Author's Note: I'm posting this a few days early, just because all of you have been so great. Thanks for the lovely feedback! It is very encouraging. This scene could use something, I'm afraid, but I have seriously re-written every scene I've posted recently at least twice from scratch and entirely thrown away at least four, so I decided finally just to go with it. I seem to have problems settling on the proper POV these days. Diego's is, for obvious reasons, not available at the moment, but I wanted to write another Felipe scene, and it just wasn't in any way working. I'll try to write at least one before the end, but I am trying to cut down on the number of scenes to see if I can maybe inject some life into this story.

I have been writing a lot lately, inspired in no small part by Icyfire's new fic (yay! New Icyfire!) so I hope to have more by the weekend.

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Alejandro sat in the chair by Diego's bed, waiting for Doctor Hernandez to return from cleaning up. Felipe was curled up on the bed before him, one hand lightly wrapped around Diego's arm where it lay above the blanket. He was able to take some comfort in the sight; the boy had been near the point of collapse from worried exhaustion and the rest would do him good.

Unfortunately, he could not seek the same relief. The same approach of old age that had robbed his body of strength had also taken his ability to so easily seek that oblivion. It would be a welcome respite from the chaos of his thoughts.

God has returned your son to you. That should be enough for you, more than enough.


Indeed, twenty-four hours ago he would have given over all he owned and borrowed whatever his name and friendships could buy him for that much. But now that Diego was lying there before him . . .

Yes, but now. He could barely recognize his refined, stable son in the haggard, damaged man lying on the bed with the dark snarl of five-days' growth of beard, tangled, unkempt hair and bruised eyes. This was a man who'd been pushed to his limit time and again and survived it, a man who could survive five days as the captive of murderers, not a man who spent his time in books or behind a canvas.

"Don Alejandro?"

He turned to find Doctor Hernandez standing in the doorway.

"Yes?" he said, painting a welcome smile on his face for politeness sake.

The doctor crossed the room to stand by Diego. He laid a hand on his forehead to test the strength of his fever and then re-checked the fitting of the bandages on his upper arm with uncharacteristic fussiness.

"Doctor Hernandez?"

The doctor nodded and pulled the blankets back up to rest smoothly. He settled himself into the chair beside Alejandro, not taking his eyes off of his patient.

"I must be honest, Don Alejandro," he said. "His condition is quite serious."

Alejandro absorbed this in silence, waiting for the doctor to continue. When the doctor had arrived, he'd spared no time but for dealing with Diego's immediate physical injuries. Repercussions and relatives came later. It was something Alejandro admired in a medical man, but now it was later, and all of a sudden there was time in spades: time for Hernandez's pronouncements, time to think about what they might mean, time in which he was going, somehow, to have to deal with all of this.

"While most of his injuries are largely superficial and likely to cause him more pain than real alarm, I am afraid the wound in his side is another matter entirely," Hernandez said.

The doctor finally tore himself from his consideration of Diego to deal with Alejandro directly. "It is clearly from a bullet."

"Yes." Alejandro was a veteran of too many battle fields not to have recognized that immediately, though that experience did little to help him deal with it. Someone had shot his son, his Diego, and it was no light graze either. The shot that had made that wound had been unmistakably aimed to kill. Which meant someone had taken up a firearm with the full intention of leaving his son dead. What the implications of that precisely were he had not allowed himself to think upon, though he knew the time would come when he would have to.

The doctor paused, uncertainly flooding him. "Without knowing the other circumstances, I would have said, looking at an injury like that, that it was older than five days. A week at least."

Alejandro let the doctor go on, though this was a conclusion he'd come to almost immediately. A wound like that would have bled profusely and Diego's shirt, though torn and dirty, had shown no signs of that. The wound itself looked only half-healed and angry, like something serious that had been prevented from healing time and again by repeated abuse.

"And yet," Hernandez was saying, "if he had received an earlier injury, certainly I would have been called, and if he was hurt, I do not understand what he was doing riding out that day when he was attacked by the men whom the alcalde arrested today."

That made two of them. He and Felipe were going to have a little discussion when he woke up. Over the last two days he had encountered nothing but mystery after mystery, and he was beginning to be a little angry at having found no answers. As much as he'd been expecting it, he had been surprised at finding his son so very . . . battered. Old bruises and new covered most of his torso, along with scratches and minor wounds scattered across a frame that held far more strength than Diego's retiring life style could explain. That bullet wound wasn't the only injury that was clearly more than five days old. He'd met soldiers with fewer scars.

"Alejandro," Hernandez said, frowning, "if there is anything you know about any of this, I think I need to hear it if I am to understand his injuries properly."

