Archive of Our Own ^beta

Why did this always happen to her? 

She was in the middle of one of Caine's adventures, a Wild West one, and she was the one that had to get kidnapped by bandits. They had tied her to a chair, then somehow managed to drag her AND the chair to the middle of nowhere to set up camp.

That would have been fine, but they put the chair, with her still tied to it, in the middle of the train tracks that ran by the camp. 

She knew where this was going, before she even started trying to undo the rope that bound her wrists to the chair. 

Sure enough she heard the sound of a train whistle off in the distance before she could make any progress.

Fantastic. Grimly, she continued working on the ropes.

She didn't even bother hiding her relief when Jax came swooping in on the back of a npc horse. He stopped at the campfire and casually shot all the bandits one by one, who apparently had reflexes as slow as molasses. 

“Not bad,” he praised himself and blew invisible smoke from the tip of his firearm.

“Jax!” She exclaimed at him, relief in her voice. “Get me off of these tracks!” 

He glanced at her and then followed her gaze down the tracks, at the train that was now visible. He jumped down off his horse and walked closer, but not close enough to help.”You know the train can't kill you, right?” he said.

She stared at him.

“Like, boom! It hits you, and you'll still pop back into existence in one piece,” he threw his arms wide.

“I know that,” she replied. “Help me?”

He folded his arms across his chest. “Naw,” he decided with a grin.

Fuck. She growled and went back to struggling with the rope. The train was getting closer and louder, with an ever increasing rumble. The bindings around her wrists were tight, and the chair heavy. She tried to tilt it to the side in order to make it fall off of the tracks, but that didn't work either. 

Her panic was rising as she looked at him again. He wasn't smiling anymore, instead he was studying her with a pensive frown on his face.

He wasn't going to help no matter how worked up she got. She knew that as well as she knew that being hit by a train wouldn't kill her. That didn't help the raw visceral panic she felt as the train loomed closer. She stopped trying to undo the knots and instead started yanking, trying to get the bloody chair to move.

The fear was unexpected and overwhelming. Her vision began to blur as she struggled and the train grew closer, the sound loud and rushing in her ears. “No, no, no, no, no -” she breathed, her chest heaving. She did not want to get hit by the train, she did not, she did not - she screwed her eyes shut when she had only a second or so before it hit.

Something hit her from the side before the train did. She saw only a flash of purple out of the corner of her eye and then a giant amount of black and loud as the train roared passed. 

She was on her side, feet and chair legs only inches from the tracks. Her arm hurt, crushed under the weight of the chair and her body, and Jax was - 

He wasn't there.

It took her several seconds to realize exactly what had happened. 

Jax had pushed her out of the way and had been hit himself. 

What the fuck? 

The idiot. The stupid incredibly frustrating IDIOT. She felt tears burning in her eyes as she slowly came back to herself and started to go back to working on the knots that held her hands.

“We would have both been fine if you had just done that in the FIRST PLACE,” she yelled at nothing, her words drowned out by the loudness of the train going by.

The knots were hopeless. By the time the train had passed she had calmed down and had chosen to just lay there in the sandy dirt. As soon as it did she saw Ragatha and Kinger standing on the other side of the tracks, their horses next to Jax's.

“I saw Jax push you out of the way,” Ragatha looked worried as she crossed the tracks. “We were too far away to help.”

“He got hit by the train, didn't he,” Pomni replied as the other woman knelt and began to undo her knots.

Ragatha nodded. “I never thought he'd -” she cut herself off and gave a yank. The ropes fell away.

-

Jax was in the town when they got back to it, sitting at the bar in the saloon. He had a drink in hand and that stupid grin on his face. 

“See,” he said as she climbed up onto the stool next to him. “Easy. And I got a free teleport back to town,” he nudged her shoulder with his, laughter in his tone.

Pomni nodded and accepted the drink from Gummigoo, who was the bartender in this universe and still didn't remember her. She hunched her shoulders and found she couldn't look at the candy crocodile. She couldn't look at Jax either. “Thanks,” she muttered to both of them.

She could have told him that he could have just helped her in the first place, but there would be no point. She didn't want to start a fight, not here. She looked at her hand beside her beer stein and noticed it was shaking. She quickly balled it into a fist, her vision tunneling momentarily.

What she didn't expect was the gloved hand that touched her arm. She jerked her head up and met his gaze.

He wasn't grinning. His eyes searched hers - she had no idea what he was looking for. She managed a small smile in return and it must have been convincing because he slowly smiled back.

For once it seemed genuine.

“You're okay,” he said quietly, with conviction.

“Yeah,” she agreed. She didn't know if it was true, but it seemed good enough for now.

He nodded, going back to his drink.

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