Thank you for the reviews – they are so lovely and so, so, so appreciated! I also wanted to take a moment to encourage any sort of constructive criticism anyone might have. As I haven't visited this story in a while, I fear that the new parts may feel a bit disjointed, so I want to ensure that everything is still working well for my audience Thank you so much!

For three long days, time wore at Daisy's skin and muscle and tissue until she felt little more than her brittle bones rubbing together, playing her their eerie song. She was beyond any sort of tired she had ever known, and still she found the continuous strength to brush off the doctor's insistent pleas that she get some rest.

"I won't be able to sleep," she would reply drowsily. "Now please give me something useful to do."

The doctor, already familiar with the girl's stubbornness, could only begrudgingly oblige. And so Daisy spent the relentless hours cleaning Cap's wound, changing the dressings, mopping his hot forehead with a damp cloth, or merely sitting on a stool at his side, her soft hand working over his calloused palm as she told him about the places she had read of in her books; places like Paris and London, places they could someday go, away from the world they knew. She longed to see those mismatched eyes, strange and comforting, watching her as he listened. And yet she felt that she may crumble if he were to awake. Daisy had found a quiet confidence in the chaos around her, her will to survive battering down the truly heinous thoughts that seeped through her brain. She was being strong for Cap, but she was also being strong for herself. The tragic possibilities of love would not be her ultimate undoing, not while Cap still breathed beside her.

The doctor left the cabin often and Daisy felt that maybe he was uncomfortable with her presence. Still, he would make it a point to check on Cap's condition throughout the day, only providing small shrugs in response to Daisy's ceaseless mountain of questions. "Is he OK?" "When will he wake up?" "Will he wake up?" The man may have been skilled at what he did, but his bedside manner was severely lacking. In fact, when he returned each evening with fresh kills for their supper, he cut the meat with such blind precision that Daisy wondered if he weren't a veterinarian, or merely a butcher with a little medical knowledge. Either way, she didn't push the subject. Despite his gruffness, the man had done more than just let Cap and Daisy recover in his temporary home: he had leant Daisy a few of his mother's dresses that still lay folded in a cedar chest at the foot of the bed. And to quiet Daisy's nerves, he had spent the nights telling her stories about cowboys and Indians and anything that would distract her from the trauma at hand. The doctor, however unreadable and distant, seemed to view Daisy as a sort of daughter.

X X X

One day, as the cold of winter worked its way through the land, Daisy again found herself alone with Cap, the brilliant white sun starting to sink into the orange clouds and naked black trees. She lay with her head upon Cap's bony hip that jutted out from beneath the quilt, eyes unblinking in their lazy perusal of his square jaw and the coarse beard that had begun to grow upon it. She touched her own hair, all knots and tangles, and thanked the Lord that the good doctor didn't keep a mirror in his cabin. A few days back, she had bathed quickly and carelessly from a bucket of cool river water out behind the house, not wanting to soil the memory of the man's mother with the dirt and blood that covered her like a second skin. When Daisy had been trapped at the inn, she had thought that a nice long bath would have been the sweetest sensation in the world, sweeter than anything she had ever known. But now, the water was only a nuisance.

Without warning Daisy began to think of her home, and of the way she and her siblings would smile in the summer as they played in the icy river. She thought of the chunks of soap that smelled like fat and honey, and of the decadent feel of Roseanna raking a comb through her clean black hair. She saw them all then: Roseanna and Tolbert and Calvin and her Ma, and most of all her Pa, who was not so different from the doctor she knew so little of. Daisy could easily imagine what her Pa would have to say about all of this if the two of them ever saw each other again. He would scold her for getting involved with a Hatfield, for letting Cap corrupt her and lead her into a life of sex and violence and murder. He would deny her birthright, same as he had done with Roseanna.

And then he would pray.

"Dear Lord," the words left Daisy's mouth before she could stop them. She lifted her head and looked up towards the ceiling, hands clasped beneath her chin.

"Dear Lord, I know I ain't the prayin' sort. I think it's my Pa's fault, truth be told. He always prayed for everything: prayed for the sun to come up, prayed for the crops to grow and the pigs to get fat, prayed for Ma to smile at him. Sometimes I think maybe he prayed so much so he wouldn't have to do anything on his own, or be responsible for himself, ya know? 'It's in God's hands,' he would always say when I asked him a hard question, like why people picked on me, or why we had to work so hard when other people didn't. I got sick of the prayin', and got sick of no one answerin'. I didn't think you ever talked to my Pa, not in any of his darkest hours, so I didn't think you would ever talk to me neither." Daisy should have been crying; it was what the old version of her would have done. But the tears were deep down at the bottom of her well, below her resolve, below the things she needed to say.

"But I need you now, Lord," she started again. "I need you to talk to me, and I need you to answer me, and I need you to help. I could say that maybe you should save Cap's life because I'm the one askin', and because, despite the never prayin', I've always been a good girl, always done what I've been told. But I don't think you should do it for me, although you of all people will see the way I feel about him better than I could ever describe. No, I want you to do it for him, because he's good, too. I know people don't see him that way, most of all my Pa, and I know he's done some bad things, some things he didn't want to do. But you've seen this war, Lord, this stupid, endless feud between our families, and you've seen the choices he's had to make. And he's only ever done what he done because of his family…and because of me. If that ain't goodness, I don't know what is."

X X X

After the prayer, the tears finally came, and with them sleep, a deep, dark sleep that wrapped Daisy in its warmth until the early light of morning. She wasn't roused by the doctor stomping inside, a warm smile pulling across his face at her finally having given in. Nor did she stir at the smell of the stew that the man prepared, or the snores that spiraled out of his own tired mouth when night had thoroughly fallen. It was only in the glowing gloom of the small hours that she was finally pulled from the black depths, something gently rustling her filthy hair as she lay with her head over Cap's good side, face turned away from him. It was the gentlest touch, like a tentative animal, persistent in its soft stroking. And underneath the calming caress, a familiar electricity whirred, jolting Daisy upward. She spun her head sharply, her heart dropping into the pit of her stomach.

Cap was staring at her, his eyes drunk with pain. He smiled slowly as he reached to stroke her downy cheek.

"So, beautiful," he whispered in a rasp. "Where are we going first?"