This one is for SingerMe. Thank you for all your thoughtful comments and I hope this gives you something to think about during some difficult days. For the rest of you, please don't think this means I'm not working on finishing "Testimony" because I am, but there were some logistics that needed to be worked out about the ending, and in the meantime, this one just came to me. I hope you like it.
OoOoO
"No." said Matt Dillon.
"What do you mean, no?" Kitty Russell stormed, "You don't get to say, no! It's not your business."
"It is my business. And what I mean is that I will not let you leave me, Kitty. You can make as much fuss as you like, but I'm bigger than you and stronger than you, and you are not leaving." Matt said.
Kitty stared at him in amazement. She'd fought and argued with Matt anytime the past fifteen years, but she'd never heard an absolute ultimatum delivered in that way or in that tone. "I could scream," she suggested.
Matt looked at her with an enormous depth of sadness in his eyes and said very quietly, "Did you scream when he raped you, Kitty?"
And that broke down all the resolution she'd been carefully building over the past three months since she'd known she was pregnant. Tears bloomed in her eyes and she slowly nodded her head. Matt took a step forward and wrapped her in his arms. "Shh, honey, shh. We'll make it right. Just give it a chance, Kitty. Hush, now."
She tried not to cry, because she knew Matt hated it when she cried, but she couldn't stop. She hadn't cried when she'd gone to see Doc. She hadn't cried when she'd signed the papers to sell the Long Branch. She hadn't cried when Trip Pardo had raped her, or even when Matt, unknowing, had shot him dead on the street the next day. But now she couldn't stop. And Matt did something he hadn't done in five long years, he lifted her in his arms and laid her on the bed, lying down next to her, boots and all. It took a long time, there in his arms, for the tears to stop.
When they finally did, and she lay exhausted and still in his arms, Matt continued to rub her back, stroke her neck, and place soft kisses in her hair. "Let's start this conversation over again, Kitty," he said finally.
All the starch had gone out of her, and there was no resistance left, but she did try. "There's nothing more to say, Matt."
"Now you know that's not true, Kitty." Matt said. He sat her up and began unbuttoning her blouse.
"Matt!" Kitty exclaimed, astonished, but he didn't stop.
The years hadn't seemed to make him forget his skill in removing her clothes. When he had her down to just her chemise he asked her, "Do you want a nightgown?" and she nodded, still not believing what was happening. He went over to the dresser, opened a drawer, the correct drawer, and took out a gown – the top one on a stack of several folded night things. It was white silk, and very plain. Matt walked back to the bed and handed her the gown, then went into the washroom, returning shortly with a wet towel and a glass of water.
Kitty sat on the bed wearing the nightgown and let him wipe her hot face with the towel, and then drank the water he handed her. "Matt…" she tried again, but he didn't respond in words, just stood her up, pulled back the covers on the bed, and laid her down under them. She watched him walk over and blow out the lamp, and thought that, having tucked her in for the night, he would leave now, as he had so many, many times over the past years. But he didn't. Not this time.
She knew he was naked when he lay down next to her. She'd heard him undressing. And she remembered, treasuring the memory, that he always came to her naked when he was going to actually get in the bed and sleep with her through the night. Kitty reached out a tentative hand to stroke his chest, and felt herself gathered into his arms, her head on his shoulder, his face against her hair. His hands were gentle, but his voice was firm, "Now you listen to me, Kitty. I've stayed out of your bed for more than five years, and I know we both had reasons for that, but none of that matters anymore. You and I are going to talk this out. You can go to sleep now if you want, and we'll talk when you wake up, but neither of us is getting out of this bed until we agree on what happens next. Do you understand me?"
He felt her head nod against his chest, but she didn't speak. He stroked her hair, stroked her back, let his hands move lower to hold and caress the warm curves of her bottom, heard her breath catch. It had been so long. He almost didn't know how to begin, but he certainly didn't know how to stop. When he found her mouth it was open for him. They'd kissed some, during those years. Sometimes little kisses, sometimes real ones, but they both knew that just kissing wasn't enough and that it was hard for it not to lead to more. They'd only failed in their resolve once, maybe two years ago, out at Carter's Creek, when he'd let her mouth and hands release him from the unbearable tension, and even that hadn't been nearly enough, though they hadn't gone fishing alone or for a picnic since.
