RaeC & Guest: Thank you guys!

ErronFan: I wouldn't say the bombs were meant to celebrate the brothers. Avenge them, maybe? Thank you so much!

Westcoast Witchdoctor: You're right, he used to be cool. Kotal really needs to get out there and show 'em all what he's capable of. And about the whole Aalem / Zar conundrum, there's gonna be a development soon but I can't say a single word about it. Thank you so much for reading and reviewing, dear!

Helly: Like I already told you, your words were the exact thing I needed. (Family trouble = Ellie's writing like crazy to keep her head out of it = Ellie updates the story thinking it's pure BS = Helly rocks) Thank you, thank you, thank you! (Ps: don't hate me, but the bounty hunter look is here to stay, just sayin')

Arc III

Chapter XXVI

Dead Man Talkin'

(Sins of the Father)

"For as the rain cometh down and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, and giveth seed to the sower and bread to the eater; so shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it."

Isaiah 55:10-11

[3 months and 2 days later]

He knew the button resting carelessly on the ground must have been Zar's. It was nothing but a tiny, dull circle of vermillion with two small perforations in the center where the lifeless edges of a frayed black thread were still showing. He got on his knees and stretched one of his arms until his fingers were able to grab the small treasure he had found. Black's amused eyes inspected the item carefully: as his memory recalled the garments inside his own wife's wardrobe, the image of Zar's favorite cape came to mind, even if only to grace the surface of his thoughts.

She must have lost it, he thought, as he removed the thread quite carefully.

"What?" He asked as his eyes found Henry's dead body wasting away in the cell across the hall. He had gotten worse, according to the mercenary's opinion, now that there was little to no skin left to cover the bones. "Oh…" the gunslinger added then, raising a suspicious eyebrow. "Buddy, you really shouldn't have."

His fingers trapped the button as his eyes began to show some unexpected candor. Just as if it was the birthday present he had always wanted to get, he smiled softly and placed the small vermillion item on his cot. Then he moved towards the bars again and leaned his shoulder on them.

"Did Zar tell you?" He asked nonchalantly. He wasn't exactly waiting for Henry to answer – he knew how things worked between them: he would talk, and the helpless corpse would be forced to listen. "We have plenty of time until she comes, my friend," Black sang, a sultry tone invading his baritone voice. "And you know it's my birthday, after all."

Storytime was about to begin, or so it seemed. It was nothing but an elaborate way for Black to keep track of his own memories and life experiences as well as staying lucid in the present, using Henry as his involuntary listener. Even if the recounting of his adventures (and misadventures) was powerful enough to take him back to simpler, happier times of his life, it could also lead him to darker swamps of mistakes and regrets. Before his imprisonment, he would have never accepted to bare his own history so willingly but now his prolonged confinement had left him with no other choice but to spill all those sacred secrets he had been bottling up for such a long time.

"Do you know how old I am today, bud?"

He paused for a moment, as if allowing Henry to guess his age.

"No, I'm older than I look, I'm afraid," he chuckled. "I'm turning 175 today." Black sat down on the ground, his face only inches away from the bars. "Let me see which one of my stories you haven't heard yet…" he paused again, as his brain traveled far away, searching for the perfect tale.

"Well, you already know about Jessica," the mercenary mused as his voice trailed off to finish his sentence: "and, uh, – it's way too early for erotic tales, those are more of a… midnight kind of thing, you know? Like the stories I tell you once she is gone." Of course, Jessica's tale had been tainted with the crimson droplets of revenge and violence but that part of the story was a chapter he wasn't interested in revisiting.

"I could tell you the story of my 23rd birthday," he contemplated the idea as his coffee-colored eyes began to spark. "That's one of my personal favorites, I must confess. And it's the kind of story I'm sure you're gonna like."

It was time for him to take yet another walk down memory lane, and even if he wasn't entirely happy with the activity, deep down he was certain it was the only thing left for a man like him to do. The memory seemed fresh enough inside his beating chest, the actions and the actors involved had left such indelible marks all over his body he could still retell every second of it. He crossed his arms over his chest as the words began to flow freely – a younger Erron was all he could see now; a boy kissing away the sordid remnants of an already lost innocence to finally embrace the life of the mercenary.

The Nomad and the gun for hire were about to become the same person.

Brenham, TX. April 26th - 1866

"Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday – mercenary; happy birthday to you."

