A/N: So, I had this idea almost as soon as I finished writing The Last Regulator. As much as the ending fit the story, a part of me just couldn't let it end that way. So, if you wished it could have been different, this one's for you. Ride with me back to Lincoln, and let's see if Billy can finally correct his biggest regret of all.
To any new readers, it's not necessary to have read my other story first, they each stand alone, or this can be read as a sequel to the other. As before, I don't own Young Guns, or Young Guns II, only my OC.
Enjoy!
Patricio, New Mexico, December, 1950
"Is it bad, Billy?" Anna Maria wiped his face with a cold cloth, concern wrinkling her brow. He swatted her hand.
"Leave me alone, old woman. Can't you let a man die in peace?" Not that he deserved any such thing, not after what he'd done. He turned his head, found the picture on his bedside table. The first thing he saw in the morning, and the last thing at night. Ever since Anna had brought it to him months ago, he'd seen her clearly again, for the first time in almost fifty years.
Dear God, they'd been so young, all of them. It didn't seem real now. How could he be the last one standing, the last of the Lincoln County Regulators? A sea of faces swam before his misty eyes, far too many just as young as they'd been so long ago, frozen in time by death.
"Billito."
"Go away, please," he rasped. "I don't deserve anyone with me." Cold sweat coated his face; pain shot down his left arm and he groaned. He should be grateful the woman had found him, but how could he die with a friend nearby when she'd only had Pat Garrett?
"I think my sister would have something to say about that, don't you?"
"She's not here, is she?" His voice broke. It was all his fault.
"Virginia went for the doctor, he should be here soon."
"Ain't nothing he can do, old woman." Billy's arm was numb and his chest felt like he was pinned under a horse. "My … my trunk. Take it, and remember, please." He felt for the chain around his neck with his good hand. "I just need this … and my … picture."
How he wished he could rest at Fort Sumner; even if time had made it impossible to be buried beside her, he could at least be near. But no one would honor that request without knowing the whole story, and no one would believe it, not after what Garrett had done.
Anna Maria's dark eyes glistened with tears. She set the cloth down and took his good hand in hers. Softly, she began to sing a Spanish lullaby, one he could almost place. A single tear slid down his cheek; she brushed it away for him.
"I don't regret what I did in the War," he whispered hoarsely. "I still think it was the only way. But, after … I don't know anymore." There were so many moments he could look back to, and see a better choice that could have bought them time, or maybe saved them all together. "I should have listened to her." Maybe then he wouldn't have spent seventy years alone. She stopped singing.
"Billy, she knew you loved her, I believe that with all of my heart."
"Damn lot of good it did her." He fought to sit up, but the pain was too great. "I failed her, left her to face Garrett alone when I knew he was out there gunning for me."
"Billy –"
"No, I was still playing damned games, never really believing he was the one shooting them. I had Poe figured for driving Pat on to do something he didn't really want to do, but Fort Sumner showed me I was wrong." Tears spilled down his weathered face. "God, if I could do it over, I'd never let her leave that house. Even if I'd had to face him, I'd have done it, and done it gladly, if it meant she lived." A tear trickled down Anna Maria's face as she studied him.
"Come, Billito, do you want to see her again looking like this?" She clicked her tongue and washed his face. "The El Chivato she knew would not cry."
He couldn't answer, his mind was drifting, names and faces a jumble in his head. Stabbing pain in his chest stole his breath and he gasped. His head rolled sideways and he found himself staring out the tiny window at the desert cloaked in the setting sun.
A mirage shimmered on the horizon, solidifying into a line of riders coming from the west, thundering across the desert straight out of the past. Despite the distance, he knew them all, and welcomed their coming.
"Billy? Billy!"
"Pals," he slurred. The Regulators had come to take him home. He released one last aching breath, gaze fixed on the chestnut mare in the lead, her rider's long braid whipping in the wind, and everything went black.
