Title: "Turn of the Cards"
Author: Pirate Turner
Rating: PG-13
Summary: It was the least thing they would have ever suspected, but they would survive this together, as always.
Warnings: Slash, Los Magnificos Vampiros AU
Word Count: 2,048
Timeline: The first, so far, in the series
Date Written: 16 October, 2011
Challenge: This fic began as an answer to the SlashTheDrabble LJ comm's weekly challenge but refused to be a drabble.
Disclaimer: Vin Tanner, JD Dunne, Buck Wilmington, Ezra and Maude Standish, Nathan Jackson, Josiah Sanchez, Chris Larabee, and The Magnificent Seven are ﾩ & TM CBS, The Mirisch Group, MGM, and Trilogy Entertainment, not the author; are used without permission; and may not be used without permission. Everything else is ﾩ & TM the author. The author makes absolutely no profit off of this work of fan fiction, and no copyright infringement is intended.

"IT'S NOT FAIR! IT'S NOT RIGHT! THIS ISN'T WHAT I CAME HERE FOR!" JD wailed, his fists beating against the strong and reassuring arms desperately trying to reach around his squirreling body. Those arms had once kept him safe when nothing else could, and he knew they were full of love, warmth, and comfort. Yet he didn't deserve comfort now.

"It's not what any of us wanted," Buck tried to make the Kid understand, his mustache twitching and dripping with his tears. "We didn't want any of this, JD, but we're all in th' same boat, pard!"

"A BOAT THAT'S HEADED STRAIGHT FOR HELL!" JD yelled, and though his voice was angry, his true anguish was seen in his paled face. His fangs flashed, and tears raced down his pale and trembling skin.

"That's enough," Buck growled, his own fangs flashing, and darted forward. Though JD still fought against him, he at last managed to wrap his arms around him. He held him still and took his hits until at last JD began to calm; then, he held his despairing face in his own desperate hands and gazed into his tear-filled eyes. "You're not a monster," Buck told him strongly, his mustache shaking with the emotions that ran rampant through his shaking body, unbeating heart, and what little was left of his soul.

"None of us are. This is the worst damn deal we could've ever been dealt, but we still ain't monsters. You're still the man I love, Vampire or human." JD shook against him, but still he held him tight now. "I don't know what we're gonna do, how we're gonna survive this one, JD, but I know two things. I know I love ya, an' I know together, somehow or another, we're gonna make it through this just like we have all the other battles and impossible odds we've been through before."

"But this . . . This's different, Buck!" JD cried. "We were never monsters before!"

"Listen to me, boy," Buck commanded. Turning his face up and pressing his forehead against his, he gazed directly into his young lover's eyes. "We're not monsters. We're Vampires, but we're not monsters. Josiah already talked to us 'bout that earlier, remember? And yeah, we fed, but we fed on th' blood o' outlaws."

"Does it make it right?"

JD's question caught him by surprise. Buck hesitated as he struggled within to find the right answer to a question he knew he didn't have yet for he'd been asking himself the same thing. "Is the wolf condemned 'cause he kills a cow that runs away from the herd?" He winced inside for the look in JD's eyes told him immediately that wasn't the right answer. "Okay, so yeah, maybe not the best answer, but think about this, JD. Those men were killers. Back in the day . . . "

"You mean yesterday?"

Buck sighed, his mustache twitching. "Back when we were men protecting Four Corners, we would've gunned 'em down, 'cause they wan't goin' peacefully. What's th' big difference in how we kill 'em, rather we shoot 'em where they stand or we feed off o' 'em 'cause we gotta eat? They're the bad guys, JD, not us."

"But we are, too, Buck. We're Vampires. We're Evil!"

"Sh!" Buck commanded, clenching JD to his chest. "I won't have ya thinkin' that way, love. You're not a monster, sweetheart, Vampire or not, an' I'll prove it to ya. But for now . . . " Somehow he could sense the sun was rising even though he couldn't see it. "For now we need to rest. Come lay down with me, an' we'll sleep together."

JD yawned as suddenly all the anguish, hatred, and fury he'd been feeling all night long since awakening drained out of him. It left him only a shell of what he was, so exhausted that he could barely even keep his eyes open. "But not in a coffin, right?"

"Not in a coffin, I promise," Buck assured. "Never gonna happen, an' JD?"

"Hmm?"

"You're not a monster, baby," Buck crooned, his mustache shaking with the power of the emotions welling inside of him, "an' I promise I'll prove that to you."

"Okay, Buck, whatever you say."

Buck smiled sadly. His beloved Kid was so exhausted he was practically asleep standing up. He lifted him into his arms and carried him to the bed Josiah had made for them, never once realizing that their conversation was being overheard.

Nathan turned from Buck and JD's door to look back to his own love. Josiah glanced up at him. "How are they handling it?"

"Better than I expected," Nathan answered truthfully. "Hell, better'n I myself am on Buck's part." His big, dark eyes gazed up into the worried face of the man he loved. "Josiah, what are we gonna do?"

Josiah shook his head slowly and thoughtfully stroked his gray beard. "I wish I could say I could save us from this, Nathan, but what's done is done." He sighed and shook his head again. "We're Vampires, and there ain't a damned thing we can do about it. We can never go back to being human again. There's no way. For a Werewolf, if you can kill the one who sired it within a certain lot of time, you can save 'em; they can go back to being human. Vampires aren't that lucky. For us, it's either sunlight, stake, or livin' the way we are."

