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He reckoned it had to happen sooner or later.
This day was five years coming, and Sparks Nevada still wasn't as ready as he shoulda been.
He hadn't seen Croach since the surprise event, when he’d let Alloy Roy walk free and Croach had walked out on him.
The few times he'd seen Red since then she'd reluctantly told him what little she knew. She always said Croach was fine. Sometimes he was with his tribe, sometimes he wasn't. She didn't see him for a long time after the younglings hatched. When the victor emerged from the brood, Red let him know, but it took almost a year for him to learn what it was.
By the time Sparks had finally swallowed his pride and was ready to apologize, it had been two years since Croach had walked out. When he tracked down Croach's tribe to tell him, Croach was gone.
So was their daughter.
Sparks tried to ask any Martian who’d look at him about Croach, but Barlok the Wise, Chief of Croach’s tribe, had forbidden any member of his tribe to speak to him. None of the rest of the tribes seemed to cotton to him anymore, either.
As good as Croach was at tracking, seems he was even better at hiding. Sparks started using tracking tech, but Croach would be gone before Sparks got to where the tech said he was. So Sparks' apology was stuck in his throat with no one to tell it to.
Three years after Croach left, Sparks thought he'd found him again. He saved Croach from some Lizardmen one day. Croach said their daughter was safe in The Secreted City of Rococoo, and he was ready to ride with Sparks again while she grew up there. Sparks agreed, as long as they'd go visit her first. Sparks finally said that apology he should have said years earlier, and they spent a week finding Rococoo.
Six days into it Sparks started to think that it wasn't Croach at all. On the eighth day, they showed down. He almost put a bullet in the Martian’s head, thinking it was the Jupiter Spy.
It wasn't. It was Chulp the Imposter. It took every ounce of control to let the Martian go unharmed. It was weeks before Sparks stopped seething over that, and months to stop thinking about it every day.
Jim came by to try and cheer him up even more often after that, but Jim wouldn't talk much about Croach, either. He said Croach made him swear not to.
Even Felton saw Croach once. Felton tried to get Croach to come back, but he wouldn't.
Sparks started spending most of his nights at O'Tooles.
Deputies came and went, sent by the Mars-Earth Coalition mostly. Some died, some retired, some got sick of him and left. Robot outlaws, regular outlaws and unauthorized aliens got shot, and Mars was about as safe as it ever was. He told Red, Jim, Felton, the Barkeep and even Barlok to tell Croach he wanted to parlay if they saw him. Said he'd stop hunting Croach down if they could only just talk. That had been six months ago. There'd been no response.
And now in the canyon just below him was one familiar Martian, quantum bow pointed at a half dozen highwaymen, with a much smaller Martian hiding behind his legs.
A little Martian girl who Sparks could see from here had tufts of ginger hair.
The highwaymen had their guns drawn. They were pointing them right back at his best pal and the kid he used to not think he wanted.
A fire he hadn’t felt in a long time burned in his belly.
He spurred Mercury on, and Mercury understood. They swooped around back, quiet as a rocket steed could ride. Sparks pulled out his shooters, and before any of the outlaws knew what was happening, two of them were down. Two of the remaining outlaws turned to Sparks, and two fired at Croach.
One of them missed. The other didn't.
Croach had already fired back--Sparks wondered if Croach had sensed him coming--and one of the ones that didn't shoot was felled by a techno arrow. Now it was three against two.
Sparks heard Croach cry out in pain, and the kid -- no, his daughter -- yelled something in Martian. That was enough for Sparks to take out the outlaw who had shot Croach and one now shooting at him before they got another shot off. One left standing, but Sparks’ guns were almost empty.
The last one was aiming careful at Croach, who had a hole shot clean through his bow-drawing arm. Croach was saying something Sparks couldn't make out, and he realized he was talking to the girl. Croach was now in his line of fire, so he rolled off Mercury to steady himself for the last shot.
