Red

The clock tick-tock-ticked its weary journey to the new day, and its lonesome little audience sighed and shifted, and fought sleep in the light of a single candle. Ben watched the tiny flame dance against the darkness, its splendor broken at odd intervals by the white flash of lightning in the windows.

His bones ached with the weight of many years.

His mind half a world away, the man's fingers drummed with an energy he didn't feel.

Taptaptap-crick.

Taptaptap-crink.

Taptaptap… tap tap.. tap tap tap.

Ben folded his hands, fighting a sigh, and closed his eyes tightly against the first faint twinges of a headache. The backs of his eyelids burned with mother of fire, tracing the precious looping script long scrawled to memory.

Landed… Australia… A man's dream-!

Write soon

All my love

A.C.

For a moment's reassurance- the thousandth moment's reassurance- the silvered patriarch touched the crumpled, long-abused note. Half the treasured words were rubbed away to ghostly fragments of thought. The rest had been carefully crafted to memory: forwards, backwards, sideways- Little Joe could recite some of them in Spanish by now, though he could only be heard to say them on the dark quiet nights, when the boy-the man, he amended-was sure his family was long asleep.

The night's magic whispered sweet nothings to his weary soul, just over the rumble of the heavens and and-

Feeling very old, Ben started at a crash that was deeper than the thunder. His heart stilled. A hesitant thump… thump-thump-thump of uneasy feet echoed across the porch. He slipped on silent feet to the doorway, groping for his pistol in the gloom.

The steps passed the front door.

The cold cock of a pistol steadied his nerves.

"Mister Cartwright!"

The swinging door caught the man across the shoulder and he sprawled across the porch, raising his hands high. The voice, vaguely familiar, shook as it rose.

"Mr. Car-Cartwright… It's just me!"

"Candy?"

The sky brightened. Candy's lip was split wide and bleeding, his face an ugly half-mask of swelling black bruises. Ben stooped, stretched a hand to the youth and pulled him to his feet.

"Candy- Candy, what happened to you? What are you doing out this late, boy? I thought you were in town for the night!"

Candy bent his weight against the man, grinning in a deep exhaustion.

"D-didn't take kindly… t' my face, I guess," he chuckled weakly.

Ben half carried the lad through the open door and into the parlor. Candy dripped over the floor, soaked through from the crown of his head to the heels of his boots with rainwater, with sweat, and with any number of unnamable fluids he could have only gained from the floor of a saloon. Ben dropped him gently in the nearest chair and vanished to the kitchen, reappearing a moment later with a bowl of water and a cloth.

Candy flinched and twisted his head away from the probing fingers.

"Mr. Cartwright, I- I was on my way to the bunkhouse, and-"

"And you'll stay right here until you get cleaned up and dried off."

Ben had used that tone for nearly forty years, and it hadn't failed yet. Candy settled deeper in the chair and sagged, wincing at the odd touch.

"Your shirt is shredded," Ben muttered. He tugged at the sodden fabric with a stern, "off!," and probed the handful of shallow slashes across the cowboy's chest.

"Mend it tomorrow." The boy's voice sounded a little thick- like he was struggling to stay awake.

"Don't worry about it," Ben murmured. He dabbed a particularly deep cut and the ranch hand hissed. "I'll have Hop Sing tend to it with the laundry tomorrow."

"No, Mister Cartwright-"

His glare could make the mountains tremble. Candy held it valiantly for a long moment, but ultimately quailed. The boy grit his teeth and braced his chest, and let his eyes fall half shut. Their breathing broke the stillness. Ben's thoughts were coasting over traces of memories. His hands worked mindlessly until the last bit of blood and muck was wiped clean. Candy wouldn't meet his eyes. His mouth, brutalized though it was, was pressed in a firm line.

"You don't need to be embarrassed, Candy." Candy's bluebird eyes remained downcast. "You think I haven't patched up my share of brawlers?"

He patted the other man's bare shoulder and stood with cracking knees. The storm outside had slowed, but not stopped. Candy rose unsteadily and made for the door. Ben's broad hand stopped him.

"You've only just dried off," Ben reproved. He could see the argument on Candy's lips but he would have none of it. "Go upstairs. Take the last room."

Adam's room.

"You'll find some spare clothes. They might be a little musty, but they're clean."

Candy pulled his shoulder out of his boss's grasp. His voice was ragged and more than a little leery. His frantic heart choked him. "Mister Cartwright, I can't do that."

Despite himself, he limped toward the staircase. Offered the older man one last protest that died on a swollen tongue. He lost the fight. It felt wrong. To be in another man's room. In his bed. Wearing his clothes, unworn and abandoned as they were.

The softness he'd heard in Ben's voice had never been directed at him; it never should have man had three grown sons already and Candy, Candy- homeless, fatherless, lost and without direction in a world content on whipping him along with the mountain wind- deserved none of that care. It felt wrong. It was wrong, to be a puppet of a son in this room, his stage. The ghost of Adam was alive and stalking the empty floorboards. Candy breathed its judgement.

The bed was soft. The sheets were almost fresh. The room must have been aired recently, and the thought of that made his racing mind slow down, down, down. They kept this room for him. Hop Sing spent an hour every week scrubbing the floorboards, fluffing the pillows, changing the sheets. It should have made him feel worse- that he was robbing this unknown man of his bed and place in his own home. Instead, his heart fell quiet.

They kept this room for him. He wasn't coming back to it.

Candy felt a wave of Joe's resentment, of Hoss's hope, of Ben's weariness. He was nothing to these people but a ranch hand. But tonight he caught a glimpse into the naked heart of this family.

The next morning, Candy hovered outside the dining room, wearing a borrowed shirt.

"You look good in red," Joe jeered. There was something unreadable in his eyes. "Get in here and get fed before Hoss polishes off the bacon!"

He'd never be another Adam. He didn't have to be.


A/N: Just a little something to get the writing fingers working again. I started this little thing years ago (five or six?) so I'm sure you can see the stylistic differences. There's a lot going on back here nowadays but I'm working on two Bonanza long-fics rn. If any of y'all have checked out A Few Good Men you'll be happy to know that's one of them. You might be more or less happy to know that it's being rewritten and reposted (I have a bad habit of doing that). I'm gonna combine the current chapters I think to be longer and there's a few details that have been changed that you may or may not notice.

At any rate, I'm glad you stopped by and hope you enjoyed it :)

*Also, Adam is not dead in this fic. The "ghost" stuff is more referring to his absence. And is Adam going to Australia canon or just very commonly adopted fanon?