A/N: Thanks to maineac, my beta, for general brilliance and helpful advice. Thanks for all your reviews. I think this will run to 11 chapters, if anyone's interested.
Caldway County, Kentucky – April 23rd, 1862
They were into Kentucky now; high, green trees covered sloping hills set around the broad, flat silver of the lakes. This was not called lake region for no reason; sheet after sheet of water surrounded them, at times making House feel like he was on an island in the middle of the ocean. The cardinals in the balmy woodland filled the air with chirping. He looked at Wilson, who was slumped in his saddle, nodding in the early morning sun. He roused himself a little under House's gaze, looking from side to side with heavy-lidded eyes. He had probably never seen so much water, House thought, and in truth neither had he. It was beautiful, he knew, but every attempt he made to appreciate it was hollow. The pain in his leg drained any beauty from his surroundings. It was vicious, throbbing and trembling like a train tearing down a hill. It had gotten steadily worse since they had started out on the journey and showed no sign of getting used to day after day of riding and sleeping on hard ground.
He tried to block out the pain, letting his body sway loosely in time with the mule's movements. Wilson started suddenly and clasped at the reins. House looked at him expectantly.
"I was daydreaming..." Wilson explained. "I dreamed that I was in a tornado."
"Well...you're not," House muttered, swigging from his water canteen and biting the inside of his cheek. He wished Wilson would go to sleep again so he could take a snifter of laudanum. It was only an hour since his dose, but he felt a desperate need for more.
"No," Wilson agreed. "But I was once, when I was a little boy. Pa took me out to see it coming, and boy was I scared. Never seen a thing to beat it – louder than you'd ever imagine."
"Right," House said, not concentrating on Wilson's words. The pain flashed now, knee to hip, knee to hip. In his mind, he threw back his head and screamed at the sky. In reality, he fixed his face firmly and tried to listen to Wilson.
"It tore the roof off the barn, killed a lot of cattle in the county."
"Uh-huh."
"Were you ever in a tornado?"
"No, but my wi-" House snapped his mouth shut quickly, killing the word before it escaped, but he knew Wilson had already worked out what had been coming. "No, I wasn't," he repeated, slapping the reins down lightly.
"Your wife?"
"Nope. I was going to say, 'My whining prisoner has been talking about them so long that I feel as though I had,'" House answered quickly, but his face showed clearly that he was annoyed with himself.
"Pain makes you forget yourself," Wilson remarked.
"So does stupidity." House glared at Wilson scathingly. "So remember yourself and shut up."
From the corner of his eye, House could see Wilson rubbing his neck tentatively. The sun must have burned it again. He hissed at the sting, licked his dry lips and spoke again. "Your leg...it's gotten worse, hasn't it? Since we started out, I mean."
"How would you know what it was like before?" House asked irritably.
"No-one could live in that much pain and still perform operations." Wilson half-smiled. "The pain...it seems to get worse the closer we get to Chicago."
House swivelled his head and fixed Wilson with a contemptuous glare. "Are you suggesting that the mere thought of losing my pet redneck makes my leg worse?"
He expected Wilson to blush and mumble a denial, but instead he just shrugged. This made House strangely angry and he gave a rough snort of laughter.
"If I were you, I'd stop worrying about me and start worrying about yourself. Two weeks more and we'll be at Camp Douglas. They got the shackles and cuffs all ready for you," he said in a manner that he knew was cruel, yet he was unable to stop himself. The corner of Wilson's mouth twitched, but he held his peace stoically. House felt another twinge of annoyance at his indifference, another bolt of pain thrust through his torn muscles and he was talking again, disjointedly, talking over the pain.
"They've got the highest rate of death, inmate mortality, in the North. Only Andersonville has a higher one in the whole, whole damned country. No doctors, no food half the time. They've got a punishment, I've been told, called Morgan's mule. They make a man sit on a wooden horse, bareback, with weights in each hand until either two hours is up or the feller falls off in a faint."
He stopped talking and realised that sweat was pouring down the inner seams of his jacket and making damp little pools at his waistband. Wilson was looking at him. Damn it, House thought, he still looked more concerned about House than himself. He fell into a gloomy silence and felt the pain of his leg swell and beat through his entire body.
They rode into Audere at just after five o'clock that afternoon. It was a clean, orderly town, small but busy, unlike many of the hostile and empty dustbowls they had come through since their journey began. House liked passing along bustling streets again, absorbing sensations he had almost forgotten – the feel of shoulders pressing past him, the smell of women's clothing and the flowers in their bonnets, the hollow call of Negro work parties marching down the middle of the road and the dull scrape of sacks and barrels being lugged from warehouses and stores. A few Union men were visible on the streets, but no resentment seemed to be exhibited towards them, and they hailed him cheerfully, for he had donned his uniform again with the intention of picking up another ten dollars from the town's Union depot. A tall figure in a slouch hat was auctioning horses in the town square to an enthusiastic crowd of townspeople. House felt safe in a strange town for the first time since the war had started.