The disgusting sensation of having those hands pressed hard against his shoulders was enough to make him shiver. The never-ending nightmare he had been forced to live had become nearly unbearable for the young kid in his early twenties. The man walked around the table and sat down on the last chair to the left, sliding a folded piece of paper towards the visibly unhappy birthday boy and Erron stretched one of his hands to accept the paper, knowing all too well what his tired eyes were about to find the second his fingers unfolded the missive: the name of his next target.

Now that the war was officially over, they had turned him into a hostile tool meant to satiate their needs and right their wrongs – he had become the one behind the trigger, the temerarious executioner that could make them weep at the slightest exhibition of his credentials: his cold and nearly spiritless stare and his deadly skills for sin.

No longer standing on the losing side of history, they had trapped him over a year ago when he had returned from Arroya only to find that the old liquor store where he and Annie had been living was nothing but ashes. Feeding his eyes with the tormenting image of his own life falling apart at the seams, the saddened boy had gotten on his knees and cried, absorbed and powerless, completely alone for the very first time yet he couldn't leave her there. Even if danger was still lurking around every corner he got up, determined to bury the nineteen-year-old nurse. As the flames began to dance away their magnificence, he ventured his body inside the store and rescued his invaluable box of memories, still intact inside one of the upper drawers, then moved closer and picked up Annie's charred body. He covered the girl with his own poncho and went back outside.

The twenty-two-year-old soldier walked around the cabin, laid his deceased girlfriend down on the still-warm earth and began digging her grave when the voices startled him.

"Is that for you, boy?"

As he turned around and looked over his shoulder, he encountered five soldiers. The colors they were wearing confirmed his every suspicion. The five men surrounded him slowly and the boy moved his hands to both sides of his waist. He was outnumbered – but he was brave.

One of the soldiers, the one who had spoken before, moved near him and got on his knees, reaching for the nurse's body. He uncovered her face and pretended to be sorry for the young girl.

"She was very beautiful – very educated," the man said as he brushed his calloused fingers across Annie's forehead. "She had just finished writing this letter when we found her; let's see what it says, shall we?" The soldier produced then, a folded piece of paper from one of his pockets – its corners were burnt, just as if he had decided to rescue the letter right after the fire had begun.

Erron's hands were itching; the deadly power of his trigger was summoning him. Yet there was nothing left for him to do now that the rest of the soldiers had placed themselves around him, flanking both his sides; their arms trapping him rather easily. Standing beside Annie's body, the words began to flow:

"Dear Mamma – blah, blah, blah. You see, as days go by, sensitivity is slowly leaving me; it's just as if death and horror have become part of this landscape, and there's nothing we can do about it. I wish you were here to hold me, poor thing, so young… let's see… more sentimentality… I have followed Erron to an abandoned liquor store a few miles away from the battlefront…"

As the man kept on skipping parts only to read his very own personal selection, the blood on Erron's veins started to boil; the warmth of his anger tainting his cheeks red. Not only they had murdered Annie – it was clear now that those men had already read the letter, invading the fallen nurse's privacy, and now they were finding their pleasure in corrupting the remains of their truncated bond.

"We're going to lose this thing, Ma. Erron's certain – What a visionary… He has plans for the future, you know? He says he's going to talk to his uncle and become a miner." As the soldier kept on reading, his voice became nothing but a cheap mockery, as if Annie's thoughts and feelings were nothing but a macabre joke.

"I trust you haven't told Papa that I'm with child."

The boy's troubled heart stopped dead on his mouth.

"Oh, this is my favorite part… I still haven't told Erron either, I just don't know how. Sometimes he's just so absorbed in his own world that he seems to be unreachable, it's like he's right here with me but long gone at the same time and it breaks my heart to know that he's still probably mourning his mother when I'm about to tell him that he's about to become a father… I'm afraid it might break him inside, it really frightens me to think that this lovely boy left his hometown and joined a war because he had nothing left to lose, he just wanted to die – but now the South will fall and things shall change; who knows everything we'll lose when that happens? And when the baby comes he's also going to lose that solitude he has treasured ever since joining this fight. I know he's not ready to become a father, he doesn't want to be ready, that's for sure – but what can I do? How am I supposed to force him into accepting this whole new life when he probably doesn't want to be a part of it?

As all the soldiers laughed at their tragic fate, the sad, unwelcomed indiscretion went on.

"I know becoming a father is not what he wants – but all I can do is hope; hope that this child will make him come back down to me, hope that there will be a happy ending for us – once this war is over, once we're a family. There's more but… think you've heard enough, kid," the man said as he folded the letter and exhibited it.

