Five Words... Chris
Cloud
They talk about silver linings...? Hell yeah, well Buck does all the damn time, and JD too, and sometimes Nathan...
Ez, he'd prefer his gold, we all know that, but silver'd do him, I reckon, and Josiah's are iron, well-tempered and rusted in spots. Vin... I dunno, he just smiles and says it's just nice to be able t'look for a lining at all, even brass'd suit him. Never asked for much, our Vin.
And me? Ain't no such thing as silver, I used ta think. Our clouds were always lined in cheap tin, and tarnished at that... like the badge of that cowardly sheriff whose runnin' out got us this crazy job in the first place. Now, all the lining I can see come different, an' every one of them, silver or not, likely has another damn cloud attached.
But whatever, it's nice to be able to look for it again... and sometimes see just a hint of its shine.
~oOo~
Home
He'd had but three homes in his life.
First, there was the farm back in Indiana, his ma and pa, all those folk he called Uncle and Auntie, a passel of cousins real and adopted... a big, noisy circle of folk, that was home for a long time.
Then, his small, brief moment. His Sarah. His Adam. His forever home, too quickly forever gone.
And now? Home, in this ramshackle little place? It's six rambunctious, roughhouse friends, brothers, as close as kin as he can take any more.
To Chris, home has always been other people...
~oOo~
Treat
Anyone grin, he'll give 'em the Larabee Glare of Death. Anyone laugh, and he'll shoot 'em. He's buyin' it for the kids, okay? - Billy, and the Potters, and the rest. And if Billy always wants ta share, and looks at him with those big eyes, what's a fearless, deadly, heart of stone gunslinger to do? Damn lucky he happens t'like the stuff, that way he's not lettin' the kid down. That's all it is, after all, not lettin' the kid down.
And if Tanner or Wilmington slyly suggests one more time how damn... handy an' all it is that Billy wants ta share, they're gonna regret it.
Hey, even a gunslinger's allowed peppermints once in a while...
~oOo~
Snow
Four Corners looks real nice in the snow.
Most places do, in the pale hours before morning, before folk have a chance to mess it up with feet and wagon wheels and horse and everythin', turning it into a slurry dirty-water mess. And even then, kids - and the kid-minded, of which he knew all too many - still found something wonderful in it.
The townsfolk's kids musta been out really early this morning, 'cause Larabee can see a row of snowmen, as crude and wobbly and damnably cute as only kids can make them (with a little help from their parents, yeah. He recalled doin' that, and how much like a kid you could be for your own).
In the early morning light he can see them.
One smaller than the rest, with a ridiculous beat-up bowler that had been thrown out months ago.
One in an old leather jacket with half the fringe missing, even tattier than the one someone refuses to get rid of.
One draped in a horses blanket cut to look like a crude serape and a cross made of sticks round its neck.
One coloured brown, he has no idea how, with a floppy hat and a medicine bottle in one twiggy hand.
One with a moustache made of - he thinks - grass or hay, and a huge beaming pebble smile.
One in a tattered scarlet coat - a cut-down dressing gown, by the looks of it - and a flat black cardboard hat.
... And one wrapped in a shapeless black cloth, with slingshots - slingshots, fer Chrissake! - tied with its pudgy middle, and a definite frown in the - literally - stony glare...
~oOo~
Red
Black was always good like that, one reason why he wore it. Black doesn't show the bright, fierce red of the blood he's spilled in his life.
Not that a lot of the blood on his hands, on his soul, would show anyway. It's - what's the word Standish uses? - figurative, all in the mind... killin' with a gun does that, you don't haveta touch the blood or be touched by it. You stay clean.
Not this time. It wasn't his fault, but the blood's wet, slick and slippery under his hands, and it feels hot, it seems so hot he would swear it burns.
He presses down harder on the wound, forcing himself not to flinch at Ezra's faint groan, that he can hear through the fighting and the screams and Nathan bellowing for help. Presses down as hard as he can, ignoring how fuckin' unfigurative Ezra's own blood is, ignoring how it dulls the red wool coat the fool insists on wearing that makes him so fuckin' easy to target, how it soaks, brash and harshly, horribly crimson, into that pretty white shirt he's so fussy about, how it slides, sticky and darkening, shocking against the pale skin.
Ez's blood may not be on his soul - someone else fired the gun this time - but Chris wonders if he'll ever get the afterimage of it off his hands.
-the end-