Blink of an Eye
Warning: Deathfic
They clustered around Vin's bed, heads bowed, eyes misted. He lay swathed in a single white sheet, bare from the waist up, covered in a thin sheen of fever sweat. It made the thin cover cling to his legs and mold to his form. His bare chest rose and fell with his belabored breathing, and the gray, rain-choked sky outside Nathan's window did nothing to improve his pasty coloring.
"What is the prognosis, Mr. Jackson?" Ezra's voice was soft, as though to raise it even an iota would break something fragile that couldn't afford to be broken.
Nathan shook his head in a move of despair and bewilderment. "I never seen no fever like this, Ezra. I done all I can. If he pulls through the next few days, then I think we can say he'll live." He hated how weak that sounded. ///I THINK we can say he'll live. I sure as hell don't know that for sure.///
"So we wait." Nathan looked up, not really surprised to hear something so sensible come from the young lips of JD Dunne.
"Yes," he replied. "We wait."
Vin was aware they were talking, though he didn't really know who 'they' were. He felt sure he was SUPPOSED to know, but everything seemed fuzzy. There was one thing he was painfully aware of, though, and that was that he wasn't doing all right. Something was definitely wrong with him. ///I ain't felt this bad since I took that bullet in that shoot-out at the saloon.///
A piece of him smiled. That was how he'd gotten to know Mary so well. Nathan hadn't been in town- he'd gone off with Josiah to help out the native's in the nearby reservation. So Mary had taken it upon herself to tend to his wound......
"Mr. Tanner, if you keep fidgeting like that, you are merely going to make your injury worse."
"You're soundin' like Ezra, Miz Travis."
"Sometimes Mr. Standish has some very sensible things to say. Now hold still." She continued wrapping the bandage around his shoulder.
Vin winced. "Damn, Miz Travis. Get that much tighter and I ain't goin' to be able to twiddle my thumbs 'fore long."
Mary grinned. "Stop whining, Mr. Tanner. And watch your language. Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?" At Vin's obvious silence, she quickly flushed, and pulled back slightly. "Oh, Mr Tanner, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean-!"
"It ain't nothin', Miz Travis. My momma died a long time ago." He sighed deeply. "It still hurts, but she's in a better place now."
Mary stared at him for a few seconds longer, then slowly went back to winding the bandage around his upper body. After a few seconds she spoke. "My mother was suffocating."
Vin arched an eyebrow. "What?"
Mary raised her eyes to meet his, her hands still working at his shoulder. "My mother. She felt I had to grow up to be perfect young woman who would cater to my future husband's every beck and call."
Vin started to laugh, then sucked in a breath as the movement sent bolts of pain searing through his body. "I can't see you doin' that, Miz Travis."
Mary winked at him. "Neither could I. Which was one of the reasons I loved Steven so much. He didn't expect that of me. So I had no qualms when he asked me to marry him and come live in Four Corners." She sighed, echoing Vin's earlier sound. "I miss him very much."
There was quiet for a long moment, with just the soft whisper of bandages to break the silence. Then Vin spoke.
"He must have been quite a man to win someone like you, Miz Travis."
Mary looked at him, surprise evident in her gaze. "Yes. Yes, he was." She paused in her ministrations and just looked deep into his eyes. "She must have been quite a woman. Your mother, I mean. To raise a son with such a strong sense of honor."
Vin nodded. "She was. The best."
They stayed locked in that mutual gaze for a long moment. Finally, Mary looked away, and fussed unnecessarily with the end of the bandage, making sure it was neatly tied off and tucked away. "Well, there you are, Vin. I don't know if I've done as good a job as Nathan would have, but you'll live."
Vin stood slowly, testing his arm carefully. When he found he could at least stand without bolts of pain ripping through his body, he smiled. "I think I just might at that, Miz Travis."
"Please," she said suddenly, "call me Mary."
The tracker looked at her for a moment, then said softly. "Thank you, Mary."
She nodded. "Anytime, Vin."
"Buck, think you could take Sire out for some exercise?" Chris Larabee's voice sounded ten years older than it should have, and he knew it. But he'd be damned if he cared.