Sparks' mouth went dry when he realized that though the last outlaw standing was aiming at Croach, there was one still alive on the ground, with his guns aiming straight at the kid. He could see Croach's nanotech was just starting to kick in, stitching up the hole through his arm, but it'd be awhile til Croach could draw his bow again.
"Oh look, it's Nevada," the outlaw on his feet said. "Now here’s how this showdown’s gonna go, lawman. You can probably just kill one of us, seein’ as how your Marjun’ ain’t much for shootin’ right now, whereas me and Charlie here can kill two of you. You're gonna let us go or--" He shot Croach, this time in the other shoulder. Croach cried out in shock and pain, while Sparks gritted his teeth at the sound.
"-we'll shoot your Marjun' so full of holes he ain’t gonna have enough guts left for his nanotech to fix up, and just to get the point across, we'll shoot a hole in the little one's head. You give us your guns and his bow and we leave all of you alive. Deal?"
"Sparks Nevada," Croach gasped through the pain. "The youngling has many years until she may go through the sacred rite of Nah Nohtek. Do not allow these men to harm her."
"I ain't," Sparks said. "Not her nor you again." He glanced up and recognized the standing outlaw. Gadget Wood. They'd scrapped before, but he'd been a man of his word.
"I'm droppin' my guns. Croach, just go ahead and drop your bow.”
For the first time in five years, Sparks looked at Croach, right at his black eyes with green irises looking back, asking for confirmation or looking for one of their old signals. Sparks nodded, and Croach let go of his bow, the hum of the quantum charge falling silent as it hit the ground.
"The arrows, too, Marjun," Gadget said.
Croach carefully pulled his quiver off the arm that had gotten shot first. Sparks could hear the wet, squishy noises of Croach's nanotech from where he stood, and resisted the urge to say "gross". The situation was far too dire.
He kicked his guns over to Gadget, while Croach kicked his bow and quiver over to the outlaw on the ground, then crouched low to better shield the child.
Gadget and his partner snatched up the weapons, and activated their jetpacks. Seconds later, they were gone.
Sparks Nevada was twenty feet from Croach, and it felt like a mile. The silence stretched out at least that long.
"Hi, Croach," he finally said.
"Sparks Nevada," Croach replied, coolly. Sparks slowly began creeping forward, so as not to startle either of them. The last thing he wanted was for them to leave.
"Is that... is that her?" he asked.
"This is my youngling, yes."
He didn't miss the way Croach stressed the word my, but he took a few more steps forward slowly.
"But she ain't just yours, Croach," he replied, trying not to sound confrontational.
"You made it very clear--" Croach stood up then, taking their daughter and hefting her into his arms, He turned to face Sparks, and then turned the girl’s head so as not to look at the dead men on the ground.. "You made it clear what you did not want when I left. And when you did not track me."
"I did, though, track you, I mean. I've been trying to find you--"
"You did not track me for two years after I left, Sparks Nevada,” Croach snapped.
Sparks had closed the distance to ten feet.
"I was wrong, Croach. I'm sorry. I was stupid and I was stubborn. I'd just lost Red, and that kid. I was in shock, and then I was mad that you left too, right after I'd lost Red."
"You did not wish for me to be fertilized."
Sparks could see the bright blue irises of the girl's eyes, looking at him with curiosity. He could see the tufts of hair were pulled into crude imitations of the low pigtails Red often wore.
"No I didn't - wait, Croach," Croach had started to turn away, but stopped at Sparks' pleading. "I didn't, you're right. Look, what happened at the Old Mission way back then, it was just so's we wouldn't get killed by the Preacher. I didn't know it could do what it did to you. Especially after you were dead for a few months. I wasn't ready to have a baby with my Martian pal, that ain't how it works for humans--"
"You wish for me to stand here and listen to you speak further about what you did not want, when you were already very clear on this?" Croach's voice was sharper than he may have ever heard it before, and Sparks knew he was close to losing him, again.
