BEFORE:

Adam stood alone in the darkness.

Taking another deep pull of his whiskey bottle, he eyed the headstone in front of him. He had experienced trouble locating it in the dark. The moon and the stars, it seemed, had decided not to gift him with their presence tonight. He had been forced to walk the cemetery for nearly an hour, his memory of its confines betraying him, leaving him wandering in an aimless circle as he took drink after drink of the bottle of whiskey he obtained after hastily retreating from his grandfather's house.

He had not meant to leave the house as quickly as he had, without taking time to grab his hat, coat, and gun; it was just that after hearing what the Captain had to say, remaining in place simply was no longer an option. He could not bear to look at his grandfather any longer. He did not want to be where he was. He did not want to know what he now knew.

"Your father," Captain Abel Stoddard had said, "he is not the person you think he is, and because of that, neither are you. There are just some people who walk this earth that are not made to sire families. There are some men that should never be trusted to rear children."

"Why didn't Pa tell me?" Adam mournfully asked the headstone. He wanted to be angry at Pa, but his anger had left him, leaving only sadness in its wake. "Why couldn't he trust me enough to tell me the truth? Had I known then I would have…?" Hesitating, he took another pull of his whiskey bottle as he wondered what exactly he would have done.

Would he have stayed in Nevada? Living under his father's guidance and thumb? Would he have left Peggy in Will's company? Abandoning her to face his harshness alone? Of course not. He would not have done either thing. So, what did it matter that Pa had not ever seen fit to tell him the truth?

Only it did matter.

It mattered a little too much, because standing in front of a stone etched with his mother's name, Adam knew being privy to the truth would have changed everything. Maybe he still would have disliked Will and taken Peggy away from him. Maybe he still would have been forced to leave his father's home. But the way in which both things occurred could and would have been so much different than they had been.

He and Pa could have stood on the same side rather than fighting each other. Shit, they could have been more than just father and son—they could have been friends. Real friends. Adam could have stood by his father in the same way he had once stood by Ed Payson and countless others throughout the years. Had Adam known where his father had come from, what kind of house he had grown up in, or what kind of man his paternal grandfather had been, he would have understood Pa's anger an occasional avoidance better; he would have understood why finding Will and enveloping him in the security of a loving family had meant so much.

"Your father's father kept a tidy house," the Captain's words rose from Adam's memory to taunt him vexatiously. "Or, at least, that is the polite way to describe such things. Joseph, your other grandfather, liked things a certain way. He was structured, disciplined, and harsh, or so I was told by Benjamin later. The way I understand it, your uncle, John, left your grandfather's house when he was thirteen. Your father followed him three years later when he reached the age of twelve. Joseph's brutality is what pushed them out; the line between discipline and maltreatment had been crossed one too many times. Although, it was no secret to the community that John Cartwright mishandled his wife and sons. That man was a persecutor; sadly, it did not seem to matter how small the crime one had committed was, the punishment was eternally the same and entirely too excessive. Frankly, your father and his brother were fortunate to escape his household with their bodies and faculties intact. He still bears the scars of that time, your father. Some trespasses are destined to remain carved into one's memory, constricting their heart and actions until the end of time. That was why your father was so careful with and protective of you and your brothers. It is the pain of his own past that both strengthens and hinders him as a father."

"He should have told me," Adam repeated to the headstone, his words emerging from his mouth slightly slurred. He had drunk nearly his whole bottle of whiskey and that coupled with the glass of brandy he had consumed in the Captain's company, he was quite inebriated. But he did not care, because nothing seemed to matter more than the things his grandfather had said.

"When I say your grandfather was a harsh man, I say so knowing that I am a harsh man, too," the Captain had said. "So, you can imagine the level of brutality we are speaking about if I am the one relaying such statements to you. You can imagine the kind of home that would prompt a young man to believe he was better off living as a beggar on the streets than in the company of his own parents."

And though he did not want to, Adam could. At his age, he was acutely aware of the evils of men; the damage one could inflict upon a child who was trapped in their home. There was all manner of physical and mental abuse; the kinds of things that made Adam's skin crawl, his stomach turn, and his heart sting. At Will's hand, Peggy had been the victim of some of those things. As a child, Will had suffered through similar treatment. As children, Ben and John had endured so much more than the rest of them combined.