They found room in a boarding house in the centre of the town, a narrow stone house that was opposite a white-painted Baptist church and run by an elderly woman who gave them chicken stew and said they looked starved.
Another house, another room, another night, House thought as they entered their room and Wilson dumped their bags on the floor.
"You ought to scrub up a little before we go down to the depot. Make it look like you're spending their money wisely," Wilson said, washing his face in the small enamel sink and rubbing a streak of mud from his jaw.
"You ought to comb your moustache, get the dirt out of it. Better yet, get rid of it altogether," House retorted, reluctantly picking up a comb and running it unenthusiastically through his unkempt hair. "And make sure you do the shy Alabama farmboy thing at the headquarters. They love a gentleman Southerner."
The Union depot was a few streets away. The sun was setting in a final flush of heat that beat down on them and made them feel heavy and lethargic. It was a low wooden building, a former general store. A guard sat outside on a rocking chair next to a recruitment poster urging southerners to join up with the Federal Army. He sprang to his feet as the two men approached and snapped to attention, his hand coming up in a salute.
"At ease," House muttered, stepping heavily onto the porch. "Captain House and prisoner. Here to pick up ten dollars for expenses."
"In you come, gentlemen."
Inside was a desk and little else. Behind it sat a middle-aged Major in a faded blue uniform with fearsome sideburns. He got to his feet, with an unmistakeable glance at House's leg, a glance that House had become acutely aware of wherever he encountered it.
"Good morning. Take a seat," he gestured to the two wooden chairs in front of the desk. "What can I do for you?"
House pulled the slip of paper from his pocket as they took the offered seats. "Notice from Colonel Briggs. I'm to have ten Yankee dollars expenses for the upkeep of one James Wilson, formerly Corporal in the Alabama Infantry."
The Major smiled and flexed his large, rough hands. "Ten dollars? For one prisoner?"
House shrugged. "He likes to look good."
The Major laughed and looked over the note briefly. "Very well, Captain. Of course, we have to make sure you're not spending it all on drink and letting this poor Wilson fellow wander about in rags, don't we?"
House bristled. He didn't like the patronising tone the Major appeared to have adopted. He tapped the cane several times on the wooden floor impatiently. The Major leaned forward and addressed Wilson.
"Well now, stout fellow – how are you?"
House watched Wilson raise his head to meet the Major's gaze and smile with just the right tint of bashfulness. Calculating bastard, House thought approvingly.
"Very well, thank you sir."
"Get along with the Captain here all right, do you?"
"Tolerably well, sir. I'm mighty grateful to him for all his trouble."
"Wonderful, wonderful. Well, I'll have it fetched for you now. Edwards!" he called through the open door, summoning the guard. "Bring ten dollars from the vault. Captain," he spoke to House again, Edwards having disappeared into the next room with an obedient nod. "If you would sign here in receipt...Thank you."
They stepped out onto the street, ten dollars in silver coin in House's hands. He handed eight of them to Wilson.
"Take these back with you. I'm going out for a while. Don't wait up."
"Thanks, but I wasn't planning on it," Wilson grinned and pocketed the money, but House could sense his concern. "Where you going?"
"A bad place that your mother would detest, Jim. Go home," House finished the sentence quickly, feeling pain begin to cut into the words. He bit the inside of his cheek stoically until Wilson shrugged and headed down the street, then gasped and reached for his laudanum bottle.
Upon his return to the boarding house, Wilson stowed the money away in a drawer and amused himself as best he could. He wrote a letter, ate all of House's hardtack and read through one of House's medical volumes. Finding himself at a loose end, he climbed into bed before the clock had struck ten.
Wilson's slumber was broken by a sharp rally of knocks on the door. For a moment, he wondered vaguely where the sound came from, his mind pleasantly clouded with sleep. A rough call, muffled by the door's thick wood, brought him to his senses. He twitched, opened his eyes and sat up with a start.
"Anyone in there?"
"Yes sir, there is," Wilson called in reply, standing up and groping clumsily for a shirt. "Who's there?" He looked at House's watch, which he had left on the table. It read five past two. His stomach knotted suddenly as he walked to the door. A call this late was always, in his experience, bad news.
"Sergeant Poole and Corporal Elliot, Union Army. Open up in there."
"Right away," Wilson answered, his eyes swivelling in search for House's uniform belt, which was draped over the back of a chair. Wilson loosed House's pistol from its holster and held it in his left hand, hidden behind the door as he opened it to reveal his visitors. Two Union men, one tall with thinning blond hair and a pencil moustache, the other stocky and red-haired. The blond soldier, with the insignia of a sergeant on his uniform, laid a gloved hand on Wilson's chest and pushed him back into the room. He then stepped in himself and looked around carefully.
