Hi, so here is another story from me for this wonderful fandom! I am so glad to be back with a couple of stories and I hope that you enjoy this one. This is a stand alone one centring around one of Season 1s best villains.

Disclaimer-Nothing is mine here.

I might have been a bit lazy when it came to the naming of the children but if anyone is a fan of Michael Landon then you will get the inside joke and you will hopefully forgive me.

I am not a spelling expert so please keep that in mind.

Please Read and Review and let me know what you think.

This is set in Season 1 as a stand alone story and I expect it to be under twenty chapters.


To Another Heart

Charles LaDuke is a lot more devious than he lets on and unable to get Ben on murder charges he instead kidnaps his youngest son and is never seen again. Joseph Cartwright is never seen again either at least until Adam hires a new hand and his motherless children (by accident).


Chapter 1-Different Pines, Same Wind

In which we set our scene.


Not many people know the story, it's half because they moved but also because Ben will never tell it.

He knows that Roy knows because Roy is a smart man and wants to know why Ben wants a wanted poster in constant circulation but at the same time Roy is a good friend and therefore Roy does not mention it more than he has to. Roy is also a good friend in the sense that Roy is never going to mention what Ben will do with Charles LaDuke when he catches up with him. That is the only saving grace that he has.

Because when Ben Cartwright finds that miserable excuse for a human being…he is going to kill him. break his bones into pieces, put a bullet through his head, rip his heart from his chest and scatter his body to ash and then to the wind.

Because what Charles LaDuke did to Ben Cartwright, what he did to Marie…it's nothing short of monstrous.

It would have been easier Ben thinks if the fucker had just killed him. Hell had he known what was going to happen next he would have skipped into that prison cell willingly. He has never been one of those people who wants to live through his children. Children should bury parents not the other way around.

And then there are parents who lose children not to death but to some other means and it's the not knowing that kills them. Certainly he thinks it killed Marie. He thinks that the not knowing what her old foe did with her son put her in an early grave. Oh she might have fallen from her horse…and perhaps that was what did the body in but the heart and the soul and the fire was gone long before the horse fell on top of her. She hid it well for the boys that she grew to love as her own sons with no disrespect intended to their birth mothers but not knowing what happened to that curly haired green eyed boy was what killed her in the end and Ben knows that.

And that's another reason he hates Charles LaDuke. To take Marie…to take her fire and douse it for little slights…because she chose Ben despite everything…well…that is unforgivable in his book.

His boy had been only three days old, a perfect three day old baby with big green eyes and a tuft of brown hair that was curling at the top, he had been a gentle baby Ben thinks but there had been a passion to his cries that he was sure he got from his French Quarter mother. He had been the sweetest most darling of his boys and he had known with him his family was complete. They had been in New Orleans about to begin their travels south to the rest of the country, the Great Plains were open again and he wanted to go west to see if the land was still as unclaimed as it was past New Orleans and it's manic energy and when he had come home one day from making provisions it was to find Marie screaming into the dirt and Adam watching her his eye black and his nose broken and it was his son, his eldest son, Elizabeth's last link to this Earth who looked him in the eye and told him that a man had broken into his home, stolen his baby thrown his wife to the side like a ragdoll and beaten his son in his own home.

If you were truly looking to get onto Ben's bad side you would say that was the end of the story but it wasn't. There had been a desperate posse that had led nowhere, interrogations that had not produced leads and then there had been nothing but the inevitability that his son was more than likely dead. He had never said so to Marie who had clung to hope that one day the door would open and her son would be there but the truth was Charles LaDuke was not what one would call a natural father and Ben could quite easily see him pitching his tiny baby out to sea…well…he had to stop the thought there before he vomited his guts out.

They had moved on, found the Pondarosa, built a home and pretended that it was not hollow and he'd watched his two oldest sons, his two remaining sons grow up to be good strong fine men. He had been told that he should be grateful and he was for them…Adam and Hoss…he had known LaDuke well enough to know that the older man could have turned up and killed everyone and anyone who got in his way, that he could have lost two sons that day and he was relieved to his very core to know that Adam and Hoss had made it out unscathed.

He also knew that it did little to soothe the ache, the sting of loss.

But he found a way to move forwards. Defeat was not in the Cartwright reader, it was not in their vocabulary. They did not crumble, they put one foot forwards in front of the other and they made it work no matter what. Life was too precious, Ben had learnt that the hard way a long time ago and so he built his house and tended his land and watched his boys grow up to be men and only disappeared once when Marie died when the overwhelming sense of failure was too great and then he feared when he had come back he had lost some of Adam's respect too.

It was like the decisions made were ongoing, like they were poison drip, dripping into his skin.

