Somewhere…
There was a flash of light, as in a dream - he gasped, and jerked in pain, and woke...
And stared at the cloudless night sky.
For a minute, he didn't know where he was - somewhere on the trail, a long way from safety, security and the comfort of his feather bed - or why he was lying wrapped in blankets near a small, sputtering fire, or why he... aagh yes, why he hurt, in a dull, peculiarly muted fashion, like an old echo of pain.
"Ezra?" The voice from above him was low, raspy with fatigue and, maybe, worry, and he finally met Vin's worried blue eyes. "You okay?"
"Hurts." Lord, was that pathetic croak his voice?
"Damn right, pard. You nearly got yourself killed again."
Had he? He couldn't remember.
"You gotta stop tryin' ta catch bullets, Ezra." From the other side, JD said softly, holding out a scorched and shredded set of cards with hands that shook slightly. "Two inches to the side, Nathan said, we'd be buryin' ya."
"Mah... apologies." He tried to speak sarcastically, but the words slurred, thick and woolly-dry in his mouth. Lord, though, this hero business is getting' to be a deplorable habit. One would think over the years he'd learned that heroics never paid.
J D was talking again, looking across at the other, shadowy, sleeping figures around the campfire. His associates, his... friends? Could he call them that? Could he dare?
Not yet. Not... yet. He wasn't ready, wouldn't be for a long time. No. Ah'm sorry, but not in this lifetime, Mister Dunne...
His senses skewed, something felt wrong. He was falling...
~oOo~
There was a flash of light, as in a dream - he gasped, and jerked in pain, and woke...
And the ceiling was white and upset his eyes as much as the weak, antiseptic smell offended his nose. Antiseptic, old flowers and that faint stinging ambience that always said hospital. Four Corners Memorial Hospital, Fifth Floor, Ward 5. Yet again.
The pain, odd and muffled as it was, was all too familiar. Yet again. This profession of being a law enforcer - an ATF agent, would his mother ever live it down? - was again proving to be as excruciating as it was laborious.
He'd been dreaming of an earlier time and a plainer, simpler place... the dream had been odd, but the ragged threads of imaginary life dissolved like mist when he tried to recall them.
Here, there was weariness and too much light, pale chilly morning sunshine from the windows; for a minute it haloed around the grizzled head of his older, heavy-featured, team-mate who was watching him.
"About time, Brother Ezra," Josiah said. "Our leader, by the way, said to tell you, as soon as you woke, that if you try that sort of, as he put it, 'fuckin' lame-brained foolhardy suicidal stunt' once more, he'll kick your ass back to Atlanta himself." Despite the words, there was no anger in his deep, rumbling voice. "Believe me, we'll all be helpin' him every step of the way."
"Ah... d-dont recall..."
"You tried to take down a gunrunner, alone and without a bullet-proof jacket. Not a wise move, brother."
By himself. He vaguely recalled that it had seemed the most efficacious path to take, the risk being... well, calculated. Closely calculated. He'd never intended to die, heroically or otherwise.
Damn, he had to stop this nonsensical trying to be the good man they wanted him to be. He was tired of trying, and never quite succeeding, and hurting. But something in his leader's eyes had made it worthwhile again. Something in the eyes of all his... associates? - friends? - no, not friends, he wasn't ready to call them friends - but something in their eyes always made it seem - against every shred of his better judgment - worthwhile.
"Ah... shall try," he mumbled, feeling sleep tug at him again, "to amend mah ways next time."
"You should do that," Josiah said, his words blurring with the fading light. "Just enough to stay alive, Ez."
His senses skewed, and he was falling...
~oOo~
There was a flash of light, as in a dream - he gasped, and heard himself wail in pain, high and frightened and... very very young.
He looked up with teary eyes at the moon, gazing down coolly at the child through old, threadbare curtains as if it saw and disapproved. He couldn't quite catch the dream - of somewhere bright and sharp-smelling and unfriendly - and himself, old and grown-up and tired and with dark, strange, world-weary thoughts. Thoughts that didn't make sense, any more than that loutish scoundrel today with the bad humor and the gun.
"Mister Chris!" He sat up in the bed, hugging the thick woolen blankets around his thin little body, wanting something, wanting...
"Hush, Ezra." The big blonde man lifted him up and onto his lap, soothing the nightmare with rough kindness. "Hush, boy. You were dreamin', Ez, just dreamin'."
"It scared me," he hiccupped, a small part of his mind knowing he should be big and valiant, and not huddle against his guardian like a infant, but just for the moment he wanted to be the child his mother scorned and Mister Chris didn't.
His mother had not been there when an enraged malefactor had tried to kill Mister Buck, only he had.
"He coulda killed you, kid," Mister Chris said softly
"Ah'm sorry." And he wondered where the marble chessboard - Mister Josiah's chess board, how could he explain to the preacher? - was. It had come in handy when the loathsome man had reached for his gun.
