Happy Birthday Mistah...
He gazed out from the rooftop at the dirty, disfavored, bedraggled main street below, his cradling a half-empty flask in one hand, and remembered all too clearly the same day last year.
Being run out of a town very like this... and running just before the locals could get their hands on him.
Sleeping out on an abandoned trail, embarrassed for the wherewithal for food, let alone a bed, and hurting from a fight he had been forced into while all too aware he'd lose.
Being absolutely, unutterably, desolately alone.
Sitting by a small, sullen campfire, and using the last of his cheap liquor to blur the pain and toast his own wretched natal day.
"Happy birthday, Mistah..." Whoever he'd been at the time.
~oOo~
As he gazed out across the dirty, bedraggled main street, Buck strolled out of the hotel, looked up and winked.
JD, bouncing beside him, insisted on waving until he saluted back.
Josiah, hammering away at that blessed church roof again, looked up long enough to send a blindingly white, almost unnerving grin.
Nathan, leaning on the balcony outside his clinic, nodded a greeting.
Vin, draped like a large alley cat across seat in front of the jail, glanced up and touched his hat with two fingers.
And Chris Larabee stared at him coolly for a moment from across the street... then smiled that slow, rare, crooked smile and cocked his head in invitation towards the saloon doorway.
Chris didn't know, of course.
They none of them knew, and he'd keep it that way, but oh, the difference a single solitary year made to his previously single solitary life...
He nodded to his leader, slipped the flask of good whiskey safely away and sighed, oddly content with the path that the year since that last, bitter uncelebratory date had led him down.
"Happy birthday..." he murmured before descending. "Happy birthday indeed, Mistah Standish."
- the end -