Author's Notes: Evenin' folks! Well, it being the Fourth of July and my favoritest holiday EVER, it occurred to me this morning that it might be appropriate to start posting a story I've been chewing on for nigh four months now, since before I even finished When It Rains, It Pours. Now, this one's a little heavier reading than usual, and a little less action, but I'm working hard to make it good. So, enjoy!

Soldier

Chapter One: Doubts

Howdy there, friends and neighbors! Now, folks, I know most of the stories you know about the Duke family generally involve a bright orange race car kickin' up dust in the face of the Hazzard law, while the Dukes themselves straighten out the side-winding curves of the system and keep themselves out of trouble. But this isn't one of those stories. This story starts months before Fate brought the Duke boys to that scrap-yard outside of Capitol City, months before Bo finished out his last year of high school, but just three days since a trans-Pacific airliner finally brought one Duke back stateside for good…

The young man sitting across seats A and B12 in Car Four of the Friday morning train from Richmond, Virginia to Atlanta, Georgia - was quiet. He'd spoken to no one since boarding the train, given no indication that he was anything but an ordinary traveler making his way home, and in fact, just now, he was sound asleep. Yet he drew an unusual number and assortment of reactions from his fellow passengers, ranging from grateful, sympathetic smiles to thoughtful curiosity to self-conscious avoidance to black hatred to suspicious squint-eyed scrutiny, as though he might suddenly jump up and maul the nearest small child. Maybe it was his clothes that gave him away - the tan t-shirt and green camo fatigues - or the battered dog tags hanging on a chain around his neck, or the equally battered boots on his feet. Or maybe, if they bothered to look long enough, the wary passengers noticed the utter exhaustion in his features, the worn, haggard frame, twenty pounds too light, or the occasional dry cough that came from a not-quite-fully-healed bullet wound to the chest. But whatever the extent of their powers of observation, there wasn't a passenger in the small, half-empty train car who didn't know that Luke Duke was a Marine on his way home from war - and right now, there wasn't a more hated man in the country than a United States soldier returning from overseas.

Luke cautiously stepped down from the passenger car of the train to the bustling platform, already being pushed forward by the other passengers behind him. He adjusted the half-filled military duffel bag slung over his shoulder and took a couple limping steps forward, trying to search the crowd as he walked without tripping on some child or crashing into someone. It didn't take long for his keen eyes to spot the bright red cap standing out at the far end of the platform. Luke headed in that direction with eager strides, despite the ache in his feet.

It was obvious that Luke had spotted them before they spotted him. Bo, his once-little cousin Bo, had shot up like a weed and filled out his lanky frame with lean muscle in Luke's years away. Now he stood awkwardly with his hands shoved in his pockets, clearly agitated as he looked around the crowd. Uncle Jesse said something stern to him, and he stopped rocking on his heels impatiently, scowling a little. Daisy sat at the end of the bench next to her uncle, staring down at her feet and not looking around at the crowd at all. Her long chestnut-brown hair partly covered her face, but Luke could see she'd done some growing of her own, more a young woman now than the girl he'd left. Uncle Jesse's face was impassive and patient as ever, systematically scanning the faces of dozens and dozens of strangers before his eyes finally met Luke's.

Luke's eager smile faded some as he saw those eyes remain impassive, betraying neither joy nor hate at the return of his war-ravaged nephew. Luke continued forward still, the crowd thinning out around him. Eventually Bo noticed him, and Luke's heart stopped for a full beat as Bo's annoyed expression shifted, his gentle blue eyes now full of cold malice.

Fearful now, his smile gone, and hoping the trembling didn't show, Luke forced himself forward, feeling for all the world like he was walking into enemy fire. Finally Daisy looked up, hearing his limp-shuffling approach, and she stood, but looked away again, refusing to meet Luke's gaze. Luke felt a knot of anguish forming in the pit of his stomach even before Jesse spoke, and he swallowed hard.

