A/N: COMPLETE Y'ALL Title is based on Paul Dunbar's poem "The Debt". Please R&R :)

Also, there's some Candy/OC moments here, but they're not the focus of the fic. If the themes get heavier, I'll update the genre accordingly.

Chapter One: Healing

There was a pall over the house. Doc Martin had arrived within the evening, with the Sheriff in tow. Roy had gone on to recover the bodies from the wood. Doc was still upstairs. For the time being and to make things easier on the good doctor, they'd drug two spare cots into the same guest room. Ben stared into a glass of brandy and listened to the pacing of his youngest son. Doc Martin came down the stairs in heavy steps, a world of weariness on his face. He met the eyes of both Cartwright's and gave a sigh.

"They'll be alright."

The relief flooding the room was palpable.

"I'm no midwife," Martin continued, accepting a sip of brandy. "I'll bring in Sue Davis tomorrow, if that's fine, to do some finer checking on the girl. But she's stopped bleeding, for now."

"And the child?"

Doc knocked the shotglass back with a wince. "Likely dead before it was even born. There was nothing I could do."

Ben lowered his eyes, and Joe stepped forward.

"What about Candy?"

"Now he's much better off. Might develop a bit of an infection, but nothing too serious I don't think. And he'll be sore and tired from the action. Mostly, right now, he just needs to get over the shock of it all."

Martin warned them to keep an eye on his wounds, but that he could return to the bunkhouse whenever he felt ready. He gave a final warning to keep food and liquids down the girl, reminded them he'd be back in the next day, and took his leave. Hoss came in as he left, a little dusty from the barn, and wore a worried look.

"They'll be fine, son," Ben assured, and eyed the staircase which seemed to grow longer with the night.

Martin had put Candy to sleep. The woman sat upright, clutching a bundle of wool shirts and staring glassy eyed at the lump of her toes under the quilt.

"Let me hold him." Hoss didn't quite hear her. "Let me hold him."

She was staring at Ben's back. His horse's tail swished idly, and once the man flexed his shoulders in a stretch, but the party was silent and stared straight forward to the road ahead.

"Please."

"What's that now, darlin'?" Hoss gave her arm a gentle squeeze.

"Let me hold him."

"Now miss, I don't think that'll be a good idea."

"Let me hold him."

Ben eyed them as they reined up. The bundle was in his left arm. He hadn't hardly dared to look at it. The girl took it with shaking hands, and cried silently the rest of the trip.

"How are you feeling?" Ben tugged a chair up near her bedside. She might have whimpered, but didn't look his way. "May I hold the baby?"

"I-I haven't washed… haven't washed him yet…"

There was blood still matted in the faint patch of hair on its crown, and all over it's color was a sickly grey-green. It almost looked human in her arms, but was hardly the size of a cabbage head.

"Would you like me to fetch some water?"

Her dark head nodded. Joe left without a word, and when he returned the woman's hands trembled but did not move to unwrap the tiny corpse. Ben touched her arm. She relinquished child was stiff and seemed to weigh nothing at all. It's eyes had never opened.

"What's your name, sweetheart?" Ben asked, gently pulling at one layer after another.

"Anna."

Ben nestled the naked creature back in her arms, and handed her a warm, wet cloth. He let the mother have a moment's quiet and looked across at Candy on the other cot. There were clean bandages around his torso. His breathing was even. Doc had mentioned their foreman was lucky the lower shot missed his heart and lungs- but that the wounds had been well tended and were showing good sign of healing.

Candy hadn't spoken on the ride home. He kept an eye out over his shoulder, and rode close to Hoss and the mystery girl. Ben had to wonder if they'd known each other long- perhaps Candy had gone to visit her on his leave- or if they'd just been thrown together by fate. Ben worried briefly the baby was his- had Candy been chasing anyone in town lately? - but put aside the skepticism. There would be time for answers another day.

When he emerged from his thoughts, the girl's hands were still. The baby's color was almost normal. Joe had found a tea towel- one of Hop Sing's good ones, with little ducks embroidered on its edges- and placed it in Anna's lap. She didn't move. It was hard to find her eyes behind the broad black scar over her nose, but Ben did, and they were flat and dull.

"I don't know how to swaddle him."

"I'll take care of it, my dear. You rest."

Roy Coffee returned the next morning alongside Doc Martin and old . He'd come to tell them he'd gathered the bodies of four men, but that a snow in the night had obscured the others' retreat. The stiffs were waiting in the city morgue, and Roy had to ask about the burial preparation of the little infant.

"Surely you won't put him in the county cemetery," Hoss pleaded.

Ben seconded the sentiment. "In an unmarked grave? He's not some vagrant ward of the state, Roy. He's an infant."

Coffee shook his head, throwing his hands up. "I have the same feeling you do, Ben, but that new preacher's heavy on the brimstone."

"The child's an innocent!"

"He's not christened- and born out of wedlock!. He can't be put up in a Christian cemetery, not if any church donor in the city has something to say."

