Lay Me Down (Kyle/Oliver) *WIP*
Story Title: Lay Me Down - Chapter Eleven (*WIP*)
Author's Name: rhombus_
Pairing: Kyle/Oliver
Rating: R
Warnings: AU setting; historical inaccuracies; cliches; coincidences to suspend disbelief
Summary: Kish in the Old West. Yep. That about sums it up. AU (of course).
Disclaimer: Characters ≠ mine.
Previous parts:
Chapter One - The Vow
Chapter Two - Our Own Place
Chapter Three - The Lesson
Chapter Four - This Land is Your Land
Chapter Five - The Hunt
Chapter Six - Bad Men
Chapter Seven - Life Lessons from the Undertaker
Chapter Eight - Birth
Chapter Nine - The Star
Chapter Ten - Seven Circles
Lay Me Down
Chapter Eleven - The Kindness of Strangers
---
Lakeside Ranch, Montana Territory. 1882.
Kyle Lewis, age 19.
---
He really should have seen this coming. He felt stupid for expecting otherwise. Once Mr. Fish took off after Mr. King he should have known his fate was sealed.
"I want you out of here." Barbara stared at him with the coldest of blue eyes.
"What are you gonna do then, huh?" Kyle demanded. "Work the land your damn self?"
She ignored him, pinching her mouth into a tight line.
"You need me," he said. "You need me more than I need this place, and that's God's honest truth."
Well, maybe there was a bit of lie in there. He loved the land, more than he could say, and it would break his heart to leave it to strangers; or worse, to neglect.
"You can't do this." Another lie. Of course she could. "Use your goddamn head for a second. You can't be here all by yourselves. Mr. King or Rogan or whatever he calls himself won't be the only wolf who comes around when there's naught but two women and no rifles between you."
Barbara's cold facade twitched a little at that. He was getting to her. Reason would win out in the end.
"Mrs. Fish. Please. I can be a help to you. I know I ain't family, but... this is my home, too." He didn't have anything else. And she right well knew it for the truth it was.
"I don't care," she said, with so much ice hardening her pretty voice.
"You haven't a heart at all, have you?"
"Stop it. No more. You are to leave this place, and you are never, ever to come back, you hear?"
Kyle felt a sharp stinging in his eyes. He was having trouble lately understanding why it seemed no one wanted anything to do with him. He'd been a good, loyal, faithful hand to the Fishes. He'd been everything good he could think of to Oliver. And yet, he kept getting cast aside. Told he was no longer wanted or needed. Told to go away and never come back. There was only so much rejection a man could take before he started questioning... everything. His very worth.
"Why are you doing this?"
"You can't be here when he gets back!"
"And what if he ain't coming back?" he yelled back.
Her hand came across his face hard, the smack making a sharp noise and burning his skin. He felt a bit of torn flesh where her fingernail had caught his cheek. Kyle swiped at his face with his thumb, pulled away a tiny smear of blood, and wiped it on the inside of his jacket. He squared his shoulders and looked her dead in the eyes.
"He'd of been back by now. Been near two months."
That charlatan Hudson King came through and spoke pretty and made promises and took all the cows and all the money and Mr. Fish had no choice but to chase after him. Kyle'd had no word if he was ever found or if a gunfight had settled it, but he knew that this place couldn't survive for long, and was in even more danger if he weren't around to take care of it. But Mrs. Fish was stubborn, and she hated him for loving her land as much as he did. For loving more than that.
Barbara crossed her arms and looked at him with that mule-like stubbornness of hers.
"He's dead, ma'am," he said quietly. "You gotta know that by now."
"I know no such thing. You speak with your devil's mouth all your devil's lies."
"Sometimes you can be as mean as snakes."
She only glared at him.
"Fine, I'll go. But you'll want me back when you can't take this place no more without me to do all your hard business. You'll want me back and I'll be long gone, you old such-and-such."
He wished he could've thought of a coarser name to call her, but his emotions were spinning all out of sorts and he didn't really know which way was up excepting the sky was where it should be. He turned from her before she could see the stupid, no-good tears forming in his eyes and started walking at a brisk pace back to his quarters.
"You get on out of here and don't you ever come back, with that devil inside of you!" she called out to him.
He wiped the wetness off his face and slammed into his small house, gathering as many things as he could and rustling them all into an old piece of fabric, tying it into a bindle and hefting it over his shoulder. He looked around the small, unadorned room. With everything he held dear already in the sack, there was nothing left for him here.
---
Ypsilanti School for Boys, Michigan. 1882.
Oliver Fish, age 19.
---
"You're going home, son."
Oliver's mouth fell open. He was sure he looked like a dead guppy to the dean.
"H-home, sir? But... why?"
The dean shuffled a few papers on his mahogany desk and sighed.
"Your tuition has been revoked. Received a letter from your aunt and uncle this morning. I'm very sorry to have to see you go. You seem like a bright young man with a promising future."
Oliver felt his arms shaking, but he wasn't quite sure why. He looked around the fine room with all its dust-free books and lamps. He was reminded again how different this place was from home.
Home. He was going home. Back to his parents. Back to... back to Kyle. It would be so much more difficult to keep his distance knowing exactly where Kyle was. Knowing when he was in his bed, sleeping. Knowing when he was hollering at the steers or breaking the young horses. How was he ever to go back home and see that face that haunted his nightmares?
That beautiful face he needed to protect from his own feelings. From a world that would cause him harm, the worst kinds of harm, if Oliver were ever to act on those feelings.
He gathered his things listlessly, didn't bother to say goodbye to anyone, and walked all the way downtown to the train station. He used his last five dollars on a ticket.
The train moved quickly, far too quickly, bringing him ever closer to a fate that would destroy everything he held dear.
---
Croop County, Montana Territory. 1882.
Kyle Lewis, age 19.
---
Before he left the ranch, he took a horse. The big brown one he used to saddle up on his rides with Oliver. It was the first time he ever stole something, but, really, he considered it back-payment for years of service gone unappreciated. Barbara wouldn't know what to do with it, anyway. It'd die of neglect under her care.
He wasn't exactly proud of himself for stealing the horse. But it had to be done. He needed a horse; and he was pretty damn sure the horse needed him. He only regretted he couldn't take all the stock that was left with him. He'd miss them. Every a-one of them. They'd been under his care for so long.
He picked up odd jobs here and there where he could. Other ranches on the outskirts of town, some even outside of Croop County. The life of a migratory worker was something to get used to, but he didn't let it get him down. It was the same as before: work all day, sleep all night, fill your belly as often as you could. Only now his wages were better. It was just finding steady work that was a problem. It wasn't unusual to go a few weeks without finding something.
He filled those unworking days with travel. He'd meet whoever he could, try to finagle his way into a job already full-staffed. Sometimes his silver tongue worked; other times, he was left high and dry.
When he had money, he stayed in Mrs. Lu's boarding house in town. Surprisingly enough, he found he really liked it there. There was always company and warm food and a table to share stories and be distracted for a little while. He'd never really had anything like that at the Lakeside, and he took to it quickly, that easy camaraderie, the fraternity that formed between the boarders, sharing such close quarters after a long day's work.
When he didn't have money, for lack of work, he rode out into the prairie and slept on the open land. He didn't mind that so much either, as long as the winds weren't too cold and strong enough to gust out his small fire. There was something... romantic about spending the night out of doors in the wide open countryside. It made him feel more like a man, like a true cowboy. Someone who only needed himself and the land to survive.
He wasn't exactly sure what he'd do in the winter time if the snows came in and there wasn't no work to be had. But he'd face that when it came, just like he always did.
He'd hum to himself, sometimes, and it would calm the horse and his own tired limbs. Other times he'd take out his book-the first one Oliver had ever read to him-and read it to himself by the light of the fire. Or study again, for the hundredth time, the drawing that had been his birthday gift. Sometimes he thought he saw another figure across the fire, through the smoke and the dark spaces where the flames danced off each other. He knew it was just a trick of his eyes, but he liked it. It was comforting to imagine Oliver there with him, reading to him, making him feel like he was at home, wherever home happened to be for the night.
It wasn't the place that mattered to him so much as the people.
But some nights he'd read the letter again-that damned awful letter-and all the blood in his belly would boil. He thought about tearing it to pieces, throwing it in the fire, undoing his pants and pissing all over it, it made him so mad inside. That low down dirty dog, with all his kind words and promises. Nothing more than a liar and a thief.
Thieved so many precious hours of Kyle's youth. Thieved his dreams for the future.
But those feelings were fleeting. Largely because the letter remained mostly in his back pocket, nestled behind the beloved drawing, unread and forgotten. And because when he'd see Oliver in his firelight visions, he was still... Oliver. Still the boy who had taken care of him, made sure he could read and write, who had cried into his fingers, who lived as much inside Kyle as his own flesh and blood.
One night, out on the chilly range, he did something that surprised him. He broke his rule about naming animals. He didn't mean to, but there had been a loud, booming noise in the distance, and when the horse got spooked, he calmed and shushed him, a soft hand on the horse's mane, and he found himself saying, "It's all right, Ol. Everything's all right. You're okay, Ol. You're okay."
Maybe it was the horse's large, soft eyes that did him in. Sometimes the beast looked at him, and Kyle could believe that it really saw him. And that it trusted him. And so the name stuck, even against his better judgment.
---
Lakeside Ranch, Montana Territory. 1882.
Oliver Fish, age 19.
---
"Where's pa?" Oliver asked first thing.
His mother fiddled with her gloves and didn't look him in the eyes.
"He's out on business."
