Author: Anonymous

Disclaimer: If I owned these characters we'd still be watching them on TV or maybe in a movie. (Vin and Chris ten feet high and in Surround Sound! Wow!) But they are owned by MGM and were crafted by folks at Trilogy and brought to life by some very talented actors. My hat's off to them all, and I only wish they'd kept at it. Since they didn't, I'm going to take a turn. I'm not making any profit and don't intend to. This is strictly for my own enjoyment.

Rating: PG, I think. It might be a little intense and therefore a PG-13. A little bad language, no sex, no implied sex (though there is comfort, but I'm being mum about what it means so Chris doesn't shoot me), lots of blood and pain and fever and all that kind of stuff. Vin is the recipient of said blood, pain, and fever (well, actually he BLEEDS, rather than receives blood . . . ), because so many people with January birthdays thought that would be a really good idea. I can't argue with genius.

Vin gasped in white-hot pain as he was jerked from a deep sleep, reflexively flinging something away from him with a violent gesture even before he was awake. A sense-memory of his fingers curled around the thing he'd thrown across the campsite brought him to his knees, dragging the sawed-off to himself with shaking hands. His eyes stared wide into the dark beyond the banked embers, knowing it was the direction he'd thrown whatever it was.

His head cleared a bit as he knelt in the silence, chest heaving and breath coming fast but light, the only other sound that of Peso pawing anxiously in the brush where he'd been tethered. The eastern horizon was pale gray, not near enough light to see the ground yet, or the lay of things around him. If anything, the shadows were darker in the false light, separate things massed together into a blackness thick as pitch. Cautiously, Vin sat back onto his heels and drew a fragment of dry brush he'd stockpiled for kindling towards himself, threw it in a low arc onto the glowing embers of his earlier fire, and squinted as tendrils of red flames licked into a sudden blaze of white. The circle of his campsite stood out in stark contrast -- rumpled blankets, the dark leaves of the trees beyond, his saddle standing on its pommel with stirrups splayed to the sides, a slithering coil of slender rope that wasn't a rope at all.

Not very big, less than two feet long, a rattler was half-coiled a quarter-way around the fire from Vin's splayed-open blankets. Its narrow head was raised off the ground, the whole front half of it levitated off the ground, swaying stiffly with anger. The back half circled round on itself even as Vin watched, the rattle rising from the coil in a tight, furious buzz.

An icy chill settled around the hot pain growing in the left side of Vin's belly when he realized what had happened. It wasn't unknown for a rattler to curl up on a man if a spring night got cold. This one had evidently done that, or tried to, and it had bitten him either just before or as he grabbed it off himself in automatic reflex. He pressed his lips together, jerked the sawed-off to his shoulder in both hands, and blew its head off. The rifle's report echoed away into the stillness of pre-dawn, and once again there was silence. Vin dropped the rifle with a sudden clatter to the hard earth, to catch himself on both hands before he fell full-length into his own campfire as shock gave way to a stab of pain so sharp it sucked the breath out of him.

He shook his head, trying to clear the roaring in his ears, and gasped as the pain turned to liquid and began to sink deeply into his gut, spreading out from the place he'd been bitten in currents of fire. He rose up to sit once again on his heels, swaying slightly, and carefully bent his head to examine his own torso. He pulled gently on the cloth of his pants and shirt, smoothing the folds and wrinkles, and found two small holes high on his pantswaist, just beneath the left suspender buttons. He fumbled at the buttons a moment with hands beginning to tremble, fingers suddenly thick and unresponsive, then gave up and shrugged down the suspender leather instead, dragging the tail of his shirt out and pulling apart the clothing so he could see the skin underneath.

A pair of small, neat holes were blue-black in the impact-blanched skin, the puncture rims already beginning to swell and turn red. They hadn't bled, but a pale, bloody-colored liquid seeped slowly from each one. Vin shook his head, it seemed inconceivable that such small things could hurt like hell-fire. But they did. And he had to do something to get as much of the poison out as he could -- right now or it wouldn't matter. Cut-and-suck wasn't going to work in this case. No way he could bend over enough to set his own mouth to his side, the puncture marks just below the waistline and a few inches left of center. He knew he had only one chance. If he could get it to bleed, and bleed freely, it might wash out enough of the poison for him to survive.

Vin began to shake, whether from cold or shock or the poison he couldn't tell and didn't want to consider. It took three tries to get several more small branches from his wood cache into the dwindling campfire. He slid his knife out of the scabbard and thrust the metal blade into the leaping flames, his hand shaking so violently that the blade danced and wobbled as if trying to escape the heat. Then his legs begin to shake, though he was half-laying on the ground and not even standing up, and Vin realized he was running out of time. A rattlesnake bite to the torso was nearly always fatal within minutes, but he'd hoped that this one was far enough from his heart to deal with before it dropped him dead. A deep chill spread across his lower back as the pain lancing his side grew hotter, and sweat ran into his eyes. Vin lifted his shirt with his left hand, struggling against what suddenly seemed to be yards of cloth in hanging drapes and folds that would keep him from saving his own life. He ripped the shirt open finally, buttons flying out into the dark shadows, and then pushed down the high waist of his pants. Half-reclining, he turned towards the fire so his bared flesh was in the light.

