alone – only now he is, isn’t he? Unseen and unheard and unfelt. Why the hell not, right? Just heap insult onto the injury. Kick a man while he’s down. Wasn’t as though he was already riddled with holes and nearly blown to pieces. His hands reluctantly drop to his lap, and he lifts his head – not to look at her, but to glance around, see who she’s talking to.
The examination of his surroundings reminds him he’s the only soul around, save for Emma, and his brow wrinkles with a frown.
It’s another second before he finally turns his face up to her, confusion clear in the set of his mouth, the crease between his eyebrows. Her eyes are on him, not staring through him, and he feels that first little inkling of hope. ]
… Miss Emma? [ Quietly. Oh, so tentatively. He slowly – slowly, slowly – half-rises from where he sits. ] Can you— Please tell me you can see me.
[ And because life, such as it is, is a cruel mistress, he disappears.
Not for long, though. It’s a bright Sunday afternoon when he returns, standing on a hill and staring down at his own grave. The corner of his mouth twitches up in a dark, rueful smile as he tries to think of who pinned the card on his marker. ]
[ the moment faraday lifts his head to look at her, emma stops cold; her expression goes slack, eyes widening impossibly as she stumbles backwards a step. this goes far and beyond her nightmares or the flickers of her imagination, because here he is, directly in front of her, while she's wide awake. she presses trembling fingers to her lips as he speaks, and she tells herself she must be going insane; ghosts don't exist, ghosts don't talk to the living, and she knows, knows there's no way he could truly be here.
faraday is as dead as he could possibly get, but— but he's talking to her, and before she can even think to manage a response...
...he disappears.
the ground where he sat looks wholly undisturbed, affected only by the soft light of the evening sun, and there's just—nothing. nothing at all.
emma is left shaking and confused, quickly walking past the spot where moments ago he'd said her name, and she barricades herself in her home for the rest of the night.
she doesn't know if she should look for him again or pretend that it had never happened, but when she leaves again the next day, everything seems exactly as it was, nothing different, nothing strange.
...maybe she is going insane.
deciding to pretend that it was just exhaustion setting in, that it was a brief moment of grief combined with a long day, she tries not to think about the encounter (as much as she can).
however, despite all of this, she still goes to the graves every sunday.
she brings flowers again as she climbs the grassy hill. the breeze gently whips her hair across her face, obscuring her view of the markers until she reaches the top, until she can push the brilliant red locks from her face to see a figure already standing by the cross.
again, she doesn't see his face, not until she steps closer, gets a better look and then— no.
not again.
she drops the flowers without realizing it, and she can't even move for a moment. ]
[ There are a lot more graves in the churchyard than he remembers.
He supposes it follows, really, considering how many casualties were incurred that blood-drenched day. Seems like an awful lot more burial mounds than there should be, though – and it occurs to him that Bogue’s men must have been interred alongside the rest of the town’s lost. Their graves were marked by simple crosses, left mostly forgotten toward the back. Six months and some bits is enough time for nature to stake a claim, and weeds began to gather around their markers.
Still, it was decent of Rose Creek to have buried them along with their dead; when the dust settled, it must have been one hell of a shouting match to allow those men even that much of a courtesy. He wonders if one of those plots is Bogue, left to rot in the dirt, or if Rose Creek had left his body to a different fate.
(If it were up to Faraday, Bogue would have been left to the elements, tossed somewhere for the wildlife to pick at. It’s only half of what he had coming for him, for taking away the lives of good men. But then again, very few people leave things up Faraday – or at least they never had when he still had breath – and for good reason.)
Faraday leans against the wrought iron fence wrapped around the graveyard, one foot kicked up on the lower rail. Some names he recognizes – men with whom he briefly spoke in that week leading up to his death (and theirs, too, he supposes) – and he watches as somber women and children tend to graves. Faraday offers something like a quick prayer for them. (Is it too peculiar for a ghost to pray for the dead?) He spies the name “Matthew Cullen” and wonders what sort of man he was to inspire a town to go to war.
It’s been a few weeks now, since he spoke with Emma beside his own grave, and he’s been present in some form for nearly every one of those days, drifting around her. (Haunting her, more accurately, but his use of the term earns him a glare every time.) His bouts of existence are getting longer, now, almost like he’s getting his strength back. Like he’s practicing, getting accustomed to a new skill. No one sees him, still, no one hears him, no matter how much of a ruckus he tries to make, save for Emma.
It’s not perfect, whatever this is. It’s not ideal. But few things ever are, and he makes do.
He learns a few things, during that time. Like how he can walk through walls and doors and people, or how he can be some place in the blink of an eye. Sometimes, he can let himself drift – invisible even to Emma’s eyes, but still aware, in a way, of his chosen surroundings and of time passing. He also learns that trying to go too far out of Rose Creek sends something buzzing through him, makes him feel a tug in his gut, and the discomfort only goes away when he wanders back toward the town. Tethered to something, though he can’t tell what.
Faraday pushes away from the fence, turns a little to look in the direction of the hill, where Goody, Billy, and Jack lie. (His own body, too, though he tries not to think too hard on it.) He offers them a brief nod – almost like a fond sort of greeting. After that, he disappears—
— and reappears in Emma Cullen’s kitchen. He grins. ]
[ emma is struck by how oddly easy it's been to adjust to having faraday around so regularly. it isn't constant, but since that sunday on the hill, she's seen him for some amount of time every day. surprising, is what it is, but also...less lonely. emma isn't necessarily reclusive, by any means, and she still interacts with the people of rose creek just fine, but, well, she otherwise lives by herself, widowed as she is — though she's made it perfectly clear to those that worry after her that she's more than capable of providing for her own needs. she isn't helpless, by any means, and never ought to be considered such.
she carries on, is what she does.
but she's not above admitting that the silence is often heavy and more than she's used to. in those times, she's come to be grateful for faraday's company and the lightness of his humor; it fills her empty hours more than anything else has, though she really doesn't much care for calling what he does "haunting." she feels like that goes on to imply some sort of malicious intent, and truly, the worst he's done is move something while she's just about to reach for it.
he's a pain, but he's not a ghoul of any kind, that's for sure.
the downside to having him around, trailing after her so often, is that she can't acknowledge him when she's around other people. she has to treat his presence with the most impassable face she can manage. she can't look like she's conversing with plain air, after all, so she's always stuck waiting until they're alone again.
however, there's also an unpredictability to his appearances. he comes and goes so frequently that emma can never figure when he'll be back again, and it's usually a surprise when he is.
like now, for instance.
she starts at the sound of his voice, in the otherwise silent house, and it's jarring enough that she yelps in the most undiginified way — and, inconvenience of inconveniences, but she just so happened to be preparing dinner, and her hand slips on the vegetables she'd been cutting, leaving a (fortunately shallow) slice on her finger.
turning to glare at him, she reaches for a nearby rag, pressing it to her hand. ]
[ That noise she made makes him grin all the more widely – but his amusement is short lived when he hears the clatter of her knife on the cutting board, sees the little flicker of red on her hand before she covers it with the rag. The smile leaves his face in almost an instant, replaced with concern, and he starts forward. ]
Sorry, sorry— I didn’t mean—
[ Faraday had always been the type of man to make do with what he’s given. Life wasn’t fair, but he grew to accept that, learned to take it all on the chin and keep on grinning. Tended to piss off a lot of people when he didn’t simply stay down, but it was better than the alternative – cowering in some corner and withering away.
Apparently death couldn’t keep him down, either – at least, not very well – and he makes do with this, too. Haunts Emma Cullen (because that’s what it rightly is, no matter how she glares, considering the state of him), pulls little jokes in town when he follows her there, offers a running commentary on the other people she passes on the wooden walkways—
(“I believe that man has goose down glued all over his chin.” “Oof, how long’s that woman’s face been like that? You think she smelled some curdled milk and it got stuck?” “When’s the last time you think he’s seen his feet, with that paunch?” “Someone should tell that man he ought to have his wife braid his mole hair to keep it outta the way.”)
—knowing perfectly well that Emma wouldn’t be able to respond immediately. Couldn’t smack him for his rudeness after the fact, either.
And sometimes he gets a cheap laugh from startling her, too, but he never means to do any real harm. He looks properly contrite, shoulders hunching a little. Not unlike a child caught stealing sweets, really. ]
[ emma swears there was a point in her life where she slept soundly; her head would hit the pillow, and she'd be out faster than she could count her first sheep. part of it, she thinks, was thanks to matthew, with her husband curled beside her, a warm, comfortable body to soothe her after a long day...it had been sublime, the most restful evenings she could have imagined.
easy, effortless, and plagued only by the simplest of nightmares.
after matthew's death, however, she truly began to grasp what it meant to have real nightmares — the kind that make you kick and cry out in your sleep, the sorts that have you waking in cold, fearful sweat, reaching into the dark for— nothing. it's the nightmares that feel so real she can practically taste the gunpowder in the air, but she knows — knows, she swears — that it's all a dream.
but lord help her, if it doesn't feel so achingly real some nights.
she'd thought the nightmares might get better once bogue was driven out of rose creek. she'd given matthew's memory the justice he deserved, but if anything, the terrors were worse — because this time, instead of seeing matthew's stricken face, she just sees all of the men into whom she'd so diligently sunk lead during that battle.
she'd never killed a man before that day, never shot one dead before he'd even had a chance to scream, never watched one collapse like a puppet with all his strings cut. but oh, that day, she'd seen it all: mountains of death, on their side and hers, and when she wasn't running so intensely on instinct and rage, it had all just hit her — the realization that there were men dead by her hand.
not for a moment does she regret it (which she thinks makes her feel worse), because it had been war; it was either kill or be killed, and emma had fallen squarely on the side of making it the hell out alive, and she had — but at a heavy price. part of her wonders how many of those men had families, children maybe, and how many little ones would grow up never seeing their daddy again. that aches. she feels smatterings of guilt over those possibilities, even if she knows she did the right thing, but in her dreams, she's still haunted by their faces and their screams.
it's bogue, however, over whom she feels no remorse. it's still a shock to her system to replay the moment when her bullet hit him square in the chest, when she'd watched him go limp in sam's arms, just at the last, precarious second — because she knows what could have easily happened if she hadn't been there.
it was sam's life for bogue's, and she has no qualms with that.
(bogue got what he deserved, after all.)
but she still sees that moment, over and over again, intermingled with the other lives she'd snuffed out in the fight — and then, occasionally, her mind revists not deaths for which she'd been responsible, but ones that had shaken her most deeply.
matthew.
and faraday.
matthew she sees taking the bullet, collapsing in a heap and gasping his final breath in her arms, and it's enough to make her tremble in her sleep, to have her waking with a pillow wet from tears — but for that, she has closure. matthew is put to rest, righteousness buried with him, as it should be.
faraday...well. it's awful different when she can simply wake from a fitful sleep and see his smiling face, always ready with a quick word to take her mind off of a terrible nightmare. when she dreams about him, however, she's reliving those last moments out in the field, faraday's bloody fingers in her own as he tries to make a few, final wisecracks — even while she can see the fear and pain in his eyes. she sees his scarlet smile and the blood she later realized she knelt in, sees him wince and gasp, grip her hand, until that last, slow moment when he was finally limp beside her.
at least, that day, she'd waited until the light had gone from his eyes before she shed a real tear.
(she hadn't wanted to let him see it, not in his final seconds.)
but god, here he is again, haunting her daily life and causing all sorts of mischeif, and—
—it's good.
she doesn't understand why, doesn't know how she's supposed to deal with the reality of his unearthly existence, but having faraday there brings light to her life in a way she didn't know was possible again.
she's grateful for that, but at the end of the day, it still doesn't drive out her nightmares. maybe a part of her carries an additional level of guilt that she'd found herself happy again; men are dead — matthew is dead — but she still smiles and lives her life and even finds joy in the company of another man (a dead man, more precisely, but a man nonetheless, her newest friend). it's the guilt, she reckons, that makes the nightmares so much worse, and on the truly bad nights, like tonight, she tosses and turns and occasionally just— cries out, loud as anything as her fingers grip the sheets and her breathing comes in unsteady gasps.
she feels trapped, on the worst nights, because she just can't shake herself free of the dreams. ]
[ A man with no need to sleep suffers no nightmares.
It’s a blessing, maybe. It’s one of the few good things to come out of this – that Faraday no longer sleeps and no longer dreams of blood and death. And logically speaking, it makes sense – he can’t be haunted by his old ghosts if he is one, himself.
