A/N – Okay, so been fighting a bad cold and writing for NanoWrimo all week, and 10k words given the challenges?—I'll take 'em. My novel is coming together, thank you very much, some of you have read excerpts.
Here's Chapter 9, one more to go.
Reflections on watching S4E9 last night with the posse: the LYING everyone was doing was simply abysmal writing. I don't see that in our writing, unless Walt is trying to deflect or steer Cady wrong instead of admitting a relationship with Vic. It's just cop-outs with poor plotting.
So, did anyone else hate all the lying? And why could Walt have any jurisdiction on the CROW reservation? What happened to the Third Man (t-shirt man) who was NOT shot…? And why hasn't Walt figured out that Henry is Hector, yet?
None of those burning questions are addressed in this chapter. They are merely food for thought as you address the PTB in tweets and/or emails for the upcoming season.
Enjoy…
Chapter 9
It was a late fall, crisp, afternoon, for the expected snowstorm had been delayed by something meteorological, letting it settle as a bruised swirling dervish high in the peaks. Walt preferred to think of its eventual arrival in Durant as a welcome annoyance…a snowstorm might delay Vic's final therapy sessions, and in turn, her departure. Maybe it would give him few more days with her. He'd take that.
In the Bronco, he could sense her restlessness, and his fear returned.
"Why did he call it couples counseling last session, Walt? We aren't a couple. You told me it was for partners."
"You are my partner, or were. I'd like—that—again."
He knew he was in trouble when her eyes wouldn't meet his, she wouldn't answer, and she was looking out her window. He felt defeated during the rest of the short trip to the therapist's hideout.
Carl greeted them, let them settle, and made a few pleasant inquiries, before he asked him point-blank, as though he were firing an emotional missile, "Walt, this morning, why don't you start by telling us your feelings for Vic?"
This was it, the emotional blindside which he'd feared for so long, the one with the power to transform him into jello.
The dreams of Vic during the spring had been temporarily replaced by both Martha and Donna, who had now disappeared again. They had been replaced for a time after the cabin invasion by nightmares he could never remember, and then more recently The Good Dreams returned again…of her. He knew he had what Vic had snorted at once, the "Deer in the Headlights, Busted" look…and yet he was powerless to articulate what he felt.
Carl waited pleasantly, expectantly, before turning to Vic. "Maybe we should start with you. Can you describe your current feelings for Walt?"
Her eyes met his own, looking no less tormented, and unable, unwilling and unready to say anything when he could not.
The awkward silence was deafening, equally condemning, and shared.
Walt abruptly stood up. He couldn't take it anymore. He had endured the therapy for weeks, for her, but this question…this one answer…was not for Carl's ears.
"Vic, with me!" Out of her long habit to obey and follow, she sprung up facing him. He grabbed her hand and they exited the offices rather quickly, and he didn't apologized when his long strides made her trot beside him.
"Walt, what the fuck—?" she started to say, but he moved so fast, he was convinced she concentrated on not tripping instead of cussing him out. He almost threw her into the Bronco passenger seat, where she rapidly buckled in.
"Do you have ammo?" he asked equally as abruptly.
Her eyebrows furrowed, but she shrugged, "Of course, at least a few dozen rounds."
"Okay."
And he almost threw himself into the driver's seat as they sped away.
"Okay," she got out after she caught her breath. "What was all that about?"
"I don't think those things are his business, or what the county is paying him for every week." He halted, unsure what, if anything, to say next, he froze inside. Shit, she must think he didn't have feelings. His own heart plummeted as he watched her shoulders slump. He added, "They're our own." Saw her shoulders slump even more, if possible.
"Yeah. Right."
He blinked his eyes slowly as he drove, as he thought of what he had just said, and what he'd told her in the alley…that his feelings were none of her business, and he felt even lower. He had no idea how to fix what came out of his traitorous mouth, but he needed to act soon, or she'd leave and he'd be left with only Eamonn to remind him of her.
