NOW:

Adam's bedroom was a monument to the past.

Everything was how it had been left; not a single thing had been touched, or moved in years—from the oil lamp on the table next to the door, the empty water basin on the dresser, or the book Adam had been reading before his sudden departure. It still sat on the bed stand, the sliver of worn ribbon he had been using as a bookmark faithfully marking where he had last left off, Elizabeth's music box and photograph sitting by, keeping it company throughout the years. Though nothing had been moved, that was not to say the room had been neglected outright. Hop Sing still cleaned it with regularity, and Ben and his two oldest sons had all spent their fair share of sleepless nights sitting on the bed and staring out the window, wondering about Adam, where he was and what he was doing. These were not occurrences that were openly spoken about or shared, rather something that was just silently understood. Ben doubted his sons knew he had fallen captive to the pull of such nights; still, it was impossible for someone else to enter Adam's bedroom without him being privy to it.

Located at the furthest end of the hallway upstairs, its entry point was directly across from the doorway of Ben's bedroom. When both doors were left open by whoever was inside, eavesdropping could not be helped. Privacy was not much of a concern when the house had been built, nor had it been in more recent years. In the former, Ben had been a widower and Adam a young boy, and in the latter, Ben had still been a widower and Adam had been gone. Privacy may have been more of an issue in the years which passed in between the time when the house was built and the day Adam walked away from the familiarity of its shielding walls. In the handful of blessed years which followed Ben's marriage to Marie, during which he had been careful to ensure their bedroom door and those of both his sons were closed at night. Neither the location of Hoss's nor eventually Joe's room warranted any real concern that anything unseemly might be overheard. They were far enough away for such things to go unnoticed. Not Adam's room, though. It had always been a little too close.

As a boy, once so used to sleeping beneath a sky overflowing with stars and much closer sleeping arrangements, Adam had wanted to be close to his father. The proximity of the rooms and ease of simply opening a pair of doors, a stable, quiet comfort in the darkest of nights. As he grew into a man, Adam never once had solicited either one of his brothers for a trade. Though his door was never left ajar, there was still comfort to be found in their proximity, it seemed.

Standing next to the window, looking at the midnight sky, Ben could not help wondering if this was a sentiment that would endure, or if another more recent one would remain stubbornly fixed in its place.

"Adam's gonna be angrier than a hornet when he comes to and finds himself here," Hoss had said early on.

There was no malice or judgement lingering behind the warning; it was merely a statement-of-fact that could not be denied. Yes, Adam would be angry to awaken and find himself in his father's home, back in a bedroom which left such little space between them, but at least he would be awake, which was a feat he had not accomplished yet. Doc Martin had warned them of the precariousness of the situation, the severity of Adam's wound, but the grimness of such a thing had been all-but-lost in the moment the words had been rendered, other worries rising from the sickness which had settled into the pit of Ben's stomach pushing that one from the forefront of his mind. He wanted to get Adam out of Virginia City. No, he needed to get Adam out of town, away from the people who assumedly had no intention of respecting his presence, authority, or life. From the gaggle of townsfolk still trading whispers and stories about things they knew nothing about.

Moving Adam had not been easy. Transporting him from Doc Martin's to the Ponderosa had taken a fair amount of time. Carefully packing him into the blanket-lined buckboard, Martin had warned them to move slowly, so slowly they had gone. Sending the rest of the family to the ranch house ahead of them, Hoss and Ben had directed the horses pulling the buckboard to walk at near a glacial pace as they carefully guarded their precious cargo. It had taken them hours to finally arrive, their darkened path lit solely by the light of a full moon. It had taken another hour to get Adam upstairs and settled, and then it had taken a few more hours to get Lil, Noah, and Peggy properly settled—another feat that proved unsuccessful.

Disconcerted by the chain of events and visibly distressed by the drastic change in his bedtime routine, Noah clung to his security blanket with increased vigor and erupted into a bout of silent sobbing that could not be calmed. Ben had trouble believing the young tot understood in real terms the seriousness of the situation, how close to death his father really was, but he was certain Noah knew; the agitation and fear of the elders surrounding him was felt. Wrapping his grandson up in the blanket that never strayed far from the tot's shoulders, Ben cradled Noah close, holding him and rocking him in a way that had once calmed his oldest son. Giving into sheer exhaustion, Noah's tears would eventually wane, though he would remain clingy and needy in the upcoming days. He cried a lot, demanded to be held nearly every moment of the day, and refused to sleep alone.

