Hi so here is my first fanfic for this fandom that I literally just stumbled across. I love this fandom I love Adam. S1-6 are hand downs the best.

This story and all stories coming from it exist S1-6.

I do plan to write series of this story so if that's something your interested in let me know.

I do have an Fanfiction account under a different name, this story will be posted there as well in case you come across it.

Disclaimer-Nothing is mine,

Please Read and Review.

And I swear in my works. If you don't like don't read.

This is part of a series, this isn't episode related. Neither is this series. Assume everything is S1-S6

Any inaccuracies please let me know.

I might add to this...I'll leave it up to you.

Please be aware...some triggers.

Running To A Standstill

Chapter 8-Nothing Ventured, Nothing Lost

Ivy meets an unlikely ally and learns a terrible truth.

She dragged herself to the back wall and stared at the patch of light as a ladder came down. Dressed in the fancy dress that she was sure was her dead best friends she stared as someone fell down into the cellar with her.

It was Mrs Mitchell.

Only she did not look like the Mrs Mitchell that Ivy remembered. The woman that had been at the funeral had been half hollowed out as if she was a toy doll with the strings was almost beyond that now. She staggered her blonde hair falling loose out of her knot and she looked dishevelled. There was a strong smell of liquor and something else that permeated her but she made a gesture with her hand and she put her other finger to her lips. Ivy saw that the nails were bitten off.

"May" she said clearly.

"Ivy" Ivy said back but she shook her head and her eyes bugged slightly. She looked utterly insane, even old Jim at the saloon didn't look like this even when he was well into his cups.

She gestured again and Ivy slid forwards trying to keep her distance from the cracked bony hands and the dirty fingernails. She did not know what was more frightening this woman or this man…actually ignore that last sentence she did know what was more frightening. This man. Clarence Carter.

The man that killed May Mitchell.

Stuck here in the darkness it was clearly obvious to everyone and anyone that it was the most obvious thing. He had killed May. He was going to kill her.

And nobody was going to rescue her.

This would be one of those times where Ivy would envision being the strong confident heroine like those books that she read. Now on the other hand, actually getting to live the thing for once she found that books were very misleading when it came to danger.

Mrs Mitchell made another gesture and she slid under the light coming from the trapdoor. For a second the woman and the girl both of them in mortal danger stared at each other and then…

"Did you know he killed her?"

Sometimes maybe Pa was right…there was a time and a place to ask questions and this was not one of them. But once the words were out of her mouth there was very little that she could do to stop them.

The woman turned to look at her then and her mouth wobbled.

"No" she said quietly and then she shoved Ivy, grabbing her by her bony shoulders, fingers digging into her flesh and she dragged her up the stairs. It took a while for her legs to work Ivy thought, she had been idle in the darkness for so long that it was hard for her to get back up the ladder. She staggered falling against one of the benches in the kitchen and then she dragged herself back upwards. While they might have been the same size the reality was May had been taller and the dress dragged.

"Run" the woman said and she opened the door and then.

"What about you?" she asked.

"Run"

There was a whistling sound and Ivy darted out quick as a flash into the darkness. She did not know what time it was but it was still dark. Maybe it was early morning but she managed to round around the house feeling her way in the dark towards the edge of the house. She waited around the corner hiding below the window as there was a shaft of light as the door opened and then she took off running silently. She did not know where she was going but she knew that she had run. Maybe she would not have a clear head start or not but she knew that once she was back on the main road…well…maybe there was hope…or even at this point the Indian's that stalk these lands. Maybe one of them would take pity on her? She did not know but she took off running tripping when the dress got too much.

She gripped the edge of it and ripped it dragging it upwards so that a huge chunk came off ripping it around so that she could see her feet. She kicked off her boots too. It was a muddy path but there was a method to the madness and Ivy knew that.

Once, six weeks ago Uncle Little Joe had come in soaking wet claiming that he had, had to outrun a wolf. For someone who had outrun a wolf he'd seemed very happy with himself beaming and dripping mud on the carpet. But his feet had been bare and as he had told her that night as she had listened wide eyed sat on her Pa's lap he had thrown his boots to the wolves in two different directions so that he could distract from the scent.

"Wonderful" her grandpa had drawled. "You know Joseph sometimes I think you boys must think that money grows on trees. Boots are not cheap and now we have to go and get you another pair—"

"I can go barefoot"

"Not in this weather you can't."

"I like going barefoot" Ivy had said which was true. She liked it in summer. Her Pa had groaned and ran a hand down her hair.

"Don't listen to your Uncle" he said pulling her back even though she rolled her eyes.

