Outlaw's Prayer (ch. 14)
Title: Outlaw's Prayer (14/22)
Author: honestys_easy
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Skibmann (Neal Tiemann/Andy Skib), Cookson (David Cook/Kelly Clarkson), Kradam (Kris Allen/Adam Lambert), various others, both slash and het
Disclaimer: Don't know, don't own; never happened, never will.
Summary: For his entire life, Kyle Peek always longed for the thrill and adventure in the open lands of the wild West. He gets more than he ever bargained for when he joins up with the legendary outlaw gang known only as The Kings.
Notes: What started out as a fledgling idea grew to be a huge AU and I'm very grateful to share it with you. A ginormous thank you goes out to dreamerren, for her work as beta and practically as the story's second author. Title credit goes to Nick Gibson for his song "Outlaw's Prayer."
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5, part one
Chapter 5, part two
Chapter 6
Chapter 7, part one
Chapter 7, part two
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
"He never killed a man that did not need killing." - Inscription on the grave of gunman Clay Allison
The impending storm Neal had predicted would slam into their camp had not yet arrived: the skies were still bright and cloudless, the shine of the desert sun more notorious than the outlaws' reputation bearing down upon them. Kyle thought that perhaps Neal had miscalculated, that he was too preoccupied with watching the ground before him to properly read the sky above. Even the Dr. himself began to doubt his initial suspicions, braving his ominous prediction and riding off for an hour or two with Sixx; he had claimed he was hunting, and had returned with two jackrabbits for a hearty supper, but both Kyle and David agreed without words that he had been looking for Andy, searching in the valleys and crevices he could not see from his perch on the ridge.
When David made the executive decision to move their camp underneath the dry safety of the ridge, it was the only time the leader of the Kings admitted they were lucky Neal decided to return at all.
Clouds began to roll in almost from nowhere, dark, low-hanging curtains of mist and rain that blotted out the stars in New Mexico's moonless sky. It was trouble enough for Kyle to corral the horses underneath the ridge, the beasts so used to only the heavens above them at night that the curved protection of the ridge left them restless and jumpy. When the first droplets of rain came, disrupting the desert dust in fat, menacing drops, the lingering bite of the cold Arctic in each one, Kyle looked to the sky, thankful the Kings were not sleeping on the open plain tonight.
Neal had stubbornly resumed his position above the ridge, his search growing more futile with the darkening of the sky, and once the rain began to fall David shouted quite convincingly that if Neal caught his death up on that ridge, David would leave him there and wouldn't bother to bury him. Only the impossible task of searching the entire desert in a rainstorm and the smell of roasted rabbit wafting up to his senses brought Neal down from his perch, and from the disgruntled frowns and grunts Neal added to their supper conversation, Kyle assumed he wasn't too pleased about it.
It would have been a wash of a guard watch, Kyle believed, as he served the horses their supper after the men had eaten, a ways away from the fire David had miraculously been able to rekindle in the face of the storm. The impenetrable blackness of that particular night left a man blind to any approaching riders, the only light coming from the distant and ominous flashes of lightning streaking across the sky, slicing through the darkness like a bullet racing towards its mark. And the oncoming dull roar of a rainstorm was sure to drown out any semblances of hoofsteps, no matter how familiar or comforting they may have been to Neal's ears.
It was only when he heard the noise of hooves himself--two pairs, one deliberate and urgent, the other more distant, and from a different origin--did Kyle realize how wrong he was.
Thankfully hesitant to shoot first and ask questions later, David's eyes widened as he saw the man ride into the light of the camp fire, the familiar figure high in his saddle, a grim expression on his face. "Ryan!" he shouted, his befuddlement evident in his tone. "Long time, no see."
No one had to point out the sarcasm in David's statement or the urgency with which he meant it. Ryan Star was a loner, and never spent more time with the Kings than he had to; thinking back to their most recent meeting, merely days before, David thought that Ryan would have been halfway to Texas by now.
"Was riding down the Santa Fe trail," he wasted no time, the courier's information at times lifesaving. He did not even take the time to dismount, the booms of thunder in the distance growing ever louder, the air colder with every gust. Ryan looked ready to ride the moment he gave the details to his outlaw patrons, bolting for the first stick of civilized shelter he could find; he had already decided in his mind not to stay for long. "I heard...something. Rumors, secondhand stories. But I thought you should know."
"What is it?" David did all of the talking for the three Kings, Kyle remaining with the horses and Neal more than content to let David represent them as always. He watched the deep shadows of Ryan's face, enhanced by the flickering, bright camp fire, and recognized the emotions, the hesitation; the regret.
Kyle divided his attentions between the task of feeding the horses and eavesdropping on the conversation with Ryan, finding it difficult to concentrate on either and giving both a halfhearted job. He was finding it particularly difficult to rein in Sixx, who had grown restless underneath the ridge and pulled at the bridle towards the frigid night. Typically the most peaceful of the outlaws' horses next to his own, Kyle couldn't understand the sudden change in temperament, assuming it might have been from the search Neal had set them upon earlier in the day, until he heard those faint hoofbeats again, louder this time, and more distinct. Kyle's jaw dropped, sinking down with his optimistic hopes, as the horse ambled into the dim light, riderless, returning to her place with the others as if she always knew how to find her way back home.
***
When the next words from Ryan's mouth were an excuse, David knew the information was far more dire than a gunfight in a dirty saloon. "It could just be rumors, I don't want to alarm you," he said, but the alarm was already set, David's nerves on edge, expecting a shootout, an ambush...anything was possible on this kind of night.
Neal kicked the dampening dust aloofly, finding Ryan's abatement of his information to be a waste of time. If the courier could just get to his point and then get the hell on his way, then--
"Uh, guys?" called Kyle's voice from the far end of the camp, the outlaws' fire only casting dim shadows of the kid against the ridge wall, distorting his frame into something monstrous. The three men turned to the approaching figure, who led a horse alongside him, the pair growing into focus with the additional light. It was a chestnut mare, weary and exhausted from a rambling, riderless journey, a path that should have only taken hours lasting over a day. The bridle, saddle and tack were all hauntingly familiar to the Kings, as well as the gun holster tucked in at Vera's flank, the revolver still securely held inside.
Neal's mouth went dry, his lungs seizing up, refusing to breathe.
He quickly turned back to Ryan, eyes flashing with a dangerous desperation no one had ever seen in him before. "Tell me," he growled.
The sudden, menacing change in the sharpshooter's demeanor startled Ryan, the courier unaccustomed to even the most common of Neal's mood changes; he paused, but only for a second, the look in Neal's eyes telling him the information he had been ready to ignore was now more precious to him than Ryan's life. Now was not the time to beat around the bush. "They say there's been an arrest; a shooting," he said, forcing himself to look away from Neal's gaze, the stare both haunting and murderous. "Rumor has it, it's one of the Kings. Some people say they saw blood, but no body--"
"Where did they say it happened," David asked quickly, his face turning stony, and serious; the determination in his eyes was much different from that of Neal's. It could have been an easy mistake, a braggart bounty hunter apprehending a stranger and pulling him off as a King for the reward; it could have been Joey, meeting an unfortunate fate, having finally encountered the ruthless posse he so feared. David needed to hear the whole story before he made any assumptions; Neal, ruled by emotion, had already made up his mind the moment he saw Vera without her rider.