"And the cows? I didn't see the cows."
"The cows are... gone. We aren't herding cattle anymore."
"But... why?"
"Oliver, my boy." She came up to him in her small boots and wrinkled frock and took him by both cheeks. "Don't ask so many questions. I'm tired and it's been a long trip for you and we can discuss it all tomorrow."
Oliver didn't fight her. He was tired, too. His head had been so full of fear of what he would come home to, he hadn't been able to sleep on the train. And now that he was home, and found the place missing so many things that he had left there, he didn't want to have to deal with any of it just then.
It could wait for the morning, when he was rested and could think better. All he knew was that his limbs were like lead and his eyelids were drooping and home wasn't as comforting to him as he hoped it would be.
The morning didn't bring with it any further answers. His mother skirted all his questions and wouldn't tell him what was going on. He tried Salma, as well, and she was just as stubbornly vague. He didn't know where his father was, why they had given up their most profitable stock, and then there was something else. He hadn't heard a single word about Kyle from either woman. In fact, he hadn't seen any sign of Kyle on the ranch whatsoever.
And the large brown horse was gone, too.
He gathered his courage and ventured out the workmans' quarters. The shutters to Kyle's window were hanging open and uneven. He dared a peek inside.
There was no sign of Kyle. Nothing to indicate he had slept there in weeks. None of his knickknacks on the small table. No blanket on the bed. All that remained, the only evidence that anyone had lived there at all, was a circle of candle wax stuck to the small bureau next to the empty bed.
---
It only took him a few days to realize that his father wasn't coming back. That he would probably never come back. That he was probably dead. He allowed himself at least an hour to take that in. To sit on his bed and feel his chest cave in. To cry into one of his father's old shirts and pretend that he wasn't crying at all. That someone was there to take him in his arms and brush his tears away. But it was only that hour, because there was so much for him to take care of now that he was home.
The ranch was in shambles. He feared his mother would go mad if they stayed there any longer. She assured him, over and over, that his father was merely on business, that he'd return any day, but Oliver couldn't believe her, as much as he wanted to. She carried on with her needlework, with giving orders to Salma, but her hair was starting to mat and her clothes were unkempt. Once or twice she had called him George and not even been aware of her mistake.
He realized then, and it shook him deep down in his stomach, that he was now responsible for the land. That he was the man in charge. And with his father, Hector, Kyle, Mr. Lewis, and the cattle all gone, he didn't know if he was capable of keeping the ranch-of keeping his family, really-from falling into ruin.
"We need to sell the ranch," he told Salma. It was useless to speak to his mother. She would only argue that everything was fine; that everything would turn out okay.
He wasn't exactly sure how to go about it, but he figured he would go into town and feel around a bit. Make his name known, perhaps hang postings for travelers to see.
And then there was the unknown future, hanging over his head. What would he do now, without anyone to tell him where to go or how to get along? What would he do with only himself to rely on?
---
Croop County, Montana Territory. 1882.
Kyle Lewis, age 19.
---
Finally, some luck.
He'd managed to secure himself a long-term job breaking horses on a ranch just a few miles outside of the county limits. There was a room for him to stay on site, and small general store only a few miles away where he could sit for meals in the back room with other ranch hands from all around. After weeks and months of drifting, he could finally settle down for once and carve out his small existence in the large world.
It was the most content he'd been since leaving the Lakeside. Since being left at the Lakeside.
Everything had been going good as goose feathers, too, 'til some rascal up and stole his boots right out from under his bed. He worked barefoot for a week a'fore he could buy an old, mud-stained pair from Mrs. Lu what used to belong to her long-dead husband. They weren't the best fit, and certainly not in the best shape, but it was better than walking about like a street urchin who couldn't afford to dress himself properly. Not that Kyle was much interested in status, but there had to be a line drawn in the dirt. He wasn't a no-good laze-about. He was an honest, hard-working man, and a man wore boots, even if his toes had more room to wiggle than an earthworm in an empty jam pot.
Boots were nothing. Boots were replaceable. There was only one thing he kept with him that he could never part with. He often unconsciously stuck a hand in his back pocket, letting his fingers reassuringly graze the folded paper there, hidden and safe.
---
Croop County, Montana Territory. 1882.
Oliver Fish, age 19.
---
A persistent and annoying buzz kept drawing Oliver's attention away from the man sitting in front of him. Sheriff Ramsey leaned back in his chair, his legs stretched all the way out and to the side of the desk, ankles crossed boot-over-boot. His hands rested on the slightly bulging pouch of his stomach and he looked Oliver over with something akin to indifference. His face was long, oval in shape, and housed eyes the color of ice. His pronounced cheekbones imparted a gauntness to his features that could be deceiving; he was still a man in the prime of his life, broad-shouldered, tall, thickly built. Strong.
Ramsey swatted lazily at the buzzing fly as it swooped near his sweaty, pale face.
"Awful peculiar request coming from the likes of a schoolboy," he said. His voice was low, slightly sibilant with lazy s's dragging from one word to the next. It would have lent him an air of easiness, had his eyes not been so entirely devoid of humor.
The room was small, confining, and terribly hot. It was situated in the southwest corner of the jailhouse, separated from the short row of barred cells by a Dutch door whose top and bottom halves had been jury-rigged together with rusted metal braces, creating one movable piece. There was one window set high above the sheriff's desk, long and narrow. Smudges of dust and debris coated the glass surface, and dark patches of rust had crawled over and through the cracks of the metal hinges, engulfing them completely, like hordes of invaders swarming a castle upon siege. Oliver imagined the window hadn't been opened in years, maybe never at all. The air in the room was thick, almost sticky with odors and particles of dust. Sunlight valiantly fought its way through the grimy glass, casting the room in sharp yellows set against dark shadows.
"I hope you would consider the request as you would any other," Oliver replied with a steady voice. He hated to sound so formal, but his nerves were buzzing under his skin almost as loudly as the fly that looped in erratic circles around the sheriff's stiff black hat.
"Can you shoot?"
"Yes sir."
"Can you take a bullet?" Ramsey spit a wad of black, slimy tobacco onto the floor.
"Take it... where?"
"No, boy." Ramsey's pale blue eyes gleamed with menace. "I mean, you ever been shot?"
He shook his head sharply. "No. No sir. Never."
Ramsey pulled the six-shooter out of his holster, fast as a crack of lightning, and aimed it square between Oliver's eyes.
"Whoa! I-I-I-" Oliver tried to swallow, but his throat had gone dry. "What are you doing?" he finally squeaked out. He prided himself on not flinching, but that didn't mean his heart wasn't pounding against his chest like an unruly, cornered beast.
"My men are tough," Ramsey drawled. His voice was still so calm, deliberate, threateningly low. "My men don't shake with fright or piss themselves, you got that, boy?"
"Y-Yes sir." A slight quiver. He hoped Ramsey hadn't detected it.
Ramsey slowly retracted the gun. The un-clicking of the hammer was possibly the sweetest sound Oliver had ever heard.
"Looks like you might have some steel in that stomach after all, schoolboy. But I ain't convinced of you yet."
He led Oliver outside into the orange dust and oppressive heat of the main road. The sun was high and had already burnt up all the morning clouds, leaving the sky wide open, a large canvas of yellow emptiness. Ramsey pulled his gun from his holster once more, but this time he presented it to Oliver butt-first. Oliver took it with a sweaty hand.
Across from the jailhouse an old post-and-rail fence had been dug into the hard ground. Ramsey strutted across the street, the spurs on his boot heels jangling, unpinned his sheriff's star from his chest, and jammed one of the sharp points into the top of the nearest post so that the metal shield stood upright.
"Go on, son," Ramsey said, gesturing to the gun he'd placed in Oliver's hand. "Show me if that hand's as steady as them nerves."
Oliver took a deep breath. This was the moment to prove himself. Years of relentless practice, years of solitary afternoons with no company but the crows.
He pointed the gun and hoped his aim was true.
The quiet afternoon woke up at the explosion of gun powder, sending a few birds into flight. Almost imperceptible, but overwhelmingly satisfying: the faraway clink of metal slamming into metal.
Ramsey inspected the dented star with round, surprised eyes. "Well I'll be damned." He pocketed the star, walked back across the narrow street, and aimed a finger at Oliver's chest. "We got ourselves a regular Bill Hickok."
"Is he a deputy here?"
Ramsey let out a deep, hoarse laugh and slapped Oliver across the shoulders. "And a joker, too. Come on, son. Can't ignore what my own eyes done seen."
Oliver thought his heart might stop beating during the half second pause Ramsey took before continuing.
"I'll take you on."
Oliver let out the breath he'd been holding, sighing with a heady mixture of relief, happiness, and trepidation at what his life was about to become. It had always been his dream-a dream he'd shared with one person alone-and now it was actually happening. Oliver blinked his eyes a few times, half-expecting to wake up back in Michigan, but the same dry road and dusty town appeared before him.
"But first things first," Ramsey said, his voice going low again. "You owe me a new star, Deputy Fish."
Another clap across the shoulders, and this one felt a little bit like pride.
With the sale of the ranch final, and now weekly wages to add to the coffers, he could assuredly take care of his mother. No longer a schoolboy. No longer a burden. He was, at last, a man.
---
Croop County, Montana Territory. 1882.
Kyle Lewis, age 20.
---
Another birthday. Kyle rose from his cot and stretched his arms high above his head. He peered out the window into the fading gray of dawn. The rooster call came late this morning; the sun had almost crested the eastern mountains in full. He rose and dressed and brewed a miserable cup of coffee that was more grounds than anything, but it didn't take the smile off his face.