"Why should I know anything? I am only his father," Alejandro said, not entirely able to keep his tone at its most polite.

But the doctor, who had two daughters of his own, only shook his head. "The fever is what really has me concerned. The bullet wound is less seriously infected than what I would expect of one received on the trail, if that is indeed where he was hurt, but as weakened as he is, it is still very dangerous. The blows he received to the head are bad enough, and combined with the fever and his general condition, well, Alejandro, I think you must prepare yourself."

Alejandro turned his head slightly away. "You are afraid he won't wake up."

"I do not like to say at this point," Hernanez said, careful as ever. "If he wakes within the next day, I would say his chances are good."

"And if not?"

The doctor's silence was a better answer than words might have been.

"Diego has surprised me before," Hernandez said, considering Diego and then Alejandro for a moment. "He has been a strength for your people, these last few weeks, much to the detriment of himself, I fear. You would have been proud of him, I think."

Alejandro nodded, as it was expected of him. Over the last few days people had kept reassuring him of that more than anything else. Did they think he didn't know that? Did they think he didn't realize how fortunate he was? Of course he was proud of his son, he always had been. He just didn't understand him, and he felt as if he were constantly being prevented from doing so. It was precisely because he sensed so much in his son that he was never allowed to see that he pushed him so hard. Could no one see that?

"I have done all that I might for him at the moment," the doctor said, "though, with your permission, I would like to stay here tonight so that I might check on him in the morning.

"I owe you far more than the hospitality of my home, Doctor," Alejandro said. "Maria will bring you whatever you need. And my men will escort you wherever you wish in the morning. I know Diego is not your only concern in these days of trouble."

Hernandez sighed and rubbed his hand across his tired eyes. "I am afraid not. Hernan de Carraco is, I fear, in even worse shape than Diego. I think, if not for Diego, he would not have survived his captivity."

There was a story there, one Alejandro had heard only snatches of that afternoon when the news from the pueblo had sent him and his men racing after Diego's trail. But it was a story that would have to wait until later.

The doctor rose. "Diego . . . he has been a good friend to me. It is so rare to find someone with whom to discuss my work and the latest research." Hernandez paused to smile in a somewhat avuncular manner at Diego, though the smile was tinged with regret. "If there is a way my skills can do anything for him, you can be sure I will find it. He is the last person to deserve this."

"My thanks, Doctor," Alejandro said. "I know I should protest at least for decorum's sake, but I find myself far too selfish for that."

"You are a father. I understand that," Hernandez said. He made polite goodnights after checking on his patient one last time, leaving Alejandro alone with the stranger who was lying in his son's bed.

He'd put so much energy into simply finding Diego, and hearing of Esperanza and de Carraco's escape that afternoon with their news of Diego had been one of life's miracles. But other than the unalloyed joy in seeing his son alive again, everything else was filled with so much confusion.

It seemed impossible that any of the stories everyone from Juan Garcia to his fellow Dons had been telling him could have anything to do with Diego. Yet there he was at the center of all of them, providing stability, giving good advice, actually riding out with the vaqueros every morning.

There was nothing of his Diego to recognize in these stories, and even less in the man they'd found that afternoon. That man had certainly mouthed the usual pleasantries. He'd been so studiously correct in them that it had almost seemed a horrific comedy. There Diego had stood, blood covering a full quarter of his face, speaking as if having spent five days as the captive of bandits was no more extraordinary than a Sunday picnic. No need for drama, no need for anyone to be concerned at all. And what was worse was that he'd acted as if this sort of behavior was what Alejandro expected of him. As if Alejandro could care about his dignity or De Soto's opinion of anything in such a moment. And there had been such a tide of bitterness beneath that careful correctness that was so unlike the benign, imperturbably pleasant son he knew.

The son he knew didn't calmly accept threats of death from clearly dangerous men and then simply nod as if he understood exactly what they meant. The son he knew took to bed for day at the slightest sign of a headache. He certainly didn't disguise life-threatening injuries and then hop on a horse and ride for several miles over rough country until he'd driven himself delirious.

There was too much for him to think through now, and he thought the only people with any real answers to his increasing questions were lying asleep on that bed. Tomorrow would hold time for revelations.

He reached into the pocket of his coat and pulled out Elena's simple rosary, his constant companion these many long years since her death.

"Help me to find what is right for our son," he said, fingering the jet beads.

He is here, alive. Rest on that. Abide on that.

His fingers found the cross, and he began the prayers, one by one. The night grew late, and finding Diego had not magically solved all of his problems as he thought it would, but if he could not find peace in his head, he could, in this old, familiar ritual, find a type of solace with her and with his God.