AN: SO, this is late. Saturday, after I got home, the power went out and my phone died, so I couldn't post it then. (The power/WiFi is out once more at the moment, and has deleted my progress twice.) That was fine by me since I was actually visiting a Mormon church Sunday and thought I could post afterwards, once I'd learned a little more about the LDS. But fanfic was down that day, so I still didn't. At long last, here is the chapter. Feel free to call me out on the many topics I may be lacking in - Biology, child development, the Mormon church, inventing a fake language for a single line of dialogue... etc.

The Mummy Returns

Synopsis: Three months after the Malpais Legate's execution, Joshua Graham turns up near New Canaan, battered, weak - but alive. (T)

Utah, July 2277.

It was incredible how disgusting a surface could become in 200 years of disuse. Take this tile floor, for example. Not quite the thing to be pressing one's open wounds to. But it wasn't as if Joshua had a choice - his entire body was an open wound. And he could not get up.

Midday heat had driven him into the old gas station. Thirst had drawn him to the bathroom. Exhaustion had dropped him, and fever kept him there. Now he was dying.

There was no other word for it. Some force of will had kept Joshua moving north for the past eleven weeks, but difficulty had crossed over into physical impossibility. He couldn't get up until his fever broke, and he would be dead long before then. He couldn't even reach the sink for more water.

Maybe Edward really is a god, thought his feverish brain, because only he could have orchestrated a fate this pathetic. Eighty days of torture, only to die like a rabid dog a few miles outside of New Canaan, on a floor that had been collecting grime for centuries.

...but then, maybe it was this repulsive before the war.

A door opened.

Don't eat me until I'm dead, Joshua complained internally. But he wasn't really in a position to be making demands.

He heard footsteps and voices he couldn't quite focus on. Through his eyelids he could see a beam of light cast into the darkened room. The voices became hushed and frantic. Joshua thought they must be speaking some other language, because he couldn't quite figure out what they were saying...

(—)

The door slammed again, waking him. There were more voices now. He couldn't bring himself to care one way or the other about it.

Time wasn't moving normally, but after an immeasurable moment, a hand touched his carotid artery, searching for a pulse. Joshua's eyes flew open with a flinch.

A face swam in his vision, tan, bearded, and hatted. And surprised. Joshua shut his eyes again.

"Sir... er, Joshua," the man murmured breathlessly. "You're going to be okay."

"Mordecai didn't teach you to lie," Joshua tried to say, but he wasn't sure it came out as words. This man came from New Canaan. That meant help, but it also meant facing the people he'd disgraced.

The only thing more frightening than death was going home.

He felt a tug on his ragged shirt, and his breath hitched. It was slowly cut and stripped away from his body. He had taken it off a random skeleton, so it was no great loss, but now he had no shirt. Worse, it stuck to the seeping wounds covering his chest and arms. Removing it not only pulled at his skin, but exposed more to the air. Joshua struggled to breathe.

The man in the hat noticed his discomfort. "I'm sorry. Everything is going to be alright. We're going to help you," he whispered, like he was trying to calm a frightened animal. He sounded pretty frightened, himself, to be staring down at this puddle of decaying flesh. Joshua didn't respond, out of equal parts exhaustion and spite.

There was some talk of Geiger counters and towels. The other voices left.

He opened his eyes to see the man surveying the desolation wreaked on his body. He was transfixed by it, which really didn't inspire confidence. He noticed Joshua staring and frowned.

A moment of silence, then "I'm your nephew, you know."

Joshua shut his eyes. "Daniel."

"You remember me."

"How could I forget?"

Daniel looked away. Biting back a sarcastic response, perhaps. Or he couldn't stand the smell of infection anymore.

Joshua hadn't forgotten. Maybe he'd tried. He'd buried most of that bookish teenager, so ready to change the world. He'd set family aside, for greater things. Early on, he'd told himself he'd come back. When the fighting stopped. When he had proof that life was better under the Legion, that following Edward hadn't been a mistake. But then it was thirty years later.