"Can we live that way?" Nathan asked cautiously.

Josiah gazed steadily into his eyes. "Do you want to die?" he asked simply, and Nathan shook his head. "None of us do," Josiah observed truthfully, "but if any one changes their mind, I'll help 'em make that cross over. In the mean time, we need to learn to live with our new selves, and I aim to make sure we can all do that."

"And then?"

Josiah gazed at the solitary window in the room. He'd draped a heavy, black cloth over it earlier, but a ray of sunshine still peeked in underneath it. "Then we go after the ones that turned us, and we make sure they can never do it again."

Nathan had reached his side now, and he placed a hand over Josiah's considerably larger hand. "We can do this?" He had meant the words as a statement of confidence, but they came out as the question that still hung heavily over his dead heart and blackened soul.

Josiah entwined his fingers with Nathan's and looked into his eyes again. There was no doubt in him as he spoke his agreement in his deep and rumbling voice, "We can do this." He only prayed that the Lord would still take pity on them and help them when it was judgement time, but he made no sign of his own fearful thoughts as he wrapped his large arms around his love and held him close. He was condemned; he'd always been condemned. He just hadn't wanted the same fate to befall his friends and prayed to a God who had stopped caring long ago rather he lived or died to help them as he kissed away his love's doubts with reassurance radiating from him that, though he felt it in every bit of his heart for his friends, no longer held true in his soul for his own self.

Vin walked away from the door knob whose lock he'd been peering out of to check on his friends. "Well?" Chris asked.

He shrugged. "They're dealin' with it best they can." He glanced down at Chris, who'd been sharpening his knife against his fingernails for hours now. "How 'bout you, cowboy?"

"I could damn well do with something real to drink," Chris snarled, his fangs flashing.

Vin nodded. "Me too. Reckon we oughta go get us some tonight."

They could see no sign of the outside world in their little room, but Chris nodded his understanding nonetheless. "Sun's already rose."

"Yup."

He set his chair on the floor, and the thud of his boots on the floor echoed heavily in the room. He put his knife down.

"Chris?"

"What th' Hell are we gonna do, Vin?" Their leader shook his head. "I swore I'd do whatever it took to protect 'em." He sighed mightily. "But I failed 'em. I couldn't keep 'em from being changed, an' what I should do now, for their sakes, is kill 'em."

"No!"

Chris looked up, surprised at the strength of Vin's declaration. "Ya think livin' like this is any kind o' life?"

Vin put one hand on the their small table and his other on the back of Chris' chair. He leaned down right before him, and their eyes met. "I know killin' our friends, our family, ain't th' answer," he vowed. "Any kind o' life spent together is better'n th' alternative. Josiah already told us he's got some answers fer us, that he's gonna work on helpin' us through this." He shook his head. "Don't know how th' Preacher man knows so much 'bout this sorta thing, but I know he's right. Death ain't th' answer. Ya do that, then ya do condemn us, but as long as we're livin' . . . "

"Only we're not living," Chris murmured.

Vin's eyes flashed, and he hit the table. "Then whatever th' Hell ya call this! Livin', not livin', it's still survivin', Chris, an' as long as we're survivin' together, we've got a chance! As long as we've got each other, got our family, we've got a chance!" His bloodshot eyes gazed into his. "Tell me ya ain't gonna take that away from us."

Chris shook his head once, Vin's words making his determination for him. "I won't," he promised, even though he'd already known inside that he couldn't kill his men. He loved them all, though none more so than his beloved Vin, and he didn't have the heart to kill them, even if his heart no longer beat and killing them was what was best for them.

Vin smiled. "We're gonna get through this, Chris," he promised and hugged him tightly to him. "We're gonna get through it together." He kissed him passionately, pledging his promise and everlasting love to him in a kiss that shot both their undead hearts far higher than any they'd ever shared while still human.

Alone in his room, Ezra dealt his cards. His long and slender fingers trembled as he read the fortunes of the men who had become more of a family to him than his own blood relatives had ever been. In silence, he bowed his head and at last allowed his tears to fall. His mother had been right: They were doomed. "Happy Halloween, Mothah," he whispered hoarsely, and a Hell of a Halloween it was!

They were all doomed, and he hadn't needed the cards to tell him the truth. They had been attacked the evening before and turned into monsters the likes of which none of them had ever really believed existed before. None of them, Ezra reflected, except for the Preacher. How had he known when all the rest of them had not? How had the man of God's cloth known that monsters existed and yet known also that, just because they were Vampires now, did not mean that they had to live up to the term "monsters"?

Ezra glanced at the outlaw's corpse that had served as his first meal in his new life and then turned his attention back to his cards. He blinked against the tears that welled in his green eyes and flicked over the last card. His eyebrows arched slightly in surprise, and his fingers weighed heavily upon that single, fateful card. It spoke of a new life, and Ezra wondered for the first time since awakening to his new life.

Maybe the Preacher was right. Maybe they didn't have to be monsters, after all. Maybe they still had a chance, and hope touched the blackened soul of the last new Vampire that early morning for the first time. Soon, he would learn he was right. He and the others would learn that they did indeed still have a chance, still have lives to lead and good to do, and together they would ride forever more as the Los Magnificos Vampiros.

The End