"As a boy, your father fled the violence of your grandfather's home, intent on joining his brother in Ohio, but he did not have the means to get from here to there. He had left home in a flurry, panic and fear driving his need to run, his feet taking him as far away from that house as he could get before his father realized he was missing and utilized his resources to locate and drag him back home. Like I said, lad, you are not the first person in your family to don a badge. Your grandfather was a very formidable and powerful man; he was a constable and very well respected in certain circles. Many knew of his brutal nature, but no one dared to stand between him and his family. Who were the rest of them to tell a lawman what to do, or how to raise his children? Especially when they knew there was nothing to be done to help those boys. Whatever allegations surfaced were always silenced. Joseph had too many allies; the badge he wore protected him whilst failing his children."

At twelve years-old and without any other alternative, Ben Cartwright had escaped his father's home. Without the means to travel to Ohio, he became a stowaway on a clipper ship, seeking respite on the sea where he would remain for four years straight, floating about in the lawless waters far beyond his father's power and grasp.

"When I discovered him on my ship, I wanted to be angry," the Captain had said. "But I too knew of his father; I had heard the stories and I saw the marks upon his skin. I knew I had a choice to make. Sending him back to his father might have seemed like the right thing to do, but it was not. Not morally, at least. I took pity on that boy; I protected him until he was old enough to protect himself. For years, Benjamin did not step foot off that boat when we docked in this city. The crew was not allowed to make any mention of his name or existence, lest his whereabouts be discovered by his father before he reached age. I should have sent him to his brother, but I taught him about the sea instead. I never was gifted with a son. It was as though fate was trying to right this wrong. I grew fond of him, and he grew into a strong, exemplary man. Over time, his dream of Ohio became a dream of something else, of not water but land for as far as the eye could see, a sprawling landscape filled with fresh air and towering trees. Like so many who would travel that path, your father had fallen in love with the notion of traveling west, and then he fell in love with my dear Elizabeth."

Though Adam knew it did not come easily, eventually the Captain had given Pa his blessing to court his only daughter. Of course, the courtship had not been without conflict and complications. The Captain's forced retirement and subsequent difficulties had certainly caused some uproar. The days which followed had brought with it a span of forced sobriety for the Captain, the beginnings of the chandlery the man would establish with his son-in-law, and the swift trading of wedding vows between Elizabeth and Ben. They had not been married for more than two weeks when they announced they were expecting a child. Adam realized he had been that child; he realized the implication, too. What he had yet to realize was enough nerve to open the letter he had hastily shoved in his pocket.

It was from his father, and it was thick. An apology or accusation that Pa had penned during his extended visit and then entrusted to the Captain to give to Adam should he ever return east. Adam was not sure he wanted to open and read it. He was unsure of his ability to do so. What was the purpose of reading Pa's words now? It would not change anything. Or maybe it would change everything, and that was why Adam was so hesitant to become privy to the message inside.

He did not know whether he should be angry or relieved. His father may not have searched or sent a Pinkerton man to find him, but he did care that he was gone. He had traveled back east where he remained with the Captain for four months. What his father was looking for or expecting, Adam did not know. His father had stayed with the Captain for months; Adam knew he himself would linger for much longer than he already had.

"New England is awfully pretty this time of year," Ed Payson had said. "Go there, Adam, and maybe, you'll discover some things about yourself you don't already know. "

And now that Adam had the beauty of the surrounding landscape was lost on him. Like so many other things were lost to him now. His grandfather had spoken at length about his father's past, but he had failed to mention anything about his grandson's stay in Ohio. Explaining so much about the events that had haunted Ben, he had not been able to provide further clarification of an event that haunted his grandson.

Ohio had become yet another thing Adam did not like to think about. He still experienced the occasional nightmare about the time, though he had little context with which to interpret them. For all he knew, these dreamlike events had been amplified or were downright fictitious, created by his subconscious with the tiniest sliver of benign memory. He tried hard to convince himself that this was the case, however, Will's treatment of Peggy coupled with what he now knew about his paternal grandfather made such a thing difficult to accept. Will had learned to express himself with violence by someone; it stood to reason that person had been his father; and John had been violent toward Will then there was little doubt his nephew would have been saved from such treatment. But if that was the case, then why did Adam have no real memory of that time? Why did he not hold on to trauma in the same way in which the rest of his family seemed to?

Because getting lost in the past did nothing to help one navigate the future, a small voice whispered in the depths of his mind. Even as a small boy, he had always known that painful events simply did not have to exist if they were never thought of. And there really was so much he had decided never to think of. He simply could not be the man that he was if he were ever allowed to dwell on the past and how much things had hurt. He had not allowed himself to do such a thing before, and he would not now.

Looking at his mother's tombstone, he drained what was left of his whiskey, then held the empty bottle by its neck, wanting so badly to smash it against the ground, but unwilling to deface and disrespect Elizabeth's final resting place in such a way.