Ryan took a deep breath; the rumors he had heard along the trail coincided with far louder murmurs of a robbery in the same town. "Some tiny settlement, called Hope," his voice held the pure opposite of the name's meaning, full of a discomforting pity and despair for the gang of outlaws who, in all the years in their line of work, never had a man fall.
Those were all the words Neal needed to hear. Without another breath he was stalking towards his mount, hands balled into fists, jaw locked into a frown to keep from trembling. His throat tight, head buzzing with painful, white noise, his thoughts were on nothing but getting back to Hope, his mind too red-hot with rage to attempt formulating a plan.
That was Andy out there; it had to be Andy out there, and no force by nature or man could cleave Neal from his anger.
But it didn't mean David wasn't going to try. "Neal!" he shouted, the hint of panic in his voice overwhelmed by the booming authority, ready at a moment's notice to push emotion aside, to be the leader the Kings required in times of crisis. The times for emotions--the fear, the guilt, the grief--would all come later, if the outlaws still had the breath and the heartbeat to feel them. Right now, David needed to take charge until they found more details on the shooting--and the most important detail was keeping the Dr. grounded. "Neal, get back here!" He dashed off without any remarks of goodbyes to Ryan, the situation too urgent for pleasantries, leaving Kyle alone with the courier and his grim news.
With a distressed frown Kyle looked up at the man on horseback, whose eyes held a deep regret that he had to deliver such turmoil to friends. "Is there anything else?" he asked, the slightest bit of optimism in his tone, hoping that Neal and David had run off before hearing that the arrest was all a misunderstanding and Andy would be riding back to them in no time, safe, whole, and as lively as ever. But even as he asked Kyle knew it wouldn't be true, the mare by his side and the bridle in his hands enough of an indication that something in Hope went horribly wrong.
Ryan shook his head, all of the information he could glean from the road without riding into Hope itself already given to the Kings. And so the task of bidding him goodbye went to the youngest member of the gang, whose chest burned with a growing fear over what this news meant for Andy...what it meant for all of them.
"It's gonna be quite a night, girl," he said to the exhausted Vera as he made his way towards Neal and David, whose quarrel drowned out the thundering sounds of the approaching storm.
"You can't just run out of here!" David protested, catching up to Neal as he was hoisting his saddle over his shoulder, wasting no time in preparing Sixx for a dangerous journey. The fire David saw in Neal's eyes, the anger fueling his actions...he knew the Dr.'s judgment was clouded by instinctual reaction, but he couldn't very well blame him for it, either. "You've got no plan!"
"Don't need a plan," Neal muttered under his breath, strapping the saddle across his mount's back, unsure whether his blurry vision was from the low, distant lights of the camp's fire or from his own emotions, slamming into him with such force he could barely see. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew he should agree with David, that riding out to a town that had deceived them in its innocence, with a threatening storm on his heels and the dangers of violence and bloodshed awaiting him, was a mission for fools at best and for dead men at worst. But none of that mattered to Neal, his heart and his stomach deeming critical thinking irrelevant. He buried his hand into the box of spare bullets, retrieving a fistful and briefly pausing to contemplate bringing along the entire box.
David gritted his teeth, his shouts only becoming louder the longer Neal ignored him; if he allowed Neal to get on his mount and ride away, with only a vengeful rage fueling his actions, David feared he would never see either of his best friends alive again. "You're gonna get yourself killed! You think that's what Andy wants?"
A flash of lightning, far closer to the camp than the last, stopped David in his long, hurried strides to catch up with Neal, the intense flicker of light illuminating the sharpshooter's features as he turned to glare at David for the first time since their argument began. He looked instantly aged, worried wrinkles and creases on his face that were not there before; whatever youthful virtue Neal still had before, that thin line he and the Kings danced between invulnerability and innocence, had been destroyed. What replaced it was dark, blind emotion, revealing in his eyes a man teetering on breakdown; he had to keep moving, keep acting, because he knew of no other way to live.
In that moment David saw how far Neal would go for Andy: he would kill in the name of the Kings, he would die proudly by David's side in a gunfight...but he would take on the entire world for Andy, ride to the depths of Hell and back, suffer a thousand deaths just to have him by his side. David would have thought it was noble, hell even a little romantic, if it hadn't been so utterly stupid.
Then Neal's face contorted into a sneer, a clap of thunder nearly overtaking his rage. David shouldn't have mentioned Andy by name; before that it was just the uncertain possibility, the dreaded fear in all of their minds that the shadow's luck had finally run out. Now, like a child's horror game, he had spoken the fear aloud, gave it substance; made it real. Neal looked as if he may never forgive David for that.
"So we should just sit on our asses and wait?!" he shouted; outside, past the shelter of the ridge, the intermittent, threatening drizzle finally gave way, the skies opening up all around the Kings in a torrent of cold rain, like the gods themselves released Heaven's floodgates. "Telling us to wait's what got us here in the first place." A low blow; the slow drip of guilt seeping into David's conscience now crashed into him with a roar, Neal pulling no punches in reminding him who told Andy to linger in Hope in the first place.
"We can't just rush in there," David stressed. "We don't know enough of the facts...they could even be expecting us. We could be riding right into an ambush."
"I can't wait for some fucking plan, Dave, not when he's out there. I can't."
"I won't let you go," David insisted, though doubtful that anything short of a bullet would stop him--and even then, that would have to be some hell of a shot. David never thought he would train a gun on Neal but it didn't stop his hand inching towards the revolver at his side, a leader desperate to keep his men together at any cost.
It was no rare occurrence to see Neal and David arguing: Kyle estimated it happened once a week or so, their forward personalities often clashing with their ideals. Neal was a man of action without strategy, and oftentimes disagreed with the path on which David had shepherded the other outlaws. But their shouting matches were always regulated by the calm, cooler head of Andy Skib, the shadow of the Kings having the advantage of knowing how both men thought and reacted towards one another; he mastered countering their fights with neutral alternatives and arguments never grew out of hand in the six years the three of them called themselves an outlaw gang.
But Andy was not here, and that was the main cause of the argument as well as the reason for its escalation. He could have prevented the shouting match long before it began, but as it was, only Kyle was there to stop it, lacking the same means and expertise. His eyes widened as he saw David's hand move towards his revolver in the dim light, knowing the fight had gone too far; stop it he must.
His arm shot out towards David's, grabbing it at the wrist before it could reach its destination. David would never shoot at Neal, the revolver a last-ditch attempt to restore the Dr. to his senses; but both David and Kyle knew that Neal was past the point of sense, that not even his best friend with a gun trained on him would stand in the way of reaching Andy. And neither man could be certain that Neal would have the same qualms about shooting a friend.
"That's not gonna solve anything," he explained quickly to David; Kyle needed to be taken seriously in this time of crisis. He was a part of the Kings, too, and had just as much invested in this dire news; he had just as much at stake. If David had the luxury to think on it at that moment he would have been impressed with the kid and how far he had come since first arriving as a gobsmacked boy looking for adventure and growing into an assertive, impassioned man. But there was far too much for his mind to focus on now, and the shortcomings of his leadership skills stared him in the face--Andy's capture, Neal's threatened desertion--forced David's thoughts onto the negative.