So when the rest of the world sleeps, Faraday drifts. Wanders through the town, sometimes, taking a look at the differences all of these months have made, marks out the spots he remembers. There, where he sat with some of the town’s children, showing them magic trick after magic trick until work called him back. There, where he blew up a shed. There, where Vasquez had killed one of Bogue’s men in Faraday’s name – the man who had shot him, who had killed him slowly.
Sometimes, he blinks out of existence, goes wherever it is he goes to rest – like he’s in a separate room watching the world from a window. Aware, but not present. Like falling into a daze and waiting to be roused.
And other times, he waits around, sits in Emma’s kitchen with a deck of cards with the light of the moon to accompany him. Practice, in a way. Strengthening. Shuffling the deck with a quiet focus, like he’s learning the skill all over again – because he is. In life, manipulating the cards came as easy as breathing, but it had taken years of practice to get there. And now, slightly removed from existence as he is, it takes concentration to grasp the cards, to cut and twist the deck. Sometimes, when he loses focus, it becomes a game of fifty-two card pick up, and he grunts in frustration as he kneels down to fix his mess.
A cry pierces the silence of the house, and the cards fall through his fingers – a small, contained mess on the kitchen table. And normally Faraday would throw his hands up, frustrated to the point of banging his head against a wall, except he’s no longer there.
He appears in Emma’s room with hardly a thought. ]
Emma. Hey, Emma—
[ He steps forward, reaches out a hand to wake her – remembers what he is, and flinches back. She described it to him once, how it felt to pass through him. Like getting doused in ice water. Like feeling something crawl up your spine.
That… probably won’t help.
It’s a bad one tonight, he thinks helplessly, hovering beside her as she tosses and turns. It’s nights like these that he hates what he is, because he can’t simply just touch her, put a hand on her shoulder and end the dream with a gentle shake. He winces when she cries out again, moves forward to sit on the edge of the bed.
[ he's on the periphery of her consciousness, just barely there. his voice cuts through the fog of gut-wrenching memories, and with the way he says her name, she starts to pull away from the flash of images, the smell of smoke, and the cracks of rifles.
matthew's body melts away before her eyes, and the shocked faces of slain men follow suit, leaving her to tug towards reality, towards the sound of faraday's words.
her name. she picks out her name.
it's just a dream.
is it?
it must be.
matthew died months ago, she killed these men months ago, and faraday...
...faraday is here somehow.
her eyes suddenly snap open, momentarily unseeing until she registers faraday sitting on the bed, and she's so startled that she just bolts upright, scrambles back on the bed as she stares at faraday, like she's seen a ghost.
and, well.
she has. in her dreams, she'd been watching him die all over again, but here he was, looking at her with concern. when her mind starts to catch up, she realizes that he saw whatever must have been happening while she was trapped in the throes of her nightmares.
oh, hell. ]
...Joshua.
[ she exhales slowly, shakily, before pressing her hands to her face, pushing away her wild, tangled mess of red hair. she hadn't braided it when she went to sleep, and with how she'd been tossing and turning, it had done a number on her hair. ]
I'm—
[ she stops, shaking her head. ]
Was I...m-makin' some kind of ruckus?
[ dear god, she hopes not (but realistically, she knows there can't have been another reason for him to look so worried or be here waking her). ]
[ after their blowout, emma legitimately thought faraday was gone for good — or as much as he could be, tied to the town as he was. but she knows he can make himself as visible as he likes, and if he didn't want her to see him, she wouldn't. it's what she expects, really, to (at the most) catch a glimpse of him before he's gone again, to see him out of the corner of her eye but never that warm, easy smile. never that roguish grin so often followed by an absurd joke or a tall tale. never faraday and that presence he'd brought around to brighten up her home.
she thinks he meant what he said, and she finds that loss sits in the pit of her stomach heavy as his death had done.
it's like he's died all over again, she realizes, and that aches. she can't put it into words, or describe why it hurts so terribly, but emma is hardly herself for days after, enough so that others in town notice. she brushes off their concern with a small smile, assures them that it's nothing more than a few restless nights keeping her up. (teddy is especially worried about her, expresses concern that she's out at that house all alone and that sure can't be good for a lady like herself.
she tells him exactly the same: that she's completely fine.)
it's not until things start to...move that she realizes faraday is actually there.
coffee already ready and waiting. a properly stoked fire when she knows she hasn't gone to touch it herself. newly chopped firewood to keep the house warm (because the winter chill has truly set in now, uncomfortable as it happens to be). she's utterly confused by the gestures at first, because while she knows it means faraday is there, she hasn't seen him, hasn't said a word to him, hasn't had the opportunity to so much as thank him.
she tries one night, to at least show her gratitude for the appearance of a blanket while she sat sleepily in a chair. she hadn't quite drifted, but she'd been nodding off, shivering a bit, and then that throw had been settled over her, the weight enough to make her open her eyes.
no one in the room; not a single whisper of faraday, but the gesture was there all the same.
"Faraday?"
when she hadn't gotten an answer, she just sighed and curled up with the blanket again, mumbling a quiet, "thank you," as she drifted.
the worst part is that she feels she owes him a real apology for their last interaction. the things she'd said had been far from kind, even pushing towards unfair, and she realizes after that making him feel so shamed and angry wasn't her intention at all. in fact, the entire thing had gotten so out of hand that she's embarrassed by how quick and cruel her temper had proved to be. even if he had caused a scene in town, he hadn't deserved that level of treatment, and she shouldn't have let him rile her up.
and she sure shouldn't have slapped him.
that still gives her pause when she thinks on it. she can still remember the feel of his skin under her palm, because she had hit him, truly had, and he'd felt just as much a person as the next man. he'd felt near alive, though she knew that was impossible. couldn't be reality.
not with his body six feet under in that pine box.
but all the same, she knows that she'd touched him, and if he's that solid, she nearly wonders if others in the town had bumped into him, if they had started to see him? what manner had his existence taken on that he was able to be so...human? spectre that he is, dead and gone for all intents and purposes, she didn't think it possible, that she'd always pass through him for that icy brush with death, but that had been far from the feel of a ghost.
they need to talk, she finally decides, and she wants to know if that physical aspect has remained or if he's just as noncorporeal as he'd been before (and she also wants to...try to apologize for the lines she crossed; "try" being the operative word). she's not sure how to get him to show up, given how much he's been avoiding her, but she does notice that the playing cards move every day, always in a new space, and well, it wouldn't surprise her to know he's still practicing his tricks.
one evening, after the sun's properly set, emma finds the cards on her table. pursing her lips, she scoops up the deck, carrying them over to her dying fire, and holds them straight out over the embers. ]
Joshua Faraday, you have to the count of five, and then I'm droppin' these right into the hearth.
This is not a surprising fact. He is routinely an ass – had been in life, has been in undeath, and that’s not likely to change.
But specifically, a handful of days after their argument, he began to think, I might have gone too far. And a full week afterward, with guilt eating away at him from the inside out, he started thinking, Joshua Faraday, you are a complete and utter son of a bitch.
He replays the fight over and over and over in his head – because being what he is, he has an abundance of free time, has no need of sleep to while away the hours, no need to work to make a living – and he knows it was a mistake to say those things, to let his anger boil over so brilliantly. For as mean a cuss as he is, as much of a bastard as he is, Faraday knows his faults and pretends to wear them with pride – but deep down, he’s ashamed of them. He’s been called worse things than what Emma called him on that day, but Emma is the first and only person in his life and unlife to drag all of those faults into the light, to rip open those old scars and pour salt all over them.
She was right, of course, on every count, and that had hurt. But it hurt even more to hear it all in her voice, cold and impassive.
A week of waiting isn’t a lot of time, all things considered, but it’s enough for him to know this problem won’t go away, no matter how hard he tries to ignore it. It’s enough to know that he should make amends, though Faraday has no idea how to go about it or how welcome his presence would be. (Probably not at all, considering what he said and what she said, and all the bad blood left in between.) So he does small things by way of apology. Chopping wood comes pretty easily, as does tending to the fire. Coffee is a little more difficult – he tends to make it strong – but he manages it all the same.
Faraday spends his time nearby, or wandering through town, or in that in-between state, neither awake nor asleep. And he’s lonely, but he reckons that’s what he deserves for the awful things he said. Deserves a lot worse, really, like another smack across the face at the very least. And that’s a funny thing, that getting slapped is even possible, but apparently it is now.
He hasn’t tested out his newfound physicality, not on another person; every time he reached out to grasp someone’s arm, he reconsidered. Probably for the best – he didn’t want to startle someone into a heart attack. But he’s— different now, and he doesn’t know why or how. Still invisible, surely, still inaudible, but different. When he grabs for an axe, he can feel the wood grain of the handle. When he stands at Emma’s hearth and tends to the fire, he feels the heat of flame, the roughness of the iron poker. When he drops a blanket over her, he feels the softness of the material. And he tests it in the dead of night with the stack of playing cards in his hands, feels the way the paper rasps against his palms as the cards riffle and bridge. The old tricks come back easily – palming cards, hiding them behind his fingers, double-lifting them as he deals. Something like relief flows through him – although it’s tempered by… everything that’s happened.
It’s been a bad week.
He’s drifting through when Emma calls for him, and he pauses. For a second, he considers ignoring her, because he’s not sure if he’s ready to hear what she has to say, isn’t sure if he’s ready to apologize. The sting of her words are still as fresh as the day they were said, and part of him worries she’s trying for a second round, trying to tell him that his gestures are unappreciated and that he needed to leave her alone for good. He starts turning away, intent on saving this conversation for another day—
Until he notices the cards.
They hadn’t been his personal deck – the set that had been with him on the day of his death – but he’d grown accustomed to them, all the same. Attached, even, though that’s a silly thing (though maybe not so silly, considering they’re about the only things on this mortal plane that Faraday considers his.) And when she actually starts counting, and a sort of nervousness clenches in his stomach.
Faraday lets her get as far as four, and just as she’s inhaling, forming the word five, he appears about two arms’ lengths away – a marked difference from the norm, where he’d materialize directly beside her just to make her jump. For a second, he just stares at her with a guarded expression, arms akimbo, before he reaches out with his right hand. ]
[ he'd let her get mighty close to five, and she hadn't been sure if he simply didn't hear her or rather, didn't care to let her see him. she'll be disappointed if that's the case, but she realizes she won't actually drop the cards, if he doesn't show. that would be far too unkind, and emma doesn't care to do that to him. even if he wasn't ready to talk or...whatever it is they ought to do to find common ground, she wouldn't want to destroy something he enjoyed so much.
when he finally does appear, she tries not to give away the relief she feels, the flush of warmth at just the sight of him (which is an odd sensation she's certainly not going to think on). drawing the cards away from the flame, she holds them close, but doesn't offer them to him. ]
Do you promise not to vanish if I do?
[ because she doesn't want him to just cut and run with the cards; that's not the point of this, not the reason she tried so hard to draw him out. it matters to her that he'll promise to stay put, at least long enough to put some things to rest, to maybe tell him that his presence isn't simply tolerated.
One. Faraday and Emma were... friends. Friendly? Probably friends, though Faraday had so few of those, he wasn't entirely sure. Close, at least, or close enough that having parted from one another's company for that short (long. interminably long.) week had soured the two of them to the idea of being apart again. Faraday, because he'd grown used to the way Emma would rib at him, would tease him in a way she never had while he was alive, and he found he was fond of it. Emma, for reasons that were purely her own, but he hopes it has something to do with enjoying his company, rather than enjoying the way he fills the silence of her home, like white noise.
Two. Faraday could— feel again. Physically, that is. Could touch and discern textures and temperature, when before it was simply a matter of pressure. He knew how much strength was too much or too little, but little more than that, before. Now, though, he could count the number of cards passing over his fingers, could pick apart when he had passed over two or one. He could feel the heat of fire (though it still didn't hurt him), the chill of the cold air. And Lord, he hadn't realized how much he missed it until he had recovered that sense.
Three. Faraday was something approaching solid again. He could still pass through things if he wanted, but it required a conscious effort. Before, he would need to think on grasping something, or else he would merely phase through. Now, he needs to think on phasing through, or else he would bump right into it. An odd change, and something he was still mastering – which made walking through town a little treacherous. These days, when he had occasion to follow Emma through Rose Creek, the two of them avoided crowded areas; he's bumped into someone at least once or twice, left them bewildered and cursing their clumsiness. Amusing as it is, he doesn't care to keep repeating the mistake, or else the town could fall into a paranoid frenzy.
