A/N: FYI in Chapter 9, the self-medicating shooting therapy is my personal modeling after 'play therapy,' often used for children who can't articulate what or who has hurt them, or how they feel. I just adapted it to a practical adult malady to address what both of our characters have suffered from during the entire series (and in the books, BTW.)

Also, the Ch 9 shooting sequence and the (yes, admittedly abbreviated) sexual situation afterwards was based on the Rebelwaltz & GM2 writing prompt. Thanks for letting me play, gals!

P.S. The Dead Guy blanket had been washed, although I am told it is a 100% wool Pendleton blanket and would have to be hand-washed and line-dried. I forgot to put that line in, though, so the blanket didn't 'get on the line' either.

Back to this chapter, this may be the last you see from me in November. These last two offerings count as 5,000 words today, but I'm going back to work on my novel tonight and try to finish it via NanoWrimo this month.

I do have this idea of…perhaps a writing prompt for the holidays? What do you think, folks, since there are NO holiday shows?

Enjoy!

Epilog

The past two months had been incredible. Living with Walt was like a complex chaos. For a place so quiet and rural, living together was full of fireworks and orchestras. It was not just the sex, it was the logistics of daily living, but I think we were both coming around to the facts that 1) it took longer than we thought to settle in together and 2) we really wanted to be around one another.

It started with me not wanting to sleep in Martha's bed. Somehow the couch seemed like much more neutral ground, and Walt admitted he and Martha had never had sex, there, so we broke that in quickly. The solution was, of course, a new bed which we had to break in properly, and often, as well.

It continued when Walt and Eamonn were bristling around one another one day at a crime scene in a field. I think it was after Walt had left me to contend with a corpse of an organized crime figure while he went off to investigate the disappearance. Eamonn had thought I could use a hand.

Well, Walt had left me with much trickier situations before, like his wild mare and all sorts of dead people, so I was nonplussed, but Eamonn taking up for me was kind of sweet, but Walt wouldn't have it.

"Vic knows her job," he almost growled to Eamonn, taking his stand.

"And a little help is sometimes—helpful," offered Eamonn, with his own stand.

Ooh, I saw the young bull and the old one again, temporary standoff.

"Guys, I can handle this," I said, before the bloodshed could commence. I half-wistfully remembered the entertainment factor when Walt and Branch had gone at it, once. I sometimes did miss Branch, even though Eamonn was the much better team player. "You guys go find the Maritawa guy who you think took him out."

They sort of looked down at the ground. Walt spat. Eamonn pulled out his cell phone.

"Okay if I call my contacts in Boston?" Eamonn asked and Walt grudgingly nodded.

I called for an ambulance, because that's the smart thing to do instead of hauling a body around like Walt usually does. They could get him to Doc Weston or Bloomfield or whoever was doing autopsies today faster than I could. When I finished, Eamonn was off a ways, presumably talking to his contact.

Walt came back over to me.

"I don't—" I think he was trying to apologize, and failing abysmally. I rescued him.

"Duh, Walt, stand down. It's not Eammon, and it won't ever be. He has a girl over in CC, now, named Sam."

"Sam?"

"Samantha, their Ruby. I guess she's crushed on him a long time, and he finally succumbed?"

"Oh." He looked somewhat abashed.

"Plus, he's just a shadow for me, Walt, a shadow of you." I sneaked a quick kiss on his ear. "See you back at the station?"

'Kay." He still looked a little disgruntled.

"Oh, ye of little faith…" but I was giving him my private smile.

He seemed to shake it off.

"Give me your phone. I'm going to call Mathias and let him know who we're hunting."

He called, and it sounded pretty cordial. I wondered if Mathias was sick, or just mellowing as he eased into the Longmire sphere.

Walt handed my phone back.

"Are we kind of now really doing the Task Force thing with him?"

I thought of my first meeting with Mathias, where my fist had wanted to meet his nose.

"Sort of. Good days and bad."

"Like us?"

"No." His voice was surprisingly forceful, his hands on my upper arms, but firm, not hurtful. "Not like us. All our days are good," he said, "just some more than others." That last was said in rueful tones.

I exhaled through my nose. "Okay, a little cheesy, but I'll take it." And then I leaned over and whispered into his ear, "That's why I love you."

Let him stew over that for a while. Neither of us had used the 'L' word, yet, although I thought it was pretty obvious that either of us would die for the other, we couldn't seem to express the three word clichés to the other.

He drew away, maybe startled a little, but a tiny smile flickered across his lips.

"Okay." He strode away, and I thought I detected just a hint of a bounce there. I would like to think something from me, or our nights together, had put it there.

