A/N: Same drill!

PROVIDENCE

Somewhere in the woods of a far distant world, a man moved silently and carefully. The weapon he carried glittered in the moon's cold gloom.

He switched it to his other hand, flung the weapon hard, at a nearby tree, and smiled with chilling satisfaction when a muffled 'thunk' came back to him.

The man continued to move within the shadowy depths of the woods. He seemed but a shadow himself, a mere apparition.

A ghost.

He retrieved his weapon from the offending tree trunk, skirted the thornbush that grew as silent and as deadly as he was, and moved still deeper into the woods.

A loud crack startled him.

He stopped and listened. Whatever had made the sound, would soon appear, and when it finally did...

The man would be ready.

In a plantation house further away, though not so distant, a man groaned restlessly in his sleep.

He slept on.

The nightmares had continued, despite his weariness, despite everything...

...on and on they went.

They marched like soldiers, steady and in a bizaare orderly fashion. Yet, they did so without command from any human voice. On and on they marched. Going ahead of him, though always coming back, just to see if he still followed.

As if he could have done anything else.

And follow, he did.

The nightmares were always the same. Never varied. Never changing.

Never ceasing their relentless march through his fevered mind.

Always taunting him.

He would not wake.

Not yet...

And he slept on.

He groaned again. Reaching out his hands to someone, or something, that was not there, he clung to what sanity he had left to him. And as the nightmares went on and on, that sanity was precious little.

And still, the nightmare marched on.

"No.." he moaned in his sleep.

On and on...

Then, with a startled cry, he saw it.

Felt it.

And he knew.

"No!" he screamed, sat up abruptly, breathing hard, as if he had marched alongside this twisted dream.

The seering pain in his stomach had woke him. It gripped him as if it were a death grip...

He knew it now.

Had always known it.

But did not, could not, believe it.

But it wasn't the pain in his stomach that scared him...

It was the numbing pain in his throat, that had drug him screaming from a restless sleep.

As the pain faded into a distant memory, he began to grope for something to cling onto. Like a drowning man...like a man...

Dying.

His sanity?

That had already fled long ago.

Mad Man.

Butcher.

Finally, when he thought he could hold on no longer, his hand brushed against something warm and solid. Something safe.

But with everything, it allowed him only a brief moment of that emotion, then it too, fled into a distant memory.

He let his hand move over the warm solid form...his hand shaking slightly...

The form moved.

Then he remembered. And as is mind recalled this memory, he smiled in spite of the terrible fear he felt.

"William?"

He caught his breath.

"William?" the soft voice came out of the hazy darkness.

"Yes." he whispered back, sickened by the tremour in his own voice.

"Why are you awake?"

The numbing pain, as if by command, slithered through him.

"I..." he could not tell her why.

When he did not continue, the woman who lay beside him, sat up, drew him close, and wrapped her arms around him.

Safe.

"William, why?"

He shuddered, sank into her embrace, and prayed. If Providence had sent this nightmare...

It did not care.

"William?"

"Catherine..." he whispered back.

Sinking.

Safe.

She tightened her embrace.

"Shhh..."

He sank further...

And though the nightmares would be waiting, as he knew they always did, he fell into an uneasy slumber.

Somewhere not too far away, a man sat hunched over a desk in a shadowy, candlelit room...a quill flew over a piece of crisp, expensive parchment.

When he finished, he folded it neatly, afixed his seal to it, and handed it to the young man who stood before him at ready attention.

"And to whom shall I deliever this, Lord General, Sir?"

The man smiled slowly.

"Colonel William Tavington, commander of the Royal Green Dragoons."

The young man grinned faintly.

"And where shall I find him, Sir?"

The Lord General looked to another piece of the same parchment, and studied it for a moment.

"Kentucky, Lt. Marshall, Kentucky."

The young man nodded.

"Yes, Sir."

He turned to leave, stopped and turned back again.

"And Sir, where shall I tell him he's being sent this time?"

The Lord General grinned. The expression was one of maliciousness...bitter to it's core.

It fit this man well.

"South Carolina."

Far off in the very same place, who's name Providence had placed on the lips of the Lord General, a man slipped silently, and ghostlike, into a white boarded house.

Providence was about to place in this man's path, another man. The path would be a bloody one...

And once again, as is always the case, Providence would not...

This path...

The Ghost...

Bloody...

The Butcher...

Deadly.

And Providence...

Would not...

Did not...

Care.

A/N: Keep reading…and thanks for doing so! R and R kindly, please!