"Then leave him here with us, Roy." Ben felt a heaviness coming on. "You're still looking for Lonnie's gang?"

Roy had a deputy on the case now, and had put out a telegram to the sheriffs of the neighboring counties for any information. The old friends chatted awhile longer, coffee growing cold in their hands, before Candy shuffled into the dining room. He grinned sheepishly, combing a hand through his dirty hair.

"They're looking after Anna now," he accepted a cup of coffee with weak hands. "Obviously it wouldn't be appropriate…"

Roy invited Candy to sit, probed him about the events of the last week. Candy left nothing out- being held by the woman at gunpoint, their frantic escape, and the three days of pain and sickness that followed his injury.

"She didn't have a lot to eat in that cave."

The men were quiet.

"Do you know anything about her at all?"

Candy shrugged. He shared what she'd told him- sold as a poker debt by her father, her affair with a cavalry scout who'd met death by the hand of Lonnie Meyers (here Ben breathed a sigh of relief- it wasn't his foreman's child), and her escape two weeks before the incident. He mentioned the scar across her nose- assumed it was from a knife- and how she'd told him nothing about it but she'd sure looked scared and lonely underneath it.

"And the baby?"

The color drained from Candy's face. He took a long, deep drink of coffee and let the question hang above him in the air.

"She never mentioned it. She never- never hinted at it. Just. Started having it." Another drink. "Boy that'll do a number on your nerves."

Ben had rarely seen the man look so far away. He thought back to the births of his children- to the darkness of his world after the death of his first wife in birthing Adam. He thought he might understand. The rancher touched his foreman with a soft hand.

"She thinks it was dead already- that it had died sometime between her escaping Meyers and finding me. Falling in the river must have just… shook it loose I guess."

"She'll be awhile in recovering," came Mrs Davis's voice from the doorway. The men turned to see her. "Bed rest, constantly. Lots of fluids," she read off like it was a grocery ticket. "Mister Cartwright I hope you have plenty of fresh sheets for the young lady."

"Of course, Mrs Davis." The words came out a little dry, and Ben cleared his voice before asking, "anything else? How is she feeling?"

There was an old weariness in the woman's eyes. It was far too tiresome to grieve with all these stricken mothers. "Have your Chinaman fetch these ingredients- the tea will give her strength and help replenish the blood she's lost." Ben took the note graciously. "And take the corpse from her. As soon as you are able, take it out of her sight. She won't give it up otherwise."

She left while Doc Martin ran over a similar list of care instructions to Candy, reminding the cowboy to take it easy and rest plenty over the next days. They left, and the sheriff with them, promising to reach out again within the week. Candy, after a long talk, was allowed to return to the shared guest room. He volunteered to retrieve the boy.

His name had been Gene. She'd known him a number of months while his company was stationed at Fort Sill. He'd promised to save her from her father's gambling, and in a way he had and in a way he'd only expedited her ruin. She'd watched his lynching. She wanted to name their boy after him- a dead man's name for a dead man's dead child- but a wicked part of her wanted to name him Alexander in hopes it would bring bad luck on her father.

She settled for Gene. She knew it would be superficial. The headstone would read "Infant. May the wings of angels carry his soul to Heaven," or some other such sort, and there wouldn't be a name because in the eyes of God he had never lived and hadn't a name to carry with him to Heaven. This is what Anna told him with flat eyes that were a sickly shade of greenish gray. She didn't fight for the boy, like Candy'd expected, but placed him in the cowboy's arms with a gentle coldness.

"Thank you, Candy."

Ben, Joe, Hoss, and Candy buried the boy two days later at the edge of the yard under a pine tree. They were just in sight of the guestroom window. Candy saw her figure there, and Hop Sing beside her. He hoped she could see the little stone. He told himself he'd take her down to it when she was well, and show her what he'd done with Ben's help.

Gene.

Born and lifted into the arms of God

December 26, 1874.

Candy was feeling better- better than he should- and was taking up light duty again around the ranch. He tried to stay away from the guestroom- Hop Sing doted on the woman like she was a doll, and Ben and Joe and Hoss came up to read her the paper or bring her gifts from the town, and Candy stayed at a distance from the stranger for the sake of his own heart. There was shock in him still.

He took a ride every day. Meyers would be back eventually. They might be hiding out on the ranch now- in a spring lineshack or in a gully between the winter and spring pasture. Candy rode out every frosty morning before the dawn, and at dusk every night after supper. The woods were empty. Sometimes Joe or Hoss rode with him. They told him Anna was making progress, that she was feeling better, and didn't mention that she missed him.

He found that out a week, maybe two after the funeral. The Cartwrights had gone to bed, and he sat up reading by the firelight, loathe to leave the quiet for the snores and snuffles of the bunkhouse. A step creaked. Anna limped down. She was on the final step before Candy could rise to help her, and held out her hand to keep him at bay. He lowered the book in his lap. She was weak, and he wasn't sure if it was the pain, or sickness, or if this was just how a woman looked while recovering.

