A/N: Short chapter here, but we're about to get to the meat and potatoes. Hope it's been worth the slow progress. Thanks for reading everyone, hope to see you again soon :)

Chapter Four: Not Salvation

Maggie Shannon chewed her lip. She had one eye on the Territorial Gazette, and another out the half-drawn window. The Osler's shop was positioned very conveniently to watch the stage come in. She tapped her coffee cup with some measure of uncertainty. She'd sent that telegram off days ago and expected-hoped-prayed to hear back before now.

This town was more dangerous than she expected. This family was more dangerous than she expected. The widow took a sharp gulp of coffee to soothe her nerves and touched a hand to her still-tender scalp. The bastard boy those Cartwrights kept on- he must be Adam's, must be. He looked as though he spawned out of the man's exact flesh.- the bastard boy they kept on despite his inexperience, despite his volatile nature…. Her head hurt thinking about him.

A marine. Recently abroad. A dangerous man with dark and glittering Cartwright eyes. They thought they were keeping him a secret- this stain on their honor, what was his story? What bitch did he come sliding out of? Maggie was clutching her empty cup with unchecked malice when the stage rolled into town. Her hands cramped. They tightened and tightened as the stage emptied, until with a last shiver the vehicle spat him out. She didn't let herself rush to the door. Only watched him. He dusted himself down, beat dirt out of his bowler, straightened his smart tie. Then his smoky eyes panned the street, found her window, met her own. Flat black and dusty blue. Her prayers had been answered.

"God what happened to you?"

Tom jerked and spilt his coffee across the legs of his pants. It was Davey, the sharpshooting boy that'd made the drive with him. Davey grimaced in apology and held his hands up in peace. Tom sighed sharply and wiped at his stained dungarees.

"You came in last night like the devil had taken a piece out of your ass," the boy offered him his own half-full cup. "You ain't been that jumpy in awhile."

"Nothing happened." Tom pushed the boy's cup back to him and took a trembling sip of what was left in his own.

"No shame in admitting that widow is a little too pushy for ya," Davey shrugged.

Tom ground his teeth and swiped his sleeve across his mouth, as if the press of her lips still lingered there. "What's the widow got to do with it?"

Davey snorted. "Well it weren't Joe's girl followed you into the barn last night."

Tom's knuckles whitened. His tin cup gave a little groan under the force of his grip.

Days later, he was working a timber contract- tagging cull trees and market-quality timber, and all the while mentally mapping the logging road that would need to come north from the existing one. The pines shivered in a breeze that came down off the mountains, but beyond the whisper of needles there was silence. He could do this. He was a good judge of direction. He had a mind for engineering- in the simple, practical sense of the word. He'd built roads and dug trenches. He could do whatever was required of a Marine at war.

He couldn't escape himself.

She used to tell him it wasn't his fault. When they were young, younger at least, and he would suddenly shove her out of their kisses. When his eyes would darken, she would remove her hands and speak quietly in his ear. Then she hit the wall for the first time. Then the second. The gentle concern on her face turned to fear- but she loved him, she loved him, she loved him. And he loved her. He tried.

"Stop punishing me," Tom quietly demanded of Viv, of himself, of God.

"It's not my fault."

It was his fault.

"I can't help it."

He could stop it. He could stop the whole cycle cold.

He was unarmed. He went everywhere unarmed these days, and he felt so bare. The spring sun brought the smell of warmed pine. Sun and cloud and swaying limbs dappled the ground in shadow. He hadn't slept in days.

She loved him. She used to love him.

Tom mounted his horse and rode from one plot to the next- the last plot on the line, a stand of ponderosas that hadn't been surveyed in twelve years. Only the Indian and the coyote skirted the shadows of this place since the dawn of time. The Indian, and the Coyote, and him.

A man waited in a splat of sunshine, cross legged on the ground. His hair was shorn and a knotted bandana crusted black rested across his eyes. Tom slid off his horse, suddenly ill.

"What are you doing here?"

Tom knew him. He was about thirty. Tall and broad, but not robust- skinny, hungry, broken, a pile of bones that once used to rest under a set of sun-bleached dungarees and carry his weight just so… He looked the same as he did on The Island, on Banika, on the transport ship.

"You've come so far." The crusty sash bound around his eyes, his hospital gown swapped for a black parishioners robe, Tom studied the wraith with such intensity that his heart slowed and stuttered in his chest. "You've come. So far."

He'd told him that in the hospital– he'd told everyone. He screamed it over the fog in his mind, thrashed his bloody face, fought the two corpsmen trying to stitch the ragged edges of his face into something vaguely human.

"Cassidy? What are you doing here?"

They took Cassidy away. Away, away. Tom was dead. He was dead, dead, after all this time-

"There is nothing for you here," Cassidy almost sounded confused. Incredulous. His voice had an odd quality, and his head was tilted to fix at a point just over Tom's right shoulder. He was quiet for a long while, just staring- not staring- until he suddenly and mechanically lifted one dirty hand. "Help a blind man."