Daniel didn't remember Joshua, of course, and it was unlikely that his parents had ever told him. He'd forgotten that Joshua was the sole witness to his first steps. Or the days of his teething, when Joshua was the only one who could convince him to eat. Or how proudly his mother had cooed when he'd taken to calling his uncle "Dawawa."

The pain in Joshua's shoulder suddenly became sharp and stinging. He cried out in shock, and the sensation halted. A cursory glance revealed that Daniel had started to clean his wounds with water from the sink.

"I'm sorry," Daniel said again. "It's about to get worse. I'm going to try and make this as painless as possible."

And he began again, allowing no time for protest. Joshua found the strength to twitch irritably upward, but one of the other men stilled him with a firm hand on his other shoulder.

"Be gentle, Levi, he's in pain," Daniel admonished, but the words faded into the distance.

And the rag turned black with eighty days of sand and grit, blood and pus, pitch and ash and filth.

(—)

Joshua was jostled awake, not sure at what point he'd blacked out. He was being bodily lifted by two men, and it hurt, yes, but the pain was a step removed. A little dimmer, a little more bearable. He opened his eyes to bright sunlight, filtered through linen.

He hissed reflexively as they set him on a wooden surface. A brahmin head lowed - it was a cart. He moved an arm experimentally. His skin felt clean. No sand digging into his flesh. Compared to an hour ago (or however long it had been, as he'd spent most of that time unconscious), he could almost pretend he was comfortable.

And naked. Covered head to toe in bandages, but naked. He was glad to have been asleep for that part.

He felt a weight settle on the bench near his head as the cart drove off. "Daniel?"

"I'm here."

Joshua reveled in the relief of the bandages for a moment longer, to delay the question he had to ask. "I assume my parents have died."

Daniel was quiet for a time, which was really all the answer he needed. "I'm sorry. It was about eight years ago."

Joshua didn't feel the need to respond.

(—)

Right outside the city limits, one of the men ran ahead to warn the town about their arrival. Joshua would really have preferred he hadn't. He fished around near his face and pulled the strand of linen away from his eyes. Daniel let out a note of complaint, but didn't replace it.

Joshua knew these streets too well. Alongside his fever, the familiarity felt like a dream. It was a nauseous sort of nostalgia. Dread and longing twisted his gut.

He rode this wave of emotions all the way to its resting place, the house of his childhood.

And he looked up to see Esther frowning down at him.

(—)

A new person had come to live with Grandma and Grandpa yesterday, Hope had been told. Mommy had called it a "family emergency," so Hope's family was visiting to help. She had expected the new person to be a tribal, but when she peeked into Grandma's sewing room, there was a mummy laying on the bed.

The grown-ups were upset. She wanted to stay out of their way. But she also wanted to see.

Mommy came over while they were talking. She held Hope's hands and kissed her cheek, and told her to go play upstairs. Hope really wanted to see, but she was a good girl. She played Egypt alone in the guest bedroom.

(—)

The grown-ups were sad during dinner. Nobody felt like talking. Well, Grandma and Daniel were talking, but they were using words like smoke inhalation and internal bleeding and severely dehydrated and tissue damage.

Hope didn't know what they were talking about, so she couldn't join in. She sat on Daddy's lap instead, even though she was getting too big. She stayed quiet the whole time so the confusing conversation could carry on in peace.

After dinner, Hope got tired of being good.

(—)

Daniel hadn't given any estimation on Joshua's chances of survival, at least not to his face. He and Esther had begun discussing his condition frantically once they'd arrived, but most of the conversation had taken place out of earshot. All Joshua had to go on were Daniel's initial promises that everything would be okay, and the fact that he'd made it this far.

In some ways, it was easier to fight for survival in the desert. He'd had a clear action plan: Stay hidden. Stay alive. Go north. Now he simply had to lie here and not pull the IV out of his arm.

He had staved off fever until now because he simply hadn't had time for it. Sleep had been sparse, water rare, and food almost nonexistent. It took every neuron firing to put one foot in front of the other (or hand, when he'd had to crawl). He didn't have the energy to spare on a fever, or anything else... distracting.

