Disclaimer: All the characters from the "Magnificent Seven" TV series are property of Trilogy Entertainment, The Mirisch Group, MGM Worldwide.
Authors Note: This story is set between One Day out West and Working Girls.
What on earth was he thinking?
What had possessed him to agree to this? He should not still be here. He should have gone long before it had come to this. What was it about this town that kept him here instead of moving on? What made it so different from the dozen or so towns that he had drifted in and out of during the past two years? It was just another town in the Territory, lawless and dust blown. It was not the kind of place anyone ought to get too comfortable with. Place like this had a way of turning on you, like mongrel dogs. He should even think of staying and yet he was still here, with a job even. A job? That reeked of permanence. He had no wish to settle down. He had done that once already and it had ended badly. He had no wish to make the attempt again, no wish to build something and to cherish it, only to lose it all with spark of a match.
He was not ready to care about anyone else again and yet he found himself in the company of six men who were almost as lost as he was. They looked to him for leadership and while he did not show it to them, his stomach constricted tight at the notion of their dependence, his mind reeled at the possibility that he might end up caring for them. This had disaster written all over it and he felt like a man trapped on a wild steed that would not let him dismount. Yet he could pinpoint the exact minute he had climbed onto its back, that instant when he looked across the street and made connection with a set of blue eyes that had almost as much steel as his own. It had been a long time since he had felt something inside him stir, in fact, it had been a long time since anything had power to move him and yet the tracker's gaze had awakened something in him he thought was dead and forgotten.
The memory of what it was to give a damn.
Then the Judge had made that speech about standing one's ground, about fighting for what was right and filled his head right up with idealistic notions that had led him to take leave of his senses when he accepted the role of peacekeeper. Together with the six men who had become his companions of late, he had agreed to protect this town for a dollar a day with room and board.
Yep, no doubt about it. Disaster.
This was a mistake.
He should have been riding to Tascosa to clear his name, not staying in this town in the middle of nowhere, playing the role of peacekeeper. A wanted man playing at being a lawman, now there was a twist and it was proof that he had gone around it well and truly. Eli Joe was out there waiting for him and the longer he stayed away from Tascosa, the harder it would become to prove that he was innocent. He could not for the life of him figure out what had compelled him to remain here when he should be long gone, taking a job no less. He had a week of working in a hardware store to learn that it was not for him and that he liked the town even less.
He preferred the open space between the settlements, where it was quiet for miles around and you could sit in solitude and let the land soak you up like you were apart of it. There was none of the chaos that came with too many people and after a life lived alone, he frankly did not care for any of that to change by taking up residence in a town. He knew why he was staying of course, deep inside and it baffled him as much as it probably baffled the man who was the cause of it. It did not make sense but it felt real. He had been standing there, trying to decide whether or not he was going to let a bunch of drunks lynch an innocent man, remembering how easy it was for the people of Tascosa to brand him a killer where no one spoke up for him. He thought about that and decided that in this instance he could do something about it for someone else and just as when decision was made, he looked up and found himself staring into the eyes of the man in black.
Hell, he still didn't know what was in that stare but it connected with him on a level that nothing had ever managed. He saw sadness and rage, wrapped up in a gauntlet of control and knew that wherever this stranger was, he had been too but had not been marked as bad. He did not know anything about destiny or fate but in the scheme of things where everything had a place in Infinity's design, he suddenly had the notion that his was at this man's side and always would be.
From the beginning of time to perhaps even to the end of it.
What was the point?
Things could never be the same between them again. They had been friends once, close friends. Their lives intermingled together with such deep bonds that for him it had been like finding apart of himself that he never thought he had. Throughout the years of their friendship, he had always expected to see his friend at his side, never imagining that anything could ever drive them apart even though as men, they were as bipolar as night and day. He loved his women and his carousing while his friend loved only one and in awe, he had watched them relish that love and make it something so beautiful that it took the breath away to behold. He who was never in need of female company, who knew the whispers of a hundred women who said they loved him and would do anything for him, he was envious of that love. He hoped in his heart someday, he would find something as wonderful.
But all that ended with a fire.
Love became sorrow and rage and a grief so intense that even he felt his heart shatter at its destruction. Not only did his friend lose her who was everything but also the child who was the greatest expression of that love and it was nothing less than devastating. At first, he had thought his friend would die and there was more than one occasion when he had been forced to prevent that from happening. In his heart he blamed himself because he had convinced his friend to stay away that night. If only he had ridden back and not remained, perhaps they would be alive. The guilt of his responsibility made him remain at his friend's side, trying to make some amends for a hurt that he could never hope to fix. Eventually Chris Larabee stopped wanting to put a bullet in his head but could not to stop from wanting to die and it was there they went their separate ways for the first time in too long.
It broke his heart all over again to see Chris leave but their relationship had changed and there was nothing he could do to make it the way it was again. When he saw Chris in this town, he had hoped that perhaps their friendship could return to what it once was but then that pretty newspaper editor had made her inquiries about Chris and he could not resist the possibility of making his friend happy again. He knew women well enough and he knew the long meaningful look in her eyes when she asked about Chris all too well. He told her the truth and incurred Chris' wrath sharply enough to know that he had been wrong about salvaging their friendship. Dead wrong.
Yet he was still staying here, still riding alongside his oldest friend, hoping against hope, that one day there might be salvation for both of them.
God had a funny way of sending him a message.
He had thought that his faith was a river run dry and that his sins from too many times past would bring him a swift death. He had no wish to suicide for there was still a part of him that was too beholding to the faith he practiced to abandon it so blatantly. He would not die by his own hand even though he had wanted very much too because the burden of those sins weighed heavily upon him and not even his love for his God could make that pain disappear. He watched the skies for the coming of the crows, a sure sign that his passing was at hand. He had actually wished for them to come while he began work on the church he knew he would never finish because he waited for the opportunity to for his life to end without committing the sin that would ensure his penance lasted an eternity.
