A/N: Some disturbing images. Read at own risk.

The sun was just dipping behind the trees when they finally pulled in front of the house. Ben noticed with relief that Paul's buggy was there, and that Joe had seen to the horse.

Joe exploded from the door almost before the wagon wheels stopped turning. He went up to the wagon and leaned over the side. "Doc an' Hop Sing are inside, gettin' things ready. Is he - do you want me to…" He looked at Adam, couldn't stop his eyes from skidding away again.

Hoss secured the horse and came around to stand next to him. "I'm gonna lift 'em. If'n you could steady his feet, that'd help."

Ben looked at Hoss in mild surprise. Well, at least he was letting somebody lend a hand. He tried to get a better glimpse of his face, but Hoss kept it carefully averted.

"Pa? Say, Pa?" Ben glanced at Joe questioningly. Joe looked embarrassed. "This'd go better if you'd let go of the quilt."

Ben dropped his gaze to his hands, noticed that they were hanging onto the quilt in a white-knuckled grip. Oh. He pried them carefully loose. They felt stiff and cramped, like claws. He watched Hoss and Joe lift Adam, unfolded his legs and dropped himself over the side of the buckboard. His muscles were rigid and he staggered for a minute, then found his feet and followed them inside and up the stairs.

Hop Sing was already waiting in Adam's room. He had set up a table with buckets of steaming water beneath it and Paul's bag and towels and torn sheets on top of it. Ben heard him breathe something softly in Chinese as Hoss and Joe lowered Adam carefully onto the bed. Ben met his eyes for a minute, then looked away, his gaze returning inexorably to Adam's face.

"Thanks, boys. Now I'd appreciate a little room to work in here." Ben noticed Paul in the corner for the first time, coat off, rolling up his sleeves. "I'll call you if I need help." He smiled to take the sting out of the words.

Joe opened his mouth as if he wanted to object, but Hoss patted him lightly in the middle of the back and nodded toward the door. Joe's mouth set mulishly for a second, then he glanced at Adam again and his forehead wrinkled. After a second he reluctantly shuffled out ahead of Hoss.

Dr. Martin closed the door behind them, glanced at Ben as if he wanted to say something and then thought better of it. He fussed with his sleeves, running his eyes over Adam. He reached down and held the back of his hand against the still face.

"He may fight you," Ben explained. "He wouldn't let us near him until Hoss…" he trailed off, embarrassed somehow to admit that his own son hadn't known him or that his other son had knocked his brother out.

Doc Martin nodded absently. "Not surprised. Nice fever. Normally I'd give him something to keep him under, but I don't know how much of that white powder Joe showed me he has in him, so I don't dare risk it. We'll just do the best we can. He's quiet right now, anyway." He peeled back the quilt, pulling carefully where the blood stains clung to the skin underneath. He tossed it aside and began his inventory.

Ben tore his eyes away from Adam and watched the doctor's face. Except for a quick grimace when he got to the torn wrists, it remained characteristically impassive. "Scissors, Hop Sing?" He accepted the sharp-bladed scissors and lifted what was left of the tattered, stained shirt to cut it away. He paused.

Ben studied him, the careful blankness in his expression more unsettling than any exclamation of shock could have been. "What is it?" he asked uneasily.

Paul put the remains of the shirt neatly back in place and straightened. "You know, Ben," he said, with deliberate casualness, "There's a lot of work to do here, and it's going to take me a while to make my way through it. Might be better if you waited downstairs with the boys. Hop Sing here can help me."

Ben folded his arms over his chest. "Paul," he ground out, a little surprised himself at the unexpected edge in his voice, "I've spent the last three days trying to cope with the idea that I'd lost him. Now I'm not leaving him."

Paul studied his face quietly for a moment, then shrugged slightly and turned back to his patient, slashing expertly through the worn fabric and tossing it aside.

Ben closed his eyes briefly at the landscape of marks and bruises, then opened them again and forced himself to focus, trying to gauge the extent of the damage. His forehead creased. "What are those?" he asked at last.

Paul glanced where he indicated. "Burns," he said briefly, applying the scissors to the ragged pants.

Ben's brows rose. "Then he was in the fire."

Paul didn't look at him. "No. No, I don't think so."

Ben looked more closely at the round sores, red scabbed and weeping. They did all look about the same size - not like the product of random sparks. "Then what would cause something like that?"

Paul was examining Adam's swollen knee and didn't look up. "Cheroot, I think."

"A cheroot?" Ben leaned closer, careful not to touch. "But there's several of them. I could understand one, but how could…" Ice prickled his skin as a new thought crept darkly into his brain. He glanced sharply toward where the doctor was busy with Adam's knee. "What are you telling me, that someone actually…?"

