A/N: Last chapter of the year! Happy holidays, guys!

ErronFan: At long last, indeed, dear. Yet things are far from easy. Thanks!

RaeCamille: We'll get back to Nathan in the future, possibly towards the end of this arc, but that's all I can say about it. Thank you so much for all your help throughout this year, it was really nice to work again with my beta from back in the day. Merry Christmas!

PinkRedRose2: Thank you so much! The reunion chapters were meant to be quite emotional, and not just because a decade had gone by but because they hadn't parted in the best of terms – this arc will focus on their struggle, in how they still recognize the other even when they both had changed. (Did that make any sense?) Happy holidays, dear!

Hell-on-Training-Wheels: She's not the same woman he abandoned in the mountain, that's for sure, and this chapter is just the tip of the iceberg. I'll be using this chapter to explore their relationship in depth, how her age and her experience come to play such a big part in this strained bond they still share, whether they want it or not. As for the reasons that drove her to the House of Pleasure, we'll get to know all about them in the next couple of chapters – like I told you, they are going to talk a lot during this arc, they got a lot of catching up to do, so… Thank you so much, friend!

Poe's Daughter: (this is when I say more than I should, so read it and erase it from your mind immediately hahaha) The reader/story pact about Black's family is a two way street, really. Black won't find out about his family, but that doesn't mean that his genealogy is done with this story. There's still more to Nathan than we know now. (that's it, erase it from your mind now LOL)

The "Hey" was planned; I wanted him to struggle… After all those years in prison, imagining her and their reunion and creating a million different scenarios in his head I just thought about the idea of completely disarming him. Like, you had a decade to prepare for this moment and all you can say is "Hey?" You're older than time, man, cowboy up! Thank you so much, and happy holidays!

Westcoast Witchdoctor: I've been throwing a lot of curve balls lately, I know. Hopefully from this chapter on things will start to get back on track for these two – sort of. Thank you so much! Merry Christmas!

Arc IV

Chapter XXXIV

The Cowboy and the Whore

"Like the wild beasts, she lives without a future. She inhabits only the present tense, a fugue of the continuous, a world of sensual immediacy as without hope as it is without despair."

Angela Carter ― The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories

He wanted to see what was left of her.

More importantly, how much of her – the original version of her he remembered from such a hazy past – could still be retrieved. And above all things; he wanted to discover if there was something about her that could still be retrieved at all.

But no matter how hard he tried, they still wouldn't let him. They were getting on his nerves, stating that she wasn't feeling alright, that she needed to rest, that the concussion was still making her feel weak and dazed. He knew better. He knew Rosario like the back of his hand and without a single trace of doubt left inside his mind the gunman was positive: Alex and the manager had talked to each other after he had left the place; Rosario was closing all doors on him now, the unmistakable feeling of rejection brushing against his scorching skin.

It was as simple as it was obvious. It was as evident as it was painful.

The doctor did not want to see him.

It would always be a different girl the one they would send his way to repeat the same old message night after night: "She's unavailable now. She'll be back in a few days."

A part of him knew that the concussion had been monumental – he understood it was going to take her some time to readjust her head after all the pain, the dizziness, and the struggle. It still was going to demand some time from her, her whole body reacting to brand new bruises, to a brand new face; his face. Familiar yet gone, he had been the first person for her blue eyes to swim into focus and see after the brutal attack.

Besides the gore and the violence, and way beyond the limits of this inclement life she had seemingly embraced, he himself was a repercussion still ricocheting inside her mind.

He came back every night after work for more than a week, but to no avail. His first attempts had been graced with the girls' kindness and impeccable sense of courtesy – thanks to Rosario, he guessed – but as days went by their responses became more and more mechanical and lifeless, as if they were disappointed at him for insisting so much, for not realizing the woman he was looking for was simply not interested.