Even his chin was shaking now, and the deep muscles of his shoulders and hips. The panting breaths he took rattled like a wind in dry leaves. But it had to be done, and right now -- he had to cut deep enough to get to the poison, but not so deep as to gut himself. He set the gleaming knife blade to the taut skin next to the lower puncture wound and drew it sharply towards his ribs in a sudden deft motion. A long hiss slipped from clenched jaws and a thin trail of blood welled from the slice to slip down his side into the darkness. Vin moved the knife tip to the opposite side of the same puncture wound and set the blade so it would make a cut that crossed the first one in an X shape. He drove the blade in and slid it up towards his ribcage even more quickly this time, a sharp strangled cry springing from lips white with anguish.

Vin dropped the knife to the blanket beside him and curled more tightly over his own body to inspect the results of his efforts. It was hard to see, his vision or the firelight wavering so that everything seemed to be under water. A sudden stab of agony seared him so deeply that he went rigid against it for a moment, then worked to steady his breathing so he could relax enough to see the job through. He examined his work with hands that shook as if palsied. He had cut deeply enough, he thought, though he wasn't sure. But the X-shaped wound wasn't bleeding strongly, maybe because of the swelling already starting in the flesh around the bite marks. Vin blinked against a sudden dizziness. The wound *had* to bleed freely. It was the only way he could think of to get at least some of the poison out of his system before it got to his heart.

He pushed on the flesh around the cut, to force the blood out, but only a small amount welled up to roll sluggishly over his side in a thick rivulet. Vin grunted in desperation and crawled on hands and knees to a stone several feet away, a blunted angular block on which he'd sat the previous evening to eat supper. Cold chills chased each other in waves down his backbone though his gut burned hotter and hotter. Darkness that had nothing to do with the lack of daylight swirled at the edges of his vision, and he dropped heavily to the ground twice before finally he reached the stone. He positioned himself so the top edge of the stone was against the right side of his gut, and lowered himself onto it, rolling across to force the blood out of the wound on his left side. Red and black flames sparks exploded across his vision when he did, and he heard his own voice cry out as he collapsed upon the stone. Then, slowly, he raised himself on shaking arms to see if he'd succeeded.

A larger pulse of dark blood had been forced from the X-shaped cuts this time, but it still wasn't enough. Vin blinked as the firelit clearing began to spin and dip around him, then clenched his fists and dug down to the last shred of strength he had, determined to finish what had to be done before he passed out. Desperation brought his hands around the edges of the stone, knuckles white with determination. It would be his last chance, and he knew it. Vin threw himself hard upon the stone this time, rolling across it in one swift movement that drove a great gout of black blood from the wound and a cry of agony from his throat. He dropped to the ground heavily and lay senseless, crumpled onto his left side. The fire faded to dull coals and then to white ash, and a light morning wind fluttered the torn calico of his shirt over a spreading run of bright blood.

-7-7-7-7-7-7-7-

"He's probably just sittin' on a big rock somewhere, lookin' at the sky, Chris. You know how Vin is." Buck lifted a low-hanging branch to ride beneath it as he spoke, his glance sidelong at the man riding just in front of him and to one side.

"So you said, Buck." Chris didn't slow his pace or even look around when he replied. His voice had the calm evenness that Buck recognized as deep worry.

The taller man wiped a broad hand over his glossy mustache and shrugged to himself. True enough, Vin should have gotten back from Ridge City about noon, but lots of things could slow a man down several hours on such a long trail. And Chris knew it. But since early that morning -- even before Vin was expected back -- he'd been restless as a lizard on a hot rock and it was clear he was worried about the absent tracker. He'd stalked up and down the street with the long tails of his coat writhing about his legs like live things, his eyes on the road into town. A little after 1:00 had sat with tight lips and eyes like tiny black stones at a table where he could watch both the saloon door and the street outside through the window. At 4:00 he'd risen without a word and headed for the livery, and Buck had nodded to the others that he'd go along to keep an eye out for whatever had set Chris's hackles on edge. Nathan and Josiah had walked out of the shadows along the boardwalk to stand above the edge of the dusty street as the two men rode out, somber eyes trailing them, and JD had taken a deep hitching breath and checked both his revolvers.

"There's a creek down in here," Chris said suddenly. "If Vin made it this far, it's where he'd have camped." Buck nodded silently, peering into the gathering shadows beneath the trees crowded along the broad, flat creekbed. The sky was darkening rapidly, lavender on the eastern horizon though still flaring with afterglow to the west. They'd ridden hard and fast, but it had still taken them four hours to get this far and there wasn't much daylight left. They'd have to camp here themselves, Buck thought, and pick up the trail again at first light. Unless Vin was down here somewhere, maybe fishing or going slow with a lamed-up horse.