XXX

Kids had been mentioned in passing, usually after a particularly energetic and sweaty session together. He would ask what I thought and I usually didn't answer.

The truth was, I wasn't sure, yet. So far, we were good as a couple, but I wasn't sure what the stresses of a family would bring. The associated birth control question had come up once, I had told him I was on it, unlikely to mess up, so it was answered and by him, apparently accepted. He hadn't asked me to stop using it, and I didn't offer.

I wondered if he wanted the son he'd never had, or whether through fate that by the time we got around to it, my age would render me infertile, or that I might give him another daughter. I was afraid to find out, or even ask myself if that was what it really was.

He had asked me to marry him twice, once in the shower, once in bed. Both times I had said I wanted to wait, truth was, I was scared shitless. I had married the 'perfect person' and been oh-so 'perfectly' miserable the first time.

Bills were also a bone of contention, one of the reasons settling in took a while. He didn't have many, while I had some lawyer divorce bills, a couple of small credit cards, but all ones which added up. He told me to pay off whatever I owed out of my paycheck and then could contribute something to the cabin kitty each month, but when I saw what he paid out every month, I almost died of shock.

The mortgage on his property, all of it had just been paid off for the last couple of years. The last few years before that, he had put most of his salary into paying back the money he'd borrowed for Cady's law school, and for Martha's treatments. Now most of his paycheck went into his retirement accounts, which he had not drained for Henry Standing Bear. That had been the standalone 401k from the county.

He paid for food and beverages, except for those at work. He had a septic and sewer. He paid for electric and gas and one phone line, but didn't have internet, satellite or any additional things bulking that up. All his professional societies dues, health insurance, gasoline and maintenance for the Bronco and so forth, were paid for by the county.

Sean had been paying way more just for our rental house he had abandoned than Walt paid out in all his bills every month.

So I did as he suggested, began to pay mine off. I figured I would make up for it when mine were at zero, and put most of my check contributing after that.

Walt, however, wanted me to put most of it into my retirement. "You may want to retire earlier than me," he said, and I felt a little like a freeloader.

It was really odd, but although I initially thought I'd lobby for it, I found I could live without internet, because when I was at the cabin, it was a refuge. It was our refuge, the perfect quiet, after all the chaos of the world barraging us all day.

I would find myself seeking out the quiet, and find that in spite of the changing seasons, the reassuring chatter of a magpie or the rustle of the pines would let me know what was quiet was not quiet, it was merely our place.

"Donna didn't understand that," he said early on in one terse statement about the quiet, and only mentioned her once again.

Gradually, as we became easy with each other, Walt even came to play the piano for me. I never pushed, because of the other comment about Dona.

"She tried to call me a chicken if I didn't play, but the truth of it was, I didn't want to play for…her. It somehow felt wrong." If only he'd trusted his gut on that one.

Before Donna, I guess he had played for Martha.

One time he said of Martha, "She didn't like my musical selections," and left it at that. I gathered the rest, but I loved what he could do. I marveled that those same hands which could play me to perfection, were just as proficient at manipulating all those keys. I, on the other hand, despite four years of lessons as a child, could barely manage chopsticks, and only if carefully coached. Of course, it ended up with him sucking my chopsticks fingers…so I benefited, even if his ears didn't.

I did insist on a good tuning and cleaning for the piano, but I polished it myself and made it as welcoming for him as possible. His time with it was something I cherished.

If he was done with his after-dinner reading, he would often play, and with it came another outlet for his passion. He loved Fats Waller and R&B, but played slower Gershwin and Bessie Smith sort of songs just for me, when he was of a mind…which often led to other things…

I figured I could handle it if my worst competition had 88 ivory keys, but I did have one other female competitor for Walt's affections. She hung out down by the small barn down the slope from his cabin.

"She'll be Horse until she tells me her name," he remarked once as he struck out for the barn to break the ice skimming her trough one chilly morning. I shrugged. I could live with that, as long as I was his only other living ride, so I learned to cope with ignoring the ghosts and learning our truths.

One thing I persisted on was having Henry over for dinner. I didn't understand the ongoing tension and apparent distance between them after so many years of friendship. I encouraged Walt to invite him for dinner, to which Henry finally relented. I did not question what had been involved in securing Henry's acceptance.

Over bison steaks on the grill outside with brisk (translate: blizzard) weather approaching, Henry and Walt discussed a winter-hunting trip. I stayed out of it, hoping they would resolve their differences and bond during the trip.

While the guys ostensibly hunted and bonded, I enjoyed four days of being in charge at the office, but alternated between craving the afterhours silence and desperately missing Walt…

When they returned, they seemed to have installed a measure of peace between them, and our freezer was successfully stocked with venison and trout.

