[fic] Stars (Western AU); Part III, Chapters 21-Epilogue
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Chapter 21
The forest stretched out before him, miles upon miles of trees; ancient things which had been around longer than his own life, which would see the next day and the next, exact same sun rising and setting on their branches. Their trunks rose around him like columns. All was coated in ice, glittering frozen, a crystalline palace eternal under the light of the moon.
Heartrending.
The moisture on his face stung; his neck was weary. His own breath rose in silver clouds, dissipating into nothing.
So many living things on the earth. Some of them with such short lives.
His feet ached, though he hadn't walked far, only far enough to leave the glow of their campfire behind.
Somehow he could sense that Walter was gliding along after him in the darkness, silent and watchful as a bird of prey, but tracking his movements from primal love instead of primal hunger.
Dan allowed him to follow, and walked on as long as his feet would carry him.
He reached a clearing, bigger than the one they'd chosen for camp. The sky stretched above, cold and austere, ringed by the bare tops of trees entirely still in the breezeless night.
A small and shallow lake lay in the clearing's center.
He would have liked to take Walter into that water, to retreat into something primeval and only know each other-
It was frozen over, stinging against his hand. The reflection of stars which would have echoed in that glassy surface was hidden.
He could be gone in two days' time. Worse, the people and things he loved could be gone. Hollis and Sally, left unprotected. The townspeople whose faces he'd learned by heart at the store. The shops and homes built by hand and pure internal grit. The stubborn old mulberry in the town square. Tufts of cottonwood seed in the wind like warm snow. Moths in the summer.
The life he'd just been beginning to wake up into. Walter.
Walter, who was standing at the edge of the lake, hands in pockets and looking down quietly at Dan where he had crouched. Mars shone just over his right shoulder, red and dim.
"Giving up, Daniel?" His voice was loud in the all-encompassing silence, his eyes dark but forgiving.
"No-God, no, I just-need some time." It was the truth, but it felt heavy and thick in his throat.
Walter walked closer, brittle leaves crunching beneath his feet, and placed his hand against the back of Dan's neck. The intention was steadying, but his fingers trembled. Dan felt the significance of it: Walter admitting fear, no matter how quietly. Admitting that he was just as human. In fact, he'd done this again and again in safe bedroom darkness, letting Dan feel the tremors in his body and how he pressed on despite it. It had been a declaration of love, over and over.
They'd only known each other for such a short time.
Walter's hand trailed down Dan's back as he knelt behind him, his mouth pressing where his hand had just been. A small sensation of warmth against his skin, enough to let him bow his head and bury his face into his hands without judgment.
A wiry arm circled around his stomach; the kisses against his neck continued, hesitant from lack of experience, not from any lack of feeling. The weight of unspoken words was as heavy as the moon hanging round and high above them, impartial, merciful.
Walter was turning him, urging him away from the frozen lake to the meadow grass a few steps beyond. They half-walked, half-crawled, unashamed in their foolishness because little else mattered anymore.
Both of them ignored the cold, moving by mutual unspoken agreement to cast away their clothing, needing to see each other once more.
Walter was looking at him-they were looking at each other, touching old scars they hadn't found before, palming tendon and bone they already knew by heart, mapping out each other's existence.
He held his old friend's face in his hands. The numb depression which had taken up such full residence in his body was being displaced by ardent love. He could see the beauty of the clearing now, austere and white; the beauty of their hands moving together across each other's skin, one set broad, one set thin and callused; he could see that dying was nothing compared to living an entire life without feeling this tenuous, trembling bond with another human being.
The ice coating the grass was melting against his back, slowly. Walter's mouth was against his neck. The vapor from their breaths merged together before disappearing up into the air.
It didn't matter that the lake had no stars, because the sky was full of them, sharp and blazing.
They didn't make a sound except when they held each other at the very end, their voices absorbing into the still forest.
Dan savored the feeling of Walter's rough-hewn body where it rested against his own, his eyes closed, everything which had frightened within him momentarily chased away.
"We won't give up," he whispered, hardly knowing where the conviction came from.
"Never surrender," Walter said, with enough conviction for both of them.
//
By the time they returned to camp to warm themselves by the fire, Adrian was still awake, the reflection of embers glittering in his troubled eyes.
Walter looked down at him, considering something.
"...Adrian. It's a Gordian Knot. If anyone can unravel it, you can."
The reference must have meant something to him; when the shocked gratefulness that Walter would even remember something like that faded, there was something new on his face.
"Yes-yes. It is, isn't it?"
They finally dropped away that night into a long and exhausted sleep, nearby the fire and nearby each other.
Dan's next conscious image was of mid-morning light coming through the woods, and Adrian desperately shaking him awake, exhausted and red-eyed and triumphant.
"Dan! Dan. I have it."
