Phoenix Chapter 11/?
Aug. 6th, 2010 01:23 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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wl_fanfictionPhoenix
By: pd
Edited by: Glyph
Disclaimer: I own the story and the OC's, not the boys
Rating (per chap): R for language, violence and some unsettling themes
Pairing (pc): Ryan/Wayne (yay for developing relationships out of intense pain!)
Summary: The Orders come in, and their first 'Mission'
A/N: Hey all, trying to keep it regular with posting this beast. Comments are love, always, and so is constructive criticism. Also wanna shout out to all of the new work up on this comm. I've never seen it so hoppin with fan-friggen-tastic product! Models? Work!
Anyway, hope you enjoy :)
<3
pd
It was the day before they were to be shipped out, and Ryan still had not received his orders. It was making him, as well as his men sweat, and it was a relief when Ryan finally was called into Colonel McShane’s office. He was surprised to find that McShane was not alone, and Ryan’s stomach dropped out as his spine immediately became a rod of iron, his eyes firmly ahead as he recognized the other man.
McShane grinned, but he’d seen the reaction before. “Ryan, let me introduce you to Brigadier General Ulysses S. Grant. Sir, this is First Lt. Ryan Stiles.”
The short, bearded man with the already fearsome reputation looked up and smiled across a table covered completely in the latest maps as Ryan snapped a smart salute “Sir!”
Scratching at his full beard, he came around the table and peered up at him. Ryan stood a little straighter as sweat began to collect on his upper lip. Why the hell was Grant himself here, and what did he want with Ryan? “At ease, my good man, I’m not nearly as bad as they say.”
“Er… Thank you sir.” Ryan relaxed, sweeping his hat off.
McShane came over then, handing them both a small glass of wine. “Ryan here is the one I was telling you about, sir.”
Grant’s eyes widened with pleasure as he accepted the wine. “Really? This tall and still that good?”
Ryan, who’d been inside his own head struggling to accept the fact that yes, he was indeed having wine with Ulysses S. Grant, frowned. “Good at… what, sir?”
McShane laughed. “Your record in battle had not been unnoticed, and despite its… blemishes we are interested in seeing that your duties match your skill. We don’t want someone of your caliber in Infantry.”
“Certainly not,” Grant nodded sensibly. “Besides, why do you think we had you doing intensive training?” He chuckled, patting Ryan on the back, or rather the small of it.
“Er, I’m not sure, sir,” Ryan said nervously.
“You’re being promoted! Already!” Grant barely sipped the wine before he set it on the table. He never did drink much. “And we’ve decided that you have too much experience to waste babysitting. We’d like to have you lead seasoned veterans, as your task will be far too taxing for a bunch of cow hands from out west,” he said it simply and without malice, just stating his opinion as fact.
Ryan gaped before collecting his scattered wits and shaking his head. “With all due respect, sirs, I don’t think that would be a good idea. While I do have the necessary field experience to lead veterans, I believe that it would help balance out men new to war, to teach them more successfully than someone who is just as green as they are. Even if I hadn’t, I would prefer to stay with the men I’ve been given. I’ve already built a relationship with them and they follow my orders well and without question. To remove me from their command could have drastic consequences, possible losses. Sirs,” he nodded respectfully before tossing back the rest of the wine.
Grant was nodding, his eyes positively glowing with amusement and pride. “Loyalty is a fine quality, especially in a soldier, but I hope you understand that loyalty in wartime is a dangerous virtue. However I don’t need to preach to you…” he sighed, shaking his head and cutting off the strange diatribe before turning to McShane. “I knew he would be the right one from the moment he walked in. Well done, Mike.”
Ryan spoke up, almost reluctant to bring Grant’s strange, calculating eyes back to him. “Sir?”
“Yes, you really do have a way with things, Mike,” Grant laughed before turning back to the bewildered Ryan. “It’s true, we have selected you for a promotion, but it’s a different kind of promotion.” His expression turned grave. “We’ve selected you in the hopes that you would take one of the more important missions for this war.” He wandered over to the maps, McShane urging a stunned Ryan to follow.
“I do hope you realize that this is a kind of war that cannot be fought by simply crushing an enemy until they give up. We are fighting our brothers here, and that requires a battle strategy to minimize losses on both sides with tactical expertise. That’s where we’re hoping you come in. The enemy has a large concentration of supply trains bringing them livestock and other supplies from all over the nation from Confederate supporters.
“Now, rather than go after the supporters, who will blend into the woodwork faster than cockroaches, we need to go after the trains. Do you understand why?”
Ryan swallowed hard, scowling. “You want to steal their supplies, starve them into submission. Cut off a mans food, and soon he’ll do anything you want.”
Grant gave a smile that made Ryan not like him very much. “Exactly. Good. We want you and your company to go, quietly. Like an Indian, you see… yes. We want you to subvert the Confederate trains and deliver the goods to Union soldiers at designated, but secret, check points. You’ll need to be cautious and make sure that these check points are not discovered, but there is a separate, and less simple task we wish for you to perform. We feel it’s necessary that we strike at their souls as hard as their wills. If you catch my drift…”
Ryan turned to fully face the shorter man, who didn’t flinch, his eyes never loosing that constant glitter. “You want us to… demoralize… the enemy.”