Shouting at each other was getting the Kings nowhere; Kyle had to try a different approach, and fast, or they would lose Neal--to the storm, their enemies, or worst of all to his self-destruction. "Neal!" Kyle's voice, rare to speak up and even rarer to shout at the sharpshooter, caused Neal to look up from his task of saddling his horse and gathering supplies for a hasty exit. The eyes that met Kyle's gaze were hard, unrelenting in their anger-fueled determination to retrieve their fallen partner. They caught Kyle off-guard, finally experiencing the ruthless, violent Neal he was first introduced to in legend; but instead of shrinking away from the threat Kyle met it full-force, with expertise and knowledge Neal couldn't deny or ignore.
"If you ride out on a saddle like that," he indicated the haphazard mess upon Sixx's back, Neal typically more than capable of saddling his mount but careless in his haste, his mind understandably on more important matters. "You're likely to lead the both of you to your deaths." The control in Kyle's voice was unprecedented; he knew he had sought the thrill of adventure when joining the Kings, but never thought it'd be like this. "Now, you can do what you please with your own life, but Sixx has been a mighty good horse to you; I won't let you do him in like that."
It was the one angle towards the argument David had never considered to try, and the one detail that gave Neal pause, staying his hands as they secured the tack. He could content himself with riding blindly to his death, facing a sudden, treacherous storm and the unknown threat of the town by himself, but he hadn't considered the fate of his horse. The black and white speckled horse waited patiently for his rider, calmly trusting in whatever journey Neal prepared for them, completely ignorant of his owner's recklessness. Kyle was right; it would be an evil thing to do to such a loyal beast.
Neal's pause gave Kyle a moment todetermine what his next plan of action would be. His appeal would only keep the Dr. here until he was able to correctly saddle his horse--or steal another whom he cared less about--so Kyle had to find a more permanent solution to preventing Neal's departure. And, from observing the argument with David, yelling at him wouldn't help one bit.
"I'm gonna try to talk to him," he said under his breath to David, though Neal could not hear their lowered tones regardless, the tension buzzing in his ears working like blinders, focusing him only on the task he needed to complete. David wasn't faring any better: he was ignoring the emotions swirling through his mind over the news, unlike Neal who let them overtake his actions without thought to the consequences. They both needed time to allow their heads to cool, to stop feeding off of each other's reactions and think logically to bring Andy back. "And...you're kinda freaking him out."
He received a suspicious, raised eyebrow in response from David, but someone needed to take charge in this moment of crisis, Neal was ill-equipped and David had tried and failed. It was up to Kyle to keep the Kings together now. "So just, go...there," he instructed David, waving his arm in the vague direction of the other end of camp. Kyle may have been the only man with the capabilities to hold the outlaw gang together that night, but he never said he had everything planned out.
Kyle had no idea what he was getting into: David had known Neal for over six years now, seen the sharpshooter at his very worst, and the temper of the Dr.--especially when it involved Andy--was not something to handle lightly. "Look," he reasoned; Kyle was going about this the wrong way, he thought, though David did heed Kyle's order and took a few steps back to the nebulous region of "there." "I know you mean well, but kid--"
"I'm not a kid," Kyle shot back, and the breeziness of his retort, as well as the look of confidence he gave as he looked over his shoulder, made David finally realize that he was right.
Without another word Kyle stalked over to Neal, immediately undoing Neal's hazardous job of saddling Sixx. If his plan backfired and Neal raced off in the storm to find either Andy or death at his journey's end, Kyle would at least ensure his damn saddle was on right. His hands worked expertly on the saddle as he addressed Neal, eyes on him and voice nothing but sincere. "I know what you're feeling right now," he began, as Neal ran anxious hands through his hair, the energized coils in his body still making him seem like he would bolt at the first given chance.
His head shot up, mouth contorted into a sneer. "You have no fucking clue what I feel," Neal seethed. He hadn't meant to lash out but there it was, his natural defense, and God, he couldn't even recognize why he had reason to be on the defense. If only he could get out and do something about this he'd be fine, focus on action and not on the ever-growing emptiness in his chest, his heart collapsing in on itself.
Any other time, any previous situation, and the look of impassioned rage on Neal's face would have scared Kyle off into the next county. But he knew that whatever fear he used to feel could not have compared to the emotions Neal had at that moment. And besides, as the man had reminded him just earlier that day, Neal wasn't so scary, after all. "You're scared," Kyle persisted. The light in Neal's eyes changed, a rageful fire still burning inside but there was an extra clarity to them once Kyle said that word, the emotion underneath his anger he had been trying unconsciously to mask. It was the exact thing he needed to hear, and at the same time the one word was not nearly strong enough to describe his true fear.
"We're all scared," he continued, finally allowing the reality of Ryan's news to sink in for himself, the wild, brave outlaw gang that had seemed almost invincible to Kyle knocked down from legend. He didn't know what this could mean for Andy, or for any one of them; it could be, he fretted, the end of the Kings. "But I know you more than anyone."
"How can--" Neal began to protest, but Kyle cut him off; there was no need to pretend, no further use for hiding what he knew, what he could see between the pair.
"I know," he said, making sure Neal heard the deliberate stress in his voice, a clear, calm tone cutting through Neal's many layers of anger and hurt. "You more than anyone." It was all Kyle found he needed to say, the few words pressing their impact onto Neal, anger subsiding in the face of revealing the subtle truth. There was no scorn in Kyle's words, no judgment in his gaze upon Neal; only understanding and sympathy, a peaceful, silent declaration that in the urgency of the situation none of the Kings could hold back secrets from one another, repress truths even from themselves. It was Kyle's simple, straightforward way of acknowledging Neal's reaction over Andy's capture, understanding that this pain was over more than just the loss of a partner in crime.
Kyle knew that the relationship between Andy and Neal was unique among the Kings, that it transcended past the phyiscal and even the emotional to a connection the two men themselves were unaware they felt. But it wasn't until he looked into Neal's eyes, a flash of lightining illuminating the blue, that Kyle saw the extent of their affection for one another. More than their heists, more than the free, wild life of the outlaw--more than his own life and most assuredly those of Kyle and David in a heartbeat--Neal cared for Andy, in ways he had never cared for another soul and undoubtedly never would again. Their lives were so entwined, their history so deep, that it never even occurred to Neal that there could be the possibility of losing it all, and Andy the same for Neal.
He wasn't just scared he may lose him, Kyle realized; he was damn close to terrified.
And it was why David's shouting would have never worked to keep Neal at camp, why threats could not appeal to the common sense of the sharpshooter. David should have known from his own experience, Kyle thought, recalling the conversation he shared with the leader of the Kings, torturing himself over his tumultuous relationship with Kelly. There was no place for common sense when it came to the realm of love.
"But bursting into town without a plan won't solve anything," he continued, abandoning the saddle and tack, Neal stunned by the admission into immobility. He had stopped moving, stopped reacting blindly, and Kyle's words made him pause and gave him time to think, to feel--and oh God, now that he began, he couldn't stop. "We thought it was harmless...and we were wrong. We can't make that mistake again, not when there's so much at risk."