Twenty years old. It felt good when he sounded it out.
He knew things like age didn't much matter in his kind of life. Young men grew up fast and twenty may as well have been forty for all it really meant to anyone.
"Happy birthday to me," he said quietly in the small, empty room. He sat on his cot and carefully unfolded the yellowed, stiff paper that he'd pulled from the bottom of his trunk. It had been his first-and only-birthday present. He couldn't remember a thing better than that, even though he got himself whupped for having it. It had been worth the whupping, especially for the tender way Oliver had held his hand afterward, pressed his lips to the bruises.
It wasn't often nowadays he let his mind wander to the subject of Oliver. Once he'd settled himself under the employ of Mr. Roberts, he'd made a promise to leave his old life behind and start completely fresh. There was no Lakeside. There was no Jinny. No Rebecca. No Pa. No Barbara or George. No Salma with her haunted eyes. And especially no Oliver.
He'd tucked the book away, and the drawing, and the letter. (The candles had long since burned down into nothing.) He buried them down at the very bottom of his things, someplace dark and lonely where they'd be forgotten.
But today was his birthday.
Today, he didn't want to forget where he'd come from or who he'd been.
---
It felt strange, having that extra bit of weight in his back pocket again after months without. He'd re-folded the drawing and stuffed it and its constant companion, the letter, into his trousers before heading out to the stables, then the round pen, with two young geldings in tow.
Jimmy was already out there working with an older horse, and there was another worker, gray-haired and rough-skinned, leaning against the wooden railing outside the pen. He tipped his hat at Kyle then continued chewing on a piece of straw. They'd met once or twice before, but hardly worked in the same area of the ranch at the same time. Not like him and Jimmy, who always had the same jobs and always got on each others' nerves before long.
He liked the kid, sure enough, but there was too much carelessness about him. He was bound to get them both bucked and brained before the year was out with his wild, youthful antics. Or maybe it was just that Kyle envied him. He sometimes thought he wouldn't mind growing up a little slower, or that happy illiterate ignorance that suited Jimmy just fine. The boy was perfectly satisfied with life, because he didn't know what else was out there but what he already got.
"You're gonna dent that lopsided skull of yours you keep riding him so fast," Kyle called out. Jimmy only whooped! in response, tearing his hat off his head and waving it above him like a lasso. He finally slowed down and unmounted near Kyle, who was busy fixing a bridle to his horse. He was trying to get the animal used to the feeling of the bit in his mouth. He wouldn't actually be riding him with it on. Not just yet. Unlike Jimmy, Kyle tried to exercise at least a little bit of caution around the animals.
"'Ey, you drop that, Stretch?" A nickname aimed at Kyle's less than oversized stature.
"Ha-ha."
"Nah, really." Jimmy spit onto the ground and pointed at something in the shadow of the horse's twitching tail. "What's that? Paper money?"
Jimmy leaned for it before Kyle thrust out an arm and pushed him back. He was about to castigate him for being so dumb as to put himself behind an unbroken horse when the shadow moved and he got a better look at what it was Jimmy had gone for.
Paper. Folded. Well-used and yellowed.
His birthday present. He reached for it without thinking, stumbling a bit in his too-big boots.
He saw dust kick up before anything else. Actually, that was all he saw before something hard and strong slammed against him and he was knocked completely off his feet. He hit the ground with a sickening thump that reverberated in his head. His shoulder felt like it was on fire and his arm felt like dead weight, throbbing with a dull pain that echoed his wildly beating heart.
"Jesus Christ and 'postles!" he vaguely heard Jimmy say. It was hard to hear anything over the rushing thrum of his pulse in his ears and the strain of his lungs. Or maybe it was the ground shaking, and not his chest. The clop of hooves nearby made his stomach clench and nausea bubbled deep down within.
"Get him outta there!" It was the other man, closer now than he'd been.
"No," Kyle moaned softly. His uninjured arm reached for the drawing. His fingers were slow and numbed with shock, but he managed to push at it a little. The paper flipped over and he saw the inked script spelling out his name. Oliver's steady, well-practiced handwriting.
Not the drawing. The letter.
Kyle felt a sob escape his throat.
"Here we go," Jimmy said, lifting him under the arms and dragging his half-limp body toward the open gate. It hurt like hell, but Kyle was almost glad to feel anything that replaced the growing cold numbness around his heart.
"Never quite seen a one kick out like that," Jimmy murmured unhelpfully. "Your arm looks broke. It feel broke?"
"You a fucking doctor now, Jim?" Kyle managed to breathe out, but there wasn't any vinegar in his voice and Jimmy grinned down at him.
"Nah, but I got eyes, don't I?"
He settled Kyle against one of the gate posts after clearing him of the pen and the unmanaged horses clomping around aimlessly inside. Every part of Kyle burned, not the least most his sense of shame. He'd never done a stupider thing in his whole life, and that was saying something.
"Canya stand?" Jimmy helped lever him to his feet. Kyle wobbled, but Jimmy's spindly arm was there to steady him. "Need to get you out to the doc or summit like."
Kyle winced. "Can't afford a doctor. You think you could set it right?"
"Could try," Jimmy said, "but it'll hurt like a motherfucker."
"You know," the older man piped up. Kyle tried to remember a name, but it was eluding him. "I know a place. Cheap. Good clean help, but cheap."
"Yeah?" Kyle panted out. The pain was starting to get to him. He could feel droplets of sweat forming on his forehead. His hair was starting to soak through with it, too. "How cheap?"
"Cheap enough."
"Yeah, all right. How far?"
"In town."
"No shit?"
"Yeah. Right there in town. Back behind the butcher's shop." He rubbed his graying, stubbled chin. "The midwifery."
"The midwifery?" Kyle barked out a laugh, but it shook his body in a way that sent waves of pain all through him. "I ain't calving. My arm's broke!"
"Trust me on this, kid. Joplin'll take good care of that arm. She don't mess around."
"Sending me to the midwifery," Kyle mumbled to himself. He didn't really have any other choice, 'cept to rely on Jimmy to put his bones back in place. And Jimmy, scratching at his rear end like it was covered in ants, wasn't fit to be no doctor.
---
"It's broken all right."
Kyle winced as Leah Joplin evaluated the state of his bruised, swollen skin. She was a tall woman, standing even an inch or so taller than Kyle himself. Her pale blond hair was pulled back into a thick braid that rested on her shoulder. Little wisps escaped where they could, and when they caught the light, it was almost like a halo shone above her head.
Though she was old enough to be his ma, he thought if there was ever a woman to fall in love with, it'd be her with her pragmatic eyes and thin lips and strong nose.
That was probably just the pain delirium talking, though.
He watched her every move as she patched him up, set the bone (which, as Jimmy promised, hurt like a motherfucker), wrapped the splint, coated the wrapping in slurry gypsum plaster, taking it all in like there might be an exam on it later.
"It'll take a while to dry," she said once she had finished smoothing the wet bandage along the fracture.
"I have to get back."
"Not til it dries."
"Got work." He said it resolutely, as if it explained everything.
"Not with that arm, you don't. You can't do anything with it for at least a month."
Kyle almost choked. "A month?"
"Maybe two."
"I can't." Kyle moved to get up, but Leah pressed him gently back down.
"You must."
Kyle knew his eyes had gone big and round, could feel them getting a little damp. He felt like a child sitting in a chair too big for him. "What am I supposed to do?" he said quietly, more to himself than her. Once again he cursed himself for his stupidity. One reckless decision, one moment where thought fled from him, and he was facing the sentence of two months without work, without wages, without food or a place to live.
"Kyle." Her voice felt distant, very far off. "Kyle. I'm going to go get more supplies. Maybe something to help you with the pain. Don't you run away on me now, not until that plaster dries, you hear me?" When Kyle didn't answer, she grabbed him by the cheeks with one hand and forced him to look at her. It was altogether improper and far too intimate, but Kyle wouldn't dare call her on it, not with the dark fire burning just under her eyes. "You hear me?" she repeated.
"Yes'm," he said, swallowing hard.
Everything inside him was cold, numb, save the same slow burn that'd been under his skin since the accident. He hadn't felt this way, this lost and confused since... since he'd last heard from Oliver. He looked around the empty room impassively, waiting for something more terrible to happen, for a storm to rage inside the walls and carry him away in a tornado of wind and despair. It seemed only fitting. His life had gone all to hell, and it was his own damn fault.
"Stop it," he grumbled to himself, trying to snap out of it. "Being so weak and all."
He sighed and settled deeper into the chair. There wasn't nothing he could do for now 'cept wait for the plaster to dry. Once he got his arm settled, he'd figure something out. He always did.
Looking around the room, blowing out bored breaths, he took in the shelves, lined with jars half-full of mysterious powders and liquids. He sat up straighter in his chair, his interest piqued. They were fascinating in a way unfamiliar to him. He wanted to know everything about them-what they were called, where they came from, how they came to be here. He usually didn't much care about the origin of things. What all did that matter anyway? If something was, it was. But these were different somehow. He stood and approached them, resisting the urge to open them all and spread them out across the table in a sea of different colors and textures.
And then there were the books. Lines of books. Old and leather-bound and thick and wonderful. He always liked the smell of books. Any time Oliver brought him a new one, he'd wait til Oliver wasn't looking, then he'd breathe in deep and let the comforting oldness of them swarm inside him, filling him and making him feel somehow more complete than before.
At the end of the lowest shelf was a large text, larger than any he'd ever seen in his life. The gold lettering on the spine was almost worn away into nothing, but he could tell it was important. That this was a book to change lives.