And four. Apparently this change in Faraday had become a source of some curiosity and amusement for Emma, because not a day passed without her testing his solidity at least a handful of times. Sometimes in small ways, by brushing a hand across his arm or poking him in the side. Sometimes in large ways, by throwing something soft across the room at him or jabbing at his chest with whatever tool she happened to have on hand at the time. There was some novelty to it, the first few times – because rarely had Faraday seen Emma partake in something as whimsical as this – but as the experiments continued, Faraday found himself simply exasperated by it.
As is the case now.
The sun had long ago set, and the two of them sit side-by-side in front of the flickering fire. The warmth suffuses the room, fills it with a cozy sort of light, as Faraday shows her a basic card skill – a quick lesson in how to backpalm a card. He demonstrates again how he tucks the card between his fingers, how he flicks his middle and ring finger beneath to flip it over and back—
—when the edge of a blanket is abruptly thrown over his head.
Faraday falls silent for a moment, his hands dropping to his lap, letting the blanket simply hang there to cover his face.
Then, in a flat voice slightly muffled by the fabric, ]
[ the unmistakable change since their argument is near palpable in the way they interact. there's a solidarity that emma didn't necessarily feel before, if only out of the realization that having faraday around was...significant, in ways she can't quite put to words. time apart had been oddly miserable, and having him back again put that week into stark, brilliant contrast. it wasn't simply about having someone or something to fill the space in her home, because she could just as easily spend time with teddy, if she asked him to keep her company, but— it's faraday, and whatever strange friendship has come from her time spent with a dead man.
he's even managed to bring a new side of emma to light: her predisposition to, well, fun. she teases him in different ways now, "testing" his solidity with the occasional poke and prod and well-aimed pillow. she's not the type to burst into uncontrollable laughter over it, though the look on faraday's face whenever he's assailed by a flying object (always soft, because she knows he can legitimately feel it now) is enough to produce a big, impish grin on the woman's face.
it's not an expression many are likely to see, just as this is an aspect of emma that she's hardly one to share with others. like her competitive streak, the way she messes with him now is reserved for him, specifically, and the mischievous delight he gets a glimpse of is not the kind of slip in her otherwise proprietary demeanor that most would ever experience.
as they sit in front of the fire together (an evening pastime emma's come to enjoy, given how frightfully cold it is outside), her eyes are steady on the card, watching him perform the trick with avid attention.
it just so happens to also be the perfect opportunity to fling part of the blanket covering her lap over his head to obscure his face.
that little grin is on her lips all over again, and she just sounds oh-so innocent and easily dismissive. ]
Just checking.
[ always "just checking." (partly for the amusement of his reactions, but a part of it really is to make sure he's still solid and there.) ]
Have to ensure you're not little more than thin air, don't I?
[ He repeats it back, still in that flat sort of voice, and lifts the edge of the blanket with his arm to cast her a level, unimpressed look. ]
This must be the thousandth time you’ve tested it.
[ Faraday pulls the blanket off of him, flings the edge over Emma’s head as a petty sort of revenge. He allows himself a smile, once her vision is obscured, entertained by this surprisingly playful side of her. She never behaved this way before their brief falling out, and there was a time long ago when he honestly thought she was incapable of a smile. Given the tragedies she had experienced, though, he couldn’t blame her.
Now, though, she smiles. She laughs. And a lot of the time, he finds pride in being the one who coaxed it out of her, in being able to share it with her. This playfulness is new, though, and he finds it charming. Even if it does occasionally leave him with a small pile of pillows or blankets pooling around his feet after a particularly spirited bout of “just checking.”
Whenever she manages to pull the blanket away, his quickly wrangles his expression, smooths it out to something neutral. ]
You know, I’m beginning to believe you may never actually be satisfied.
[ Faraday drifts over Rose Creek in the early hours of the morning, just before the sun crests over the horizon. The dirty, grey light of pre-dawn. The town is quiet and still. Changed, in so many ways, and a little more grown than what he recalls from those handful of days while he was still alive. New buildings, new shops. The Imperial Saloon's sign is much grander than it was before, needing replacement after the battle with Bogue and his men had left it riddled with bullet holes. The Elysium Hotel has a few new painted ladies, as he recalls. Some of the women had returned when the dust settled, others were newcomers to the town, and all of them were dozing away the night in the upper floor with some lingering customers.
He wanders and waits for the town to start waking, for folks to yawn and stretch and complain as they're forced to start their day. It's Sunday, which means church, which means following Emma on her weekly ritual – hovering a distance away as she kneels beside the grave of her late husband, watching folks pass by to give her some privacy. Helping her tidy up the markers on the hill.
The colder months makes it more difficult to gather flowers, but as the cold well and truly set in, Faraday took the task upon himself. He wasn't bothered by the weather, after all, and though he didn't see the sense in keeping up the tradition for his own grave (an idea he still had difficult wrapping his mind around), he agreed to it all the same for the others. He didn't have quite the eye that Emma did, but whatever he gathered always seemed to please her well; and sometimes, just keeping the graves free of weeds was enough to satisfy her. His gaze darts away from his own marker every time, and he instead focuses on Billy's, on Goody's, on Jack's. They're the ones in need of remembering, after all. He's still kicking up trouble, though he's not sure if he'll ever know why.
(Maybe he has unfinished business, though hell if even he knows what that is. Or maybe he was just as restless in death as he was in life, which kicked his spirit straight out of Heaven or Hell and back to Earth.)
He hopes they're all happy, wherever they ended up. It's the least they deserved.
The more time he spends at Emma's side, the more that curling bit of heat in his chest grows. And by now, it's admittedly something of a modest fire. Comfortable. Warm. Safe, as much as it is dangerous, for reasons he still doesn't quite understand. She smiles so much more, laughs and teases; even the exasperation she puts on when he steps a little too far over a boundary makes him grin all the same. The uncertainty of his state goes forgotten, most of the time, the wrongness of it, and now he just settles for being.
This is a second chance he never asked for, but he's glad for it, all the same.
It's a few hours past noon when the two of them settle back into Emma's home, and Faraday sits at the table with his cards as she fixes herself lunch, laying out a game of patience he had learned from a miner some years ago. A crunch of dirt just outside catches his attention, and he vanishes—
—to reappear at the front window, careful not to touch the curtains as he peeks out. His eyes narrow, jaw clenching, though he's hardly aware of it. ]
Your associate is makin' his way up the path.
[ A reference to the first day he met Emma and Teddy Q. He speaks brightly, even if he feels a bitter twist in his gut. ]
He's lookin' awful waxed up, and—
[ He lets out a quiet sound, forces himself to sound amused. ]
[ it's already been months since faraday's reappearance in his new, inhuman form. months since the battle, since their rebuilding, and it's safe to say the town of rose creek has found a way to move on. one might argue that emma hasn't, if only because of the company she continues to keep, but...it's different. faraday is different — in her eyes, at least. it's hard to even continue thinking of him as a dead man, considering his current state and the way they interact.
she can talk to him, joke with him, touch him — and it feels just as real as being with any other person. except faraday happens to provide her with a level of comfort that's been previously unrivaled in her interactions with others (a kind of comfort she'd only found in matthew, before). it's not something over which she chooses to dwell, because questioning what he does for her and the way he makes her life— better is complicated.
simultaneously, faraday makes her life challenging and confusing, but also...good. he keeps the loneliness at bay, but she doesn't think of him as only something to fill her time; it's more than boredom that has her always so eager to see him during the day, though she'll never admit that to him. maybe it's that he makes her smile so much, draws that warm glow from her and makes her laugh — because while she's hardly opposed to that level of joy, it's faraday that really brings it out of her.
odd, she thinks. but good.
she nearly forgets sometimes exactly what he is, but it's the quick there-and-gone-again vanishing that reminds her most. she looks over her shoulder just in time to see him disappear from the table, fading in again at her window. wiping her hands on her apron, she frowns slightly and steps away from the counter. ]
Teddy? What on earth...?
[ she comes around to the window, standing nearly up against faraday's back (paying hardly any mind to that) as she peers out over his shoulder. ]
Oh no.
[ that boy better not be doing what she thinks he's doing. dressed in his sunday best, and flowers to boot?
lord, please spare her from what will inevitably become a damn trainwreck.
she turns quickly away from the window, like she's almost hoping he'll think she's out if he didn't manage to see her there. ]
I thought he'd dropped this nonsense.
[ because teddy hadn't really breathed a word about courting her, and she'd been doing her utmost not to encourage him. she's kind, but that's about all she is with teddy. apparently her lack of blatant rejection had been taken as a near invitation. ]
[ He scoots aside obligingly to admit her a better view, though he doesn’t do it with any level of hurry; evidently her proximity goes unnoticed, though he notices it all the same. A part of him tells him he should be entertained by this oncoming disaster, that the outcome of this conversation will surely leave him in stitches for months to come, but what he mostly feels is— angry. Annoyed. Some brilliant flare of heat that leaves a sour taste in his mouth.
(jealousy, though he doesn’t know it. envy.)
Faraday glances over his shoulder as she steps away, and though he smirks in his usual way, his heart isn’t exactly in it. Another flash, and he reappears at the table, gathering the cards into a neat deck. (Most folks don’t think it appropriate for ladies to have cards. He could at least spare Emma that little bit of embarrassment, should Emma admit the poor boy and he should take notice it.)
A quiet, nervous knock at the door, and Faraday’s mouth shapes itself into a grin as he shuffles the cards lazily. Even if Teddy can’t hear him, he still pitches his voice low. ]
[ things had been...a little tense since that odd spill she and faraday had taken onto the floor. it had put them in a position to be far closer than emma anticipated or intended them to be, and it had left her rankled, uncertain, and heartily confused. emma cullen is not a woman who often finds herself flustered (or, truly, ever does), but in that moment with faraday, laid out on the wood floor with their faces mere inches apart— oh, she'd been flustered.
and possibly moreso in the aftermath. because, if she's remotely honest with herself, she'd liked it and the flutter it had set off in her chest. of course, she's taken to denying that just as fiercely, out of a sense of...what? self-preservation? fear? distaste? no, not the last one, she thinks, because while her introduction to faraday all those months ago, before the battle, before his death, had been less than charming, she's spent so much time with him now that she doesn't find him or his company disagreeable.
in fact, she's almost come to...depend on him. he sees her through her long, lonely days, offers her a reprieve from the silence of her small town and empty house, or simply gives her the opportunity to be close to someone else — whether they speak or sit together in comfortable peace. it means something to her, but after that mild incident, she's finally realizing that it means— more than she'd expected. perhaps a different meaning than she'd anticipated, and that's caught her so off-guard that in the week following their spill, she's been particularly careful to just...not touch him.
the casual way she'd gone about it before, little brushes of contact, the occasional smack on his arm or a playful nudge ("just checking") — she's dropped it in the last week, without even a poke or prod here and there. it's harder than she expected, and she's caught herself a few times, about to reach out, before pulling back again. she speaks to him the same way (or at least tries to), with the occasional ribbing and joke at his expense, but she catches herself being more mindful of her words. she's not as free as she'd become, and she finds she doesn't like it.
the worst part, however, is that she doesn't think withholding from him has made her feel particularly better about...any of it. the moment (now long gone) and the way she'd felt, the way she continues to dwell— pulling away hasn't made it lessen or disappear like she'd hoped.
why can't it be simple?
after nearing a second week of the limited contact, emma finally decides she's had more than enough of it. she doesn't like dancing around him or what could have (but didn't) happen, and she doesn't like the way she's isolated herself by refusing to be...well, herself with faraday. he's given her the chance to open up and unwind in ways she hadn't since matthew, let her feel warmth and joy and filled her home with laughter again, and— she wants that. she wants to keep that close, and she knows that means keeping him close.
she can't do that if she shuts him out.
unfortunately, being that emma is emma, her pride isn't going to let her just outright apologize to him. of course not. she can't summon up the words, not when she hasn't necessarily done anything; it's more like she hasn't done something, and that's difficult to atone for anyway.
instead, she purchases a bottle of bourbon (which earns her the most startled of looks from rose creek's dutiful bartender), along with a second deck of cards. the bourbon she explains away as a gift, while the cards she says she intends to leave up on the hill, in front of the gently worn cross with faraday's name carved into the wood. that receives far less question, because of course the townspeople still remember what faraday and the others did for rose creek, and given the gambler's penchant for cards and tricks that had delighted the children, it's deemed more than understandable that emma would purchase something so sentimental.
a lovely gesture, she's told.
emma can only manage a smile.
she hasn't seen faraday near so much in the last few days (not that she can blame him, given how uncomfortable she's seemed around him), so she isn't entirely sure when he'll reappear. she doesn't care for that thought, but she can't do an awful lot for it, and instead, just leaves the bottle and the cards at her small table.
it'll be there and waiting for him, whenever he does decide to make himself known. ]
[ Things are different, after the mess with Teddy Q.