So now he said, moving his hands to her breasts and laying his mouth against her neck, "I'm not going to stop this time, Kitty."
"I don't want you to stop, Matt. Whatever else happens, I want you tonight," she told him, letting her hands stir in the curls of his greying hair. He unbuttoned the gown slowly, continuing alternately to cup her breasts and stroke her nipples through the soft fabric. When he was done he turned back the front of her gown and touched the warmth of her bare flesh, first with his hands and then with his mouth.
"Oh Kitty, I've dreamed of you, I've wanted you, I've needed you," he thought, "I love you so much." And then because there wasn't any reason not to, he lifted his head and said the words aloud.
"You couldn't have possibly missed me more than I've missed you, Matt," she said. She wanted it to go on forever. She wanted to forget everything in the feel of him. Her hands reached for the silky skin of his hard shaft, knowing, remembering what it would feel like, and unable to stop the deep moan of contentment when it felt just as she'd imagined all those lonely nights.
His breath was harsh, and he let a groan escape against her breast as she rubbed her soft hands over the length of him. "Kitty you can't. I can't last at all if you do that." he said, moving her hands and holding them up above her head.
But she moved them back around his neck when he let them go, and she turned onto her back, kissing him and opening both her mouth and her legs. "Don't make me wait anymore," she said, "I've waited far too long as it is."
Kitty felt him lifting the gown up around her waist, and tried to lie still as he moved between her legs and slowly filled her, stretching her. But when he began to thrust slowly into her it was all too much and she couldn't stop – couldn't stop her hips moving against him frantically, bucking, searching for the release that she could feel just seconds away. Was it the waiting, the long years of wanting him, or was this what being pregnant did to a woman? "Let it go, Kitty, just let go." She heard him saying, and she did, feeling the heat in her face at the noise she couldn't help making. But when it faded he was still with her and she twisted her legs around his, letting it start all over again as he plunged harder into her and smiling at the sounds he made as passion overran them both.
"Dear God," Matt said, some unknown time later, lying on his side next to her, "Why did we ever stop doing this?"
OoOoO
It had been a long day. Matt had spent the past two chilly November days riding down from Hays. Years ago, he and Buck had been able to do that in one long stretch, but those days were behind him. He rode in to Dodge just after sunset to find Doc sitting, wrapped in his buffalo coat, in front of the Long Branch waiting for him. It was Saturday night and the Long Branch was closed and dark.
"Kitty?" he asked, stepping down, and Doc answered him, "Kitty. Come up to my office, Matt."
Matt was up the stairs and searching the small empty office and the bedroom behind it before Doc even made it to the door. "Where is she?" Matt asked.
"Matt, you have to listen to me." Doc said closing and locking the door behind him. "Kitty's not hurt, but she's not well either. We have to talk about this before you see her." He sat down at his desk and turned his chair around to where Matt stood waiting for him to speak. "I'm not supposed to tell you this, Matt, but I'm going to. I don't feel that Kitty has any right to keep it from you, and I think she's lying when she says you're not the father."
"The father?" Matt repeated, stunned.
"Kitty's pregnant, Matt. About 15 weeks. She's sold the Long Branch and she says she's leaving town. I've tried everything I know to bring her to her senses and get her to tell you, but she wouldn't do it." Doc said. "So. This. I've broken my oath. I can't believe you're not that baby's father, Matt, or at least that it's possible you are, and if you're the man I think you are, you're going to marry her."
Matt took a long breath. And then a longer one. "Tell me what happened, Doc."
"I don't know what happened, damn you!" Doc barked, "And I don't know why Kitty's scared to tell you about this. You can't tell me you and Kitty aren't lovers. Why is she frightened of you, Matt? You just tell me that?" He reached into his desk and pulled out his old Army Colt, newly cleaned and gleaming with oil. He pointed it directly at Matt's heart. "You tell me why she's frightened of you, Matt Dillon, or by God I will shoot you down where you stand, and I know that body of yours too well to make a mistake."
Matt didn't even respond to the gun. He dropped his hat on the floor, sat himself down hard in the seat across from Doc, and buried his face in his hands. It was a long time before he looked up again. The gun was gone, and Doc handed him a glass of whiskey. Matt turned it in his hands without drinking it. "Tell me, son," the old man demanded.