Peggy did not seem to sleep at all. Taking up residence in a chair next to Adam's bed, she would not be persuaded to stray far. It took some convincing but Lil and Ben eventually succeeded in getting her to bathe and change clothes. Bloodstained apparel permanently discarded, she donned a pair of jeans and a button-up shirt lent to her by Jamie, and sat cross-legged at her post. Bare feet curled up beneath her, she brushed her fingers through her long, wet hair and braided it idly, her absent gaze fixed on her wounded pa. She did not shed more tears over the situation, rather she seemed to be embracing the overwhelming, weary numbness that always seemed to follow on the heels of trauma and tragedy. Ben knew from experience that it was not wise to continue in such a way for long, lest it seep into one's heart and soul and impact their outlook permanently. He wanted to comment on it; he wanted to take the girl in his arms and beg her to yell, scream, or start crying again. But he did not. Who was he to deny her even the slightest of comforts?

Peggy did not speak much, and she was emotionless when she did. "Do you know what I was thinking about?" she whispered, prompting Ben to turn away from the window as she broke the silence that had existed between them for so long.

"What?" he asked.

"What Doc said this last time he came."

Predicting the bleakness of the impending conversation, Ben nearly sighed. Doc Martin had come and gone daily to check in on his patient, his positive prognosis for Adam's recovery diminishing a little each day—not that it had ever been glaringly optimistic in the first place. It was not lost on Ben how scrupulous Martin had become with his assessments; each word he used was so carefully chosen. He was careful not to instill false hope, careful not to foster too much fear. They would not know the extent of Adam's condition until he awoke—if he awoke.

Peggy nodded at Adam. "He's not getting any better."

"He's not getting any worse."

"It's been days."

"It's only been three days. That is not a very long time."

"According to who?"

"According to whom," Ben quietly corrected. He was not certain what he was seeking by doing such a thing. Maybe he just wanted to lighten the mood and make the girl feel momentarily better. When Peggy looked at him, he was not certain if his response had made him the focus of her attention, or if something else had. "He's going to be okay," he added, his voice no more than a low whisper.

Brows furrowing, Peggy's face contorted with sadness as she reached for her braid and began twisting it tightly around her fingertips. It was beginning to come undone, some of the hairs pulled completely loose, left frazzled and frizzy from repeated, absent abuse. "How can you be so sure?"

Ben did not have to think of how to respond. "Because I am his father," he said. If he was not sure his son would live then how could anyone else be? "I had a hand in how he came into this world, and I want a say in how he leaves it."

"Wanting him to live isn't enough."

"Who says?"

"History."

"Whose?"

"Yours. Mine. Ours. You can try to hold on to people as hard as you can, they'll still find ways to slip from your grasp. If death wants somebody, they're gonna take them. You can try to fight it all you want; it won't change the way things are gonna be."

"He's not going to die."

Ben's tone was firmer, his statement harsher than he intended or wanted it to be, but such a thing was not without benefit. Looking back at Adam, Peggy did not pursue the conversation, leaving him to contend with his awakened doubt.

What if Adam did die? What would happen then? To Peggy and Noah? To Lil? To Ben's other three sons and himself? Would the extended family remain together, or, without the one person linking them, would they be torn apart? What would happen to his grandchildren then? Would Lil take them back to San Francisco? Would Ben stand in her way if she wanted to? Or would they become like the respective elders of the Mahn and Clarke families feuding over their grandchildren because they were the only remaining remnants of the children they had lost?

Shaking his head, he dismissed the thought. There was little point in speculating about such things. It was best to focus on the present and deal with things as they currently were, because currently Adam was still very much alive. He may not have been conscious or moving, but he was still breathing and that was far from nothing. Breathing was far from dead. Lying immobile, Adam was decidedly not that. His breaths were shallow but steady. His complexion was ashen in comparison to the dark hair of his mustache and beard and the white bedsheets pulled up to his chest.