Brush crackled beneath their horses' hooves as Chris led down the gentle slope towards the creek, and a roost of birds flushed from a tree with soft, plaintive cries and a rattle of wings. Chris's gelding snorted suddenly as his rider reined in sharply, then leaned forward, squinting into the dusk. The next moment Chris was galloping the black through the high brush, Buck close on his heels, his eyes on a blaze-faced black horse tied to a small tree. The animal half-spooked as they swept up to it and reined in, rolling its eyes and snorting, ears darting backward and forward as it danced against the tether.

Chris was already on the ground, running -- three long strides and then he dropped to the ground. A vice cold as snow-covered steel clamped around Buck's heart as he dismounted, stepped over the ashes of a cold campfire, and stood looking down at Chris, who was kneeling over a crumpled body that was clearly Vin's. Buck dropped to one knee, reaching a hand out to feel of Vin's waxy face. The only good thing he could think of about the fever that met his hand was that it meant Vin was at least still alive.

"What the hell happened t' you, Pard?" he whispered.

"We've got to get him to town." Chris slid a hand beneath Vin's shoulders and started to roll him onto his back, to lay him flat on the ground. The younger man moaned and then cried out weakly, and Chris and Buck both caught sight of blood beneath Vin's torn-apart shirt. Chris reached instinctively to bare the wound further so he could assess it, but his wrist was caught and stayed by a violently trembling hand, and he looked at Vin's face to see that his eyes were half-open and wild with delirium.

"I can't do it," gasped Vin. His voice was rough as torn burlap, desperate and urgent.

"Easy, Vin. It's all ri--"

Vin shook his head, damp tendrils trembling against his forehead as he shook uncontrollably. "No. Gotta' kill . . . kill it. I can't get th' poison out . . . It'll get somebody else." He shook Chris's arm, still clutched tightly at the wrist, and gestured wildly with his other hand. "Over there. I shot . . . shot at it, but . . ." The words broke off into a guttural cry that was nearly a howl, choked-back and swallowed as the injured man trembled violently head to toe.

Buck silently got to his feet and cautiously walked over to the area Vin had pointed out, then turned a grim gaze to Chris.

"Rattler." Buck toed the body and sighed. "Head's shot off. Looks like it was done a while ago." He walked back towards Vin quietly, the injured man's waxy complexion and sweaty skin ominously meaningful in light of the discovery. He knelt again, close enough to set a steadying hand on Vin's lower leg, and looked at Chris. "Looks like it'd just eaten. Still has a big lump in the middle of it. Maybe Vin'll be lucky."

Chris nodded without saying anything. Both of them knew that a rattler that had just killed prey would have less venom in its sacs. There was no way of knowing how much less, though, and Vin's condition made it clear that there'd been venom in the fangs. Chris licked his lips and took a deep breath.

"You'd better get Nathan and bring him out here. I've heard him say that it makes the poison spread faster if you move a person . . ." He raised clouded eyes to Buck as his words trailed off. He swallowed, licked his lips again. "I guess . . . give me the canteens and some blankets before you go."

Buck nodded wordlessly. What could he say? He set out the things Chris wanted in a few swift movements and was in the saddle and gone within minutes. It would be a long way back to town, in the dark.

Chris dropped the ends of the dead tree limb he'd broken over his knee and straightened. He'd laid in enough wood to last the night now, and had the fire built up to keep Vin as warm as he could. He'd heated water and washed some of the blood away from the wound but the injured man had fought him on it, pushing Chris's hands away in urgent silence. The whole left side of Vin's abdomen was hard as a brick, the X-shaped incision the tracker had made between the bite marks a black bruise against sweat-slicked skin stretched tight as a drumhead. It had to hurt beyond bearing to touch it at all, Vin couldn't even stand to have his shirt brush across it, and Chris had finally set the wash basin aside and stopped trying to clean it. At least he could see why it had bled so much now, which had puzzled him at first. Maybe it had bled too much, but then again maybe it had flushed out enough of the poison to let Vin survive this long. Chris shook his head to himself, grim at the thought of Vin having to cut his own flesh. The man had nerves they'd never fathom, he thought. He lowered himself slowly to the ground by Vin's head and set a gentle hand to the pale forehead, pushing the damp curls to one side so he could feel of the fever.

Eyelids trembled and drew open a fraction, and Chris found himself looking into a dark abyss of suffering that regarded him in silence. The next instant the eyes squeezed shut again, the whole face straining and drawn as Vin's back stiffened and then arched, hands clawing against the ground beneath him, a low and ripping sound of anguish forcing its way out through his clenched teeth. Chris bent lower and shifted so his face was looking into Vin's, dark eyes fixed on the suffering features of his friend with helplessness and concern. "Easy," he whispered. He didn't know if Vin could even hear him, but he put his hands on his friend's shoulders and squeezed gently, firmly, and said it again. "Easy, Vin. Try to take it easy."