Surgical Instrumentation and Internal Exploration. He mouthed the words quietly to himself. Even in his low whisper they sounded powerful and heavy in the silence of the room.
With his good arm, he dragged the thick text off the shelf and brushed the dust away with slow reverent strokes. He set it on the table and flipped to the middle, too eager to learn something-anything-to bother with introductions and chapter organizations. There were charts and diagrams with bits of writing and shorthand in the margins that made no sense to him, but he could feel the power of those notes anyway, feel how each of them was a new bead of knowledge. He studied the drawings intently, fascinated by how the insides looked like tangled rope that made a beautiful kind of sense. How intricate the human body was, how fragile and perfectly miraculous. He didn't quite know how much in God he rightly believed, but looking inside man for the first time had him trusting in something greater than this hard, cold world and its stark, unforgiving beauty.
He turned page after page, devouring as much knowledge as he could, submerging himself in the unfamiliar Latin terms and connecting them to images on the page he could pin to memory.
"You can read."
Her voice startled him.
"I'm sorry," he said reflexively, closing the giant tome and releasing a plume of dust from its ancient pages.
"It was my husband's." Everything about her softened then and she ran slender fingers against the worn leather spine. "He taught me everything, or left me those thing with which to teach myself. You didn't answer my question."
It was an unfair thing to say, seeing as how she didn't really ask a question, but more stated what was plainly obvious and not in need of an answer. Kyle obliged her anyway, because he wanted to hear more.
"Yeah, can read a little bit. Went to school and everything." He didn't want to offer any more detail than that, for reasons he couldn't quite explain, not even to himself.
"Do you want to learn?"
"Sure, why not?" He shrugged with his good shoulder as if it was the most natural thing in the world to say. "Would be more useless than a dead barn owl if I didn't learn nothing."
"No," she said with a slight shake of the head. "This." She ran a hand over the book again. "Do you want to learn this?"
Kyle swallowed. How to answer? Of course he did. It was all he'd ever wanted, but it couldn't ever be. He didn't have the brains for naught much more than what he was doing already. Or what he used to do, seeing as how he was an invalid now and no use to anyone anywhere.
"I don't-I can't..." he stuttered out, unsure where he was going with the response.
"You can. I can teach you." Said nonchalantly, like it wasn't the most ridiculous thing Kyle had ever heard.
"But... why?" He couldn't fathom it. There was no reason at all for her to offer such a thing. He couldn't make it make any sense in his head. Was she tricking him? To what end? He didn't have anything worth being tricked out of.
Leah uncrossed her arms and gestured around the room. "All this, all this work I've put into this place, and it doesn't mean a damn thing because..." She stopped, pushed a hand over the wisps of stray hair above her temple, seemed to gather herself. "Because my husband is gone and there isn't another man around to take his place. Not anymore," she added softly, as if that last part was meant only for herself. "If I apprentice you, I can be more than this."
Kyle parsed it out in his head until it made a strange kind of sense. She needed him. Well, she needed somebody, and he'd do in a pinch. "Yeah, all right," he said slowly, still not sure this wasn't an elaborate trick meant to humiliate him and cast him down in some way.
"You got a bed, Kyle? I don't have much to spare. Can fit a mattress in the back room, not much more space than a man can crawl through, but it's not nothing."
Kyle ran his thumb along the raw end of his splint. He didn't have much choice. Not really. And it's not like he wouldn't give up the other life for this, even without needing to. He looked up to see Leah smiling benevolently at him, that same halo shining around her. "Why're you being so nice to me, anyhow?"
"You remind me of someone."
"Yeah?" he prompted. She looked at him with the kind of maternal gaze he'd never gotten from any of the women at the Lakeside.
"I have a boy. A son. Haven't seen him in years. He's a lot like you. Smarter than he looks."
Kyle couldn't help but smile.
"What happened to him?"
Leah looked down at the floor. "Just gone off, you know, like young men do. Can't stay in one place for long, my Schuyler." Her gaze was distant and she sounded altogether lost, and Kyle knew he wasn't always the quickest on the uptake but he thought maybe he figured it out. Why she'd offered to apprentice him, to let him stay, to give him what he needed so he wouldn't feel the itch to run off.
Maybe it wasn't right, knowing what he knew and taking advantage of it. Maybe he should have been a better man than he was, but he wasn't about to throw away the one ripe apple life had given him in a basket full of rotten ones.
---
So he brought his horse and he stayed and he moved all his things over to the small room in the back and he learned and he learned some more and the whole world seemed somehow brand new, his life was brand new, and he put away the old things, and he meant it this time. He would forget his life from before now, and if he didn't love Leah Joplin like his own family already, he knew it was only a matter of time.
---
Croop County, Montana Territory. 1883.
Kyle Lewis, age 20.
---
But his old life didn't want to forget him, it seemed.
He couldn't believe his eyes when he saw him again for the first time.
Oliver, dressed in deputy's brown, standing outside the jailhouse with his thumbs in his pockets. It took his breath away and made him stagger a little on his feet. He might have thought it was an illusion, a mirage caused by too much sun and not enough sleep. How long had he been back? It must have been a while, to see him so settled. Maybe since George ran off and got himself killed and Kyle got booted and Mrs. Fish finally realized how over her head she was without someone to take care of things for her. Not that he didn't think a woman capable of handling her-Leah was all the proof he needed that a woman could fend for herself just fine. It was just that Barbara Fish was certainly no Leah Joplin, didn't have the same kind of mettle in her bones or generosity in her heart.
So she must have sent for Oliver. So easy to banish him from home in the first place. Kyle had long ago let that bitter fire in his chest burn out-or at least he thought he had. Seeing Oliver again, closer than ever yet just as untouchable... well, something was heating up under his skin again, making his chest buzz and his toes twitch.
Because really, if he was being completely honest, all Kyle really wanted was to run over to him and grab him in his arms and laugh with joy at seeing his best friend again.
But he remembered the letter. That awful letter that made him burn with anger at his friend for abandoning him so. He didn't know why he expected any different from any son of Barbara Fish.
He kept on walking, back to the midwifery, head down to obscure his face, cursing himself for getting so excited over nothing. It was stupid. Oliver obviously still resented him for getting sent away, and there wasn't a darned thing Kyle could do about it but live his new life and be the man he always wanted to be. With or without Oliver by his side. He didn't need him. He had his work and he was helping people, like he always wanted, and no damned letter from Oliver could make him feel bad about himself now.
Or at least that's what he told himself.
---
Kyle was mixing herbs together with tonic water into a grayish-green paste that would numb the skin when applied. It was one of the first remedies Leah had taught him, and he always felt a pleasant hum of nostalgia when he found himself making a new batch. He scraped his concoction off the wooden mixing board and into a small jar, then lined it up on the shelf with the other medicinal pastes.
A murmur of noise alerted him that two men were approaching the midwifery. Their voices formed into distinguishable words as they got closer.
"...can't believe it. Mr. Perfect with jammed gun. Thought you was gonna burn your damn hand off."
"I didn't," the other voice grumbled, almost too low to hear.
"Here it is. Get the nice lady to fix you up, schoolboy. Then mommy can tuck you in." There was a rough peel of laughter, sounding like sandpaper over stone, and then the crunch of a pair of boots marching off in the direction they came from. The second pair stayed where they were. Fidgeting.
"Hello?" A tentative knock on the door frame. "You busy?"
Kyle's heart froze at the familiar voice. He turned slowly.
"Oliver," he said, voice barely above a whisper. He didn't mean to sound so... so... so breathless. But seeing as how all the air in the room had up and vanished, there wasn't much he could do about it. He braced his arms on the counter behind him, almost as if he were afraid he wouldn't be able to stay upright without the support. Oliver stood in the door way, a dark silhouette against the brightness of the outdoors behind him. Kyle couldn't see his face, but the unmistakable shape of him... he couldn't ever forget the shape of him.
"Kyle. I-" Oliver paused, swallowed, rubbed his hands nervously against his chaps, then tried again. "I never thought I'd see you again."
Kyle couldn't decipher his tone any more than he could his features, hidden in just as much shadow. It wasn't exactly pleased, or nostalgic, or relieved. He didn't want to think it was disappointment, but he was running out of other options.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
"I didn't realize you'd be here."
It wasn't the answer Kyle wanted, nor the one he hoped for. It sounded almost like an accusation. Like Kyle wasn't allowed to be anywhere Oliver might happen to come across. He didn't know what he was thinking-it was stupid, trying to fall back into his old forgotten life, into the role of comforter, of protector. Oliver didn't want him. But damn it, he could still need him, and that was something. Maybe something pathetic. Maybe something he should have been ashamed of, but he wasn't.
"Said you've got a burn on your hand?" he asked gently. He took a slow step forward, as if approaching an ungelded horse for the first time. His heart clenched painfully at seeing him again, even just this dark outline of him, and he knew he was likely to get more than just his arm broken for the trouble.
"It's nothing," Oliver said. He stepped back away from Kyle, into the sunlit patch just outside the entryway. Kyle only caught the quickest glimpse of them, but his eyes were big and blue and round and maybe he was scared, but maybe he was softening, too.
"I can take a look at it." Kyle started poking into the lids of Leah's medicine jars. "Know I've got some salve 'round here that'll heal it up quicker..."
"No-no thanks," Oliver said, looking anywhere but at Kyle. "I have to go. I have... things." He gestured behind him toward absolutely nothing at all but empty land and gray sky. "Important things to do."
"Oliver, wait-"
Oliver turned back. His eyes weren't soft anymore. "Don't call me that," he said.
