Chapter 11: A Changed World

Jamie jerked awake with the panic that comes with realizing one has overslept. He glanced at the clock on the mantle and groaned. Almost ten o'clock. The horses were probably on their way to California by now, in hopes that they'd find a master that wouldn't starve them to death.

Patrick too, was still snoring in contentment on the floor.

He relaxed a bit when he saw the empty couch, thinking that Rose had probably fed them. Sighing, he stretched and went outside into the steadily falling rain to help her.

His brow wrinkled in confusion when he saw the barn door bolted tightly, not remembering having closed it up the night before. He also glanced back at the house. Maybe Rose hadn't fed the horses after all. Maybe she'd just crawled up to her room in the middle of the night to sleep in her own bed.

Shrugging his shoulders, he opened the door to the hostile glare of many irritated horses, who instantly thrashed at the stall doors with their front hooves when they caught sight of their worthless caretaker.

"I know, I know," Jamie muttered as he pushed the wheelbarrow full of feed down the hall, measuring out grain to the horses, "Haven't you ever overslept?"

He was on his way back up the aisle when he noticed a broken lantern in the hallway and wrinkled his brow, trying to understand how the wind had blown it so far in.

The hair on the back of his neck lifted and in a hurried stride he moved back toward the house.

Something by the porch caught his eye and he wrinkled his brow in confusion as he bent to pull a blanket out of the shrubs. It had been on the couch, covering Rose the last time he'd seen it. The uneasy feeling suddenly grew in the pit of his stomach, diminishing the thoughts of breakfast he'd been experiencing only moments before. He slammed the door open with a crash that startled Patrick out of slumber, and took the stairs two at a time.

As he feared, her bed was untouched.

There was no light or dark, nor was there a sense of time or place. There was only a thick kind of nothingness, with no color, no smell, no temperature, and no limit. It was floating in midair with a million kaleidoscope images swirling rapidly in front of her face, amounting to everything and nothing at the same time.

Still, she struggled, fighting against things that weren't tangible enough to fight against. Her mind struggled fiercely, trying to comprehend what was holding her down. Several times she nearly grasped the urgent memories in front of her, but then felt something slide down her throat, and all was nothing again.

Finally, she grasped the edge of a thought, and clung to it for dear life. It worked hard to break the surface of her confusion, and finally it was there, a tiny but firm anchor in her drifting brain…Where Am I?

Clinging to that thought for all that she was worth, Rose finally opened her eyes. The room was dim, thick with dust, but even the bit of light streaming through the cracks over her head was painful.

Laying very still, until she was reasonably sure the room wasn't really spinning, Rose let her eyes wander over her surroundings. She was in a primitive looking room with a dirt floor and three rickety wood walls. The other wall was dirt. Above her the ceiling was actually only boards laid carelessly near each other, allowing light from above to shine in. A streak of sunlight lit the wall on the other side of the room, and Rose watched it, transfixed by the pattern. She shook herself out of her daze and continued her survey. The room only had a bed, a cot, a table and a chair within it. She could find no door, except for a square on the ceiling.

It was a cellar of some sort then, a cellar of what building she couldn't guess.

She vaguely began remembering bits and pieces of things as she lay conscious for the first time since the night she'd been taken from the ranch…her last clear memory of anything. She had no idea how long she'd been gone. Scenes flashed before her eyes, disconnected and confusing.

They played in her mind, fragments that didn't fit together into a coherent picture. Waking up thrown over a horse like a sack of potatoes, and watching mud pass beneath the hooves. A campfire, and a hulking shape trying to make her eat, and shaking her roughly when she would not. A creaky door that didn't sit well on the hinges, protesting the booted foot that kicked it open while she was hoisted through it. A figure over her, gently removing her clothes and pulling a nightgown on her instead, despite her weak protests. These were interspersed with fantastical images of sailing ships and dancing bears and rivers of fire.

Rose looked down, touching the light cotton nightdress. Her skin crawled. He'd had his hands on her, she could remember that much, her mind had been alert enough to feel him but her limbs too weak to fight. He hadn't hurt her, not really, not then...and maybe not since though she thought she recalled him above her, frustrated and breathless, but unable to perform the act of rape. She wasn't sure what was memory and what was nightmare.