Numb and completely paralyzed, Erron stood still as the soldier walked towards him. There was a certain air of petulance inside his eyes, a subtle superiority meant to destroy what was left of that poor boy's spirit.

"I'm sensing two things, boy," the cold-hearted man began as he crossed his arms over his chest. "The first one, you are Erron. The second, you had no clue the bitch was knocked up. You're welcome, by the way."

He had no idea Annie was pregnant with his child yet it enraged him to know that they had made the choice for him. He didn't want any children; he wasn't even in love with her but the choice should have been his and, deep down, he knew he would have done anything in his power to become a good father for that baby. Erron moved, finally, driven by sheer fury – his gestures were nothing more than a convoluted series of nearly spasmodic attempts to snatch the letter from that man's hands.

Laughing at the boy, the soldier let the paper fall down to the ground for Erron to take it. The future mercenary got on his knees as he picked up the letter and placed it in his pocket. As the five men kept on laughing at his desperation, the boy stood up again, ready to unleash hell.

The fight didn't last long but the final numbers were far better than the ones he could have ever expected.

He killed two, wounded another two – one in the thigh and the other in the shoulder blade - and fell before the last one: the one who had read the letter, the one with the name Carlisle written on his uniform. The minute Erron's gun had dared to address the man's kneecap it was over for him – the fight was over; he had been trapped. There was no way out for his young impulses to run away.

"I won't kill you, boy," the man said as he got on his knees, completely careless about the blood or the pain the boy had inflicted; the blade of his knife pressed hard against Erron's neck. "That's what you want me to do, right? You wanna die, you little piece of shit? I'm not gonna kill you, son, I'm not gonna give you the pleasure of ceasing to exist. I hate conformists, so I won't turn you into one." Carlisle snapped his fingers for the rest of the battalion to join them.

They took a nearly unconscious Erron by the armpits and dragged him across the floor.

"I'm keeping this one – I like when they fight back," he heard Carlisle say as he moved away from him.

"Sir, what's with the box?" One of the soldiers said as he held on to Erron's box of memories.

Carlisle approached the battered boy and slapped him hard across the face causing his idle eyes to meet his.

"That yours, boy?" The man asked, and Erron nodded. "You want it?" The boy nodded again. Carlisle opened the box then, to make sure it was safe for them to take it. "Papers, an old rusty knife that couldn't hurt anyone, tickets… a bible. Memories. You sure you want it, son?" he asked again.

Erron nodded in silence, for the third consecutive time.

"Your cross, boy. Not mine," Carlisle commented as he closed the box again. They had taken it all away from him – letting him keep a brown box of memories wouldn't hurt.

Erron became their war prisoner, but his stay behind bars lasted less than ten months. One morning, at the very beginning of 1866, Carlisle released him from his cell. They branded his shoulder – the scorched metal stigmatized his skin with the mark of what he was: a boy who had stood on the wrong side of history. They turned him into a gun for hire in no time; if he wanted his freedom back, he was supposed to earn their trust by proving his loyalty. Even if he knew they would never set him free, he still listened every time Carlisle would talk about his duties and how important it was for such a young man to become useful and give something back.

Brenham's brand new mayor, McIntyre, appeared like hope on the horizon after a long period of anarchy. Now that the city had found a new leader, things were about to change. The inexorable truth was that the man's government was only going to last for a year – yet in their minds, they knew it was high time for them to sweep the streets and clean the mess that the Civil War had made.

Carlisle and his group, one of the most fervent fractions brought by the Union, had found the perfect killing machine in the hands of that troubled boy they had just branded. Erron wasn't a fool, he knew that the mark on his shoulder was much more than a sick, perverted way for them to torture him for his thoughts; it was also their insurance policy. If things were to go south during one of his jobs, the brand would be enough for him to become their helpless cannon fodder. As usual, Carlisle's cheap sense of philosophy would make things perfectly clear for the young mercenary: a chain is no stronger than its weakest link, he would repeat over and over.

Yet Erron knew he was no link. He was a mere adjacent actor participating in their affairs. The minute things were about to blow back in their faces they would cut him loose: the branded soldier would take the blame and the big fishes would remain untouched.

Dispossessed of any other choice, he ultimately accepted their terms and understood that the job they had for him, to become the gun for hire they needed, could actually prove useful in time. Even if they weren't giving him any money they were allowing his skills to be perfected – and that could only be seen as positive progress for him.