Buck looked up from his vigil by Vin's bed. The usually grinning gunslinger had a morose look on his face that didn't suit him, and Chris would have given anything to see his usual brash smile. "Yeah. All right, Chris. Vin would probably like that." He stood slowly, looking lost. Eventually he made it to the door and stumbled out into the hallway.
Chris looked from the doorway and back to his unconcious, deathly pale friend. A grim smile spread across his face. "Vin, pard, you've looked better." The flickering smile died as unobtrusively as it had begun. "Come on, Vin. Wake up. We all know you don't want to go yet. There's gotta be something here to keep you hanging on. Nathan says it's almost a miracle that you've lived this long." Chris paused here, taking a deep breath so he could swallow down the emotions that threatened to bubble over any second. "So come on Vin," he finally continued. "Come back to whatever it is that's keeping you here."
Mary's long golden hair streamed out behind her as she galloped across the dusty plain. Her laughter sounded like Muse music juxtaposed against the dry landscape.
"Mary, you give me that hat back!" Vin hollered as he galloped after her, his own long brown hair blowing behind him. "I said give that back, d'ya hear me!" Still, he couldn't keep a smile off his face.
A distance ahead of him, the blonde widow pulled up, her pretty bay prancing beneath her. "Are you SO attached to this old thing?" she asked, waving the weatherbeaten, ragged hat in his direction.
Vin came to a stop beside her, and tried to ignore the grin that she wore from ear to ear. "It's a good hat. It ain't never given me no problems." He made a grab for it, only to have her pull it away from him. "Unlike some newspaper editors I can think of," he muttered under his breath.
Her grin broadened, and her eyes lit up. "Oh, for that you aren't going to get this back without a fight."
"What d'ya mean, fight?" Vin felt a competitive smile begin to creep across his own face.
Her eyes drifted away for a moment, and he made another grab for the hat, only to have her once more dance it away from his grasp. "You get to town first, you get your hat back."
Vin raised an eyebrow. "And if you get back first?"
She gave him a conspiratorial look. "I'll tell you when we get there. Let's see if you're really as good as they say you are, cowboy!" And with that she took off again, heading towards Four Corners.
"MARY! Dagnabit!" And Vin took off behind her, trying not to admit that just what exactly she had planned if she won was keeping him just a step behind.
"Speak your mind, Brother Larabee?"
Chris looked across the still form of the tracker to where Josiah sat, calmly, Bible in hand. The preacher was watching him with deep-set, compassionate eyes, and Chris became suddenly aware that he didn't know how long he'd sat there, simply staring at the floor, waiting for his friend to die.
"I'm just wondering why people like Vin Tanner have to die like this, and men like we tangle with every day get to live, Josiah." Chris didn't like the bitterness in his voice, but he couldn't temper it. It burned in his stomach like vinegar on an open wound.
Josiah nodded, understanding, and turned his eyes back to the broken-backed bible in his hand. Chris turned his eyes back to the floor and there was silence for a moment.
Until it was broken.
"'Man no more knows his own time than fish taken in the fatal net, or birds trapped in the snare; like thesse the children of men are caught when the evil time falls suddenly upon them.'" The preacher's rich, rumbling voice seemed to give the Biblical words a deep sense of truth and meaning.
Chris heard that meaning all too well, but he didn't want to admit to it. Yes, every man died. But, by God, Vin Tanner didn't deserve to go like this!
"The Lord God said: 'It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a suitable partner for him.'" Mary read softly, the flickering of the firelight casting soft shadows across her cheeks. "'So the Lord God formed out of the ground various wild animals and various birds of the air, and he brought them to the man to see what he would call them; whatever the man called each of them would be its name."
Vin listened to her soft, lilting voice, his eyes contented to rest on her lovely face, watch her tender lips as they moved with her words. His momma had read to him from the bible when he was just a scrap of a boy. He'd loved it then- stories of such far off lands, of such unequivocal right. Now he listened to Mary speak of the creation of woman, and as he gazed at her, he was sure he knew why God had created Eve.
"'The Lord God then built up into a woman the rib that he had taken from the man,'" Mary was reading, seemingly oblivious to Vin's enraptured gaze. "'When he brought her to the man, the man said: 'This one, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; This one shall be called 'woman,' for out of 'her man' this one has been taken.'" She paused then and looked up. Vin saw a soft blush rise into her cheeks when he met her gaze. "What is it, Vin?"