A small, petty part of him blames the other man for the problems that have arisen between himself and Emma, though the problems are largely invisible and ignored. Like Faraday, in those early days after his death. There, but certainly not acknowledged. But unlike Faraday and his haunting of Rose Creek, this was looming. This was giant and incredibly close, its shadows dark and oppressive as it stood over them.
Too big for Faraday to get a good look at it. Too dangerous for him to grapple with it. Too terrifying for him to spend too much time dwelling on it.
But it's there, creating a wall between them. Old, familiar barriers that Faraday had once assumed were set aside. Emma goes back to treating him like a leper, and something in his chest clenches. He misses the casual brush of her hand against his arm. Bitterly, he thinks on how a kind touch has been stolen from him twice over now – once by death, and again by this thing driving them apart. He finds himself moving to initiate some kind of contact, sometimes – except he always shies away at the last moment. Some alien fear he's never experienced, something that paralyzes him and brings him to his knees.
Like stepping onto a bridge, hearing the telltale snap of twine. Like feeling it lurch beneath his feet and fearing that another misstep will send him plummeting. Better to be frozen than to unravel the whole thing.
Eventually it becomes too much, and rather than speak on it, rather than turn to Emma and demand an explanation for this sudden wedge driven between them, he drifts away. Faraday had always done his best to never outstay his welcome in life, and now, while he doesn't have a choice, he can at least make himself a little scarce. Wandering through town. People watching. Making life inconvenient for a particular Theodore – nothing dire or dangerous, but small things to get his dander up. Nudging his glass toward the edges of tables, leaving him liable to knock the thing over onto the floor. Pushing his chair aside as he moved to sit. Holding doors shut and letting them just as Teddy heaved it open with all his might, sending the poor man tumbling under the force of his own strength.
It did little to improve Faraday's mood, but it did little to harm it, too.
But Faraday always drifts back, always finds himself ending his day in Emma's home, because what else can he do? Even with Emma keeping her distance, Faraday craves her company – not just because she's the only one who can speak to him, but because he likes being in her presence. Feels a strange sort of warmth curling in him as she smiles, as she laughs, as she turns that look on him, the one that tells him she's up to no good.
Lord, how he misses it, that comfort that had settled between them. Now, the tenseness just makes him itch.
So here he is, just as the sun begins to set, fresh from tripping Teddy Q off the edge of a porch, face-first into a mud puddle. (Entertaining, at the time, but still not a proper remedy for what ails Faraday.) He appears timidly in the corner of her home, thumbs hooked over his belt, and glances around carefully. ]
Miss Emma?
[ Back to old habits. A quiet warning to alert her to his presence. He steps further into her home. ]
Just dropping by—
[ His gaze falls on the small table – his usual haunt while Emma busied herself with chores – onto the bottle of bourbon sitting alongside an almost innocuous set of cards. Faraday slowly stills, eyes narrowing as he takes in the sight, as he tries (and fails) to determine the reason for the items' presence.
Faraday creeps up the table, almost as though he was afraid of startling some frightened creature, and reaches out. His hand hovers uncertainly before it closes around the cards. Brand new, judging by the sharp edges of the cards, the whiteness of it, the snap of the paper as he riffles the short edge.
His gaze flicks to the bottle again, and in a murmur, mostly to himself, ]
[ with the sun going down, emma is just finishing off her laundry, bringing it in from the clothesline to properly put it all away. she nudges open her front door with her hip, an armful of dresses and otherwise in hand as she steps inside. she pauses when she sees faraday by the table, the new deck in his hands, and she can't help the faintest of smiles tugging at her lips (not quite there, but she's oddly warmed to see him with the cards). ]
Evenin', Faraday.
[ she doesn't say anything about the spirits or the cards, doesn't feel the need to mention the gift — because it's absolutely all for him. not many others she'd be gifting with alcohol, and certainly none she'd go out of her way to bring a deck of cards.
she moves to set down the laundry, figuring she might as well take care of it after she's made dinner (which, even months after matthew's death, it's still strange to cook for herself and no one else, deadman that faraday is). ]
I trust you found something to fill your day.
[ she isn't sure what he does when he vanishes during the daytime (now that he's taken to disappearing from her home, from no longer trailing along beside her), but she assumes he entertains himself...somehow.
unfortunately, she's also realized how much she's missed having him hang around, and the quiet in her days without his chatter and jokes (often at others' expense) is unpleasantly hollow. ]
[ emma doesn't see much of faraday over the next few days.
she doesn't go out of her way to avoid him like she could, but in so many ways, she's caught in her own thoughts and in trying to parse out what that small, seemingly insignificant encounter in the field with jack had brought up for her. if nothing else, she's preoccupied enough that she doesn't seek faraday out or go looking for his company as she tries to understand what's going on and what she truly believes about the odd nature of the gambler's existence.
is he real? why can only she see him? has she been imagining it all? and if not, what is he?
what, indeed.
she'd promised faraday she wouldn't shut him out again, and she doesn't this time — not intentionally. but with how much she grapples with a reality she's set aside for months now, she doesn't find the opportunity to pay him the kind of mind she usually does, so she doesn't notice quite so much when he spends his time in the town rather than specifically at her side.
someone else notices, however.
there's only one other person who notices faraday whenever he walks beside emma, who sees him pull his pranks or look for something to alleviate his boredom. he watches with a careful eye and never speaks up, never tries to catch either of their attention because...well.
he knows emma will just look right through him.
matthew cullen has filtered in and out of rose creek since the day of his death. he'd seen the way his wife pulled the town out from under bogue's heel with the help of her little mismatched army, and he was proud. his consciousness was always vague, always barely there, and by the time he could finally coalesce for anything worthwhile, emma just never saw him.
it's good, he's told himself. keeps her from dwelling when he knows she needs to move forward with her life, to persevere in that way emma is so good at, but— that was until faraday returned to the world of the living. matthew realizes quickly that faraday is just as much a dead man as matthew when he watches faraday follow emma around, sees how she carefully avoids acknowledging him around the townsfolk, and he knows that unlike himself, emma sees the gambler.
but strangely, he doesn't feel the heavy pangs of regret over this fact. if anything, matthew feels incredibly at peace with his existence, even if emma can't see him. she doesn't need to, is what it comes down to. emma has put him and his spirit at rest, and though he still finds himself returning to the town here and there to see his wife's progress, matthew doesn't feel trapped or unsettled.
emma found righteousness for him, and he's seen his justice.
however, it makes him keenly aware of the reasons emma is still a woman haunted by another ghost.
and what strange reasons they are.
lately, matthew sees faraday in town without emma. odd, given how frequently inseparable they are, he thinks. at first, he doesn't try to get faraday's attention, instead choosing to observe, to see when and how long faraday hangs around by himself, and after a few days of it, matthew's curiosity gets the better of him.
he waits by the imperial saloon, leaning casually against one of the beams supporting the building's balcony as he keeps an eye on the other ghost.
quiet for a long while, before he calls out, keen blue eyes fixed firmly on faraday, ]
Seems like it's not often you wander through here by yourself these days.
He’s not in the habit of staying where he doesn’t want to, and more than that, of staying where he’s not wanted. He made a life on running, on causing trouble and dodging it, on laughing and gambling and shooting his way out of his problems, when it came right down to it. He doesn’t outstay his welcome, most of the time – sticks around long enough to line his pockets and then absconds with other men’s money.
These days, being what he is, he can’t quite do that. Can’t leave the town of Rose Creek, thanks to a tether he can’t see, a hitching post he can’t find, binding him to the place. Can’t run off and stir up new trouble, thanks to his invisibility. Can’t do much of anything, really, and it makes something stir in his gut, something restless and hopeless and—
And lonesome, if he’s honest.
Something terribly, terribly lonesome.
But most days, he can ignore that. Days filled with teasing and joking and exasperated sighs. Nights filled with magic and sleight-of-hand and more exasperated sighs, as Emma throws the edge of a blanket over his shoulder, his head, as Emma pokes into his flank with a wooden spoon.
(She’ll say something like, “Been a while since I checked.”
Faraday will scowl, rubbing at his side, and say something like, “You just ‘checked’ not but five seconds ago.”
And she’ll smile that small, impish smile, and say, “As I said, it’s been a while.”)
But Faraday is keeping his distance. Checking in, of course, because he craves the acknowledgment, the brief reminder that he’s not actually alone. Not yet. Not while Emma still deigns to make note of his existence, but that could change. Has in the past, in small ways – never outright ignoring him, thank heavens, but edging so dangerously close that Faraday had felt something freeze in his belly. Icy tendrils scrambling in his chest.
And when he does check in, she’s distant. Quiet. Hardly asks for favors, these days – “Grab that pot for me? Show me that trick again? Cut these carrots, would you?” – and it leaves him wandering. Aimless.
He drifts, day and night and day again, hardly notices time passing, feels those cold claws burying into what might have been his heart. He wonders what he’ll do if, at long last, she stops lifting her head when he enters the room.
The thought makes him want to scream.
Faraday occupies himself with people watching, these days, though it’s hardly even that. He sits or props up a wall somewhere out of the way, or he wanders the streets when he doesn’t feel like staying still, hands in his pockets, head bowed. And these days, he’s more often intangible than not, with hardly a thought to the transition.
(Folks pass through him, sometimes, though he hardly notices or cares. Folks will pass through him and shudder violently, and when their companions frown at them, when they ask, “What’s wrong?” they’ll answer, “Someone just walked over my grave.”)
With as long as he’s stayed in town (longer than he’s ever stayed in one place since his childhood), Faraday likes to think he recognizes everyone who lives here. There are new faces, now and again, of folks passing through, folks visiting family, sometimes even some folks who had once lived here before the battle and decided to return.
(Faraday wonders how the survivors must feel, these prodigal sons returning to live in a town they hadn’t bled for. Hopes they’re not too resentful.)
He’s drifting down the main road, head bowed as usual, thumbs hooked over his belt, when he hears a new voice. Faraday frowns, glances around, listening for someone else’s reply.
No response comes.
His frown deepens, and he scans his surroundings, gaze falling on a man standing on the porch of the Imperial Saloon. Faraday thinks he’s seen the man, once or twice – brief, rare, distant glimpses that made him think the stranger must be a visiting relative or friend – but he’s never heard the man speak. Explains the new voice, at least.
Doesn’t explain why the hell the man is staring straight at him.
The gaze roots Faraday to the spot, makes him gawk for a good, long second. He can hardly wrap his head around it, though, and he looks over his shoulder – no one’s stopped, no one’s taken notice of either of them – before turning back to the saloon.
Faraday takes a breath (though there’s no need for it), just blinks for a few seconds (hardly a need for that, either), before clearing his throat (though there’s nothing in need of clearing). ]
Did you—
[ He cuts himself off with a wince, his voice raspy and odd, unfamiliar in his ears.
He tries again: ]
Are you— Did you— [ His eyebrows knit together. The corners of his mouth pull downward. ]
[ matthew waits patiently as faraday takes a long, slow moment to acknowledge him.
(it's not surprising, really. he can't imagine anyone other than emma's said a single word to faraday since his reapperance, and matthew understands that; those stumbled words out of faraday's mouth are the first anyone's said to him in over a year.)
a crooked smile tugs at the corner of matthew's lips, and he spreads his hands wide in a sweeping gesture. ]
You see another dead man tryin' to get your attention?
[ might as well speak plainly, he reasons. he and faraday are here on equal ground (in a manner of speaking), and it's at least explanation enough for why matt can see him, let alone speak to him. ]
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oh jesus this is long, i'm sorry
That is, he's a God-fearing man, to an extent. Knows quite a bit about sin, about vices, about how many of those Ten Commandments he's broken, time and time again. He knows there's a Heaven, that there's a Hell, and that he's most certainly destined for one of those – three guesses as to which. And that one day, when the right bullet finds him, he'll take that plunge.
