Thank you so, so much for the reviews! I didn't know if anyone was going to want to follow along, but I am SO happy to find out there is some interest in this story. :)
Chapter 2
Vin's boots rapped against each step as he made his way up the stairs to Mary's apartment.
He stopped himself at the door and forced himself to knock, to not throw the door open and go barreling in.
He could hear Mary's quiet voice, then her steps as she approached the door.
Mary opened the door and Vin immediately looked over her shoulder.
"Vin?" she asked.
Vin saw the blood-stained dress draped over the back of the chair. He gently nudged Mary out of his way, his eyes fixed on that dress.
"Vin?" Mary asked again, closing the door and following him.
Vin looked around the small living quarters. He swallowed hard. "Where is she?" he asked quietly. "Lucy."
He hadn't said her name in over a year before today. Not out loud. In his mind, he thought of her every day, wondered if he had done the right thing.
"She's in my room, resting," Mary said, her blue eyes studying him. "Did Chris want you to question her? She's not in any shape—"
"No," Vin cut her off. He looked back at the tattered and soiled dress and his hands curled into fists. "I need to see her."
"Maybe in a couple days, or tomorrow. But she's not—"
Vin stepped around Mary, going toward the only other room in the small upstairs. The door was open a crack.
Vin paused at the threshold, he lifted his hand to knock, then paused.
He closed his eyes, not sure he was ready to face what Lucy had been through.
But Lucy needed him and that had always been all he needed to know.
He knocked softly, then belatedly remembered himself and reached up to take his hat off.
There was no response from the room.
"Vin," Mary said, more insistently. "She really isn't in any condition for this."
Vin barely heard her, stepping into the room. He was aware of Mary turning and rapidly leaving the apartment, he assumed to get Chris to pull him away.
Seated in a chair near the window, light brown hair in a neat braid, wearing a simple pink calico dress, Lucy hadn't changed since he last saw her a year ago.
"Lucy," Vin said. He took a few more steps into the room. Her lips trembled, the only sign that she heard him.
Vin slowed his steps. He crouched down in front of the chair.
The trembling moved from her lips and spread across her face, her pretty features crumpling, the trembling spreading to her hands.
She bit her lip, a sob catching in her throat.
"It'll be alright," he said, trying to meet her eyes. She closed her eyes and shook her head. "It will. I promise," he said.
Lucy let out a shaky breath that released the tears she was fighting back. With a muffled sob, she fell forward into Vin's arms, her heartbreak slicing through Vin.
He held her without a word. Just stroked her hair, held onto her, was there for her.
She was broken and he wasn't sure how to put her back together. His baby sister.
#
Mary was coming down the stairs when Chris strode through the door of the Clarion office. Vin was nowhere in sight.
"He's upstairs," Mary said. "He said he needed to see Lucy. He knew her name."
Chris and Mary had never managed to progress much past friendship, his harsh edges and bitterness keeping the widow, and everyone else, at a distance that was safer for his soul, but Chris could read the look in her eyes. She was worried about the girl, she was baffled by Vin, and she didn't like not being able to make heads or tails of what was going on.
Well, that made two of them.
"She stuck that man with Vin's knife," Chris said.
"What?" Mary looked horrified, like somehow the girl using a knife belonging to Vin was the greatest offense of the day.
Chris had no idea who the girl was to Vin, and he wasn't one to push to hard into the private man's affairs, but he needed to make sure his friend and the girl were alright.
Taking the steps two at a time, he went upstairs. He could hear Vin's quiet voice and the girl's weeping mingling together.
He followed the sounds and looked into Mary's room.
Vin was kneeling in front of the woman, Lucy he had called her, and wiping tears from her cheek with his thumb.
"The man on the stage," Vin said, once her tears slowed. "Did he hurt you?"
Chris stilled, knowing that man was in the jail and Chris could go wrap a hand around the scum's neck and choke the life out of him if Lucy gave the answer he feared. His hand instinctively went to his gun at the thought of all the things he could do to that sorry excuse for a man.
Chris' movement caught her attention. Her blue eyes flashed to him and fear filled them. He heard the catch of her breath, saw the way her hands tightened on Vin's arm. The way she jerked away from him, even though an entire room separated them, pressing back against the upholstered chair the same way she had tried to flatten herself against the interior wall of the stagecoach when she first saw him had Chris well aware of how much of his humanity he had lost in the years since Sarah and Adam had died. He didn't know how to be anything other than a gunslinger bent on vengeance, and it showed in his face. He took a step back, nothing else he could do to show the woman he wasn't a threat.