He felt the muscles relax in his grip, heard a hitching breath caught and then released, and the eyes slid open again.

"When--" The voice was faint as the flutter of moth wings, dry as corn husk, and it caught on the one word and then tore itself loose to go on. "-- get here."

"A couple of hours ago." Chris looked deeply into Vin's eyes, holding to his life with that contact and knowing it. "When did you get bit, Vin?"

"Mor . . . nin'. GOD!" A quick hissing intake of breath, the eyes closing again. Chris held Vin's shoulders more tightly.

"Hang on, Vin. Buck's gone to get Nathan."

Vin attempted to reply but choked on a cry of pain that slid shards of ice down Chris's back when he heard it. He raised his friend's upper back from the ground and pulled him to his own chest, cradling him in arms that he hoped could offer a strength to replace what Vin was losing. The body in his arms shivered and trembled as if with endless seizures, and Chris pulled the blankets up off the ground to wrap snugly around the drooping head and sagging shoulders. He tented one side of them off his own raised knee so they wouldn't touch Vin's stomach, and tucked the tail end under his foot to shut out the night air and the cold.

"Snake. There's a . . . Chris there's . . ." The voice was tight with pain, muffled against Chris's chest. The gunman nodded very slightly and wrapped his outside arm more firmly about the trembling shoulders.

"It's ok, Vin," he said softly, calmly. "The snake's dead. Take it easy."

A pale hand crept painfully up Chris's shirtfront to latch onto his collar. A even paler face turned upward and Vin blinked at Chris, wincing. The tracker's pupils were so dilated that his eyes looked black in the firelight. Beads of sweat stood out on his forehead, and a dull flush of red crested each cheekbone beneath dark and hollowed eyesockets. Chris felt his brows draw together into a deep furrow over the bridge of his nose despite trying to maintain a reassuring expression.

Deep in the backs of Vin's wide, flat eyes, reflected flames of firelight sparked like falling stars. Then the lids dropped and the clenched hand tightened on Chris's shirt collar, twisting it. The muscles of Vin's jaws bunched convulsively and he shivered under the onslaught of a new bout of pain that shook him like a dry leaf on a winter-bare tree. Slowly, after it seemed the agony had lasted for hours, the shivering stilled to occasional deep tremors, and then Chris felt a shift of the weight in his arms as Vin relaxed a little, against him. The older man lowered his head to barely brush the top of Vin's damp curls with the side of his face, afraid to move more than that lest he trigger a new round of suffering but wanting somehow to reassure the man burning to death in his arms. "It's going to be all right," he breathed. He closed his eyes a moment, suddenly feeling every inch of the dark, stony miles that lay between the dying man and town, and then Nathan coming all the way back again. "It's going to be all right, Vin. Hang on."

Vin's weight sagged in his grip as the tracker slipped more deeply into exhaustion and fever. Chris couldn't tell if he was awake or unconscious, delirious or lucid. He'd thought one or the other of each of those at various times through the night, and finally decided it didn't matter.

Vin was slipping away, was what he was -- dying -- and Chris Larabee wasn't going to let him go without a fight. He didn't know what he was fighting exactly, whether fate or nature or the Devil himself, but he sheltered Vin Tanner's trembling life within his arms now, and he intended to keep it safe there as long as he had to.

The hours crawled by, the stars moving imperceptibly in their great wheel about the sky. The fire burned lower, finally becoming a bed of bright coals where small sheets of flame raced and danced, and vanished to reappear lsewhere. Chris's legs cramped, and his arms ached from holding the tracker's dead weight. He was sweating from the heat burning off Vin and right through his shirt front, but his back and shoulders were cold, the night air settling deep around the cramped muscles there like snow drifting over a dead, frozen body.

But it didn't matter.

For so long Chris had hidden, even from himself, the sharpest and most bitter pain of all those to come out of his family's death. He hadn't been there to comfort them. In nightmares he stalked a burning landscape of endless night, finding Sarah and pulling her from the smoking embers into his arms, holding and loving her, not letting her die all alone. Adam wasn't in those dreams, for which he thanked whatever power might live in heaven -- he couldn't even contemplate the horror of failing the child who'd trusted that his daddy would always protect him. But Sarah . . . Sarah had been with him sick and

in her childbirth, had clung frightened to his hand when they'd been threatened, had always been there, beside him, and he beside her. Their hands reached for each other instinctively, hers finding his and slipping inside it with a slip of warm skin soft as silk. He couldn't let her die alone, her hand seeking his helplessly, her last and hardest challenge in life met without the one who'd faced everything else alongside her. He couldn't.

But he had. And Sarah's slender hand seeking futilely for his in the dark smoke and snapping flames haunted him in ways her death itself never had. Fear was so much the worst part of a hard death. So much worse. Chris's mouth worked as he pressed his lips tight against the deep pain of knowing that, turning his mind away from it with force and bringing his thoughts back to the here, to the now.

