Hi, and here is another chapter, I am leaving this note short and sweet this time so enjoy.

Disclaimer-Nothing is mine.

Please Read and Review.

Also as I said in the last chapter I am back at work now so updates might be a bit few and far between for a while.

Again some liberal licence with Esther and the War and Ben Sr.

Also Esther-utter joy and ease to write.

Guardian's And Gladiators

Chapter 3-I Ain't Going Out Like That

Ike arrives at the Waltons to deliver the news, Jason and Mary-Ellen try to keep a stiff upper lip and even while dealing with her own emotions Esther tries to keep Olivia from falling apart.

Esther sits on the porch with her eyes closed. She's awake but she's in that wonderful mood where she could fall asleep at any moment. She should be working on her mending—seven grandchildren and the state of the clothes that need patching and darning means that there is always something that needs stitching (to say nothing of Zeb when he's in a mood) but the light is so nice and the warmth is so pleasant that she's quite content to be idle for a little while.

The more she sits there though the more she thinks. She thinks about what is happening on that mountain and it does nothing to quite her mind. Even Scripture right now couldn't calm her mind. She couldn't think about anything other than Martha Corrine and Boon and Wade and Vera and then when she inevitably thought about Martha Corrine and Boon and Wade and Vera then she thought of Zeb and when she thought of Zeb up there facing off on the US Government with only John-Boy for company she felt her heart begin to pound so fast it was like it was a bird waiting to take flight.

She had never really gotten on well with Henry if she was being honest with herself and she had never really gotten on well with Martha Corrine. They had been two different woman from two different sides of town. Martha Corrine had shunned all society with her husband preferring to live the frugal existence that being up in that little house had given her. Esther could count the amount of times they had met before this on one hand and she and Zeb had always had to make the trip up there, never had they had to make the trip downwards. Martha Corrine had shunned all town life, including a doctor believing in mountain medicine and while Esther liked mountain medicine and she used it nine times out of ten she thought of that little baby who had died as soon as he had drawn his first breath who had been placed wrong and she thought of how she had nearly lost two grandsons in childbirth and she could not understand it.

Boon…Boon she disliked. She could not help it. It wasn't the whiskey. Despite the moonshine the Baldwin sister's made she liked them immensely (though she was never going to admit it or approve of what they did because if she did Zeb would move in with them just to get his hands on the recipe) but Boon she disliked. Boon from the second he had been born hadn't a care in the world. Henry had let Martha Corrine spoil him after the death of their baby and Esther had never approved of that. She and Zeb had never favoured John after Ben…but Boon hadn't a care in the world. He did what he did and let the chips fall where they may. And when the chips had fallen it had usually been someone else who had paid the price for his actions.

She also didn't like Zeb when he was with Boon. Boon saw Zeb as an easily riled person and Esther hated that Boon without a care in the world was up there risking not only his own life but Zeb's, Wade or John-Boy. To say nothing of Vera and that unborn life.

But then she went back to the fact that the Waltons up on that high mountain had never had a choice. John might have chosen last year to sell and then not sell the land but Martha Corrine who had built her whole life on the frugal conditions up there—who didn't get electric lights, or the need for a town store or the need for an indoor outhouse or even hot water coming into the house without having to be carried in, had no choice and she was being uprooted from the only life that she had known and she was not a young person.

And though Esther had a difficult relationship with Martha Corrine she did not wish the woman the distress that was coming and she understood the memories in a home that were not so easily replaced with bright and shiny things.

But Zeb being up there with a gun…

She didn't know what John was thinking leaving John-Boy with him. John-Boy with his fancy words who hunted but didn't hunt well. John-Boy who could never dream of picking up a gun to hurt a human being. Goodness the boy struggled with a turkey! And had that bear not been endangering John's life Esther was not sure that it would have been made into steak.

She also knew why John was not staying. John would say that Livy knew him the best but Esther was his mother and she knew her son and she knew that John didn't want to be in a situation where he had to pick up a gun and point and fire it at another human being again. She had not been naïve in 1917, she had known if she was one of those lucky mothers who got her sons back then they were not going to be the same boys as the ones who had gone out there but she had seen the difference between the John who had gone and the John who had come back and stayed.

And now here they were. Waiting to see if there would be another shootout on the mountains, only this time it was her grandson and not her son.

The screen door opened with a bang and it disturbed her from her thoughts. She knew who that was. Mary-Ellen Walton who was the only girl in the history of the world who could slam open a flimsy screen door as if she was banging through a bank vault door. One of these days it was going to come off it's hinges.

"Mary-Ellen"

"Sorry Grandma" Mary-Ellen said not sounding very sorry at all and managing a smile. "But Mama wants to know if Martha Corrine is going to come down from the mountain again—she wants to know if you think she will"

Esther refrained from commenting on the first thing that popped into her mind which was that Martha Corrine Walton was coming down off that mountain in a box and it was a race to see who would be the one responsible for it, God or the US Government but she caught herself just in time. Mary-Ellen might be on the cusp of womanhood but it wouldn't do well to let her think it was ok to sass her elders.

"I don't know" she said finally turning back to her darning. "Is Jason in the house?"