Now he had to fight to keep the despair at bay. His brain went haywire trying to make sense of it all. Every thought was sticky and amorphous. Pain, betrayal, hopelessness, all coagulated into something he wasn't well enough to understand.

The door opened. Joshua meant to turn to the visitor, but Vulpes Inculta's disembodied head was currently cackling at him from the ceiling and occupying most of his attention. Maybe he should have left the bandage on his eyes.

Even though he knew there was someone in the room, the approaching footsteps made him jump. They were wrong, somehow. Featherlight, yet weirdly intense. Looking, he saw a little girl rocking from foot to foot at his bedside.

He had practically forgotten that children existed. She seemed impossibly small, standing there. He puzzled over whether his mind had invented her or not.

She looked shy at his unresponsiveness. Probably real, then, though he had no idea what he was supposed to say to her.

She held out a piece of paper, as if that explained her presence. Joshua's head spun as he tried to figure out why there was a child with a piece of paper at his sickbed.

Daniel peered through the cracked door. "Hope, what are you doing in here?"

Hope looked bashful. "I wanted to see."

Daniel smiled a little and took her hand. "I don't think Joshua feels like talking right now. Let's let him rest, okay?" He looked meaningfully toward Joshua, a casual apology. (Which wouldn't have sufficed, back in Flagstaff. It wasn't worth the effort to think over right now.)

He began to lead her out of the room, but she protested. "No, I drawed him a picture! To help him." She presented the piece of paper. "He's sad," she added in an insufficiently quiet whisper.

"Wow, you drew this?" Daniel exclaimed. "That was considerate of you. We'll put it up over here where Joshua can see it, okay?"

Hope looked pleased as she silently mouthed the unfamiliar word "considerate" to herself. Daniel made a big show of duct taping Hope's drawing to the wall, then herded her back toward the door.

"He's a mummy, right?" Hope whispered loudly as they left.

"He's not a mummy, he's your uncle."

"You're my uncle!"

"He's your great uncle."

"You're my greatest uncle ever in the world and space."

"No, that's not what I-"

(—)

It had been hours.

Joshua still couldn't figure out what the drawing was.

He could identify the sun fairly easily. Why it was oblong and half-shaded in red, he couldn't understand. It also had two eyes, both of which were smiley faces. Below the sun was some mess he couldn't make heads or tails of, least of all in his confused state. It looked like the girl had started to draw something, then scribbled over it frantically in every color at her disposal. A stick-hair woman holding a circle, a bald man, and some misshapen being that might have been a dog all grinned widely off to the side. Evidently Hope had considered her work decent enough to be given as a gift.

Joshua couldn't call to mind the last time he'd been given something for the sake of it. Without obligation or expectation of gain. In this case, with a total disregard for whether he would actually appreciate it - but she had clearly put in effort.

They had asked this morning if he was ready for visitors. He had said no. They had said they understood, and to tell them when he was ready. Their assumption that he would ever be ready was proof that they didn't understand, but he wasn't about to start an argument.

The New Canaanites had started giving him things, though. Food, mostly, but also clothes and whatever random thing they thought he might need. And it was kind of them, but he didn't know how to handle it. His home was now alien to him. He didn't know how to function in this world, assuming he could ever leave his bed.

And he couldn't leave, which was another reason the gifts were strange and nearly unwelcome. He couldn't use any of his new possessions. (Well, theoretically he could, given that he'd just hiked 500 miles through the desert with no assistance or resources, but he no longer had a good reason to subject himself to that.) The only things he could do on his own at the moment were sleep and stare at the ceiling.

There was nothing to see there but a golden bull in a sea of blood.

Which was why his gaze kept gravitating back to the drawing. The chaos kept him at peace. It was a distraction. It reminded him of innocence, something he hadn't given thought to in a long time.

Reflecting on why he liked the drawing gave him a headache. He went back to not thinking.

(—)

"At least your eyes were spared. Count your blessings, brother."