Grant smiled. “Exactly.”
In the rail car, Ryan sat while his company reclined and joked around him, this time confident and utterly sure of their skill instead of frightened lambs waiting for the axe. The gentle clack-clack of the train car going over the mile markers would normally have rocked him to sleep, or the gentle scenery sweeping by through the slats of the wood would have made him doze heavily, but today he was too disturbed by his auspicious meeting with the man Lincoln himself had appointed to win the war.
“You will not be promoted until after the war; you will not tell anyone of this particular mission; we will deny your ‘actions’ having ever been directly ordered by me. In fact, I was never here.”
It was no small wonder now to Ryan why Grant was Lincoln’s second choice to lead the Union Armies. He had an insane look about him, of a man thinking of sending his face through a brick wall and was about to do it, too.
“Sir?”
Ryan blinked, finding Wayne sitting on the crate next to him. “What?”
“Did you eat some of Cooky’s chili before we left?” He chuckled, along with a few other of the boys playing cards on the crate nearby.
Ryan smirked. “No, not exactly. I got some specific orders about where we’re going.” He had everyone’s attention now, so he spoke louder. “What you know is that we’re going to attack Confederate supply trains in Nashville, Tennessee. What you don’t know is that we’ve been not quite ordered to… forcefully… demoralize the Confederate soldiers.”
“‘Been not quite ordered to’?” Wayne asked.
“It was strongly suggested, is more like it,” Ryan snorted as the men made rude noises.
“What’s ‘forcefully demoralize’ mean?” a younger man, Studs Hahn with hair like a surprised carrot under his hat, asked, freckles like ink spots on his pale face.
They all turned to Ryan, whose grim face did not provide comfort. “Hurt them. Leave survivors to bear tales… or leave… frightening evidence of our passing.”
Studs only looked confused. His older brother, Archie with strange, pale eyes, gripped his shoulder. “‘Member when Ma an’ Pa was hurt last spring? How bad you felt at what those men had done to ‘em?”
“Yeah…” Studs nodded sadly. “And scared…”
Ryan almost couldn’t stand to watch the boy’s innocence crumbling away before his eyes. “I don’t know what they think we’re going to do. They probably think that, well, since we’re cowboys from the wild west, we’re just as bad as the Scalpers. Are we? Or are we as I told you we’d be, Men? If you want to act like a demon and demoralize them the easy way by committing crimes, we will stop you, but you will have been following orders when we reassign you to another company. But there’s another way.”
“Sir, all respect meant, but you’d only been in our town little on two weeks. Why do you care how they see us cowboys?” Bolt, a bear of a man with shaggy dark hair, asked suspiciously.
Ryan sighed, and shrugged. He fought not to look to Wayne, whose eyes he felt on his skin like a candle flame almost too close. “Because I promised to bring you men back home to your families, as whole as I can manage. I intend to keep that promise to the best of my abilities.”
One by one, they nodded, accepting the small bit of truth easily explained before Wayne spoke up, smiling softly at his leader. “How will we make them fear us if we don’t wish to hurt them?”
Ryan’s grin turned feral as he stared back at Wayne. “We go in like ghosts from the open desert, leave nothing behind but stories… but I’ll… I’ll have to do something to start that fear… something none of us will like. But it’s one instance… or this will never work.” The men looked away, each knowing that it was true. “But I’ll do that. I’ve done somethin’ like it before and I will probably do somethin’ like it again. If any of you do not wish to witness it, none of us will blame you for walkin’ away. None of us will call you yellow.”
They all nodded silently, and that thick silence stretched, no one willing to break it. Tthe sick feeling in the pit of Ryan’s stomach grew until someone finally snapped. Of course it would be Abe Glass. “Well I dunno about y’all, but these rifles th’ army gave us ain’t worth the powder to blow ‘em up,” he drawled before Bolt smacked him over the head. “Hey! Man, y’know that hurts m’feelings!”
“Shut up,” Bolt rumbled tiredly, and surprisingly, Glass did with only a pout.
But, it was enough to break the spell, and Ryan chuckled lightly, shaking the sick feeling away.
“Well, let’s start by attacking a gun train,” Wayne suggested.
Slowly, the train was filled with dark chuckles. Someone spoke up suddenly in the dim light. “I hear the new Henry 44’s are in early this year.” The laughter lasted for miles.
A week later, McShane himself would have been hard pressed to realize that the pristine, glittering fresh company and this raggedy band of traveling toughs sporting Union colors were one and the same as they picked over the remains of the Confederate soldiers lucky enough not to survive their inaugural train-jacking.
High in the dry pine hills of Tennessee, the survivors, several of them bleeding and one unconscious, were tied up like calves at a roping competition with their bandannas in their mouths on the dusty needles beside the railroad track, glaring back at the guns trained on their heads.