But Neal wasn't about to be talked out of it; his hands balled into fists at his sides, and Kyle actually believed the Dr. would strike him. His emotions began to overwhelm him in entirely different ways now, no longer fueling the fire towards blind, reckless action, feelings crowding and cluttering his mind, causing him to struggle to focus on Kyle's words and not on his own emotion. He said through gritted teeth the only thing that came to mind, a code the Kings had lived by for years, but never once had to die by. "We leave no man behind."
"And we won't," Kyle responded immediately; even to him the thought of riding off to safety and leaving Andy to a grim fate in town was deplorable, and well beneath the honor of the Kings. He couldn't imagine how that possibility weighed on Neal's conscience, his heart; he realized why the sharpshooter reacted so strongly against David's argument, why even the slightest hesitation was unacceptable to him. "I promise you, we won't leave him." Kyle took a deep gulp, swallowing the last vestiges of doubt in his gut; if his life's dream was to live like an outlaw, he had to overcome his fear of dying like one. "He's a King; Andy's one of us. We'll all fight to get him back...no matter what the cost."
"You're gonna come up with a plan?" Neal's tone held a bite that he did not mean to make; he hadn't meant to direct his anger towards Kyle, the kid had obviously done nothing wrong, but his frustration came out despite himself, desperate to find itself a target.
Well now, Kyle thought in dismay; that was the catch. He was a follower, not a leader, and he had never come up with a successful plan in his life--barring, of course, his plan to join the Kings in the first place, which had technically grown from the lack of an actual plan on Kyle's part. But if there were ever a seamless leader and organizer of men, it was the third man at their camp, who had orchestrated countless successful bank robberies in the past six years, leading the Kings with his plans throughout the West and into legend. "David will," Kyle supplied optimistically; though riding with the Kings had shown him David Cook wasn't as infallible as the newspapers' portrait of him, he had faith in the outlaw that he could guide them through anything. "He'll figure out how to get Andy back, I know he will. He won't let the Kings down."
***
He was within reasonable earshot, anywhere inside the dry confines of the camp was, underneath the canopy of the ridge where the natural curve of the sandstone amplified any sound to a hollow echo, but David did not strain to overhear their conversation; eavesdropping always seemed to be in Kyle's job description, not his. Fueled by the same types of emotions as Neal--though, he admitted with some humility, not justifiably as intense--he strained to focus on the facts they were given, the reality of their critical situation and not on emotion or instinct. Neal would handle enough of that for himself and the rest of the Kings; David needed to keep a level head and pull them through this safely.
If only he could concentrate on the present, and what their next plan of action would be, instead of the past, then he might have actually been useful to a soul.
Kyle came bounding up to him, his conversation with Neal apparently concluding; David squinted in the dim firelight but couldn't tell from the expression on Kyle's face if their exchange had been a good one. He couldn't have even imagined that Kyle would succeed in calming Neal when David failed; he had known the Dr. for over six years and believed he could handle his outbursts of emotion by now. But when Kyle came closer he saw a look of relief mixed with worry, and David knew the expression well; negotiations in their line of work always ended with a price. But he did note that Neal's boots remained on the ground, his impetuous thoughts of riding off and shooting through the town of Hope postponed. David had to hand it to the kid--no, not a kid anymore, Kyle had proved that himself--what he promised he would do without David's help, he had delivered.
But the cost would weigh on David's shoulders to the end of his days. "I talked to him," Kyle said once he approached the fire, a worrisome crease of his brow indicating he wasn't telling David the whole story of their conversation. "He'll stay, I think. He..." Kyle took a deep sigh, his mind reviewing what Neal had said to him, what he saw in his eyes that David's own emotions forced him to miss. "He just really needs to get Andy back."
David nodded. "What did you say to him?"
The insecurity in Kyle's eyes, his stance, crept back in, his gaze turning towards the ground, shoulders slumping. "I...promised him something," he said, hesitant to elaborate.
Before David could pursue the matter further, Neal stalked up to the pair, his boots making dull thuds against the packed earth, louder in David's ears than the thunderstorm around them. His look of determination had changed from before, the anger still burning inside him, itching to break free, but his talk with Kyle forced Neal to stop and reflect upon it, and his feelings over why he felt so angry were stronger than those of mere rage. His jaw set, his hands in fists at his sides, Neal was an intimidating figure even to the man that had known him for so long, had seen him at his best and at his most dangerous. He was never prepared for that danger to be directed towards him.
"Come up with a plan," he ordered through gritted teeth, pointing an accusing finger in David's face. If he was the great leader of the Kings, if he masterminded their heists and elevated them to the infamy they both loved and hated, then David should have been more than capable to organize a way to get the four of them out of this dire situation. He had to, for all their sakes. "You've got till morning. Think of...something, Dave. And if you don't by dawn..." Neal trailed off, the rest of his threat unnecessary: they all knew what the consequences would be should David's calculating mind fail.
With one short yet powerful glare in Kyle's direction, Neal sent the younger man scrambling for some other place to be, a clear desire to speak with the leader of the Kings alone. Once Kyle decided tending to the exhausted, riderless horse that had returned to them was preferable to watching their conversation, Neal's voice lowered, losing the biting edge of his ultimatum before. Where a hard, piercing stare was before, was now sad, almost repentant eyes, a sneer downturning into a trembling frown. His walls were down, David recognized, and they let him peek into the raw emotion churning inside of Neal, the fears he didn't know he had until the news of Andy's capture broke.
David thought Neal was looking for consolation, some kind of assurance that despite what the Kings knew about the harsh realities of the outlaw life, they could all come out of this alive. But David had already misread Neal once that night; it was about to happen again.
"David." It had been years since Neal had called him by his full name, most often a telling look or a nod in his direction sufficing beyond names. The formalities told the outlaw Neal's words were important to him, to the both of them; they could even be crucial in the future of their lives or deaths. Neal wanted David to know he meant his words with the utmost conviction; that he lived by his words, and he'd die by them if he must.
"You know I'd follow you through anything," he began. From their first mission together, tracking and hunting down the lawman who had wronged David's family, Neal had followed David's lead, trusting in the other man's judgment, and though they commonly argued, in times of life or death Neal knew David would always come through. "I would die for you; I would kill for you, and I have." It all ran through his head now, the countless times David entrusted his back, his very life to Neal's capable trigger finger, how many times a heist had come down to gunshots, to blows; David was not ignorant of the fact he'd be dead now if it wasn't for the Dr.'s quick hand, and Neal the same for him. "You're like a brother to me."
But then his expression changed, a darkness sweeping over his features as thoughts of the man they left behind waded into Neal's mind. It had always been clear to David that Andy was very much not like a brother to Neal; that for all the loyalty the sharpshooter had for David, he would betray him to the dogs in an instant if it meant saving Andy's life. And this one time, it did. "But if he dies," he threatened, his voice cracking on the last word, the growl of the first three more than making up for it. "It is on you." His jaw clenched again, his eyes closed off once more to any emotion but anger. This was the threat David truly had to worry about. "And I will never forgive you for it."
