Hi, and here is another chapter and I hope you all enjoy it, I will do my best to bring you the next one sooner rather than later.

This does deal again with the war, I wanted to write about John and the guilt that I think he does have for surviving as touched upon sometimes in some of the episodes were the First World War is mentioned. This chapter explores how it ties into the guilt he feels for leaving John-Boy on the mountain and how easy it is to blame his father.

But next chapter that all changes.

Disclaimer-Nothing here is mine.

Please Read and Review.

Again some warning for the language used. It is quite funny to imagine the Waltons with swearing. Even easier to write but funny to imagine.

Guardians And Gladiators

Chapter 6-None The Wiser

Livy and John have a conversation about the past, the present and the future as they finally get news on John-Boy.

"You know I think I can count on my hand the number of times I've ever seen you in a chapel"

John had been eyeing the cross when his wife said this coming and sitting down next to him with all the usual reverence that he did not understand or have time for.

"Desperate times" was all he said and Livy being Livy scoffed.

"No" she said in that way that only his wife can and that's only because she's know him for so long.

"No I think somewhere John deep down you do believe"

Oh God.

And unlike his Pa he doesn't mean that reverently.

"Livy I am not going to have this conversation with you" he said finally. Olivia touched his arm and John forced his eyes open and away from the cross too look at her.

"What you said to your father—"

"Believe me Livy that was restrained"

"John—"

"Livy I told him! I told him I didn't want any rifles, or shooting, I told him if things got bad up there he was to take John-Boy and go, I just…I should have stayed up there but…"

And there it was the crux of the matter. The thing that was niggling at him. His Pa aside there was the acknowledgement between the two of them (because Livy knew even if she would never say it) that he had left a twenty year old on a mountain with his grandfather—that he loved and that his son was going to defend him.

"Wasn't your fault" Livy said finally. "It wasn't John—"

"I left him up there" was all John said. "I left him up there Livy"

"You left him with your father"

"Yeah and I knew what he was going to do didn't I?" John burst out. "I knew exactly what was going to happen. I knew that my Pa was never going to lie down and let his brother's home be trampled, I knew that Martha Corrine would play on that sense of duty and that sense of brotherhood and kinship. And I left my son up there! I should have been the one there Livy! I should have been the one that stayed up there because I could have stopped it. I could have stopped it all. If I'd have been there it would have never have gotten to the point where my son was shot!"

The truth was undoubtable but the truth of the matter was that if John had been there the woman wouldn't have been able to get her hooks into his Pa. His uncle and his father had always had a contentious relationship but he had been family. John had never considered it that. Up on the mountain those people had just been that…they'd never bothered with them before. Never bothered when any of his children had been born or when he had married Livy or when his brother had died. Martha Corrine on the one time John had met her when he was a young father with Jason on his hip had told John that she was a mountain person and that flat land people could never understand that pages of life were numbered.

If memory served correctly John had promptly passed Olivia a squawking Jason and had, had to go for a walk for several hours.

"Grandpa would give his life over to protect the children" Livy said finally her hand on the small of his back. "You know that and I know that. He loves them with everything that he has. If he could have seen this coming…well…I know that he would never have allowed John-Boy to be there. It was just an accident John. Perhaps it was a foreseeable but then again…we asked John-Boy—"

"I asked John-Boy"

"Alright then but…but John-Boy…he doesn't…accident happen in the heat of the moment. He saw his Grandpa in trouble and he reacted."

"Shouldn't have got that far"

Livy sighed. It was impossible sometimes to speak to John when he was in this mood. Sometimes things happened and he reacted not as a father, not as a husband, not even like a man—he responded as a soldier. It had been a while but she knew that part of him was there. Always there.

"John…the second she came down to the mountain looking for help we knew how it was going to end. The woman had decided it was going to go to a gunfight before she even came to us. She had decided that she was going to fight for her land one way or another. Maybe we shouldn't have gotten involved the way we did but nothing, not your father, nor you, nor John-Boy would have stopped that woman once her mind was made up. And whatever you think right now we both know that it wouldn't have sat easy with us if we hadn't tried to help"

She was speaking truth to him like she always did. It was that way that Livy had that made him feel young again. She knew how to speak to him in ways that very few people did. He loved her for it. But even now as she was speaking to him he thought that she was struggling to get her point across. He loved her, he was heart and soul her man but this…this was something that, like that stupid fucking pully all those months ago where he knew he would be feeling the blame for months to come.

Oliva knew that to be fair thought. She knew that in the same way that she knew him.

Didn't mean she had to like it thought.

"Your father" was all she said sternly and John groaned because he knew what was coming next and it was so easy to just be angry with his father and to stay angry with his father than to sit and analyse his feelings for the man, the situation and the rest of it. His words especially. Right now he was angry and anger being just one of the emotions that he was feeling he found that he could put one foot in front of the other and cope until he knew one way or the other what was happening. Anger was one of the emotions that he was feeling right now and he was clinging to it because it kept away the blind panic, the terror and the never ending fear that a man in a white coat was going to walk through the door and tell him that his eldest was dead.

Well…unlike Ben at least he would be told face to face and not through some fucking telegram like his mother and father had. Or God forbid from some Army Captain with some vague sympathy that in those days you had to scrouge up to hide the bare exhaustion.