As the jobs began to pile up upon his shoulders, new ideas began to form inside his mind. He was now sure of two things: he was getting really good at his job, more than that – he was getting disturbingly good at it, and he wanted to make a living out of it. He stayed with them for a couple more months only to realize that he could never get to make a living out of it while staying under their suffocating wings. He wanted to fly solo. He wanted to become a lone wolf.

The last couple of weeks he got to spend with Carlisle and his men were also the most enjoyable ones: two very interesting jobs had presented themselves – the happy young widow who had just poisoned her fourth husband, and the pharmacist that had earned himself a fortune by trading expired medicines for weapons. Yet that morning, as he unfolded the piece of paper that Carlisle had slid across the table, he knew that that particular job was meant to be the last one.

He knew that after pulling the trigger on that unfortunate next target he would not return.

Closure and freedom were finally smiling back at him.

"Aren't you curious, my birthday boy?" Carlisle asked. "Come on, unfold the damn thing already."

Nathaniel Taggart.

"Your next target is a man named Nathaniel Taggart, a retired banker from Arroya. According to our accounts, retirement should have impoverished the man yet the bastard's richer than ever," Carlisle explained.

"Ever heard about savings?" Erron asked, raising an eyebrow. He could never bring himself to defend a man like Nathaniel but at least he felt compelled to know.

"Yes, boy, I have. But we're facing fraud and misappropriation of funds here, so… happy birthday, mercenary."

They sent him on his way back to his hometown on that very same day. Arroya seemed alien now, as if the years he had spent in that godforsaken town had been nothing but a very elaborate tale his brain had manufactured for him. The Taggart house still had its windows bricked up so, instinctively, he decided to go to the house that Amanda and the barber had shared during their brief marriage.

Eavesdropping from the corner, Erron heard a woman leaving the house. As she walked in his direction, the gun for hire greeted her. She was a nurse.

"I'm looking for Mr. Nathaniel Taggart. Do you know him?" The treacherous mercenary asked.

"I'm his nurse," she said, "you look familiar, boy."

"I'm an old friend of the family," Erron explained, "now that I'm back in Arroya, I'm visiting all those friends I haven't seen in a while."

"Oh, I'm sure he'll be delighted to see you!" The nurse exclaimed. "He's been so lonely ever since the accident."

Erron's confused expression must have been clear enough for the woman to understand that he had no clue about Nathaniel's misfortune.

"He fell off a horse," she explained, "It's his spine… he can't walk, boy."

The news clicked inside his head as every new piece of information slid into place for him to understand what had happened: Nathaniel wasn't that old to be retired yet, even if seven years had passed since their last encounter. The accident and his subsequent motor disability had pushed him into seclusion. A handicapped person was meant to lose most of their money – doctors, treatments, nurses, and medicines weren't exactly cheap or easy to afford. Yet the man had somehow gotten richer, no wonder his name had caught Carlisle's attention.

"I'm in a rush now, but let me at least open the door for you, boy. I'm sure he'll be happy to see you." The nurse grabbed Erron by the arm and led him back to the house. She opened the door for him and patted his shoulder slightly. "He can get cranky, so please try to understand." With that she left, leaving the boy alone in the crescendo of evening darkness and closed curtains.

He went upstairs, looking for the man – as he ventured his body in the dimly lit corridor, he heard Nathaniel's voice guiding him.

"You out there, Rose?"

The boy followed the sound until he found the retired banker – sitting up on his bed, his arms crossed over his chest.

"I'm not Rose," Erron said, his baritone voice wasn't entirely familiar. He opened the curtains to let the light in: he needed Nathaniel to see who he was, who he had become.

"You," the man said, a soft chuckle escaping from his bitter lips.

"Me."

"Rose!" Nathaniel yelled.

"She was in a rush – but she thought you would be pleased to see me. Now tell me, Nathaniel," Erron said menacingly, as he sat down on the bed, closing in on the helpless man: "Are you pleased to see me?"

The man flinched – but he knew he had nowhere to go.

"Where's Amanda?" Erron demanded. He was supposed to kill the bastard and leave yet her image invading his thoughts seemed tempting enough to delay the inevitable.

"I thought she was with you - she ran away, boy. She was lookin' for you," Nathaniel informed him, surprise leaving him as seconds went by. "Poor little minx – I take it she didn't find you, then."

The boy rose up from the bed and let his fingers caress the trigger of his gun.

"You know boy, what happened between us – it wasn't personal," Nathaniel said, embracing the fact that he was facing his very last moments.