Chapter 15, part one
Author: honestys_easy
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Skibmann (Neal Tiemann/Andy Skib), Cookson (David Cook/Kelly Clarkson), Kradam (Kris Allen/Adam Lambert), various others, both slash and het
Disclaimer: Don't know, don't own; never happened, never will.
Summary: For his entire life, Kyle Peek always longed for the thrill and adventure in the open lands of the wild West. He gets more than he ever bargained for when he joins up with the legendary outlaw gang known only as The Kings.
Notes: What started out as a fledgling idea grew to be a huge AU and I'm very grateful to share it with you. A ginormous thank you goes out to dreamerren, for her work as beta and practically as the story's second author. Title credit goes to Nick Gibson for his song "Outlaw's Prayer."
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5, part one
Chapter 5, part two
Chapter 6
Chapter 7, part one
Chapter 7, part two
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
"He never killed a man that did not need killing." - Inscription on the grave of gunman Clay Allison
The impending storm Neal had predicted would slam into their camp had not yet arrived: the skies were still bright and cloudless, the shine of the desert sun more notorious than the outlaws' reputation bearing down upon them. Kyle thought that perhaps Neal had miscalculated, that he was too preoccupied with watching the ground before him to properly read the sky above. Even the Dr. himself began to doubt his initial suspicions, braving his ominous prediction and riding off for an hour or two with Sixx; he had claimed he was hunting, and had returned with two jackrabbits for a hearty supper, but both Kyle and David agreed without words that he had been looking for Andy, searching in the valleys and crevices he could not see from his perch on the ridge.
When David made the executive decision to move their camp underneath the dry safety of the ridge, it was the only time the leader of the Kings admitted they were lucky Neal decided to return at all.
Clouds began to roll in almost from nowhere, dark, low-hanging curtains of mist and rain that blotted out the stars in New Mexico's moonless sky. It was trouble enough for Kyle to corral the horses underneath the ridge, the beasts so used to only the heavens above them at night that the curved protection of the ridge left them restless and jumpy. When the first droplets of rain came, disrupting the desert dust in fat, menacing drops, the lingering bite of the cold Arctic in each one, Kyle looked to the sky, thankful the Kings were not sleeping on the open plain tonight.
Neal had stubbornly resumed his position above the ridge, his search growing more futile with the darkening of the sky, and once the rain began to fall David shouted quite convincingly that if Neal caught his death up on that ridge, David would leave him there and wouldn't bother to bury him. Only the impossible task of searching the entire desert in a rainstorm and the smell of roasted rabbit wafting up to his senses brought Neal down from his perch, and from the disgruntled frowns and grunts Neal added to their supper conversation, Kyle assumed he wasn't too pleased about it.
It would have been a wash of a guard watch, Kyle believed, as he served the horses their supper after the men had eaten, a ways away from the fire David had miraculously been able to rekindle in the face of the storm. The impenetrable blackness of that particular night left a man blind to any approaching riders, the only light coming from the distant and ominous flashes of lightning streaking across the sky, slicing through the darkness like a bullet racing towards its mark. And the oncoming dull roar of a rainstorm was sure to drown out any semblances of hoofsteps, no matter how familiar or comforting they may have been to Neal's ears.
It was only when he heard the noise of hooves himself--two pairs, one deliberate and urgent, the other more distant, and from a different origin--did Kyle realize how wrong he was.
Thankfully hesitant to shoot first and ask questions later, David's eyes widened as he saw the man ride into the light of the camp fire, the familiar figure high in his saddle, a grim expression on his face. "Ryan!" he shouted, his befuddlement evident in his tone. "Long time, no see."
No one had to point out the sarcasm in David's statement or the urgency with which he meant it. Ryan Star was a loner, and never spent more time with the Kings than he had to; thinking back to their most recent meeting, merely days before, David thought that Ryan would have been halfway to Texas by now.
"Was riding down the Santa Fe trail," he wasted no time, the courier's information at times lifesaving. He did not even take the time to dismount, the booms of thunder in the distance growing ever louder, the air colder with every gust. Ryan looked ready to ride the moment he gave the details to his outlaw patrons, bolting for the first stick of civilized shelter he could find; he had already decided in his mind not to stay for long. "I heard...something. Rumors, secondhand stories. But I thought you should know."
"What is it?" David did all of the talking for the three Kings, Kyle remaining with the horses and Neal more than content to let David represent them as always. He watched the deep shadows of Ryan's face, enhanced by the flickering, bright camp fire, and recognized the emotions, the hesitation; the regret.
Kyle divided his attentions between the task of feeding the horses and eavesdropping on the conversation with Ryan, finding it difficult to concentrate on either and giving both a halfhearted job. He was finding it particularly difficult to rein in Sixx, who had grown restless underneath the ridge and pulled at the bridle towards the frigid night. Typically the most peaceful of the outlaws' horses next to his own, Kyle couldn't understand the sudden change in temperament, assuming it might have been from the search Neal had set them upon earlier in the day, until he heard those faint hoofbeats again, louder this time, and more distinct. Kyle's jaw dropped, sinking down with his optimistic hopes, as the horse ambled into the dim light, riderless, returning to her place with the others as if she always knew how to find her way back home.
***
When the next words from Ryan's mouth were an excuse, David knew the information was far more dire than a gunfight in a dirty saloon. "It could just be rumors, I don't want to alarm you," he said, but the alarm was already set, David's nerves on edge, expecting a shootout, an ambush...anything was possible on this kind of night.
Neal kicked the dampening dust aloofly, finding Ryan's abatement of his information to be a waste of time. If the courier could just get to his point and then get the hell on his way, then--
"Uh, guys?" called Kyle's voice from the far end of the camp, the outlaws' fire only casting dim shadows of the kid against the ridge wall, distorting his frame into something monstrous. The three men turned to the approaching figure, who led a horse alongside him, the pair growing into focus with the additional light. It was a chestnut mare, weary and exhausted from a rambling, riderless journey, a path that should have only taken hours lasting over a day. The bridle, saddle and tack were all hauntingly familiar to the Kings, as well as the gun holster tucked in at Vera's flank, the revolver still securely held inside.
Neal's mouth went dry, his lungs seizing up, refusing to breathe.
He quickly turned back to Ryan, eyes flashing with a dangerous desperation no one had ever seen in him before. "Tell me," he growled.
The sudden, menacing change in the sharpshooter's demeanor startled Ryan, the courier unaccustomed to even the most common of Neal's mood changes; he paused, but only for a second, the look in Neal's eyes telling him the information he had been ready to ignore was now more precious to him than Ryan's life. Now was not the time to beat around the bush. "They say there's been an arrest; a shooting," he said, forcing himself to look away from Neal's gaze, the stare both haunting and murderous. "Rumor has it, it's one of the Kings. Some people say they saw blood, but no body--"
"Where did they say it happened," David asked quickly, his face turning stony, and serious; the determination in his eyes was much different from that of Neal's. It could have been an easy mistake, a braggart bounty hunter apprehending a stranger and pulling him off as a King for the reward; it could have been Joey, meeting an unfortunate fate, having finally encountered the ruthless posse he so feared. David needed to hear the whole story before he made any assumptions; Neal, ruled by emotion, had already made up his mind the moment he saw Vera without her rider.