Half on and half off the track, lying on its side was their first train. Most of the supplies had been removed already in carts specifically for this purpose, the tracks wiped away as they fled in their many directions to the check points. The men would meet up again in two days at the designated rendezvous, rest, and wait for the new mark. Standing on the broad, black iron hull of the overturned beast, Ryan looked more like a pirate from a storybook than a proper Union Lieutenant as he pulled out the half-crushed Confederate Colonel’s lovely Burnside Carbine, wondering what Northern man had owned it before the good Colonel had taken it. He admired it before he pulled his old rifle out of its back-sling and slid the new one in. Like a glove. He chuckled, pulling out all of the dead man’s Confederate dollars and handed them to his second in command, Wayne, before he turned to the watching prisoners and sighed. “Let’s go say ‘hi’,” The most uppity of them was trying to chew through his gag and growling at his keepers.
“You don’t have to do this, si-”
“It’s one or many. We all agreed on this once and I will not let you unhorse me, dammit.” Ryan muttered back as they walked down the hill, scratching at his week’s worth of stubble shaved crudely into a goatee. He pointed to the most furiously struggling of the survivors and had his gag removed. “Whom do I have the pleasure of addressing?” he drawled slowly.
The young man spit at him. “These supplies are going to families, you mon-!” Ryan shot him in the head without so much as a flicker. This was what had to be done. He picked the next man to his left, his side closest to the dead man covered in gore and several gashes in his cheek and arm showing that bone was truly shrapnel at times. The boy was so pale that he almost fainted as his gag was removed. Instead he vomited noisily before, whimpering what sounded like the Lord’s Prayer. When he was dragged back upright, Ryan spoke again. “Whom do I have the pleasure of addressing?”
“P-P-P-”
“Take a slow breath, son, I don’t have all day,” Ryan marveled inwardly how he almost sounded bored.
“P-Private First Class Monty Ha-Hasbrouck…”
“Well Private First Class Monty Hasbrouck, we have a simple job for you, and the only thing you have to do is go and tell all your friends about us.”
Hasbrouck seemed to find his tongue, and his wandering courage, a little. “You’re letting us go? What about the articles of war? P-prisoner exchange-”
“We don’t care about the articles of war, we don’t care about anybody’s orders, and we don’t care about you. Now, do you want me to change my mind about letting you go?” Hasbrouck shook his head violently, looking like he’d be sick all over Ryan’s boots. Ryan nodded. “Good choice.” He looked to Finchly and Bolt, looming behind Hasbrouck. “Take him elsewhere. Let’s not make it too easy for him to tattle on us.”
“Yes sir,” they said, cutting Hasbrouck from the others and pulling out a snuffbox of opium.
“Wait! What about them!” Hasbrouck pointed to the rest of the men sitting with their unconscious companion.
Ryan looked straight at him. “I said we’d let you go. Not them.” With a nod from his head, the man with the opium dabbed his finger in it and, with others holding his mouth open, Hasbrouck had no choice but to accept the powder. The effect was near instantaneous, his pupils dilating and his body sagging in his captors’ hands. As he was dragged onto the back of a horse to be dumped later, Ryan turned to the rest of the men watching and waiting behind their gags. “I’m sorry gentlemen… I have no excuses for my actions.” Out of all of them, shooting the unconscious one bothered him the most.
Ryan stood there for the longest time watching the trampled grass turn black with blood, and a bright flash of green caught his eye, stark against the scarlet. One of the dead men had a bright green parrot’s feather in his hat band, and without thinking why, Ryan tucked it in the band of his own hat. Going to families, he’d said. Well… fuck.
It was Wayne who finally worked up the nerve to approach him. “Sir?... Ryan?” he whispered.
“What is it Wayne?” Ryan asked, voice hollow as he finally turned from the scene and walked away.
“It worked… We won’t have to do this again if Hasbrouck does what he’s told. And he will. We’ve made sure to drop him off where he’s sure to be found by Southern supporters. You did the best you could…”
“Don’t say that. Just… don’t speak to me for a while. Let’s finish cleaning up here and move out.” Wayne frowned after his leader and friend before turning to the rest of the men left behind. “Get what you can and go, we’ll meet you at the rendezvous point in time.” They nodded, and slowly melted into the woods like they’d never been, leaving the dead men where they’d been lined up.
Ryan stumbled down the train line to where Spud and Wayne’s horse, Wakita stood impatiently waiting for them. Ryan leaned heavily against the train car, sweating hard suddenly as he struggled to keep a hold of the white cotton wrapping comfortingly around his brain. It threatened to buckle under what he’d just done when he blinked dully, just now noticing the messily stacked crates of broken items. He heard Wayne speaking to him, heard his approaching footsteps, but he saw something. It winked at him from the broken corner of a crate and he bent down, a smile blooming on his face so suddenly it almost startled him. “Jack Daniel’s. Thank you God,” he sighed, picking up an unbroken 5th of the stuff.