"You're awake!"

Rose turned her blurred vision toward the voice and saw John jump from the trap door in the ceiling and come to sit beside her.

"How long have I been here?" she whispered, her voice hoarse from disuse.

"Doesn't matter, does it Rose? The important thing is we're together."

"Are you going to kill me like you killed those other women?"

"Of course not, my darling. I love you. I killed them so we could be together."

Rose flung her head to the side, ignoring the dizziness doing so caused in favor of escaping the hand that tried to brush her damp hair back.

"What are you talking about?" She murmured, surprised at the slurring sound of her voice, at how hard it was to think of the words and then say them, "What did they have to do with me!"

"They tried to turn my head Rose, to make me like them. To make me want them the way I wanted you. So I let them know I was yours!" John gently traced her damaged earlobe.

Rose shuddered violently, "What are you talking about?"

"I cut their ears off Rose…because they thought they were more perfect than you. And they thought themselves better than me. So I showed them…I showed them they weren't."

"That saloon girl never knew me! And Elizabeth was my friend...oh God, you killed my friend...because of me…" Tears filled her eyes as Rose fought through the fog that still hung between coherent thoughts and her utter confusion.

"I saw them looking at me Rose. I knew they wanted me to leave you...to make love to them."

"Did you rape them and tell yourself they wanted you to?" Rose asked incredulously, but she didn't want to know the answer, feeling closer and closer to hysteria. "And Carlos. You let them kill him...you encouraged it!"

"I needed them to feel safe again...so I could come for you. The last one...the mayor's wife...she almost got the best of me...I knew it was time to come get you when I realized I could have died without us ever being together. Shhh, love, you're getting agitated. Let me just give you some more of this...it will settle you."

He got up and went to the small table, lifting several small bottles and studying them. That was the explanation for her weakness and inability to think. She'd been drugged. Laudanum? More chloroform maybe? Something else too...something stronger...

"I want to go home John," she said softly, then a plan worked its way into her restless brain, "Please, take me home, and we'll announce our engagement…and we'll have a big wedding and all of Sweetwater will come and no one will ever have to know what you did."

Rose hoped her voice didn't sound as desperate to his ears as it did to hers.

"Really, love, you mean it? You wish to marry me now?" John asked, grasping her hands.

"Really, my….l-love," Rose nearly choked on the words. She prayed him mad enough to believe her. If she could just get within sight of Jamie, she had no doubt he'd save her. Her childish faith in his ability had not wavered much with age. If he could save her from a group of drunkards, a pack of Indians, and a bloodthirsty mob, he'd save her from a mad man.

John was gazing in her eyes, "Ask me to kiss you again, Rose. I said I'd never do anything you didn't ask me to do."

She knew it was a test and wondered briefly what she'd do if he asked for more. Reluctantly she raised her eyes to his. She licked her dry lips, trying to prepare herself to speak. What would he do if she wouldn't…couldn't, ask him to kiss her? Her stomach lurched and her heart pounded at the thought of him touching her at all, much less kissing her.

"Well?"

"Would you like to…k-kiss me, John?" She finally whispered, looking away from the strange light that came into his eyes. She choked and bit back a gag as he leaned toward her, and all she could see was Elizabeth's terrified eyes as she'd died, holding her own ears in her hand.

Before John reached her, with a sudden surge of panic-induced strength, Rose struck out with all her might, catching his nose with her forehead. She heard his cartlidge crack, and he fell on his knees at the side of the bed, blood running down his face.

With a shriek of fear for what she'd just done, Rose bolted out of bed, and unsteadily ran to the trap door. Her limbs were sluggish, uncooperative and at odds with the urgency of her terror. She leapt for the rope that would help her up, but she was too short, her legs too weak and unresponsive.

It was one of the most frustrating experiences of her life, this disconnect between instinct and limb.

She glanced at John, who was getting up and coming toward her.

She screamed for help and grabbed a bottle of laudanum from the table, flinging it directly at his head.

Her weak arm was inaccurate and the throw was wide. The glass shattered on the back wall, and the thick black liquid ran across it, almost as slowly as John walked toward her.

With another shriek, again finding his unhurried calm in the face of her horror more unsettling than anything, Rose jumped for the rope, and then fell hard to the floor.