And it didn't help that with each year he could imagine what his son looked like. Sometimes Ben thought that he would not recognise him now if he was alive a man of eighteen nearing nineteen. And that thought had him gasping in pain.

At other times a part of him thought that if Joe walked up to his door again then he would recognise him, his soul would recognise the third missing piece.

He didn't allow himself the luxury of grieving for him, knew that if he started it would destroy him and he could still remember the look on Adam's face when he came home that one time when he had gone missing after Marie had died. Adam who had said nothing but had been cool with him for months afterwards as if he expected him to get on his horse and disappear after a phantom. Adam who he knew still blamed himself because Ben had not managed to find the words to speak of that day.

He got up, he did his job, he made sure his ranch was running and he kept an eye out always for weather that man would dare to come and find him. He actively did not go looking for him but he knew that if LaDuke came looking for him he would not find Ben Cartwright waning. He was ready.

He had robbed Ben of his heart.

One day he knew he would get it back.

And if there was a light always on for Joe to come home too…if the door was sometimes left unlocked even though there was no way that the boy could find him…well…that was between him and God.

He didn't expect him.


He gently shakes Mary awake first. Mary who looks at him with mused hair but stays quiet. It's cold in Maryland. He needs to get somewhere warm for his girls but thankfully the cold has worked for him. The cold has given him some help as it means both of his children can sleep in their clothes without any kind of suspicion gathering.

Mary watches him as he tucks her hair behind a bonnet. He's not got much to take with him just his children and enough supplies. He reckons if he's quick he can be over the border and if he can get into Virginia…well…it's a big state. He also knows his master…his owner (not his father, never his father) and he knows what he will do next. The man is an overthinker in the extreme and he will never believe that he will stop in the first state, he knows that he is going to go through Virginia…why would he stay? And then maybe his arrogance will save him. LaDuke will keep going…or maybe not. Frederick has been studying the man long enough to know him. If he's right then it doesn't matter.

After Mary is awake and standing by the door he opens it and she slips out. Carefully he shuts is before the cold air can get in and he goes to wake up his other daughter. Laura is even younger than Mary. Mary is six and Laura is three and he knows that she is the one that might give the game away but Laura is already awake when he goes to shake her awake and he watches as she slips out of the door to unnoticed.

He slips out and sends both of the girls to the horse. They sit easily and he knows that soon he might have to get a wagon if only for support but he knows right now his biggest bet is on horseback. He lets out all the horses in the yard. Smacks them away and watches as they run off and then he bits down hard on the match creating a cupping sound with his hands so he can light the fire that will set the barn and (God Willing) the house on fire.

If he does that then maybe he has a chance.

The flames grow higher and higher and he knows it's now or never.

"Cover your ears" he says to Mary who holds the reigns. She shoots him a look that is all her mother consigned to the dirt and the ground in what he has been told is fever but what he suspects is murder. She grits her teeth and holds the horse and he smiles as the stench of smoke rises in the cold night air before he raises his shotgun and slips back into the house.

The man is asleep still but he's coughing and Freddie knows that it's only a matter of time.

He raises his gun.

"Fuck you old man" he says and look…he knows it's not the most inspiring of quotes but he also knows that it sums up perfectly what he wants to say. He is only taking the important things in this life with him, his children, a letter written to him by his wife and what he thinks is the portrait of his mother and he's not even entirely sure if he will burn that.

Charles LaDuke shoots upwards but Freddie is waiting for him, the first shot knocks him backwards but it hits him in the shoulder and he falls into the house that is rapidly crumbling down coughing he takes aim and fires a second shot that hits him a little lower down it the chest, the third gets his knee and he thinks that if that doesn't do it the fire will, he takes his gun slinging it onto his back and he runs out the house before the roof collapses eyes streaming, flings himself into the saddle ties the rope around his daughters so that they hold on and then throws himself into a full gallop getting away as fast as he can.

His children don't say anything but he knows they can taste it too. He can feel it with every step his horse takes, he can smell it without even having to smell the stench of smoke, he knows what he is doing, he just needs to find a place to lie low, he just has to be calm.

He's been training in one way or another for a lifetime for this.

Freedom.

He turns and eyes the horizon green eyes flashing and then he takes his horse and his children and rides away from the monster who insisted he call him Pa and goes towards the west where Virginia is and where he hopes there is a sanctuary for men like him.


I also went a bit Horizon in this chapter too-If anyone wants a good western I would recommend that movie. Does take a while to get into but Kevin Costner does not disappoint.

I am hopeful that I will update sooner rather than later.

Next Chapter-'Freddie' gets to Virginia City and he knows he needs a job. Adam is in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or is it the right place at the right time?