And then he was gone.
(...TBC...)
Author's Name: rhombus_
Pairing: Kyle/Oliver
Rating: R
Warnings: AU setting; historical inaccuracies; cliches; coincidences to suspend disbelief
Summary: Kish in the Old West. Yep. That about sums it up. AU (of course).
Disclaimer: Characters ≠ mine.
Previous parts:
Chapter One - The Vow
Chapter Two - Our Own Place
Chapter Three - The Lesson
Chapter Four - This Land is Your Land
Chapter Five - The Hunt
Chapter Six - Bad Men
Chapter Seven - Life Lessons from the Undertaker
Chapter Eight - Birth
Chapter Nine - The Star
Chapter Ten - Seven Circles
Lay Me Down
Chapter Eleven - The Kindness of Strangers
---
Lakeside Ranch, Montana Territory. 1882.
Kyle Lewis, age 19.
---
He really should have seen this coming. He felt stupid for expecting otherwise. Once Mr. Fish took off after Mr. King he should have known his fate was sealed.
"I want you out of here." Barbara stared at him with the coldest of blue eyes.
"What are you gonna do then, huh?" Kyle demanded. "Work the land your damn self?"
She ignored him, pinching her mouth into a tight line.
"You need me," he said. "You need me more than I need this place, and that's God's honest truth."
Well, maybe there was a bit of lie in there. He loved the land, more than he could say, and it would break his heart to leave it to strangers; or worse, to neglect.
"You can't do this." Another lie. Of course she could. "Use your goddamn head for a second. You can't be here all by yourselves. Mr. King or Rogan or whatever he calls himself won't be the only wolf who comes around when there's naught but two women and no rifles between you."
Barbara's cold facade twitched a little at that. He was getting to her. Reason would win out in the end.
"Mrs. Fish. Please. I can be a help to you. I know I ain't family, but... this is my home, too." He didn't have anything else. And she right well knew it for the truth it was.
"I don't care," she said, with so much ice hardening her pretty voice.
"You haven't a heart at all, have you?"
"Stop it. No more. You are to leave this place, and you are never, ever to come back, you hear?"
Kyle felt a sharp stinging in his eyes. He was having trouble lately understanding why it seemed no one wanted anything to do with him. He'd been a good, loyal, faithful hand to the Fishes. He'd been everything good he could think of to Oliver. And yet, he kept getting cast aside. Told he was no longer wanted or needed. Told to go away and never come back. There was only so much rejection a man could take before he started questioning... everything. His very worth.
"Why are you doing this?"
"You can't be here when he gets back!"
"And what if he ain't coming back?" he yelled back.
Her hand came across his face hard, the smack making a sharp noise and burning his skin. He felt a bit of torn flesh where her fingernail had caught his cheek. Kyle swiped at his face with his thumb, pulled away a tiny smear of blood, and wiped it on the inside of his jacket. He squared his shoulders and looked her dead in the eyes.
"He'd of been back by now. Been near two months."
That charlatan Hudson King came through and spoke pretty and made promises and took all the cows and all the money and Mr. Fish had no choice but to chase after him. Kyle'd had no word if he was ever found or if a gunfight had settled it, but he knew that this place couldn't survive for long, and was in even more danger if he weren't around to take care of it. But Mrs. Fish was stubborn, and she hated him for loving her land as much as he did. For loving more than that.
Barbara crossed her arms and looked at him with that mule-like stubbornness of hers.
"He's dead, ma'am," he said quietly. "You gotta know that by now."
"I know no such thing. You speak with your devil's mouth all your devil's lies."
"Sometimes you can be as mean as snakes."
She only glared at him.
"Fine, I'll go. But you'll want me back when you can't take this place no more without me to do all your hard business. You'll want me back and I'll be long gone, you old such-and-such."
He wished he could've thought of a coarser name to call her, but his emotions were spinning all out of sorts and he didn't really know which way was up excepting the sky was where it should be. He turned from her before she could see the stupid, no-good tears forming in his eyes and started walking at a brisk pace back to his quarters.
"You get on out of here and don't you ever come back, with that devil inside of you!" she called out to him.
He wiped the wetness off his face and slammed into his small house, gathering as many things as he could and rustling them all into an old piece of fabric, tying it into a bindle and hefting it over his shoulder. He looked around the small, unadorned room. With everything he held dear already in the sack, there was nothing left for him here.
---
Ypsilanti School for Boys, Michigan. 1882.
Oliver Fish, age 19.
---
"You're going home, son."
Oliver's mouth fell open. He was sure he looked like a dead guppy to the dean.
"H-home, sir? But... why?"
The dean shuffled a few papers on his mahogany desk and sighed.
"Your tuition has been revoked. Received a letter from your aunt and uncle this morning. I'm very sorry to have to see you go. You seem like a bright young man with a promising future."
Oliver felt his arms shaking, but he wasn't quite sure why. He looked around the fine room with all its dust-free books and lamps. He was reminded again how different this place was from home.
Home. He was going home. Back to his parents. Back to... back to Kyle. It would be so much more difficult to keep his distance knowing exactly where Kyle was. Knowing when he was in his bed, sleeping. Knowing when he was hollering at the steers or breaking the young horses. How was he ever to go back home and see that face that haunted his nightmares?
That beautiful face he needed to protect from his own feelings. From a world that would cause him harm, the worst kinds of harm, if Oliver were ever to act on those feelings.
He gathered his things listlessly, didn't bother to say goodbye to anyone, and walked all the way downtown to the train station. He used his last five dollars on a ticket.
The train moved quickly, far too quickly, bringing him ever closer to a fate that would destroy everything he held dear.
---
Croop County, Montana Territory. 1882.
Kyle Lewis, age 19.
---
Before he left the ranch, he took a horse. The big brown one he used to saddle up on his rides with Oliver. It was the first time he ever stole something, but, really, he considered it back-payment for years of service gone unappreciated. Barbara wouldn't know what to do with it, anyway. It'd die of neglect under her care.
He wasn't exactly proud of himself for stealing the horse. But it had to be done. He needed a horse; and he was pretty damn sure the horse needed him. He only regretted he couldn't take all the stock that was left with him. He'd miss them. Every a-one of them. They'd been under his care for so long.
He picked up odd jobs here and there where he could. Other ranches on the outskirts of town, some even outside of Croop County. The life of a migratory worker was something to get used to, but he didn't let it get him down. It was the same as before: work all day, sleep all night, fill your belly as often as you could. Only now his wages were better. It was just finding steady work that was a problem. It wasn't unusual to go a few weeks without finding something.
He filled those unworking days with travel. He'd meet whoever he could, try to finagle his way into a job already full-staffed. Sometimes his silver tongue worked; other times, he was left high and dry.
When he had money, he stayed in Mrs. Lu's boarding house in town. Surprisingly enough, he found he really liked it there. There was always company and warm food and a table to share stories and be distracted for a little while. He'd never really had anything like that at the Lakeside, and he took to it quickly, that easy camaraderie, the fraternity that formed between the boarders, sharing such close quarters after a long day's work.
When he didn't have money, for lack of work, he rode out into the prairie and slept on the open land. He didn't mind that so much either, as long as the winds weren't too cold and strong enough to gust out his small fire. There was something... romantic about spending the night out of doors in the wide open countryside. It made him feel more like a man, like a true cowboy. Someone who only needed himself and the land to survive.
He wasn't exactly sure what he'd do in the winter time if the snows came in and there wasn't no work to be had. But he'd face that when it came, just like he always did.
He'd hum to himself, sometimes, and it would calm the horse and his own tired limbs. Other times he'd take out his book-the first one Oliver had ever read to him-and read it to himself by the light of the fire. Or study again, for the hundredth time, the drawing that had been his birthday gift. Sometimes he thought he saw another figure across the fire, through the smoke and the dark spaces where the flames danced off each other. He knew it was just a trick of his eyes, but he liked it. It was comforting to imagine Oliver there with him, reading to him, making him feel like he was at home, wherever home happened to be for the night.
It wasn't the place that mattered to him so much as the people.
But some nights he'd read the letter again-that damned awful letter-and all the blood in his belly would boil. He thought about tearing it to pieces, throwing it in the fire, undoing his pants and pissing all over it, it made him so mad inside. That low down dirty dog, with all his kind words and promises. Nothing more than a liar and a thief.
Thieved so many precious hours of Kyle's youth. Thieved his dreams for the future.
But those feelings were fleeting. Largely because the letter remained mostly in his back pocket, nestled behind the beloved drawing, unread and forgotten. And because when he'd see Oliver in his firelight visions, he was still... Oliver. Still the boy who had taken care of him, made sure he could read and write, who had cried into his fingers, who lived as much inside Kyle as his own flesh and blood.
One night, out on the chilly range, he did something that surprised him. He broke his rule about naming animals. He didn't mean to, but there had been a loud, booming noise in the distance, and when the horse got spooked, he calmed and shushed him, a soft hand on the horse's mane, and he found himself saying, "It's all right, Ol. Everything's all right. You're okay, Ol. You're okay."
Maybe it was the horse's large, soft eyes that did him in. Sometimes the beast looked at him, and Kyle could believe that it really saw him. And that it trusted him. And so the name stuck, even against his better judgment.
---
Lakeside Ranch, Montana Territory. 1882.
Oliver Fish, age 19.
---
"Where's pa?" Oliver asked first thing.
His mother fiddled with her gloves and didn't look him in the eyes.
"He's out on business."
"And the cows? I didn't see the cows."
"The cows are... gone. We aren't herding cattle anymore."