Ryan took a deep breath; the rumors he had heard along the trail coincided with far louder murmurs of a robbery in the same town. "Some tiny settlement, called Hope," his voice held the pure opposite of the name's meaning, full of a discomforting pity and despair for the gang of outlaws who, in all the years in their line of work, never had a man fall.
Those were all the words Neal needed to hear. Without another breath he was stalking towards his mount, hands balled into fists, jaw locked into a frown to keep from trembling. His throat tight, head buzzing with painful, white noise, his thoughts were on nothing but getting back to Hope, his mind too red-hot with rage to attempt formulating a plan.
That was Andy out there; it had to be Andy out there, and no force by nature or man could cleave Neal from his anger.
But it didn't mean David wasn't going to try. "Neal!" he shouted, the hint of panic in his voice overwhelmed by the booming authority, ready at a moment's notice to push emotion aside, to be the leader the Kings required in times of crisis. The times for emotions--the fear, the guilt, the grief--would all come later, if the outlaws still had the breath and the heartbeat to feel them. Right now, David needed to take charge until they found more details on the shooting--and the most important detail was keeping the Dr. grounded. "Neal, get back here!" He dashed off without any remarks of goodbyes to Ryan, the situation too urgent for pleasantries, leaving Kyle alone with the courier and his grim news.
With a distressed frown Kyle looked up at the man on horseback, whose eyes held a deep regret that he had to deliver such turmoil to friends. "Is there anything else?" he asked, the slightest bit of optimism in his tone, hoping that Neal and David had run off before hearing that the arrest was all a misunderstanding and Andy would be riding back to them in no time, safe, whole, and as lively as ever. But even as he asked Kyle knew it wouldn't be true, the mare by his side and the bridle in his hands enough of an indication that something in Hope went horribly wrong.
Ryan shook his head, all of the information he could glean from the road without riding into Hope itself already given to the Kings. And so the task of bidding him goodbye went to the youngest member of the gang, whose chest burned with a growing fear over what this news meant for Andy...what it meant for all of them.
"It's gonna be quite a night, girl," he said to the exhausted Vera as he made his way towards Neal and David, whose quarrel drowned out the thundering sounds of the approaching storm.
"You can't just run out of here!" David protested, catching up to Neal as he was hoisting his saddle over his shoulder, wasting no time in preparing Sixx for a dangerous journey. The fire David saw in Neal's eyes, the anger fueling his actions...he knew the Dr.'s judgment was clouded by instinctual reaction, but he couldn't very well blame him for it, either. "You've got no plan!"
"Don't need a plan," Neal muttered under his breath, strapping the saddle across his mount's back, unsure whether his blurry vision was from the low, distant lights of the camp's fire or from his own emotions, slamming into him with such force he could barely see. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew he should agree with David, that riding out to a town that had deceived them in its innocence, with a threatening storm on his heels and the dangers of violence and bloodshed awaiting him, was a mission for fools at best and for dead men at worst. But none of that mattered to Neal, his heart and his stomach deeming critical thinking irrelevant. He buried his hand into the box of spare bullets, retrieving a fistful and briefly pausing to contemplate bringing along the entire box.
David gritted his teeth, his shouts only becoming louder the longer Neal ignored him; if he allowed Neal to get on his mount and ride away, with only a vengeful rage fueling his actions, David feared he would never see either of his best friends alive again. "You're gonna get yourself killed! You think that's what Andy wants?"
A flash of lightning, far closer to the camp than the last, stopped David in his long, hurried strides to catch up with Neal, the intense flicker of light illuminating the sharpshooter's features as he turned to glare at David for the first time since their argument began. He looked instantly aged, worried wrinkles and creases on his face that were not there before; whatever youthful virtue Neal still had before, that thin line he and the Kings danced between invulnerability and innocence, had been destroyed. What replaced it was dark, blind emotion, revealing in his eyes a man teetering on breakdown; he had to keep moving, keep acting, because he knew of no other way to live.
In that moment David saw how far Neal would go for Andy: he would kill in the name of the Kings, he would die proudly by David's side in a gunfight...but he would take on the entire world for Andy, ride to the depths of Hell and back, suffer a thousand deaths just to have him by his side. David would have thought it was noble, hell even a little romantic, if it hadn't been so utterly stupid.
Then Neal's face contorted into a sneer, a clap of thunder nearly overtaking his rage. David shouldn't have mentioned Andy by name; before that it was just the uncertain possibility, the dreaded fear in all of their minds that the shadow's luck had finally run out. Now, like a child's horror game, he had spoken the fear aloud, gave it substance; made it real. Neal looked as if he may never forgive David for that.
"So we should just sit on our asses and wait?!" he shouted; outside, past the shelter of the ridge, the intermittent, threatening drizzle finally gave way, the skies opening up all around the Kings in a torrent of cold rain, like the gods themselves released Heaven's floodgates. "Telling us to wait's what got us here in the first place." A low blow; the slow drip of guilt seeping into David's conscience now crashed into him with a roar, Neal pulling no punches in reminding him who told Andy to linger in Hope in the first place.
"We can't just rush in there," David stressed. "We don't know enough of the facts...they could even be expecting us. We could be riding right into an ambush."
"I can't wait for some fucking plan, Dave, not when he's out there. I can't."
"I won't let you go," David insisted, though doubtful that anything short of a bullet would stop him--and even then, that would have to be some hell of a shot. David never thought he would train a gun on Neal but it didn't stop his hand inching towards the revolver at his side, a leader desperate to keep his men together at any cost.
It was no rare occurrence to see Neal and David arguing: Kyle estimated it happened once a week or so, their forward personalities often clashing with their ideals. Neal was a man of action without strategy, and oftentimes disagreed with the path on which David had shepherded the other outlaws. But their shouting matches were always regulated by the calm, cooler head of Andy Skib, the shadow of the Kings having the advantage of knowing how both men thought and reacted towards one another; he mastered countering their fights with neutral alternatives and arguments never grew out of hand in the six years the three of them called themselves an outlaw gang.
But Andy was not here, and that was the main cause of the argument as well as the reason for its escalation. He could have prevented the shouting match long before it began, but as it was, only Kyle was there to stop it, lacking the same means and expertise. His eyes widened as he saw David's hand move towards his revolver in the dim light, knowing the fight had gone too far; stop it he must.
His arm shot out towards David's, grabbing it at the wrist before it could reach its destination. David would never shoot at Neal, the revolver a last-ditch attempt to restore the Dr. to his senses; but both David and Kyle knew that Neal was past the point of sense, that not even his best friend with a gun trained on him would stand in the way of reaching Andy. And neither man could be certain that Neal would have the same qualms about shooting a friend.
"That's not gonna solve anything," he explained quickly to David; Kyle needed to be taken seriously in this time of crisis. He was a part of the Kings, too, and had just as much invested in this dire news; he had just as much at stake. If David had the luxury to think on it at that moment he would have been impressed with the kid and how far he had come since first arriving as a gobsmacked boy looking for adventure and growing into an assertive, impassioned man. But there was far too much for his mind to focus on now, and the shortcomings of his leadership skills stared him in the face--Andy's capture, Neal's threatened desertion--forced David's thoughts onto the negative.