It had been several months since he'd started courting her, and he knew that, if ever he'd met a woman who completed him, Mary was that woman. But did that make it any easier to say? No. So he clasped to the first thing he thought of. His eyes strayed down to the pure white Bible she held, still open, in her hands. "That's a mighty pretty Bible, Mary."
The blonde widow gave him a puzzled look, then looked down fondly at the book. "Yes. Yes, it is. My mother's wedding gift to me." She laughed softly, and Vin felt his heart melt even more. "I think she wanted to remind me not to go sinning out here on the wild frontier." She closed the Bible and ran her hand over the smooth, white cover, the gold-leaf lettering. "It's one of my dearest possesions." She raised her eyes to his again, and Vin knew that she understood there was more to this than her Bible. "What is it REALLY, Vin?"
///Well, it's now or never!/// He stood up from the sofa where he was sitting beside her and went to his buckskin jacket. Mary's eyes followed his movement, and he saw a smile light up her face when he pulled a single lily from where he had secreted it inside his coat. Walking back to the sofa, he handed it to her, smiling.
She took it happily. "Oh, Vin! It's beautiful! Thank you!" She leaned forward to embrace him warmly, and he felt his heart skip a beat.
Moving quickly, she opened the Bible on her lap and placed the lily between it's pages. "To keep it always," she said softly, her eyes sparkling.
But as she closed the cover, something fell from within the cup of the lily's petals. It glittered against the violet calico of her dress, and she picked it up.
It was a ring.
Her eyes flew to his, surprise giving way to happiness. "Vin...?" She trailed off, and Vin couldn't keep his own grin away any longer.
Sliding off the edge of the couch, he reached out and slipped the ring from her limp fingers. Kneeling before her where she sat, he took her hand and said softly, "Mary Travis, will you marry me?"
Her free hand flew to her throat as she watched him slide the gold ring onto her finger. Mouth working, throat closed with emotion, she managed to choke out, "Yes! Oh, yes, Vin. Of course I will." Tears streaked their way down her cheeks as she let herself slide off the couch to kneel before him, both of them grinning wildly.
"I love you, Mary," Vin whispered into her golden hair.
"I love you, too, Vin," she murmured against him, before raising her lips to his and stopping the need for speech.
Voices still drifted on the outer edges of his conciousness, but Vin tried to tune them out. He was enjoying this little trip down memory lane. Things were coming back to him clearer than they had in months. He could still smell the sweet flowered scent of her hair when he'd proposed. Could still feel the smooth, supple touch of her lips when her mouth had met his. It almost rivaled the wedding in terms of sentimental value.
Almost.
The wedding hadn't been anything grand. Nothing big and shmaltzy. Just a small, joyful gathering of friends and family. Judge Travis had travelled to Four Corners to give Mary away, and, by God, she had been the most beautiful vision Vin had ever laid eyes on, as she walked up that aisle, enveloped in her swirling white gown........
"Ladies and Gentlemen, we are gathered here today to witness the joining of this man, Vin Tanner, and this woman, Mary Travis in the bonds of holy matrimony."
Josiah's rich voice filled the tiny church, but Vin hardly noticed. All his attention was focused on the beautiful woman in the gauzy veil before him. ///Lordy, she is beautiful!/// Not for the first time, he wondered what he could possibly have done so right to deserve this lovely woman in front of him.
Mary gazed back at him through the veil with adoring eyes, and he knew that adoration was mirrored in his own gaze. To them, no one else existed just then.
"Do you have the ring?"
Vin looked away then, feeling as though a part of him had torn away when he had to turn from Mary's eyes. "What?"
Josiah smiled at him. "I asked if you had the ring, Vin."
"Oh. Um, Chris?" He turned to his best man, who, for once, didn't look out of place in his all-black outfit. "Can I have the ring?"
The older gunslinger did something then that Vin did not like one bit.
He shuffled his feet.
"Chris? CHRIS?" Vin's voice was rising. When the other gunslinger didn't respond, Vin turned back to his bride and gave her a tiny smile. "Hold on just one second, will you, Mary?"
He could see her trying not to laugh behind her veil. "Certainly, Vin," she said softly, and he could hear her trying to hold in the laughter.