"All right, Corporal Elliot," Poole nodded, and his comrade joined him in the room. Elliot glanced at Wilson.
"He's holding a pistol, Sergeant Poole!"
"I'll put it down," Wilson hastily interjected, tossing it onto the bedspread. "Seemed like a useful thing to have for calls at this hour, is all. What's the matter?"
Poole held out his hand and Elliot placed a scrap of paper on it. Poole held the paper out at arm's length and consulted it.
"Are you James Wilson?" he said, at length. Elliot lit the lamp and Wilson blinked in the light.
"Yes sir, I am. What's the matter?" Wilson asked, wondering if he was ever going to be answered. Poole blinked pointedly at him, then held up the scrap of paper. Wilson screwed up his sore, sleepy eyes and tried to make out the neat black handwriting inked in small letters across it. He made out his name, then something else.
"This piece of paper," Poole loudly informed Wilson, as Elliot warmed his hands over the lamp behind them, "was found in the pocket of one Captain Gregory House. On it was written your name and the name of this hotel."
Wilson's eyes widened and he suddenly felt wide awake. "Is he all right?" he said, a mental image of the paper being plucked from House's limp and lifeless body filling his head. Poole waved a dismissive hand.
"He's alive, if that's what you mean."
"Well, no. I mean, is he all right? Where is he?"
Elliot snickered, rubbed his hands and re-extended them over the lamp, which cast its flickering shadows across the room. Wilson glared at him. Poole tucked the piece of paper into his jacket.
"He's in the jailhouse. A party of soldiers was sent out to bust an opium den run by a pair of Chinamen downtown a few hours ago. They caught him there and brought him to the station."
Wilson pinched the bridge of his nose and shut his eyes. His dread had been replaced by a something worse. He was relieved to know that House wasn't dead or direly injured, but this turn of events was not exactly something he'd imagined.
"Why are you here?" he asked after a few deep breaths. "I thought you usually kept prisoners overnight."
"Usually, yes!" Elliot chuckled, roughly. "But the sonofabitch won't shut up! He's crazy with opium and drink. Normally, we'd just slap him around until he shut up."
"But we felt that it wouldn't be fitting, him being an officer." Poole spoke with an expression which suggested that if he were in charge, House would be a boot-cleaning private.
"Besides," Elliot added, "the men that picked him up had already given him the works. Until they realised he was a cripple, of course."
"In the circumstances, I felt that perhaps you might be able to take him away. If I hear him start singing one more time, my deeds will not be upon my head," Poole warned.
"What did he do?"
"Enough to keep any other guy in jail for at least six months, but an officer gets the kid glove treatment. Public disorder and striking a United States soldier."
"Did he? Oh God..." Wilson muttered, picking his jacket up from the floor and slipping it on. As he searched for his shoes, Poole frowned at him.
"You're not from the North. What is your relationship to this man?"
Wilson smiled ruefully. "I'm his prisoner."
Poole and Elliot led him silently through the cold streets to the jailhouse. A few drunks skulked on corners, a few beggars snored in doorways, but otherwise the town was deserted. Poole halted them outside a square wooden building on a corner and called "Guard" softly. A soldier sitting on a bench just by the door emerged from the shadows and showed them in. As the door opened and a pool of light fell across them, Wilson could clearly hear the strains of a song coming from within. He rolled his eyes as he realised that he knew the voice.
Inside the jailhouse was a short hallway with three barred cells on either side. At the end of the hall, past the cells, was a table on which stood a lantern struggling to illuminate the entire room and the remnants of a card game. A soldier was sitting in one of the chairs around the table and smoking a pipe. Wilson stood at the other end of the hall, hearing Elliot shutting and locking the heavy wooden front door behind him, and took in the scene.
"Geary, Geary!" groaned a voice from one of the cells. "Give me a puff, Geary!"
"Close your head, Michael, and call me sir, damn you!" the soldier Geary spat back, raising the blackjack he held in his hand threateningly. Poole and Elliot marched swiftly down the hall to the table, not looking at the cells at their sides as they passed. Wilson, his heartbeat rapid and his mouth dry, began to walk hesitantly after them. A drunk rushed the bars of his cell and clattered against them with an impact that made Wilson start so violently that he almost tripped. Corporal Elliot snickered.
He could hear the song clearly now, coming from the last cell on the right. It was a slow, dirge-like tune, sung with mournful abandon.
"Ich hatt' einen Kameraden, Einen bessern findst du nit, Die Trommel schlug zum-"
"Quiet in there! I won't tell you again!" Geary waved the blackjack with menace. House was silent for approximately four fifths of a second before continuing.