“Sir, it wouldn’t be wise-” Wayne started, but Ryan rounded on him, eyes glittering maniacally. It made him almost take a step back, but he didn’t. Instead he spoke calmly, his face utterly at peace from years of training, years of learning the hard way that angry people would hurt him. “Sir, we need to leave here before the Rebels find us.”
Ryan blinked rapidly, clutching the bottle to his chest and nodded. “You’re right… you’re right, lets get… get out of here.”
“Sir… are you alright?”
“Yes,” he snapped, turning away and climbing onto Spud’s tall back, the bottle still clutched tight like a shield as he wheeled the antsy horse around, mouthing the bit, and kicked him into a wild gallop, nearly falling off of the horse in the process.
Wayne had no choice but to race after the man, kicking the train and the dead men to the dust.
They made their first stopping point without trouble almost at midnight, a small encampment where they would stay at and leave early in the morning, and Ryan heaved a proud sigh of relief before he promptly dropped the bottle. It shattered at Spud’s feet, and the poor animal, already tired and confused at his masters strange mood, shied.
He reared, kicking his front feet and tossing Ryan off with ease. It seemed to shock the animal that he’d fallen off so easily, because Spud turned, whickering quietly. Wayne thundered in, his eyes popping at the sight of the broken glass and Ryan lying flat on his back, his horse nuzzling him curiously. He hopped off, going to his knees beside his fallen friend, his gun out as his dark eyes scanned the shadows around them. “Good lord, Ryan, are you alright? Did you fall? Were you shot?”
“No… no stop your fussing I wasn’t shot… I fell…” He heaved a weak sigh and sat up with Wayne’s help. Then his face fell as he took in the bottles shattered remains. “Dammit… I didn’t even get to have any…” it must have been too much for him, because the first tear streaked down his grizzled cheek and he frowned, swiping at it, choking on them. “‘I’ve done somethin’ like it before’… my ass…”
“Sir?” Wayne asked, unconsciously petting his hair and not taking his arm from the man’s shoulders. Ryan shivered, though it might have been the cool darkness that they now sat in, deep in the woods. Some how Wayne didn’t think that was the case. “Sir, are you alright?”
“I’ve never done a damned thing like that before, dammit, I killed- murdered… in the name of the country… it’s still murder,” Ryan was babbling now, his brain spinning out of his slippery control, the thin, white cotton barrier keeping him sane peeling away and-WHACK!
He blinked, his head suddenly turned to the right and… “OW!” Ryan cupped his jaw as fire bloomed across it, glaring at the dark man kneeling between his spread legs. “You slapped me?” he demanded.
“You were getting a little odd, sir.”
“I’m not allowed to?!” he snapped, waving a hand behind him.
“No… we need you to lead us… not fall apart when you have to do something horrible…”
“It isn’t easy to murder people, Wayne.”
“What do you think every soldier out there is doing?”
Ryan blinked, shaking his head, confused now. “But that’s… that’s different-”
“How?”
Ryan stared up at him, and Wayne stared right back, until Ryan slowly, reluctantly, had to look away, burying his face in his hands. “How can they ask us to do these things, let alone something worse?”
Wayne moved over to sit next to him in the dirt, leaning in so that they were touching from shoulder to thigh. “I don’t know sir. All I know is, some people have to do it so good people don’t.”
Ryan pulled his hands away from his face to look at his friend, staring into the dark, face deep in thought. “Does that mean we can’t be good men anymore?”
Wayne looked at him, face so close. “Do you think you’re a good man?”
Ryan thought about it, really thought about it. “I’d like to think that.”
Wayne smiled. “Me too.”
He truly did have a lovely smile, Ryan mused, staring at it from those bare inches away. Ryan was glad he got to see it, even though Wayne didn’t really smile like he did now very often. The smile in question faltered, and Ryan realized he’d been staring at Wayne for some time now, how close they were, close enough to smell Wayne’s sweat mixing with the dirt and the smell of pine. He could taste it now, when had they gotten closer?
Dry, full lips brushed his and Ryan squeezed his eyes shut, inhaling against the flood of sensation at that tiny brush of flesh. It felt too damned good. He pulled back sharply, rising gingerly and coughing as he grabbed his sleep roll and curled up onto a spot of ground. “I’m gonna turn in… goodnight Wayne,”
Wayne, still sitting where Ryan had left him, his lips tingling, hung his head and sighed. “Goodnight, sir…”
By: pd
Edited by: Glyph
Disclaimer: I own the story and the OC's, not the boys
Rating (per chap): R for language, violence and some unsettling themes
Pairing (pc): Ryan/Wayne (yay for developing relationships out of intense pain!)
Summary: The Orders come in, and their first 'Mission'
A/N: Hey all, trying to keep it regular with posting this beast. Comments are love, always, and so is constructive criticism. Also wanna shout out to all of the new work up on this comm. I've never seen it so hoppin with fan-friggen-tastic product! Models? Work!