And Matt had told him. Told him the literal truth, which was the thing he should have avoided at all costs. After all the years of caution, of discretion, of refusing to discuss the topic with anyone at all, Matt simply let out the truth. "I love Kitty with all my heart, Doc, and I think you know that, but I haven't shared her bed in more than five years." Matt hesitated and then went on, a little brokenly, "Not since Kitty killed Etta Stone. That's when we decided, the two of us, that no matter how much it hurt us, that we could live with the idea of losing each other if we had to, but that we couldn't tolerate the idea of a child losing either of us. Or both of us. There was no other way to be sure of that, so we stopped. We just stopped." Matt tossed back the whiskey and handed Doc the glass.
Matt looked across into Doc's eyes and held them steady. "If Kitty's pregnant, then she knows as positively as I do, that it's not my child. Who raped her, Doc?"
"I wish I knew, Matt. I asked her that when she kept denying you were the father. But I wouldn't believe it wasn't you, and when I asked her who the father was, she just shook her head – wouldn't say a word. You're really trying to tell me you haven't been with Kitty in five years? Matt, you come along here." He took Matt's arm and dragged the big man to his feet, walked him into the back bedroom and to the window that looked across the alley. There was a light on at the back of the Long Branch, and Matt saw Kitty's shadow cross the room.
"I wouldn't have taken you for a voyeur, Doc." Matt said, with a sad look that was almost a smile.
"I'm an observer, Matt. I observe you and Kitty and this whole town. I know more secrets than any priest, and I keep them just as close. I didn't choose this room for its view, but the view is there, and I've seen you in that room a whole lot of nights, Matt Dillon."
Matt nodded in agreement. "It's the only place we have where we can be alone together, talk privately. I go up there most nights." Now he turned from the window to look down at the rumpled little man beside him, "But then I come out and go sleep in my own room, or at the jail." He took a gasping breath, to Doc it almost sounded like a sob. "Lord knows I don't want to do that, Doc. But we made a decision, we made a promise, and both of us have kept it. Sometimes, if things are really bad, I'll sit up there with her until she goes to sleep, but that's hard on both of us, so we avoid it when we can. Or sometimes I'll go for you, and get you to give her something, and I know you'll stay with her."
Doc nodded. There had been times Matt had done just that. Times he'd sat with Kitty for hours while she fought sleep, or times he'd just sat on her bed and held her hand for a quarter hour and watched her drift off. "What about you, Matt? How do you manage?"
Matt shrugged, "I don't need much sleep. I do okay during the days, so does she, it's no different then than it's always been. It's mostly the nights..."
"Well, son, I can see why she wants to leave. No one in this town is going to believe that child's not yours, and it would be hard on both of you to live with not having you acknowledge it. I think Kitty would face that down, for herself, but I know she won't do that to you." Doc shook his head sadly. "So I suppose we're going to lose her."
"I never said I wouldn't acknowledge her child, Doc." Matt said, "If Kitty's pregnant, then it's my child, and I will not lose her or the child. She is going to marry me whether she knows it yet or not. You just forget everything I said here. Forget it as dark and deep as any secret you ever knew." Matt walked out into the front room, and unlocked the door. He picked up his hat from the floor and then turned to face his friend before he left. "You still go to church on Sunday, Doc?"
Doc nodded. "Pretty often."
"Well, you be sure to go tomorrow."
And with that, Matt went down, crossed the alley, kicked in the back door of the Long Branch, and walked up to Kitty's room.
OoOoO
Matt wanted nothing more than to just hold her next to him and sleep, but he knew that wasn't enough. The time after loving, that was when it was easiest to get the hard words out. They'd both missed that, and tried to make up for it, recreate that feeling, in various ways, but nothing was the same. Since it had to start somewhere, he started it. "Tell me, Kitty. You've nothing to fear from me, you know that. Just start at the beginning and tell me."
"I don't want to talk about it, Matt."
"I know. But you have to do it anyway, so just go ahead." Matt's voice was quiet encouragement.