Billy's eyes opened and he whipped around in shock, staring at the empty desert. Where was he? Where were his friends? "Jessie? Doc? Charlie!" He spun in frantic circles. He'd seen them coming for him, what had happened? This didn't look like any afterlife he'd ever heard of. "What's going on? Hey!"
But there was nothing. Not even a lizard crawled across the sand. He turned another circle, heart pounding in his chest. Wait, he was dead, wasn't he? He felt his chest, then froze, attention snagged on his hands. He looked down at himself, noting the absence of scars and wrinkles accumulated over a lifetime of mishaps and aging.
"William H. Bonney." He spun, hand going for a gun he didn't have. A strange man in a black suit stood three feet behind him, arms folded over his chest, head tilted to the side. "I knew, but I was still expecting someone older."
"Who are you? What's going on? Why –?"
"Aren't you dead? You are, Mr. Bonney, and if it was up to me we wouldn't be having this discussion. But, luckily for you, someone else is calling the shots."
"What are you talking about? Where – where are we?"
"You don't recognize it?" The stranger nodded at something over his shoulder and Billy spun. "The town of Lincoln, sight of your most memorable escapades, wouldn't you agree?" Billy's heart pounded and his mouth went dry.
"That's not Lincoln, it hasn't looked like that since –"
"The 1880's." He whipped back around. "A better question would have been when are we, not where. It's 1880, Bonney." The stranger's face tightened. "I don't agree with this and ultimately, I'm not doing it for you. You got far more chances than you should have the first time around."
"The first …"
"You got what you spent seventy years begging for." He held up a hand. "Don't interrupt, I'll answer any question you have – if I'm allowed to answer it that is – when I'm finished." He huffed and straightened the cuffs on his jacket. "When I leave, you'll be back in the past, the Lincoln War behind you, but Garrett ahead. You will have the chance to fix your mistakes, but be warned, once you start changing things, the farther the new future will drift from the old and your knowledge will become useless.
"Your friends can still die, Bonney, even those who didn't before, so you will need to contain that reckless streak if you want to save her this time around. And before you ask, this is a one shot deal. Whether you die now, or seventy years from now, there will be no other chance. The next time, dead will be dead."
"I can save her?" Billy could hardly breathe his heart was hammering so hard. "She's alive, right now?"
"Yes. The whole lot of you are up at Fort Sumner at the moment. Do you remember those bounty hunters you blew away?"
"There were kind of a few," he mumbled, and the stranger's face darkened.
"It's the day Pat Garrett told you the governor wanted to meet with you and Jessie." Garrett.Fury rose hot in his chest. I'll get you, Pat. "Oh." The stranger's face twisted. "I can't let that one stand, you have no idea how badly you would regret following that impulse through to completion."
"If I kill Garrett today, he can't kill Jessie next year."
"No, he certainly couldn't. But haven't you thought about who would take his place if the Ring can't get to him? They would still come after you with everything they had and if they can't turn Pat Garrett, they'll just look elsewhere."
"Jessie would never turn on me! She died because she wouldn't leave when she should have. None of my boys would turn." The stranger sighed and scraped a hand over his face.
"You're not wrong about that Billy Bonney. You just don't know how far she would go to make sure of it." Billy's blood ran cold as ice.
"What do you mean?" The stranger nodded over his shoulder again and he turned to look. Lincoln was gone, the Sierra Bonitas spreading out in front of them like a blanket, the peak of Capitan looming high in the clouds. "What are we doing here?"
"I'm showing you what will happen if Garrett dies before the Ring can make him sheriff," the man snapped. "I'd rather not watch, so if you'll excuse me." He turned his back. Voices rose on the breeze and Billy whipped around, spotting a line of riders climbing up the winding trail towards them. He knew this place, they'd ridden past it to set the trap for Morton and Baker. The sheer drop that began a few feet farther on had made his stomach bottom out. "And by the way, they can't hear you or see you, so don't bother trying to stop it."
"Stop what?"
"Come on, Jessica, you help us catch Billy and you'll be free as a bird." Poe's oily drawl rang in Billy's ears.
