I was only gone for two days the first time I went treasure hunting with Lucian's map. It wasn't that I was uninterested or uninspired by the idea, but after the first day, nearly all I could think about was the sight of Vic, sitting on my porch with a cup of coffee in her hand, seeing me off on my fool's errand with a smile on her face.

I half thought she might return to her motorhome while I was gone. When I got back, I was relieved to find that she was still at the cabin, welcoming me home with that same smile. And then, ten minutes after I was done washing the dust off of my trail-weary body, she had welcomed me back into her bed, which, for the time being anyway, appeared to be located in my bedroom.

The second time I went out, I lasted four days. The third time, I was gone for six days, but that was only because the horse threw a shoe down in the Otter Creek Valley and it was a two-day walk back to the land of cell phone reception with a lame horse in tow. The gaps between each trip got longer and longer, and I was less and less sure of what it was I was really searching for while I was out there. Treasure? I'm not sure I ever really believed that it existed. And, even if I found it, what was I going to do with it? Retire and live out my days on a five-hundred acre ranch in Big Sky Country?

On my fourth trip, nearly three months after Lucian's death, I finally found what I had been searching for.

I was two days out, retracing the same steps I had taken on my previous route with a plan to turn east where I had last turned west, thinking that perhaps Lucian's map was merely 180 degrees out of phase. The sun had made its escape for the day, and the autumn air quickly turned chilly. I settled the horse down near the bank of the Powder River with a bag of feed while I unpacked my saddle bags and brought out my sleeping roll. The fire had started to lick around the edges of the kindling, and I was grateful for the tiny tendrils of warmth. Perhaps it was my age, or perhaps it was merely remembering how much warmer my bed back home was now that Vic was in it, but the nights on the plains seemed much colder than they once had.

I unrolled the cold weather sleeping bag Vic had bought for me ("If you're going to prance around the countryside like an idiot, at least this way you won't be a hypothermic idiot"), and lay back on it with my head propped up against the horse's saddle. The fire crackled, the horse moved restlessly at the end of her tether, and night insects sang cheerfully in the darkness. I tilted my hat across my face and was just starting to drift off when someone kicked my boots apart and demanded, "What's all this horse shit, then?"

I was up fast and moving with the Colt already half out of its holster before I realized that the narrow figure looming over me with a sour expression on its face was Lucian.

He was dressed in the same blue-checked Western shirt and brown jacket he'd been wearing the last time I had seen him alive, and he had his hands parked on his hips like he was squaring up for a fight, which Lucian generally was.

"Why in seven hells are you out here in this godforsaken wilderness, Troop?" he demanded.

"Lucian," I said, by way of greeting. I stuffed my gun back in it's holster and stood, feeling at something of a disadvantage with the shade of my former boss towering over me. "You're looking…"

"Dead. I'm looking dead. Yeah, I know it."

Lucian cocked his usual black Stetson Open Road model hat back on his head and regarded me with with his chin tilted belligerently upwards. "So that's my excuse for being out here in the ass end of nowhere. What's yours?"

"My excuse?" For anyone else, perhaps, the idea of running into someone who had died several months prior out in the middle of the Wyoming desert might have been a little off-putting. For me, it had become just another peculiar facet of living at the epicenter of mysticism that is Absaroka County and its thereabouts. Lucian wasn't the first ghost I'd seen. I suspect he won't be the last.

"Yeah. What the hell are you doing out here surrounded by dirt, rocks and lizard piss when you could be back at your place warming up the sheets with that purty little deputy of yours?"

There was no point in trying to discourage Lucian from objectifying Vic. For one thing, he was already dead, and I'd imagine, at this point, far past any hope of self-improvement. For another, she had never let Lucian's propensity for colorful misogyny bother her overmuch. And if I needed a third reason, he also had a point. I'd been asking myself the same thing on and off for months.

"I retired."

"I'm happy to hear you took at least some of the advice I gave you over the years. But you still haven't answered my question. Why are you out here?"

"Well, I just thought somebody ought to pick up where you left off looking for the Anson-Hamilton treasure, so…"

Lucian made a disparaging sound in the back of his throat and spit into the dirt. "That is the absolute most bullshit thing I've ever heard in my life, Walt."

"Well, I didn't think…"

"You are a twenty-gallon fool in a ten-gallon hat, you know that?"

He shook his head and looked as though he'd never been more disappointed with an individual in his entire life. I'd been his deputy for a good number of years before he retired, so I was more than passingly familiar with that particular facial expression.

"Did you ever stop to wonder why I spent so much time working on that damn riddle? You think I was really hoping I'd find the treasure and live out the rest of my days in luxurious splendor?" He dug one booted heel into the dirt. "Naw, Troop. Life has to have a purpose. And when you ain't got family and you ain't got that tin star pinned to your chest anymore, you gotta come up with something else to keep yourself going. Anson-Hamilton was my purpose. Get your own."

My mouth kicked up into a lopsided smile. "Is that a direct order, boss?"

