A/N: The title is taken from a Walt Whitman poem in his "Leaves of Grass" collection.
Debris
HE is wisest who has the most caution,
He only wins who goes far enough.
Any thing is as good as established, when that is established that
will produce it and continue it.
Debris
Johnny pulled Scott around the side of the thick oak, and told him to "wait, just wait", while he got a look at the damage. The evening twilight made it tough. The angle from the leftover light was all wrong, and Scott was in enough pain that he'd quit trying to hide it. Johnny's exploring fingers were less than appreciated. Scott found his voice as he arched away from the touch, and the slung cuss words brought some heat to Johnny's face.
It'd been a while since he'd heard something like that, and he wondered where Scott had picked it up. As a rule, his brother was way more genteel in his language.
"Sorry," he offered, screwing up his nose as he lifted Scott's ripped shirt higher. He whistled low in his throat. The gash dog-legged around Scott's right side like a giant fishhook, deepened up through the muscle of his back. As far as Johnny could tell, it stopped short of his shoulder blade, but between the poor light and the too-much blood it was hard to be sure.
Either way, it was a lot worse than Scott had let on. Always was, for the short time he'd known him.
"At least I wasn't wearing my new jacket."
"Yeah. 'Cause we need to be worried about your jacket right now."
Johnny felt the grin in the darkness. "I'm just saying, brother, I'm glad it's not cold."
"Okay, I think you need a doctor." Johnny twisted a little to unknot the red bandana from Scott's neck.
"Why?" Scott sounded annoyed.
Johnny yanked the bandana away then folded it into a square. "Because it's bad, that's why," he snapped. "This's gonna hurt." He let that pass as fair warning, pressed the linen along the deepest section of torn flesh.
Scott's knuckles whitened against the tree and his head snapped up. He grunted, buckled a little.
Johnny grabbed at the back of his brother's trousers, kept him on his feet. "Breathe," he suggested when it seemed the reminder might be necessary.
Scott obliged noisily. "You can't stitch it?" he groaned.
"No, it's pretty clean, it's just…this is deep. You're bleeding. A lot."
"So, stitch it."
"Scott, I haven't-"
"No doctor. Sam is in San Francisco. Besides, I'm not going back to town, we're closer to the ranch."
"But Murdoch and Teresa are gone." He snapped his fingers. "What about the vet at Green River?"
He just said that to take Scott's mind off the situation and was rewarded with a huff of laughter.
"Funny. But definitely not. Lancer takes care of its own, remember?"
He remembered, but he hadn't put a whole lot of stock into it yet.
~o~
"Hey, Pilgrim! I'm talking to you!"
"You shouldn't have said anything back, it was better than good odds the man had friends," Johnny told him on the way back to the ranch, while the slow plod of their horses seemed to metronome with his brother's harsh breathing.
Scott turned his glistening face to Johnny as though his head was weighted. "No, you should have moved faster." The grin was more of a grimace, had too much tooth. "You know, you're slower than I remember."
"Yeah?" Johnny clenched the reins in his hand when he remembered the shiny knife slicing towards Scott. He frowned hard in the darkness. "Well, you're stupider than I remember."
~o~
Scott couldn't wait for the door, either. Johnny had barely rounded the hitching post, when Scott kicked free of his horse and slid off. His groping hand slapped at the saddle on the way down.
"Whoa, hey!" Johnny lunged forward, caught Scott's flailing wrist, and took almost none of the weight out of his brother's fall. Scott swung like a pendulum and groaned. Johnny winced, instinctively released, and Scott hit the ground, face-first.
"Shit," they chorused.
~o~
Beside the horsehair settee, Scott mumbled "cover" into Johnny's ear. When Johnny froze in confusion, he added: "Towels to cover."
A tight coil of anger unleashed, flashed like lightning inside Johnny. He eased Scott to the cushions, guided him down onto his left side. "It doesn't matter." He looked around. Murdoch's injury kit. In the kitchen. "Stay there, don't move."
"Yes, sir."
Johnny retrieved the kit, pulled the ottoman over from the big chair in the corner. When he sat down, Scott was still having trouble letting it go.
"Should have gotten a towel or bed linens," he chastised. "This is going to be messy."
Johnny's jaw flexed and clenched.
The access wasn't great with Scott on his side. Johnny pulled at his shoulder, got him semi-faceplanted into the pillow. He ran the scissors up the back of his brother's shirt, cut away enough of the fabric to angle the lamp in and get a good look at what they were dealing with. A big breath. He found another spark of ire to beat back his fear.
"Johnny?"
"Okay, what do I do?"
Scott's cheek shifted on the pillow, chin angling up to look at him. For a second, his expression was completely blank, and then he let out a keening sound that could have been laughter. His teeth chattered shut on the end of it.
"Scott, I haven't done anything like this in a lot of years."
"More on the receiving end?"
Johnny nodded.
"It'll come back to you." The shake wasn't just confined to Scott's clacking jaw, his whole body was trembling.
Johnny dipped his eyes from the reassurance in Scott's pain-etched face, fumbled in Murdoch's wooden box. "You'll need something. This'll hurt."
"Yes, and yes. Thank you."
Johnny's fingers closed on a bottle of laudanum, and he hesitated. And now what? He turned the medicine in the palm of his hand, checked the tiny label for some sort of instructions he knew weren't there. "How much?"