Turns out, it's not one bullet but a half dozen that do him in. But at least he got to blow something up.
Death had been— terrifying. Painful. About the worst thing he had ever experienced, but— he wasn't alone. He had Emma holding his hand, shepherding him through to the other side, and that was a blessing. That was a miracle in itself, that a miserable bastard like him would warrant the attention of a kind woman like Emma Cullen.
The angel ushering warriors to their afterlife. Valkyries, he remembers. They were called Valkyries.
But remembering is— hard. He feels a flash of it, every now and again, like his mind focuses long enough that he can think, that he's actually Josh Faraday, and then he's gone. Like he's a droplet on a window pane, collecting bits of himself as he's pulled downward, splitting when he hits some imperfection. It's— it's hard. It's difficult.
Then sometimes, it's not. Sometimes, there's a flash, and he sees a sun-drenched street, sees men and women alike, carrying tools and wood. Bandaged men, the freshly wounded, hobbling around the porches of buildings and doing their best to pitch in, hammering planks to walls, painting over scorch marks with pristine white paint. Sees children laughing and playing and suffering the lectures of their school-ma'am. Sees a familiar flash of red hair. He wonders if she smiles, these days, if she—
And then he's gone.
It's probably three months later before he's aware again, that he's Faraday again, and he finds himself standing against the wall of a familiar saloon, the mood somber but so much lighter than he had ever seen it before. He spots a fresh bottle of gin sitting on a table and feels a peculiar sort of longing, like he hasn't had anything to drink in ages, though he feels no thirst. A woman with a pitcher passes directly in front of him, and he asks, "How much for a drink?"
She ignores him completely, and before he can complain, he scatters.
It happens faster and faster, after that; instead of three months, it's two months later, appearing in an empty field, where men and horses and a wagon stood. Then one month later, near a dead tree, where he remembers talking about nightmares and reaching a silly agreement about names, of all things. Then two weeks, sitting on one of the chairs on the saloon's porch – completely disregarded, though he speaks to the other patrons, louder and louder and louder, but he disappears just as he's about to start hollering. Then one, standing in front of the church and thinking, "What the hell is happening?" The preacher's steps crunch in the gravel behind him, and he turns, reaches out to grab hold of the man, except—
Faraday's hand passes through him, and the preacher continues forward, none the wiser.
And he's gone once again.
A few days later, and he finds himself up the path from Emma Cullen's house at around sundown, sitting in the dirt with his face buried in his hands, because— he doesn't know what this is. He doesn't know what he is. It feels like some terrible dream, and if he just waits, maybe he'll finally wake up from it. ]
never apologize for this beauty
they wouldn't be forgotten — not by rose creek, and certainly not by emma.
she still goes to faraday's grave almost every sunday after church, leaves all four a handful of flowers and dusts off the markers to keep them clean. it's the least she can do, she rationalizes, because while they deserve so much more, it's everything she can offer.
she so often and so vividly relives that day, the fight, and her last moments with faraday, usually at night when she's trying to fall asleep, because she truly has traded her old ghosts for new ones. matthew— matthew has seen justice, and she no longer feels haunted by his memory, even if occasionally she'll wake, reaching for the empty half of her too-big bed. but despite that, she doesn't feel plagued the way she had, because she's had her righteousness and she's had her revenge.
and then there's faraday. joshua. the final minutes together when he'd given her his name and used her own while he slowly bled out in the grass— she sees that often in her dreams. she knows that she can't feel responsible for his death, because it's not like she's failed him, that she could have truly prevented it, but he had been there in rose creek because of her and her quest for justice.
she'd gotten it, certainly, but at quite a price.
sometimes, she thinks she catches glimpses of him outside of her dreams. it's quick, brief, and always not-quite-there, but there's still a short moment that her heart leaps in excitement — and then she turns to look, and quickly realizes that it must be her overactive imagination.
faraday is gone, after all. he died right in front of her, she helped put him in the ground, and she knows there's no coming back from this.
life goes on, like it has to, like it always will, but she still wishes things could have gone differently.
it's been nearly half a year since rose creek took on bogue, nearly half a year of living with her new ghosts, and in the falling evening light, emma comes home to find a strange figure sitting on the ground near her house. she pauses mid-step, frowning as she pulls a small shawl tighter around her shoulders. she can't see his face, obscured as it is by his hands, but there's something familiar about him in the dying light. ]
Are you needin' some help there?
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(Because that’s what this must be. A nightmare. Gregarious and talkative bastard that he is, he can imagine no greater hell than one where he is completely and utterly ignored.)
So he waits. The sunlight wanes. A quiet breeze sets in, brushing through the tall grass and the tree leaves. And he waits.
And then there are footsteps approaching, the soft sound of boots on dirt.
Faraday is slow to react – because he recognizes the voice. Emma. It would figure, really, that the next one to ignore him would be the woman who helped to ease his final moments, who did him the kindness of reminding him he wasn’t alone – only now he is, isn’t he? Unseen and unheard and unfelt. Why the hell not, right? Just heap insult onto the injury. Kick a man while he’s down. Wasn’t as though he was already riddled with holes and nearly blown to pieces. His hands reluctantly drop to his lap, and he lifts his head – not to look at her, but to glance around, see who she’s talking to.
The examination of his surroundings reminds him he’s the only soul around, save for Emma, and his brow wrinkles with a frown.
It’s another second before he finally turns his face up to her, confusion clear in the set of his mouth, the crease between his eyebrows. Her eyes are on him, not staring through him, and he feels that first little inkling of hope. ]
… Miss Emma? [ Quietly. Oh, so tentatively. He slowly – slowly, slowly – half-rises from where he sits. ] Can you— Please tell me you can see me.
[ And because life, such as it is, is a cruel mistress, he disappears.
Not for long, though. It’s a bright Sunday afternoon when he returns, standing on a hill and staring down at his own grave. The corner of his mouth twitches up in a dark, rueful smile as he tries to think of who pinned the card on his marker. ]
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faraday is as dead as he could possibly get, but— but he's talking to her, and before she can even think to manage a response...
...he disappears.
the ground where he sat looks wholly undisturbed, affected only by the soft light of the evening sun, and there's just—nothing. nothing at all.
emma is left shaking and confused, quickly walking past the spot where moments ago he'd said her name, and she barricades herself in her home for the rest of the night.
she doesn't know if she should look for him again or pretend that it had never happened, but when she leaves again the next day, everything seems exactly as it was, nothing different, nothing strange.
...maybe she is going insane.
deciding to pretend that it was just exhaustion setting in, that it was a brief moment of grief combined with a long day, she tries not to think about the encounter (as much as she can).
however, despite all of this, she still goes to the graves every sunday.
she brings flowers again as she climbs the grassy hill. the breeze gently whips her hair across her face, obscuring her view of the markers until she reaches the top, until she can push the brilliant red locks from her face to see a figure already standing by the cross.
again, she doesn't see his face, not until she steps closer, gets a better look and then— no.
not again.
she drops the flowers without realizing it, and she can't even move for a moment. ]
What— are you?
[ it's all she can ask, all she can manage. ]
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He supposes it follows, really, considering how many casualties were incurred that blood-drenched day. Seems like an awful lot more burial mounds than there should be, though – and it occurs to him that Bogue’s men must have been interred alongside the rest of the town’s lost. Their graves were marked by simple crosses, left mostly forgotten toward the back. Six months and some bits is enough time for nature to stake a claim, and weeds began to gather around their markers.
Still, it was decent of Rose Creek to have buried them along with their dead; when the dust settled, it must have been one hell of a shouting match to allow those men even that much of a courtesy. He wonders if one of those plots is Bogue, left to rot in the dirt, or if Rose Creek had left his body to a different fate.
(If it were up to Faraday, Bogue would have been left to the elements, tossed somewhere for the wildlife to pick at. It’s only half of what he had coming for him, for taking away the lives of good men. But then again, very few people leave things up Faraday – or at least they never had when he still had breath – and for good reason.)
Faraday leans against the wrought iron fence wrapped around the graveyard, one foot kicked up on the lower rail. Some names he recognizes – men with whom he briefly spoke in that week leading up to his death (and theirs, too, he supposes) – and he watches as somber women and children tend to graves. Faraday offers something like a quick prayer for them. (Is it too peculiar for a ghost to pray for the dead?) He spies the name “Matthew Cullen” and wonders what sort of man he was to inspire a town to go to war.
It’s been a few weeks now, since he spoke with Emma beside his own grave, and he’s been present in some form for nearly every one of those days, drifting around her. (Haunting her, more accurately, but his use of the term earns him a glare every time.) His bouts of existence are getting longer, now, almost like he’s getting his strength back. Like he’s practicing, getting accustomed to a new skill. No one sees him, still, no one hears him, no matter how much of a ruckus he tries to make, save for Emma.
It’s not perfect, whatever this is. It’s not ideal. But few things ever are, and he makes do.
He learns a few things, during that time. Like how he can walk through walls and doors and people, or how he can be some place in the blink of an eye. Sometimes, he can let himself drift – invisible even to Emma’s eyes, but still aware, in a way, of his chosen surroundings and of time passing. He also learns that trying to go too far out of Rose Creek sends something buzzing through him, makes him feel a tug in his gut, and the discomfort only goes away when he wanders back toward the town. Tethered to something, though he can’t tell what.
Faraday pushes away from the fence, turns a little to look in the direction of the hill, where Goody, Billy, and Jack lie. (His own body, too, though he tries not to think too hard on it.) He offers them a brief nod – almost like a fond sort of greeting. After that, he disappears—
— and reappears in Emma Cullen’s kitchen. He grins. ]
Boo.
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she carries on, is what she does.
but she's not above admitting that the silence is often heavy and more than she's used to. in those times, she's come to be grateful for faraday's company and the lightness of his humor; it fills her empty hours more than anything else has, though she really doesn't much care for calling what he does "haunting." she feels like that goes on to imply some sort of malicious intent, and truly, the worst he's done is move something while she's just about to reach for it.
he's a pain, but he's not a ghoul of any kind, that's for sure.
the downside to having him around, trailing after her so often, is that she can't acknowledge him when she's around other people. she has to treat his presence with the most impassable face she can manage. she can't look like she's conversing with plain air, after all, so she's always stuck waiting until they're alone again.
however, there's also an unpredictability to his appearances. he comes and goes so frequently that emma can never figure when he'll be back again, and it's usually a surprise when he is.
like now, for instance.
she starts at the sound of his voice, in the otherwise silent house, and it's jarring enough that she yelps in the most undiginified way — and, inconvenience of inconveniences, but she just so happened to be preparing dinner, and her hand slips on the vegetables she'd been cutting, leaving a (fortunately shallow) slice on her finger.
turning to glare at him, she reaches for a nearby rag, pressing it to her hand. ]
Now that was perfectly uncalled for.
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Sorry, sorry— I didn’t mean—
[ Faraday had always been the type of man to make do with what he’s given. Life wasn’t fair, but he grew to accept that, learned to take it all on the chin and keep on grinning. Tended to piss off a lot of people when he didn’t simply stay down, but it was better than the alternative – cowering in some corner and withering away.
Apparently death couldn’t keep him down, either – at least, not very well – and he makes do with this, too. Haunts Emma Cullen (because that’s what it rightly is, no matter how she glares, considering the state of him), pulls little jokes in town when he follows her there, offers a running commentary on the other people she passes on the wooden walkways—
(“I believe that man has goose down glued all over his chin.” “Oof, how long’s that woman’s face been like that? You think she smelled some curdled milk and it got stuck?” “When’s the last time you think he’s seen his feet, with that paunch?” “Someone should tell that man he ought to have his wife braid his mole hair to keep it outta the way.”)
—knowing perfectly well that Emma wouldn’t be able to respond immediately. Couldn’t smack him for his rudeness after the fact, either.
And sometimes he gets a cheap laugh from startling her, too, but he never means to do any real harm. He looks properly contrite, shoulders hunching a little. Not unlike a child caught stealing sweets, really. ]
How bad is it?