Vin glanced back at Chris. "It's ok, Luce," Vin said, a hand moving to her shoulder, the other holding her shaking hands. "This is Chris. He's a friend of mine."
Chris waited for Vin to tell him who this girl was to him.
Vin stroked the woman's light brown hair, the way one do to a child who had woken from a bad dream. "This is my sister, Chris. Lucy Tanner."
#
Lucy heard Vin say her name. She opened her mouth to tell him she hadn't been Lucy Tanner in a long time. But the words wouldn't move past the fear that tightened her chest. She couldn't get her voice to work with the trembling that had taken over her body.
She risked another look at the lean man in black. His face was all hard planes and anger. His green eyes looked at her like he could see exactly what she was made of and she cowered at the idea he might find anything out before she could talk to Vin.
She looked back at Vin, needing his familiar face to anchor her before what happened today got twisted up in the memories of the last month and all the fear and terror swept her away. She clutched at his hand.
He had said something, asked her something, before the terrifying man in black had showed up. Lucy risked another cautious look at that man. Chris. Vin had said he was a friend of his. She could trust Vin. She focused on the one thing that made sense right now. She could trust her brother. He would help her.
What had she been about to say? Her muddled thoughts swirled around with the jolts of memory that kept surfacing.
"There were two of them." That was it. She needed to correct what Vin had said about the man attacking her.
"What?" Vin asked.
Her voice was rough still, whispery with how hard it was to put words together. "Two. Two men."
Her brother, only twenty-six months older than her twenty-one years of age, but he had taken care of her as best he could, and for as long as he could, since they had lost their mother when Lucy was only three. Vin didn't show any reaction to her statement other than a nod.
"I'll have Mary bring you some tea. Maybe some toast?" he asked, starting to rise.
Lucy grasped at his hands. She didn't want to lose him. Not when she had finally found him and he was the only thing that made sense in this entire day. The only thing keeping the full force of the memories at bay.
Vin didn't untangle his hands from hers, just squatted down in front of her again. "I'll come back and check on ya. I promise, Luce. I got some things to take care of first."
Lucy knew her breaths were coming too fast. She made an effort to slow her breathing. She had never swooned in her life. She had never been weak. She couldn't start now.
She clenched shivering teeth together and nodded.
"That's my girl," Vin said. He stood and looked over to the man in black, giving him a slight nod that Lucy couldn't interpret.
They strode out of the room together and Lucy barely had time to register the loss of Vin's presence before Mary was back with her.
Mary started turning down the covers on the bed and Lucy realized the golden sunlight had long since stopped coming through the window.
"You'll stay here tonight," Mary said. She fluffed a pillow and smoothed the blankets with a hand before turning back to Lucy. She looked at Lucy with such concern that Lucy had to look away, down at her hands. The hands that had held the knife Vin gave her before he had to leave and told her to use it if she ever had to…
"Lucy?"
Unsure how long she had been lost in her thoughts, Lucy looked up. Mary had taken a seat on the edge of the bed.
"Those men today…did they…did they hurt you in any way?" Mary looked at her without any judgment and Lucy found herself holding back the words that threatened to tumble out if she had full control over her voice.
"I…" How did she tell Mary that it didn't matter whether those men had done anything to her or not? Nothing mattered after what she had lived through for the last seven months. "Where's Vin?" she asked, the emotion building in her chest too much.
"He had some things to deal with," Mary said and Lucy was sure the grim look on her face had something to do with the men on the stage.
Mary shifted slightly, trying to catch Lucy's eye, trying for a smile to reassure her. Lucy was beyond reassurance. The shaking was back and Lucy wished she could just give in, let the tremors overtake her, maybe shake the sense right out of her and forget everything.
"Perhaps a warm bath?" Mary suggested. "There's a private bathhouse down the street."
"No." The word tore from her throat. The thought of leaving the apartment, even leaving this room, was terrifying. The people who had gathered around the stage to stare at her, the men who she had no idea whether she had injured or if they were even now coming into town to find her, it was all too much.
Her breaths were ragged gasps, tearing out of her chest, unable to drag any air back in. Her fingers started to tingle, go numb. The numbness was the only thing that was a comfort in her world.
She could hear Mary's voice in the distance, fading away. The room started to go black, everything faded away.
For the first time since the stage had stopped for those men, Lucy found relief in the darkness that closed in around her.