He gave a bark of laughter. "Hell, no. I'm dead. I can't give orders anymore - not that you ever listened worth a damn when I was still alive. No, son, this is something you gotta decide for yourself. Can't nobody head down your path but you."

He strolled over to my saddle bag and nudged at it with his foot. The coffee can that contained his ashes rolled free. He stopped it with the worn bottom of his boot. "This me?"

"Yep."

"You planning on leaving me with the treasure?"

I nodded into the darkness. "If I could find it."

Lucian laughed. "I have never met anybody else who could turn fidelity into a character flaw the way that you do." He took his hat off and slapped it against his leg like he was knocking trail dust loose from the brim. "You know, it wasn't your fault."

I blinked at him. "What wasn't?"

He tapped his toe against the coffee can. "This."

I was unsure of how to respond, so I merely looked down at the Folgers can as though it might offer me some insight into what I was doing with my life, or maybe in the short term, why I was having this conversation with Lucian.

"I feel like you're not hearing me, Troop."

"No, I hear you."

"Then you're not listening."

"I'm listening."

"Bullshit."

I sighed. "Say what you gotta say, Lucian."

"I done said it, boy. See, I knew you wasn't listening. I'm gonna say it one more time, and I want you to really hear me this time - it's not your fault that I'm dead. I made a choice, and I made it for all the right reasons. You're a good man, Walt. Tucker Baggett was not. For that matter, neither was my good-for-nothing brother. The world is a better place with them gone. Hell, me too, probably."

I breathed through the heavy pressure on my chest, but said nothing.

Lucian went on, but his voice had lost its sharper edges. "It's time to forgive yourself, Walt. Time to move on. Enough with the treasure hunting. It's not doing me any good, and you don't really want it anyway. Not meaning to sound all poetical in my ethereal state, but I think your treasure's waiting for you back home. And you need to get back to it."

He settled his hat back on his head and turned around in a brief circle, looking thoughtful for a moment. "Here's good."

"What?"

"There's a good piece of land, a bit of the Powder River, and the Bighorns in the distance." He nodded. "Yeah, here's good."

"You sure?" I watched him carefully, but there was nothing but certainty on his craggy face.

"Yeah, I'm sure."

"Alright."

He nodded once more into the distance as if he was settling something within himself. "You still have a life left to live, Troop. How about you head back home and get on with it?" He gave me a grin that Vic would have called 'shit-eating'. "And how about when you get there, you give Deputy Moretti a good one, and tell her it's from me?"

Down near the water, the horse snorted and stomped, her shoe ringing out loud against a rock in the darkness. I glanced over, and when I looked back, Lucian was gone. In his place sat a black and brown long-eared owl, one gimlet eye staring balefully down at me from its perch on a low branch of a cottonwood tree. It ruffled its feathers against the chill, and then, presumably deciding that present company was lacking, it spread its wings and took flight, disappearing at once into the darkness beyond the meager reach of the firelight.

I said my last goodbye to Lucian Connelly the following morning just as the sun crested the mountains and set the world on fire. The wind came and took him gently away, calling him out to his last rest among the juniper and sagebrush, a permanent part of the hard and unforgiving land he had spent so much of his life protecting.

"So long, old man," I said out loud. I removed my hat and bowed my head for a long moment, letting the tears for my friend run unchecked down my cheeks.

And then, wrapped in the absolution I had been seeking, I turned and headed for home.

I didn't want to push the horse too hard, but I was ready to get home, and we made good time on the ride back. Knowing where I was going and what I wanted when I got there was an unfamiliar and welcome feeling.

I drove the horse trailer into the yard in front of my cabin shortly before midnight. I had already unsaddled the horse and given her a thorough rub down before I had loaded her up back at the trailhead, so all that was left was to turn her loose in the paddock for the night with fresh water and the rest of the feed I'd packed for the trip. She kicked her heels up in appreciation for being back on home turf before she settled down to graze. I kind of knew how she felt.

The cabin was quiet and dark when I let myself in. Vic's truck was parked outside, right where it tended to be when she was off-duty as of late, but it wasn't until I pushed open the bedroom door and saw her there, asleep on her back, that I let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding.

She was turned toward the door, her hair spread out across my pillow in a fan of dark gold, the usual stern lines of her face gentled by sleep. My chest squeezed tight in the general vicinity of my heart, and I thought of Lucian's words.

A truly honorable man would have let her sleep.

On my best day, I am merely a somewhat honorable man.

She stirred when I slid onto the mattress next to her, slowly gaining awareness as I drew her into my arms.

"Walt?" Her voice was husky with sleep, and I felt a jolt low in my gut, like someone had just driven a fist into my solar plexus, but in a good way. I drew in a breath.

"It's me."

"Well, thank God. I'd hate to think someone else was reaping the rewards of me sleeping naked in your bed."

I laughed.

"You're back early… Is everything okay?"

"It's fine," I said. "Everything's fine." I buried my face in her hair, breathing in her clean, warm scent.

She stretched, bringing her body flush with my own, and the heat of her skin replaced every other thought in my brain.

"I'm glad you're back." She nuzzled her face into the crook of my shoulder and then hummed appreciatively. "I missed you."