Vin wouldn't die alone, wouldn't die afraid if he could help it. And if courage or will or determination could stop it, he wouldn't die at all while Chris held him.

================

Nathan had been leaning forward all the dark hours he rode, desperate to get there, to do something while there was still time to. As the darkness began to give way to morning light, he'd bitten his lip with anxiety. Now they could travel faster, but towards what? It seemed impossible for Vin to have survived the long night. He played the scene of arrival again and again in his head -- seeing the smoke of the campfire and bursting through a last screen of trees at a run, rushing to Vin to find him . . . dead. Or in pain. Or not hurt to begin with. Or sick from some other cause that Buck had misunderstood. But always he imagined he would arrive running, still leaning forward, finally able to act on the desperate urge to hurry that had whipped at the backs of his legs all night long.

Instead, he sat his horse and stared in dull horror at a cold campsite in which nothing stirred. The fire was dead, not even a thin coil of smoke rising from the powdery gray ash into the still air. A mass of shadow and soft, strange angles across the clearing resolved itself, finally, into the crown of Chris's hat, brim like a flat dinner plate, down-turned above an awkward tent of blanket. Nathan's gaze trailed downward to see a boneless sprawl of legs projecting out from beneath it, at the wrong angle to be Chris's.

Buck's long in-drawn breath whistled softly over his teeth as the tall gunman swung from the saddle with a snapping creak of cold leather. The dark hat brim over the blanket shuddered and rose slowly, to reveal a face deep in the shadows beneath it that regarded Buck and Nathan, and Josiah behind them, in numb silence. Buck spoke Chris's name in a soft tone that yet carried clearly, and the gunman shivered in response. He inhaled deeply, and blinked. "Vin's still hanging on," he said softly, and his voice cracked with exhaustion.

Whatever had been frozen let go at that instant, and Nathan let the rising tide of rewakened urgency sweep him into swift motion. Buck knelt to set a steadying hand to Chris's back and Josiah bent low over them both, as Nathan gently pulled apart the small blanket tent to reveal the tangle of bloodied clothing beneath it, and the cloying heat of fever-heated air.

"Don't let anything touch his stomach," said Chris. "He can't stand it, not anything."

The blanket slipped from Vin's head and then his shoulders as Josiah began to pull him from Chris's arms. The tracker's breath caught as his body shifted, and he began to stiffen against a renewed wave of pain, features closing into an anguished grimace. Chris's hold tightened reflexively, but Nathan set a firm hand on the gunman's shoulder and spoke to him.

"Let me 'n Josiah have 'im now, Chris."

Chris nodded, his eyes fixed on Vin's working face. He let go.

Josiah gently slid his arm between the two men as Nathan nodded to Buck to steady Chris against the rush of cold air that would flood his lap when they pulled away the man he'd protected all night. A low cry black as blood seeped from Vin's throat, and his arm fell suddenly from the blanket, fingers trembling, the whole hand shuddering with unbearable pain that had nowhere to go. He arched farther, stiffening, gasped brokenly, and twisted against the hands that were trying to move him with such care.

"I need a fire," panted Nathan, as they lay him prone at last. "And hot water. Right away." He was trying to straighten Vin's limbs and lay him flat enough to examine. The features of his strong, dark face shone with intensity. As quickly as he laid a leg straight, it drew up again, the hip turning as Vin writhed and shook. "I need a hand here," he added. "I need someone to hold him so I can--"

"NO!" Vin's voice was wild shriek of panic and pain. He half-rolled to his right side, clawing at the ground with desperate fingers.

"Vin!" Nathan barked the name sternly, desperately, trying to get through the haze of fever and pain. But Vin writhed away farther, breath ragged and gasping, and Nathan caught him by the hips to hold onto him. In so doing, he laid hold of Vin's left side, and Vin screamed raggedly, then collapsed limply to the ground.

Chris staggered to his feet. "Nathan?"

Buck knelt in a single move at Vin's head and Josiah froze with a stick of wood half-in and half-out of the new fire he'd just kindled. The healer's eyes were on Vin, his hands moving quickly, his face unreadable. Chris tottered closer. He saw Vin's chest rise and fall, and his knees nearly buckled. There was a sharp ripping sound, Nathan impatiently cutting away Vin's shirt with one of his knives, his eyes focused on the wounded man's abdomen. "Gimme some a' that water," he said shortly, and he held out a hand to Josiah without even looking.

The preacher set a canteen in the square palm without a word, and Nathan uncapped it and sloshed water into his other hand, gently brushed it along the flaming red skin that glistened in tension, pulled taut over swollen flesh beneath. Vin moaned softly, unconscious though he seemed to be, and Nathan's eyes flicked up to his face once, then back to the wound. "Hold 'im," he said shortly. "I gotta' take care a' this, no matter how it hurts 'im. An' I don' want 'im movin' no more."

Buck silently pressed a hand to each of Vin's shoulders, and Chris knelt over his legs, carefully settling his weight to pin the knee joints without harming them.