The eighth night he saw himself insisting just like Nathaniel had insisted back then. The thought repulsed him as the bitter memory of that despicable man flooded his head with the virulence of an unwanted hurricane. Even if he knew, deep down, that their reasons differed, in their eyes – and even when they were completely unaware of the story – he was just another Nathaniel waving the distinctive flag of infatuation.

The ninth night was different. None of the girls came to stop him before he had even had the chance to walk through the door. The atmosphere had changed, he noticed as his cautious pace guided him through the crowded bar. A palpable sense of commotion, a tricky sense of awkward improvisation was enrapturing them all, making them forget all about him.

The mercenary took off his hat and sat on a stool by the bar; maybe it was finally time to try and talk some sense into Rosario, make her understand he just wanted to see the doctor. The patrons were crowded together all around him, their impertinent impatience demanding those drinks they had ordered a long while ago.

As Black looked over his shoulder with eyes full of disdain, indicating those men he was not amused by their unwanted proximity, he noticed three girls at the other side of the bar, struggling with countless bottles and glasses, trying their best and failing miserably.

"Rosario never keeps us waiting!" One of the patrons yelled.

Black rolled his eyes and tapped his fingers on the bar – the itching sensation dwelling in the palms of his calloused hands already speaking about an ancestral knowledge claiming to be unburied. Determined, he jumped over the bar and placed himself on the other side of the action. He indicated the girls to make some room for him to maneuver and, with the prestige of a true professional, the gunman opened the gates for the bartender to come out and play.

"You take their money, I'll keep the drinks comin'," he commanded as the girls nodded, surprised.

Familiarized with the routine, Black smiled softly to himself as he acknowledged that the memory of Good Old Jacob was still there, still pulsating inside of him.

The crowd dissipated rather quickly now that the bicentennial saloon boy was finding his delight in recreating a time that was long gone. The patrons quickly returned to their tables - he still was Erron Black after all, and many of them did not want to have him near. Yet a few men remained sitting by the bar, their drawn-out voices getting stained with the particular colors of liquor. They told him all sorts of stories as their mere, troubled presences allowed the mercenary to keep on pouring their drinks – some of them had problems back home, some others were unemployed or underpaid. Just when the gunman was starting to feel comfortable with their unexpected confessions, a gloved hand tapped him on his back, forcing him to turn around and look over his shoulder.

"What do you think you're doing?" The doctor asked, mildly surprised. Those black leather gloves were matching her long black dress.

"The girls were having a hard time here, so I decided to help them out," he retorted simply.

The woman crossed her arms over her chest as her scrutinizing blue eyes began deconstructing the shy image of those three twenty-something girls standing only a few feet away from them.

"It's all good; they should be able to take over now," Black said apologetically as he raised both hands in a defensive motion. "Where's Rosario?"

"They attacked her," one of the girls confessed, causing the doctor to narrow her eyes at her unwanted intromission.

"What happened?" Black asked, already guessing that the old, Peruvian woman had suffered the consequences of his irrational reaction.

"The usual," the doctor spat coldly as her eyes met his again, "everything you touch turns to shit."

Black lowered his head in silence, the sting of guilt quickly finding its way inside of him – yet visibly unmoved by his genuine sorrow, Alexandra cut him off before he even got a chance to say anything.

"Save it."

"The meeting is about to start," one of the girls informed the doctor yet her undivided attention was still glued to Black's pensive expression.

"You stay here and take care of the bar," Alexandra ordered the girls without even turning around to look at them. "You – upstairs, with me." She grabbed the man by one of his forearms and dragged him out of the bar and up the stairs. The familiar corridor welcomed their quickened pace and their uncomfortable silences. Opening the door to the room where he had found her only days ago, the doctor signaled him to join her. She closed the door behind him and motioned towards the balcony waiting for Black to follow her. He obliged, and they sat by the petite table there – their eyes traveling beyond the limits of the balcony only to find the inner courtyard below them engulfed in the quietest of silences now that every single one of the girls was working, whether they were on the bar or selling their bodies in the rest of the rooms.