"I missed you, too." I drew back and kissed her softly.

She made a face and turned away. "Ugh. Don't. I have morning breath."

"I don't care," I said, and captured her lips again. She responded, just as she had every time I had turned to her in the months since we had first consummated our relationship. There was still some level of uncertainty between us, and neither of us had made promises for the future, but she had never given anything less than all of herself when we came together, and this time was no exception.

I was tired and sore, so when she rolled me onto my back, I voiced no objection. She floated over me like something out of one of my more enjoyable dreams, but she was all heat and smooth skin, solid and real, far better than anything I could have imagined on my own. Her muscular thighs bracketed my waist, strong, nimble fingers working the buttons on my shirt loose with her usual single-mindedness of purpose. The sheets slid down, leaving her completely naked above me, her pale skin glowing in the faint light of the moon that came in through the uncovered window. Only the neat little scar on her lower abdomen marred the smooth perfection of her body.

"You're beautiful," I said, reaching up to twine a lock of her hair around my fingers.

She snorted, and worked the last of my buttons free, pushing impatiently until I rose up far enough to allow her to slip my arms free of the shirtsleeves. "You've been in the saddle too long."

"That's true," I agreed. "But it doesn't make what I said any less accurate."

"And," she went on as though I hadn't spoken. "You're wearing too many clothes."

My shirt went over one of her shoulders, and then she moved further down so she could start working on my belt buckle. I let her have her way, choosing to save my energy so I could trail my hands down her neck and the smooth curve of her bare shoulder.

She moved off of me so she could work my jeans and undershorts down my legs until they joined my shirt on the floor at the end of the bed.

I was ready for her - had been since I walked in the door.

With the sinuous grace of a panther, she prowled back up the length of my body, a crooked, knowing smile on her lips as she straddled my hips. The warm, wet heat of her settled over me and I groaned, closing my eyes against the pleasure that washed over me like an ocean wave.

"God, Vic," I said softly.

"I'm here," she murmured. Then, tilting her hips, she took me inside of herself with a soft moan that went through me like lightening. Reflexively, I grabbed her hips, less to control her movements than to hold on for dear life.

Everything about Vic was intense. She was full of fight and fire, bright and overwhelming as the sun, fierce in all things, but perhaps nowhere as much as in her lovemaking. She was generous, and giving, but demanding at the same time, and I had a feeling that sex with her was never going to get boring, nor was anything else, for that matter.

She moved. And moved. Rising and falling above me, she pressed her hands to my chest and let her head fall back, her hair flowing across her shoulders like a waterfall. She was bathed in moonlight and shadow, her eyes closed, her lips parted, her pink-tipped breasts rising as she moved over me again and again. She was a glorious sight, and I couldn't take my eyes off of her.

I stayed with her, fighting against the rising desire to lose myself in her body. I would wait forever if it meant continuing to watch her seek her own release without the slightest hint of self-consciousness. Her cheeks were flushed, her brow furrowed in concentration. Her breathing started becoming erratic, hitching in her chest as her fingers began to grasp at me, and I felt the muscles in her thighs begin to tremble.

"Come on, Vic," I breathed.

She dug her fingers into my chest and gasped, "Fuck, Walt."

"Yes, ma'am." I grabbed her hands in my own and rolled her onto her back, without ever breaking the contact between our bodies. She moaned as I took over, pressing her down into the mattress with long, slow strokes, applying just the right pressure at just the right spot until she went completely still beneath me, her spine arching up off the bed like a bow as she cried out and pulsed around me. Fierce pride and lust and love sang through my veins, and I followed her, rocking against her as the world went warm and white as a supernova around me.

Afterwards, with the sweat cooling on our skin, and our breathing slowly returning to normal, Vic draped herself across my chest, and lazily drew shapes against my collarbone with her fingertip. "So, you missed me." It wasn't a question. She sounded pleased.

"I did."

"And you're glad you're back."

"I am."

"And you're done with treasure hunting for good now?" This time the question mark was audible. She tilted her head so she could look me in the eye.

I kissed her softly on the lips. "I am."

She nodded as if that was the answer she was expecting, and settled back down with her cheek against my chest. "Good."

I tilted my head down far enough to kiss the top of her hair. "Yep."

After that, I stopped pretending I was hunting for treasure. And Vic stopped pretending she still lived in the motor home.

A/N: I am, as always, late to the fandom. I stumbled across Longmire on Netflix, and promptly fell in love with the stories and the characters. And, because I can never do anything halfway, I plowed through 6 seasons and fifteen books in under a month, and then realized that I'm not ready to be done with Walt and Vic just yet.

This is going to be a longer story, and I hope to update somewhat regularly. Fair warning, I watched the show and read the books concurrently, so they're a bit conflated in my brain. I'll be mixing what happens in the show with what happens in the books a little bit. It doesn't matter in this chapter, but it'll be noticeable later.

And many thanks to the bestest beta, Katie F, for reading over my nonsense no matter which fandom happens to strike my fancy.

Thanks for reading!