"I was down at the Arkansas. Festus was going to come with me, but something happened, and he couldn't come, and I just took the buggy and went myself. I actually had a catfish on the line when he walked up behind me, and at first I was just mad because he made me lose it. Then I realized what he was going to do. I did scream, Matt, but he seemed to like that. It... it excited him. So I stopped." Kitty's body was tense, but her voice was calm, and he realized this was something she had relived, retold herself, countless times. "He was bigger than I was, and a lot stronger. He had a knife."
"He hurt you?" The words dropped out of him, foolish as they were.
"He hurt me a lot. He knew who I was. It was deliberate. He kept talking about how he was going to tell you about it. He tore my dress. He ripped off my underthings. He didn't touch my face, didn't hit me there, only… only where it wouldn't show." Kitty turned her back to him, but she didn't stop talking, "He used that knife like a razor to cut off my hair – down there – and he nicked me with it, just little cuts, but when he took me I was all over blood." Eventually she went on, "And he liked that."
"Who was it, Kitty?"
"It was Trip Pardo. He came into town the next day, and called you on the street. I watched from the Long Branch." She rolled back over, her hands on his face as if trying to see him in the dark room, "I was afraid he was going to shout it out, there on the street, in front of everyone, but he didn't," she shook her head, "I don't know why he didn't, but he just went for his gun, and you killed him."
That was it for a while, and they just lay touching each other, not able to get enough of the feel of that. Finally she said, "I almost came to you that night. In your room. I think I would have if I hadn't been so bad hurt, so sore."
"I wish you had, Kitty. I wish you'd just told me, and then we could have faced it together, figured out what to do. You didn't see Doc?"
"No."
"Why?"
"I knew he'd tell you. Eventually if not right away. And by that time I didn't want you to know. And pretty soon, just a couple of weeks, well, then I figured I was pregnant."
"You thought somehow I wouldn't find out, Kitty?" He smoothed her tangled hair back from her face.
"Well, I hoped I could keep it under wraps until I left." Matt could feel the pugnacious outthrust of her jaw, even in though he couldn't see it, "And I would have if Doc hadn't caught me."
"Caught you?"
"Throwing up behind the Long Branch," she said. "I explained it away the first time, but then he started watching, and, well, there wasn't any way to hide it."
"I'm still going to leave, Matt," she said. "I'm glad you came to me tonight, and I'm glad you know, but I'm still leaving."
"We're both leaving, Kitty," he said.
"No, Matt. I can't let you take this on."
"You don't have a choice, honey. I've given you a lot of choices over the years, but this isn't one of them. I am never going to keep myself from you again, or let you keep yourself from me. That is simply not going to happen. You are going to be in my bed and in my arms for the rest of our lives, so I suppose you need to just make up your mind to it," he told her with quiet firmness.
"It's not your child, Matt," she told him.
"You've been my woman for a good many years, Kitty, and that makes any child of yours my child. I know it feels awkward to you now, but you'll get over that. We'll make it right."
"No, Matt." But she didn't let go of him while she said it.
"Yes, Kitty." He told her, and began softly kissing her again. It was slower this time, full of an infinity of tenderness. It seemed to take hours, and she wondered why it was still night and not dawn when they finally lay, sated, side by side, not even breathing hard.
"Do you even remember why I was in Hays, Kitty?" Matt asked eventually.
Kitty thought. She'd jumped on the opportunity to have him gone for a few days to finalize the sale of the saloon and make her travel plans. She had known she'd have to face him before she left, but had hoped to do it in public not in private. She should have known better. "To… to see Judge Thomas?"
Matt began to realize how far away from him she'd been. He'd talked to her about this several times. It had meant so much to him, and he'd tried to get her to see it as the turning point in their lives that it was. Clearly her mind had been too full of her own unshared troubles. She hadn't heard a word. "Sit up here, honey," he said, pulling her up and propping her on pillows at the head of the bed. He sat facing her and holding her hand. "Now listen to me, really listen. Hear what I say. Can you do that?"
"I'm listening now, Matt," she told him.
"Kitty, I resigned as Marshal of Dodge while I was in Hays."
"You took off your badge?" Her voice was unbelieving.