"He should have told me," he whispered firmly.

"He should have," a familiar voice emerged from the darkness. "But he didn't."

Startled, Adam squinted through the night, struggling to discern where the voice had come from. Had he imagined it? Or was it real? And what did it mean for him either way? He took an unconscious step back, the bottle falling from his grasp as his legs swayed and he struggled to stay upright. He was beyond drunk; his vision swam as a man emerged from the distant darkness.

Blinking, Adam did not trust his impaired sight. "Is it really you?" he asked.

He did not receive an answer to his question. As soon as it passed from his lips, he was struck and knocked from his feet. Falling hard, he forcefully clipped his forehead on the edge of his mother's tombstone, and the world around him went dark.

Embedded in a sea of darkness, he dreamed of utter blackness. As time passed around him, he was aware of nothing at all.

"Come on, darlin'," a woman's voice suddenly said, reaching into the depths of the darkness to rouse and bring him back to the light. "It's time to wake up now. You don't want to sleep through all the fun."

With consciousness feeling just beyond his grasp, Adam struggled to find the energy or willpower to open his eyes. His head pulsated with immense pain; radiating down his neck and into his shoulder blades, it promised to endure for the foreseeable future. His stomach was turning so wildly it seemed inevitable that he would eventually become physically sick. Whatever he lay on felt soft beneath him, and whatever lay on top of him felt too heavy to allow him to move. Disoriented and confused, it took ages for him to realize he was laying on a bed; even longer than that to realize that the woman who was speaking was sitting on top of him.

"If you open your eyes," she said throatily as she smoothed her finger across his beard, "I'll give you a big surprise. I have such big plans for you."

Her breath felt hot against his ear. The overpowering sweet smell of her perfume turned his stomach further as she nuzzled his neck, leaving a trail of kisses from his chin to his collarbone.

"I heard it's your birthday," she continued. "Your brother told me to sing to you, and then to make you feel so good that you'll be the one singing to me. He said you have a fine singing voice; I think I'd like to hear it for myself. And trust me, darling, ain't nobody in this world as good at celebrating a man the way I am, so you're gonna want to wake up. You don't want to miss out on the things I'm going to do to you."

Managing to open his eyes into narrow slits, Adam closed them immediately. Bright starbursts erupted in his vision, intensifying the already insatiable pounding of his head. Though the room was dim, almost negligibly brightened by a single low burning oil lamp, it was too illuminated to be tolerated in his current condition.

"My brother?" he whispered, his voice gritty, tight, and laced with confusion. Something about the detail was not right; although, he could not seem to understand what it was. He had brothers, of that he was certain, but what was so wrong about hearing mention of one now? Where were they? Where was he? "My brother is here?"

"Uh-huh," the woman affirmed. Sitting up, she rested her weight on his pelvis and then rocked slightly back and forth. Her fingers found the buttons of his shirt and began to slowly undo them. "Handsome fella if you ask me. Of course, I am a sucker when it comes to the tall, dark, and mysterious types. Oh, but don't worry yourself about the things I have to say about him. I'm sure I'll have plenty of good things to say about you, too."

Lifting his arms, Adam blindly reached for her hands, grasped, and then held them as tightly as he could. But his grip was as weak as the rest of his body. Regaining power over her hands easily, she resumed her indigent roaming and rocking. He wanted to tell her to stop, but he could not seem to find the right words. They were beyond him, each slipping from his grasp rather than his tongue. Something about what was happening was terribly wrong; he struggled to identify what it was. What was the harm in allowing her to continue? Of allowing himself to react to her purposeful and competent maneuvers?

Because something was wrong about it—even if he could not seem to understand what or why. He should not have been in her company. He should not be feeling as sick as he was. What had happened to make him so impaired? Who was she? Where were they and why had they been paired? Surely, he had not asked for her companionship; he had not been the one to invite her into this room.

Had he?

"You're a good-looking man, too," she said. "Mysterious, dark, tall, and handsome, even though I haven't seen you stand upright and there's blood disguising half your face. Oh, but you are tall." She grinded her pelvis against his. "From the way things are shaping up, I'd say you're sizable, too. Open your eyes, baby, let me get a nice good look at you. Are your eyes gonna be dark like your brother's? Or are you going to dazzle me with a different color? Maybe make me think I've fallen in love."

Brows furrowing with concern, Adam barely registered her extended diatribe; his befuddled mind could not seem to move past a very bothersome word. "Blood?" he whispered. "I have blood on my face?"