Anyway, hope you enjoy :)
<3
pd
It was the day before they were to be shipped out, and Ryan still had not received his orders. It was making him, as well as his men sweat, and it was a relief when Ryan finally was called into Colonel McShane’s office. He was surprised to find that McShane was not alone, and Ryan’s stomach dropped out as his spine immediately became a rod of iron, his eyes firmly ahead as he recognized the other man.
McShane grinned, but he’d seen the reaction before. “Ryan, let me introduce you to Brigadier General Ulysses S. Grant. Sir, this is First Lt. Ryan Stiles.”
The short, bearded man with the already fearsome reputation looked up and smiled across a table covered completely in the latest maps as Ryan snapped a smart salute “Sir!”
Scratching at his full beard, he came around the table and peered up at him. Ryan stood a little straighter as sweat began to collect on his upper lip. Why the hell was Grant himself here, and what did he want with Ryan? “At ease, my good man, I’m not nearly as bad as they say.”
“Er… Thank you sir.” Ryan relaxed, sweeping his hat off.
McShane came over then, handing them both a small glass of wine. “Ryan here is the one I was telling you about, sir.”
Grant’s eyes widened with pleasure as he accepted the wine. “Really? This tall and still that good?”
Ryan, who’d been inside his own head struggling to accept the fact that yes, he was indeed having wine with Ulysses S. Grant, frowned. “Good at… what, sir?”
McShane laughed. “Your record in battle had not been unnoticed, and despite its… blemishes we are interested in seeing that your duties match your skill. We don’t want someone of your caliber in Infantry.”
“Certainly not,” Grant nodded sensibly. “Besides, why do you think we had you doing intensive training?” He chuckled, patting Ryan on the back, or rather the small of it.
“Er, I’m not sure, sir,” Ryan said nervously.
“You’re being promoted! Already!” Grant barely sipped the wine before he set it on the table. He never did drink much. “And we’ve decided that you have too much experience to waste babysitting. We’d like to have you lead seasoned veterans, as your task will be far too taxing for a bunch of cow hands from out west,” he said it simply and without malice, just stating his opinion as fact.
Ryan gaped before collecting his scattered wits and shaking his head. “With all due respect, sirs, I don’t think that would be a good idea. While I do have the necessary field experience to lead veterans, I believe that it would help balance out men new to war, to teach them more successfully than someone who is just as green as they are. Even if I hadn’t, I would prefer to stay with the men I’ve been given. I’ve already built a relationship with them and they follow my orders well and without question. To remove me from their command could have drastic consequences, possible losses. Sirs,” he nodded respectfully before tossing back the rest of the wine.
Grant was nodding, his eyes positively glowing with amusement and pride. “Loyalty is a fine quality, especially in a soldier, but I hope you understand that loyalty in wartime is a dangerous virtue. However I don’t need to preach to you…” he sighed, shaking his head and cutting off the strange diatribe before turning to McShane. “I knew he would be the right one from the moment he walked in. Well done, Mike.”
Ryan spoke up, almost reluctant to bring Grant’s strange, calculating eyes back to him. “Sir?”
“Yes, you really do have a way with things, Mike,” Grant laughed before turning back to the bewildered Ryan. “It’s true, we have selected you for a promotion, but it’s a different kind of promotion.” His expression turned grave. “We’ve selected you in the hopes that you would take one of the more important missions for this war.” He wandered over to the maps, McShane urging a stunned Ryan to follow.
“I do hope you realize that this is a kind of war that cannot be fought by simply crushing an enemy until they give up. We are fighting our brothers here, and that requires a battle strategy to minimize losses on both sides with tactical expertise. That’s where we’re hoping you come in. The enemy has a large concentration of supply trains bringing them livestock and other supplies from all over the nation from Confederate supporters.
“Now, rather than go after the supporters, who will blend into the woodwork faster than cockroaches, we need to go after the trains. Do you understand why?”
Ryan swallowed hard, scowling. “You want to steal their supplies, starve them into submission. Cut off a mans food, and soon he’ll do anything you want.”
Grant gave a smile that made Ryan not like him very much. “Exactly. Good. We want you and your company to go, quietly. Like an Indian, you see… yes. We want you to subvert the Confederate trains and deliver the goods to Union soldiers at designated, but secret, check points. You’ll need to be cautious and make sure that these check points are not discovered, but there is a separate, and less simple task we wish for you to perform. We feel it’s necessary that we strike at their souls as hard as their wills. If you catch my drift…”
Ryan turned to fully face the shorter man, who didn’t flinch, his eyes never loosing that constant glitter. “You want us to… demoralize… the enemy.”
Grant smiled. “Exactly.”
In the rail car, Ryan sat while his company reclined and joked around him, this time confident and utterly sure of their skill instead of frightened lambs waiting for the axe. The gentle clack-clack of the train car going over the mile markers would normally have rocked him to sleep, or the gentle scenery sweeping by through the slats of the wood would have made him doze heavily, but today he was too disturbed by his auspicious meeting with the man Lincoln himself had appointed to win the war.