He had spiked a fever just after arriving home. Beads of perspiration had seeped off his skin, soaking through his shirt and pants. Defiled with blood stains and bullet holes, his shirt was not salvaged. The pants did not fare much better and were a small loss. With Hoss's and Hop Sing's careful assistance, Ben undressed Adam; he gasped as he looked upon the state of his son's body. He was still fit, as lean and muscular as he ever was. His fresh bullet wounds had been covered by a thick bandage that was wrapped around his lower abdomen and encircled his back. His exposed skin was marked with an array of scars his father did not recall or recognize, the largest of which were immediately decipherable as old bullet wounds. He had once been shot in the chest and on his upper left side, the lesions of such injuries had long since healed into clumps of pink and puckered skin that would continue to fade given more time. The scars were appalling; they declared the seriousness of the aged wounds. These were not the kind of injuries a man usually survived to speak of or have others question him about.

Ben could not help wondering when his son had sustained such wounds and under what circumstances they had been endured. Could they be dismissed as consequences of the danger of his chosen profession? Or were they indicative of something more?

Hoss's expression mirrored his father's concern, though they did not share a word as they gently redressed Adam in a nightshirt and settled him into bed. Ben had no trouble falling into old habits; still, it did feel wrong to be caring for his son in such a personal and unsolicited way—especially since Adam was unconscious and not able to speak or advocate for himself. It had to be done, which was why Ben had done it, feigning a certitude he did not truly feel. Surely, if Adam were conscious, he would not have wanted his father caring for him like this, making himself privy to the scars marking his skin, physical proof that the years that had passed had not been without great struggle, pain, and difficulty. Certainly, if Adam had a say, he would have wanted someone else's help, or no help at all. Neither of those were plausible options now, and, given Adam's new injuries, they would not be for quite some time. Like it or not, when he awoke, Adam was going to have to become comfortable with accepting his father's help, and Ben would have to grow reaccustomed to offering it in ways that would make such a thing palatable.

"You know what else I've been thinking about?" Peggy eventually asked, her voice sounding tired and hollow.

"What?"

"The last time I spent a great deal of time sitting in this room, next to this bed. Adam wasn't my Pa yet, but he was still gonna be."

"That was a very long time ago."

"Mommy was going to marry Adam, and then we were all going to live happily ever after, just like an ending in a fairytale. He was her prince charming and she was his damsel in distress. He was building her a house, but it was built of straw and the big, bad wolf came and blew the whole thing down."

Ben looked at her, his face etched with deep lines of concern. Had the girl been driven mad by exhaustion and strain? "I do not recall the house falling down," he said carefully. "I don't recall a wolf either."

"I supposed you wouldn't."

"Why wouldn't I?"

"Because you're the shepherd who let it infiltrate your flock, and then you pretended to be blind when it began butchering the ones you love."

Ben suspected they were no longer discussing fairytales.

"Adam is the one who fell down," she said. "Of course, I don't need to remind you of that, because you know. You were there, and we were all here, hoping and praying he would walk again while everything we thought we knew started to shift around us. I felt my life change, and I think Adam felt his change too." She looked at Ben, the end of her braid coiled tightly around her fingers, cutting off her circulation and turning the tips an angry, red hue. "Did you feel it?" she whispered, her voice sounding slightly manic.

Crouching down before her, he emancipated her captive fingers, and gently moved her braid to safely hang down her back. Absently, she reached for it again, seemingly needing to hold on to the sparse comfort it provided. He interrupted the motion, taking her hand in his own and holding it tight. She looked at him then, her eyes wide, full of anguish and unshed tears. She was exhausted, he could see that so clearly now, fatigue guiding her every thought and word.

"Did you feel it?" she whispered again. "The precise moment when what you thought you would never lose began slipping from your grasp?"

"Yes," Ben said. He could not account for allowing the word to pass his lips; it seemed to have exited at its own accord. He could not deny it; in fact, he would not deny he had felt it, that dreaded moment when the life he had grown familiar with had begun to change so irrevocably. It had started in an instant, the unraveling of his life, and it had ceased just as quickly. It had begun with Adam's fall and it had ended with Ben's words. The horrible, vile things he had said to his son, while never once bothering to defend Adam from the damaging opinions of others the one time when his son really needed him to.