"Water's nearly hot," Josiah offered softly.

"I'll need a pan a' water boiled besides that, with a lid for it, t' put things in t' make a poultice." Nathan's words were swift, deft as the hands that were turning a dirty, tangled knot of suffering compounded upon itself into a quiet, clean patient being tended with calm assurance. He laid his palm across the injured man's forehead, assessing his fever, and then lifted his eyelids to look at his eyes. He slid one hand carefully under Vin's back on the left side, feeling the extent of the swelling there, and then brushed a touch light as down over the distended left abdomen. Vin's breath caught at that touch, but he didn't rouse further, and Nathan exhaled as he nodded to himself.

"Gonna' make a poultice a' snakeroot an' some other things." Nathan seemed to be speaking to Vin middle, his fingers swiftly palpating the areas that didn't seem to be swollen. But he was talking to Chris, and Chris knew it. "Got some things'll bring down that fever some, but th' snakeroot's mos' important. It'll draw out the poison." He paused a beat, adding, "If it ain't been too long."

"How long's too long?" Chris's voice was soft. Nathan accepted a basin of warm water Josiah set in his hands and dipped a cloth in it without looking, began to carefully wash the inflamed flesh in which both knife cuts and fang marks had been swallowed by a larger trauma.

"Don' know," admitted Nathan. "Depends on where a person's been bit, if they git some a' the poison out right away, things like that. Hard t' say. Ever."

"The snake had just caught something and eaten it," offered Buck. He cleared his throat. "Think that might help?"

"It could." Nathan still spoke without raising his eyes from his work, dark fingers pressing gently but firmly on Vin's abdomen, working from the right side to the left and into the area of discoloration. They could all see how rigid the flesh was there, no give at all to Nathan's probing fingers, the skin tight over a distension so clearly defined that it looked like a river rock was under the skin. Vin grunted and stirred finally, then jerked convulsively so that his back came up off the ground. His head rolled to one side and he uttered a low, anguished moan that broke into a sob of desperate torment. Nathan stopped probing and sat back on his heels with a sharp exhale of frustration. He swallowed, then looked up and met each man's eyes in turn. "We'll just have t' see," he said simply.

There was a knife in his gut, the blade twisting inside him each time he breathed and even sometimes when he didn't. Vin couldn't recall how it had gotten there any more, only knew it had been there so long he couldn't remember anything else now. He couldn't take any more of it. The pain was relentless, wearing him down until he knew he'd die of it. Wished he could die of it. He fumbled for the knife, wanting to pull it out, and somehow drove the blade deeper instead, set it piercing more sharply into places too vital to withstand that kind of agony. He heard a ragged cry, piercing and anguished, and the sound shattered the knife blade into a thousand tiny fragments that drove into his belly in a thousand directions. He climbed the unbearable pain of it, tried to escape over the top of sharp talons already shredding his gut into long, bloody strips. A flurry of dark blood drops spattered the darkness, and the pain rose over his head and flooded his mouth and his nose and he couldn't breathe any more, and it drowned him again. He shuddered and trembled, agony vibrating his arms and legs and hands and feet as if lightning was trapped under his skin. But then just as he slid over the edge of madness or death, hung on the broken edge of what he could survive, it receded a bit. Just a little, but enough, and he found he could breathe again. He felt a hand clasping his own, very far away, and heard distant voices with reassuring tones, and realized that the darkness ended somewhere just beyond his closed eyes.

But he couldn't get out, he couldn't find the place where the voices were. And then someone began to push on that knife, and it twisted with a sudden burst of pain that turned him inside-out as it all started again.

-7-7-7-7-7-7-7-

"I'm not even sure he knows I'm here."

Nathan turned the wick up on the oil lamp and bent lower over the clinic bed to peer closely beneath the poultice he was lifting from Vin's side. "He knows you're here, Chris," he said steadily. "If y' saw him when you ain't, you'd realize it."

The low hiss of the sputtering lamp flame stitched together the different kinds of silence in the room -- middle of the night, wind banging a far-off loose board, a patter of rain thrown against the window glass. Nathan sighed and set the poultice back, straightened with a hand to the small of his back. Chris looked up expectantly.

"Still gettin' better," said the healer. "Slower'n I'd like, an' I reckon slower'n he'd like. But th' swellin's still goin' down. C'n see th' bite marks again, an' the cuts he made, too."

"But . . . five days, Nathan!" Chris ran the fingers that weren't wrapped around Vin's through the shock of tousled hair falling over his forehead. The tall black man set a hand to Chris's shoulder and squeezed it gently.

"Takes time, Chris. Th' miracle is he's gettin' better. Lord knows why, 'cause I surely don'." He took up an empty basin and turned weary steps to the wood stove, mentally cataloging the supplies he had on hand and a compress he figured to try in the morning. Might bring the fever down more, get Vin awake again and then maybe he could recover faster.