Heck, she might take up again with Eamonn, but if the younger man had been right, and Vic had wanted him…Well, she'd evidently wanted him at least that once, when she'd come out to the cabin while he was Jacob-hunting. He had no idea how to make her want him again.
Get it right, just once… He thought of his words to her at the river even as he sifted for evidence in Branch's murder. He wondered if his moment of inspiration as they fled therapy had any merit toward that. He thought she vaguely recognized the road they turned on, the Bronco not with lights and sirens, but at a goodly speed.
"Fuck, the shooting range?"
"Yep."
She made a noise through her nose, but he ignored it. She'd understand soon enough.
She said slowly, maybe a little tremor in her voice, "I'm not sure I should be out here right now."
"It'll be all right." He hoped he was right.
He pulled up much as they had with all the deputorial candidates a couple of months ago. He found a permanent marker stashed in the console and dropped it in one of his jacket pockets.
"What now?"
"We shoot."
She rolled her eyes and shook her head, and he couldn't blame her. Maybe it was a stupid idea.
He led the way, they got eye and ear protection, and he removed some targets from the waterproof cylinder which hung under the overhang.
He stalked out to the targets, began clipping them on and flipped the pen up.
On one, he wrote directly over the heart WALT. On the next one, he wrote DONNA.
He came back to find her loading her Glock to capacity. She had not yet seen his additions to the targets.
He silently loaded his own.
When she looked up, she saw the targets and stilled.
"It'll be your one chance," he said looking up, "to get it out of your system. No one watching, asking questions, or prodding. I know you want to."
She looked at him like he was crazy. It was the WTF, Walt? look all over again. Maybe, at that moment, he was. He just couldn't live with her everyday anger and apparent indifference any more, but he would take even that over the chance of living without her.
He gestured her to take her stance.
"Fire at will to the target of your choice on the count of four, "One two three FIRE!"
The noise was deafening. When the smoke cleared, he could distinctly see a large hole where "Donna's" face had been. His, however, was unmarked.
He tilted his head in question.
"Keep your weapon holstered," she ordered him with a straight-arm signal for safety, and walked out to the other target with his name, then put her arms around it and rested her head on where his chest would be.
His heart stuttered and hope fluttered, where before there had been a dead zone.
She walked back, her stride less cocky than usual. "Give me your marker!"
He did, and she trotted back out to the other two targets. As she returned, he could see in a clear Block print, "VIC" on one, and "EAMONN" on the other.
"Your turn," she said, he took his stance, and she called out, "One, two, three, FIRE!"
The sound had barely faded when he immediately holstered his gun and walked around to the target labeled VIC enveloped it with his arms and buried his head against where its neck would be. Next to where he was standing, surrogate Eamonn was untouched. He had nothing against Eamonn, who had provided what she had needed at a moment when he could not.
"What now?" she asked from behind him, but it was in a very soft, husky voice he had rarely ever heard.
He stepped back and turned toward her, lips pressed together, and jerked his head. He was kind of out of ideas, but she held out her hand. He didn't hesitate, but walked up to her and took it.
"What fucking took you so long, Walt?"
He gave a long exhale, before pulling her into him, her cheek turned to his chest.
"Branch. Barlow. Both tragedies that didn't have to happen, that I might have been able to prevent. Nearly getting executed twice, attacked in my own home. Worried about you with Chance and Branch and thought I wouldn't be able to live if you died as well. You were right with Carl, I had a lot to process and put to rest in a short time, and I did a lousy job with it."
"And Dr. Monaghan?
He hesitated. "Solace. I wanted solace for Branch and Barlow…I—I thought she was Martha. She wasn't, she was only Donna, tormented in her own way."
"And the Thursday night chess?"
"Same. Like Carl said, we find comfort and purpose in routine and repetition. New opportunities can be scary, especially when our psyches are wounded."
"But you didn't find it, there?"
"I kept wanting to confide in you, but you were going through so much with the divorce, then I had Barlow, you had the eviction, I didn't want to complicate things if Donna could give me some peace. I thought…"
"You never thought maybe I was the only one who might or could understand? I do this for a living too, you know."
