I wrote most of this months ago but didn't like it all that much. Since I just heard today that there's a release date for the final season, I figured I'd finish it up (the chapter, I mean) and get it out there. It's probably not the same attention to detail as my previous works. But whatever. I figured I'd share it.

I hope you're all well. : )

Chapter 10

She doesn't know what takes her so long to figure it out.

At the time, she just thinks he's being a martyr and maybe a little self-righteous. She thinks he's being Walt. There's no feeling of rejection, and she's not confused. She gets it: He's sacrificing himself to do what's right for the wife he couldn't save. He's doing what he needs to do. It's who he is.

She never feels even a twinge of jealousy over it.

For now at least it's over. Maybe they'll find their way back to each other and maybe they won't, but at least she's not left wondering, or left with that icy lump of unreciprocated love lodged behind her ribs. There was reciprocation. If ever she'd doubted, it was cleared up when he socked her in the nose that day.

Sometimes she misses him, but she understands. And she still sees him. It's all right.

That is, it's all right until the eeriness descends, the tight silence, the entire absence of personality, as though his soul is being held captive somewhere, and now this remote-operated, hollow-eyed casing scuffs around the office, and sits in his chair, and barks the occasional unconvincing order, and doesn't shave, or apparently shower.

Henry joins him on his last trip to Denver. They aren't gone long, and when they return, there's hushed talk of feathers and Ridges and Nighthorse and Miller Beck. Walt's emptiness becomes the eye in a building storm.

In the stillness, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation leaves messages he ignores. Everyone's on edge about it except him.

A few days later, she hears him tell Ruby he'll be out of the office for the rest of the day, and it's barely noon. After all that silence, he's cagey. Once when she gets up to go to the bathroom, he's standing in his doorway frozen, staring at her.

"What?" she says.

He doesn't say anything. He just keeps those haunted eyes on her. She doesn't push it, and when she comes out, the door to his office is closed.

She's out on a call when he leaves.

Even then she doesn't put it together. Not really.

Later that same day, though, after she's already gone to the gym and taken a shower and changed into shorts, the eeriness invades her somehow. The icy lump pops in her chest and spreads.

The afternoon is bright and blustery, but it doesn't feel like spring. She takes the left turn onto his property, leaving the pavement. She's had plenty of time to plan, but she still doesn't know what she'll say. She'll probably start with What the fuck? and go from there.

The driveway is long. The truck flushes dust up into the paling afternoon sky, creating a rearview haze. By the time she sees the cabin, she's livid and heavy with the tears she's straining against.

You asshole. That's what she'll say. You selfish, clueless asshole.

The thing is, she knew his ambivalence about the two of them had to do with what lay ahead, but she didn't understand he wasn't planning on being around for much more of it.

She pulls into the yard. Some seconds pass before she registers the Bronco's absence and the open front door. She gets out, eyes locked on the blackness beyond the threshold. She stands with the truck door as a shield. Her sidearm is at home, in the nightstand drawer, and she's wearing yoga pants and flip flops. It dawns on her the degree to which she didn't think it through, any of it, starting way back, long before they were lovers for 24 hours, long before she left Philly for this godforsaken place.

Why the fuck didn't she say something when she had the chance three weeks ago, or yesterday, or this morning?

"Walt!" she calls.

There's a slow knocking of boots on the hardwood inside the house. A burst of adrenaline has her hand instinctively rising and easing back towards her belt, and since there is no belt, the hand hovers there in denial. She waits, shallow breaths, ears pricked.

After a minute or even two, she thinks maybe she imagined it. She leaves the metal barrier and takes a few slow steps across the dusty driveway towards the porch. Then she hears the steps again.

"Walt?" Her voice quivers.

There's motion in the blackness. Her heart sinks. As she's stepping back towards the safety of the vehicle, a tall figure appears in the doorway. It's not Walt.

"Vic?"

"Henry?"

She walks over to the porch. He comes out to the top of the stairs. His face is drawn, and there's tension in his jaw.

"Where's Walt?" she says, her voice crackling.

A tear makes it all the way to her top lip before she notices. It rolls over the ridge and into her mouth, salty. She doesn't wipe it away. If she didn't notice, maybe he didn't, either.

"If you know something that I do not, now would be a good time to share."

"What do you mean?"

She knows what he means.

"It was just once," she says. "I mean, it was more than once. Four times actually. But just one day."

He looks confused at first. Then the light comes on. "Ah, okay," he says, unfazed. "You are right. I did not know that. But that is not what I meant."

"I know." She bites her bottom lip. "But the part you should know won't make sense without that part."

He waits, arms crossed, watching her. It doesn't come across as pressure.

"He said it's over," she says. Something about hearing the words come out of her mouth, about releasing the information into the universe, makes her ache the way she probably should have but up to this point hasn't. "I thought he meant us. That. I thought he meant we were over."

"But?" he says.

"But I think he meant it's over."

He takes another deep breath. Hands on hips he scans the field, and the hills in the distance, and the sky, as though whatever he says next will originate out there.

When he looks back at her, he seems to suddenly be aware of the distance between them, the height differential, with her at the bottom of the steps and him on the porch. He squats down. His smile is remorseful, almost as though in addition to everything else he must be feeling, he has some sympathy for her.

"Martha's ashes are gone," he says. "They have been on the same shelf in the kitchen for four years. Walt was waiting."

"Until he had the guy."

"Yes."

"Does he? Have the guy?" she asks.

"He believes he does. I am not convinced."

"He thinks it's Nighthorse."

He doesn't respond.

She nods. "Then that's what he meant."

"I have to go, Vic," he says, standing up. "I am sorry Walt brought you into this."

"I brought myself in." She quickly wipes the tear, and another that slipped out while they were talking. "I'll go with you," she says.

"It is best that I go alone."

/

All night she waits, not sure what she's waiting for. There is no rational reason to think Henry will give her an update, and she's certain Walt won't.

If Walt was dead, or on his way to jail, or even if Nighthorse was dead, someone would call. No one does.

At two in the morning, she finally goes into her bedroom and tries to get some sleep. Instead she replays that conversation, over and over, what she should have said, what she should have done, and she repeatedly drives the thought away that says if he's capable of this, it wouldn't have mattered anyway.

So she revises history:

"Look at us," he said.

"I know. We're a mess."

"Yeah," he said. "But I mean look at us."

"This is how it should be," she said. "It's stupid to be afraid to say that, so I'm saying it: This is how it should be."

He tried to look away, towards the office. A door had opened. There were voices. They were being watched, but she didn't care. She kept her eyes on his face until he came back to her.

"In a different time," he said.

She dropped the hand with the rag, and took his wrist gently, lowering it to the table. Her nose was sore, the skin stretched tight and throbbing with her pulse. The plug in each nostril miraculously disappeared.

She stood. His eyes widened.

"No," she said, sliding onto his lap, encircling his neck with her arms. In his good ear, she whispered, "This is a different time."

As evidence, she kissed him. Before long, he kissed her back, and she stuck with it until any semblance of resistance had drained out of him. Then she stood up, and sat in her own chair again.

After refolding the rag, dipping it in her beer, and dabbing it against the wound on the side of his face, she returned the ice pack to the bridge of her nose.

"Don't tell me it's over," she said.

And finally she slept.