Jenna

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"Jenna, what is man's greatest weakness?"

It was morning, the kind of morning where the sky decides not to breathe and the clouds fall to the ground in heaps of dampened fog. The words of my lesson books blurred in my eyes, the tight lettering a garbled string without meaning and my eight year old mind caught in fluttering curtains dancing over the windows. My hand wrapped around a pen but dormant on my desk. I looked up at my teacher, eyes swimming with reflection.

"What?"

"You weren't listening," He dropped the heavy book he had held in his arms onto my desk, and standing before the worn chalkboard sighed.

"What is man's greatest weakness?"

Children are quick to remember, and a phrase without meaning to them will easily catch in their minds, repeating like silly poems and meaningless words, sing-song and light.

"Man's greatest weakness is his self obsession, and appetite for destruction."

"And do you think that is all?"

"Um," I scrawled on my paper and glanced out the window, unsurity creeping in. "Yes,"

"Are you not considering that it might be much more than that?"

"Like what?"

"You have read, yes, arrogance and violence. But what about the obvious? Doesn't a man's fear bring him down as well?" 

I blinked. He continued, turning his back, smearing chalk across the surface of the board with words directed back to me. I followed his movement, watching as the form morphed with every swipe and circular motion.

"His fear?"

"False fear. Fear of death, of pain, of the unknown. Tell me,  what is it you fear?"

I bounced in my seat a little and peered at the ceiling as I thought.

"Snakes,"

"Oh?"

I hadn't noticed the look on his face, that he was jotting something down mentally and putting it away for later use. 

"And how can you get over this fear?"

"I don't know,"

A problem or threat into fear. He spelled a word branching off of fear. Confrontation.

"The only way to abolish fear is through confrontation," He tapped the board between every few syllables, words curt and staccato.

"Although there is…"

He wrote another word, beside confrontation, under fear. 

"Avoidance. Which will get you nowhere except in trouble or still seeped in fear. But confrontation-"

Two words he branched off of it. 

"leads to either the fear coming to pass, or"

I nodded, and looking to the board we read that last line together.

"Victory."

"So in conclusion," He set the chalk lightly on the edge of the board and turned. "The only way to abolish a fear of any kind, is for one to face the danger and either risk losing everything, or conquer it."

He looked at me the same even years afterwards, that furrowed expression that shot down any hint of pride you might hold and told you that perhaps you'd never make it.

His presence captured  in a dark oil painting hanging silently over mahogany trim hallways, resting among dozens of other stiff portraits. A quiet row. Judgemental, and dead.

You could have done better, he seemed to say without, moving a muscle.

I glanced as I passed, feeling the weight of his gloomy aura grow on me. It was too much to bear. I looked away feeling my heels hit heavily against the floor. Fear. Confrontation. Victory, or failure. I breathed through my nostrils and rounded a corner, unlocking a door, descending a flight of stairs. It was all so instinctual, now. A thing I'd done countless times. I knew my way around the church like the back of my hand, and every creaking board along its countless staircases. I raised the candle I held on a silver stand, letting its feeble light wash orange over the dusty dark path ahead. Two doors to the right, another hall, another flight of stairs. Six doors to the left. An iron gate, a room of stone. I unlocked the door at the end with the heavy ring of rusted brass keys I kept on my belt. All that for a jacket, I thought, the tightness of a grimace pulling at my face as I lay eyes on the rumpled denim abandoned to the furthest corner of the room. 

It was heavy in my hands, drenched with the weight of curses and actions you couldn't take back. The whole thing was covered in scuffs and scars--a little like Leon himself had become-- and the back, coated in faded fabric paint. 

Deadwood wolves.

The black shape of the wolf's head seemed to grin up at me tauntingly.

You can't run from fate, can you. But you can become strangely attached to the reminder of it. I folded the face away and stuffed it under my arm, straightening and brushing the dirt from my knees with a sigh. There was too much to do. I missed the days when things were simpler, easy hunting, being alone. How did I acquire those two, and in such a short amount of time? The now strangest teens at Deadwood public highschool, as far as I had seen. Apart from myself. 

How can I get rid of them?

The answer was unfortunate. I'd have to help them, first. And somehow fix my own mess along the way. 

It was a long way back to the makeshift infirmary, but after a long walk of bored silence, a detour stealing through empty rooms to avoid the gatherings and making it into the kitchen to grab something a little more sustaining than grape juice and old crackers, I shoved open the door. D'arco was standing over Halloway, gripping his shirt with white knuckles and impaling the boy with a look that meant death, or something close. Mouth set twisted into a teeth clenched snarl, eyes flicking over to me as I appeared in the doorway with arms full.

"Hey you," 

He backed away, releasing the other boy's shirt and feverishly wrenching the bunched sleeves of his shirt back down over his wrists. 

Impassively I stared, and meeting Leon's frightened gaze slung the jacket over the bedside table. His face remained frozen, eyes brimming with what seemed to be concern, a look of anger hidden in the lines of his forehead. 

I gave a single nod in their direction.

"I got you bread."

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