*SPOILERS*
Alternate Ending: This story would take place after the movie if none of them had died.
It Wasn't About the Cards
Winter is almost upon the small mining town of Rose Creek and as night blankets the landscape it settles with a chill in the air, forcing townsfolk inside to stoke fires and drink warm whiskey. Long, fallacious tales of victory still spew from drunken mouths and cook over the flames until every man is a legend who has outdone the last, including the band of seven that actually saved their home. The Magnificent Seven, as they've become known, allow the legends to grow, even encourage the fellows with the tips of their fingers underneath liquor glasses and a , "So how'd you manage to fight off ten men at the same time with four of 'em circlin' on horses?"
Sam Chisolm sits idly by, offering a low chuckle from around the wet rim of a shot glass at the lighthearted actions of his men gathered at the saloon, but he's weighed down by more than just weariness and a strong drink. Vasquez sinks into the chair next to him with the same burden upon his shoulders and a cigar between his teeth. Taking it between his fingers, he puts it out on the table with a nod towards the door. "He still out there?"
"Uh huh," Sam says while staring into the amber liquid swirling at the bottom of his glass.
"Did you try talking some sense into him?"
Chisolm blows out air like he's the one who' d been smoking, "It's probably why he's still out there."
Vasquez pushes his hat back on his head and downs the rest of a discarded whiskey glass from the next table over, "You think he'll be ready to set out?"
"We won't leave him behind. He's just as likely to catch death sitting out there in the cold than in a shootout with some outlaws on the trails." He knows it doesn't settle the Mexican's nerves any, but false hope is as dangerous of an addiction as any to some folk.
The notorious outlaw cranes his neck to see past a fat bellied, card playing man near the window to where Faraday is sitting on the other side. "So far so good," he heatedly mutters to where it's almost drowned out by drunken hollers and off-tempo piano music. Sam catches his arm as Vasquez stands from the table with angry momentum, something he's had to stop the outlaw from acting on for days. He stares up at him, debating on whether or not to give in just a little, offer just a taste of faith one can't get hooked on. "He's…..not falling off a building anymore. He didn't hit the bottom," he decides, tipping his head toward the direction of their friend outside. Vasquez glares down at him.
"No, but I'm starting to think it would have been better if he had," he says, and shakes his arm out of Sam's grip. "Maybe then we wouldn't have to sit around watching him pine like a dead man anyway."
The cold wind sobers him up, but not from the whiskey. He'd planned on storming out of the bar like a raging bull to a red cape, offering their used-to-be gambler a flurry of Spanish curses until Faraday finally told some stupid joke, or showed him a magic trick that left him drawing his gun with his finger on the trigger, but that first gust of winter air hit him in the face so hard that he had to catch his breath on the threshold before turning to Faraday sitting down at the corner of the porch.
The man is battered and bruised, perched on the railing like an injured cat huddled away from a pack of dogs and Vasquez is suddenly reminded of every feverish night spent trying to calm him down enough so that he wouldn't pull his own stitches, or the way the group of them felt like they'd won another battle when Faraway walked all the way to the outhouse and back on his own. Guilt envelops him for belittling the effort it took the younger man to survive.
With his anger settled at the bottom of his liver, he crosses the space between them. His boots are heavy against the wooden slats of the stoop, the sound echoing around them like a stampede of horse hooves galloping into the dirt just without the speed. Faraday seems as skittish as a coward with a pitchfork facing a gunslinger at high noon while perched on the banister and Vasquez makes it a point to let his gun show when he leans against the railing. "Hard to be the legend of the Magnificent Seven when there's only six in there to enjoy it."
"There was almost six."
"Is that why you like to try to freeze yourself to death nowadays?"
The gambler squints up at him like the sun's hanging over Rose Creek in the dead of summer while fidgeting with an unopened bottle of whiskey in his hands. "Ain't nobody tryin' to die."