"Not exactly. I'll still work and I'll still get paid, but I'm now assigned to the court system in Hays. Some travel, I suspect, escorting prisoners, but not much. I'll be more of a special set of hands for Judge Brooker and Judge Thomas. And I'll spend time reading law in their offices. I've been reading law for years Kitty – mostly nights – when I can't sleep anyway – and they think that within a year I can pass the examinations to be an attorney. A new way for me to practice law, Kitty. One that doesn't include killing men on the street. I was coming back tonight to tell you that, Kitty, when Doc hijacked me and told me you were pregnant."
Kitty was sitting up straight now, and shivering a little, her nightgown long since gone. "You're leaving Dodge, Matt?"
Matt pulled her down under the covers, settling her in front of him and spooning himself against her back. "I was going to ask if you would wait a year for me. But this way is better. How much did you get for the Long Branch, Kitty?"
"I got seven thousand dollars," she said, and despite the rape, and her pregnancy, despite her desolation at leaving, and her fear of the future, there was pride in her voice.
"That's a big change from when you first bought in with Bill a dozen years ago, Kitty. You've done more than well." His praise and admiration were sincere. He'd never met anyone better at business, honest business, than Kitty. But he went on, "The interest on that, plus what I have saved, that should keep us pretty well for a year until I start earning more. We can get a little house, something big enough for us and the children."
"Children?"
Matt kept his hands firm on her, he didn't want her turning, knew he couldn't say these things to her face, even in the dark. "Kitty what would you do if I told you that, five years ago, I took a Kiowa woman down in the Nations. Made her a home and visited her every time I went south."
He felt her go rigid for just a moment, and then she was relaxed again in his arms. "I'd say that was just the kind of thing you would do, Matt, if you needed someone. And you surely did. I'd be relieved to know you had something. Had someone. An Indian woman, she wouldn't expect more than you could give, would she?"
"No." Matt said, "She wouldn't. And if I told you there were two little boys, two sons, before she left me, would you take them in? Raise them with me? Make a home for my halfbreed boys?"
"Oh, Matt, you know I would," Kitty said, the whole structure of her world changing in those words, "How old are they? Do they speak English? Do they look like you?" She turned now in his arms and he let her, her hands up on his face. He knew she was smiling. He could hear it in her voice.
"There are no boys, Kitty, and there was never a woman, not even once." Matt hesitated at the harsh pull of her breath, and then asked with quiet intensity, "But if you would take in my children, Kitty, why won't you let me take on yours?"
And she knew at that moment that she had lost, but losing felt somehow strangely like winning.
OoOoO
Doc Adams dressed carefully for church that Sunday. He didn't quite know what to expect, but he knew what he hoped. He usually sat half way down the church, on the left, but this Sunday he took an aisle seat in the back pew. The congregation was seated, and the minister had just begun his announcements when the door opened and Matt Dillon escorted Kitty Russell into the sanctuary. Doc rose and stepped into the aisle so that first Matt, and then Kitty could take seats beside him. There were a few turned heads and a susurration of whispers, but the service had begun, and there wasn't much that people could do.
Matt knew the service, though he rarely attended church anymore, but Kitty clearly didn't. She joined in the Creed and the Lord's Prayer, although her wording was a little different. She stood and sat when the men on either side of her did, but didn't even attempt the hymns. And when the service was over, the three of them stood there, not speaking with each other, but greeting those who stopped on their way out to welcome them, and ignoring those who walked past them without a word.
After everyone else had left, they moved out into the aisle, and when the minister came back in Matt stepped forward to greet him. "Reverend, Miss Russell and I would like to be married. Right now if you could. Doc here will stand up with us, but we'll need another witness."
Kitty was afraid. She had wanted to go someplace else, some town where no one knew them, but her fear melted under the warm gaze of the dark brown eyes, kind eyes, set in the minister's thin, harshly planed face. "Nothing would give me more pleasure, Marshal. If you'll just step into my office, I'll get my wife. It won't be the first time she's witnessed a wedding, and it certainly won't be the last."
And that was the beginning.
OoOoO
Jude Bonner and Will Stambridge, Cord Wrecken and Dan Whalen, Tate Crocker and Mike Yardner – none of those people ever entered their lives. And neither criminals nor rustlers nor bushwhackers, not spoilers and murderers or even Norman MacDonnell and John Meston and all of CBS and its affiliates could keep them from living happily ever after.