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...
christ almighty this is wordy
easy, effortless, and plagued only by the simplest of nightmares.
after matthew's death, however, she truly began to grasp what it meant to have real nightmares — the kind that make you kick and cry out in your sleep, the sorts that have you waking in cold, fearful sweat, reaching into the dark for— nothing. it's the nightmares that feel so real she can practically taste the gunpowder in the air, but she knows — knows, she swears — that it's all a dream.
but lord help her, if it doesn't feel so achingly real some nights.
she'd thought the nightmares might get better once bogue was driven out of rose creek. she'd given matthew's memory the justice he deserved, but if anything, the terrors were worse — because this time, instead of seeing matthew's stricken face, she just sees all of the men into whom she'd so diligently sunk lead during that battle.
she'd never killed a man before that day, never shot one dead before he'd even had a chance to scream, never watched one collapse like a puppet with all his strings cut. but oh, that day, she'd seen it all: mountains of death, on their side and hers, and when she wasn't running so intensely on instinct and rage, it had all just hit her — the realization that there were men dead by her hand.
not for a moment does she regret it (which she thinks makes her feel worse), because it had been war; it was either kill or be killed, and emma had fallen squarely on the side of making it the hell out alive, and she had — but at a heavy price. part of her wonders how many of those men had families, children maybe, and how many little ones would grow up never seeing their daddy again. that aches. she feels smatterings of guilt over those possibilities, even if she knows she did the right thing, but in her dreams, she's still haunted by their faces and their screams.
it's bogue, however, over whom she feels no remorse. it's still a shock to her system to replay the moment when her bullet hit him square in the chest, when she'd watched him go limp in sam's arms, just at the last, precarious second — because she knows what could have easily happened if she hadn't been there.
it was sam's life for bogue's, and she has no qualms with that.
(bogue got what he deserved, after all.)
but she still sees that moment, over and over again, intermingled with the other lives she'd snuffed out in the fight — and then, occasionally, her mind revists not deaths for which she'd been responsible, but ones that had shaken her most deeply.
matthew.
and faraday.
matthew she sees taking the bullet, collapsing in a heap and gasping his final breath in her arms, and it's enough to make her tremble in her sleep, to have her waking with a pillow wet from tears — but for that, she has closure. matthew is put to rest, righteousness buried with him, as it should be.
faraday...well. it's awful different when she can simply wake from a fitful sleep and see his smiling face, always ready with a quick word to take her mind off of a terrible nightmare. when she dreams about him, however, she's reliving those last moments out in the field, faraday's bloody fingers in her own as he tries to make a few, final wisecracks — even while she can see the fear and pain in his eyes. she sees his scarlet smile and the blood she later realized she knelt in, sees him wince and gasp, grip her hand, until that last, slow moment when he was finally limp beside her.
at least, that day, she'd waited until the light had gone from his eyes before she shed a real tear.
(she hadn't wanted to let him see it, not in his final seconds.)
but god, here he is again, haunting her daily life and causing all sorts of mischeif, and—
—it's good.
she doesn't understand why, doesn't know how she's supposed to deal with the reality of his unearthly existence, but having faraday there brings light to her life in a way she didn't know was possible again.
she's grateful for that, but at the end of the day, it still doesn't drive out her nightmares. maybe a part of her carries an additional level of guilt that she'd found herself happy again; men are dead — matthew is dead — but she still smiles and lives her life and even finds joy in the company of another man (a dead man, more precisely, but a man nonetheless, her newest friend). it's the guilt, she reckons, that makes the nightmares so much worse, and on the truly bad nights, like tonight, she tosses and turns and occasionally just— cries out, loud as anything as her fingers grip the sheets and her breathing comes in unsteady gasps.
she feels trapped, on the worst nights, because she just can't shake herself free of the dreams. ]
it is beautiful is what it is
It’s a blessing, maybe. It’s one of the few good things to come out of this – that Faraday no longer sleeps and no longer dreams of blood and death. And logically speaking, it makes sense – he can’t be haunted by his old ghosts if he is one, himself.
So when the rest of the world sleeps, Faraday drifts. Wanders through the town, sometimes, taking a look at the differences all of these months have made, marks out the spots he remembers. There, where he sat with some of the town’s children, showing them magic trick after magic trick until work called him back. There, where he blew up a shed. There, where Vasquez had killed one of Bogue’s men in Faraday’s name – the man who had shot him, who had killed him slowly.
Sometimes, he blinks out of existence, goes wherever it is he goes to rest – like he’s in a separate room watching the world from a window. Aware, but not present. Like falling into a daze and waiting to be roused.
And other times, he waits around, sits in Emma’s kitchen with a deck of cards with the light of the moon to accompany him. Practice, in a way. Strengthening. Shuffling the deck with a quiet focus, like he’s learning the skill all over again – because he is. In life, manipulating the cards came as easy as breathing, but it had taken years of practice to get there. And now, slightly removed from existence as he is, it takes concentration to grasp the cards, to cut and twist the deck. Sometimes, when he loses focus, it becomes a game of fifty-two card pick up, and he grunts in frustration as he kneels down to fix his mess.
A cry pierces the silence of the house, and the cards fall through his fingers – a small, contained mess on the kitchen table. And normally Faraday would throw his hands up, frustrated to the point of banging his head against a wall, except he’s no longer there.
He appears in Emma’s room with hardly a thought. ]
Emma. Hey, Emma—
[ He steps forward, reaches out a hand to wake her – remembers what he is, and flinches back. She described it to him once, how it felt to pass through him. Like getting doused in ice water. Like feeling something crawl up your spine.
That… probably won’t help.
It’s a bad one tonight, he thinks helplessly, hovering beside her as she tosses and turns. It’s nights like these that he hates what he is, because he can’t simply just touch her, put a hand on her shoulder and end the dream with a gentle shake. He winces when she cries out again, moves forward to sit on the edge of the bed.
Tries again, uncertain, ]
Emma, wake up. It’s— it’s just a dream.
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matthew's body melts away before her eyes, and the shocked faces of slain men follow suit, leaving her to tug towards reality, towards the sound of faraday's words.
her name. she picks out her name.
it's just a dream.
is it?
it must be.
matthew died months ago, she killed these men months ago, and faraday...
...faraday is here somehow.
her eyes suddenly snap open, momentarily unseeing until she registers faraday sitting on the bed, and she's so startled that she just bolts upright, scrambles back on the bed as she stares at faraday, like she's seen a ghost.
and, well.
she has. in her dreams, she'd been watching him die all over again, but here he was, looking at her with concern. when her mind starts to catch up, she realizes that he saw whatever must have been happening while she was trapped in the throes of her nightmares.
oh, hell. ]
...Joshua.
[ she exhales slowly, shakily, before pressing her hands to her face, pushing away her wild, tangled mess of red hair. she hadn't braided it when she went to sleep, and with how she'd been tossing and turning, it had done a number on her hair. ]
I'm—
[ she stops, shaking her head. ]
Was I...m-makin' some kind of ruckus?
[ dear god, she hopes not (but realistically, she knows there can't have been another reason for him to look so worried or be here waking her). ]
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how do you adult
she thinks he meant what he said, and she finds that loss sits in the pit of her stomach heavy as his death had done.
it's like he's died all over again, she realizes, and that aches. she can't put it into words, or describe why it hurts so terribly, but emma is hardly herself for days after, enough so that others in town notice. she brushes off their concern with a small smile, assures them that it's nothing more than a few restless nights keeping her up. (teddy is especially worried about her, expresses concern that she's out at that house all alone and that sure can't be good for a lady like herself.
she tells him exactly the same: that she's completely fine.)
it's not until things start to...move that she realizes faraday is actually there.
coffee already ready and waiting. a properly stoked fire when she knows she hasn't gone to touch it herself. newly chopped firewood to keep the house warm (because the winter chill has truly set in now, uncomfortable as it happens to be). she's utterly confused by the gestures at first, because while she knows it means faraday is there, she hasn't seen him, hasn't said a word to him, hasn't had the opportunity to so much as thank him.
she tries one night, to at least show her gratitude for the appearance of a blanket while she sat sleepily in a chair. she hadn't quite drifted, but she'd been nodding off, shivering a bit, and then that throw had been settled over her, the weight enough to make her open her eyes.
no one in the room; not a single whisper of faraday, but the gesture was there all the same.
"Faraday?"
when she hadn't gotten an answer, she just sighed and curled up with the blanket again, mumbling a quiet, "thank you," as she drifted.
the worst part is that she feels she owes him a real apology for their last interaction. the things she'd said had been far from kind, even pushing towards unfair, and she realizes after that making him feel so shamed and angry wasn't her intention at all. in fact, the entire thing had gotten so out of hand that she's embarrassed by how quick and cruel her temper had proved to be. even if he had caused a scene in town, he hadn't deserved that level of treatment, and she shouldn't have let him rile her up.
and she sure shouldn't have slapped him.
that still gives her pause when she thinks on it. she can still remember the feel of his skin under her palm, because she had hit him, truly had, and he'd felt just as much a person as the next man. he'd felt near alive, though she knew that was impossible. couldn't be reality.
not with his body six feet under in that pine box.
but all the same, she knows that she'd touched him, and if he's that solid, she nearly wonders if others in the town had bumped into him, if they had started to see him? what manner had his existence taken on that he was able to be so...human? spectre that he is, dead and gone for all intents and purposes, she didn't think it possible, that she'd always pass through him for that icy brush with death, but that had been far from the feel of a ghost.
they need to talk, she finally decides, and she wants to know if that physical aspect has remained or if he's just as noncorporeal as he'd been before (and she also wants to...try to apologize for the lines she crossed; "try" being the operative word). she's not sure how to get him to show up, given how much he's been avoiding her, but she does notice that the playing cards move every day, always in a new space, and well, it wouldn't surprise her to know he's still practicing his tricks.
one evening, after the sun's properly set, emma finds the cards on her table. pursing her lips, she scoops up the deck, carrying them over to her dying fire, and holds them straight out over the embers. ]
Joshua Faraday, you have to the count of five, and then I'm droppin' these right into the hearth.
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This is not a surprising fact. He is routinely an ass – had been in life, has been in undeath, and that’s not likely to change.
But specifically, a handful of days after their argument, he began to think, I might have gone too far. And a full week afterward, with guilt eating away at him from the inside out, he started thinking, Joshua Faraday, you are a complete and utter son of a bitch.
He replays the fight over and over and over in his head – because being what he is, he has an abundance of free time, has no need of sleep to while away the hours, no need to work to make a living – and he knows it was a mistake to say those things, to let his anger boil over so brilliantly. For as mean a cuss as he is, as much of a bastard as he is, Faraday knows his faults and pretends to wear them with pride – but deep down, he’s ashamed of them. He’s been called worse things than what Emma called him on that day, but Emma is the first and only person in his life and unlife to drag all of those faults into the light, to rip open those old scars and pour salt all over them.
She was right, of course, on every count, and that had hurt. But it hurt even more to hear it all in her voice, cold and impassive.
A week of waiting isn’t a lot of time, all things considered, but it’s enough for him to know this problem won’t go away, no matter how hard he tries to ignore it. It’s enough to know that he should make amends, though Faraday has no idea how to go about it or how welcome his presence would be. (Probably not at all, considering what he said and what she said, and all the bad blood left in between.) So he does small things by way of apology. Chopping wood comes pretty easily, as does tending to the fire. Coffee is a little more difficult – he tends to make it strong – but he manages it all the same.
Faraday spends his time nearby, or wandering through town, or in that in-between state, neither awake nor asleep. And he’s lonely, but he reckons that’s what he deserves for the awful things he said. Deserves a lot worse, really, like another smack across the face at the very least. And that’s a funny thing, that getting slapped is even possible, but apparently it is now.
He hasn’t tested out his newfound physicality, not on another person; every time he reached out to grasp someone’s arm, he reconsidered. Probably for the best – he didn’t want to startle someone into a heart attack. But he’s— different now, and he doesn’t know why or how. Still invisible, surely, still inaudible, but different. When he grabs for an axe, he can feel the wood grain of the handle. When he stands at Emma’s hearth and tends to the fire, he feels the heat of flame, the roughness of the iron poker. When he drops a blanket over her, he feels the softness of the material. And he tests it in the dead of night with the stack of playing cards in his hands, feels the way the paper rasps against his palms as the cards riffle and bridge. The old tricks come back easily – palming cards, hiding them behind his fingers, double-lifting them as he deals. Something like relief flows through him – although it’s tempered by… everything that’s happened.
It’s been a bad week.
He’s drifting through when Emma calls for him, and he pauses. For a second, he considers ignoring her, because he’s not sure if he’s ready to hear what she has to say, isn’t sure if he’s ready to apologize. The sting of her words are still as fresh as the day they were said, and part of him worries she’s trying for a second round, trying to tell him that his gestures are unappreciated and that he needed to leave her alone for good. He starts turning away, intent on saving this conversation for another day—
Until he notices the cards.