"Well, boy…you made it back," Jesse said simply, stating it as a fact, his expression still emotionless.

Luke nodded once, unable to speak.

"Well…" Jesse pursed his lips. "I figured I owed it to you to tell you in person. You were like a son to me, after all. But I won't have no killer in my house, nor anywheres near my family. Yer an adult now, and you've got yer blood money, so you find somewheres else to go. Yer no kin of ours anymore."

Wide-eyed, fighting to remain calm, Luke stared at his uncle, who had just so matter-of-factly torn his nephew's very life apart. Then he looked at Bo, who continued to glare at him with pure hatred in his eyes - a dagger straight to his heart might have been less painful. With a pleading expression, Luke turned to Daisy, but she turned away without a word just as he saw the slightest glimmer of tears on her cheeks.

"I…I…" Luke choked on the words and took a step backwards in shocked disbelief. "Bo…cousin…" He held out one beseeching hand.

Bo's upper lip twitched in a hint of a snarl. "No cousin of mine, killer," he spat, both figuratively and literally, a glob of saliva landing at Luke's aching feet. Jesse put a supportive arm around Bo's shoulders, lifting his chin as he leveled a cold look at the Marine.

Horrified, Luke took another step back. No, no, no… One booted heel caught on a broken tile on the floor, and he tripped backwards, and fell, and fell, and fell…

Luke jerked awake, his skin alive with cold shivers. The other train passengers were looking at him strangely as they gathered their belongings, but he was still too much in the nightmare to really register their reactions. No kin of ours…killer…

Wide-eyed, he swallowed hard, heart pounding. The movement in the passenger car finally brought Luke back to reality, and he realized he was sprawled on the floor in front of the two empty seats he'd been sitting across. Grasping the seats, he pulled himself to his feet with a grunt, and bent down to retrieve his belongings from underneath.

Three days. Three days he'd been back on American soil, and all he'd seen so far was Camp Pendleton, three airports, three train stations, and the same old nondescript countryside rolling by, neither caring that he'd left nor that he'd returned. The half-empty duffel bag in his hands held the sum total of his belongings after three years of service overseas. Three years of war.

It wasn't over, either. Back in 'Nam, yes, there were men still fighting, suffering, dying, but now the war was here, here in the U.S., here at home. He passed by men and women in the streets who held the same malice and hatred in their eyes as the rice-paddy villages of women and children he'd passed through. He looked down to avoid those hateful eyes, the eyes that made him feel ashamed, even though every fiber of his being was screaming that this is what he fought for, what he suffered for, to uphold the right of these American citizens to spit on him.

No, that wasn't what he fought for. Luke had stopped asking himself that question a long time ago. At some point, it had been about ideals, about what was right, but even the innocence of fighting the good fight had been taken from him - there are no ideals involved when a few scraps of cloth and a battered helmet are the only things between you and a bullet. In the end, he fought to keep himself and his men alive for another day, against an enemy who wanted him dead, and that was that.

Some of the other passengers were still giving him odd looks, but now he purposely ignored them, just as he'd stoically ignored the hateful glares and angry insults of perfect strangers throughout his trip. Pokerfaced, Luke shouldered his duffel bag and joined the line of passengers crowding their way forward to exit onto the platform of the Atlanta Amtrak station, still shivering a little. The cold knot of fear hadn't changed, and was still firmly fixed in the pit of his gut, growing more painful by the moment. There was nothing he wanted more than to be back home with his family on that quiet Hazzard farm, helping his uncle and watching over his cousins, picking up where his life had left off, but he didn't dare let himself hope and believe that would actually happen. They won't want me back…they'll hate me when they realize what I've done…

Nevermind how happy Uncle Jesse sounded when Luke called Tuesday from California and said he was on his way home. Nevermind the dozens of letters he'd received every month of his thirty-eight month sojourn abroad, every one of them saying they loved him and hoped he was well. Nevermind the faded scar on his palm, the mark of his pact with his cousin and blood brother.

