A possible future....
How did he come to be here?
Standing at the dry plot of earth, he stared at the mount of soil in front of him, surrounded by green grass, beneath the tree she liked, while the sun’s heat drained out of the world as easily as it was taking the daylight. Above him, grey clouds were marshalling up their strength, rolling across the sky to begin the inevitable downpour that should accompany days like this.
He knew he should be joining his friends and the children she left him at the wake, but Vin Tanner could not move. He suspected Chris would let them know he wasn’t coming. His best friend was the only one wise enough to know he was going to be missing it.
The ache in his heart was so intense, he felt like he was going to break in half. It was worse than any bullet. In fact, he would have happily accepted a bullet instead of this. At least when you got shot, you knew you’d heal up. Flesh would cover the ragged hole left behind by a bullet. If it didn’t, it wouldn’t matter, because you’d be dead soon anyway.
This wound, this would follow him every day of his life, until he breathed his last. This one would never end because until the day they were reunited in some other place, he would be walking around with a hole in his heart where she used to be.
Yesterday he woke up without her and thought he might die from the sheer pain of it. He lay there in bed, feeling his heart so heavy in his chest, he thought it might sink straight through his flesh, unto the floor and through the ground. It might keep sinking, until it passed through the world, before tumbling into space.
They spent their last day together, riding across the land, surrounded by tall grass and stretches of green as far as could be afforded in the Territory, or rather New Mexico as it was now called. She was too sick to ride the way they used to, double on a horse but she insisted. A part of him knew the end was drawing near, so he’d permitted it. She clung to him, her arms around his waist, her frail body pressing to his back and they rode on his horse, named Peso after the trusted companion who carried them in their youth and left the world behind for an afternoon.
They went to the Wells’s property, now occupied by Kyle Larabee and Nettie’s grandniece Annette, to the creek that still flowed and had become such a cherished part of their memories. Sitting on the wooden dock, his arm around her waist while their feet soaked in the water, they held each other and Vin almost believed, if they stayed there, she would remain with him for just a little longer.
Because thirty years together was still not enough.
Until he met her, he was half complete and the first time he saw her, Vin knew he was finally whole. They weathered so many storms, so many highs, and lows, over the decades but they endured. From the instant, she had become his, Vin never had reason to look back.
She always watched him ride off with his friends because she knew his being a part of the Seven was as vital to him as breathing. Once she had said, seven was a number of power and one must never try to break it. She understood that, like all the women who loved the seven understood, as long as they were together, they would always come home.
She loved him, even though he was a hunted fugitive without a cent to his name. What value he brought to her life could not be measured, she said. When she looked at him, she saw someone who was wild, untamed, and free. Yet she never realised he willingly surrendered his freedom to have her, and in doing so, realised with her he could fly.
He held her in his arms, listening to her soft, whispery breath against the sounds of bullfrogs and birds, thinking about the children she gave him. The daughter who looked just like her but was all him, and the son looked like him but was all her. Sammy, who flew the skies in her flying contraptions, and Danny who became a doctor. She had been so proud of that and gifted him her worn doctor’s bag, a gift the boy still carried with him.
They held each other, reminiscing about the past, the places they’d been since and the friends they shared the years with. They talked about the dance they attended, the first time the rest of the world knew what they were to each other. Vin remembered how it felt to dance with her that first time. There would be other dances after that day, but the first one, where they looked into each other’s eyes and knew immediately they would be together every day after it, he remembered with especial fondness.
“Vin.” He heard Chris’s voice over his shoulder.
Vin was so lost in grief he hadn’t even realised it was raining. He hadn't realised he had been standing in place for so long, the rain had sneaked up on him. There was cold biting into his skin, felt it chill his bones so completely, but adamantly refused to penetrate his heart so it would put an end to the pain inside him. This pain that would follow him until the day he died.