You scared me good, boy," Chris whispered roughly against his hair. "Thought you'd been told to stay outa the saloon, though."
"No, no," he said, anxious to explain it all properly, "Truly, Mister Chris, I wouldn't do anything you told me not to."
"Ezra..."
"You told me not to play cards in the saloon. You didn't say anythin' about hindering scoundrels from shooting Mister Buck, truly." He didn't really like this being brave business, not when it hurt. But Mister Buck was, maybe, nearly, something like what he thought - what hey all said - a friend might be like.
"All right... hush now, boy. We'll talk in the morning."
Sleep called again, and everything blurred but the feel of the rough, strong arms and the fading light. He was falling...
~oOo~
There was a flash of neon-bright light, as in a dream - that, and the low hum of the starship engines, woke him to darkness and drug-dulled pain, and blew away the fragments of childish fears - oh stars, how mortifying, crying all over Mister Ch- no, Space Commander Larabee? Surely a nightmare...
The flash of neon-bright electronic light startled him, blinded him a little. When it cleared, Doctor Jackson was there, his smooth, gentle dark face barely visible in the artificial gloom.
"Lie still, you idiot."
Gracious as - always - but his hands were light on sore and aching limbs, so Ezra tried to be grateful, banishing dreams to the realm of unacknowledged fancy. Nathan was fussing with the paraphernalia around his head, the smooth, sleek, life-saving equipment that they all were too familiar with.
"Next time you want to fight bug-eyed Betelbutchers three times your size," he said stiffly, "do us all a favor and don't."
"Ah don't recall... a choice bein' tendered..."
"They got a mite tetchy, Ez - seein' as you blew up their flyer." Buck's deep voice, from the other side, held both the usual laughter and a thread of fierce worry. "With a bottle of Old Benetnash Mount'n Dew."
He vaguely remembered that. "It seemed..." he said, fingering the soft, slippery starsilk sheets, "a rational course of action."
"Rational?" Nathan squawked.
"Ah did say... seemed."
His team-mates glanced at each other, and decided not to ask. "And," Buck went on, "your Captain wants to know where you got it, how the hell you smuggled it on board, and is there any more waitin' somewhere t'explode in deep space."
At least 700 bottles, actually... he didn't say that. Chris would either space them or make him share with his... associates.
"Wasn't a bad idea, though, droppin' it into the helium furnace," Buck went on, "though when we thought you'd gone up with it..."
"Mah... apologies." Stars, was he always apologizin' for taking the only course open? Apologizin' for saving them all?
Wasn't that was friends were for?
He didn't know, he'd always fought shy (in some cases quite literally, with a blaster if needed) of finding out what this friendship thing was all about.
He was still fighting shy, two years into this galactic journey.
He was still fighting... sleep.
He was still fighting as the his senses skewed and drifted away. He was falling...
~oOo~
The world was dark and empty, there was no light. He knew even before he woke and shed the all-too-human dreams, that it was night, and safe to be out.
He opened his eyes and gazed calmly at the other six. At least there was no pain, unlike the aching memory from the fragmenting dreams of when they had all been alive. He'd almost forgotten what it meant to be hurt.
They'd been heroes once, whatever that had meant. They were now bound together by something else, something that had happened a long time ago.
He recalled, as through a dim and smoky glass, something about friends...
The tall blonde vampire who led them met his gaze with one of icy, undead familiarity.
And the darkness closed in, and he was falling...
~oOo~
There was a flash of light, as in all too many of his dreams - he gasped, and woke.
And he stared at the rough wooden ceiling of a old, dimly-lit office-turned-clinic above a livery stable, in the straggling main street of a dusty dirtbowl of a town.
"Welcome back, Ezra."
Ezra turned his head, shaking free the last of the strange dreams of somewhere else, something else, someone else... stared at his - yes, friends - all five of them, draped around the room sleeping the sleep of the worn out from waiting and desperately exhausted... and at his unelected leader - and, yes, friend - in black, watching him with weary, worried, sleepless eyes.
"Did ah... go anywhere?"
"Some of the boys thought we'd lose ya this time," Chris said gruffly. "You seemed to be far away."
"Maybe Ah was." Ezra tried to shrug, and gasped again, and regretted it. The pain was real, as real as the sharpness of splinters under his legs, as the acid tang of carbolic and the sour smell one of warm willowbark tea, as the heavy, careful roughness of Chris's hand on his forehead. "I can't say I am... elated to be back..."
Though - if I were ever to be truthful, Mister Larabee - it might well be true.
- the end -
(This was written to illustrate the idea of Alternate Universes: for anyone interested, No 1 and 6 are of course the Old West canon; 2 is the biggest AU, the modern ATF one invented by mog; 3 is an unashamed visit to the Little Ezra kidfic universe; 5 is inspired by Diamondback's vampire AU; 4 came straight out of my own head but was motivated by several Mag7-in-space stories I've read).