"The cowboy and the whore… it has a nice ring to it; there's a certain western vibe to it," Black reflected absentmindedly, his eyes wandering her indifferent expression.

It took her a moment for her words to venture her lips.

"I thought you were still in jail," she confessed, her eyes still unfocused, swimming in the confines of an untouchable distance.

"I see you heard about me," he reflected. "I thought you were…"

"Dead? Gone?" She cut him off.

Her tenacity caused his lips to curl up slightly as he ventured one of his hands to kill the distance between them, cupping her nearest hand with his own.

"Alex…"

"Erron," the woman said as her eyes swam into focus only to offer him the coldest of stares. Even if it was the first time his name was being adorned by her voice, it was light years away from the enchanting sound he was expecting to hear. "See? I too know your name," she sentenced before removing his hand. Feeling disregarded inside the very limits of his own identity, the cowboy sighed helplessly.

"You never mentioned you were married. Did you kill her?" Alexandra asked him coldly.

"I was in prison," he said, angered by her train of thought. "How can you even ask me that?"

"Can you really blame me?"

Speechless, the mercenary understood that the damage he had caused her had been greater than what he had thought. That woman he had longed to find for so long had nothing to do with this other version of her; a colder version he had helped manufacture with his impertinence and his chauvinist ways. Surely her time in the brothel had worsened the situation yet he could see, clearly and vivid before his eyes, the original seed of his sins contaminating her.

"This is the prologue of the rest of your life," he said. The doctor directed her attention back at him, yet she still couldn't quite understand the true tenor of his words. "You're in charge until she recovers, right?"

Alexandra nodded in silence.

"She's trustworthy," he said. "Rosario…" Her cold stare was making him see that, at least, they agreed on something. "But still you chose to hide your true identity from her; I noticed she calls you Dakota. Do you know your invisibility is on borrowed time, right?" His tone was distant and calculative yet there was a certain color to his diction, a genuine confessional trance enveloping him entirely: "Rosario wants you to be the new manager of this place once she's gone. That position implies power and danger – that position is just too far from the shelter of anonymity."

"That's just hearsay," the doctor offered, trying her best to persuade him. "I know most girls are jealous of me, Rosario and I are close friends." Her voice was more amicable now, for the first time.

"It's not hearsay. Rosario told me."

Her expression changed abruptly, making it crystal clear for him that the attention of being placed in the honeyed zeniths of power was the last thing she wanted.

"I grew up in a saloon – I can help you out until she recovers. We can plan something together; I can help you avoid all that undesired exposure," he suggested.

Her hands were suddenly tight fists weighing heavily against the waves of her black dress – her black hair in the wind, cascading down her shoulders and the lump in her throat; forcing her to remain silent. She stood up and let her fists rest on the railing, her blue eyes lost in the courtyard below them.

"You left," she remembered. "You left and you left me there - to burn, to melt without you. I imagined this moment a thousand times; ever since that night… I guess I have always entertained the idea of finding you again. I longed for you that night, and you still left me there."

He remembered those lips of hers and the leather separating them from his own lips; such fragility, such vulnerability. He had known, back then, it had had nothing to do with love yet that image had accompanied him during his nights in his cell nonetheless – as she longed for him every night, in the theater of his convoluted memory, painting his dark world a shade lighter each time.

"I had a life before you," she went on; still not ready to face him. "I'm not talking about my life back in Earthrealm but my life here, before you. Good or bad, it existed."

The mercenary stood up and enveloped her with his arms yet the sudden warmth he had to offer was not enough for her eyes to meet his.

"I have thought, many times, if it was possible for us to pick up things where we had left them," she said. "To kill the distance and the time and just pretend that I was still standing on that burning mountain; and that you were coming back to rescue me. I see now that it may not be possible for us to do so. And all I ask of you is to understand the same thing: I'm not standing on that mountain anymore – and you just can't come and rescue me." She turned around, finally, still trapped inside his embrace yet miles away from the soothing, balsamic feeling of actually belonging there. "I understand now that it was naïve of me to ask for your help – I appreciate everything you did for me; you helped me escape from prison, you provided me with a roof above my head… you fed me, you held me when I cried. But please don't be confused by any of this," her tone, even if just above the scales of a dying whisper, turned an octave darker as she brushed her hands over the stronghold of his arms. "I did not miss you."