"There were men . . ." said Chris slowly, "in the war." He stopped, and Nathan looked back over his shoulder to see the lithe man sitting in the small circle of yellow light, umber shadows edged all around and the lamp reflecting off the window glass. His eyes were on Vin's face, the pale and seemingly lifeless hand of the injured man held between both of his own sinewy hands. Hands of a skilled gunfighter. Hands of a friend.

Nathan realized he could see glistening beads of rain tracing rivulets down the window in the lamplight. He sighed and turned to face Chris, set the basin down next to him and leaned against the wall.

"I heard they . . . went mad, Nathan." He didn't look around. He spoke as if to himself. "Some of them -- shot in the gut, they went mad with the pain. I heard . . . I heard after a while a man just can't take it any more. If he lives, he's not . . . " The soft voice trailed off and Chris turned to face Nathan across the space of darkness in the little room, his eyes wide and open all the way down to his heart. The healer took a deep breath.

"Sometimes that's so," he admitted. "But Vin--"

"It's been so long," said Chris. "And he hasn't come out of it."

"That's not why, Chris. He ain't well enough yet. Fever's still too high. An' it's harder 'cause there's things I cain't give 'im 'cause a' where he's hurt." His voice gentled. "Soon 's I'm sure the wounds're healed I c'n give 'im stuff t' drink -- medicines 'n' tea 'n' broth an' such. He'll get better a lot faster once that happens."

Chris looked back at Vin's face, sweating and pale against the pillow. Even as he watched, the young man moved weakly, stirring and moaning. Chris raised one hand to rest it on the crown of his head. "I know you can't give him anything to really drink, but . . . so little water at a time! Nothing for the pain. God." His voice broke and Chris bowed his head, eyes squeezed shut, and Nathan quickly crossed the short distance to the chair on which Chris sat, and knelt to look up into his face.

"Chris, you know all this. So what's goin' on? What's this really about?"

"That first night, I decided I wasn't going to let him go, Nathan. And I've been holding onto him ever since." Chris turned hollow, haunted eyes to the healer, and there were deep circles of exhaustion ringing them. "Now I'm wondering if that was fair. To Vin."

"Ya' ever known Vin not to go somewhere or do somethin', jest 'cause a' you tellin' 'im otherwise?" Nathan's voice was gentle, and his mouth lifted at the ends into a sad ghost of a smile. Chris laughed very softly, not happily, and ran a hand through his hair again.

"Can't say as I have," he admitted. He nodded, tracing his thumb over the back of Vin's hand. Then he looked up at Nathan. "Why don't you get some sleep, Nathan. I'll call you if anything changes."

"Only if ya'll git some rest after that."

Chris nodded finally, reluctantly, and his eyes rose as Nathan stood up. "He's a fighter," he said, and Nathan nodded.

"One a' the best," he agreed.

A gust of wind threw droplets of rain in the door when Nathan opened it to go out, and the wind guttered the low flame in the oil lamp. Chris reached to shelter it with one hand so it wouldn't go out, the door clicking shut heavily in the stillness behind him, and when the flame steadied he lowered his hand and watched it for a while. Flickering, dancing, wavering -- it seemed about to go out over and over, but kept burning. His gaze moved to Vin's face and he settled back into the chair, Vin's hand still in his own.

-7-7-7-7-7-7-7-

It hurt like a son-of-a-bitch, but at that he knew it was better than it had been. He could stand it this time. That was the first thing he knew, and he knew it even as he swam up through dark woolly stuff that seemed to pull apart as he moved through it. Whatever he was moving through grew lighter, grayed, and then was suddenly translucent. He heard someone saying something, though he couldn't distinguish the words, and trying to hear them made him so tired that he nearly let go and sank down again.

"Stay with me, Vin."

Who had said that? Something cool -- oh God!, it felt good! -- touched his face, and he turned into it. That was a mistake, because it somehow made him take a deeper breath and for a moment everything trembled on the verge of the kind of agony he remembered only darkly but too well. He rose a little higher towards the light, and the pain settled itself to one side of his belly, aches everywhere else and a throbbing deep inside his head. He tried to lay very still, and as the pain died down again he started to slide back to where it was safer.

"C'mon, Vin. Wake up now."

"Wha--?" Was that _his_ voice? It must have been, he had felt sandpaper scratching the inside of his throat when he'd thought of speaking, and heard that croaking whisper, but ....

"Open yer eyes. C'mon, Vin. Y' c'n do it. Look at me."

He shook his head, or thought he did. It hurt too much where that voice was, the pain in his side gritty and hot as desert gravel rubbing against his insides . . . like stones. Stones. Could be round and smooth, with water flowing over them . . . A dark pool of blessed oblivion rose to his shoulders and he started to float back on it.

"Hey, Cowboy."

That was a different voice. Vin hesitated, treading water in the place that was dark, the inviting indigo depths just beyond. He knew that voice too, but it meant something different. He wanted to turn to it, but it was up where the light was. Where it hurt more. He tried to speak, heard that rasping croak again, felt sharp tears sting his eyes as his throat tore itself inside-out. "Who--?"

