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In hindsight, Boyd thinks, the bear trap had been a misstep.
Of course, there should be no hindsight; he should be dead. Would have been, he and Ives both, if the trap had done its job, but— there’s the hitch and he sees it now. Using a mouse trap to catch a rat was his first mistake.
He’s back in his bed. It’s the first thing he registers as his sleep-muzzy mind fights to reconcile the exchange of damp crimson-strewn straw for cool linen and fur. The absence of metal teeth eating through muscle and bone.
Back in his bed. Sleeping. Like nothing had ever happened. It feels so improbable that for one bleary, stupid moment, he wonders if he is dead, facing some purgatorial punishment, a frontier Prometheus thrown back in time to relive the events of that day over and over, indefinitely. It’s foolish, but the thought sends a twinge of fear through him all the same. The anaesthetic of sleep is beginning to fade, and before he can brace himself he feels a shock of pain ricochet outward from his center. He grits his teeth, eyes squeezed shut as the wave surges up his spine, cresting to break across the back of his skull. He can feel it ringing in his bones.
No hard reset then, no mystical refresh; If this is divine intervention, he’s not sure he’d survive another round.
He’s sweating with the effort to remain immobile, wary of another shockwave, as he glances downward. He feels sore all over, but his torso throbs the loudest, like a pulsing sun, bolts firing at random across an unseen network of heat and dirty, red feeling. Tucked beneath a matted blanket of bear hide, his stomach is a cocoon of cloth, but he can pinpoint the remnants of his and Ives’ fight without seeing— dotted sinkholes of sensation where the pain burns hottest. The knife wounds pitting his front. The teeth marks ringing his back. And a new pain, too, smaller than the rest: the wrist of his right hand, chafed and scabbing where he’s strung to the wall with a familiar iron cuff.
Boyd blinks at it for a moment, working in vain to divine some meaning, some connection— Slauson? Martha? Ives?— but he gives up. He knows nothing, and what he does have is as useful as a single page torn from an unknown book.
The shackle complicates the process, but with effort, he pulls himself up ever so slightly, shoulders pressed to the wood of the backboard, halfway between lying and sitting. It feels better, safer, having a clear line of sight, but he’s rewarded for the action with another surge of pain. He can feel tears gathering in the corner of his eyes like a reservoir, and he closes them, breathes, wills his body to calibrate around the new sensations flooding in. The bandage that envelops his middle is working admirably to keep him in one piece, but it’s doing nothing to relieve the pain, and he thinks with an edge of hysteria, I would very much appreciate some of that bourbon now.
He’s choking back something halfway between a sob and a laugh when his door pushes open, and Boyd snaps to attention. In the doorway, Lindus, the general’s aid, seems as surprised as Boyd.
Lindus fixes his expression into something neutral with a practiced speed, but Boyd follows the way his gaze travels from Boyd’s face to his chained wrist and back, the way his posture turns guarded and tense. The bob of his Adam's apple as he swallows.
Abruptly, things click in Boyd’s mind: he’s back under arrest. Or— still under arrest. The thought might have shaken out a laugh, if he were in more of a laughing mood; it’s absurd, cartoonish in the scheme of things. the law can’t exist here anymore than it could at the bottom of the ocean. The rules are simply different now.
There is a length of suspended silence as they appraise each other, Lindus still hanging in the entryway like an unanswered question. He looks unsure, hesitant in a way Boyd hasn’t seen, diametric to the cool confidence he usually exudes.
“Captain,” he finally starts, gathering himself, “you’re awake.”
He sighs and gives a quick glance toward the hall before advancing into the room. A worn chair has been dragged in from the dining hall to sit beside the bed and he settles down on it stiffly, eyes still flickering to and from Boyd’s face. Closer now, Boyd can see how tired he is, his coif and poise somehow deflated, the noticeable tinge beneath his eyes.
“I would prefer that the general were here for this discussion, but as he is currently indisposed...” he tips his head back, heaving another sigh, then leans forward again to rest his chin on his hand, pointer finger tapping contemplatively against his cheek. “How are you feeling?”
Boyd’s response comes out as an aborted croak, and Lindus quickly course corrects, seeing his error. He has the decency to look a bit embarrassed as he seizes Boyd’s canteen from its place on the chest beside the bed, and holds it up questioningly.
“Sorry— water?” he asks, nodding himself as if to demonstrate.
Wearily, Boyd nods in turn, and Lindus works quickly to uncap the lid. He pauses for a moment as if processing how to proceed, then, gently, he leans forward to press the mouth of the canteen to Boyd’s lips, hands working in tandem to stabilize the careful angle. After a few awkward gulps, Boyd lets his eyes drift from their task, upward, and meets Lindus’ eyes— intense, alert— over the container. Instantly, he chokes, flushing under the attention. The canteen is jerked back as Boyd sputters and coughs, feeling stray droplets of water strike his chest like shrapnel. The cough wrenches another swell of pain from his torso followed closely by a ripple of nausea. He clamps that down, waits for the feeling to recede.
Lindus is quiet and still, holding the canteen up like a makeshift shield in the space between them. Boyd can feel his heart beating in his chest.
Lindus starts, “Are you—” at the same time that Boyd grinds out a soft, “Sorry.”
The expression on Lindus’ face is conflicted, pitying.
“More?” he offers. Boyd accepts. When he’s drunk his fill— eyes obediently fixed ahead, unwandering from the soft, elegantly tapered officer’s hands that grasp his worn flask— he signals to stop with a quick duck of his chin.
Lindus nods questioningly, and Boyd finds himself nodding back— a new language forming between them. Lindus smiles for a moment, but then it falters.