"I see," Vasquez offers while reaching out to take the bottle from him. Faraday lets him have it without so much as a card trick. The outlaw knows better than to think it's his still healing wounds keeping him from putting up a fight. He turns it over in his hands, notices the wear of the label even though it's not been drunk out of. It's the first bottle of liquor the older man offered him once he was well enough to leave the town's doctor. He shakes it at Faraday.
"Forgive me," the outlaw replies while tossing the bottle back to his friend. "I just assumed that for a Gambler who doesn't gamble, a magician who does not use magic, and a drunkard that doesn't drink life would be unlivable."
Faraday stares at the bottle the way a lonely preacher stares at a barmaid. "Maybe I ain't none of those things."
"Then what, pray tell, are you?"
Silence falls between them, something Vasquez realizes only a near death experience had ever let happen before, and that thought causes him to wonder if maybe he's the skittish coward with a pitchfork.
"You know," Faraday begins after a long while, and if the outlaw jerks in surprise he hides it well by readjusting his stance against the railing. "I've killed a lot of men. Bad men, all of 'em. I don't reckon I've killed a good one before. Not by aimin' at him anyway."
Vasquez hopes there's a punchline coming, but Chisolm's taught them enough by now not to cling to such things when there's a lot at stake. "Who was the first one you killed?"
Faraday controls the silence again the way his fingers used to manage a deck of playing cards, only showing the one he wanted to at his command. "My daddy."
"What'd he do?"
"There were stories. Every man had one about him. A woman had two. I followed him one night out to the saloon to see if they were true. He 'bout never made it there, stumbling as he was already. I lost sight of him for a while, but when I found him…."
Faraday looks down at the bottle in his hands, fingers wrapped tightly around the neck of it.
"He was standing over some girl, already had his fun with her. I guess he didn't want anymore stories 'bout him floatin' around 'cause Momma was already mad at him and draggin' him to the front row pew at the church on Sundays. So he strangled that girl so she couldn't tell nobody. Then he told me he was gonna do the same to my Momma."
"What'd you do?"
"I told you. I killed him."
"How?," Vasquez asks softly, and it must surprise Faraway the way he asks it because he's suddenly looking up at him for the first time in a while.
"No-…nobody ever asks me that," he replies, and it reminds the outlaw of the younger brother he use to have, the one he had to explain how the world works to.
"Because the men you tell never know that you're trying to tell them something else entirely. Now, how'd you do it?"
Faraway swallows and begins to fiddle with the cork in the bottle. "He had a stack of trick playing cards…it's how he won all his money. He'd take a switch to me every time he caught me playing with them. So, when Momma went to the store a few days later, I took the cards from his room. He came at me with the switch like I figured he would. I shot him. When Momma got home, I told her it was because I wanted to play with the cards so she'd never find out the truth 'bout Daddy."
"It wasn't about the cards," Vasquez knows.
"It never is."
"Just like it's not about you almost dying by Bogue's hands."
The bottle of whiskey stills in Faraday's hands. "I…..wanted to tell Momma the real reason I did it….but I don't think it would've changed nothin'. She still would've sent me away."
"You think that's what we'll do? Leave you behind, because you're not the person we thought you were?"
"I'm just talkin' about my Momma."
"You're talking about family and that's what we are," Vasquez replies while gently prying the bottle back from Faraway again. "I gave this to my brother who I thought I'd lost, but as it turns out, I don't think I've found him yet. Perhaps I will hold onto it, so that when I do, we may both share a drink together. How does that sit with you?"
Faraday doesn't respond, but doesn't object to Vasquez putting the bottle in his breast pocket.
"You know, you never answered my other question," the outlaw states, while throwing an arm around the gambler and tugging him off the railing. Faraday allows himself to be guided back towards the saloon entrance, but asks warily, "What was that?"
"If you're not a gambler, a magician, or a drunkard, then what exactly are you?"
Faraway smirks just a little and says, "Supposedly, I'm the younger, handsome Mexican brother of a Spanish outlaw with horrible taste in liquor, but until I can be sure of that, I'm just a part of the Magnificent Seven."