Turning back to his best man, the tracker affixed Chris with a level gaze. "All right, Chris. What did you do with the ring?"
The blonde gunslinger raised himself up to his fullest height and replied, "I gave it to Buck."
Vin turned his eyes now on the boisterous gunslinger in the front pew behind Chris. Buck looked very much like he wanted to crawl out of his skin. "Buck," Vin said hoarsely, "where is the ring and why do you have it?"
"Well, Vin buddy," the mustachioed gunslinger said, smiling and standing slowly, a sure sign he'd done something wrong, "I figgered it would be best for ME to hang on to the ring for Chris, what with me having had experience with being the best man and all, and I just wanted to be helpful, and I surely didn't MEAN to drop it like that, confounded thing is so small I couldn't find the dang thing, and-"
"So you lost it?" Vin's words were cold clarity.
Buck's shoulders slumped. "Well....yeah, yeah I did, but I PROMISE to get another one, I do. I swear it by all that I hold dear and good, that I will not go near another woman until I have gotten you and your lovely bride, howdy ma'am, a new ring, and-"
"You can have mine." All eyes turned to Inez, where she stood just behind Mary, acting as her bridesmaid. The lovely mexican woman stepped forward and pulled a slim gold band from her finger. "It's not much, just a pretty thing I got when I came here, but if it will help, then you may have it." And she dropped it into the tracker's hand.
Mary turned to the raven-haired woman and hugged her. "Thank you, Inez," she said softly. "You are so wonderful!"
"Anything for my best friend," the woman whispered back.
Vin stared down at the simple gold ring in his hand, and smiled. It would do. But he gave Buck and Chris one last good glare before turning around, all smiles, to face his bride once more.
Josiah cleared his throat and raised one eyebrow. "Are we all set?" Vin nodded. "All right then. Since we know you have the ring, let's just move on, shall we? Take her hand, and repeat after me. I, Vin Tanner...."
The ceremony went on uninterrupted. And when Vin lifted Mary's veil to reveal her gentle features and waiting lips, it was almost enough to make him forget the debaucle of the ring. And when he pressed his lips against hers, and listened to the applause of his friends, it was the furthest thing from his mind.
God, how long had it been since Vin had first ended up in this bed?
Chris sat by his friend's side, watching the days pass. Nathan had tried to get him to leave, had tried to move him bodily. But Chris would not do that. He couldn't do that. Vin needed his friends right now. Needed them more than ever before.
God, how long had it been?
It was four months after the wedding when Vin stumbled through the doors of Nathan's clinic, Mary's limp form cradled in his arms. "NATHAN!" he bellowed, fear tinging his words with panic. "NATHAN, SHE NEEDS HELP!"
The healer flew down the stairs at the panicked voice of his friend, and Vin saw him visibly pale at the sight of the woman in the tracker's arms. "Dear God, what happened?"
"I don't know," Vin gasped out. "She wasn't feelin' too well last night, and this mornin' she just collapsed!"
"Get her upstairs fast!" Nathan ordered, and Vin wasted no time in doing just that.
He flew up the stairs with her, and laid her gently, oh so gently, onto the soft mattress. "Mary, sweetheart, look at me darlin'." He felt his heartstrings tug as her eyes fluttered open. He knelt beside her and took her hand gently between his. "It's gonna be all right, 'kay darlin'? It's gonna be all right. Nathan's gonna fix you right up. Ain't you, Nathan?" The tracker pinned his friend with a fearful stare.
Nathan worked feverishly, taking Mary's pulse and feeling her head for fever. "That's right, Mary. I'm gonna take care of you." But Vin knew from the look of worry in the healer's eyes that it was a shot in the dark.
"Vin?"
The tracker's eyes flew to his wife's paler than normal face. "Yes, Mary?"
"Vin, promise....you won't...l-leave me." Her words were soft and nearly inaudible.
Vin massaged her hands between his. "I promise, Mary. I promise."
She smiled wanly. "Good." Then her eyes drifted closed and she slept.
Vin looked up into Nathan's brown eyes. "Nathan?"
The healer shook his head. "It's some kinda fever bug I ain't never seen before, Vin. I don't know how to handle it. The best we can do is try and get her fever down and keep her comfortable and hope she can fight it off on her own."