"But... why?"
"Oliver, my boy." She came up to him in her small boots and wrinkled frock and took him by both cheeks. "Don't ask so many questions. I'm tired and it's been a long trip for you and we can discuss it all tomorrow."
Oliver didn't fight her. He was tired, too. His head had been so full of fear of what he would come home to, he hadn't been able to sleep on the train. And now that he was home, and found the place missing so many things that he had left there, he didn't want to have to deal with any of it just then.
It could wait for the morning, when he was rested and could think better. All he knew was that his limbs were like lead and his eyelids were drooping and home wasn't as comforting to him as he hoped it would be.
The morning didn't bring with it any further answers. His mother skirted all his questions and wouldn't tell him what was going on. He tried Salma, as well, and she was just as stubbornly vague. He didn't know where his father was, why they had given up their most profitable stock, and then there was something else. He hadn't heard a single word about Kyle from either woman. In fact, he hadn't seen any sign of Kyle on the ranch whatsoever.
And the large brown horse was gone, too.
He gathered his courage and ventured out the workmans' quarters. The shutters to Kyle's window were hanging open and uneven. He dared a peek inside.
There was no sign of Kyle. Nothing to indicate he had slept there in weeks. None of his knickknacks on the small table. No blanket on the bed. All that remained, the only evidence that anyone had lived there at all, was a circle of candle wax stuck to the small bureau next to the empty bed.
---
It only took him a few days to realize that his father wasn't coming back. That he would probably never come back. That he was probably dead. He allowed himself at least an hour to take that in. To sit on his bed and feel his chest cave in. To cry into one of his father's old shirts and pretend that he wasn't crying at all. That someone was there to take him in his arms and brush his tears away. But it was only that hour, because there was so much for him to take care of now that he was home.
The ranch was in shambles. He feared his mother would go mad if they stayed there any longer. She assured him, over and over, that his father was merely on business, that he'd return any day, but Oliver couldn't believe her, as much as he wanted to. She carried on with her needlework, with giving orders to Salma, but her hair was starting to mat and her clothes were unkempt. Once or twice she had called him George and not even been aware of her mistake.
He realized then, and it shook him deep down in his stomach, that he was now responsible for the land. That he was the man in charge. And with his father, Hector, Kyle, Mr. Lewis, and the cattle all gone, he didn't know if he was capable of keeping the ranch-of keeping his family, really-from falling into ruin.
"We need to sell the ranch," he told Salma. It was useless to speak to his mother. She would only argue that everything was fine; that everything would turn out okay.
He wasn't exactly sure how to go about it, but he figured he would go into town and feel around a bit. Make his name known, perhaps hang postings for travelers to see.
And then there was the unknown future, hanging over his head. What would he do now, without anyone to tell him where to go or how to get along? What would he do with only himself to rely on?
---
Croop County, Montana Territory. 1882.
Kyle Lewis, age 19.
---
Finally, some luck.
He'd managed to secure himself a long-term job breaking horses on a ranch just a few miles outside of the county limits. There was a room for him to stay on site, and small general store only a few miles away where he could sit for meals in the back room with other ranch hands from all around. After weeks and months of drifting, he could finally settle down for once and carve out his small existence in the large world.
It was the most content he'd been since leaving the Lakeside. Since being left at the Lakeside.
Everything had been going good as goose feathers, too, 'til some rascal up and stole his boots right out from under his bed. He worked barefoot for a week a'fore he could buy an old, mud-stained pair from Mrs. Lu what used to belong to her long-dead husband. They weren't the best fit, and certainly not in the best shape, but it was better than walking about like a street urchin who couldn't afford to dress himself properly. Not that Kyle was much interested in status, but there had to be a line drawn in the dirt. He wasn't a no-good laze-about. He was an honest, hard-working man, and a man wore boots, even if his toes had more room to wiggle than an earthworm in an empty jam pot.
Boots were nothing. Boots were replaceable. There was only one thing he kept with him that he could never part with. He often unconsciously stuck a hand in his back pocket, letting his fingers reassuringly graze the folded paper there, hidden and safe.
---
Croop County, Montana Territory. 1882.
Oliver Fish, age 19.
---
A persistent and annoying buzz kept drawing Oliver's attention away from the man sitting in front of him. Sheriff Ramsey leaned back in his chair, his legs stretched all the way out and to the side of the desk, ankles crossed boot-over-boot. His hands rested on the slightly bulging pouch of his stomach and he looked Oliver over with something akin to indifference. His face was long, oval in shape, and housed eyes the color of ice. His pronounced cheekbones imparted a gauntness to his features that could be deceiving; he was still a man in the prime of his life, broad-shouldered, tall, thickly built. Strong.
Ramsey swatted lazily at the buzzing fly as it swooped near his sweaty, pale face.
"Awful peculiar request coming from the likes of a schoolboy," he said. His voice was low, slightly sibilant with lazy s's dragging from one word to the next. It would have lent him an air of easiness, had his eyes not been so entirely devoid of humor.
The room was small, confining, and terribly hot. It was situated in the southwest corner of the jailhouse, separated from the short row of barred cells by a Dutch door whose top and bottom halves had been jury-rigged together with rusted metal braces, creating one movable piece. There was one window set high above the sheriff's desk, long and narrow. Smudges of dust and debris coated the glass surface, and dark patches of rust had crawled over and through the cracks of the metal hinges, engulfing them completely, like hordes of invaders swarming a castle upon siege. Oliver imagined the window hadn't been opened in years, maybe never at all. The air in the room was thick, almost sticky with odors and particles of dust. Sunlight valiantly fought its way through the grimy glass, casting the room in sharp yellows set against dark shadows.
"I hope you would consider the request as you would any other," Oliver replied with a steady voice. He hated to sound so formal, but his nerves were buzzing under his skin almost as loudly as the fly that looped in erratic circles around the sheriff's stiff black hat.
"Can you shoot?"
"Yes sir."
"Can you take a bullet?" Ramsey spit a wad of black, slimy tobacco onto the floor.
"Take it... where?"
"No, boy." Ramsey's pale blue eyes gleamed with menace. "I mean, you ever been shot?"
He shook his head sharply. "No. No sir. Never."
Ramsey pulled the six-shooter out of his holster, fast as a crack of lightning, and aimed it square between Oliver's eyes.
"Whoa! I-I-I-" Oliver tried to swallow, but his throat had gone dry. "What are you doing?" he finally squeaked out. He prided himself on not flinching, but that didn't mean his heart wasn't pounding against his chest like an unruly, cornered beast.
"My men are tough," Ramsey drawled. His voice was still so calm, deliberate, threateningly low. "My men don't shake with fright or piss themselves, you got that, boy?"
"Y-Yes sir." A slight quiver. He hoped Ramsey hadn't detected it.
Ramsey slowly retracted the gun. The un-clicking of the hammer was possibly the sweetest sound Oliver had ever heard.
"Looks like you might have some steel in that stomach after all, schoolboy. But I ain't convinced of you yet."
He led Oliver outside into the orange dust and oppressive heat of the main road. The sun was high and had already burnt up all the morning clouds, leaving the sky wide open, a large canvas of yellow emptiness. Ramsey pulled his gun from his holster once more, but this time he presented it to Oliver butt-first. Oliver took it with a sweaty hand.
Across from the jailhouse an old post-and-rail fence had been dug into the hard ground. Ramsey strutted across the street, the spurs on his boot heels jangling, unpinned his sheriff's star from his chest, and jammed one of the sharp points into the top of the nearest post so that the metal shield stood upright.
"Go on, son," Ramsey said, gesturing to the gun he'd placed in Oliver's hand. "Show me if that hand's as steady as them nerves."
Oliver took a deep breath. This was the moment to prove himself. Years of relentless practice, years of solitary afternoons with no company but the crows.
He pointed the gun and hoped his aim was true.
The quiet afternoon woke up at the explosion of gun powder, sending a few birds into flight. Almost imperceptible, but overwhelmingly satisfying: the faraway clink of metal slamming into metal.
Ramsey inspected the dented star with round, surprised eyes. "Well I'll be damned." He pocketed the star, walked back across the narrow street, and aimed a finger at Oliver's chest. "We got ourselves a regular Bill Hickok."
"Is he a deputy here?"
Ramsey let out a deep, hoarse laugh and slapped Oliver across the shoulders. "And a joker, too. Come on, son. Can't ignore what my own eyes done seen."
Oliver thought his heart might stop beating during the half second pause Ramsey took before continuing.
"I'll take you on."
Oliver let out the breath he'd been holding, sighing with a heady mixture of relief, happiness, and trepidation at what his life was about to become. It had always been his dream-a dream he'd shared with one person alone-and now it was actually happening. Oliver blinked his eyes a few times, half-expecting to wake up back in Michigan, but the same dry road and dusty town appeared before him.
"But first things first," Ramsey said, his voice going low again. "You owe me a new star, Deputy Fish."
Another clap across the shoulders, and this one felt a little bit like pride.
With the sale of the ranch final, and now weekly wages to add to the coffers, he could assuredly take care of his mother. No longer a schoolboy. No longer a burden. He was, at last, a man.
---
Croop County, Montana Territory. 1882.
Kyle Lewis, age 20.
---
Another birthday. Kyle rose from his cot and stretched his arms high above his head. He peered out the window into the fading gray of dawn. The rooster call came late this morning; the sun had almost crested the eastern mountains in full. He rose and dressed and brewed a miserable cup of coffee that was more grounds than anything, but it didn't take the smile off his face.
Twenty years old. It felt good when he sounded it out.