The pines shivered overhead. The day was suddenly chill. As if possessed, Tom fished two bits out of his pocket and dropped them in Cassidy's outstretched hand. The spirit tugged at Tom's sleeve.

"You have come so far. This is not salvation?" The blind prophet's breath stung his nose. "This is not salvation! Why have you come here?"

Tom shoved the man out of his face and stumbled backward. His ears rang. Cassidy caught himself with an agility that defied his ragged appearance, and looked up- uncannily up- into Tom's eyes.

"What is freedom? Will you ever find it?" A moment's pause. His voice was familiar again through his parting words, "Semper fi, Tom."

When Tom returned to himself, his horse was cropping at thin grass growing up between the spent pine needles. A bird was singing. There was a voice calling him over the ridge- a voice he recognized, and Candy appeared with the young roper, Lars.

"Napping on the job, Tommy boy?"

"No, I-" Tom looked to where Cassidy had been a moment before. "I just got here. What are you guys doing here?"

Lars turned his horse in tight circles seemingly for the sake of doing it. His voice was light and sexless. "Gathered strays in the next section- figured we'd come check the place out. Candy said nobody's ever been around here."

"That's what Cartwright tells me," Candy confirmed. He took note of Tom's uneasy expression. "Everything going well up here?"

Tom told him how the survey had gone- gave rough estimates of the ratio of cull trees to good timber, scratched out his mental map in the dirt and pine duff. Candy nodded. The figures were good. The map was solid. Tom volunteered to be the first to break ground on the logging road.

When the foreman slapped his shoulder and said, "You done good, Tom," he meant it.

Tom didn't hear whatever followed. He saw Lars's mouth move, but didn't process anything more than the boy's smooth voice, the tickle of the breeze through his too-long hair, and the lingering sensation of Candy's hand rapping his shoulder. These were real. They were solid, they touched his soul- the Marine leaned against his horse's shoulder and felt the animal warm and steady and alive. Whatever apparition spoke to him earlier was only that. This was real. Whether he wanted it to be or not. Candy and Lars and Maggie Shannon were real, and his wife and their pain might never be again.

He went to make amends. Or try. He was supposed to be having a beer with Lars and Davey, but the boys were arguing about horses and guns and poker, and all the while Tom felt his skin prickling and his palms sweating and the guilt souring his gut. He wasn't sure what excuse he made, but ten minutes later after drifting the streets like a ghost the Marine found himself hesitating outside the Oslers' shop. He shouldn't be here- he had no right. But he pushed through the door with a deep breath. Maggie Shannon was reading a paper at the counter. When she heard the door bell jingle he watched her face roll through waves of pleasant interest, confusion, fear, and a neat and cold professionalism that fixed him in place in the doorway.

"Let me fetch Paul-" her voice sounded weak.

"No, Maggie. Wait."

He tiptoed to the counter, palms raised. He felt every groan in the floorboards and shivered under the thrashing of his own heart. Her eyes, flat black and wide, made his stomach churn. He'd seen that look. On Viv. On his mother, in some long gone day. At the hands of men who should have protected them.

"I'm sorry." He wasn't sure how long they were standing nose to nose before the words tumbled out of his mouth. "I'm sorry." It wasn't enough. "I don't want to hurt anyone. I don't want to hurt you. I'm a married man, and she's better off without me because I hurt her. I'm sorry."

His hands were in his hair. He let them fall, shaking, seeing his wife and his mother and himself wild eyed, feeling Viv's fragile skin stain his very fingers–

"Let me make it up to you." The words fell out of his mouth like stones. Maggie's eyes glowed with interest. Tom couldn't tell if he found her pretty or just pretty frightening as his nerves danced just below his skin. "I'll take you out for lunch and a dance."

"Tommy, are you alright?" Janey swept down the stairs like an angel before Maggie could reply. "Tommy take a seat, you poor thing, you look ashen. Take a breath." He couldn't breathe. "What are you doing here this early in the day?"

He tried to choke the words out. The truth, an excuse, anything. "I-I-nothing-!"

"Oh Janey dear, it's my fault." Maggie's hand fell firm and hard on his shoulder. Her fingers bruised him. She had that look in her eye- calculating and cold- that he'd seen so many times and puzzled over and over and over. "I must have given the poor boy a fright- I was under the counter when he came in."

Janey gave her sister-in-law a harsh look and tugged at Tom's dungarees. "Come upstairs and have some tea, Tom. Please?"

Tom shook his head. He tugged his sleeve loose. Maggie was watching him with that look and he felt like a boy in his grandfather's office again, watching and unable to look away. "No thank you Janey." He swallowed a lump in his throat. "I just came to ask Maggie out for a da-date."

Janey Osler looked surprised and a little concerned. Tom, nearly shaking, raised his hand in farewell and shot out the door.