His mother hadn't had a chance to recover, before she joined his infant sister in Heaven.

Anna eased onto the settee, across from him, and watched the flames dancing in the hearth. The bloody wound across her face had healed to a mild scab over the bridge of her nose with red traces of scar to either side. She was putting weight back on.

She still looked ghoulish.

"How are you feeling?"

"Better."

"Is this… Is this the first time you've been up?"

She shook her head. "They've had me pacing the room for exercise."

Her face was clean, and her short cropped hair brushed smooth. She plaited small tufts of it while watching the fire.

"I wanted to see you." She met his eyes, tugging the loose braids back out. "They said you were doing better."

"Have been. Doc said you kept me good and clean during the worst part."

Candy abandoned the book and the chair and invited himself to sit beside the young woman. He tugged his shirt collar to the side so she could see the uppermost wound, tender still but healing well. She touched it very softly.

"I'd like some fresh air." She was wearing a black shawl, a gift from Mrs. Davis, and tugged it tighter around her frame. "And to stretch my legs."

They walked slowly outside and down the porch steps. Candy let her lead, watching her head bob as she studied the yard. They passed the barn. The horses were sleeping easy, and an owl was roosting in its eaves. Their walk took them along the side of the house and behind it, where Anna spied the little stone they'd given her boy. Candy helped her sit beside it. She traced the simple words with tear dimmed eyes, and leaned against his shoulder.

"You remembered."

"I thought they told you."

She shook her head. She'd spent the last weeks thinking of a tiny corpse in an unnamed grave, and her fingers seemed to burn as she trace Gene over and again. Candy touched her back gently, briefly, and dropped his hand back down.

"I'm glad he's here, and not in the cemetery with Meyers's boys. He's better off here. Someone can remember him here."

"What are you going to do when you're better?" Candy asked. First she shrugged. She touched his hand where it splayed in the grass and held hers over it.

"I don't know. Daddy's place is so far away, and I don't know how to get there."

"You'd go back to him?"

"Someone has to take care of him."

He started to argue that he'd sold her to Meyers in the first place. He thought about Meyers being out there now, alive and likely still after her. Anna caught him chewing on his tongue, and from the look in her eye she knew what he was mulling over.

It took her a minute to stand, even with Candy's help. They paced the long way back to the door.

"What's your name? Your full name."

Candy flushed a bit. "I just go by Candy, ma'am. But it's David- David Canaday."

"Mine's Anna Gipson."

At the bottom of the staircase Candy lifted her neatly in his arms. There was a slight pull in his shoulder, and he adjusted her weight to his right side. He felt her wince, and smiled sheepishly down at her. When she was steady on the floor in front of her room, she squeezed his arm to thank him.

"We should do that again. The night air felt nice."

"Only if you start talking more," Candy teased. "At least one person in this house ought to know you better, and I've got first dibs."

It was the first time he'd seen her smile, and even in the half light of the moonlight through the window, her teeth flashed like pearls.

They walked again, and again, and again, until it became a nightly habit of theirs. Anna grew stronger. She spoke more- and better, she smiled more. She began to spend her days in the parlor of the house, where she saw more of the family and lived less in her own mind. On a particularly clear January day, Candy trotted into the parlor with a grin on his face and held out a hand. In it was a package, neatly wrapped. Anna took it graciously and, casting a look at Ben smirking coyly over a cigar, tore into it.

A red cape, trimmed in white rabbit fur.

"David, what's this for?"

Ben's smile grew more mischievous and Candy fought a blush.

"For you. This afternoon." Candy grinned ear to ear. "I'm taking you on a buggy ride."

Anna's head snapped in Ben's direction, and the man fought to tamp down his grin. "Is he really, Mr. Cartwright?"

Ben shrugged with laughing eyes. "As far as I'm concerned the man can do what he wants on his afternoon off."

Candy had a team of bays waiting, and a picnic packed away.

"Where are we going?" Anna asked as he lifted her up to the seat.

"Only a short ride," Candy replied, settling himself in the driver's seat and giving the team a click and slap of the rein. "Don't want to chance the weather."

He felt light. He was back on his full span of duty, could ride without feeling the ache in his side, and if his friend had been in yet better condition he'd have found her a pony and they'd be racing down the mountain trails. The cool air in his lungs was exhilarating, and he felt not unlike that day just before Christmas when his world had shifted.

They were nearly out of the yard, Anna's hand just barely touching his the way she liked, when Roy Coffee trotted up before them. The sheriff reined his mount to the side and tipped his hat at the lady. The older man kept his face carefully schooled, and smiled thinly as he spoke, but Candy felt a cold dread when their eyes met.

"Out for a drive, Miss Anna?"

"Yes! David's just taking me around, and-"

"Ohoho, David is he? You'd better watch this one, Candy." The cowman grinned. "Y'all carry on then, don't let me hold you up none."

Candy watched as a myriad of worries crossed the lawman's face, but he grinned anyways and waved them on.