He knew things like age didn't much matter in his kind of life. Young men grew up fast and twenty may as well have been forty for all it really meant to anyone.
"Happy birthday to me," he said quietly in the small, empty room. He sat on his cot and carefully unfolded the yellowed, stiff paper that he'd pulled from the bottom of his trunk. It had been his first-and only-birthday present. He couldn't remember a thing better than that, even though he got himself whupped for having it. It had been worth the whupping, especially for the tender way Oliver had held his hand afterward, pressed his lips to the bruises.
It wasn't often nowadays he let his mind wander to the subject of Oliver. Once he'd settled himself under the employ of Mr. Roberts, he'd made a promise to leave his old life behind and start completely fresh. There was no Lakeside. There was no Jinny. No Rebecca. No Pa. No Barbara or George. No Salma with her haunted eyes. And especially no Oliver.
He'd tucked the book away, and the drawing, and the letter. (The candles had long since burned down into nothing.) He buried them down at the very bottom of his things, someplace dark and lonely where they'd be forgotten.
But today was his birthday.
Today, he didn't want to forget where he'd come from or who he'd been.
---
It felt strange, having that extra bit of weight in his back pocket again after months without. He'd re-folded the drawing and stuffed it and its constant companion, the letter, into his trousers before heading out to the stables, then the round pen, with two young geldings in tow.
Jimmy was already out there working with an older horse, and there was another worker, gray-haired and rough-skinned, leaning against the wooden railing outside the pen. He tipped his hat at Kyle then continued chewing on a piece of straw. They'd met once or twice before, but hardly worked in the same area of the ranch at the same time. Not like him and Jimmy, who always had the same jobs and always got on each others' nerves before long.
He liked the kid, sure enough, but there was too much carelessness about him. He was bound to get them both bucked and brained before the year was out with his wild, youthful antics. Or maybe it was just that Kyle envied him. He sometimes thought he wouldn't mind growing up a little slower, or that happy illiterate ignorance that suited Jimmy just fine. The boy was perfectly satisfied with life, because he didn't know what else was out there but what he already got.
"You're gonna dent that lopsided skull of yours you keep riding him so fast," Kyle called out. Jimmy only whooped! in response, tearing his hat off his head and waving it above him like a lasso. He finally slowed down and unmounted near Kyle, who was busy fixing a bridle to his horse. He was trying to get the animal used to the feeling of the bit in his mouth. He wouldn't actually be riding him with it on. Not just yet. Unlike Jimmy, Kyle tried to exercise at least a little bit of caution around the animals.
"'Ey, you drop that, Stretch?" A nickname aimed at Kyle's less than oversized stature.
"Ha-ha."
"Nah, really." Jimmy spit onto the ground and pointed at something in the shadow of the horse's twitching tail. "What's that? Paper money?"
Jimmy leaned for it before Kyle thrust out an arm and pushed him back. He was about to castigate him for being so dumb as to put himself behind an unbroken horse when the shadow moved and he got a better look at what it was Jimmy had gone for.
Paper. Folded. Well-used and yellowed.
His birthday present. He reached for it without thinking, stumbling a bit in his too-big boots.
He saw dust kick up before anything else. Actually, that was all he saw before something hard and strong slammed against him and he was knocked completely off his feet. He hit the ground with a sickening thump that reverberated in his head. His shoulder felt like it was on fire and his arm felt like dead weight, throbbing with a dull pain that echoed his wildly beating heart.
"Jesus Christ and 'postles!" he vaguely heard Jimmy say. It was hard to hear anything over the rushing thrum of his pulse in his ears and the strain of his lungs. Or maybe it was the ground shaking, and not his chest. The clop of hooves nearby made his stomach clench and nausea bubbled deep down within.
"Get him outta there!" It was the other man, closer now than he'd been.
"No," Kyle moaned softly. His uninjured arm reached for the drawing. His fingers were slow and numbed with shock, but he managed to push at it a little. The paper flipped over and he saw the inked script spelling out his name. Oliver's steady, well-practiced handwriting.
Not the drawing. The letter.
Kyle felt a sob escape his throat.
"Here we go," Jimmy said, lifting him under the arms and dragging his half-limp body toward the open gate. It hurt like hell, but Kyle was almost glad to feel anything that replaced the growing cold numbness around his heart.
"Never quite seen a one kick out like that," Jimmy murmured unhelpfully. "Your arm looks broke. It feel broke?"
"You a fucking doctor now, Jim?" Kyle managed to breathe out, but there wasn't any vinegar in his voice and Jimmy grinned down at him.
"Nah, but I got eyes, don't I?"
He settled Kyle against one of the gate posts after clearing him of the pen and the unmanaged horses clomping around aimlessly inside. Every part of Kyle burned, not the least most his sense of shame. He'd never done a stupider thing in his whole life, and that was saying something.
"Canya stand?" Jimmy helped lever him to his feet. Kyle wobbled, but Jimmy's spindly arm was there to steady him. "Need to get you out to the doc or summit like."
Kyle winced. "Can't afford a doctor. You think you could set it right?"
"Could try," Jimmy said, "but it'll hurt like a motherfucker."
"You know," the older man piped up. Kyle tried to remember a name, but it was eluding him. "I know a place. Cheap. Good clean help, but cheap."
"Yeah?" Kyle panted out. The pain was starting to get to him. He could feel droplets of sweat forming on his forehead. His hair was starting to soak through with it, too. "How cheap?"
"Cheap enough."
"Yeah, all right. How far?"
"In town."
"No shit?"
"Yeah. Right there in town. Back behind the butcher's shop." He rubbed his graying, stubbled chin. "The midwifery."
"The midwifery?" Kyle barked out a laugh, but it shook his body in a way that sent waves of pain all through him. "I ain't calving. My arm's broke!"
"Trust me on this, kid. Joplin'll take good care of that arm. She don't mess around."
"Sending me to the midwifery," Kyle mumbled to himself. He didn't really have any other choice, 'cept to rely on Jimmy to put his bones back in place. And Jimmy, scratching at his rear end like it was covered in ants, wasn't fit to be no doctor.
---
"It's broken all right."
Kyle winced as Leah Joplin evaluated the state of his bruised, swollen skin. She was a tall woman, standing even an inch or so taller than Kyle himself. Her pale blond hair was pulled back into a thick braid that rested on her shoulder. Little wisps escaped where they could, and when they caught the light, it was almost like a halo shone above her head.
Though she was old enough to be his ma, he thought if there was ever a woman to fall in love with, it'd be her with her pragmatic eyes and thin lips and strong nose.
That was probably just the pain delirium talking, though.
He watched her every move as she patched him up, set the bone (which, as Jimmy promised, hurt like a motherfucker), wrapped the splint, coated the wrapping in slurry gypsum plaster, taking it all in like there might be an exam on it later.
"It'll take a while to dry," she said once she had finished smoothing the wet bandage along the fracture.
"I have to get back."
"Not til it dries."
"Got work." He said it resolutely, as if it explained everything.
"Not with that arm, you don't. You can't do anything with it for at least a month."
Kyle almost choked. "A month?"
"Maybe two."
"I can't." Kyle moved to get up, but Leah pressed him gently back down.
"You must."
Kyle knew his eyes had gone big and round, could feel them getting a little damp. He felt like a child sitting in a chair too big for him. "What am I supposed to do?" he said quietly, more to himself than her. Once again he cursed himself for his stupidity. One reckless decision, one moment where thought fled from him, and he was facing the sentence of two months without work, without wages, without food or a place to live.
"Kyle." Her voice felt distant, very far off. "Kyle. I'm going to go get more supplies. Maybe something to help you with the pain. Don't you run away on me now, not until that plaster dries, you hear me?" When Kyle didn't answer, she grabbed him by the cheeks with one hand and forced him to look at her. It was altogether improper and far too intimate, but Kyle wouldn't dare call her on it, not with the dark fire burning just under her eyes. "You hear me?" she repeated.
"Yes'm," he said, swallowing hard.
Everything inside him was cold, numb, save the same slow burn that'd been under his skin since the accident. He hadn't felt this way, this lost and confused since... since he'd last heard from Oliver. He looked around the empty room impassively, waiting for something more terrible to happen, for a storm to rage inside the walls and carry him away in a tornado of wind and despair. It seemed only fitting. His life had gone all to hell, and it was his own damn fault.
"Stop it," he grumbled to himself, trying to snap out of it. "Being so weak and all."
He sighed and settled deeper into the chair. There wasn't nothing he could do for now 'cept wait for the plaster to dry. Once he got his arm settled, he'd figure something out. He always did.
Looking around the room, blowing out bored breaths, he took in the shelves, lined with jars half-full of mysterious powders and liquids. He sat up straighter in his chair, his interest piqued. They were fascinating in a way unfamiliar to him. He wanted to know everything about them-what they were called, where they came from, how they came to be here. He usually didn't much care about the origin of things. What all did that matter anyway? If something was, it was. But these were different somehow. He stood and approached them, resisting the urge to open them all and spread them out across the table in a sea of different colors and textures.
And then there were the books. Lines of books. Old and leather-bound and thick and wonderful. He always liked the smell of books. Any time Oliver brought him a new one, he'd wait til Oliver wasn't looking, then he'd breathe in deep and let the comforting oldness of them swarm inside him, filling him and making him feel somehow more complete than before.
At the end of the lowest shelf was a large text, larger than any he'd ever seen in his life. The gold lettering on the spine was almost worn away into nothing, but he could tell it was important. That this was a book to change lives.