Chapter 22
Water dripped from the branches around them as morning sun hit melting ice, pattering down like a cloudless rain as they gathered together around the remnants of their campfire. They had a quick and desperate breakfast from the last of their reserves as Adrian described his plan in great detail and animation.
"I don't know, it-it would be wonderful to work out that way." Laurie worried at the strap to her supply bag. "But it could go wrong, especially at the end."
"A complicated plan. Maybe too complicated," Walter muttered around a mouthful of hard biscuit.
"It's the only plan we have," Dan protested, "isn't it? Compared to the alternative-waiting to get gunned down? That wasn't a plan at all."
Laurie trailed her foot through the fire's ashes, looking to be turning the plan over and over again in her mind. "It's crazy, but-you're right. We might as well give it a try."
Jon nodded slowly. "I don't foresee any better course of action."
"Well. I uh, I guess that's it."
"Should leave immediately. The plan can always be modified as we go." Walter rose, dusting pine needles from his trousers and offering Dan a hand up. "Let's hope our adversaries have been lazier than ourselves."
They packed away their belongings; they scattered the ashes and saddled their horses.
The sky above was a sublime stretch of delicate blue. Dan couldn't help but notice that everything was already looking a little bit brighter.
Their little group of five rode out through a winter morning toward home, emboldened by purpose.
//
The journey back was easier somehow, as if all the ache in their bones and restless fatigue had been put away somewhere else. They went over their plan, pulling and refining; Walter helped Adrian with his lines. Forests rolled away to rugged earth rolled away to grassland.
//
It was dawn once more by the time they topped the last rise separating themselves from town with held breaths; Star Bluff lay beneath them, quiet and undisturbed, catching the first blazing orange touches of sunlight. The sight was so familiar and so welcome that they all took the last few hundred feet at a full gallop.
//
"Laurel Jane!"
It was Sally who first came running out of the dry goods store, looking disheveled and abandoned of all restful sleep. Laurie's face blanched to such a degree as she swung down off her horse that Dan nearly laughed (but didn't because her retribution could be swift), and wondered if all people no matter the age mentally reverted to a guilty five-year-old at the sound of their parent's voice calling out their full given name.
Instead of a scolding, Sally wrapped her daughter in a tight, grateful hug while Hollis walked out to join them looking every bit as careworn and relieved as she did. She only let go when Laurie laughingly protested of breaking ribs and moved on to pat Jon, Dan, and Walter on the knee in turn as if checking to make sure they were alive, declaring them "my boys" while Walter looked nearly overwhelmed.
Hollis stood beside her, his hand resting on her shoulder in an entirely intimate manner and blinking up at them through tears. "Thank God."
"Mom, we have to tell you-"
"I know," Sally replied solemnly, the tension and worry they had all become familiar with the past few days replacing some of the relief on her face. "Eddie told us; he came back a couple of hours ago. He's gone to wake people and see who has firearms. We're about to, too."
Adrian cleared his throat, speaking for the first time in hours, still possessed of an intent focus in his normally benign expression. "Actually, Ms. Juspeczyk, I believe we have a plan."
Hollis raised his eyebrows. "That so? Can we help?"
Dan smiled at him, straight-backed in determination and a fearlessness he hadn't felt in his entire life. "We'll need everyone we can get."
//
And nearly everyone was what they got.
Dan couldn't remember seeing so many people, even during the summer holiday; word had spread from house to house and from neighbor to neighbor like wildfire and within an hour and a half, everyone who had a home anywhere in or even remotely near Star Bluff was gathering in the town square. There were mining men and shopworkers, laborers from the rows and fields, there was Janey Slater who seemed to draw steel courage from Laurie's confidence, there was even Edward Jacobi who greeted them abashedly, pale but growing healthy.
There were guns and shovels, buckets and candles and bandannas, but most of all there was a mood of fierce, bright-eyed defiance.
He hoped these people would be rewarded for it, that they'd each live to tell this tale to their grandchildren. The weight of their lives would rest on he and his friends, and the thought was somehow both right and distantly terrifying at the same time. It was suddenly easy to understand what Hollis had meant in all his old stories of the police force, of knowing you'd be willing to give your own life so good people could carry on simple lives.
But it wouldn't come to that, if he could help it.
Eddie had been surprisingly accepting of the idea, and it was he who explained it to the crowd with Adrian's occasional interjections. Whether it was by their combined charisma or something else, everyone seemed to approve with more force than any of the original group expected.
There was nothing left after that. It was hard to believe how near it was already upon them.
"Here we go," Laurie whispered.
The people were divided into groups, each headed up by Adrian, or Dan, or Walter, or anyone else in that strange extended family of theirs. They then scattered with great haste in different directions to the wild wilderness at the edges of town until they all made a rough ring around it.
And then they started to dig.