John's feet appeared in front of her.

"I'm sorry," Rose whispered, hiding her face in her hands, "I'm sorry…please, don't kill me!"

Soon, his hands were on her shoulders, and he pulled her up. He looked at her for a moment, and Rose tried not to flinch under those vacant looking green eyes. She couldn't understand what he was thinking, but she was reasonably sure he wasn't pleased with her for breaking his nose. The blood stained the front of his shirt and his face, and hands.

Rose gasped in surprise a moment later when the back of one of those hands cracked across her cheek. She stumbled backwards and would have fallen but he reached out and grabbed her arm, taking her back to the bed and throwing her onto it.

Rose, her control already weakened by the left over effects of the sedative, began sobbing, not having the presence of mind to concern herself with dignity. She curled up in a ball.

"Rose, darling, you aren't going to go home. You're going to stay here with me forever. Maybe one day you can come out of here, but not until I'm sure you love me and won't go back to him. You will never see him again. Any of them."

Rose sobbed harder at the reference to Jamie, longing for him and Patrick, Teaspoon, Kid and Lou. The thought made her weep more bitterly.

Jamie will find me, she thought desperately, but the small voice at the back of her mind nagged at her, How will he find you? You vanished right under his nose, in a rain that would wash out all tracks, and you're underground in some kind of building, and don't know where or how long you've been here…how should Jamie?

"Don't cry darling. I know it doesn't seem fair now, but I know you'll love me for it one day."

"No I won't!" Rose snapped at him, "I hate you! I'll hate you forever! They'll find me! Kid and Lou and Jamie will turn over every rock in this country until they do! "

"I hope not. I'd hate to kill them all. It was their good fortune it was you and not them that came out to the barn. I thought they would come...the goddamned Irishman and that ignorant cowhand that looks at you like a rutting stag...and I was waiting to put a bullet in their brains before collecting you from the house...I still plan on killing him...but brave Rose, you came out all alone to latch the doors down. Like fate intended it."

"They'll kill you," Rose said, but her voice shook badly, "I'll never love you...if-if you hurt my family.""

"Shh, you're upset now, you're saying things you don't mean. Here, let me give you something to help you sleep," John crooned soothingly.

Rose sat up, trying to get away from him, but he secured her arm in a vise-like grip. "I don't want anything to help me sleep, no, please," she whimpered weakly as he drew out a needle and syringe, "please."

He ignored her, intent on selecting a vial from his collection. His touch was sure, and she realized he'd done this many times. She wondered who he used the drugs on, himself or other victims. Or both.

With the syringe filled, he got up, and went to light something on the floor on the other side of the bed. A small cloud of smoke drifted up and reached Rose's nostrils. It was a sickly sweet odor, and instantly her head began to reel. She realized that the room wasn't dusty, it was smoky.

"Opium?" She questioned him when he came to take her heavy, unresisting wrist. She found she cared less about what happened to her than she had a second ago.

"Yes, you like it?" He smiled at her as he jabbed the needle into her arm and let more sedatives into her bloodstream, "I like opium."

"No," Rose mumbled, feeling the edges of her vision clouding, "I don't like it…"

"You will love it soon enough. Shh, my love, all will be well," John told her and lifted her, moving her over on the bed, and climbing in beside her. Rose struggled in vain, thinking he meant to harm her, but instead, he put his arms around her, cupping her breast in his hand and lay his head on the pillow beside hers, holding her like a lover. Blood still dripped from his nose, but he seemed to feel nothing.

To Rose, and her quickly diminishing capacity to think clearly, John's arms might have been steel bands for all the good pushing against them did. Finally, she could fight no more as she closed her eyes, and felt John pull her more closely to him.

The dreams were constant. They were drug-induced dreams of endless searching and running, but never finding or reaching the object that bounced along in front of her. They were vivid dreams, sometimes terrifying, sometimes beautiful, with the startling colors, nonsensical timeline, and alternate logic only possible in dreams.

She was whimpering from the effects of a dream of a wooded area and a chase through screaming trees when a hand gently took hers.

She gasped and opened her eyes, looking with only a little shock into a pair of keen eyes she'd traveled Westward to find.

"Bill-uh…Jimmy?"

"Yes, sweetheart."