“You will not be promoted until after the war; you will not tell anyone of this particular mission; we will deny your ‘actions’ having ever been directly ordered by me. In fact, I was never here.”
It was no small wonder now to Ryan why Grant was Lincoln’s second choice to lead the Union Armies. He had an insane look about him, of a man thinking of sending his face through a brick wall and was about to do it, too.
“Sir?”
Ryan blinked, finding Wayne sitting on the crate next to him. “What?”
“Did you eat some of Cooky’s chili before we left?” He chuckled, along with a few other of the boys playing cards on the crate nearby.
Ryan smirked. “No, not exactly. I got some specific orders about where we’re going.” He had everyone’s attention now, so he spoke louder. “What you know is that we’re going to attack Confederate supply trains in Nashville, Tennessee. What you don’t know is that we’ve been not quite ordered to… forcefully… demoralize the Confederate soldiers.”
“‘Been not quite ordered to’?” Wayne asked.
“It was strongly suggested, is more like it,” Ryan snorted as the men made rude noises.
“What’s ‘forcefully demoralize’ mean?” a younger man, Studs Hahn with hair like a surprised carrot under his hat, asked, freckles like ink spots on his pale face.
They all turned to Ryan, whose grim face did not provide comfort. “Hurt them. Leave survivors to bear tales… or leave… frightening evidence of our passing.”
Studs only looked confused. His older brother, Archie with strange, pale eyes, gripped his shoulder. “‘Member when Ma an’ Pa was hurt last spring? How bad you felt at what those men had done to ‘em?”
“Yeah…” Studs nodded sadly. “And scared…”
Ryan almost couldn’t stand to watch the boy’s innocence crumbling away before his eyes. “I don’t know what they think we’re going to do. They probably think that, well, since we’re cowboys from the wild west, we’re just as bad as the Scalpers. Are we? Or are we as I told you we’d be, Men? If you want to act like a demon and demoralize them the easy way by committing crimes, we will stop you, but you will have been following orders when we reassign you to another company. But there’s another way.”
“Sir, all respect meant, but you’d only been in our town little on two weeks. Why do you care how they see us cowboys?” Bolt, a bear of a man with shaggy dark hair, asked suspiciously.
Ryan sighed, and shrugged. He fought not to look to Wayne, whose eyes he felt on his skin like a candle flame almost too close. “Because I promised to bring you men back home to your families, as whole as I can manage. I intend to keep that promise to the best of my abilities.”
One by one, they nodded, accepting the small bit of truth easily explained before Wayne spoke up, smiling softly at his leader. “How will we make them fear us if we don’t wish to hurt them?”
Ryan’s grin turned feral as he stared back at Wayne. “We go in like ghosts from the open desert, leave nothing behind but stories… but I’ll… I’ll have to do something to start that fear… something none of us will like. But it’s one instance… or this will never work.” The men looked away, each knowing that it was true. “But I’ll do that. I’ve done somethin’ like it before and I will probably do somethin’ like it again. If any of you do not wish to witness it, none of us will blame you for walkin’ away. None of us will call you yellow.”
They all nodded silently, and that thick silence stretched, no one willing to break it. Tthe sick feeling in the pit of Ryan’s stomach grew until someone finally snapped. Of course it would be Abe Glass. “Well I dunno about y’all, but these rifles th’ army gave us ain’t worth the powder to blow ‘em up,” he drawled before Bolt smacked him over the head. “Hey! Man, y’know that hurts m’feelings!”
“Shut up,” Bolt rumbled tiredly, and surprisingly, Glass did with only a pout.
But, it was enough to break the spell, and Ryan chuckled lightly, shaking the sick feeling away.
“Well, let’s start by attacking a gun train,” Wayne suggested.
Slowly, the train was filled with dark chuckles. Someone spoke up suddenly in the dim light. “I hear the new Henry 44’s are in early this year.” The laughter lasted for miles.
A week later, McShane himself would have been hard pressed to realize that the pristine, glittering fresh company and this raggedy band of traveling toughs sporting Union colors were one and the same as they picked over the remains of the Confederate soldiers lucky enough not to survive their inaugural train-jacking.
High in the dry pine hills of Tennessee, the survivors, several of them bleeding and one unconscious, were tied up like calves at a roping competition with their bandannas in their mouths on the dusty needles beside the railroad track, glaring back at the guns trained on their heads.
Half on and half off the track, lying on its side was their first train. Most of the supplies had been removed already in carts specifically for this purpose, the tracks wiped away as they fled in their many directions to the check points. The men would meet up again in two days at the designated rendezvous, rest, and wait for the new mark. Standing on the broad, black iron hull of the overturned beast, Ryan looked more like a pirate from a storybook than a proper Union Lieutenant as he pulled out the half-crushed Confederate Colonel’s lovely Burnside Carbine, wondering what Northern man had owned it before the good Colonel had taken it. He admired it before he pulled his old rifle out of its back-sling and slid the new one in. Like a glove. He chuckled, pulling out all of the dead man’s Confederate dollars and handed them to his second in command, Wayne, before he turned to the watching prisoners and sighed. “Let’s go say ‘hi’,” The most uppity of them was trying to chew through his gag and growling at his keepers.