"It was very personal to me, Nathaniel."

"The barber, boy… the barber was loaded. I learned about his true financial position while I was working at the bank. But there's more: have you ever been to a high-society cocktail? To those people, the man sitting on their money is like their fucking priest. People trusted me, they told me things – and one of the things they told me was that the barber was sick," Nathaniel explained. "I just did my math, boy: the man was rich, and he was about to die. The stupid girl should have waited, the man didn't last long. She would have been free and rich but no, she loved you, the stupid girl loved you, so she went after you. When the barber died she was long gone, so all his money ended up in my hands."

Erron understood then that the banker hadn't been stained with the indelible marks of fraud or misappropriation of funds – the barber had no family other than Amanda and her father. He had just crafted a plan that, in the end, had proved itself to be more beneficial for him than what he had initially imagined.

"I came back here last year, I went to the Wise Bird and asked for her and they told me that the barber was dead and that she had run away with a soldier," Erron remembered.

"Jacob's nephew didn't know shit back then and he still doesn't know shit now," Nathaniel whispered. "When the old man died he took over the saloon – but the place had already changed. Without your mom, without Good Old Jacob… it was never the same. Anyway, as I said before, it wasn't personal, kid. I could have never thought she would fall for you; you were a threat, I had to keep you away from her. I did everything in my power to keep you apart, I even fucked your mother, for God's sake, boy!"

Infuriated, Erron slapped the man hard in the face – a whimsical line of red appeared then, as it traveled from the corner of Nathaniel's mouth.

"You said they saw you as a priest," the blinded mercenary spat as he lifted his hand. "Then forgive me father, for what I am about to do."

Everything he had lost, he had lost it because of that man's unscrupulous greed. In the path of solitude and desperation, he was about to travel for the rest of his days, the irony would chase him unceasingly: that very same original greed would become a part of him; it would define him.

Nathaniel's greed would become, in time, the seed of Erron's greed.

"It's not my fault she came back, you must have done something wrong, boy, you must have hurt her," Nathaniel yelled, desperate. "It's not my fault you couldn't keep her by your side."

Confused, Erron lowered his weapon.

"Amanda ran away twice, boy. The first time she escaped it had only been a few months after their marriage. I don't know what she was expecting to do: a brat with no money… good luck with that. I thought she had found you then, but then she came back. Don't blame me for your own shortcomings, kid. If you hurt her and she chose to return to the place where she belonged that's on you."

"She never found me."

"When she returned, she had changed. It pained me to see that look on her eyes – of complete frustration. So I stood up for her. I quieted their voices by telling people that she had gone seeking a cure for her husband. I did my best as a parent, boy: she needed time, I gave it to her. Can you imagine the things they said about her? That she was a cold-hearted bitch, capable of abandoning her dying husband. That she was a whore, your whore," Nathaniel's enraged voice screamed. "I knew she would come back, I always knew you weren't man enough for her. I knew she couldn't stay with you: you were a soldier, you had nothing left to lose, you wanted to die but she… she had everything to lose… and she's always been a coward. The second she smelled the danger the brat was back. But then she ran away a second time - the barber was dying and the accident had crippled me; suddenly she had become a slave for us. Can't really blame her for running away that second time though: her mother had filled her head with tales of princesses and eternal, tragic love. She woke up one morning and we had turned her into a nurse."

Unable to listen to the stories of that bitter man anymore, Erron's bullet silenced him.

Nathaniel's eyes gradually lost focus until he was nothing but the memory of a withered soul.

Erron closed the curtains and left, finally free from Arroya's bindings.

The shadows clouded his naked face. Revisiting his past would always leave him breathless, subjugated by an ancient hunger that could never be fully satiated. His 23rd birthday had been his own emancipation letter, signed with the blood of those who had chosen to put chains around his wrists.

"I came back to Brenham that night and killed that Carlisle bastard and the few men that were still with him. Then I grabbed my brown box of memories, packed my bags and left." He looked down as he remembered. "Consider yourself lucky, Henry – this is a story I haven't told many people. It's not that I don't like it – in fact, I'm rather proud of it. But when these things happened everyone I cared about was already gone so I really had no one to share my story with."

He stood up and retreated to the darker side of his cell.

"No, Henry, I don't know if I'm supposed to be the soldier that ran away with her. I can only wish – I mean, I am the soldier, but she never found me. Guess she ran away to find me and when she didn't, she returned. I like to think that the second time she ran away, she did so to find herself. That's what I would have done in her place."