Even when the fortress of his arms had ceased to provide her with the necessary fierce to keep her smaller figure gravitating near his broad chest, the woman still chose to remain there, mildly sustained in place by her own free will.

"The night you found me here, I only accepted your arms around me because I was confused; the situation had overwhelmed me. That night you were met by a weaker, more fragile version of me. Even so, I'll admit such gestures; dear…" she grabbed his wrists strongly, forcing him to tighten up the embrace once again. "It's easy to be held by you – your arms are still weird, haunted houses. Yours was the first embrace that was not polluted by sexual desire since I came here, it was a drop of water in the desert that's this place." Leaving his arms, her hands landed on his chest. "It's not because your body language distills love, Erron. Far from it – I still remember your every misplaced desire. There's something cunning about feeling protected, even if that protection comes from the very man who has abandoned you." She separated their bodies by pressing her index fingers against his torso; his arms already struggling to outrun the growing distance, her voice now a mere murmur brushing against his ears. "I won't thank you for saving me that night – what you did that day… so selfish and reckless, they retaliated because of you, and now Rosario is the one paying for your actions."

Her fingers abandoned his chest only to find his wrists once again – she directed them back to the sides of his own body, the stronghold of her tight fists keeping his arms there, gravitating in the impervious empty space surrounding his own body. She leaned in closer and whispered in his mouth: "I won't thank you for corrupting the limits of my privacy once again; for seeing me naked, for bathing me and dressing me up while I was unconscious. Such transgressions, dear, can only come from a man who still doesn't give a shit about me."

He shook himself free from her. This time, he was the one building walls and barriers to keep her away from him.

"I did all those things because I still care," he whispered back as he walked away, already headed for the door, feeling overwhelmed by the rollercoaster ride of emotions she had just forced upon him. The tables had irrevocably turned, he acknowledged. Now she was the one romancing power; now she was the one subjugating his heart and his mind in a phantasmagorical Ferris wheel of desire and repulsion.

As she sat back down, her voice traveled the room, coaxing him to stay:

"They are regrouping. The Rebel-Seekers."

He walked back to the balcony but instead of joining her, he simply leaned his body against the railing and crossed his arms over his chest.

"I heard things in El Club de los Amantes; some of the girls had heard things as well – you know, they confess things from time to time," she explained vaguely.

"A good man always trusts his whore…" Black reflected bitterly as he remembered himself back in the day, confessing his dark secrets to Rosario.

"These are not good men," Alexandra corrected him.

"Neither am I."

El Club de los Amantes was a very selective consortium inside the House of Pleasure. Only those wealthy enough or powerful enough were welcomed to join – their weekly meetings would cover topics placed far beyond the limits of the simplistic nuisances of the brothel and its interests: trafficking of weapons, goods and liquor; political uprisings and all sorts of shady business would fly from one mouth to the other as Rosario's imperturbable gaze would moderate the debates and discussions.

"Now that you're out, they want to finish what they started," she said. "They want you to pay for what you did to their organization by exposing it."

Only then Black joined her, as he sat back down next to her.

"If the emperor is not funding them anymore, who is?" He asked yet the woman simply shrugged, unable to provide him with an answer. "They can't know about you," he let out, visibly worried. "This meeting the girl mentioned before – is one of their meetings, right?" Alexandra nodded in silence. "Let me go with you."

The woman cocked her head and offered him a look of complete bewilderment: "I just told you they want to end you and you want to join them?" She was right. If he wanted to break them again, for good this time; if he wanted to avenge his wife, he would have to be smarter than that.

