Hi, and here you go another chapter, we have just two more to go, so this story is rapidly winding down and we are almost at the end of it! Thank you all so, so much for your continued support. It means more than words can say and I hope that you enjoy this chapter and the final two. I will try and bring you them as soon as I can.

Disclaimer-Nothing is mine. Absolutely nothing, I am just taking these wonderful characters and playing around with them for a little while.

Please Read and Review and let me know what you think.

And next chapter is coming soon.

Guardians And Gladiators

Chapter 12-Figures In A Landscape

John and Zeb finally come full circle about John-Boy's shooting. Mary-Ellen gains a new perspective on things.

"John"

"Pa"

"He's alright then?"

"Acts like nothing has ever happened. Not sure if that's the drugs that he's on or if it's genuine. Doctors think he can come home in a couple of days and providing he doesn't aggravate the wound too much he should be fine"

"That's…wonderful John. Really. It is"

John nodded. He was looking at his hands and then finally up at Zeb.

"I suppose I should apologise"

"Livy put you up to that? Or your mother"

John sighed running a hand through his hair and instinctually Zeb wanted to reach out and stop him. It was a nervous tick John had picked up somewhere between turning fourteen and becoming a Dad for the first time and Zeb had always told him to stop before he pulled his hair out.

"No. Livy's in with him now and then she's going to go home and see the children. Ma and I haven't talked since she punched Boon clean out, which by the way was one of the best things that I have seen in my life"

"You and me both"

"Pa…pa will you sit down your making me nervous?"

Zeb sat down. He needed to anyway. He had ran up the mountain and down the mountain or so it felt like trying to help Martha Corrine and the mattress that she had given him had been homemade and there was no way a homemade mattress was ever more comfortable than one that was store bought. Besides with the hours that he had and Boon had been pulling during this whole thing and the lack of Esther sleep had been fair and far between and so that meant that his bones were creaking more and more in the last few days than they had done in the last few years. So he sat down. John was still looking at his hands as if he could see past the clean skin to where they had been covered in John-Boy's blood. Zeb understood, he had been doing the same thing recently. He wondered how long it would be before he didn't look at his hands and see his grandson's blood all over them.

"John"

"Pa I know I said somethings that were untrue and unfair. I'm sorry"

Zeb paused. A part of him wanted to push John, to find out why he had said those things, another part of him told him not to pick at the scab. There was only so much that he could say but then again…

"I...thank you" he said finally. "I accept your apology"

And then because it was pain upon pain and he had to say it because John had to understand.

"Please John, please don't imply that I don't care about that boy in that room. And please don't ever make assumptions about my relationship with Ben ever again. I know the two of you were close, but he was my son. And if you want perspective on what you've said then imagine Jason saying that to you"

John eyed him for a second and then nodded taking the rebuke on the chin. There was nothing else to say. Zeb didn't want to get into the point by point analysis of what was being said or what had been said or what was going to be said (God forbid) he just wanted this entire thing over with. He just wanted to put the past behind them and move on towards a future, a future where John-Boy went to college, the road was built, his grandchildren had lives that took them off the mountain and yet where they could always come back. He might be old but he wanted to grow older with his wife and if that meant that this became a nightmare that they didn't talk about for the rest of existence then that didn't matter much.

When Jason had walked in through the door that morning it had been him and Esther up trying to make breakfast for the little ones who were hurt, confused, scared and above all worried. Jason had come in collapsed at the table and had told them that John-Boy had made it through the night, that John had wanted to see him and then he'd asked for coffee. Esther had given it to him bustling around the kitchen and trying to do her best to hide her face and her emotion but Zeb had been married to the woman for over fifty years and he knew when she was struggling. Esther and he had been up with he chickens that morning both of them waiting to see if they would enter their own agony for the second time and when Jason (looking so much like John had done when he was that age) had told them that their prayers had been answered the emotion had hit them both in waves.

"Wade came to see him" Jason said attacking his eggs. When Esther had heard that he'd only ate a bit of dried toast given to him by one of the nurses that had been enough for his wife to start cooking. None of the other children were up and Jason looked dead on his feet stuffing eggs down his throat so that he could go to sleep had told them.

"Did he?"

"Said he was sorry. Said he never wanted a shoot out and to be fair Daddy believed him. Says the wicked witch of Walton's Mountain is packing but she's taking her sweet time. Vera's not happy and Boon just goes around stalking not lifting a finger to help"

"Really" Zeb said as Esther pointed her wooden spoon at Jason and overruled him.

"Don't speak ill of your elders boy. Regardless of how we might feel about them they are your kin and should be treated with some respect"

Jason opened his mouth to argue and then closed it with a yawn.

And that had been the end of that. He had gone up to bed and Zeb had taken the truck, screaming in protest at being used again down to the hospital in Charlottesville and that was how they got here.

"I am sorry Pa. I just…I shouldn't have asked him to stay, I knew it felt bad. It reminded me of the war and how we'd feel before we were due to go over and I just…I didn't listen to my instincts. Neither did Ben really. If we'd have had any sense we wouldn't have gone"

"You'd have had to go eventually" Zeb said and that was the truth. "And neither one of you were going to sit on your hands. It was hard enough for you both to do it before we went into the war"

John said nothing to that. It was the truth. There was nothing that he could say to it.

"I am sorry I put him in danger John. And I did. I knew it was going to come to a shootout. I knew that the woman was going to carry on until the end, hell maybe I encouraged her I don't know. I just…I was just there with her you know? With Henry and with her and just…trying to fight the good fight like we did when you were a baby. You wouldn't understand what those woods had been like back then, about how much you had to fight for every inch of land and food and firewood. It's not like it was now. But the second the blasting started I should have forced him back down the mountain."