Scott's brow furrowed, like he was thinking about it, but Johnny could tell he was beyond any good advice now. "I don't know." He lifted a heavy hand from the pillow beside his cheek, flapped it. "Fill a glass, I'll take it from there."
The angle was awkward. Scott came up on his elbow, had to curl some to find a position that would work. He was already tapped out, and it clearly hurt. Johnny moved to get an arm behind his shoulders, take his weight and keep him off his back. Scott's eyes scrunched shut while the pain flared and evened out, then his clumsy blood-slick fingers were seeking out the glass. Johnny passed it over.
"Are you okay?" The question fell unbidden from his lips and was immediately regretted. There was blood on the settee and Scott was about to willingly down a glass of laudanum and water. If he could get any further from okay, Johnny couldn't see how. But his brother nodded.
Scott concentrated; lips pressed into a thin line and forced a few noisy breaths down through his nose.
Johnny didn't doubt the physical control his brother could muster by sheer dint of being stubborn. He'd seen it in action enough to know. But it was clear the tremor in Scott's hand had become too violent. "I can't seem to get it."
"Okay." Johnny covered Scott's hand with his own, took back custody of the glass.
Scott sank back in relief, and Johnny had to pull him sharply forward. "W-whoa. On your side." Scott's temple fell onto the cushion, and he exhaled an apology into the settee.
Johnny spent the better part of thirty minutes forcing half a glass of bitter water down Scott's partially conscious gullet. One slow sip at a time with breaks in between, or Scott retched, and they had to start again.
Finally, one long guttural moan, and his brother passed out cold.
~o~
"And who's the dirty Mex?"
He should have found a towel. Johnny realized when he finished up the last of the stitches, and Scott started to shiver. His brother was lying in wet, blood-slicked horsehair, riding the laudanum that left him barely conscious. He was pale and sweaty, utterly drained.
But Johnny didn't use a towel, so he was going to have to get him someplace dry.
He threw the leftover bandages into Murdoch's kit with such frustration the box nearly tipped over. Or maybe it was the wide swath of rage, enough to encompass himself, the idiots who waylaid them as well as the absent doctor. Enough to blanket Johnny's disgust at the neat row of evenly spaced stitches he'd just laid up his brother's back.
He tapped Scott's cheek until his eyes cracked open.
"Hey, you awake?"
"No," Scott slurred.
"Sorry. I gotta get you to a bed."
Scott frowned, nose scrunching, and he made a noise that sounded like protest.
Johnny felt himself growing hot again. "The cushions are wet, and you're cold. You can't stay here."
Scott's tongue flicked out to wet his lips for the admission that slipped past them. "I don't know if I can get up."
"I know. Don't move. I'm just trying to figure out the best way to do this."
Scott was wracked by another shiver, and it set his teeth off on a rapid-fire clack that got Johnny to his feet. He thought while he worked Scott's boots off his feet. He knew he should lose the bloodied pants, too, but thought they could stay. He convinced himself they weren't that wet.
He stripped back the fresh covers from the bed down the hall, stopped long enough to grab a towel from the nearby basin and lay it out on the mattress. Now that you don't need it anymore.
"Okay, on three," Johnny said, and then yanked on the count of two anyway. Scott made a wasted sound that Johnny felt in his chest as much as he heard. He pulled and prodded and coaxed Scott off the settee.
It was more of a drag than a walk. Scott had a few inches on him and as thin as his brother was, dead-weight.
When he'd done everything he could do, he pulled the blankets over his brother's abused body and retreated to the kitchen for water.
He washed his hands four times, and they still felt odd and slippery, like Scott's blood was clinging in his pores. He stood over the sink for a while, thinking he might puke, but the feeling passed.
~o~
Johnny didn't try to sleep. A little after five in the morning, he tested the back of his hand against Scott's cheek, couldn't tell if the tacky warmth was from the heaped blankets or fever. He peeled back the layers, peered at the gauze covering the wound. Inspected the patches of crimson seep that told him the bleeding had all but stopped. Johnny had a thumbnail working under the edge of the dressing wrapped around Scott's back when his brother shifted.
"Don't." Scott didn't open his eyes.
"I just want to take a look."
"It looks bad, and it hurts." Scott's 's voice was a rough mumble.
"Does it feel like you've got a fever?"
"No, it feels like someone is keeping me awake." Scott's hips twisted and Johnny grappled at the waist of his trousers, stopped him before he rolled.
"Hey, stay off your back. Stay on this side."
Johnny tried to ignore Scott's face, awash in sudden agony.
"Why did you do it?"
Scott popped open one eye. "Do what?"
Scott's words had cut the man down quicker than anything but only after slurs had been hurled towards Johnny.
"I can take care of myself."
Scott's eye widened. "You don't think I know that? I do. Obviously. But…"
"But what?"
"You're my brother, Johnny. You're worth it."
It set him back, what Scott was saying. He dragged the back of a sleep-clumsy hand across his mouth.
Scott shivered, a full-body spasm that forced a soft shuddering sound from his lips, and Johnny hurriedly pulled the blankets back up. He tucked them into the space between his brother's shoulder and chin.
Johnny thought about coffee. He should make some coffee if he planned on staying awake. He rubbed his eyes and stared hard at Scott. Johnny thought he looked calm, lying there in the aftermath of the attack, all those stitches in his back.
Lancer did take care of its own, after all. In every way.
The End