He buried his face in her neck, much as he had with the target's.
"Not until you knocked the stupids out of me," he murmured for her ear only.
Her forehead crinkled. "What?"
"Something Lucian said. He—he thinks I should marry you."
"Shit!"
"More or less what I said—at first."
"Crazy old man, although he did say we both needed therapy."
"Crazy like a fox. So…what about Eamonn?" he asked. He needed to know.
"Well…he liked me when no one else seemed to. You'd been biting my head off, avoiding me, lying to me, treating me like I didn't exist. Giving me shit duty like Gab's house. I wanted to hurt you, but afterwards, I figured you never even knew. So, the alley."
"And in the alley?"
"You'd lied to me about the shirt, you'd lied about her at the hospital, and it just happened at Cady's, the night before you came to talk to her about Gab?"
His chest grew cold. While he had been talking to Cady, Eamonn had been inside with Vic…?
"Yeah," she said, "then. And I hated myself for it, but when you wouldn't talk to me, hiding the Doc thing, what the new shirt meant, and then that edict about your personal life…Fortunately, Eamonn is a good friend although no longer lover, and told me to figure myself out before anything us could happen. I think he already knew he was not The One."
"Who is The One?"
She punched him in the gut, but softly, and she was grinning. Pulling her punches for once was a good sign, he thought, and she was grinning. That was a good thing.
"Vic," he whispered, pulling her to him, and he felt like he was bestowing a benediction with her name. It felt so right, even just holding her. "So, where do we go from here?"
She shook her head, then stopped and cocked it. "I—might know a place."
"Not the cabin?"
"Not yet—Not. Yet. Something just for us, somewhere without Martha or Donna ghosts, and we don't want to scare the shit out of Ferg, or he might become one." She grinned as though viewing a private image of that.
"Okay."
In the end they took the Bronco, neither willing to be apart for as long as the drive would take to go back to the therapist's and then on the road again.
He held her along his side in the car, disregarding seat belts for once. She took liberties, touching him where she could, and he knew that the first time he would not last, but that it if he had any say in it, it would be far from the last time.
She directed him to pull off the road near the little treed cove she had found near Lake Desmet. She pulled out the 'dead guy' blanket and they walked to the top of the small hill where they could view the lake from seclusion. A couple of boats were out in the middle, fishing. Across the lake on the other shore a lone fisherman sat in his camp chair drinking. It was a place for thinking, or…for lovers. It was cool, but still held a taste of the late sun. It was…perfect.
"I used to spend time here. Cady was great, but I had to be alone. I—could let myself long for you here, and at one point, even wondered whether I should just walk into the lake and not come back."
He stilled. It had been that bad? Well, obviously it had. His guilt returned.
But she was still speaking…
"This is, being with you here, would be like, redemption for all of that, that it was all worth it." She exhaled.
He wanted to apologize, for shutting her out, for Cady's house, for Donna, but he was left speechless by the dappled pre-sunset shadows making her appear to be like a gilded fairy in his forest…
He didn't need more of a hint. He touched her face, and grazed the other cheek with a fleeting but open-mouthed kiss, more question than statement.
He thought the look she gave him might just melt him into the leaf scatter and dirt, as she launched into his arms…
XXX
"Sometimes I would like someone else to be sheriff," he sighed, before nuzzling her neck where she lay next to him. Despite the afternoon chill, they both still lay only partially clothed.
He had been right, the first time had been fast, the second much more leisurely, but it was now sunset and cooling quickly, and probably time to seek warmer sanctuary for any further fun.
She straightened.
"Like me? Sometimes I can be the sheriff when we're together?" She leaned over and bit his neck near where it joined his torso. He thought maybe she liked that just a little too much…
"Sure," he said, a mixture of a laugh and a groan.
"You'd let me be the boss of you?"
He responded by pulling her on top of him. One more time, and he'd wrap them up tight in the blanket. No dead guys, here.
"Sure, somebody's got to be the sheriff…"