Winter's Grasp Chapter 14
Beta's Saddletramp and Nakoosay
Slim's POV
A voice I thought I wouldn't hear again exploded into my ear as I slowly drew myself out of the perpetual darkness I had been clouded in. The last thing I could remember was trying to escape from a room and I fell. An image of an old man, a miner I think, came to mind but I couldn't place it. Jess's voice spoke again, and I realized that he wasn't yelling it was just my head splitting with pain that made his voice seem so loud.
Sounds seemed close one second then the next so far away. I was struggling to keep myself from going back to the darkness. I felt weak and that was unusual and slightly frightening to me. I don't like to feel weak though I can take nursing back to health way better than Jess can. But just because I don't mind being looked after when I'm sick doesn't mean that I like being vulnerable and therefore unable to protect Jess.
We'd rather take a bullet for each other than see the other get hurt. So, the feeling I have of missing strength is frightening not for my safety but because it means if something were to happen, I couldn't help Jess. Exactly like the circumstances I'm in right now.
As I drew myself farther from the darkness and towards the light, I could feel that my muscles were weak, that there was something wrong with me, and the utter dread that if I ever saw Jess again and something had happened to him it would be on me.
Head pounding, heart racing from the exertion, I opened my eyes and found myself staring at the barrel of someone's six-shooter. Jess's voice came strong and clear from my right, but I was transfixed by the gun glinting at me in the lamplight. I blinked but it was still there staring at me like… I don't know what, but I couldn't take my eyes off of it. I wasn't scared of the gun and that was something that scared me.
I've always disliked guns. Always. But growing up out here you had to learn fast and then there was the Army. Probably seems strange to dislike guns and yet I carry one everywhere I go. When I was 14 and my father was showing me how to shoot, I told him that I feared guns. My father told me that was a good thing that a gun can be your friend or your enemy. He sat beside me and told me that fear of guns keeps a man from becoming too fond of them and what they can do.
The steel still glared at me flinging light at my face. It me drew me from my thoughts and Jess's words started with register with me.
"I ain't going to say it. You can shoot me but leave Slim out of it." Jess said it through gritted teeth that almost shook from the sheer power it took not to scream in agony as his body ached to the bone.
"What's…. going…. on?" The wonderful sound reached Jess's ears in the form of Slim's slow voice interrupted by short gasps of breath and a small grunt of pain.
"Slim? Slim! Partner are you okay?" Jess almost couldn't get the words out he was so elated that his friend was awake and talking.
"Jess" Slim said without turning to look at his friend but a smile flicked across his cracked lips, his eyes glued still to the gun pointed at him and repeated his question "What's going…on Jess?"
TBC