"But you're dead," Rose murmured, "Am I?"

He smiled, shaking his head, "No, you're not dead, thank God."

"What are you doing here then?"

"Visiting. Do you want me to go?"

"No…of course not. There's something I meant to tell you a few years ago, but I never got to," Rose began, struggling to sit up. She couldn't say why she wasn't shocked or scared to find her deceased father sitting on the edge of her bed, his hand warm on hers, but she felt no alarm, only urgency to get the words out before he left her again.

Jimmy smiled, his handsome face transformed by his even white teeth. She had loved his smile and realized she was one of the few people in Deadwood he gifted with it. "I know Rose. I know you are my own. I always thought so, but I didn't want to tell you, in case you didn't…in case you had a father you loved and thought was yours. Hell, he would have been a better father than me anyway."

"You didn't know about me," a horrible thought occurred to Rose and she looked him directly in the eyes, "did you? Mama always said you didn't ever know…"

He smiled again and put her at ease, "I didn't know until I saw you for the first time Rose, in the doctor's office while the doctor took care of your ear. I could see your mother right there in front of me. But I could see myself too."

Rose wrinkled her brow, "I'm like my mother?" She recalled the unhappy, unsatisfied woman aged far beyond her years that she remembered. She could still see her mother on her deathbed, telling her who her father was and how he'd refused to come away with her, to remove his guns. Her mother had blamed her unhappiness, life and death on a man known only to Rose through dime store novels.

As if he knew who her mother had become, he shook his head, "I remember her differently Rose. She was a saloon girl when I knew her, and she was beautiful. Flaming red hair, even more so than yours…it was darker, and the brightest green eyes I've ever seen in my life. Spirited as a wild horse, too, and loved to laugh and play." He smiled at the memory and his eyes obtained a far away look, "We had several good months together. The happiest I've been since I left the express, you know, at least until I met you. But she wanted an easy life, Rose, just to settle down. I tried that in my early years, and trouble always found me. And when trouble finds me Rose, people I care about get hurt. Believe it or not, she counted among those I cared for very much."

"That's why you left Sweetwater in the first place," Rose said quietly, understanding.

"Yes, and why your mother left me. She didn't understand that I couldn't take off my gun. You never can once you go down the road I traveled, you know. She ran away in the middle of the night, and for months I looked for her, but she didn't want to be found. I heard a few years later that she was working in a brothel in Texas, but not that she'd had a child. Seemed like she went to great pains to keep me from knowing where she was so I never went after her...figured I hurt her enough."

Rose sighed, "She still loved you I think, although she always told me I was just like you and talked about how much she hated you, and me too. She tried to convince herself she made the right choice running from you, but she never did. Your name was the last thing she ever said before she died."

Jimmy nodded, "And so you came to find me. Why didn't you tell me? You already know why I didn't tell you."

Rose shrugged, "I never could find the nerve. I didn't know if you'd believe me, if you would want to know even if you did see it was true, and I didn't want you to send me away. I wanted to know you."

Jimmy smiled, "Not want you? I never wanted anything more than you! I wanted to make up to you all the years I missed, but was afraid you'd be so angry at me for trying, for thinking I could. I wanted to give you the world. I'd stopped caring if I lived or died long ago, but when I saw you I wanted nothing more than to live, protect you and teach you everything and watch you grow. I wanted to change every bad choice I ever made so I could have the chance to know you from the second you were born. I-You changed everything for me Rose. But for the world, it was too late...it wouldn't let me change."

"Why did you sit with your back to the door? They say it was suicide." Rose said quietly. It was something she had heard said plenty in Deadwood but she had never heard any of their family at the Bar M utter a whisper of speculation about it, at least not in her hearing. But they had to wonder, didn't they?

He shook his head, "It wasn't suicide. I don't even know why I did. Maybe I was distracted or tired or careless. Maybe it was meant to be, I can't say. But I did, and it's too late to change it. But, it could have been for the best. The McClouds might not have found you if it wasn't for that, and they've given you more than I ever could have."

"The only thing they gave me that you couldn't have is your name," Rose said softly.

"I would have given you my name!" Jimmy protested, "If I had known you wanted it!"