I asked Henry about the reconciliation.

"It was a misunderstanding," he said cryptically, and would not say more.

When I asked Walt in bed much later, after we'd shared a hot shower, he'd mostly shaved, and we had enjoyed our physical reunion, he said, "It was a misunderstanding."

My thought was, they each had a different story to tell, and that the nature of the misunderstanding was far from simple, so, I let that one go. I had learned that with Walt you win some, you lose some, and that pushing didn't always work. The therapy had shown me that. His experiences with Lizzie and Donna had also shown me that.

Although we did have some fights, there were days we would both be rocked by laughter by something totally unrelated, like the day a great horned owl Walt had finally admitted frequented the cabin, swooped in while he was drinking his morning coffee on the porch before leaving for work, and dropped him a field mouse on the doorstep. Now, not having cats about, we occasionally had mice invade the house, we usually trapped them, but we didn't think we were the National Mouse Repository or anything like that.

I know the Cheyenne thought they were often messengers of death, but Walt didn't think so. He had explained the philosophy to me once, that they were often messengers of transition or unborn children as well, but it was a tortured description. With this owl, however, he didn't have a care.

"No presents!" Walt had shouted at the owl. He had shaken a fist at the magnificent bird as he fluttered away, and I broke down laughing as the mighty Sheriff of Absaroka County discovered he had no jurisdiction over the wily owl. In the end, we wrapped our arms around one another and just laughed and laughed.

I think that, even more than the weeks of therapy, slowly led to our healing. It was despite seeing the weakness and failures of humanity during our days together, that we could come home, come together, and just be us…

He rarely spoke of Martha, now, and I never spoke of Sean, except in passing, like, "Sean and I tried that restaurant," or other very impersonal things.

My bills diminished quickly with the whole of my salary going into them.

We seemed to finally be learning how to rub together in reasonably close quarters without a lot of stimulation from extraneous sources like televisions and phones. And, we had to figure out self-entertainment inside, especially during Durant from fall into winter, which was usually mostly winter to anyone from anywhere else. I did have my tablet loaded with books and movies, which Walt thought was interesting, but preferred the heft, paper, and he claimed the smell of the real thing.

Finally, one night the week before Thanksgiving, he broached those deferred topics again. We lay in the new bed Walt claimed we had almost satisfactorily broken in. He joked it still needed a lot of practice to make it perfect. He held me in his arms and whispered in my ear.

"Marriage, children, how we share our finances, those things are still all on the table, honey."

"Yep," I said in acknowledgment.

"Will you, with me?" he asked, still whispering, and I thought of a young therapist who needed therapy himself after hearing Walt's story. I thought of another who had almost, almost been able to broach the dam inside where I visited quite regularly. The words were still coming, though, "Because I love you…"

I didn't answer right away. I held him equally close and smiled against his ear.

"Maybe the owl should be the one to tell us our future?" I finally whispered, overwhelmed, and fell asleep.

The next morning another mouse graced the front stoop. We stood over it, unwilling to acknowledge the coincidence. I knew Walt didn't believe in them. Our eyes met and I conceded the field.

We married at the courthouse the next day. Walt evidently had pulled the license the day after our shooting therapy session, months ago, and the license was badly creased and stained from life in his wallet, but the county clerks solemnly honored it.

Henry stood up with Walt, who wore a new shirt, and I had Ferg with me. I wore my old boots with my new dress uniform and a borrowed blue sash Cady had loaned me. She was in the audience, and patted Ferg's back as he cried after the ceremony was over. I wasn't sure what the tears were for, but I appreciated his support anyway.

Over the winter, I started to put 75% of my salary into retirement, and 25% into the kitty for us to share. Walt suggested the percentages after a meeting with his financial guy.

The owl visited us the next spring with a fresh offering laid at our doorstep, but given his previous message, I was afraid to consult him on any of the items still on the table—to wit, kids, the politics of Walt's next election, or even an upcoming stock market crash.

The next week I was late. I had never been late in twenty years…but I acknowledged that my hormones were up. When I approached Walt a little later, chopping wood on that fine spring morning, a bit of sweat around the neckline and under his arms, and looking mighty tempting, he took a break, a long break from the chopping to make his wife very happy.

Amidst the ruins of our bedclothes, I quietly broached the late part to…silence. No, silence at the cabin was our heaven, but this…I was afraid to say anything else. I couldn't bear it if he was appalled I had messed up.

He shifted me in his arms, as though to get a little more comfortable. One large hand splayed across my belly.

Then, "I've been hoping that owl delivery was for this," he said, rubbing my belly, and the joy in his eyes was all I needed to see.