"Streite,...Er ging an meiner Seite... In gleichem Schritt und Tritt."
Wilson approached the cell tentatively, each step revealing more of it and its occupant. Along the back wall of the cell ran a bench and it was on this that House lay. His head and shoulders were leaned against the wall closest to Wilson, his body extending towards the opposite wall. His left arm was bent across the top his head limply, the other was draped over his leg.
"Eine Kugel kam geflogen...Gilt's mir oder gilt es dir?"
From here, Wilson was able to see House but House had not yet noticed him. He halted, a look of horror on his face. There was blood, some dark and dry, some fresh and garish red, covering most of his face in broad smears and dripping down onto his collar. A bruise was already purpling around his right eye. His voice was thick with drunken emotion as he droned his song with throaty pronunciation.
Poole clattered his pistol along the bars loudly.
"Shut your damned mouth! We've brought your buddy down here to take you home."
House shut up and swung his head leftwards, his glassy eyes taking in Wilson, who hovered uncertainly by the bars. The soldier Geary rattled a hoop of keys at his side as he approached the cell's lock.
"Oh Wilson, it's you...they said they brought my buddy down here, you damnable Southron, you," he mumbled. "You fellers met Wilson, then? The Alabama Kid..." he trailed off. "'Oh, I come from Alabama with my banjo on my knee,'" he began to sing again, but stopped as the bars slid away across the door of the cell and disappeared.
"Ha," House said in a satisfied tone of voice. "Wonderful. I'll just grab my cane and we'll get out of here," he announced, twitching a leg and falling spectacularly from the bench onto the floor. He lay on his front with his face turned a little towards Wilson and the soldiers and he remained there, motionless, until Geary stepped aside, allowing Wilson to hurry into the cell. A red, frothy mixture of blood and saliva was seeping from between House's lips and onto the concrete floor, and his eyes were drowsily shut. Wilson crouched down by House's side and shook his shoulder. He burbled incoherently for a few moments, his bruised and bloody face twitching, then one eye opened wide and stared at Wilson. In an exaggerated whisper, he said, "Four. I counted 'em."
"Did you?" Wilson said absently, wondering what he meant. "Come on, let's get up."
He hitched an arm around House's back and helped him get to his feet. He picked up the cane and placed it in House's hand, then steered him gently towards the open cell door. Corporal Elliot snorted in amusement as House lurched suddenly against the wall and had to be straightened and re-aligned. Wilson didn't speak to any of the men as he wiped the blood from House's nose and led him slowly out of the jailhouse.
House was singing again.
"Jimmy crack corn and I don' care. Jimmy crack corn and I don' care...Hey, Jimmy," he broke off, tugging urgently at Wilson's shoulder. They were proceeding slowly along the wooden sidewalk, under the unlit porch lamps and past closed doors.
"What?" Wilson whispered, his eyes on the way ahead cautiously.
"Four, I counted. Four of 'em."
"Right you are," Wilson muttered. "Walk a little straighter, can't you? You're hanging off me like an anchor."
"Don't pretend you don't like it."
Wilson couldn't help but smile, despite his anger At the moment, he was focussed solely on making it back to their hotel room, but already he was starting to feel the bitterness welling inside him. This man, whom he had come to regard as a friend, who repulsed and fascinated him, who had been his sole companion over this long journey, had deceived him. As they dragged themselves closer to their destination, it all began to slide into place. Wilson remembered every instance where House had disappeared for hours at a stretch, every brazen excuse.
They crossed the silent square and Wilson left House on the porch while he tapped the door softly until the houseboy answered.
"Who's there?"
"It's Wilson and Captain House. We're staying here."
"Yes sir, I remember sir." The door clicked open and the boy held it, watching with wide eyes as Wilson supported House through, shaking and sweating under the weight. Together, Wilson and the boy managed to drag him upstairs and into their room, where Wilson tossed the child a nickel and shut the door. He took a deep breath, then steered House onto the bed and sat him down. Wilson soaked an old cravat of House's in water and drew a chair to the bed. Sitting on this, opposite House, he began to wipe the blood from his face.
"Quit that!" House snapped. "I can do it myself."
Wilson ignored him and his subsequent hisses of pain. There was a constant trickle of blood from his mouth and nose, and his eye was swelling darkly. Wilson could imagine how easy it would have been for the soldiers to get hold of House, unable to run.
"They did a good job on you. What did you do when they hit you?"
"I counted. Know how many I counted, Wilson?"
Wilson chuckled. "Four?"
House nodded and smiled a cunning smile, showing the bloody interior of his mouth. He slowly raised his clenched left fist, extended it towards Wilson and let his long, red-stained fingers uncurl.
On his palm lay four large white teeth.
