Chapter Text
Disclaimer: Young Guns and all of the characters who appear here or are mentioned belong to Morgan Creek Productions and 20th Century Fox etc; they are not mine
The request was for Doc to live at the end of the 2nd movie so it will verge into the AU territory...
"I Shall Return" by karrenia
Doc regained consciousness so quickly that it startled him and he woke to several unpleasant sensations all at once. The inside of his mouth tasted like an entire sack of mothballs and
he felt as if he were dying of thirst. Which was ironic when you stopped to think about because, by rights, he should already be dead.
The only thing that that might have forestalled that final departure was if the unwashed morons who had had guns and the law on their side had royally screwed up their job.
Namely, to track him down and kill him, then he could not have been lying on the floor of a charcoal burner's hut to moan and groan about it.l No. It was unfathomable. It was impossible.
'Odd' Doc thought, "how the mind goes off on tangents at moments like these because at the very instant when I was knew my number was up, when I shouted my defiance at it so loudly that
was the moment I knew that I could face it with stoic courage and poetry.' He shook his head and the motion set off the beginnings of a twinge that would soon become a full-blown head-ache.
He gritted his teeth and held still until it subsided before attempting to move once more.
Aloud he remarked: "Dylan Thomas would have been proud of me and the lines were quite fitting under the circumstances." As he considered that fact another followed closely on the heels
of the first. "I seriously doubt any of Garrett's posse would have grasped the reference let alone known who the English poet was. That's the past, isn't it?"?
Josiah "Doc" Scurlock is not as certain as he was back in what he had reckoned were his last moments on earth; however, as he rolled over with a muffled groan and a creaking of tired
and sore muscles he realized that his mind was still housed in a body that felt pain and pleasure;; or the myriad sensations that came with being alive.
His memories were still intact as well: He could recall riding in the desert, by day and by night, the ranch house of John Tunstall, the school were once taught, the good and bad times
with his friends in the Regulators, or in the house of Jane Greathouse, and even looking up at the sky at night at the thousands of pinpricks that were stars in a velvety black sky.
Doc suddenly wondered where Billy the Kid was at this precise moment. The fact that they'd been made and that most of the old gang were either dead by now or nearly dead was not one
that he particularly cared to dwell on.
Life had been good even before he met William H. Bonney and since then it was like he tied his fate and fortune to a tornado; for as young as Billy wss; and he had been very young,
Billy had been like a force of nature. And Doc were being honest with himself, God only knew that over the years of their friendship he and Billy had had their differences, so much so
that more than once they had even come to blows.
"Damn it, Billy!" Doc suddenly shouted. "You bastard! I told you once that you were a fifteen year old kid going straight to your grave and the rest of us, straight to hell!"
Doc shook his head and sat up so he could stare up at the night sky through the gaping hole in the old hut. "Maybe I had it all backwards."
This dead but not being dead was getting boring and he figured that he could not just lay here and contemplate it, even if, he seemingly had all eternity in which to do so.
Doc lurched to his feet and propelled himself through what was left of the door.
Outside it was nearing the witching hour and and the landscape was picked out in both the radiant moonlit and starlit. He realized that while he had been, well, out of it, not
much had changed and seemingly time still went on whether or not he was there to participate in it or not. With a sigh Doc realized that in his flight from Garrett's posse he had come a long way into the middle of nowhere and if he wanted to reach a town he would have to walk.
"Maybe I can find a horse along the way," he muttered to himself at the very first faint blushed of approaching dawn began to lighten the sky overhead. There was no help for it
so he began to walk, one foot in front of the other. He judged direction by the position of the rising sun as Chavez had once taught him how to do.
***
Much later, he found a horse to ride at an outpost and if luck were with him the soldier posted there did not recognize him. At that moment it occurred to him that he might want to
consider working on a cover story to explain how he managed to still be very much alive. Although, in his own mind, even he was not entirely certain of how it worked. Once he ran into
people he had known from his old life, it could, well, become more than a little sticky.
**
Figuring that he could mitigate the stickiness and awkwardness of his explanation a good ways, Doc figured he'd start by doing something about cleaning up his appearance. He had been wearing the same tunic and slacks along with his favorite long coat for several days running when word came of the pursuit and the bounty on the heads of each member of the gang.
So, needless to say, his clothes were not fresh. He stopped to discard his old, rank clothes for fresh one a common boarding house on the outskirts of town.
She did not ask any questions and Doc, relieved, felt better about his prospects once he actually reached town. He left some money for the woman and rode on.
One more stop for a shave and a dip in a bath house. It was a good thing, that he had had money stowed on his person, otherwise he might have had to rely on his native talents and
and charm for all of these amenities. These tasks accomplished, Doc recalled with a fond grimace for his own fastidiousness on his appearance that his friends used to give him perhaps well-deserved ribbing for it.
Those were good memories and he was determined to hold onto them. Tomorrow, he would ride into town and seek lodging, he stil need to refine his cover story, but it could wait
until tomorrow.