"Yes"

"Can you ask him to play something for me. Maybe that tune that he was tinkering around with yesterday?"

"Sure thing—Grandma it's Ike, in the Sherriff's car"

"Ike?"

What was Ike doing here.

And then suddenly he got out the car and Esther was standing and her needlework was tumbling out of her lap.

Because she knew.

She had known Ike Godsey since he was a teenager. It had been him with the Sherriff who had come to see her once before, it had been his Daddy's car then and now he was stepping out of the Sherriff's car with the same expression on her face.

"Grandma?"

But she couldn't speak but suddenly it was a cold day in 1918 and winter was almost upon them and so was the end of the war and she had thought stupidly that her boys would make it through to the bitter end and come home to her. Never before had she felt fear like she had in that moment and now she was feeling it again, it was being dusted off, the old bruise that had been pressed until it was throbbing again.

Because there was another young boy she loved in the war now.

"GRANDMA? MAMA!"

Mary-Ellen's shout was enough to smack her into sense as harshly as if the girl had slapped her, herself. She took a deep shuddering breath and turned just as her daughter in law came out of the house wiping her hands on her apron. Esther watched in a sort of slow motion horror as history repeated itself. Olivia had come out that day too but there had been John-Boy on her hip and her belly had been round with Jason and Esther had, had Zeb at her side. He had known…she didn't know how and she had never asked him but he had known and it had been him who had, had the conversation, it had been him who had taken the telegram from Ike's trembling hands.

Zeb was not with her now.

Olivia's eyes slid from hers to the Sherriff, to Ike's and Esther saw the exact moment that she realised what had happened.

Jason was behind her and his face too grew pale but then again she was not sure that he and Mary-Ellen knew what was happening. But they knew enough to know that something terrible had happened. At seventeen and sixteen they were just babies themselves.

"What happened?" Olivia asked and Esther held her breath.

"I got a call from John about ten minutes ago, he's at the hospital in Charlottesville with Zeb…it's John-Boy Livy, he's been shot"

Esther felt the air disappear. Olivia for one moment stared at Ike and then she staggered a little and it took her a second to realise that Jason was propping his mother up though he looked horrified himself. Mary-Ellen's hand found hers and suddenly Esther was gripping it tightly.

Nobody seemed to speak and then because Zeb was not here this time and therefore someone had to ask and this time it had to be her. Her grandbaby was in a hospital with a bullet hole and God only knows (and she meant that reverently) what was happening between her son and her husband and therefore…

"Is he alive?"

"Yes" Ike said firmly. "John said they were wheeling him into surgery but they got him all down from the mountain in one piece so that has to be a good thing. And it's over…I think…the Sherriff—"

"I think it's over up there" Sherriff Bridges said finally. "I think it's over up there. I'm gonna check in with some people but I think I'd have heard by now if there was a resolution"

Esther wasn't listening to him. John-Boy was shot so what did it matter what Martha Corrine was going to do. Esther understood it and yet at this moment in time if the woman walked through the door then she was going to do something very, very unladylike.

"We need to go" Livy said her face white to the lips. "Sherriff can you—"

"It's why I brought my car Livy"

"The children—"

"Mama we can handle the children"

That was Jason and Esther turned and started a little. Out of all of John's boys Jason was the one who reminded her of Zeb when he was young. John-Boy was his father's shadow, Ben was the spitting image of his namesake and Jim-Bob was a cross between Zeb and John but Jason was the one who reminded her the most of Zeb and she took comfort from that. His face was white, the freckles the only thing that was showing but he was resolute. This was not the first time that Jason had stared down death and somewhere between his first shoot out with John's old army friend and somewhere between this moment he had become a man. Mary-Ellen her hand over her mouth managed to nod her head.

"We can take care of them" Jason said finally. "Mama when they come back Mary-Ellen and I can distract them as long as someone tells us something when they know."

"I can run point in my bike" Ike said nodding his head grasping at something that he could do. "I can do it Livy, you and Mrs Walton go. I'll take my bike back to the store and get Fanny to get a secure connection between the hospital and me and I can get them news"

Livy still had not said anything and Esther didn't think she would. Instead she nodded.

"Thank you Ike. Jason, Mary-Ellen the children do not need to know anything, not Ben, not Erin, nobody, nothing. If they ask we've gone to see Martha Corrine. Make them supper if you have to and tell them that we'll be back later. Livy…Liv…OLIVIA!"

Blue eyes dimly found hers. Esther resisted the urge to shudder. If that was what she looked like when Ben had died…God know wonder Zeb had been terrified about what she would do.

"Olivia, get in the car"

And finally her daughter in law moved and Esther went with her and they got into the car and didn't look back and Esther found Livy's hand and squeezed it. She breathed in and she breathed out as the wind from the open window cooled down her face and she tried not to be sick.

Because this was not happening. Not again.

God wouldn't let it.

And if God tried to take John-Boy from them Esther would just have to give Him a piece of her mind.

And there you go, I hope you enjoy and see you next time.

Next Chapter-Olivia and Esther arrive at the hospital to be confronted by two very different men.