"Olivia"

"John what you said…and I know that things have been said without me being here…I know that you know that it's unfair to blame him for the whole events of what has happened here tonight"

It was and she didn't know the half of what he'd said. He certainly wasn't going to tell her that he had thrown Ben into the wide and angry gulf that now existed between father and son but he had. Ben was one of those things that they just didn't talk about. In fact John had never heard his father even mention his brother after the war. In those early days his mother had—she had been determined to make John-Boy and Jason remember their Uncle. Eventually Livy had spoken a few quiet words and his mother had stopped mainly because Mary-Ellen had been confused as to who she was going on about and then Ben had been born and it had been natural to look at the angry, red-headed baby kicking and punching his fists into the air and name him after the angry, red-headed flirt that his own brother had been.

But talk about Ben? Talk about the war? Talk about the death and the blood and all that fucking mud? No. Not even when Tip had been down had his father and he had the conversations that on some level they both knew they should have had in 1919.

In fact to be honest knowing what he knew about Tip back then and what he had seen in Tip three years ago he was amazed that the man had not brought it up on a whim.

"I have said somethings" he said carefully. Olivia seemed to know that and from the raise in her left eyebrow she knew that she was not going to be impressed if she asked him straight out just what the fuck he had done.

And he supposed the amount of language he had used was not helpful either. The John Walton who swore and punched the wall and stalked off in a huff was the John Walton from the war. He could feel the itch in his skin again.

It had been hard to put it into words when John-Boy his face as innocent and shining as John's had been in 1917 when they had heard that America was finally in the war, had asked him what it was like. Hard for him to speak when he had looked at Jason and seen the hard look of manhood in his face. It had been hard that time to look at his two eldest and not see him and his brother eager for the adventure and the glamour that even in 1917 they had thought the war would bring them. Anything Ben had said with that grin, to get them away from the mountain for a bit. Even now he could still see the memory clear between his eyelids.

So yes it had been hard to talk about, when he had seen Jason become his own man it and he had missed it in favour of walking down memory lane with a man who had never really grown it had been hard to talk about.

He and his Pa…well…he had gone to work with the man and they had just carried on and this thing between them had been just been there. It was just something they learnt to live around, the ghost of the brother and the son that they had lost and now with John-Boy in the hospital, Martha Corrine being thrown off the mountain and all these words between them he didn't know how to fix it, how to take it all back or even if he even wanted to.

"John-Boy would know what to do" he said quietly. "He'd know how to fix all of this, he'd know how to phrase it all so that it could be a story we just tell people one day. Something that happened on the mountain, one of those stories that when people drive down the new highway they think about so that the people who had to move out of their homes and their farms and their little worlds could be remembered"

"You have quiet the way with words yourself"

"Livy if this is a crack about me swearing—"

"It's not though I am glad you didn't use the language when the children are present"

"Believe me the children know it all if not more than me"

She made a small laughing noise and he turned to see her and take in her expression for the first time since she had arrived and he took in her fear and her panic and her love for him that he knew he didn't deserve and he leaned his head against her shoulder wishing that he could close his eyes and not see his brother laughing or his son with blood all over his front.

The door to the chapel opened and then it was Doctor Vance. The country Doctor that had come down to the hospital to work a couple of days a week with patients who could pay real money. John didn't blame him in the slightest. It was a shitty day in America when a doctor couldn't earn enough money he was sure.

"He's going to be alright" the Doctor said with a small smile. Vance didn't bother with pleasantries and at times it could put you off and at times it was his saving grace. John listening to him felt like he could breathe a little more. John-Boy was going to be alright. He was going to live.

Unbidden the memory of Ben came to mind and he nodded thinking he was nodding to his brother.

Thank you Ben.

Not God.

Ben.

He could hear Ben's laughter on the wind.

"He's coming out of surgery, give me fifteen minutes and I'll get you in the room. He's done remarkable well considering this is his second surgery in a year, bullet didn't hit anything just caused a lot of blood loss. May I suggest John, Livy, that there not be a third time"

"Oh don't worry" Livy said taking his hand. "There wont be"

Within seconds of Vance backing out of the room his mother and father were there.

He let Livy speak to them. He didn't want to deal with anything other than the fact that his son was going to live and he turned away to blink away something that was in his eye. He was not going to call it tears.

Not yet.

"Son?"

"What Pa?"

"We have a problem"

"Oh?"

"Martha Corrine and Boon have just arrived. And they say they won't leave until they speak to you"

John turned to stare at his father.

"What the fu—heck does she want?"

"Don't know" his Pa said quietly. "God as my witness son I don't. I don't know if she's come here for answers or a fight or—"

"Well" John said cutting across his father with a slight snarl. "If she wants a fight she's damn well gonna get one"

And ignoring Livy, ignoring his mother and his father and everything else he turned and walked down the hallway towards the woman who had put his son in the hospital bed and he could almost hear Ben's low, slow laughter in his head and his words as though he was stood here with him.

"Go get em brother"

Oh he would Ben, John thought feeling the itch of war under his skin again.

Oh he would.

And there you are, I hope you enjoy this chapter and I will do my best to bring you the next one sooner rather than later.

Next Chapter-Martha Corrine, Boon, John, Olivia, Esther and Zeb come face to face for the first time since John-Boy's shooting. Expect fireworks.