“You don’t have to do this, si-”
“It’s one or many. We all agreed on this once and I will not let you unhorse me, dammit.” Ryan muttered back as they walked down the hill, scratching at his week’s worth of stubble shaved crudely into a goatee. He pointed to the most furiously struggling of the survivors and had his gag removed. “Whom do I have the pleasure of addressing?” he drawled slowly.
The young man spit at him. “These supplies are going to families, you mon-!” Ryan shot him in the head without so much as a flicker. This was what had to be done. He picked the next man to his left, his side closest to the dead man covered in gore and several gashes in his cheek and arm showing that bone was truly shrapnel at times. The boy was so pale that he almost fainted as his gag was removed. Instead he vomited noisily before, whimpering what sounded like the Lord’s Prayer. When he was dragged back upright, Ryan spoke again. “Whom do I have the pleasure of addressing?”
“P-P-P-”
“Take a slow breath, son, I don’t have all day,” Ryan marveled inwardly how he almost sounded bored.
“P-Private First Class Monty Ha-Hasbrouck…”
“Well Private First Class Monty Hasbrouck, we have a simple job for you, and the only thing you have to do is go and tell all your friends about us.”
Hasbrouck seemed to find his tongue, and his wandering courage, a little. “You’re letting us go? What about the articles of war? P-prisoner exchange-”
“We don’t care about the articles of war, we don’t care about anybody’s orders, and we don’t care about you. Now, do you want me to change my mind about letting you go?” Hasbrouck shook his head violently, looking like he’d be sick all over Ryan’s boots. Ryan nodded. “Good choice.” He looked to Finchly and Bolt, looming behind Hasbrouck. “Take him elsewhere. Let’s not make it too easy for him to tattle on us.”
“Yes sir,” they said, cutting Hasbrouck from the others and pulling out a snuffbox of opium.
“Wait! What about them!” Hasbrouck pointed to the rest of the men sitting with their unconscious companion.
Ryan looked straight at him. “I said we’d let you go. Not them.” With a nod from his head, the man with the opium dabbed his finger in it and, with others holding his mouth open, Hasbrouck had no choice but to accept the powder. The effect was near instantaneous, his pupils dilating and his body sagging in his captors’ hands. As he was dragged onto the back of a horse to be dumped later, Ryan turned to the rest of the men watching and waiting behind their gags. “I’m sorry gentlemen… I have no excuses for my actions.” Out of all of them, shooting the unconscious one bothered him the most.
Ryan stood there for the longest time watching the trampled grass turn black with blood, and a bright flash of green caught his eye, stark against the scarlet. One of the dead men had a bright green parrot’s feather in his hat band, and without thinking why, Ryan tucked it in the band of his own hat. Going to families, he’d said. Well… fuck.
It was Wayne who finally worked up the nerve to approach him. “Sir?... Ryan?” he whispered.
“What is it Wayne?” Ryan asked, voice hollow as he finally turned from the scene and walked away.
“It worked… We won’t have to do this again if Hasbrouck does what he’s told. And he will. We’ve made sure to drop him off where he’s sure to be found by Southern supporters. You did the best you could…”
“Don’t say that. Just… don’t speak to me for a while. Let’s finish cleaning up here and move out.” Wayne frowned after his leader and friend before turning to the rest of the men left behind. “Get what you can and go, we’ll meet you at the rendezvous point in time.” They nodded, and slowly melted into the woods like they’d never been, leaving the dead men where they’d been lined up.
Ryan stumbled down the train line to where Spud and Wayne’s horse, Wakita stood impatiently waiting for them. Ryan leaned heavily against the train car, sweating hard suddenly as he struggled to keep a hold of the white cotton wrapping comfortingly around his brain. It threatened to buckle under what he’d just done when he blinked dully, just now noticing the messily stacked crates of broken items. He heard Wayne speaking to him, heard his approaching footsteps, but he saw something. It winked at him from the broken corner of a crate and he bent down, a smile blooming on his face so suddenly it almost startled him. “Jack Daniel’s. Thank you God,” he sighed, picking up an unbroken 5th of the stuff.
“Sir, it wouldn’t be wise-” Wayne started, but Ryan rounded on him, eyes glittering maniacally. It made him almost take a step back, but he didn’t. Instead he spoke calmly, his face utterly at peace from years of training, years of learning the hard way that angry people would hurt him. “Sir, we need to leave here before the Rebels find us.”
Ryan blinked rapidly, clutching the bottle to his chest and nodded. “You’re right… you’re right, lets get… get out of here.”
“Sir… are you alright?”
“Yes,” he snapped, turning away and climbing onto Spud’s tall back, the bottle still clutched tight like a shield as he wheeled the antsy horse around, mouthing the bit, and kicked him into a wild gallop, nearly falling off of the horse in the process.
