CHAPTER ONE
The Rising Sun

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DAWN IS BROKEN BY THE USUAL sprawling cloudscape of Lemoyne, the hazy auburn light scalding the final stars so that they retreat back into the cosmos 'til night falls again. A warm breeze rustles the sleepy plains of Scarlett Meadows and kicks up small dust clouds across the gentle slopes, morning dew dampening the ruddy earth so that it squelches slightly underfoot. The air is already beginning to heat up in preparation for another unbearable day under the sweltering sun, the chilly comfort of the lost twilight having dissolved entirely by the time they've scraped past noon.

Winona keeps her eyes trained on the horizon, her palms loose around her Lancaster Repeater as her mind begins its first aimless wander of the morning. A bored sigh slips from her before she can smother it and a few nearby rabbits startle at the sound. She pays them no mind. When she grows sick of standing still, she lights a match on her spurs and lifts it lazily to light the end of her cigarette, taking a long drag to ease her restless mind.

She's always enjoyed taking the night watch, really. It busies her when she's plagued by night terrors or the occasional burst of insomnia and can't bear lying in the confines of her tent, giving her the opportunity to pace back and forth in the dead of night without disturbing any of her sisters as they sleep away the troubles sired by the previous day. Although, she can't help but wish that something interesting would happen every once in a while. Maybe then she wouldn't be bored out of her mind, sitting with her gun limp in her hands, literally watching the grass grow.

Her head lolls back with the first exhale. It relaxes her, focuses her — unburdening the tense weight on her shoulders. Smoke clouds the atmosphere, curling from her mouth to wisp off into the muggy air around her. Her eyes flutter shut as the exhaustion begins to catch up with her, sinking deep into her bones until it feels as though she'll melt under the pressure.

The past couple of days have been hard on everyone and she can't help feeling guilty for her tiredness. They had to relocate their camp from the remote outskirts of Ambarino all the way down to Scarlett Meadows after an... extremely unfortunate run in with a band of bounty hunters, constantly looking over their shoulders as they tore across three states to evade them. Those ones had been particularly relentless, only being shaken off their trail halfway through the bayou after a congregation of gators had spooked their horses.

She can sort of understand why. The collective prices on their heads are, to put it mildly, eye watering but if there's one thing the False Widows can't risk, it's being caught by the law — none of them have the time to rot in a jail cell or await a hanging when there's so many people out there just asking to be robbed. If only the government could understand their point of view on such matters.

Winona crushes her cigarette beneath
her heel, scoffing slightly. God forbid a woman has hobbies. She lifts her chin to stare out across the field again, hardening her stare and willing herself to continue keeping watch until somebody says otherwise. Luckily, that relief comes sooner than later.

  A hand rests on her shoulder and she practically jumps out of her skin, spinning around and lifting up her gun to press against the perpetrator's forehead. Her finger goes to graze the trigger just as she realises who it is, her grip faltering.

  Clementine only grins. "Easy there, cowgirl," she says, voice gravelly from sleep. She uses the tip of her index finger to direct the barrel earthwards, pushing the gun flat against Winona's chest. "I've just come to take over for a while. Go get yourself somethin' to eat, yeah?"

  Her tight black curls have been wound atop her head, partially concealed by the sloping hat she's taken to wearing as relief from the relentless sun rays. The battered old flannel across her shoulders is unbuttoned to reveal her chemise and the long golden pendant glittering over her breastbone, her skirt hiked up to avoid trailing in the soil. The bandana tightened across her jugular hides a graveyard of scars that she's more than happy to keep in the shadows, the worst crevices of her past obscured by that flimsy piece of checked fabric. Her dark skin glistens under the tangerine sunrise, full lips quirked up in amusement.

Their eyes meet for a moment. Searching. It's only when she raises her eyebrows that Winona realises she's awaiting some kind of response.

  "Yeah. Thanks, Clem," Winona manages through a stifled yawn. She shoulders her Lancaster Repeater and trudges back toward their camp, her legs aching from a sudden surge of pins and needles. The undergrowth rustles with unseen critters and she can't help the shiver that courses through her at the idea.

   Yikes. The last thing she needs is for a rattlesnake to come up and bite her when her guard is down. That wouldn't be of use to anyone. In an attempt to quell her minor phobia of snakes and the panic it wrenches from her, Winona tightens her grip around her gun's sling and begins to walk a little faster so that she can get herself out of the small woodland.

   The sun has risen halfway over the horizon by now. The dawn chorus is racing towards a crescendo as the world grows lighter with every passing minute, her head no longer sheltered by that thick canopy of leaves and instead subjected to the open skies. She can already start to feel the scorching rays beating down on her and it makes her shoulders slump. For once, she finds herself missing the freezing cold mornings in the Ambarino wilderness.

The horses whinny when they see her approaching. It looks like almost everyone is dead to the world when she steps into sight, curled up in closed tents with a few of the early risers pacing around the campfire. Her tent is calling a siren song to her across the open plain but she urges her feet over to the chuck wagon in search of something to satiate her hunger first, feet dragging slightly in the dirt as sleep echoes in her mind.

She accepts a bread roll and cup of coffee from a half-asleep Dakota, who's attempting to plait her hair with one hand and stoke the makeshift fire with another.

  Winona stifles a laugh at the sight. "G'morning, Dakota."

"Mornin'," she calls, her strong Spanish accent amplified by the groggy traces of sleep that still lace her voice. She inclines her head to the left. "If you're looking for Bonnie, she's still in her tent."

She wasn't intentionally. In fact, she was thinking about how nice it'd be to collapse into her cot and sleep undisturbed until the afternoon. Duty calls, she supposes.