“I found colonel Hart… Ives and yourself. I don’t think I need to explain to you how it looks, considering everything.” He looks away, consternation drawn in his brow. Then he shakes his head and meets Boyd’s eye again, continuing, “what happened, Boyd?”
Boyd thinks about the answers he could give, ways he could spin the truth or weave a lie, but he knows it’s no use. He can’t really blame them for their disbelief at this point; it’s only proof of their sanity.
He looks at Lindus as he confesses, “I killed them. Hart. And Ives. I had to.”
Lindus’ face is carefully blank as he nods, “And yourself, I suppose.” Boyd nods, letting his gaze fall, coming to rest on his free hand, resting limply on the bed beside him. He flexes the fingers carefully, just to see if he can.
Quietly, Lindus sighs. “Well, you’ll be held here until you’re well enough to travel. Slauson is preparing a court-martial in San Miguel. If you won’t alter course before we depart—” he breaks off to offer him a beseeching look, the offer hanging clear between them, “perhaps the colonel’s testimony may shed some additional light when the time comes.”
Boyd’s chin jerks up at that. He blinks, the words settling like a boulder in the pit of his stomach. He can feel his throat constricting, gooseflesh and chills breaking out across his brutalized body. When he speaks, it comes out as a strangled whisper: “Colonel?”
When Lindus only squints in confusion, Boyd tries again, slowly and with effort, “Ives. He’s alive?”
Eyes widen in acknowledgement, but Lindus pauses, perhaps contemplating how much patient information it might be prudent to share with the person who’d infirmed the patient in the first place. After a moment, he answers carefully, “Yes. The colonel is alive.” He doesn’t add, “No thanks to you,” but the sentiment is clear, despite his motions at sympathy.
The words hang for a jaunt as Boyd’s mind races. He’s jolted from his reverie by a warm weight settling suddenly against his bare shoulder. Lindus’ hand squeezes almost imperceptibly, but he seems impossibly close when Boyd turns wild eyes to meet his. “It’s not too late, Boyd. It may be gauche to speak of it plainly, but— no one wants to see you hanged. There are... options. Please think about it.” He nods curtly and returns his hand to his lap. Boyd’s skin seems to prickle in its absence.
Lindus straightens up then, promptly businesslike, and addresses Boyd directly, “I’d like to redress your wounds now. Are you able to sit up?”
Boyd nods numbly, still processing. The pain has ebbed since Boyd woke, and he dutifully swallows the small pangs that jangle out as he pulls himself to sit. His chained arm, momentarily forgotten, drones with sensation as the limb slackens, allowing blood re-entry. Lindus scoots forward and begins to loosen the gauze wrapped tight around his midsection, practiced hands making quick work. He tilts his head this way and that, taking in the patchworked bare flesh. Boyd stifles a gasp as cold fingers prod softly first at the scabbing punctures that line Boyd’s back where the metal teeth dug in, then around to the front where Ives’ blade had plunged through again and again and again. The skin is puckered and purpled with bruising and Boyd’s stomach churns, too much damaged flesh swimming in his vision.
Lindus doesn’t flinch. He bends to retrieve a cloth, wetting it in a basin waiting nearby for this purpose, then moves back to the bed to swab at the wounds and the surrounding skin. “It looks worse than it is,” he offers, “the bleeding has stopped. To be honest, you’re healing... remarkably quickly. You and the colonel both.” He sounds perplexed, but unsuspicious.
Boyd feels little of the re-bandaging process. Thoughts, impressions, worries are piling up behind his eyes. His brain feels like a snowstorm that he’s stuck trudging through. Logically, he knows he shouldn’t be surprised— if he had survived, why shouldn’t Ives? Hart had gone through this. Alive, then dead, then alive once more (certain curative properties, indeed). But he had been sure— and he deserved this, didn’t he? Hadn’t he done the right thing, the noble thing?
Hands glide along Boyd’s vertebrae as Lindus checks over his work, moving across his stomach, then guiding Boyd’s arms up to feel along his ribs and the shallow beneath. The touch makes Boyd shiver. He closes his eyes and focuses hard on knitting the right words together.
“Is he— is Ives—?”
Lindus pulls back, seemingly satisfied. He crosses his arms across his chest before responding. “Awake? No, no, you beat him to it.”
Boyd had suspected, but the relief reduces the boulder in his gut to a stone. There’s still time, then. A realization hits him, and he knows it’s futile, but he has to try all the same. He looks at Lindus, determined, “You should leave— you have to leave. He’ll kill you.”
“Boyd…” Lindus grimaces. The expression spells out clearly: Don’t spoil it. We were doing so well.
But he can’t help himself, shaking his head slightly, “If you go now—”
“Boyd.” Harsh, chastising. “Boyd, please. Stop.”
Boyd stops. He meets Lindus’ eye, and he can see a tenderness underlying the fatigue and resolve. Boyd nods, and Lindus nods.
“Now,” Lindus says, rising smoothly from his chair, “unfortunately, I still have much to attend to. I am happy to see you awake, Boyd.”
He pauses, throwing a glance towards the door, before adding, “Mind what I said?”
He exits, leaving Boyd alone again.
But an instant later, he ducks his head back in.
“My apologies— are you hungry? Slauson has been positively raving about the stew.”
***
(In the end, Ives woke up that very week, and made quick work of poor Lindus— Hart’s slender blade drawn across his throat in one easy motion. Mockery, or maybe re-enactment.
Boyd could hear him, bare feet dull on dirt floors, as he made his way through the kitchen and across the drafty corridor outside of Boyd’s room. He’d stopped in the doorway, and even in the dim of the room Boyd could see the crimson streaking his hands, oozing its way down the blade, loosely clasped.
In the dark, his eyes seemed to glint like broken glass, but his expression was soft as he smiled.
“There you are,” he said.)