"And now here we are again," Peggy said. "Hoping and praying while the world begins to shift again, because the question isn't really what's going to happen if he dies. It's what's going to happen if he lives. Something will change, because it can no longer stay the same."

Something had already changed, Ben thought morosely. Or is it that all these years it was the one thing that refused to change? If Roy Coffee was to be believed, and Ben knew that he was, then that meant Laura Dayton's diary had been unearthed. The word written on the wall of the sheriff's office and Adam's still form in the bed a few paces away were proof that old rumors still held a great deal of clout. They could neither ignore nor run from the past any longer. None of them could, because somebody shot Adam. They declared him a murderer, an accusation that was penned with his blood. Adam did not fight when his assailant came calling; he did not pull his gun. It was a terrible fact to contend with, a haunting detail that once shared openly among the townsfolk would defile Adam's reputation further. What kind of a man didn't defend himself? What kind of a man took a bullet without reaching for his own gun? A guilty one—or at least, Ben knew that was what others would think, but what he himself thought was something else entirely, because Adam did not want to come back to Virginia City. He knew the town would hold nothing but trouble for him. He had known that, and he had returned anyway.

Adam came back. Back to a town full of people who did not know him, or had never really known him in the first place. Back to his father who was too foolish to treat him anything other than poorly. Back to his two younger brothers and the third who had been added in the interim, all of which did not know him the way they once had or as well as they wanted to. Adam came back because the life he had found was over. His wife and his son were dead. He didn't come back for himself. He came back for his kids. He came back to give Noah a chance at a different life, one that in the darkest of days could seem so much better than the future Adam thought he could provide on his own—or at all. Adam had come back, but he had never intended to stay. He had never intended to remain.

Though he and Adam had never spoken about any of these things, his son had never felt safe or comfortable enough in his company to open the crypt of intentions and secrets he held close to his heart, Ben was privy to them anyway. The truth had always been there, quietly existing in every tiny thing Adam had said and all the things he had not. It would have been easier to decipher earlier on had Ben had the courage to think and sit with the past. But he had not, because he was not yet ready to talk openly about Ohio, John and Will, and Adam and himself. He was not ready to look upon his own actions and compare them to those of his father or his son.

It was impossible to consider Adam's actions without thinking of his own; it was downright infeasible to think about his son's strengths without unearthing the memories of his own weaknesses. Taking place decades and miles apart, these moments had nothing to do with each other, and yet they were hopelessly intertwined. Ben's past had everything to do with anything that happened in the time after Laura Dayton married Will, and how Ben dealt with it—or did not deal with it rather. Thank God for Adam, though. For having the courage to stand alone and do what he did. He really was a better man than his father would ever be, because six years ago he had found the courage to do for Peggy what Ben should have done for Will after Ohio. And if Ben had found the courage, then maybe things could have been different. Maybe Will would have had a chance to become something other than what he was. Maybe Ben would not have felt the need to defend him, or take responsibility for him—or cover up his flaws. Maybe he would have seen the situation clearly from the beginning; he and Adam could have stood on the same side and it could have been him and his son against the world instead of just his son.

Maybe it all could have been different. But it was not.

Both Will and Adam had left. Adam had come back, and now he was lying in bed, slowly succumbing to his wound. He could die, or he could live, and there was nothing his father could do. He could neither change the past nor control the future. All he could do was stop running from the truth.

"Peggy," he said. "We need to talk about your mother's diary." Lord help him, he knew this was not the proper moment for such revelations but it simply could not be put off. It was important Peggy understand the truth about the book and her pa. It was crucial she not be deceived by her mother's well-told lies and the rumors floating around town.

Peggy's shoulders and expression sank. "I already know about the damn diary," she tiredly said, wiping her freehand over her tear streaked cheeks.

"You do?"

"Of course, I do. I'm not stupid."

"How did you—? When did you—?"

"Sally Jenkins had it; she showed it to me."

"You read it?" Ben was horrified.

Peggy's expression twisted with disgust. "God, no," she said. "I mean, a little of it, yeah, just to make sure it was real, that it was really Mommy's handwriting. I guess you could say I was disappointed, or relieved depending on what it is you want to believe. It really was my mother's hand that penned that book."