"Who d'you think?" There was a soft sound, maybe a chuckle. "It's me, Vin. Chris. Nathan says you need to wake up now." There were other sounds and then the voice was much closer. It was as if the voice had come down a little bit into the darkness to whisper right in his ear. "You're going to be ok, Vin. Come on back to us. Open your eyes."

Vin gasped as light exploded all around him, the brightness making him draw breaths far too deep, that slid stabbing pains into his side. He started to curl over on himself but felt a gentle pressure on his shoulders.

"Easy, Vin. Take it easy. Just breathe slow and easy. That's it." The voice was good to listen to. He found he wanted to hear it, wanted to stay near it. The dark slipped farther away and he squinted against the light and saw a blurry face. A white flash was a smile, he realized, and the voice trembled in some indefinable way. "You awake, Vin?"

"Think . . . so." He coughed and then wrapped his arms around his middle as it tried to catch on fire, struggling to sit up. "What--" But he coughed again and then everything got very confusing for a while, and it seemed that a lot of people were there and then not there, and the light brightened and then dimmed, and after a long time he felt the wonderful coolness stroke across his face again, and this time it didn't stop. He lay very still until he knew that everything had stopped spinning and hurting, and then he opened his eyes very slowly.

He saw Chris. Behind him was Nathan. He frowned. "Wha' . . . hap'n'd?"

"Rattlesnake bit ya', Vin." Nathan leaned closer and did something with his hand, and Vin realized he was the one who'd made the coolness slide across his hot skin.

"Scared the hell outta' me, Cowboy. But you're gonna' be ok now." Chris's voice shook a little, but he smiled. He looked tired, Vin thought.

"'M ok . . . now," he sighed. He closed his eyes, feeling sleep lap up around him like a warm blanket. The pain softened as it did. He thought Chris or maybe Nathan might've said something else, but they were already too far away for him to hear.

-7-7-7-7-7-7-7-

Vin unbuttoned his shirt and slid it off carefully, still mindful of not pulling the muscles on his left side too far. Each day was better, but one unwary move could still double him over, speechless for a long moment. And the attention that brought was just downright embarrassing. He'd learned to be careful and to move a little slower than he thought he could. Nathan said he'd get his strength back right enough if he gave it time, and time was something Vin Tanner figured he had more of than he likely had a right to.

The breeze that blew in the open second-story window was cool across his skin as he laid the shirt over a chair and toed off his boots. He looked down, traced the fingers of his right hand across the odd scars left by the venom and the wounds. The X-shaped cut was pale red, scar tissue shiny but already starting to whiten, and the puncture marks of the fangs were all but invisible. They sat at the edge of a dimpled depression in his side, a place that might've looked like he'd sucked in his breath if it was more to the center. Nathan said that would fill in some, with time, but that he'd probably always have a little dimple there, some of the flesh underneath having withered away and disappeared because of the poison killing it. But at that, he'd gotten off damned easy, and he knew it.

He sat slowly, carefully on the edge of the boarding-house bed, and then lay back with a soft groan. He didn't make a point of letting anyone know how tired he still got, but he guessed they knew. No one bothered him when he came up to lay down for a while, even if he fell asleep and didn't come down for an hour or more. And they never asked where he'd been. They were just glad to see him, every time, and that was a gift he still held with wonder.

Any other time in his life, he'd have died the first night. And he'd have died some time after that if not for these particular people and what they meant to him. What he, apparently, meant to them. He knew that JD and Ezra had nearly wrecked themselves and a wagon getting it through rough timber to haul him safely back to town. He knew Buck and Josiah had spelled Nathan in caring for him, keeping the fever down and talking to him when he was so sick. Nathan had flat out saved his life, no two ways about it.

And then there was Chris.

Vin felt his eyes closing, and knew this was going to be one of those times that he slept. Couldn't help it. Nathan said after a while . . .

His breathing deepened and grew regular as he drifted off.

The carpet in the hallway outside his door was padded underneath, and Vin didn't hear the stealthy steps that approached his doorway. Boots stopped and a man listened closely, then lowered himself to the floor to lean against the wall with a sigh.

Chris smiled to himself, knowing full well that one of these days Vin was going to hear him do that, and open that door and say, "What the hell d' ya' think yer doin', Larabee?" And when that happened, Chris would smirk and say, "Thought you might like a drink." And they'd go over to the saloon, Vin eyeing Chris curiously and with a funny light in his eyes but not saying anything more, and Chris wouldn't come up to sit outside this door any more. Because then Vin would be able to protect himself again.

That day hadn't come yet, though. He could hear the deep, even breathing from inside and knew Vin had fallen into the healing sleep he still needed.

The gunman feared by half a territory opened the small book of poetry he'd brought to pass the time, settled back with a sigh of contentment, and began to reread Sarah's favorite sonnet.