They hadn’t been his personal deck – the set that had been with him on the day of his death – but he’d grown accustomed to them, all the same. Attached, even, though that’s a silly thing (though maybe not so silly, considering they’re about the only things on this mortal plane that Faraday considers his.) And when she actually starts counting, and a sort of nervousness clenches in his stomach.
Faraday lets her get as far as four, and just as she’s inhaling, forming the word five, he appears about two arms’ lengths away – a marked difference from the norm, where he’d materialize directly beside her just to make her jump. For a second, he just stares at her with a guarded expression, arms akimbo, before he reaches out with his right hand. ]
Give ‘em here.
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when he finally does appear, she tries not to give away the relief she feels, the flush of warmth at just the sight of him (which is an odd sensation she's certainly not going to think on). drawing the cards away from the flame, she holds them close, but doesn't offer them to him. ]
Do you promise not to vanish if I do?
[ because she doesn't want him to just cut and run with the cards; that's not the point of this, not the reason she tried so hard to draw him out. it matters to her that he'll promise to stay put, at least long enough to put some things to rest, to maybe tell him that his presence isn't simply tolerated.
that he's been missed. ]
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One. Faraday and Emma were... friends. Friendly? Probably friends, though Faraday had so few of those, he wasn't entirely sure. Close, at least, or close enough that having parted from one another's company for that short (long. interminably long.) week had soured the two of them to the idea of being apart again. Faraday, because he'd grown used to the way Emma would rib at him, would tease him in a way she never had while he was alive, and he found he was fond of it. Emma, for reasons that were purely her own, but he hopes it has something to do with enjoying his company, rather than enjoying the way he fills the silence of her home, like white noise.
Two. Faraday could— feel again. Physically, that is. Could touch and discern textures and temperature, when before it was simply a matter of pressure. He knew how much strength was too much or too little, but little more than that, before. Now, though, he could count the number of cards passing over his fingers, could pick apart when he had passed over two or one. He could feel the heat of fire (though it still didn't hurt him), the chill of the cold air. And Lord, he hadn't realized how much he missed it until he had recovered that sense.
Three. Faraday was something approaching solid again. He could still pass through things if he wanted, but it required a conscious effort. Before, he would need to think on grasping something, or else he would merely phase through. Now, he needs to think on phasing through, or else he would bump right into it. An odd change, and something he was still mastering – which made walking through town a little treacherous. These days, when he had occasion to follow Emma through Rose Creek, the two of them avoided crowded areas; he's bumped into someone at least once or twice, left them bewildered and cursing their clumsiness. Amusing as it is, he doesn't care to keep repeating the mistake, or else the town could fall into a paranoid frenzy.
And four. Apparently this change in Faraday had become a source of some curiosity and amusement for Emma, because not a day passed without her testing his solidity at least a handful of times. Sometimes in small ways, by brushing a hand across his arm or poking him in the side. Sometimes in large ways, by throwing something soft across the room at him or jabbing at his chest with whatever tool she happened to have on hand at the time. There was some novelty to it, the first few times – because rarely had Faraday seen Emma partake in something as whimsical as this – but as the experiments continued, Faraday found himself simply exasperated by it.
As is the case now.
The sun had long ago set, and the two of them sit side-by-side in front of the flickering fire. The warmth suffuses the room, fills it with a cozy sort of light, as Faraday shows her a basic card skill – a quick lesson in how to backpalm a card. He demonstrates again how he tucks the card between his fingers, how he flicks his middle and ring finger beneath to flip it over and back—
—when the edge of a blanket is abruptly thrown over his head.
Faraday falls silent for a moment, his hands dropping to his lap, letting the blanket simply hang there to cover his face.
Then, in a flat voice slightly muffled by the fabric, ]
Really.
Come on.
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he's even managed to bring a new side of emma to light: her predisposition to, well, fun. she teases him in different ways now, "testing" his solidity with the occasional poke and prod and well-aimed pillow. she's not the type to burst into uncontrollable laughter over it, though the look on faraday's face whenever he's assailed by a flying object (always soft, because she knows he can legitimately feel it now) is enough to produce a big, impish grin on the woman's face.
it's not an expression many are likely to see, just as this is an aspect of emma that she's hardly one to share with others. like her competitive streak, the way she messes with him now is reserved for him, specifically, and the mischievous delight he gets a glimpse of is not the kind of slip in her otherwise proprietary demeanor that most would ever experience.
as they sit in front of the fire together (an evening pastime emma's come to enjoy, given how frightfully cold it is outside), her eyes are steady on the card, watching him perform the trick with avid attention.
it just so happens to also be the perfect opportunity to fling part of the blanket covering her lap over his head to obscure his face.
that little grin is on her lips all over again, and she just sounds oh-so innocent and easily dismissive. ]
Just checking.
[ always "just checking." (partly for the amusement of his reactions, but a part of it really is to make sure he's still solid and there.) ]
Have to ensure you're not little more than thin air, don't I?
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[ He repeats it back, still in that flat sort of voice, and lifts the edge of the blanket with his arm to cast her a level, unimpressed look. ]
This must be the thousandth time you’ve tested it.
[ Faraday pulls the blanket off of him, flings the edge over Emma’s head as a petty sort of revenge. He allows himself a smile, once her vision is obscured, entertained by this surprisingly playful side of her. She never behaved this way before their brief falling out, and there was a time long ago when he honestly thought she was incapable of a smile. Given the tragedies she had experienced, though, he couldn’t blame her.
Now, though, she smiles. She laughs. And a lot of the time, he finds pride in being the one who coaxed it out of her, in being able to share it with her. This playfulness is new, though, and he finds it charming. Even if it does occasionally leave him with a small pile of pillows or blankets pooling around his feet after a particularly spirited bout of “just checking.”
Whenever she manages to pull the blanket away, his quickly wrangles his expression, smooths it out to something neutral. ]
You know, I’m beginning to believe you may never actually be satisfied.
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rip theodore
He wanders and waits for the town to start waking, for folks to yawn and stretch and complain as they're forced to start their day. It's Sunday, which means church, which means following Emma on her weekly ritual – hovering a distance away as she kneels beside the grave of her late husband, watching folks pass by to give her some privacy. Helping her tidy up the markers on the hill.
The colder months makes it more difficult to gather flowers, but as the cold well and truly set in, Faraday took the task upon himself. He wasn't bothered by the weather, after all, and though he didn't see the sense in keeping up the tradition for his own grave (an idea he still had difficult wrapping his mind around), he agreed to it all the same for the others. He didn't have quite the eye that Emma did, but whatever he gathered always seemed to please her well; and sometimes, just keeping the graves free of weeds was enough to satisfy her. His gaze darts away from his own marker every time, and he instead focuses on Billy's, on Goody's, on Jack's. They're the ones in need of remembering, after all. He's still kicking up trouble, though he's not sure if he'll ever know why.
(Maybe he has unfinished business, though hell if even he knows what that is. Or maybe he was just as restless in death as he was in life, which kicked his spirit straight out of Heaven or Hell and back to Earth.)
He hopes they're all happy, wherever they ended up. It's the least they deserved.
The more time he spends at Emma's side, the more that curling bit of heat in his chest grows. And by now, it's admittedly something of a modest fire. Comfortable. Warm. Safe, as much as it is dangerous, for reasons he still doesn't quite understand. She smiles so much more, laughs and teases; even the exasperation she puts on when he steps a little too far over a boundary makes him grin all the same. The uncertainty of his state goes forgotten, most of the time, the wrongness of it, and now he just settles for being.
This is a second chance he never asked for, but he's glad for it, all the same.
It's a few hours past noon when the two of them settle back into Emma's home, and Faraday sits at the table with his cards as she fixes herself lunch, laying out a game of patience he had learned from a miner some years ago. A crunch of dirt just outside catches his attention, and he vanishes—
—to reappear at the front window, careful not to touch the curtains as he peeks out. His eyes narrow, jaw clenching, though he's hardly aware of it. ]
Your associate is makin' his way up the path.
[ A reference to the first day he met Emma and Teddy Q. He speaks brightly, even if he feels a bitter twist in his gut. ]
He's lookin' awful waxed up, and—
[ He lets out a quiet sound, forces himself to sound amused. ]
Oh, look at that. He's got flowers.
he gonna be deader than faraday tbh
she can talk to him, joke with him, touch him — and it feels just as real as being with any other person. except faraday happens to provide her with a level of comfort that's been previously unrivaled in her interactions with others (a kind of comfort she'd only found in matthew, before). it's not something over which she chooses to dwell, because questioning what he does for her and the way he makes her life— better is complicated.
simultaneously, faraday makes her life challenging and confusing, but also...good. he keeps the loneliness at bay, but she doesn't think of him as only something to fill her time; it's more than boredom that has her always so eager to see him during the day, though she'll never admit that to him. maybe it's that he makes her smile so much, draws that warm glow from her and makes her laugh — because while she's hardly opposed to that level of joy, it's faraday that really brings it out of her.
odd, she thinks. but good.
she nearly forgets sometimes exactly what he is, but it's the quick there-and-gone-again vanishing that reminds her most. she looks over her shoulder just in time to see him disappear from the table, fading in again at her window. wiping her hands on her apron, she frowns slightly and steps away from the counter. ]
Teddy? What on earth...?
[ she comes around to the window, standing nearly up against faraday's back (paying hardly any mind to that) as she peers out over his shoulder. ]
Oh no.
[ that boy better not be doing what she thinks he's doing. dressed in his sunday best, and flowers to boot?
lord, please spare her from what will inevitably become a damn trainwreck.
she turns quickly away from the window, like she's almost hoping he'll think she's out if he didn't manage to see her there. ]
I thought he'd dropped this nonsense.
[ because teddy hadn't really breathed a word about courting her, and she'd been doing her utmost not to encourage him. she's kind, but that's about all she is with teddy. apparently her lack of blatant rejection had been taken as a near invitation. ]
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(jealousy, though he doesn’t know it. envy.)
Faraday glances over his shoulder as she steps away, and though he smirks in his usual way, his heart isn’t exactly in it. Another flash, and he reappears at the table, gathering the cards into a neat deck. (Most folks don’t think it appropriate for ladies to have cards. He could at least spare Emma that little bit of embarrassment, should Emma admit the poor boy and he should take notice it.)
A quiet, nervous knock at the door, and Faraday’s mouth shapes itself into a grin as he shuffles the cards lazily. Even if Teddy can’t hear him, he still pitches his voice low. ]
We pretendin’ to be out?
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idefk what i'm doing oh well
and possibly moreso in the aftermath. because, if she's remotely honest with herself, she'd liked it and the flutter it had set off in her chest. of course, she's taken to denying that just as fiercely, out of a sense of...what? self-preservation? fear? distaste? no, not the last one, she thinks, because while her introduction to faraday all those months ago, before the battle, before his death, had been less than charming, she's spent so much time with him now that she doesn't find him or his company disagreeable.
in fact, she's almost come to...depend on him. he sees her through her long, lonely days, offers her a reprieve from the silence of her small town and empty house, or simply gives her the opportunity to be close to someone else — whether they speak or sit together in comfortable peace. it means something to her, but after that mild incident, she's finally realizing that it means— more than she'd expected. perhaps a different meaning than she'd anticipated, and that's caught her so off-guard that in the week following their spill, she's been particularly careful to just...not touch him.
the casual way she'd gone about it before, little brushes of contact, the occasional smack on his arm or a playful nudge ("just checking") — she's dropped it in the last week, without even a poke or prod here and there. it's harder than she expected, and she's caught herself a few times, about to reach out, before pulling back again. she speaks to him the same way (or at least tries to), with the occasional ribbing and joke at his expense, but she catches herself being more mindful of her words. she's not as free as she'd become, and she finds she doesn't like it.
the worst part, however, is that she doesn't think withholding from him has made her feel particularly better about...any of it. the moment (now long gone) and the way she'd felt, the way she continues to dwell— pulling away hasn't made it lessen or disappear like she'd hoped.
why can't it be simple?
after nearing a second week of the limited contact, emma finally decides she's had more than enough of it. she doesn't like dancing around him or what could have (but didn't) happen, and she doesn't like the way she's isolated herself by refusing to be...well, herself with faraday. he's given her the chance to open up and unwind in ways she hadn't since matthew, let her feel warmth and joy and filled her home with laughter again, and— she wants that. she wants to keep that close, and she knows that means keeping him close.
she can't do that if she shuts him out.
unfortunately, being that emma is emma, her pride isn't going to let her just outright apologize to him. of course not. she can't summon up the words, not when she hasn't necessarily done anything; it's more like she hasn't done something, and that's difficult to atone for anyway.
instead, she purchases a bottle of bourbon (which earns her the most startled of looks from rose creek's dutiful bartender), along with a second deck of cards. the bourbon she explains away as a gift, while the cards she says she intends to leave up on the hill, in front of the gently worn cross with faraday's name carved into the wood. that receives far less question, because of course the townspeople still remember what faraday and the others did for rose creek, and given the gambler's penchant for cards and tricks that had delighted the children, it's deemed more than understandable that emma would purchase something so sentimental.
a lovely gesture, she's told.
emma can only manage a smile.
she hasn't seen faraday near so much in the last few days (not that she can blame him, given how uncomfortable she's seemed around him), so she isn't entirely sure when he'll reappear. she doesn't care for that thought, but she can't do an awful lot for it, and instead, just leaves the bottle and the cards at her small table.
it'll be there and waiting for him, whenever he does decide to make himself known. ]
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A small, petty part of him blames the other man for the problems that have arisen between himself and Emma, though the problems are largely invisible and ignored. Like Faraday, in those early days after his death. There, but certainly not acknowledged. But unlike Faraday and his haunting of Rose Creek, this was looming. This was giant and incredibly close, its shadows dark and oppressive as it stood over them.