That was easy for Esther to say, as she wasn't the one being spoon fed some liquidized approximation of food.

When asked to weigh the pain of feeding himself against the humiliation of having it done for him, Joshua's choice had been easy. But the moment they saw his hand shaking, Esther and Daniel had decided he needed help, and so this was how he got his sustenance now. It was better than starvation, but just barely.

The nausea hit suddenly, and he cringed, turning his face away like a fussy baby. The alternative would be forcing his fractured mind and tattered lungs to form a complete thought, which he didn't feel up to while trying to keep down a meal.

If Edward could see him now...

It occurred to him abruptly that in Esther's mind, he deserved this. Not only her, but all of the New Canaanites, and the Legion for good measure. The suddenness of the thought made him gag. He doubled over, trying by sheer force of will not to expel everything he'd already eaten.

Esther rubbed his back, her touch like a breath, her words soothing and gentle. He groaned and straightened. "Are you going to burp me too?" he muttered.

Esther smiled. "Don't underestimate me."

Joshua wanted to fire back, to fall into routine as bantering siblings. Instead he said, "I need to start wearing clothes."

"What."

"I've been here three days and I need clothes. Especially if the child will be in the house again."

"You're not indecent!"

"I feel indecent."

Esther chuckled despite his seriousness. "You're still you."

"And you're still absurdly positive," Joshua grumbled.

"We'll get you some clothes, my love."

It hurt to sigh, but Joshua did it anyway. "Thank you."

She stared at him with a small, strange smile. He felt scrutinized, but didn't shy away from the eye contact. At least he could maintain that tiny shred of dignity.

"You're a miracle, Joshua."

"I'm a dead man walking."

"You're here for a reason. God's given you a second chance."

"A chance to do what? I can't even get to the bathroom on my own. I'm an infant in a man's body."

She followed his frustrated gaze, staying in his line of sight. "Well, you are acting like a child. Lucky for you, I like babies."

"This is why women aren't allowed in the Legion." He had meant it to be lighthearted, but Esther's face darkened. She turned away. Joshua didn't try to take it back. His lungs hurt from all the talking anyway.

"You were supposed to help me bury them."

The real problem with women - their unpredictability. The subject change was so sudden, and to a topic he was so unprepared to deal with, his mind went blank.

"Our mother mourned you for longer than she raised you. She prayed. Every day." Esther gave him a moment to respond, but was unsurprised that he didn't. "And our father... he always believed that one day you would come back. He talked about you like you were still out on a mission, like you'd just gotten sidetracked. I used to believe it..."

He closed his eyes and let her talk, but she trailed off. "What do you want me to say, Esther?"

He could feel her trying not to get angry. "Alright. You're not in a place to talk about this right now. It was too much to ask." She began clearing up the food she'd laid out. "But, brother... don't forget about them. Because I promise, they never forgot about you." Finished, she made her way to the door.

"Esther."

She turned slowly.

"..."

She calmed herself with a sad smile. "Call me when you think you can eat some more. We need to work hard to gain your strength back."

And she was gone.

(—)

The world was fire, and Joshua was terrified.

Disbelief and betrayal churned within him. The flames tore at every nerve. He choked on thick black smoke from his own burning flesh.

He didn't scream. He would not scream.

He wouldn't let them see him scream.

His body shook violently from fear and cold. Each desperate breath hit his lungs like a bullet.

He was on his back.

On a bed.

In the dark.

The IV pulled at his arm as he clutched himself for protection.

He must have woken from a nightmare. Joshua usually couldn't remember his dreams, but he could pretty easily guess what this one had been about. He told his brain that it was over, it had already happened.

At least he hadn't screamed and woken Esther or Abraham. That wouldn't have improved his night.

He relaxed, but adrenaline thrummed through his exhaustion, warding away sleep like a campfire wards off wild animals. The exhaustion and the remnants of fever mixed into insensibility, and he stared out into the darkness as half-formed memories consumed him.

The Sand Belts won't be expecting an attack so early...

...love you, son. We'll be praying for your safe return...

...ranger's aim was deadly with the big iron on his hip...