Tom threw a ludicrous amount of his paycheck on the bar. The barkeep, familiar with his pale and stricken look, fetched a new bottle of whiskey and rapped a friendly knuckle on the neck of it. The barkeep had a gold ring that sang against the glass. Tom watched it glimmer and knocked back one shot, two, a third, before shaking himself off and pushing himself free of the bar. A dusty traveler eyed him with a sneer.

"That enough for you cowpoke?"

The barkeep went still behind the counter. Tom curled his lip at the stranger. He raised the bottle to his mouth and took several long pulls, his narrow eyes spitting hazel fire. When his eyes watered and his nose burned he wiped a dribble off his chin snarled back,

"I'll let you know when it's any of your fucking business."

He stumbled a bit on his way to the corner table where Lars and Davey looked on. The traveler, a little taken aback, watched him go.

"That feller bother you, Tom?" Davey asked over his beer.

"That guy doesn't have big enough balls to bother me," Tom snorted, just loud enough to be heard at the bar.

"You've got that half dead look again," Davey warned, scooping up the pile of cards they'd spread on the table. "Widow Shannon get her hands on you again?"

Lars peeked up in interest. Tom caught and corrected the violent look he was about to fix the younger man with, and bit out that he got his hands on her. Davey grinned, shuffled, and dealt him into the next hand. Their game stretched on for an hour or so before attracting the notice of a few other drifters. Some sat in for a couple hands. Others watched, murmuring to one another over beers and whiskeys and mescals. When Tom was nearly halfway through his bottle, sleepy-eyed and sinking into the hazy stupor he craved, the spurned stranger kicked out and claimed an empty chair. Tom hardly recognized him. He only picked his bottle up and held it to his lips a moment, waited for his stomach to settle, and took another gulp. The alcohol choked him.

"Still not enough, cowboy?" The newcomer had an accent the boys couldn't place. His eyes were smoky and pale. "Deal me in, shorty."

Lars, mid shuffle, tossed the other man a wide eyed look. Without a word he flicked the entire deck so they scattered toward the stranger's side of the table.

"Deal yourself in then, boss," Davey interpreted. He had a belly full of beer and boiled peanuts, both of which colored his breath as he leaned into Tom and asked loudly, "what bitch decided to spit him out in our dis-des-destablishment?"

"The United States Marine Corps did, son," the stranger replied crisply. "Major Trace Compton."

Lars and Davey eyed Tom, who had gone suddenly pale. Compton dealt with precise and clipped motions. There was nothing quite conversational in his tone as he picked up and studied his own hand. "Spent the last four years in Korea. Detailed back to home soil, eh, six months ago?" He waited. Watched. Encouraged the boys to pick up their cards. His blue eyes flicked between Tom and his bottle. "The barkeep has been telling tales on you, Marine."

Hours later, under the thin light of the waning moon, Tom found himself in the yard on the Ponderosa. He'd puked three times coming home and wasn't sure how he'd made it to the ranch alive when he felt so nearly dead. He nearly was dead when his horse came to a sudden stop that sent him tumbling out of the saddle with one foot still caught in the stirrup. His horse only looked at him with tired disdain.

Everything ached. The Marine couldn't pick out one hurt from another. He laid twisted in the dirt and without adjusting his position he tugged at his trapped foot. It didn't move. Neither did his horse. Somewhere between half-sleep and unconsciousness he gave up and let the limb hang there, stretching out from his body and cramping without relief. Someone untangled him. Dropped his foot down unceremoniously. His horse was led away. Centuries seemed to pass in moments. The earth churned and rolled like his transport ship, aflame on an empty sea. The planet dissolved into nothing and nowhere. It was reformed and Flooded anew before he woke to a pair of black boots near his nose.

"Where are Lars and Davey?"

"Bought a room in town." It didn't sound like his voice that croaked out.

"You didn't?"

Very carefully, Tom stretched out his arms to touch the black boots. He twitched his bloodied knuckles across them. "Kicked out." There was a sigh. He felt the need to defend himself. "Didn't start it this time."

"At least there's that."

The boots slid back, out from under his fingers. A pair of hands groped at his armpits and pulled him vertical. Candy's face swam into view. He let Tom lean against him for a couple minutes before starting him toward the bunkhouse. Blood rushed to his head as he swayed; his heart suddenly stuttered, his skin prickled, and feeling hot and overwhelmingly guilty Tom dragged one foot to slow the foreman down.

He almost kissed Candy's ear as he slurred, "Candy I'm in trouble." Candy paused, craning his head away from the Marine's whiskey-sour breath. "Candy, I'm about to be in a whole world of trouble."

Before Candy could ask what he meant, Tom passed out cold in the dirt.

The barkeep was found dead behind the saloon the next morning. The next morning, Davey was found in his room beaten and hardly breathing. The next morning, Adam Cartwright returned to Virginia City.