Shouting at each other was getting the Kings nowhere; Kyle had to try a different approach, and fast, or they would lose Neal--to the storm, their enemies, or worst of all to his self-destruction. "Neal!" Kyle's voice, rare to speak up and even rarer to shout at the sharpshooter, caused Neal to look up from his task of saddling his horse and gathering supplies for a hasty exit. The eyes that met Kyle's gaze were hard, unrelenting in their anger-fueled determination to retrieve their fallen partner. They caught Kyle off-guard, finally experiencing the ruthless, violent Neal he was first introduced to in legend; but instead of shrinking away from the threat Kyle met it full-force, with expertise and knowledge Neal couldn't deny or ignore.
"If you ride out on a saddle like that," he indicated the haphazard mess upon Sixx's back, Neal typically more than capable of saddling his mount but careless in his haste, his mind understandably on more important matters. "You're likely to lead the both of you to your deaths." The control in Kyle's voice was unprecedented; he knew he had sought the thrill of adventure when joining the Kings, but never thought it'd be like this. "Now, you can do what you please with your own life, but Sixx has been a mighty good horse to you; I won't let you do him in like that."
It was the one angle towards the argument David had never considered to try, and the one detail that gave Neal pause, staying his hands as they secured the tack. He could content himself with riding blindly to his death, facing a sudden, treacherous storm and the unknown threat of the town by himself, but he hadn't considered the fate of his horse. The black and white speckled horse waited patiently for his rider, calmly trusting in whatever journey Neal prepared for them, completely ignorant of his owner's recklessness. Kyle was right; it would be an evil thing to do to such a loyal beast.
Neal's pause gave Kyle a moment todetermine what his next plan of action would be. His appeal would only keep the Dr. here until he was able to correctly saddle his horse--or steal another whom he cared less about--so Kyle had to find a more permanent solution to preventing Neal's departure. And, from observing the argument with David, yelling at him wouldn't help one bit.
"I'm gonna try to talk to him," he said under his breath to David, though Neal could not hear their lowered tones regardless, the tension buzzing in his ears working like blinders, focusing him only on the task he needed to complete. David wasn't faring any better: he was ignoring the emotions swirling through his mind over the news, unlike Neal who let them overtake his actions without thought to the consequences. They both needed time to allow their heads to cool, to stop feeding off of each other's reactions and think logically to bring Andy back. "And...you're kinda freaking him out."
He received a suspicious, raised eyebrow in response from David, but someone needed to take charge in this moment of crisis, Neal was ill-equipped and David had tried and failed. It was up to Kyle to keep the Kings together now. "So just, go...there," he instructed David, waving his arm in the vague direction of the other end of camp. Kyle may have been the only man with the capabilities to hold the outlaw gang together that night, but he never said he had everything planned out.
Kyle had no idea what he was getting into: David had known Neal for over six years now, seen the sharpshooter at his very worst, and the temper of the Dr.--especially when it involved Andy--was not something to handle lightly. "Look," he reasoned; Kyle was going about this the wrong way, he thought, though David did heed Kyle's order and took a few steps back to the nebulous region of "there." "I know you mean well, but kid--"
"I'm not a kid," Kyle shot back, and the breeziness of his retort, as well as the look of confidence he gave as he looked over his shoulder, made David finally realize that he was right.
Without another word Kyle stalked over to Neal, immediately undoing Neal's hazardous job of saddling Sixx. If his plan backfired and Neal raced off in the storm to find either Andy or death at his journey's end, Kyle would at least ensure his damn saddle was on right. His hands worked expertly on the saddle as he addressed Neal, eyes on him and voice nothing but sincere. "I know what you're feeling right now," he began, as Neal ran anxious hands through his hair, the energized coils in his body still making him seem like he would bolt at the first given chance.
His head shot up, mouth contorted into a sneer. "You have no fucking clue what I feel," Neal seethed. He hadn't meant to lash out but there it was, his natural defense, and God, he couldn't even recognize why he had reason to be on the defense. If only he could get out and do something about this he'd be fine, focus on action and not on the ever-growing emptiness in his chest, his heart collapsing in on itself.
Any other time, any previous situation, and the look of impassioned rage on Neal's face would have scared Kyle off into the next county. But he knew that whatever fear he used to feel could not have compared to the emotions Neal had at that moment. And besides, as the man had reminded him just earlier that day, Neal wasn't so scary, after all. "You're scared," Kyle persisted. The light in Neal's eyes changed, a rageful fire still burning inside but there was an extra clarity to them once Kyle said that word, the emotion underneath his anger he had been trying unconsciously to mask. It was the exact thing he needed to hear, and at the same time the one word was not nearly strong enough to describe his true fear.
"We're all scared," he continued, finally allowing the reality of Ryan's news to sink in for himself, the wild, brave outlaw gang that had seemed almost invincible to Kyle knocked down from legend. He didn't know what this could mean for Andy, or for any one of them; it could be, he fretted, the end of the Kings. "But I know you more than anyone."
"How can--" Neal began to protest, but Kyle cut him off; there was no need to pretend, no further use for hiding what he knew, what he could see between the pair.
"I know," he said, making sure Neal heard the deliberate stress in his voice, a clear, calm tone cutting through Neal's many layers of anger and hurt. "You more than anyone." It was all Kyle found he needed to say, the few words pressing their impact onto Neal, anger subsiding in the face of revealing the subtle truth. There was no scorn in Kyle's words, no judgment in his gaze upon Neal; only understanding and sympathy, a peaceful, silent declaration that in the urgency of the situation none of the Kings could hold back secrets from one another, repress truths even from themselves. It was Kyle's simple, straightforward way of acknowledging Neal's reaction over Andy's capture, understanding that this pain was over more than just the loss of a partner in crime.
Kyle knew that the relationship between Andy and Neal was unique among the Kings, that it transcended past the phyiscal and even the emotional to a connection the two men themselves were unaware they felt. But it wasn't until he looked into Neal's eyes, a flash of lightining illuminating the blue, that Kyle saw the extent of their affection for one another. More than their heists, more than the free, wild life of the outlaw--more than his own life and most assuredly those of Kyle and David in a heartbeat--Neal cared for Andy, in ways he had never cared for another soul and undoubtedly never would again. Their lives were so entwined, their history so deep, that it never even occurred to Neal that there could be the possibility of losing it all, and Andy the same for Neal.
He wasn't just scared he may lose him, Kyle realized; he was damn close to terrified.
And it was why David's shouting would have never worked to keep Neal at camp, why threats could not appeal to the common sense of the sharpshooter. David should have known from his own experience, Kyle thought, recalling the conversation he shared with the leader of the Kings, torturing himself over his tumultuous relationship with Kelly. There was no place for common sense when it came to the realm of love.
"But bursting into town without a plan won't solve anything," he continued, abandoning the saddle and tack, Neal stunned by the admission into immobility. He had stopped moving, stopped reacting blindly, and Kyle's words made him pause and gave him time to think, to feel--and oh God, now that he began, he couldn't stop. "We thought it was harmless...and we were wrong. We can't make that mistake again, not when there's so much at risk."