...Master... Master, please...

...baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit...

The memories came hard and fast, slipping over one another and struggling for purchase in his mind. None were pleasant.

...Legate, it's a trap!...

...can't just take our land...

...BIG IRON~... BIG IROOON~...

...Ert wuntil Legion! Legion wun! Maftert, Tupalis...

...can't. Please, Master...

...And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not...

Joshua groaned out loud to refocus. He had to pull himself from the nightmare state between asleep and awake. He was too on-edge to sleep, but he could wake up.

He sat up, and the pain was enough to rouse him completely. Lights blinked in his vision, his brain trying to comprehend the nothingness.

His gaze drew, once more, to the drawing on the wall. For some reason, it made it easier to breathe.

(—)

"I really don't see how this is better."

"It's better for me."

Daniel frowned as he reconnected Joshua's IV. He glanced back at his uncle. "The pants just draw attention to the fact that you aren't wearing a shirt."

"Then give me a shirt."

Daniel ignored him. "I need you to breathe deeply on three." He listened to his breathing with the stethoscope. "I think you're improving."

"Mm," Joshua grunted noncommittally.

"Are you in pain?"

"What do you think?"

Daniel frowned again. "Alright. Is the pain more from the deep breathing or the stethoscope?"

Joshua's mouth twitched. "The stethoscope was worse. The breathing lasted longer."

Daniel sighed and put the stethoscope away. "Well, lucky for you, cilia and lung tissue regenerate. Your skin, on the other hand..."

"What."

"...I don't know."

Joshua growled. "Yes you do."

"No, I don't."

"You're a doctor."

"I don't have all the answers, Joshua! I've never seen anything like this before. You shouldn't still have nerve endings. You shouldn't still be in pain."

"I shouldn't be alive," he summarized.

"No!" Daniel agreed. Joshua almost laughed. "If I weren't seeing it with my own eyes, I wouldn't believe it. From what I hear of the battle, it was barely survivable. Then, the fire - not survivable. Your fall - not survivable. Three months alone in the desert, with injuries this severe - definitely not survivable. And yet, you're here, and you're improving, even."

"Thank you for the recap, but it wasn't actually necessary."

"I mean it. I don't know how you can still feel, how you can talk, I don't know how you made it here. Did you have help?"

"No. I found a stimpak nine days in, so I was able to walk."

Daniel scoffed in disbelief. "I'm sorry. I'm being completely insensitive. But I have no idea what's going on, Joshua."

Joshua's fist clenched, and unclenched quickly. "Do you have anything for me?"

Daniel sighed. "You're alive. Your fever's broken. Your breathing is getting better - quicker than I would have expected, even. At this point, there's no reason to worry about whether you'll survive this. As hard as it is to believe."

"...And?"

"And, I don't know. You are recovering, praise God, but I don't know what recovery is going to look like for you."

"I want answers, Daniel," he said harshly.

"And I want for you to stop talking at me like I'm your underling, but I'm trying to have forbearance with you." Their eyes met for a moment. Joshua knew he should look away, show humility, but all he did was raise an eyebrow. Daniel surrendered and continued. "The infection should be gone fairly soon. Your lungs will heal, like I've said. You'll gain much of your strength back - probably - once your appetite improves. But your skin, I don't know what to tell you. It should all be dead, but it isn't. Unless... what you're experiencing is just psychosomatic... is that even possible...?"

"Daniel?"

"No, but you felt me touch you back in the gas station, when you weren't looking. So you still have functional nerves."

"I'm not imagining anything." Joshua was getting more than irritated with this conversation.

"I don't mean to insult you, it's just that this shouldn't be possible. The Lord must have a purpose for you."

"Your mother said that. And yet you don't let me feed myself or wear a shirt."

"We're not going to let you put yourself through pain for pride's sake. Learn to let us help you."

Joshua used the ensuing silence to test whether his glares were nearly as withering when hidden under layers of bandages. Daniel changed the subject quickly.

"On another note, your psychological recovery is going to depend a lot on your attitude."