"Yes! Yes, Croach, because I was wrong to tell you this was your fault and I was wrong to not go after you, and I was wrong to not help raise the kid. You were my best friend, and I shouldn'ta let you go, and I shouldn'ta let you stay away."
He was close enough now to reach out and touch his daughter. He thought about the blur of the last five years, of too many empty nights and too many empty bottles of whiskey. Watching Red and Jim have their kids, the Barkeep and the Troubleshooter even have one more, and Felton's boy growing up in front of him. He’d never had any of that. Nor a lady who could put up with him for more than a few weeks at a time. He hadn't had much at all but the Marshaling job.
"Look Croach, just... just come back to town. I got the other room still, you can stay there. Let me get to know her."
Croach eyed him suspiciously. "Sparks Nevada, my youngling and I do not belong in town. Becoming too close to humans is how I was nearly exiled from my tribe. It is how I was--" he glanced towards the girl and paused, "...shamed. Humans nearly killed us again this very day. I do not plan on being near any human who is not The Red Plains Rider or Cactoid Jim ever again unless it is necessary. We will not go with you."
"Well then, can I come see you, and see her? Every once in awhile?"
Croach thought on this for what seemed to be an eternity.
"At noon on the third day of every month we will be at the Old Mission. If you wish to come, you may. We will not stay for long."
Sparks wanted to object, to ask for more, but quelled the urge. Croach didn’t trust him right now, and didn’t have a reason to, but at least he was willing to start.
"Can I hold her? Please. Just for a minute." He couldn't help it -- His mind flashed back to those few, sweet seconds when he thought he had a daughter before, with Red. He never even got to hold that daughter. And now he'd missed his chance to hold his real daughter while she was a baby, too.
Croach eyed him suspiciously again. "You may.... touch her. Holding might come later."
Croach's grip on the girl tightened as Sparks slowly reached out his hand. The girl's skin was a much lighter shade than Croach's deep blue. Her antennae were short and she had more of a bump on her face where her nose should be, if she were a human. Not quite Martian, though still far from human, even with her tufts of hair. This must be why Barlok the Wise wouldn't speak of her.
"Hey, lil cowpoke," Sparks murmured, heart beating in his throat, knowing he was about to touch his daughter--their daughter--for the first time. Tears started to burn the edges of his vision as the years, the old hurts and the resentment and the pain, fell away for the first time since he could remember.
"Sparks Nevada, I--" Croach said, and then he collapsed.
Sparks lunged for their daughter before she hit the ground. He managed to get one hand behind her to soften her fall a little, and he suddenly found himself kneeling on the ground, Croach's head in his lap, an arrow through his head, and a hole in his chest that wasn't supposed to be there.
Except this time he was cradling a girl who was screaming in Martian, and Alloy Roy was standing over him, aiming one of Croach's arrows right at his daughter.
"NO!" he screamed, jerking violently awake as he sat up in bed, covered in a thin sheen of sweat. He gasped for air, the memory of the nightmares he used to have about Croach’s death flooding into his mind, and yet this one had been even worse.
Sparks nearly punched himself out trying to rub his eyes. His robot fists were still on his hands, even after Alloy Roy took his six shooters. He scrambled to pull them off, and broke a glass bottle as they thunked to the floor next to his bed.
He breathed deeply in an attempt to calm down. He reminded himself that it wasn't five years later, it was just the same night. Croach had walked out mere hours ago, and there was no kid yet.
But there was gonna be.
He could either let Croach stay out there on his own, or find a way to deal with what was now officially the weirdest situation in a life chock full of weird situations.
If that was his choice, then there wasn’t a choice at all.
Sparks steeled himself and got out of bed. After kicking aside the broken glass--still wearing his boots, too, dang it--he hauled himself to his feet and set about getting ready for the day. Once he was about as reasonably clean as could be expected, he picked up his badge, gave it a hasty wipe with a shirtsleeve, and pinned it on for the first time in days.
His best pal was out there, waiting to be tracked. What else was he going to do?