But Neal wasn't about to be talked out of it; his hands balled into fists at his sides, and Kyle actually believed the Dr. would strike him. His emotions began to overwhelm him in entirely different ways now, no longer fueling the fire towards blind, reckless action, feelings crowding and cluttering his mind, causing him to struggle to focus on Kyle's words and not on his own emotion. He said through gritted teeth the only thing that came to mind, a code the Kings had lived by for years, but never once had to die by. "We leave no man behind."
"And we won't," Kyle responded immediately; even to him the thought of riding off to safety and leaving Andy to a grim fate in town was deplorable, and well beneath the honor of the Kings. He couldn't imagine how that possibility weighed on Neal's conscience, his heart; he realized why the sharpshooter reacted so strongly against David's argument, why even the slightest hesitation was unacceptable to him. "I promise you, we won't leave him." Kyle took a deep gulp, swallowing the last vestiges of doubt in his gut; if his life's dream was to live like an outlaw, he had to overcome his fear of dying like one. "He's a King; Andy's one of us. We'll all fight to get him back...no matter what the cost."
"You're gonna come up with a plan?" Neal's tone held a bite that he did not mean to make; he hadn't meant to direct his anger towards Kyle, the kid had obviously done nothing wrong, but his frustration came out despite himself, desperate to find itself a target.
Well now, Kyle thought in dismay; that was the catch. He was a follower, not a leader, and he had never come up with a successful plan in his life--barring, of course, his plan to join the Kings in the first place, which had technically grown from the lack of an actual plan on Kyle's part. But if there were ever a seamless leader and organizer of men, it was the third man at their camp, who had orchestrated countless successful bank robberies in the past six years, leading the Kings with his plans throughout the West and into legend. "David will," Kyle supplied optimistically; though riding with the Kings had shown him David Cook wasn't as infallible as the newspapers' portrait of him, he had faith in the outlaw that he could guide them through anything. "He'll figure out how to get Andy back, I know he will. He won't let the Kings down."
***
He was within reasonable earshot, anywhere inside the dry confines of the camp was, underneath the canopy of the ridge where the natural curve of the sandstone amplified any sound to a hollow echo, but David did not strain to overhear their conversation; eavesdropping always seemed to be in Kyle's job description, not his. Fueled by the same types of emotions as Neal--though, he admitted with some humility, not justifiably as intense--he strained to focus on the facts they were given, the reality of their critical situation and not on emotion or instinct. Neal would handle enough of that for himself and the rest of the Kings; David needed to keep a level head and pull them through this safely.
If only he could concentrate on the present, and what their next plan of action would be, instead of the past, then he might have actually been useful to a soul.
Kyle came bounding up to him, his conversation with Neal apparently concluding; David squinted in the dim firelight but couldn't tell from the expression on Kyle's face if their exchange had been a good one. He couldn't have even imagined that Kyle would succeed in calming Neal when David failed; he had known the Dr. for over six years and believed he could handle his outbursts of emotion by now. But when Kyle came closer he saw a look of relief mixed with worry, and David knew the expression well; negotiations in their line of work always ended with a price. But he did note that Neal's boots remained on the ground, his impetuous thoughts of riding off and shooting through the town of Hope postponed. David had to hand it to the kid--no, not a kid anymore, Kyle had proved that himself--what he promised he would do without David's help, he had delivered.
But the cost would weigh on David's shoulders to the end of his days. "I talked to him," Kyle said once he approached the fire, a worrisome crease of his brow indicating he wasn't telling David the whole story of their conversation. "He'll stay, I think. He..." Kyle took a deep sigh, his mind reviewing what Neal had said to him, what he saw in his eyes that David's own emotions forced him to miss. "He just really needs to get Andy back."
David nodded. "What did you say to him?"
The insecurity in Kyle's eyes, his stance, crept back in, his gaze turning towards the ground, shoulders slumping. "I...promised him something," he said, hesitant to elaborate.
Before David could pursue the matter further, Neal stalked up to the pair, his boots making dull thuds against the packed earth, louder in David's ears than the thunderstorm around them. His look of determination had changed from before, the anger still burning inside him, itching to break free, but his talk with Kyle forced Neal to stop and reflect upon it, and his feelings over why he felt so angry were stronger than those of mere rage. His jaw set, his hands in fists at his sides, Neal was an intimidating figure even to the man that had known him for so long, had seen him at his best and at his most dangerous. He was never prepared for that danger to be directed towards him.
"Come up with a plan," he ordered through gritted teeth, pointing an accusing finger in David's face. If he was the great leader of the Kings, if he masterminded their heists and elevated them to the infamy they both loved and hated, then David should have been more than capable to organize a way to get the four of them out of this dire situation. He had to, for all their sakes. "You've got till morning. Think of...something, Dave. And if you don't by dawn..." Neal trailed off, the rest of his threat unnecessary: they all knew what the consequences would be should David's calculating mind fail.
With one short yet powerful glare in Kyle's direction, Neal sent the younger man scrambling for some other place to be, a clear desire to speak with the leader of the Kings alone. Once Kyle decided tending to the exhausted, riderless horse that had returned to them was preferable to watching their conversation, Neal's voice lowered, losing the biting edge of his ultimatum before. Where a hard, piercing stare was before, was now sad, almost repentant eyes, a sneer downturning into a trembling frown. His walls were down, David recognized, and they let him peek into the raw emotion churning inside of Neal, the fears he didn't know he had until the news of Andy's capture broke.
David thought Neal was looking for consolation, some kind of assurance that despite what the Kings knew about the harsh realities of the outlaw life, they could all come out of this alive. But David had already misread Neal once that night; it was about to happen again.
"David." It had been years since Neal had called him by his full name, most often a telling look or a nod in his direction sufficing beyond names. The formalities told the outlaw Neal's words were important to him, to the both of them; they could even be crucial in the future of their lives or deaths. Neal wanted David to know he meant his words with the utmost conviction; that he lived by his words, and he'd die by them if he must.
"You know I'd follow you through anything," he began. From their first mission together, tracking and hunting down the lawman who had wronged David's family, Neal had followed David's lead, trusting in the other man's judgment, and though they commonly argued, in times of life or death Neal knew David would always come through. "I would die for you; I would kill for you, and I have." It all ran through his head now, the countless times David entrusted his back, his very life to Neal's capable trigger finger, how many times a heist had come down to gunshots, to blows; David was not ignorant of the fact he'd be dead now if it wasn't for the Dr.'s quick hand, and Neal the same for him. "You're like a brother to me."
But then his expression changed, a darkness sweeping over his features as thoughts of the man they left behind waded into Neal's mind. It had always been clear to David that Andy was very much not like a brother to Neal; that for all the loyalty the sharpshooter had for David, he would betray him to the dogs in an instant if it meant saving Andy's life. And this one time, it did. "But if he dies," he threatened, his voice cracking on the last word, the growl of the first three more than making up for it. "It is on you." His jaw clenched again, his eyes closed off once more to any emotion but anger. This was the threat David truly had to worry about. "And I will never forgive you for it."
Chapter 15, part one