"You could use some extra cash; a part-time job, maybe? Especially now that you wasted your miserable salary by staying the night here with me," she began, a half-smile adorning her seemingly amused expression. "Rosario told me you gave up your entire salary for a night with me. Had I known that beforehand I wouldn't have kicked you out of the room when I woke up that morning, dear, I would have been so much nicer." She cupped his hand with her own, romancing him.

"I'm not one of your clients."

"A good mercenary could always use some extra money," she went on, oblivious to his previous statement. Her age was trying to fool him but he still was able to see things as they truly were: now she was his equal, time and despondency had broken down that girl, summoning the woman in her. "Come by every night after we close. You say you grew up in a saloon? Perfect - help me with the numbers; I assume you know how to administer a place like this."

She did not want to make amends, she merely wanted to negotiate.

"Both of us are looking for the same thing: we want to terminate the Rebel-Seekers, or what's left of them before they even get the chance to rise again. For Aalem, for me – even for you."

"For my wife," he added, downhearted.

"Every night, come by and help me with the numbers – I'll pay you a small amount for your services, say, two silver coins, and give you their names in return." In her mind, there was no room for his words to bloom; if he was grieving, she didn't want to know.

He remained silent for a moment, absorbing the true implications of her proposal. The tables had turned, indeed. Not only she was the one wielding power and playing all sorts of games with his mind – now she was about to become his boss; providing him with names like mere crumbs trying to feed a starving pigeon. She was about to keep him in her invisible cabin in the mountains, entertaining him with false mirages just for her amusement, just because she could, just for the thrill of watching him waste away under her gaze.

Crestfallen, but understanding that if he truly wanted to be near her, if he truly wanted to help her and help the memory of Zar he had no other choice but to accept her terms, Black finally nodded, accepting the deal.

As she stood up, ready to leave the room, she said: "Meeting's about to start. You stay here, I'll come back for you once it's over – once it's safe for you to go."

Safe for him to go… he was Erron Black; he was capable enough of unleashing hell upon them all yet he understood their plan was bigger than that. He had to be patient, he had to be wiser. Chewing on his growing frustration, the gunman stood up and grabbed her by her waist, forcing her rich blue eyes to meet his.

"You could have done something else instead," he barked, his thoughts tangled in what Rosario had told him – no one had given her up, she had chosen that life.

"Excuse me?"

"Selling your body is easy – I'm disappointed at you. You chose the easy way out." He prepared his cheek to feel the distinctive sting of her palm slapping him hard across the face yet the woman only laughed, and caressed his shoulders gently.

"I imagine being a gun for hire is an extremely complicated thing to do, then. Isn't it?" She whispered as she resumed her pace, headed for the door.

"The bounty hunter and the whore," her tantalizing voice reached for him before her figure disappeared behind the door, "it has a nice ring to it; there's a certain western vibe to it."

He had wanted to see what was left of her.

More importantly, he had seen now how much of her – the original version of her he remembered from such a hazy past – could still be retrieved, if there was something about her that could still be retrieved at all. The man shook his head pensively as she left the room. His hopes demolished, almost nothing was there to remind him of the woman who had positively unburied his beloved ones. As he brushed his calloused fingers against his skull, the sudden realization hit him: little was there to anchor the man he had been before jail to the one he was now, emerged from his most private confines and replenished by the dark specters of vengeance and retribution.

They were not the same ones who had said goodbye by the mountainside. Yet still, neither she nor he could find the strength to say goodbye again, even if their awkward reunion had been polluted by power and leverage, like some sort of romance mixed with an unwanted air of professionalism.

Neither she nor he could manage to say goodbye again, not now. Not now that their looks had finally been leveled, not now that her scars were finally matching his scars, not now that her body had endured countless lifetimes just like his.

Not now that a brand new, different sense of chaos had finally merged their differences into just one homogenous tabula rasa so eager to be illustrated, so incomparably thirsty, so inherently hungry.

Not now.

He had wanted to see what was left of her.

Adaptation became again a mechanism for survival.