#
"What's your plan?" Chris asked.
Vin could hear the warning underlying the question.
"Find the other man," Vin answered, not slowing his steps.
Chris easily kept pace with Vin's long strides. Vin didn't look anywhere but toward the jail.
He opened the door and scanned the two cells. Nathan was just coming out of one, his bag of doctoring tools in hand.
"He gonna live?" Vin asked, taking in the man's dusty clothing, the bandage on his neck, the other bandage wrapped around his midsection, under his open shirt.
Nathan gave Vin a nod, though something in Vin's tone had him glancing back at Chris.
Vin looked over at JD, seated behind the sheriff's desk. "Give us a minute," Vin said, his voice low.
JD lowered his feet to the floor, looking from Vin to the other men.
Without taking his eyes off the man in the cell, Vin spoke again. "I'll take care of 'im from here, Nathan."
He didn't have to look to know the other man was shaking his head. "He's lost a lot of blood, Vin. He's not going to stand up to any sort of questioning you have in mind."
"He's going to lose some more," Vin said shortly, moving to grab the keys to the cell. He was aware of Chris moving Nathan and JD out of the jail after asking Nathan to go check on Lucy, closing the door behind them. Vin heard the satisfying click of the lock when Chris locked the door to hold out any interruptions or misguided good Samaritans with principles.
The bandit lay flat on his back. He rolled his head to the side to look at Vin.
Vin unlocked the cell and tossed the keys aside. They hit the desk with a loud clang.
Vin didn't say anything at first, just stared down at the man. He realized it didn't matter if the man had done anything to his sister or not. He had intended to and had forced Lucy to fight for her life, and he would pay equally for that.
Chris stepped into the cell with Vin, but didn't get in his way.
Vin struck swiftly, one hand around the man's neck, the other pressing against the knife wound in his side. The men let out a shriek and Vin could feel blood start to seep through the bandage.
"Where's your partner?" Vin hissed out between his teeth.
The man shook his head, his eyes panicked, looking past Vin to Chris for help.
Vin increased the pressure on the wound. " He's not talkin' to you, I am. Where's your partner?"
The man's eyes started to roll back like he was losing consciousness and Vin eased off, taking his hand off the bandaged cut to slap at the man's face and bring him back around.
"Where would a snake go to hole up?" Vin asked when the man's eyes focused on his again.
"Ain't no need for holin' up," the man wheezed out.
Vin's eyes narrowed.
"Stage driver gut shot 'im," he said quickly. "That—that girl what stuck me had me bleedin' all over and we were gonna leave. Thought the driver were dead, then he up and gut shot Bricky before he keeled over hisself."
Vin had thought he saw tracks for another man. But he had read the tracks of the second horse to be riderless and not seen any bodies in the area. He had assumed this man had brought an extra horse to stick his plunder on.
"We'll go back out and check his story," Chris said. "Buck and JD can ride out tonight."
Vin believed the man. It matched up with what he had seen. But it left him with no one to track down. No one else to draw on and make pay.
He gave the man a solid blow to the jaw, the pain that flared in his knuckles a welcome reward. Another hit, this one straight to the gut that had the man curling around the pain and wheezing for air.
"That's enough."
Vin ignored Chris' directive, giving the man another blow to the head.
"I said, that's enough," Chris said more sharply.
Vin shook his head. His jaw tightened, his entire body tensed, ready to kill the dirty mongrel.
"You do this, there's no coming back from that," Chris said, moving a step closer.
"You think Lucy's gonna come back from what they put her through?" The thought of what Lucy had felt, had feared, had seen, had Vin's hand going around the man's neck again.
"I think she's going to need you to come back from it," Chris said. "And you won't be there if you do this."
Chris' words made sense. Vin didn't want them to. He shook his head, his fingers digging into the skin at the man's throat, blood flowing from beneath the bandage on his neck.
"You do this," Chris voice was low next to him, "and I'll stick by you. But you won't be the same. Think about Lucy."
He was thinking about Lucy. About her innocence and her quick laugh. Her compassion and caring. Not knowing if she would get any of that back. But finding out Vin had become the very thing she feared, a cold-blooded killer, had his fingers easing their hold.
He shoved the man away, sliding him across the narrow distance of the cot and hitting the rough wood of the wall.
Chris' hand dropped onto Vin's shoulder. "Come on. Nathan's seeing to your sister, I'll buy you a drink."
Vin figured he needed more than one drink.
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