Rose shook her head with certainty, "You would have been a father to me. Were one on a lot of levels. But, no, you would have been too worried that your trouble would find me easier with your name. I've thought about it for years. But, it never has found me…well, not your trouble anyway. I seem to do a good job of finding my own."

Jimmy grinned, "Like your father, eh? Well, learn what I never could, Rose. You have to let someone love you, or there's no hope for you. I had plenty of people in my life that would have, but I was too scared to let them. I was hoping to…to earn your love, but I was out of time.

"You did that easily." Rose assured him, "I know you were scared. They all loved you anyway, though. Did you know that? They still grieve for you. Especially Lou I think. So do I."

His eyes showed doubt. He reached down and took the star she'd pulled from beneath her pillow from her, "You kept this?"

"It's the only thing I had to remind me of you. I stole it when I came to see your body," Rose said, "The doctor chased me through town when I did it, but I outran him. I don't go anywhere without it."

Jimmy nodded, "I'm glad you've got it. It served me well for many years. Still, given your current situation, I'll keep it safe for you until you're safe again." He put it in his pocket, and Rose didn't protest.

Rose asked, "Haven't you come to take me from here?"

Jimmy shook his head, "Rose, I think you know there's not much I can do right now. But help will come. You fight till then, my girl, all right?."

He was slowly fading before her eyes and she tightened her hold on his hand, "No! Please don't leave me, stay with me if there's nothing you can do!"

"I can't darlin'. You have to wake up. It's time to be brave."

"No! Please stay!" Rose cried out again.

He smiled, and reached to cradle her cheek, "Rose, I do love you, I only wish I'd been allowed to stay long enough to show you how much."

"I love you...Daddy," Rose whispered back and then watched in fascination as his face faded from beneath his black hat and as John's face replaced it.

John was grasping her hand and looking into her eyes, whispering words of love. Had the words been his then, and not her fathers after all? The weight of disappointment almost crushed her. It had been a dream then.

So great was her depression and hopelessness that she turned her head in disgust and willed herself back into a dazed sleep, hoping to encounter her father again.

Jamie's face was a stone mask as he rode back into the station. Lady was dark with sweat and blowing hard. Inside he was shattered, broken into a million shards of agony that compounded every hour that went by and they didn't find her.

Patrick rode beside him, equally tormented.

Exhausted from the constant watch they had set to keep Rose safe, Jamie and Patrick had been too weary to help her when the time came that she needed them. She had been taken from under their noses and all the promises Jamie had made to Teaspoon, his parents, and Rose herself, had been broken. He could not forgive himself.

It had been a week, and they'd covered the surrounding territory without the slightest clue.

After discovering John was missing they'd figured out who had Rose, but where was another matter.

No one had seen hide nor hair of John or Rose in a hundred mile radius. Jamie had recalled every angry word he had said to John, tortured by thoughts of how the deputy might take them out on Rose. He was sick to his very soul at the thought.

Kid, Lou, and Buck ran out to greet Patrick and Jamie with grim expressions.

Jamie was going to ask if they'd heard anything, but the hopeful look on their faces told him they were wondering the same thing of them.

Lou held Lady's reins as he climbed down. There were no words of greeting.

"Nothing?" she asked, voice breathless from the unrelenting and absolute state of panic they were living in.

"No," Jamie said quietly, the picture of defeat, "It was my fault. I should have been more careful knowing the killer was loose. I don't even know when he took her, except it was sometime during that night."

"Jamie, we're going to find her," Buck said reassuringly, "Teaspoon's riding South of here, and has printed out wanted posters and sent them from Boston to San Francisco. Seth is out riding North, asking around. Cody is on his way here too."

Kid nodded, "They couldn't have disappeared into thin air. They'll turn up or we will find them."

"I'm afraid the beast has taken her back to England," Patrick said softly.

"No, someone would have seen them, and Rose would have been fighting. He's holed up somewhere."

"But what if he did take her to England?" Lou asked softly.

"Then I'll find her there," Jamie said softly.

Kid nodded, "And I'll go with him."

Lou watched as Jamie and Kid met eyes and nodded to one another, sealing the pact. She knew that look too well, they were good at their word.

What none of them were talking about, Lou also knew, and what all of them could do nothing but think about in grim detail, was what John would do to Rose in the interim.