“Your daughter is starting to get worried about you,” the former gunslinger, now rancher and grandfather said quietly. “I told her I’d come up and check on you.”
“I’m fine.” Vin assured him, in a toneless short answer.
“No you’re not,” Chris remarked perceptively, “But it’s okay, you’re allowed.”
His fists clenched and he turned around to face Chris, his usual stoicism and unflappable composure completely gone. “It should have been me that died! It was supposed to be me! I never expected to live this long, I didn’t want to have to live this long!” He said through gritted teeth. “I never wanted to be the one to bury her!”
“I know,” Chris said simply. He could offer no words of comfort. Mary was still with him but time was catching up on them. He just wished it had not caught up on Vin first.
“All her doctorin’ and she couldn’t save herself,” Vin complained. “How fair is that!”
“It aint,” Chris sighed.
“I don’t know what to do Chris,” he stared at Chris and the gunslinger could tell from the moisture on his face, some of that wet was tears.
The world around them had changed and now they were old men, waiting out the twilight years of their lives. They were still seven but their past glories had faded into legend and now they were family, supporting each other through the hard times of life.
“I don’t know what to do without her. I don’t know how to live without her.” Vin’s voice cracked. “It’s like a knife inside me and I can’t get it out.”
Chris placed a hand on his shoulder and said quietly. “It doesn’t come out, ever.” Chris didn’t lie to him about that, “but you gotta remember what you had together and that does help.”
Vin closed his eyes and thought about that beautiful young woman who came off the stage, how captivating she had been. How she spoke to him the first time, and their words sparked off each other like electricity. It felt like a charge across his skin even though she didn't notice. Her breathy cries the first time they made love still haunted his nights.
He smiled thinking about how she came to his rescue once. Thirty years on, he still teased her about it. They used to go back to that town once a year, even after the children came, making love in a hotel room, until the town was finally swallowed up by the desert. A few years ago, he heard the Doherty place was up for sale, Vin bought it for a pittance. He fixed it up nice and when they went off to be alone, they’d come to the old place and rekindle some past memories.
He thought about the colour of the dress she wore the night they danced and how on their wedding night, they’d fallen asleep staring out the stained glass windows of that convent, and how it had shone the next morning, breathing the life across her skin with its colour. Despite getting older, they continued to go for rides, exploring the land.
“She just slipped away while I was holding her,” Vin whispered. “While we were sitting there by the creek. She wanted to go there because she said that was the place she started to love me. She wanted me to hold her hand one last time, so I did and then she was gone.”
Vin broke down then, turning away from Chris because he didn’t want his best friend to see him weep. How does one go on after this, how does one live without a wife after so many years together? For the first time, he understood why Chris descended into such despair after losing Sarah and Adam. No wonder Chris had lost himself inside a bottle, trying to dull the pain with liquor. No one could cope with such agony.
“It’s okay Pard,” Chris said kindly, “we can’t know your pain, but we’re with you. I know it’s not going to make it any less but I can tell you what helped me when I was hurting from Sarah and Adam.”
“What?” Vin turned around to face him and then saw coming out of the rain to stand with him were the rest of the seven. Ezra, Buck, JD, Josiah, and Nathan. They were standing back at a discreet distance, allowing Chris to approach Vin first.
“This,” Chris took his hand and clenched it into a fist, before looking at the rest of the seven. “You first, and then the rest.” He turned to the others and gave them a little smile before facing Vin again. “It doesn’t take away the pain, nothing will ever do that. But knowing all of you made it easier for me to live with it.”
Vin looked up at the friends who had shared the last thirty years with him. Before Chris Larabee and the seven, there was only loneliness. Looking across the street to meet the eyes of the black garbed stranger had changed his life. Now he needed that salvation again.
“Thanks Pard,” Vin looked into the icy blue eyes and knew this time, it would be the same. This time the life they saved wouldn’t be Nathan’s, it would be his.
Together, they would help him go on without his Alex.
THE END