He had gone to the village thinking he would die, in fact he had almost been certain of it. It was a foolish and yet noble crusade. As a means to pass the veil, he could not think of any better. What better way to meet the maker than to sacrifice one's life by attempting to help innocents? It was almost serendipitous. A curious thing happened though instead of him shirking off the mortal coil. He met six other men who had come together for different reasons to defend the same village and for some inexplicable reason, he felt something he had not felt in a long time, a need to watch over them because they needed someone to do so and because he could.
As if to confirm that he had reached a watershed, the Almighty chose not to let him die even though there was a point when he had come damn near close to it. He recalled watching the imaginary crows circling him while his blood poured out of him, anticipating that they would begin their feeding in due course. However, they circled and circled until they were nothingness and he had learnt that he was not in fact going to die and in their departure, he realized that a man with faith was far more valuable than any man of cloth. He still had faith and it was faith in himself and his God and the men he rode with that told him that his work on this Earth was far from done. He was not certain that this work intended him to play peacekeeper but he supposed that if he were going astray on the path that God had set him upon, he would learn soon enough.
The crows would circle again.
He could not believe it.
He was one of them! Not just a stray they picked up on the way who would not leave them alone but one of them. Apart of him was still stunned with disbelief that these six men, all so capable and the kind that he could only dream of being had wanted him as one of their number. Why did they want him? He was just a stupid kid. He had come to the West full of ideas garnered from one too many dime store novels, with no idea that this was almost another world. People died here a lot and young men such as he, who did not know better and were full of dreams were usually the first to be sacrificed. Until he had killed that man in the village, his entire view of the West had been peppered by romantic notions that were nothing like the reality. Until he took a life, he had not understood.
Only when he saw the light fade from eyes that would never see anything again and understood that he had taken everything that man would ever be with a single gunshot, he had not known the West at all. That night he thought he had sold his soul to the devil in order to achieve his dreams. He thought of all the things he had wished for when he was making that long journey to the West and felt it soiled by that one act of violence. It had almost sent him home. And then out of nowhere, the big man who seemed to know everything, who did not stop telling him how much he did not know, said the words that made it alright and he felt better and for the first time since his mother died and not so completely alone.
As different and as hardened as they were, he seemed to be the one thing they wanted to protect and while he thought he was old enough to look after himself (thank you very much), it was nice to know that he still had something of a family.
Even if they all hated his hat.
Times are a changing.
Ask him a few years ago that he would count six white men as his friends and he would have thought that was pure insanity. After all, there had never been a white man save one that had ever treated him like a slave even after the war. He always saw that glint in their eyes that sized him up as less the minute they cast their gaze upon him and as much as he tried to develop calluses over his feelings about that reaction, he could not keep the hurt from seeping in. It was not that he was starved for friends, he could find some in his own kind if he wished but he did not think that was friendship ought to be segregated. A friend should come in whatever shape or color, it should not be based on just one physical characteristic.
When he had to the town, dust blown place that it was, he had been merely drifting. It was not until he learnt that they needed the services of a healer that he chose to stay because in place like this were violence ensued regularly, he knew he could help. There was the usual prejudice but one could not be a Negro and not expect that. It was the way things were. However, he learnt that a friend had settled in town though the preacher seemed to be waiting for death and nothing he had been able to do at that time could convince him otherwise, they still remained friends. He made new friends as well, some colored and some white folk but all of it had been friendship at a distance. He did not expect deep bonds to be formed.
Not until he was almost lynched.
The two men came out of nowhere and why they chose to help him was as much a mystery to them as it was to him. However, that act of kindness had led to a kinship he had not expected to feel with them. With the two, they had become seven, even though one had looked at him with that same glint in his eyes until after their first adventure together and it disappeared altogether. Now he knew without doubt that there was something special about their number for the old people used to say that seven was a number of power. He did not know anything about that but he did know that they looked at him and saw one of their own and that in itself was something worth hanging onto.
Even if it did mean he would have to overcome his own prejudices.
This was pure foolishness. Mother would say he was utterly insane.
Since when did he have a compulsion to be a member of the gainfully employed? Especially in this dilapidated collection of dusty buildings attempting to call itself a town? And for a dollar a day? The more he thought about it, the more he came to the conclusion that he had lost his mind. Law and order was not usually something he aspired to maintain and if truth be known, he had spent more time circumventing the law than upholding it during his life time. He could not for the life of him understand what had compelled him to remain here when everything that he was told him to leave and not look behind. It was not as if he had made any deep attachments that forced him to remain. Indeed his associates were less than friendly and appeared to simply tolerate his presence.
He did not admit even to himself that it hurt a little watching the bonds forming between the six men and know that he was placed firmly outside that circle even though he was one of their number. The boy had been more than ready to incarcerate him when the Judge had recognized him for an offence committed in Fort Laramie. After everything they had been through, he had hoped he had earned some measure of trust but the young man had merely shrugged his shoulders apologetically and then slammed the doors shut on his cell. It had hurt even though he did not show it.
He never showed it.
Even when they needed his help, the gunslinger had been perfectly happy to leave him in his cell to languish rather than ask him for assistance. He knew that he had erred when he left the scene of their first battle when it appeared all was lost but he wondered if any of them knew how hard it had been for him to resist his natural inclination to save his own skin and return to them. He had done so and earned no gratitude for his effort but rather the scornful gazes of the others and the stinging warning from their illustrious leader to never do it again. And with all that between them, he was still staying. Why?
Because he was mad that was why. Mother would say so if she were here and she would be right.
Completely mad.