"Which one were you?"

"Which what?"

"Disappointed or relieved?"

"Disappointed," Peggy admitted glumly. "I think I always knew Mommy had been flighty, a bit needy and dimwitted. I just never wanted to know she had been a liar too."

"Oh, Peggy," Ben whispered, wanting nothing more than to soothe her.

"Don't try to make me feel better by saying she wasn't those things, because I know she was. My mother was a fool. She hated my father, because he didn't love her, not really. He wasn't a good man. When I was little, I didn't know that." She looked at Adam. "I didn't yet have a good basis of comparison, so I couldn't see it. I thought he was the best daddy in the world, and now I know he wasn't. Mommy she saw that then, that's why she acted the way that she did. I think when he died, she was scared but also relieved, because that meant she could be free. She could find somebody who would make her truly happy. The only problem was that when you spend so much time with someone who doesn't treat you properly, it affects how you expect other people to treat you too. It messes with your ability to distinguish between what you want and what you need. A beau comes along and treats a woman kindly, treats her child kindly too. He cares for them both, maybe he doesn't express his fondness in direct ways, but he expresses it just the same. He gives the child a pony, teaches her to care for it; he looks after the ranch in ways the woman can't on her own. These are all things that should be taken note of, but they're not, because the woman has a certain idea in her head of how things should look, how they should be. She thinks about how the things in front of her aren't really how she sees them in her mind. That makes her unhappy, it makes her second guess what is and what could be. Then one day, her beau doesn't show up to a 4th of July picnic and another man steps in to take his place. He's handsome and charismatic. He says things in ways her beau does not. The seeds of doubt have been planted, and they begin to grow because she tends to them. This new man becomes her basis of comparison, the one which causes her to judge her beau a little too harshly."

"Your mother loved Will, Peggy," Ben said simply. It brought him no pleasure to say it; it was simply the truth. Adam had not loved Laura; Laura had not loved him. There was no purpose in pretending otherwise.

"No, she wanted Will. She only realized later she needed Adam. Don't you understand? By the time she realized that, it was too late. She had married another man. The one that seemed so good from a distance but up close was worse than she could have ever imagined. She was stuck. That's why she wrote the diary, because the only way she could have Adam was in her head, and she needed to have him somehow; she needed to hold onto him, because she knew she was safe with him. I felt safe with him too, which is why I used to go out of my way to run into him, to follow him, or have our paths cross. He tried to put distance between us, but I closed it so fast. I tracked him down every time. I needed to be close to him; I needed him to protect me. I tried so many times to tell him the truth about what was happening at home, but each time I couldn't seem to find the right words. I kept trying, though, because I knew that once he knew he would protect me. I knew he would come and take me far away from that place. Then one day he finally did."

"And then what happened?"

"We went to San Francisco. We found a place with Eddie and Lil. It was hard at first. Adam and I, we both struggled letting go of the things we knew we needed to leave behind. He left for a while. He was gone for months; there was a time I was afraid I'd never see him again. Then, one day, he came back, and, in a way, he began building a new house, the home we had when we were together. Charlie was born. We all loved that little boy so much that I'd thought our hearts would just burst, and then later Noah came along. Things were good. They were so good for a long time. And then…"

Eyes widening with horror, she paused. She didn't seem to be looking at anything in the room, rather her attention appeared to be rooted in the past.

"And then?" Ben anxiously prompted.

She looked at him, tears filling her eyes. "And then the big, bad wolf came back," she whispered thickly. "He came back, and he showed us that the home we had built was made of sticks; he huffed and he puffed and he blew the whole thing down. H-he wrecked everything, and now we c-can't have it back. Oh, God, w-we'll never be the same, because n-nothing is how it s-should be. Nothing is—" Expression crumbling, she inhaled a taxed breath, expelled it, and succumbed to her tears.

Standing on his knees, Ben gathered her into his arms and held her tight as she violently sobbed, crying herself into an eventual, fitful sleep. He held onto her for a while before picking her up and carrying her to a room where she could rest comfortably and extendedly in a safe, warm bed. Returning to Adam's room, he took up post in Peggy's chair where he hoped and prayed that Adam would survive and waited for something to change.

TBC