~777~
"Mister Lar'b...?"
It was like an fragment of a voice, like an echoing memory. He froze, and in that frozen moment the clouds above shifted, ashen moonlight spilled onto a face that was suddenly all too human, and old, and damn plug-ugly. A tramp. It really was a tramp, blinking at him with small, pale, rheumy eyes in a wrinkled and whiskery round face and clutching at the cast-off coat like a blanket.
Chris let out a breath, so slowly and harshly it almost rattled in his throat, and lowered his gun with an effort that made his arm hurt. "What th'hell are you doin' here?"
"No' hurtin' none," the old man gabbled, staring with starting eyes at the gun. Something about him rang a faint, out-of-tune memory in Chris's tired mind, but he didn't care enough to follow it. "Honest, Mister, jis' passin' through, thinkin' t'sleep a mite here."
"Not here," Chris said.
"No' botherin' none, folks don't see most times -"
"Well, they're seein' now. Find somewhere else."
"Ain't nowhere but here fer likes a'me, Mister."
Chris thrust a shaking hand into a pocket and drew out several crumpled bills, what remained from a poker game, the one where he'd actually won a hand or two, the last one before everything had gone to hell. He couldn't believe he was doing this, but he just wanted the man out of this place.
"Take this an' find somewhere - anywhere - else."
In the gloom, the little eyes gleamed with a greed faintly familiar, a greed like and unlike what Chris remembered in another green gaze, and clawlike hands reached and snatched away the notes as if they were ten thousand. He'd probably drink it all and then sleep in a gutter, but Larabee didn't care.
"Awful gooda ya, Mister, don' suppose ya c'n help an ol' man get -"
Chris put a hand to his gun.
"Jis' goin', jis' goin'," the man backed off, scrabbling up a bundle and a few (probably scavenged, Chris didn't care about that, either) things and clutching them as he stumbled away towards the firelight in the main street. "Thankin' ya, Mister, yer a awful good man, an' I won' fergit -"
Whatever he was mumbling was swallowed in the darkness, as he was. Chris watched him go, in silence.
Good man? Hardly. What he felt like was a total fool, letting an idiot ghost story take hold to the point where he'd pretty much ran out on his men... on Ezra... and nearly killed a harmless old drunk who'd been fool enough to salvage a wreck of a coat from the trash.
He stared down at the decayed headstone the tramp had been planning to use as a bedhead. No answers there, most of the carving had worn away years ago, and a single name - SIMPSON - barely readable in the patchy light.
More tired, more cold, than he'd been for years, Chris turned and started back towards the clinic.
The soft light spilled from the doorway as he reached the steps, and someone was waiting on the stairs.
"You okay, pard?" Buck. It figured. Where there was light, there he always was, him and Standish. Up till now. Up till...
"C'mon," Buck went on, and something in his roughened voice made Larabee paused, staring up at him. "Need ya in here. Ez," he faltered, then wiped a hand across his face and smiled, "Ez is askin' about ya."
Chris stopped. "He's woken up?"
"A bit, jis' a bit." Buck didn't seem surprised when his leader pushed straight past him on the way up to the doorway.
They were all there still, almost exactly as they'd been when he'd walked out, but so different. And Ezra...
Ezra shifted a little, barely with them but something - some worry, apart from the pain - creasing his white face, and his voice broken, almost soundless but persistent. "Mist...Lar'bee...?"
He should have known. The damn man never did give up.
He crossed to the chair by the bed - the one JD hastily scrambled out of - and leaned forward, trying to focus Ezra's weak and wandering attention. "Ez."
"Mis... L'bee..." The glassy green eyes flickered past him.
"Ezra," Chris spoke a little louder, though the sheer relief left him with nothing to say, and from the flicker of tired amusement he saw in several pairs of eyes, they all knew it. "What is it?"
"Wrong... card..."
Chris glanced up at Nathan, who was hovering, and at Josiah hovering behind him, and then shrugged; they all knew the man was obsessed by cards, it made sense that any dark, fading dream had involved them. Hell, he thought, if the ghost he'd fancied up did come for Standish, the man would probably try to gamble his way out of dying, five card poker, aces always wild, and their very own ace not above cheating Death itself.
"Black... king," Ezra murmured.
Larabee frowned. "What?"
"Black... mah 'pologies, that one's yours. Need 'nother one, 'nother card... need the ace. Mistah Lar'bee," and something changed, Ezra stared past him, dazed and troubled. "Mist... Lar'bee, the money..."
Chris leaned forward more, cupping Ezra's face in one careful hand to turn it so that the man was looking straight at him, and spoke clearly, harshly. "Fuck the money."
Ezra kept staring.
"The money don't matter, Ez." Total confusion shimmered in the pained green eyes at the very idea. "You can tell us about it later. Meaning that you need to pull through, y'hear?"
"Money... don't matter...?" Clearly a thought that scandalous wasn't getting through, and Ezra's restlessness was worse. Josiah lifted him a little; Nathan came forward with one of the foul potions he liked to dose them with, and tried to coax a little of it into Ezra's mouth. Vin and JD and Buck were all crowding around, as if wanting to help - or at least touch - but not sure how.
Ezra seemed to be trying to shake them all off, to tell his leader something, though even he didn't seem to be sure what. But he had to, he had to tell them...
Fuck the money... Chris sighed. Not likely, it seemed. "Tell me, Ezra."
"It's..." Ezra took a deep, shaking breath, visibly trying to think. "It's hidden. Ah put it..."
"Go on," Chris prompted.
"It's well and truly hidden, Chris..." There was now something pleading, desperate in his voice.
"I know that."
"Ah know you don' trust... but ah put it safe, Chris, put it..."
"Where, Ezra?"
"With the... ace o' spades."
There was a silence; they all blinked. "Ohhkay." Whatever that meant to Ezra could wait, Chris could see the man calming and fading, with any luck, into sleep. "Ezra -"
"... Simpson."
Chris went cold. "What?"
"Ezra... Simpson. Mah... name, Mist... Lar'bee." Ezra muttered. "One of them at any... didn' care for it overmuch." The glassy eyes returned to him. "Killed him off... 'fore settin' foot in... this charmin'... dust..."
"Yes you did." Chris drew his own deep breath, and pushed back the memory of a old, worn - and meaningless - inscription. He stood up, one hand resting lightly on the side of the bedhead. "An' a damn good thing too. Stick with being' alive, and a Standish instead."
A wavering hand almost lifted, trying to salute... and Ezra fell back, eyes closing again, but this time in good, healing sleep.
~777~
It wasn't too late.
Chris stepped back, watching as Nathan fussed, Josiah stayed close, and his men all settled down to rest around their sleeping seventh.
Not too late to tell the man... whatever it was he'd thought all those hours ago. It was hard to recall right now, and even harder to see himself talking deep and meaningful stuff about bein' remembered, and bein' trusted, and bein'... dead wrong, to anyone at all, let alone Ez. But he'd have time, midnight had gone but morning, All Souls' Day, was still a long way away.
He now stayed in the lamplight, feeling the impulse to go out, to try and see through the darkness towards the church and the graveyard, to see for once and all that there wasn't anyone there. He knew there wasn't. He knew there couldn't be.
But instead he stood, and watched Ezra's face in sleep, and said no more.
Could be he didn't really want to know.
- the end -