Everyone who had a shovel dug as hard as they could, digging away any stubborn trace of dry wild grass, piercing through the nearly-frozen ground until sweat streamed from their faces and trenches began to lengthen themselves around the edge of the town. Others who weren't digging retrieved water from the well on relay, using every bucket and washtub which could be found, drenching the ground behind the trenches and then filling them up once more.
Walter's group was first to light the fire. From there, it spread like a signal to all points in the circle, flames swirling in the cold and twisting up to the downy-grey sky, throwing heat and light onto the faces of everyone present.
Panting with effort, Dan looked to the horizon. Still empty. Still time.
All they had left to do was wait until the last act.
Chapter 23
Walter and Dan, Laurie and Jon, Eddie and Adrian were gathered in the town square again, on horseback and perfectly still in the stifling expectation. Adrian was casting worried looks time and again up at the sky; it looked much too close to rain, grey building upon grey, and Dan wished very hard for the villains of the piece to just show up already and get it over with.
Walter, the lightest and nimblest among them, was perched solemn and vigilant at the top of the ancient tree, watching the eastern horizon with a pair of half-made binoculars Dan never thought would see the light of day.
None of them said anything, only comforting each other with short glances and clenching their hands against the cold, waiting.
It was nearly an hour until Walter looked down at Dan, black branches cutting across his face.
"Four riders approaching."
Everyone startled and looked up at him, stirred into activity; Dan met his serious eyes, placing one hand on the trunk.
"Deschaines?"
After a pause and a minuscule shift to his binoculars, Walter snorted. "No. As expected, too cowardly to carry out his own plot." He gave Dan one long, significant look. "End is here."
There was a hail of bark as Walter clambered down, tensions reflected in his hasty movements. Dan felt quite the same-it was almost as if he were about to step on the stage of a play.
If this was a play, it had to be a pretty absurd one.
"All right." He forced himself into two deep breaths. "Everyone have their watch?"
Adrian and Jon held up their timepieces, each one a tiny clockwork owl from Dan's work desk.
"Sure you won't switch places?" Walter muttered from directly beside him, low and quiet. "You're a terrible liar."
They both knew very well it was one last plea to get Dan out of harm's way, one he had steadfastly refused time and again. "Maybe-but you're worse." Walter had to allow a smile at that. They clasped each other's shoulder briefly; Walter was the first to turn away, his face tilted low under the brim of his hat and kept hidden away from the others.
He and Laurie followed Dan as long as they could, passing through a gap in the flames, Laurie with her gun and Walter with a borrowed rifle, until they reached an abandoned, disused shed they had passed dozens of times during patrol. The two of them were to set up watch inside, peering through the knotholes as Dan passed, the first line of defense in case it all went terribly wrong. Eddie would remain further behind, a line of defense all on his own.
And then it was only him.
Dan could see them finally, three men and a woman, four shapes dark against the sky. He urged Archimedes faster and dug two merciless fingers into his shallow gunshot wound until tears sprung to his eyes.
He could do this. He would.
Max Shea-smiling bastard-was the first person Dan could recognize, and it was to him Dan waved frantically, desperately.
"Mr. Shea! Mr. Shea, please, help!"
The four people had already slowed their pace, most likely already spooked by the tendrils of smoke reaching up like a fantastic creature, visible from a hundred miles or more; from the way they slowed even further, it seemed that Dan's recognition caught them in the uncomfortable boundaries of polite behavior that all people fell into without thought from long habit.
They couldn't pretend they hadn't seen him, not by the way he was making straight toward them and carrying on like someone deranged, halfway toward bawling. They finally had to stop and allow his approach, watching him warily. He did his best to ignore the fact that they all had gleaming revolvers ready at their sides.
"Please help, please! Oh God, God, he's insane!" Dan choked, now weeping outright. "He's destroyed everything! The mining barracks, the homes, all those people-"
"What? Slow down, who are you talking about? What the f-"
A minute, twenty seconds. Adrian should be behind him soon. He did his best not to tip the hand by glancing backwards and instead pretended to be too overcome to speak. The halfway-terrified looks on their faces told him exactly when Adrian was approaching.
Dan reeled back in horror as Adrian bore down upon them with the full force of wrath. "It's him."
"Sinners! Filth!" Adrian cried, his eyes wide and blazing and terrible, head thrown back in stark relief against the darkening sky, "Rotting in the stench of your own decay!"
"Holy shit," breathed Hira, abruptly reining her horse backward three steps. Mr. Shea only stared.
"How could you," Dan whispered, hoarse and sorrowful, "The whole town, gone-"
"The whole town?" Shea had about one part feigned sympathy, two parts sudden dismay.
"I have obeyed the directions from the Lord my God; this cursed town is cleansed! Look on my works and despair!"