No, since the moment he was handed his papers a little over six days ago, Luke couldn't close his eyes without imagining the same hate, anger, and rejection in his family's eyes as he saw in the eyes of those villagers and strangers, and he wondered if they would be strangers to him now - or he to them. Fear gnawed at him in a way it never had in 'Nam, and after every stolen snatch of plagued sleep, he had to re-steel himself to keep going, continue home, face his family, no matter what they had to say. Luke, who had never doubted in all this time, who had so looked forward to going home, couldn't help but be afraid that things had changed too much, that he had changed too much, and that they couldn't love him anymore.

He stepped down to the train platform, jostled along by the impatient passengers behind him who were far more eager to be on their way. With aching footsteps, Luke carefully made his way through the crowd, searching hopefully and fearfully along the edges of the station lobby. The scene seemed foggy and numbed, a ghost of the vivid nightmare fresh in his mind. He wasn't ready when he saw that red cap standing out against the bland colors of the bustling crowd, and he drew a hitched breath when he saw, exactly like the last picture they'd sent, first Jesse, then Daisy - and no Bo. No cousin of mine…

Oh Lord, they don't want me back, Luke thought, seeing his uncle and cousin stare back at him. I was right, they don't want me back, it's been too long, I've done too much, they don't want me back. His heart sank in his chest and he swallowed hard, but he couldn't move, rooted to the spot. All his fears were coming true, and he wanted for all the world to turn and run. Then Jesse smiled broadly through his thick white beard, eyes twinkling, and Daisy grinned with delight, shocking Luke into immobility all over again.

Before he could blink, Daisy turned away to one side, making a motion with one hand that Luke couldn't see, and a third figure in a blue t-shirt waded through the crowd from the direction of the men's room. Bo's attention was focused on his female cousin, trying to puzzle out what she was trying to tell him across the flow of twenty other people. Exasperated, she finally just pointed, and Bo followed her gesture in Luke's direction.

For a brief moment, his joyful grin rivaled the afternoon Georgia sun, and, like the fallen rain from a midnight storm, Luke's fears and worries instantly evaporated into nothing under the brilliant warmth of that bright smile.

Three seconds later, his duffel-bag dropped and forgotten on the train station floor, Luke braced himself as one-hundred and seventy pounds of high school linebacker assaulted him with an enthusiastic hug. The words choked in Luke's throat as he returned the hug, but the fierceness of his tight hold on his little cousin spoke volumes of his joy and relief. Daisy and Jesse weren't far behind, smothering Bo and Luke both with kisses and hugs - since Bo didn't see fit to let go of his long-lost cousin just yet. None of his family saw Luke's overjoyed tears through the watery blur of their own.

When Bo finally pulled back, laughing and coughing as he tried to draw air back into his lungs, Daisy took his place, tears openly streaming down her face as she threw her arms around her warrior cousin. Luke found enough of his voice to whisper her name, almost in disbelief, and she leaned back to kiss his rough-shaven cheek before hugging him tightly again.

Then it was Uncle Jesse's turn. Daisy reluctantly pulled away from Luke, and Jesse stood back for a moment, looking him up and down while Luke looked back at him, that twinge of fear returning. But there were tears in Jesse's eyes too, and he stepped forward to grab his nephew in a tight hold.

"My boy, my boy…" he whispered as Luke returned the hug, closing his eyes and pressing his cheek to his uncle's shoulder. "Welcome home, son."

Tears flowing anew, Luke leaned heavily into his uncle's warm embrace, wondering how he had ever doubted this one constant in his life - the love of his family.

I tell ya, that's one thing about these Dukes: they sure stick together, through thick and thin - and we ain't seen nothin' yet.

"What goes around comes around... Feel it breathing down heavy on you...
Be sure your sins will find you out... Your past will hunt you down and return to tell on you..."
- "Bones" by Little Big Town