Surgical Instrumentation and Internal Exploration. He mouthed the words quietly to himself. Even in his low whisper they sounded powerful and heavy in the silence of the room.
With his good arm, he dragged the thick text off the shelf and brushed the dust away with slow reverent strokes. He set it on the table and flipped to the middle, too eager to learn something-anything-to bother with introductions and chapter organizations. There were charts and diagrams with bits of writing and shorthand in the margins that made no sense to him, but he could feel the power of those notes anyway, feel how each of them was a new bead of knowledge. He studied the drawings intently, fascinated by how the insides looked like tangled rope that made a beautiful kind of sense. How intricate the human body was, how fragile and perfectly miraculous. He didn't quite know how much in God he rightly believed, but looking inside man for the first time had him trusting in something greater than this hard, cold world and its stark, unforgiving beauty.
He turned page after page, devouring as much knowledge as he could, submerging himself in the unfamiliar Latin terms and connecting them to images on the page he could pin to memory.
"You can read."
Her voice startled him.
"I'm sorry," he said reflexively, closing the giant tome and releasing a plume of dust from its ancient pages.
"It was my husband's." Everything about her softened then and she ran slender fingers against the worn leather spine. "He taught me everything, or left me those thing with which to teach myself. You didn't answer my question."
It was an unfair thing to say, seeing as how she didn't really ask a question, but more stated what was plainly obvious and not in need of an answer. Kyle obliged her anyway, because he wanted to hear more.
"Yeah, can read a little bit. Went to school and everything." He didn't want to offer any more detail than that, for reasons he couldn't quite explain, not even to himself.
"Do you want to learn?"
"Sure, why not?" He shrugged with his good shoulder as if it was the most natural thing in the world to say. "Would be more useless than a dead barn owl if I didn't learn nothing."
"No," she said with a slight shake of the head. "This." She ran a hand over the book again. "Do you want to learn this?"
Kyle swallowed. How to answer? Of course he did. It was all he'd ever wanted, but it couldn't ever be. He didn't have the brains for naught much more than what he was doing already. Or what he used to do, seeing as how he was an invalid now and no use to anyone anywhere.
"I don't-I can't..." he stuttered out, unsure where he was going with the response.
"You can. I can teach you." Said nonchalantly, like it wasn't the most ridiculous thing Kyle had ever heard.
"But... why?" He couldn't fathom it. There was no reason at all for her to offer such a thing. He couldn't make it make any sense in his head. Was she tricking him? To what end? He didn't have anything worth being tricked out of.
Leah uncrossed her arms and gestured around the room. "All this, all this work I've put into this place, and it doesn't mean a damn thing because..." She stopped, pushed a hand over the wisps of stray hair above her temple, seemed to gather herself. "Because my husband is gone and there isn't another man around to take his place. Not anymore," she added softly, as if that last part was meant only for herself. "If I apprentice you, I can be more than this."
Kyle parsed it out in his head until it made a strange kind of sense. She needed him. Well, she needed somebody, and he'd do in a pinch. "Yeah, all right," he said slowly, still not sure this wasn't an elaborate trick meant to humiliate him and cast him down in some way.
"You got a bed, Kyle? I don't have much to spare. Can fit a mattress in the back room, not much more space than a man can crawl through, but it's not nothing."
Kyle ran his thumb along the raw end of his splint. He didn't have much choice. Not really. And it's not like he wouldn't give up the other life for this, even without needing to. He looked up to see Leah smiling benevolently at him, that same halo shining around her. "Why're you being so nice to me, anyhow?"
"You remind me of someone."
"Yeah?" he prompted. She looked at him with the kind of maternal gaze he'd never gotten from any of the women at the Lakeside.
"I have a boy. A son. Haven't seen him in years. He's a lot like you. Smarter than he looks."
Kyle couldn't help but smile.
"What happened to him?"
Leah looked down at the floor. "Just gone off, you know, like young men do. Can't stay in one place for long, my Schuyler." Her gaze was distant and she sounded altogether lost, and Kyle knew he wasn't always the quickest on the uptake but he thought maybe he figured it out. Why she'd offered to apprentice him, to let him stay, to give him what he needed so he wouldn't feel the itch to run off.
Maybe it wasn't right, knowing what he knew and taking advantage of it. Maybe he should have been a better man than he was, but he wasn't about to throw away the one ripe apple life had given him in a basket full of rotten ones.
---
So he brought his horse and he stayed and he moved all his things over to the small room in the back and he learned and he learned some more and the whole world seemed somehow brand new, his life was brand new, and he put away the old things, and he meant it this time. He would forget his life from before now, and if he didn't love Leah Joplin like his own family already, he knew it was only a matter of time.
---
Croop County, Montana Territory. 1883.
Kyle Lewis, age 20.
---
But his old life didn't want to forget him, it seemed.
He couldn't believe his eyes when he saw him again for the first time.
Oliver, dressed in deputy's brown, standing outside the jailhouse with his thumbs in his pockets. It took his breath away and made him stagger a little on his feet. He might have thought it was an illusion, a mirage caused by too much sun and not enough sleep. How long had he been back? It must have been a while, to see him so settled. Maybe since George ran off and got himself killed and Kyle got booted and Mrs. Fish finally realized how over her head she was without someone to take care of things for her. Not that he didn't think a woman capable of handling her-Leah was all the proof he needed that a woman could fend for herself just fine. It was just that Barbara Fish was certainly no Leah Joplin, didn't have the same kind of mettle in her bones or generosity in her heart.
So she must have sent for Oliver. So easy to banish him from home in the first place. Kyle had long ago let that bitter fire in his chest burn out-or at least he thought he had. Seeing Oliver again, closer than ever yet just as untouchable... well, something was heating up under his skin again, making his chest buzz and his toes twitch.
Because really, if he was being completely honest, all Kyle really wanted was to run over to him and grab him in his arms and laugh with joy at seeing his best friend again.
But he remembered the letter. That awful letter that made him burn with anger at his friend for abandoning him so. He didn't know why he expected any different from any son of Barbara Fish.
He kept on walking, back to the midwifery, head down to obscure his face, cursing himself for getting so excited over nothing. It was stupid. Oliver obviously still resented him for getting sent away, and there wasn't a darned thing Kyle could do about it but live his new life and be the man he always wanted to be. With or without Oliver by his side. He didn't need him. He had his work and he was helping people, like he always wanted, and no damned letter from Oliver could make him feel bad about himself now.
Or at least that's what he told himself.
---
Kyle was mixing herbs together with tonic water into a grayish-green paste that would numb the skin when applied. It was one of the first remedies Leah had taught him, and he always felt a pleasant hum of nostalgia when he found himself making a new batch. He scraped his concoction off the wooden mixing board and into a small jar, then lined it up on the shelf with the other medicinal pastes.
A murmur of noise alerted him that two men were approaching the midwifery. Their voices formed into distinguishable words as they got closer.
"...can't believe it. Mr. Perfect with jammed gun. Thought you was gonna burn your damn hand off."
"I didn't," the other voice grumbled, almost too low to hear.
"Here it is. Get the nice lady to fix you up, schoolboy. Then mommy can tuck you in." There was a rough peel of laughter, sounding like sandpaper over stone, and then the crunch of a pair of boots marching off in the direction they came from. The second pair stayed where they were. Fidgeting.
"Hello?" A tentative knock on the door frame. "You busy?"
Kyle's heart froze at the familiar voice. He turned slowly.
"Oliver," he said, voice barely above a whisper. He didn't mean to sound so... so... so breathless. But seeing as how all the air in the room had up and vanished, there wasn't much he could do about it. He braced his arms on the counter behind him, almost as if he were afraid he wouldn't be able to stay upright without the support. Oliver stood in the door way, a dark silhouette against the brightness of the outdoors behind him. Kyle couldn't see his face, but the unmistakable shape of him... he couldn't ever forget the shape of him.
"Kyle. I-" Oliver paused, swallowed, rubbed his hands nervously against his chaps, then tried again. "I never thought I'd see you again."
Kyle couldn't decipher his tone any more than he could his features, hidden in just as much shadow. It wasn't exactly pleased, or nostalgic, or relieved. He didn't want to think it was disappointment, but he was running out of other options.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
"I didn't realize you'd be here."
It wasn't the answer Kyle wanted, nor the one he hoped for. It sounded almost like an accusation. Like Kyle wasn't allowed to be anywhere Oliver might happen to come across. He didn't know what he was thinking-it was stupid, trying to fall back into his old forgotten life, into the role of comforter, of protector. Oliver didn't want him. But damn it, he could still need him, and that was something. Maybe something pathetic. Maybe something he should have been ashamed of, but he wasn't.
"Said you've got a burn on your hand?" he asked gently. He took a slow step forward, as if approaching an ungelded horse for the first time. His heart clenched painfully at seeing him again, even just this dark outline of him, and he knew he was likely to get more than just his arm broken for the trouble.
"It's nothing," Oliver said. He stepped back away from Kyle, into the sunlit patch just outside the entryway. Kyle only caught the quickest glimpse of them, but his eyes were big and blue and round and maybe he was scared, but maybe he was softening, too.
"I can take a look at it." Kyle started poking into the lids of Leah's medicine jars. "Know I've got some salve 'round here that'll heal it up quicker..."
"No-no thanks," Oliver said, looking anywhere but at Kyle. "I have to go. I have... things." He gestured behind him toward absolutely nothing at all but empty land and gray sky. "Important things to do."
"Oliver, wait-"
Oliver turned back. His eyes weren't soft anymore. "Don't call me that," he said.
And then he was gone.
(...TBC...)