"He wouldn't have gone without you" John said simply. "I could have come back up and ordered him to go but he'd have dug his heels in. He told me this morning before they took him in his breakfast that he had been chasing a story and because of that he'd had to keep going no matter what"

"Sounds like our John-Boy" Zeb said finally once he had gotten the power of speech back.

"He's forgiven them all" John said shaking his head. "It's such a Livy thing to do, no doubt she's gone and done the same thing. She says hatred is such a wasted emotion and that it does more harm than good but if truth be told…if truth be told I don't want to think about forgiveness just yet Pa. I want to hate them a little bit more. I want to hate them a little bit longer because if I hadn't been on my way up then God knows what would have happened and she knows that"

"She does"

"Pa—"

"Don't think she doesn't understand it John" Zeb said. He might understand his son's fury with Martha Corrine Walton, he might feel anger himself, but he did not subscribe to the general view that their family had been manipulated. Had they lost sight of the bigger picture in the middle of all of this? Yes? Had they been manipulated by kith and kin? Zeb didn't think that they did. But then again be as stubborn as you will be and the Waltons were a stubborn family and John was one of the stubbornest men alive. If John wanted to find a way to hate someone for just a little while longer then he would and there was nothing that he or anyone else could do to stop it.

"She's lost a husband, a baby, her daughter in law and now her home. She gets lost in the worst ways that a person can and none of those losses have been easy. That being said you are entitled to your own feelings. She's lost. She's now going to go have to move. And I for one am going to help her back"

John eyed him for a second and then decided that clearly this was not the fight that was worth having.

"I can't very well do anything to stop you Pa" he said levelly. "I don't want us to row over this woman, I don't want her getting in the way between us."

"Of course that won't happen" Zeb said as if the very idea was ridiculous. And to him it was.

"You are my son John, you said somethings, I did somethings and the good Lord has lucked down on us favourably and kept our boy with us. And that's all that we can do"

Maybe it was an oversimplification of things but Zeb didn't have the heart go to through everything again. John-Boy was going to live. That was the most important thing and this family, his family, his family of red-headed Waltons were going to survive it, intact and in one piece. In the grand scheme of things, in the great and grander world where families were being torn apart at the drop of a hat that was something.

Indeed that was more than something. That was everything.

John nodded and leaned back on his chair and Zeb's hand found his shoulder. John leaned into the touch and the two of them stayed there for a very long time.

No other words were needed.

Mary-Ellen had not gone to sleep the entire night. Elizabeth had been crying and Erin unable to deal with it all night had pulled the girl into her lap and then into her bed and Mary-Ellen had just shifted so that the two of them could come into her bed and sleeping in a small bed with a fourteen year old and a seven year old was not the easiest thing to do so Mary-Ellen didn't sleep.

She had heard Jason come up the stairs and she had met him on the landing just as the weak dawn ray suns were shining through the bedroom and turning Erin and Elizabeth's hair into molten gold and crimson fire and all those other cleaver words and descriptions that John-Boy would no doubt use if he could see them.

Maybe she'd ask him when he was home.

"Alive" Jason said seeing her face and she collapsed against the edge of the door breathing in and breathing out to try and stop the fact that she was going to be sick. She was not going to vomit over the floor at Jason's feet.

"Alive?"

"Awake and alive and already forgiving everyone and anyone that's been involved in this thing from the start. Wade turned up and John-Boy wanted to see him. Just like that"

"Sounds like John-Boy" Mary-Ellen said smiling.

"Yeah. Look I'm gonna get a couple of hours sleep. Can you help Grandma? Mamma's at the hospital still, she's gonna be there for a while and Grandpa's taking the truck back and I gotta sleep Mary-Ellen"

"Go" she said gesturing towards his bedroom and Jason nodded looking pathetically grateful. She watched him go and leaned back against the wall of the landing.

So John-Boy was alive.

She breathed in and breathed out again and then she scrubbed a hand over her mouth. She needed to get dressed and go downstairs to help but she just needed a moment to think.

When this was over she was going to give her Mamma a big hug. Mary-Ellen didn't have children, yet, but she knew that her Mamma must have been scared out of her mind. She kept seeing that look on her face and she kept seeing it when she was in the hospital, when she had been out on the porch. There had been nothing but that look and Mary-Ellen knew that if she had children she would move heaven and earth to make sure that she never had to look like that.

She sighed and moved to the bathroom even though she wanted nothing more than to try and sleep even if it was for ten minutes. But her muscles were too tight and she splashed some cold water on her face and knew that that would have to do.

She remembered her Daddy had once told her Momma that all children had to grow up and there was nothing that they could do to stop it, and she thought that she had learnt that lesson the hardest of all and with that she grabbed her toothbrush and began to get ready thinking that being an adult was a lot more complicated than being a child and that maybe…just maybe…her Momma had been right when she had said that one day she would wake up and adult and wish that she was a child again.

But she wasn't going to tell her Momma that just yet.

Mary-Ellen was a Walton, she had her pride after all.

And yeah, another and final, dive into Mary-Ellen's mind I should think. Next chapter is the penultimate chapter and will take place from Walton's Mountain for the first time, so expect a little bit of a time jump with the next one. I will post as soon as.

Next Chapter-John-Boy comes home and he knows that there is a story to write here. He just has to figure out how to put it on paper. Penultimate Chapter of this story.