"You think I'm gonna believe that?" His heart cracked in half, the sound of her voice startling after seventy years of silence. "Chisum wants us both dead."
"Alright," Poe called over his shoulder. "How about we try this: you help us bring him in, and I'll arrange for an … accident. Wouldn't he prefer a bullet in the head over a rope?"
"You'll never get him." The horses came closer and Billy could see her hands were shackled and lashed to the saddle horn.
"I rather think we will, Ms. Dolan. Everyone knows the two of you are thick as thieves." He laughed and turned in the saddle to sneer at her. "I tell him I have you, and Billy Bonney will be begging me to take him instead." Jessie snorted, the sound morphing into a wild laugh that echoed across the mountains.
"Son of a bitch, you're deluded if you think I mean that much to Billy. I'm not his woman, Poe, I'm his right hand." The laughter died and her face hardened. "And I'll never betray him."
Something in her voice sent alarms ringing in Billy's head. Poe must have noticed it too, because he yanked his horse around, a frown creasing his face. Jessie drove her heels into the horse's sides and shrieked a war cry that spooked the animal into bolting. Her mount crashed into Poe's horse and its hind hooves slipped off the edge of the trail. The animal stumbled backwards with a shrill scream that sent a knife through his heart.
"No!" Billy ran for the horses, hands out as though he could pull her back.
"Regulators!" The piercing call echoed off the mountains as both horses plummeted over the edge and plunged down the sheer drop. Silence fell and the rest of Poe's men stared open-mouthed at the cloud of dust slowly fading away in front of them.
"I'm out of here," one of them said, and wheeled his horse around, spurring it back down the trail. The others drifted away and Billy ran through them – literally, one passed right in front of him and he ran through the horse's hip – to reach the edge of the trail. He dropped to his knees and forced himself to look over.
The pinto's broken body lay crumpled at least a hundred feet down, Jessie's much smaller form barely visible under its bulk. His stomach twisted and he heaved, bringing nothing up. "Jessie!"
"You didn't deserve her loyalty, much less her love," the man grouched without turning around. "Yet somehow, you ended up with both."
"That's not gonna happen, I – I won't let it happen!" Billy drove his fists into the dirt beside him, hot tears spilling down his face. "Jessie!"
"I told you they can't hear you." Billy lunged off the ground and darted over to the stranger still standing with his back to the scene.
"You're not gonna let that happen." He stabbed a finger at the drop. "It can't happen, she can't die like that." He gasped for breath. "I'm not gonna let it happen!" The man finally turned around, his eyes blazing.
"Then resist your stupid impulse to kill Garrett. That's the only way that is never going to come about. Part of me wishes her trigger finger had been just a hair faster than her eyes that day." He deflated. "But then, she would have had to live with the resulting guilt and it would have killed her as sure as a bullet." He rubbed his face. "Why couldn't she just leave your worthless hide and get out of the territory?"
"We were pals. There isn't anything I wouldn't have done for her."
"Well. Now's your chance to prove that. Once I leave, you'll be back in 1880, just like the last seventy years never happened. For her sake, I hope you're smarter this time around, but I'm not counting on it." For a split second, his face softened. "Fate isn't an easy thing to change, William Bonney, and the decisions you make now may just as easily make matters worse instead of better."
"What am I supposed to do, just let it play out the same way as before and hope like hell he actually has a heart?" The man's eyes hooded.
"How about you do what you spent seventy years moaning about and actually listen to her this time?" Billy snorted.
"You just said I can't get rid of Garrett and that was her fondest wish."
"I guess you'll just have to get creative, won't you? Time's up. I have to be going. Maybe she'll get lucky and you'll die this time."
"What's that supposed to –" The man vanished, Billy blinked in shock, and found himself inside a building. "Damn it, come back here!" He ran to the door and threw it open.
Jessie stood on the other side, eyebrows in her hairline. Alive. Without thinking, he threw his arms around her.