"Oh, don't even start with that."

Abraham opened the door, which both of the younger men were grateful for. Hope bounded in after him, wearing a green dress.

"Hi Daniel!" She ran up and hugged his waist until he bent to kiss her.

"Good morning, Hope! What are you doing here?" greeted Daniel.

Abraham put his hand on his granddaughter's shoulder. "Naomi and Elias are visiting Hannah at Dead Horse Point. So Hope's staying with us for the weekend."

Hope turned abruptly towards Joshua. "Is it good?"

"Hm?"

She smiled bashfully and toed the ground. "You know."

"Oh. Your drawing."

She nodded encouragement.

Deliberately not answering her question, he reported, "I like it. It's... distinctive."

She tugged on Abraham's arm. "I - Grandpa, I did that! It's disentive!"

"It sure is, darling," he responded.

Hope ran back to the bed and tapped Joshua's hand. He recoiled, but she didn't notice. "Did it stop you being sad?"

"Yes. Definitely."

"Because it's special?"

Vulpes Inculta could take interrogation lessons from this child. Joshua did what he always did when Edward was soliloquizing about something he didn't understand and expected input. "Of course. But what does it mean to you?"

The tables now turned, Hope fidgeted thoughtfully for a few seconds. "Ummm. That's me!" She pointed at the stick girl. "When I'm big."

"Yes, I see that." He made a random guess. "And you're doing a very important job."

"Yyyes!" She bounced happily. Mission accomplished.

Seeing that the conversation was over, Abraham took the girl's hand. "Good job, Hope. Now come on, let's get you breakfast so Joshua and Daniel can finish up in here." And the two left, Hope waving goodbye over her shoulder.

"You can really tell what that is?" Daniel asked incredulously, staring at the drawing.

"Of course. Can't you?"

(—)

Sleep had been spotty at best last night, so Joshua dozed. His thoughts weren't as frantic as they had been, and he wasn't hallucinating anymore. Still, the teenager's begging voice crept into his psyche more than once.

"I'm sorry."

But the voice was a ghost, and couldn't hear him.

There was a scrabbling at the door handle, and he knew it would be Hope who walked in. He sat up to receive her.

"Hi."

"Hello, Hope."

Hope sat in the middle of the floor and played with her shoes. Apparently she hadn't wanted him for anything. Still, it was hard to be miserable with the sound of toddler boots loudly thumping against hardwood in the background.

"Are you a mummy?" Hope asked, after a few minutes.

So this was his life now. "No. Mummies are dead."

"Because they're in Egypt," Hope nodded solemnly. Joshua didn't see the correlation, but if it clarified the issue for her, he was fine with it.

"Are you alright down there?" He asked after another moment.

"Mhm."

"Very well."

More shoe-clacking. Then Hope got bored, stretched onto her back, and muttered something unintelligible.

"What did you say?"

"Um. It's. Why?" Hope wasn't shy, just struggling to rope her developing focus and verbal skills into forming a complete sentence. "Why are you so SLEEPY?"

"Why do I stay in bed, you mean."

"Yeh."

How to explain this. He took another gamble. "Well, I'm hooked up to this." He fingered the IV bag. "I have to stay here because the line isn't long enough."

Hope sat up again. "Why?" Mission failed.

Joshua sighed grimly. "I made some people very angry. They decided that I had to... be gone. So now I'm hurt, and I need to stay in the bed."

Hope stared, her mind trying to wrap around the concept. He wanted to keep her in a world where no one would dream of hurting anyone else, but his very existence was a testimony against such a place. She half-whispered, "Will the bad people come here?"

He was thankful his face was covered and there was no need to pretend to smile. "No, Hope. They're far away. No one will hurt you here."

"Okay." She took him at his word, apparently. "D'you like my dress?"

"It's exquisite."

Hope beamed, because apparently she thought all unfamiliar words were compliments. "You too!"

"...thanks."

Hope stood and leaned frontwards against the side of the bed. "Hey."

"Yes?"

"Do you want another picture?"

"I'd like that very much."