No one even began to know what to say.
Two minutes. Jon would be approaching.
And he was; he rode toward them on his enormous horse like a young and vengeful god, his chest still bare from the effort of digging, his face drawn into an expression so wrathful even Dan's stomach turned in fear, all the more terrifying for the contrast with his normal demeanor.
"Adrian Veidt," he boomed, "I am very disappointed!"
The intruders' horses were beginning to skitter backwards, betraying the nervousness and outright fear of their mounts, who looked for all the world like they wished very much to be somewhere else. Tension mounted and snapped like a wire; one of the men's hands strayed toward his hip, and Dan thought for one heartstopping moment he'd have to throw the signal for Laurie and Walter.
But then Jon was drawing closer, his eyes dark in fury, and Adrian was taking off to draw his pursuer away in an enormous semi-circle behind the Shea group, forcing them to watch their backs and making them even more skittish, and the moment passed.
One of the men he didn't recognize tried to whisper quietly to Mr. Shea, his eyes flickering guiltily over to Dan. "Look, maybe this can be, uh, advantageous-"
Shea rounded on him, temper brittle and short in his agitation. "Fuck, Leith, where the fuck do you suggest we get mine workers from? Hmm? Do you feel like rebuilding the barracks yourself?"
"But-I don't understand, what do you mean?" Dan made his eyes as wide and innocent as possible while they glanced between him and the distant flames, most likely cursing themselves for the worst luck ever had.
"Look, Mr., uh..."
"Dreiberg,"
"Dreiberg." Adrian in the near distance set off a maniacal laugh that made him jump in the saddle. "-shit-look, I'm terribly sorry to hear about all this, but we were just passing through to pay a visit and we have, uh, pressing matters." The other man Dan didn't know nodded in nearly comical agreement. "If you need anything, well." His smile was watery. "Look me up in Wichita."
Nearly before Dan could believe it, they were gone, having turned as one to thunder away from the town back into the east, giving Adrian and Jon's path as wide a berth as humanly possible.
All he could do was stare after them as they diminished in the distance. It worked.
It didn't sink in as Adrian and Jon recurved back to join him, Adrian's laughter having grown warm and genuine; it didn't sink in as he noticed a scattering of tiny snowflakes beginning to whirl down, almost as small as dust motes; he only began to feel it as they reached the abandoned shed where Laurie and Walter were running toward them, as he slid down off his horse in a wreck of trembling muscles and genuine tears catching somewhere behind his throat.
Dan and Walter grasped at each other's arms and were joined by Laurie and Adrian and even Jon as they all stumbled and laughed at their own foolishness and stupid bravery and luck.
Eddie was coming forward to rejoin them from his station, strolling with hands in pockets and shoulders loose from all tension, moving to pull Adrian aside and muss his hair with happy and relieved affection.
"Ain't you just the smartest man in the world?"
"I did it," Adrian whispered, half giddiness and half shock in his voice as he turned his hands toward the clouds and let the snow fall on his face like a blessing.
Walter smiled wider than Dan had ever seen him.
"Let's go home," Dan responded with his own answering smile, holding onto him for dear life.
Epilogue
'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,
'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
In the hours to come, they would all find each other again to rejoice, friends and family, ash-smudged and ebullient; they would return to their homes to sleep as only the living can.
In the months to come, scorched grass would fade away into the dust to be replaced by green shoots of new grass; the dug trenches would slowly erode; daily routine would return.
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
In the years to come, the silver mine would eventually run dry as they all did, sooner or later. The miners would move on to other mines or change occupation. The town would remain bolstered by a steady farming community which benefited from their recent discovery that the town combined had enough manpower to dig effective irrigation trenches.
Robert Deschaines would be jailed after an anonymous tip implicated him in breaking several import laws; Jacobi would move back east with his wiife; Max Shea would look for an employer who wasn't in prison while he and his wife kept afloat by composing an illustrated book on native grasses of the western states.
When true simplicity is gain'd,
To bow and to bend we shan't be asham'd,
Hollis and Sally wouldn't officially marry, but on the following Christmas Day, Sally would allow Laurie and Jon to arrange her hair while Hollis allowed Dan and Walter to convince him into a fine brass-buttoned suit. Adrian would say a few words over their clasped hands.
Eddie would find use with the farming community, toiling under the sun to turn the earth; in evenings, he'd sit in Harry's tavern, laughing heartily at all his own jokes. Laurie would take a few more of the administrative duties of the mayorship.
To turn, turn will be our delight,
Loving couples would stroll under the town square's mulberry; moths would land on dusty windowsills of the sun-drenched church under a cat's watchful eye; Walter and Dan would take turns carrying Blair Osterman on their backs through drifting cottonwood seed with her handmade dress and her handmade toys.
'Til by turning, turning we come out right.
The End