"He doesn't come out with much sense"

"HEY—"

BANG.

It was the single gunshot that startled her and she whimpered throwing one boot far down the lane as she could. She took the crumpled dress and threw down the other. There was very little that could be done about footprints but she scrambled down the little embankment and crawled through the undergrowth until she found a little hidey hole half hollowed out under a tree and she hid under the branches far away as the sound of a horse came close.

For a second it paused on the road and then it carried on and she sat there frozen with fear.

It was getting lighter now.

She had to sit here she knew until it was light enough to run and then she would run. If she got to the lake then she was on the Ponderosa Land and soon she would run into someone that she knew she was sure of it.

But it meant leaving this little bit of safety. And Ivy did not know if she wanted to do that.

And then just as that thought occurred to her there was a moment and her Pa's voice was back in her head again.

"You stay there until you can see, you get up and you RUN"

She nodded wiping the back of her hand down her face and she nodded again.

The sky was now a deep shade of navy indigo.

There was time.

There was time.

There was time.

To understand this you have to understand the tragedy of May Mitchell…or perhaps to understand that tragedy of May Mitchell's mother. Pregnant, abandoned, forced to lie to everyone to save her child from the badge of bastardy and forced to move whenever it became plainly obvious she had fallen on Clarence Carter like he had been a drink in the desert after a long drought. He had been charming, kind, had bought her things and Mrs Mitchell had been too long without the touch and comfort of a man to not fall on it. She had not seen the signs and God help her had ignored her daughter even though it had been too late. Ignored it all, the warnings…and now the price had been her dead daughter and a drug habit that was being slipped into her drink.

When Ivy Cartwright had come she had put the pieces together, had put together the last piece of the puzzle and had painted the picture and all the lovely metaphors that educated men and woman would but at that point his hold on her had been too much.

And then Ivy Cartwright had come along and if there had ever been a time for action it had been then. Getting that girl to freedom before she had ended up in the lake the same as her precious baby. Adam Cartwright was a much better parent than she had ever been. He deserved to have a child, a living child. She had squandered hers.

When Clarence had come through the door she had struggled with him. It had not taken him long to realise what had happened and he had threated to go after her but she had struck him from behind. The Cartwrights she reasons were a notoriously hard family to kill time and more than a few stories in the saloon had proven that. There was no reason why their youngest member should be any different.

He had rebounded from her blow…it was piss weak at best even without the drugs in her system and then he had rebounded but she had been ready for him. Gripping the fire poker getting her stiff hands to move as he had for his gun and the end of it had caught him clean in the upper shoulder just as his gun went off. She fell to the floor and he staggered backwards yanking the thing out blood pouring from his arm where it connected to his chest bone sticking out and hitting the cold air.

She staggered back too. He made it out the door just as she fell to her knees and then to the floor her body broken and bleeding from the shock but a part of her knew that it was over. He was not going to make it that far on horse or even on foot. He was going to go and end it on the best way he could.

The lake.

She had learnt that much from the entire nightmare playing out in real time. It was always the lake for this man, it began with a lake and it ended with a lake and if he ran across little Ivy Cartwright when he got there then that would be the end of her.

But she knew as she lay dying on the floor of her little shack that Adam Cartwright was a better parent than she was and he would be out there looking for his daughter come hell or high water. She knew that, she felt it deep down in her bones and so she closed her eyes and saw her perfect little girl as she had last seen her.

And then someone kicked down her door.

The lake was beautiful, the lake was stunning, clean water a perfect shimmering blue. Dark and beautiful and dangerous but it gave no illusion to this. It was the stage to the final chapter of this story, the stage to what would happen next. Roy Coffee had not gotten a chance to drain it but as the sun crested the sky and Ivy Cartwright forced herself out of her hiding hole to get home and Clarence Carter staggered to the lake and Adam Cartwright crashed through May Mitchell's home door it was the setting of the stage of what would happen next.

Only Samuel Wylde knew that. Samuel Wylde who had held his own daughter and screamed at her to wake up even though she was dead, drowned and strangled knew what was going through this man's mind. He had dedicated himself to it since he had seen his own daughter Elsa buried in the cold ground. It had become his waking vision, his wound.

And so while hell was kicking off around him he took one step back and then another and he was gone before any of the Cartwrights knew what was going on.

This was going to end one way or the other.

And finally…the players were in place and the stage was set.

And so…here we go.

And now...onto the climax of this story.

Next Chapter-Ivy, Clarence Carter, Samuel Wylde, Adam and a lake. Part 1.