Vin felt hot tears spring to his eyes, and he turned back to look at his wife's pale, sleepy features. Bringing her hand to his lips, he pressed his mouth against her fingers, gripping her hand in a white knuckled grip. "Mary. Oh, God, my Mary. Don't you leave me. Please." He rocked back and forth where he knelt, tears trailing down his cheeks. He didn't even notice when Nathan left, nor when he returned to try and lower Mary's fever.
Vin didn't notice anything about the world around him for two days, then he couldn't had he wanted to, because he collapsed then of the fever, too.
///No. No, I don't want to think about that./// Vin tried to shake the bad memories away, but they stuck and refused to move.
///God, is that why I'm here? Is that what's wrong with me?/// Now that he thought of it, he knew that had to be the case. What else could it be?
Even as he thought of it, he felt his conciousness begin to fight against the blackness around him. ///Mary! I told her I wouldn't leave her! Oh, God, Mary! I'm coming!/// He pushed against the bonds that surrounded him, fighting, struggling, sheer, mad terror forcing his limbs into motion.
"MARY!" Vin screamed, his body arching up from the mattress.
Chris was at his side instantly, Nathan just a step behind. "Vin? Vin, calm down. Calm down!" Chris demanded. "You're going to hurt yourself! CALM DOWN!"
The words must have gotten through on some level, because the tracker's wild thrashing eased. "Mary? Where's Mary?" he mumbled.
Nathan checked his forehead. "Fever's broken," he said softly, and Chris let out a half-hearted sigh of relief.
"Mary? Where is she?" Vin sounded so weak still.
Chris looked down into his friend's drawn face. He could sense Nathan watching him, knew the others were clustered now in the doorway behind him, staring into the room with dim eyes. ///God, pard, why did you have to make me your best friend, huh? Why me?///
But he said nothing. Instead, he reached into the pocket of his duster and pulled out something small and glittering. Leaning forward, he pressed it into his friend's weak hand. "She wanted you to have this," he whispered, unable to make his voice go any louder without cracking.
Vin stilled. His eyes looked down even as his hand raised itself ever so slowly upwards so that he could see what it was he held.
It was a ring. A simple gold band.
Mary's wedding ring.
A lump built in his throat, and a low moan escaped him. "No. Mary. God, no," he whispered hoarsely.
"I'm sorry, Vin," Nathan said softly, and the tracker's blue eyes flashed to his face. The utter emptiness in those usually sparkling eyes ripped what was left of the healer's heart to shreds. "I tried, but she couldn't hold on. I'm so sorry. So sorry." There didn't seem to be anything else he could say.
Vin turned his eyes away and gazed at the ring in his hand. Slowly, his eyes closed, and his hand fell back to the sheets. Finally, a thin, hiccuping sob escaped him.
Chris looked around the room, and the same message was communicated amongst all the men. They had grieved for the past two days for Mary Tanner, who now rested in the tiny graveyard beside her first husband, with an empty plot beside her where her second husband would someday reside. But not yet. Not just yet.
One by one, the other members of the seven filed away, leaving the private man alone with his grief.
Vin listened to them go. His fingers turned the gold band over and over between them. ///Why? Oh, Mary. My Mary. Why?///
He reached out to the bedside table, his hand clutching for the thing he knew would be there.
His fingers made contact with the smooth surface of her white Bible, and he felt a shock of such pure grief go through him, he thought surely it would kill him. The same white Bible she had been reading from on that night when he'd proposed. The same Bible which still held that single white lily pressed between its pages. "To keep it always," she had said, and the memory tore a sob from his throat.
But the misery didn't kill him. The tracker prayed that it would- he didn't think he was strong enough to go on without her beside him, as it was SUPPOSED to be. ///God, please, just let me die! Let me be with her!///
But he didn't die. His heart kept beating stubbornly, and his lungs still pumped air, and the tears flowed even more freely down his cheeks. And she was gone, and he wasn't, and the pain was so deep, it was like an open wound. Worse than the gunshot which had first brought him close to her. Worse than any physical pain he had ever endured.
///Oh Mary. I loved you so much.///
Loosening his fingers, he let the ring fall on top of the Bible with a soft, "Clunk."
And bringing his hands to his face, he wept.
The End