Paul lowered his scissors and met his eyes squarely.

Ben felt his unreliable stomach lift and roil again. He swallowed once, then again, not sure that was going to do the trick this time. Air, that was what he needed. Some fresh air.

His eyes dropped from Paul's, slid over Adam, noting the areas of his body as yet unexamined, dwelt briefly on the possible new horrors to be discovered there, ricocheted to the floor. He swallowed again, surprised by the sudden undulation of the floorboards under his feet.

"Maybe you're right," he choked gruffly when he could trust himself to speak. "Maybe it would be better if I - waited outside."

He caught a glimpse of Paul's face, soft with understanding. "I think that's a good idea. I'll let you know as soon as I've finished."

Ben stumbled to the door, closed it behind him and leaned against it for a minute, trying to let the world steady, trying by sheer will to control his stomach. He could hear Hoss's stolid pacing on the floorboards below, could picture Joe restlessly shifting on the settee. His mind slid automatically to his remaining son and his stomach clenched again, nearly escaping his precarious control. He squeezed his eyes shut.

He should go downstairs. Or maybe outside, on the porch, where he could breathe. He pushed himself away from the bedroom door at his back and staggered forward. He made it as far as the top step before his knees dissolved beneath him. He sat down with a thump and buried his face in his hands.

*

"Pa." Hoss's voice sounded soft and foreign to his ears - almost didn't register. "Pa." More insistent this time. He turned his head to indicate that he'd heard. "Doc must be about done. He's washin' up, then he'll be down."

Ben nodded. It was so peaceful out here - so normal. The sounds of the insects, the brilliant sweep of stars. Back inside nothing was normal - things were shattered and out of kilter, like the images in a broken mirror. Things he couldn't fix or change. He sighed, staring at the dark, empty space that had been his barn. Maybe if he stayed out here forever things would go back to normal. Maybe all of this would disappear and the worst of his worries would be a burned barn.

"Pa?" Joe this time, voice tinged with worry.

He sighed again. He was frightening his children now, and that wasn't fair either. He needed to get a hold of himself, for them and for Adam, too. "Coming, son." With one last look at the peaceful night, he turned to enter the house.

His eyes had adjusted to the dark, so he stood blinking for a moment, letting them get accustomed to the light. Paul was descending the stairs, wiping his hands on a towel. He gave Ben a tight smile. Ben looked at him more closely. "Is your nose bleeding?"

"Still?" Paul dabbed at his nose. "Thought it had stopped." Ben raised a questioning brow. "You were right - put up a fight at one point. Caught me in the face with one hand. Just lucky - don't think he was actually aiming."

"He hit you?" Ben rubbed a hand over his forehead. Surely, the world had run mad.

Paul smiled. "Oh, it wasn't much of a hit. Hasn't got a lot of power behind his swing at the moment."

Ben decided that he'd probably better sit down. He sank into a chair and gestured for Paul to do the same. It took him a moment to realize that he had selected the blue chair that Adam favored and he sighed again. "So," he felt his mouth twitch. "How is he?"

"Well…" Paul dropped into the red leather chair, accepted a cup of coffee from Hoss. "I strapped up his knee, got his shoulder back in place. Cleaned things up. Funny - doesn't seem to be any internal damage. Almost like somebody meant to hurt without actually…" his eyes rested on Ben's face and he trailed off, cleared his throat, took a sip of his coffee. After a pause he continued. "Worst of it was his arms and that left hand. That was a mess. An infection building there, but could be worse. Little while longer and we'd be looking at gangrene. Took me a while to sort that tangle out. Needed some fancy sewing - Hop Sing helped with that. Tell you, that rope had just about - " He stopped and cleared his throat again. "Sorry." He shrugged apologetically. "Long day." He took another drink from his cup, poured himself a little more. "Any idea what happened there? Never seen anything quite like it."

Ben shook his head. "No. He was just lying there when we found him. I wondered myself. Almost looks like - "

"Hung 'em." Hoss's voice was so unexpected that everyone stared at him in surprise. No one looked more surprised to find he'd spoken than Hoss himself. He reddened and dropped his eyes.

"What did you say?"

Hoss's color deepened. "Nothin'," he muttered.

"Hung him?" Ben persisted, his hand going automatically to touch his throat. "What do you mean? What are you talking about? How could he - ?"

"Not - I don't mean like that - by the neck." Hoss looked acutely uncomfortable. Joe was staring at him with his mouth slightly open. "It - forget it."