Too big for Faraday to get a good look at it. Too dangerous for him to grapple with it. Too terrifying for him to spend too much time dwelling on it.
But it's there, creating a wall between them. Old, familiar barriers that Faraday had once assumed were set aside. Emma goes back to treating him like a leper, and something in his chest clenches. He misses the casual brush of her hand against his arm. Bitterly, he thinks on how a kind touch has been stolen from him twice over now – once by death, and again by this thing driving them apart. He finds himself moving to initiate some kind of contact, sometimes – except he always shies away at the last moment. Some alien fear he's never experienced, something that paralyzes him and brings him to his knees.
Like stepping onto a bridge, hearing the telltale snap of twine. Like feeling it lurch beneath his feet and fearing that another misstep will send him plummeting. Better to be frozen than to unravel the whole thing.
Eventually it becomes too much, and rather than speak on it, rather than turn to Emma and demand an explanation for this sudden wedge driven between them, he drifts away. Faraday had always done his best to never outstay his welcome in life, and now, while he doesn't have a choice, he can at least make himself a little scarce. Wandering through town. People watching. Making life inconvenient for a particular Theodore – nothing dire or dangerous, but small things to get his dander up. Nudging his glass toward the edges of tables, leaving him liable to knock the thing over onto the floor. Pushing his chair aside as he moved to sit. Holding doors shut and letting them just as Teddy heaved it open with all his might, sending the poor man tumbling under the force of his own strength.
It did little to improve Faraday's mood, but it did little to harm it, too.
But Faraday always drifts back, always finds himself ending his day in Emma's home, because what else can he do? Even with Emma keeping her distance, Faraday craves her company – not just because she's the only one who can speak to him, but because he likes being in her presence. Feels a strange sort of warmth curling in him as she smiles, as she laughs, as she turns that look on him, the one that tells him she's up to no good.
Lord, how he misses it, that comfort that had settled between them. Now, the tenseness just makes him itch.
So here he is, just as the sun begins to set, fresh from tripping Teddy Q off the edge of a porch, face-first into a mud puddle. (Entertaining, at the time, but still not a proper remedy for what ails Faraday.) He appears timidly in the corner of her home, thumbs hooked over his belt, and glances around carefully. ]
Miss Emma?
[ Back to old habits. A quiet warning to alert her to his presence. He steps further into her home. ]
Just dropping by—
[ His gaze falls on the small table – his usual haunt while Emma busied herself with chores – onto the bottle of bourbon sitting alongside an almost innocuous set of cards. Faraday slowly stills, eyes narrowing as he takes in the sight, as he tries (and fails) to determine the reason for the items' presence.
Faraday creeps up the table, almost as though he was afraid of startling some frightened creature, and reaches out. His hand hovers uncertainly before it closes around the cards. Brand new, judging by the sharp edges of the cards, the whiteness of it, the snap of the paper as he riffles the short edge.
His gaze flicks to the bottle again, and in a murmur, mostly to himself, ]
The hell is all this?
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Evenin', Faraday.
[ she doesn't say anything about the spirits or the cards, doesn't feel the need to mention the gift — because it's absolutely all for him. not many others she'd be gifting with alcohol, and certainly none she'd go out of her way to bring a deck of cards.
she moves to set down the laundry, figuring she might as well take care of it after she's made dinner (which, even months after matthew's death, it's still strange to cook for herself and no one else, deadman that faraday is). ]
I trust you found something to fill your day.
[ she isn't sure what he does when he vanishes during the daytime (now that he's taken to disappearing from her home, from no longer trailing along beside her), but she assumes he entertains himself...somehow.
unfortunately, she's also realized how much she's missed having him hang around, and the quiet in her days without his chatter and jokes (often at others' expense) is unpleasantly hollow. ]
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matt is in this icon so i guess that counts
she doesn't go out of her way to avoid him like she could, but in so many ways, she's caught in her own thoughts and in trying to parse out what that small, seemingly insignificant encounter in the field with jack had brought up for her. if nothing else, she's preoccupied enough that she doesn't seek faraday out or go looking for his company as she tries to understand what's going on and what she truly believes about the odd nature of the gambler's existence.
is he real? why can only she see him? has she been imagining it all? and if not, what is he?
what, indeed.
she'd promised faraday she wouldn't shut him out again, and she doesn't this time — not intentionally. but with how much she grapples with a reality she's set aside for months now, she doesn't find the opportunity to pay him the kind of mind she usually does, so she doesn't notice quite so much when he spends his time in the town rather than specifically at her side.
someone else notices, however.
there's only one other person who notices faraday whenever he walks beside emma, who sees him pull his pranks or look for something to alleviate his boredom. he watches with a careful eye and never speaks up, never tries to catch either of their attention because...well.
he knows emma will just look right through him.
matthew cullen has filtered in and out of rose creek since the day of his death. he'd seen the way his wife pulled the town out from under bogue's heel with the help of her little mismatched army, and he was proud. his consciousness was always vague, always barely there, and by the time he could finally coalesce for anything worthwhile, emma just never saw him.
it's good, he's told himself. keeps her from dwelling when he knows she needs to move forward with her life, to persevere in that way emma is so good at, but— that was until faraday returned to the world of the living. matthew realizes quickly that faraday is just as much a dead man as matthew when he watches faraday follow emma around, sees how she carefully avoids acknowledging him around the townsfolk, and he knows that unlike himself, emma sees the gambler.
but strangely, he doesn't feel the heavy pangs of regret over this fact. if anything, matthew feels incredibly at peace with his existence, even if emma can't see him. she doesn't need to, is what it comes down to. emma has put him and his spirit at rest, and though he still finds himself returning to the town here and there to see his wife's progress, matthew doesn't feel trapped or unsettled.
emma found righteousness for him, and he's seen his justice.
however, it makes him keenly aware of the reasons emma is still a woman haunted by another ghost.
and what strange reasons they are.
lately, matthew sees faraday in town without emma. odd, given how frequently inseparable they are, he thinks. at first, he doesn't try to get faraday's attention, instead choosing to observe, to see when and how long faraday hangs around by himself, and after a few days of it, matthew's curiosity gets the better of him.
he waits by the imperial saloon, leaning casually against one of the beams supporting the building's balcony as he keeps an eye on the other ghost.
quiet for a long while, before he calls out, keen blue eyes fixed firmly on faraday, ]
Seems like it's not often you wander through here by yourself these days.
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He’s not in the habit of staying where he doesn’t want to, and more than that, of staying where he’s not wanted. He made a life on running, on causing trouble and dodging it, on laughing and gambling and shooting his way out of his problems, when it came right down to it. He doesn’t outstay his welcome, most of the time – sticks around long enough to line his pockets and then absconds with other men’s money.
These days, being what he is, he can’t quite do that. Can’t leave the town of Rose Creek, thanks to a tether he can’t see, a hitching post he can’t find, binding him to the place. Can’t run off and stir up new trouble, thanks to his invisibility. Can’t do much of anything, really, and it makes something stir in his gut, something restless and hopeless and—
And lonesome, if he’s honest.
Something terribly, terribly lonesome.
But most days, he can ignore that. Days filled with teasing and joking and exasperated sighs. Nights filled with magic and sleight-of-hand and more exasperated sighs, as Emma throws the edge of a blanket over his shoulder, his head, as Emma pokes into his flank with a wooden spoon.
(She’ll say something like, “Been a while since I checked.”
Faraday will scowl, rubbing at his side, and say something like, “You just ‘checked’ not but five seconds ago.”
And she’ll smile that small, impish smile, and say, “As I said, it’s been a while.”)
But Faraday is keeping his distance. Checking in, of course, because he craves the acknowledgment, the brief reminder that he’s not actually alone. Not yet. Not while Emma still deigns to make note of his existence, but that could change. Has in the past, in small ways – never outright ignoring him, thank heavens, but edging so dangerously close that Faraday had felt something freeze in his belly. Icy tendrils scrambling in his chest.
And when he does check in, she’s distant. Quiet. Hardly asks for favors, these days – “Grab that pot for me? Show me that trick again? Cut these carrots, would you?” – and it leaves him wandering. Aimless.
He drifts, day and night and day again, hardly notices time passing, feels those cold claws burying into what might have been his heart. He wonders what he’ll do if, at long last, she stops lifting her head when he enters the room.
The thought makes him want to scream.
Faraday occupies himself with people watching, these days, though it’s hardly even that. He sits or props up a wall somewhere out of the way, or he wanders the streets when he doesn’t feel like staying still, hands in his pockets, head bowed. And these days, he’s more often intangible than not, with hardly a thought to the transition.
(Folks pass through him, sometimes, though he hardly notices or cares. Folks will pass through him and shudder violently, and when their companions frown at them, when they ask, “What’s wrong?” they’ll answer, “Someone just walked over my grave.”)
With as long as he’s stayed in town (longer than he’s ever stayed in one place since his childhood), Faraday likes to think he recognizes everyone who lives here. There are new faces, now and again, of folks passing through, folks visiting family, sometimes even some folks who had once lived here before the battle and decided to return.
(Faraday wonders how the survivors must feel, these prodigal sons returning to live in a town they hadn’t bled for. Hopes they’re not too resentful.)
He’s drifting down the main road, head bowed as usual, thumbs hooked over his belt, when he hears a new voice. Faraday frowns, glances around, listening for someone else’s reply.
No response comes.
His frown deepens, and he scans his surroundings, gaze falling on a man standing on the porch of the Imperial Saloon. Faraday thinks he’s seen the man, once or twice – brief, rare, distant glimpses that made him think the stranger must be a visiting relative or friend – but he’s never heard the man speak. Explains the new voice, at least.
Doesn’t explain why the hell the man is staring straight at him.
The gaze roots Faraday to the spot, makes him gawk for a good, long second. He can hardly wrap his head around it, though, and he looks over his shoulder – no one’s stopped, no one’s taken notice of either of them – before turning back to the saloon.
Faraday takes a breath (though there’s no need for it), just blinks for a few seconds (hardly a need for that, either), before clearing his throat (though there’s nothing in need of clearing). ]
Did you—
[ He cuts himself off with a wince, his voice raspy and odd, unfamiliar in his ears.
He tries again: ]
Are you— Did you— [ His eyebrows knit together. The corners of his mouth pull downward. ]
Are you— talkin’ to me?
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(it's not surprising, really. he can't imagine anyone other than emma's said a single word to faraday since his reapperance, and matthew understands that; those stumbled words out of faraday's mouth are the first anyone's said to him in over a year.)
a crooked smile tugs at the corner of matthew's lips, and he spreads his hands wide in a sweeping gesture. ]
You see another dead man tryin' to get your attention?
[ might as well speak plainly, he reasons. he and faraday are here on equal ground (in a manner of speaking), and it's at least explanation enough for why matt can see him, let alone speak to him. ]
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