Wayne had no choice but to race after the man, kicking the train and the dead men to the dust.
They made their first stopping point without trouble almost at midnight, a small encampment where they would stay at and leave early in the morning, and Ryan heaved a proud sigh of relief before he promptly dropped the bottle. It shattered at Spud’s feet, and the poor animal, already tired and confused at his masters strange mood, shied.
He reared, kicking his front feet and tossing Ryan off with ease. It seemed to shock the animal that he’d fallen off so easily, because Spud turned, whickering quietly. Wayne thundered in, his eyes popping at the sight of the broken glass and Ryan lying flat on his back, his horse nuzzling him curiously. He hopped off, going to his knees beside his fallen friend, his gun out as his dark eyes scanned the shadows around them. “Good lord, Ryan, are you alright? Did you fall? Were you shot?”
“No… no stop your fussing I wasn’t shot… I fell…” He heaved a weak sigh and sat up with Wayne’s help. Then his face fell as he took in the bottles shattered remains. “Dammit… I didn’t even get to have any…” it must have been too much for him, because the first tear streaked down his grizzled cheek and he frowned, swiping at it, choking on them. “‘I’ve done somethin’ like it before’… my ass…”
“Sir?” Wayne asked, unconsciously petting his hair and not taking his arm from the man’s shoulders. Ryan shivered, though it might have been the cool darkness that they now sat in, deep in the woods. Some how Wayne didn’t think that was the case. “Sir, are you alright?”
“I’ve never done a damned thing like that before, dammit, I killed- murdered… in the name of the country… it’s still murder,” Ryan was babbling now, his brain spinning out of his slippery control, the thin, white cotton barrier keeping him sane peeling away and-WHACK!
He blinked, his head suddenly turned to the right and… “OW!” Ryan cupped his jaw as fire bloomed across it, glaring at the dark man kneeling between his spread legs. “You slapped me?” he demanded.
“You were getting a little odd, sir.”
“I’m not allowed to?!” he snapped, waving a hand behind him.
“No… we need you to lead us… not fall apart when you have to do something horrible…”
“It isn’t easy to murder people, Wayne.”
“What do you think every soldier out there is doing?”
Ryan blinked, shaking his head, confused now. “But that’s… that’s different-”
“How?”
Ryan stared up at him, and Wayne stared right back, until Ryan slowly, reluctantly, had to look away, burying his face in his hands. “How can they ask us to do these things, let alone something worse?”
Wayne moved over to sit next to him in the dirt, leaning in so that they were touching from shoulder to thigh. “I don’t know sir. All I know is, some people have to do it so good people don’t.”
Ryan pulled his hands away from his face to look at his friend, staring into the dark, face deep in thought. “Does that mean we can’t be good men anymore?”
Wayne looked at him, face so close. “Do you think you’re a good man?”
Ryan thought about it, really thought about it. “I’d like to think that.”
Wayne smiled. “Me too.”
He truly did have a lovely smile, Ryan mused, staring at it from those bare inches away. Ryan was glad he got to see it, even though Wayne didn’t really smile like he did now very often. The smile in question faltered, and Ryan realized he’d been staring at Wayne for some time now, how close they were, close enough to smell Wayne’s sweat mixing with the dirt and the smell of pine. He could taste it now, when had they gotten closer?
Dry, full lips brushed his and Ryan squeezed his eyes shut, inhaling against the flood of sensation at that tiny brush of flesh. It felt too damned good. He pulled back sharply, rising gingerly and coughing as he grabbed his sleep roll and curled up onto a spot of ground. “I’m gonna turn in… goodnight Wayne,”
Wayne, still sitting where Ryan had left him, his lips tingling, hung his head and sighed. “Goodnight, sir…”
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Date: 2010-08-07 08:33 am (UTC)Ooh, I felt so bad for Ryan when he ahd to kill those men....ah, sometimes you have to make a sacrifice for the greater good, even if it taints it....
LOVE IT!
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Date: 2010-08-07 05:39 pm (UTC)Yeah, life sucks sometimes. Thanks for the comments, tho! They brighten my day :D
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Date: 2010-08-07 11:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-07 05:41 pm (UTC)Thanks muchly for the comment!
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Date: 2011-01-18 08:20 pm (UTC)Finally got all caught up on this story! I thought the Ryan/Maxine sex was super, super hot. Gorgeous imagery and really, really well done. I'm curious as to why you made her an OFC, however, when her description sounds almost exactly like Josie. I'm not complaining or anything, I just find it an interesting choice when you basically already have that character at your disposal.
I also really enjoyed the difference between that and Brad's sex scene. I was thinking as I read about how well everyone fit their characters. I love Greg as the undertaker in particular.
And I find the growing relationship between Ryan and Wayne so, so intriguing. I think it was a really bold choice—in fact, the entirety of the story has been so far. It's a tough thing to write about, and I imagine you could get some backlash, but I think you're doing a very good job. I think the detail really makes the piece.
I love it, and I'd love to get more. ^_^