"Hoss." Ben's voice deepened and Hoss winced. He toed at a suddenly interesting point on the floor, then seemed to find one on the wall he liked even better and stared at it.

"One of them drying hooks - the kind ya hang smoked meat from? Had - dried blood on it. Was some on the floor underneath, too. I figger they…" He paused and let his breath out slowly through his nose. "…would explain how the ropes got dug in like that anyhow."

The ticking of the Grandfather clock sounded abnormally loud in the silence that followed. Joe sat down abruptly on the settee, his complexion tinged suddenly green.

Ben stared. After a minute he stammered, "Well…if they were using them for meat, it's possible - "

Hoss had obviously already thought of that. "Not raw meat, Pa. You don't keep raw meat in a root cellar. Had to be from…somethin' else. Not - not the meat. Not - that kind, anyhow."

Ben was regretting his few sips of coffee as he felt his stomach rise warningly again.

Paul saw and stepped in, clearing his throat delicately. "I - didn't give him anything for the pain, so he might be a little hard to manage. Hop Sing knows a whole lot more about that powder than I do, so I'm letting him handle that. He tells me that they mix all kinds of things in with it, so it's hard to know exactly what we're dealing with. I want to keep a close eye on that infection and the dressings on his hand and arms need to be changed three or four times a day. Keep them really clean."

Ben dragged himself from a half-trance. "I'm sorry, Paul," he said roughly. "I haven't even offered you anything to eat. Hop Sing is busy, but there must be something in the pantry - something for sandwiches, at least - "

"I'll take a look." Hoss disappeared to the kitchen with a speed that was astonishing for such a large man. Ben wasn't even tempted to smile. For once he was sure it had nothing to do with his usually active appetite.

Joe was staring at the top of the staircase, his eyes fixed and blank. Ben could imagine the pictures that were flashing across his mind behind that stare. Best to put a stop to that or they'd all be having nightmares. "Joseph, why don't you give your brother a hand?" Joe didn't even blink and Ben set his teeth. Didn't anyone hear him when he spoke anymore? "Joseph!"

Joe started, moved his stare to encompass Ben. That stare held a frightened, haunted quality that tore at Ben's heart. Too late to stop the nightmares, probably. "Why don't you help your brother with the sandwiches?" he repeated more quietly. Joe looked back at the staircase, moved his mouth as if he wanted to ask something, then nodded jerkily. He stumbled to his feet and walked, zombie-like, to the kitchen.

Ben watched him go, then switched his gaze to Paul. "What else should I know?"

Paul leaned over to refresh his coffee. "That your son is still alive? And that I don't see that changing in the foreseeable future?"

Ben nodded blankly. "At what cost, I wonder. I can't imagine how this might leave him - change him."

Paul studied him for a long time. "Are you saying it might have been better if he hadn't survived?"

"No! Of course not! Never!" The ferocity of his own tone shocked and relieved him at the same time. He had been wondering if he felt that way, just a little, deep inside. "I'm glad my son's alive. Thankful. I just wish…" Paul didn't interrupt him, and he stirred aimlessly at his coffee. "I wish it was - gone. Not true. That it didn't happen. I want it to not be true."

Paul didn't laugh, didn't even smile. "I remember feeling that way when I first started practicing medicine. Some of the things I saw were horrifying, permanent - I kept wanting the same thing. A way to stop them - to turn back time and make them not true."

Ben peered at him over his coffee. "And now?"

"Now." Paul put his cup back in its saucer, arranging the cup handle at a careful angle. "Well. What I came to realize is that that was just something we didn't get. We couldn't turn back time. But as a doctor, there were things I could do: repair some of the damage, relieve some of the pain, offer comfort. Keep watch and see that things heal properly." He looked at his hands a moment, then rubbed them together. "It's not much, maybe. But it's something. A way to go forward. Because that's the other thing we don't get - a choice about stopping the clock. We can't go back and we can't not go forward. So we have to figure out a way to go forward. One foot in front of the other usually works, I find."

Ben gave up pretending to drink his coffee and put his cup down, too. "I hope I can," he said quietly. "He needs me. They - " he nodded toward the kitchen, "need me. And here I sit - frozen. Even my brain feels frozen. My heart."

Paul nodded faintly, pressing his fingertips into his forehead, abruptly losing his impassive doctor's face and looking sad and torn himself. "You'll do fine. Your heart's not frozen."

"No?" Ben almost smiled in response. "Is that your professional opinion? How would you know that?"

Paul sat back in the leather chair, unrolling his sleeves and fussing with the cuffs. "Simple. Easy diagnosis. I just read the symptoms. Frozen hearts don't feel pain."