Hi, so here is the final chapter. If you guys like this i might come back to this fandom if not then this is a one time thing, i hope you all enjoyed this quick little story and thank you for taking the time to read. This story does contain some of the language used in the episode so keep in mind it might not be historically accurate, this has only been written for fun.
Disclaimer-Nothing is mine,
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Survivor
Missing scenes from the episode Survival in Season 1. Four chaptered fic-from the point of view of Charles, Caroline, Mary and Laura.
Part 4-Laura
The night after the shooting and the early morning afterwards.
Laura wakes up with a jolt.
Last night sleep had been thin and she had both shivered with cold and fear and she had struggled to fall back asleep. Her Ma had kept the three of them back and had tended to Jack Lame Horse herself rolling up her sleeves and cleaning up the blood that had spilled onto the floor. Laura had never seen blood like that before. She had seen blood before, scraped knees and broken noses and she knew what a gunshot looked like having seen them in animals before. But she had never seen that much blood.
There had been so much the entire house stunk of it. Mary for once this strange night doing what she was told had pulled Laura back down covering them with the covers, Carrie included so that the covers were over their head and they couldn't see or smell much more. It did nothing to hide the sounds or what Laura could imagine was going on and she struggled with the images behind her eyelids.
She had to grip Mary's hand for the first hour which felt like a lifetime and pretend that she didn't feel her older sister's whole body shaking like a leaf in a snowstorm next to her.
There was another bang and Laura squeezed her eyes shut thinking that Mr Anders had shot someone else but she hears the scraping of the pot being lifted up and knows that it wasn't what she thought it was.
Laura has had harder nights sleeping but she has never remembered a night going as slow as that one.
She wakes up in the morning and finds that the snow has stopped. The entire house, the roof, the grounds, the window is bathed in a perfect white. Jack Lame Horse is still asleep but the blood and the carnage of the night before, the little of it that she saw and the worst that she just knew came is gone. Her Ma or perhaps even her Pa must have scrubbed the stones clean and washed the bloody rags, or even burned them.
She and Mary stick their heads out the blankets and curl up against the wall Carrie stirring. Her Ma passes them a cup of soup each. The cups clink against their frozen fingers and Laura takes a good look at her Ma then.
Her Ma looks tired but there's a warm smile though it's the same one that was on her face so many times during the last few days. It's twisted a little around the edges and Laura knows just like Mary knew and knows now that her mother is only keeping herself strong because a part of her, an indomitable part of her Ma refuses to show weakness even in front of her own family, and especially not in the face of two men that she doesn't know.
Laura wishes that when she grows up she can be just as indomitable as her Ma. She thinks that should her own home ever be invaded she would act as best she could to protect her family.
She and Mary curled up, backs up against the wall and Carrie cuddled between their legs and wrapped snug in blankets and their coats. They talk a little but not much, only to themselves.
That night is not as easy as the one before but she can see out of the corner of her eye her Pa visibly relax, his shoulders uncoiling when he stares out the window. She can see Marshall Anders...Mr Anders...Whatever his title, doing the same thing and Jack Lame Horse starts moving during the night, a sure sign that he is on the mend her Ma says.
That night her Pa tells them that in the morning they will begin packing. Marshall Anders takes her Pa's place of staring out the window looking for his own friends and hoping they've not abandoned him to what Laura suspects would have been a painful death.
She knows he's concerned that they have because during those periods he doesn't train his gun on Jack Lame Horse or make snide comments about hangings and rewards. In fact if Laura was sure of herself in this situation she would say that she was sure that the man's attitude towards the Indian man was getting a little better, though Mary whispered to her on their last night that it was probably the fact that this was the first night in nearly four nights here that they all have had a good, full belly.
She's glad. She's more than ready to leave this place, she wants to go home to her own house, and her own bed with her dog. She wants to look out her own window and change her clothes and even take a bath, anything to rid this feeling that somehow the events here have tainted her family in any way, shape of form. At this point she thinks she's almost looking forwards to seeing Nellie and Willie again.
Almost.
That morning her Ma sets her and Mary to packing up the sheets. Mary sits Carrie on a pillow and they fold the sheets into neat little squares just like they've been told. Her Ma and Pa work the heavy stuff and Marshall Anders moves out of their way occasional helping whenever her Pa asks him too.
She's busy folding the last sheet when Marshall Anders leaves. She notices he doesn't take Jack Lame Horse with him. Laura doesn't understand much about either of the men that have joined them uninvited in their shelters nor does she know much about the history that sees them on opposite sides of this great divide of culture but she does see the relief in both her Ma and Pa's faces and knows that nothing bad is going to happen today.
Today they all get to move on with their lives.
She doesn't doubt that she will ever see either of these men, so strange and yet so similar in their own way again and she's not sad for it. They haven't even spent a week in this place and already Laura feels like a different person than that little girl that she was when she half fell, half stumbled into the small shelter they've been surviving in.
She doesn't even have to look at her sister to know that she's been struggling with the same idea. If Laura had a remembrance book she knew that she would write about this one day. Even though she didn't know if this was a memory that she would want to remember.
Instead she pulled her boots on only shuddering a little at the dampness that was still there. There was something on them, a spot of dark brown that she tries to pretend isn't blood. She and Mary had kicked off their boots the previous night in order to sleep more easily under their protective circle of blankets and now she doesn't want to look at what's on her feet or what's not regardless. She could be imagining things. The good Lord knows that Laura has an overactive imagination, everyone has said so and a part of her wants to believe that that was just it.
(Another part of her disbelieves that entire statement. It's blood on her boots and she wants to do nothing but crawl underneath the covers that she's just folded and pretend that she's never seen it before in her entire life)
However she stands tall and only lets out a sigh of relief when Mr Anders takes one step out the door, and then another, to mount his horse and then he rides off into the distance.
She won't be sorry if she never sees him again in her life.
Jack Lame Horse slips out the door three seconds later, he shakes her Pa's hand after a moment of consideration and gives some strange salute/half bow in her mother's direction which Laura takes to mean as some strange kind of respect. His eyes rake over both her, Mary and Carrie and then without a backwards glance he's out the door and into the white snow.
They pack up in silence and while Mary looks back at their shelter as they leave it, much like she did in their little house on the Prairie. Some memories are both painful and difficult for her to wrap her brain around even know when she thinks that's she's older than she was back then.
She likes to think that anyway.
They all but crawl into the wagon, her Pa shuts the door to the house with respect and Mary and Laura spread a blanket over their knees. Laura is exhausted and she can see purple smudges under Mary's eyes, Carrie seems to be the only one that has come through this with little change to her and Laura doesn't know if she wishes her sister this ignorance or if she wants to shake her until she understand what had has happened over the course of the last four or five days.
She shudders once and though she doesn't know it Jack Lame Horse is giving her parents a very special farewell and thank you. Mary smiles at her as the wagon begins to move and Laura knows her sister well enough to know that she too is happy to get home as much as she.
The wagon starts to move, Laura closes her eyes and she knows that she has survived this, her sisters have survived this, her Ma and her Pa have survived this and they are going home.
And after all...home is the nicest word Laura Ingalls knows.
And there we go, hope you all enjoyed.