"On your hands too," she affirmed. "A lot of it. It's run down your face and neck, ruined that nice shirt of yours. Although, I wouldn't worry too much about the bleeding itself, if I were you. Wounds to the head tend to bleed a lot; they always seem to look a lot worse than they actually are. And when we're done, you can clean yourself up real nice. I promise, you'll feel better than you have in a long while."

With the way his head was pounding, Adam was not sure he believed her assessment of his wound. He was not sure he should believe her word on anything. Who was she, and why should she be trusted? How had he gotten where he was and why was he here? He did not know the answers to these questions any more than he could find the energy to ask them.

He groaned painfully as she shifted her weight once more, the sound still emerging from his throat as she leaned over and claimed his mouth with her own. Her breath was horrendous, her kisses a little too needy and hard. Embedding her fingers into his hair, she tugged it slightly—something he may have found pleasurable had everything else not been so immensely off putting. His stomach turned with renewed force; he could not control his body's reaction to her.

The contents of his stomach rushed up his esophagus too quickly to be stopped. Summoning what little energy he had, he pushed her off and away from him, sat up, leaned over the side of the bed, and began retching. The violent sickness seemed to last for eternity; when it was finally over he was spent. With his lax upper body still hung over the side of the bed, he could not summon the strength to move or open his eyes. The power of his indomitable vomiting spell had left his cheeks hot and streaked with tears of exertion; they trickled off his face to fall upon the splattering of vomit on the floorboards. Neck and shoulders screaming with agony, his head pounded with renewed force. He felt dizzy, lightheaded, and oddly disconnected from his surroundings as his awareness slowly began to fade.

"Well, that's terribly disappointing," the woman said, her voice sounding incredibly far away. "Who exactly do you think is going to clean this mess up? I may be the kind of woman a man spends hard earned money on, but I'm certainly no nursemaid. Your brother warned you weren't going to be feeling so well when you woke up, but this is a little more than I was warned about…"

Though she continued speaking, Adam was beyond listening or caring about what she was saying. He was beyond caring about much of anything other than the pain of his body and the only option he had to soothe it. He did not fight to remain awake and lucid—if he ever truly was—and unconsciousness overtook him quickly, returning him to a darkness void of dreams.

He did not know how long he remained unconscious. He awoke with no concept of time. The room was shadow filled. The oil lamp had long burned itself dry, but there was a sliver of daylight creeping in through a crack in the curtains, casting a slender line of light through the center of the room.

Even so, Adam was not anxious to open his eyes. The pain in his head seemed to have calmed to a dull ache, but his neck and shoulders were tight and sore. He lifted his hand, intent on gently probing his fingers over his forehead to assess his wound, only to find it had been bandaged. He did not have time to consider the oddness of this detail before he was distracted by the oddness of everything else. He was naked underneath the blanket; there was a weight of another person next to him on the bed; and the mattress was wet beneath them. Rising to hold himself up on his elbows, he squinted through the dimness of the room, his eyes seeing the dark stain marking the bed sheets, but his brain not understanding the significance of the liquid, or how it had come to pepper his upper body, arms, and hands. His hands were bloody; his fingertips stained dark, congealed clumps of the liquid clinging to the indents beneath his fingernails. The blood did not belong to him—somewhere in the back of his mind he registered the troublesome fact. The wound to his head may have bled, but not this much.

He reached out almost absently to the figure next to him. Resting on her back, a woman lay, her long hair cascaded upon the pillow behind her, her face hidden beneath the blanket befouled with blood. An overbearing sense of dread gathered in the pit of Adam's stomach, a galvanic insistence which raced through his body demanding he leap from the bed and run before it was too late.

But it was already too late.

Even caught in the horror of the moment and captive to panic, he knew that, and perhaps that was why he did not get up from the bed and run. He pulled the blanket off the woman instead.

Laying naked, her face had been demolished, irrevocably fragmented, and fractured, transformed into a bloody hollow heap. Particles of her skin, bone, cartilage, and brain lay speckled upon her chest and the bed like confetti, depraved and demonic. It was a stomach-turning, heart-wrenching, and horrifying sight as he quickly realized he was laying naked next to her in bed. She was dead. His body was speckled with remnants of hers. His fingertips were stained with her blood.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he heard someone begin to scream; it was loud, so full of panic and outrage that he could not begin to fathom its source. He was certain he had never heard someone make a sound like that—and he had witnessed his fair share of people reacting to all manner of terrible things. But there was something different about this particular sound. Something troublesome. Something haunting. Something familiar.

It was not until someone broke down the door that he realized the sound was coming from his own mouth.

TBC