  Winona thanks her with a nod and sets her sights on Bonnie almost immediately, turning to trudge in her direction before any sense can knock her upside the head.

The rising sunlight lightens her dark curls until they seem almost chestnut, her skin glittering expensively with all the stolen jewellery from different heists in the years gone by. Her dress is the colour of raven feathers as a homage to her 'mourning' and has been laced up tight, her gun belt discarded on a nearby chair as she pours over some kind of document at her makeshift desk. A cup of coffee with lipstick smeared on the rim rests by her hand, curls of steam breaking from the surface as it rests there, forgotten.

  She ambles over until she's stood before her boss, leaning on one of the tent poles with her head crooked to the side as she takes in the concentration on Bonnie's regal face. Her lips purse in suspicion.

Too immersed in the map before her, she doesn't look up. "Good morning, Winona."

   "What're you scheming about now?" Winona asks after a beat, an arch to her eyebrow.

   Bonnie splays her hands in faux surrender. "How d'you know I'm even scheming in the first place?" she asks under that perfect guise of innocence she's concocted over the years, her voice mellifluous and her eyes wide.

   "You've got that look on your face," she replies simply. "Means you're up to something." She points at the table. "And you've been sat readin' that map for hours."

   Her crimson lips break out in a grin. "Why, well done, Inspector Bennet. You caught me red handed." She leans forward, a sly glint in her eye. "I've got a lead."

   "Do you now? I—"
 
   A different voice splinters straight through her sentence. Crassly, it cries across camp: "You say something about a lead, Bonnie?"

   Winona sighs in mock exasperation. "Here comes trouble."

   "Oh, shut up, grandma," the singsong from before snaps, filling the quiet in the tent abrasively. "You love me really."

Brandy Turner is the youngest of them all at fourteen, the top of her head just about coming up to Winona's bicep. She's the single exception to their entry level requirement since she had never actually been married in the first place — let alone widowed — but one afternoon amidst the crime and grime of Saint Denis, they had taken a chance on a stray that needed guidance. She's rough around the edges with freckles to soften up her appearance when they want to run a con, her pale ginger hair collected in two loose braids down her back. Her grin is wolfish and reveals the gap between her front two teeth, an impish air about her now that she's heard about a job in the works.

"I'm barely a decade older than you, girl," Winona laughs, hands on her hips. "Why ain't you asleep, anyway? I thought you said somethin' about sleeping 'til noon?"

"That was before you woke me up when you came barrelling into camp," Brandy gripes. "You're like an elephant in a china shop sometimes, y'know that?"

"Bull in a china shop, Brandy, darling," Bonnie interjects distractedly. Her pencil scrapes across the paper before her.

"I said what I said."

Winona rolls her eyes. "You was sayin' about a lead, Bonnie?"

"Ah, yes." She looks back up at the pair, sitting up straight to take them both in. "Apparently, some feller that bought Jolene a drink in town yesterday was running his mouth about a stagecoach coming up from Saint Denis to Rhodes. Heavily guarded, no doubt, but it'll be worth it with all the loot inside. It's passing up through the plains later on this morning so we'll be able to catch it without attracting too much attention from civilians." Bonnie leans forward proudly, dropping her voice to a lower tone. "I reckon we'll have to get all hands on deck for this one."

Brandy cheers something that'd make any proper ladies clutch their pearls, scandalised, and instantly ducks out of the tent to go and waken everyone up with the news of their plan. They can hear her voice ringing like cacophonous church bells outside and then the groaned responses that chorus back from the ring of tents. Their collective annoyance only seems to spur her yapping on.

Bonnie chuckles, steepling her ringed fingers beneath her chin speculatively. The movement catches Winona's attention. She's renowned for taking a trophy from all her victi— er, casualties, her hands decorated by a myriad of sparkling engagement and wedding rings. It makes Winona squirm a little bit at the thought but she never has the guts to say anything about how it makes her skin crawl. She'd probably get laughed at for it, anyways. There's no room for irrational fears or worries in the type of world they live in.

"So, how much are we talking exactly?" Winona can't help but wonder aloud.

"Always a stickler for the details, you." Bonnie thinks over her answer. "Couple thousand in cash, plenty of other valuables to take back with us as well. Watches and jewels and whatnot. This job will be enough to get us away from the South and somewhere more promising," Bonnie announces with a self satisfied smirk. "Away from those no-good lawmen and away from all those damn bounty hunters."

Winona purses her lips so that she doesn't speak her mind, hands coming down to rest on her gun belt. "You for real?"

"I always am, my dear."

Her chair scrapes back over the earth as she gets to her feet, reaching for her own gun belt and a bandolier to fasten over her chest. She shakes her wavy black hair over her shoulders and brushes down her expensive skirts, crouching down to pull a rifle from a battered metal box beneath her cot. She pockets some ammo for it, going on to holster two more Volcanic Pistols around her hips.

She finally faces her, head tilting in question. "Shall we?"

Winona steps out of the way with her hands raised up in acquiescence. "Be my guest."

That's enough for Bonnie. She pushes back her tent flaps, stepping out to glow under the now fully fledged sunlight. She spreads her arms and takes in all of her sleepy sisters as they filter out to gather before the crackling campfire, the broad grin on her face lively enough to resuscitate the fight within the lot of them.

"Come on, ladies! Wake up, we've got ourselves a stagecoach to rob."

AUTHOR'S NOTE

winona bennet my favourite lackey

omg first chapter done and dusted 🥳 kind of short and boring tbh but it serves as a first introduction to the gang, their dynamics and a few members, but we'll be seeing all the false widows in chapter 2  ＼(≧▽≦)／

we're going robbing next chapter whoop whoop (i sure hope it goes off without a hitch and nothing interferes with their plan!!!!!!)