A/N: My first Yuma-fic. This one has not been Beta-read. I didn't have anyone to o it at the time of its first publication. Still, I hope you guys like it. Constructive criticism please if any.

Prologue: Prodigal

The feel of cold metal against his temple has become expected. This was a sort of nightly ritual for them. Charlie doesn't care. He's still trying to wrap his head around the fact that he should be dead. He would be dead, but Wade…Wade, it seems, had other plans.

Charlie sees this as a punishment. He had been a bad boy, heard the Boss scream no and kept on shootin' anyway. But he saw the look Ben gave the damn rancher and he couldn't handle it.

Ben's first shot shocked the hell out of him; he'll always the look in them beautiful eyes full of rage and hate. The look of the dark angel as he yanked him close and pressed the muzzle into Charlie's chest. He knew that Ben was going to deliver the last bullet straight into his heart he just knew it. Leave it to the great Ben Wade to prove him wrong.

The first bullet hit Charlie in the chest just below his heart and lungs. The second shot, the one aimed for his heart ends up breaking his damn clavicle. So the vain and restless Charlie Prince is bed ridden for two months.

'Lesson learned,' he thinks.'

But more on that later, because the gun is doing something its never done before; it's nudging his head. This is a first, so, without meaning to, Charlie reacts raising a confused brow at the ceiling and blinking. He tries to ignore it again, but now that it just keeps poking his temple it making his head ache more then it already does.

"The hell do you want? If ya ain't gonna shoot me then you best be leaving me alone," he tells the boy as sharply as he can.

"I should kill you. After what you done to my Pa."

Charlie almost says 'He started it' but catches himself.

"He's alive ain't he?"

The boy gives him a grudging look because they both know the answer to that. Charlie didn't need to be told, he saw the look in the Boss' eyes. He was coming back for the rancher, and maybe for Charlie too. Charlie sure hoped so.

"What's your name?" He asks the rancher's son.

"William Evans."

In the future Charlie will come to think of Will as a sort of little brother, a partner in crime. He'll look back on this night and he'll laugh and curse the day the boy ever came into his life. But that is for the future. Something beyond him now.

Right now all Charlie can think about is the two more months before he's done healing and the day that Ben Wade will return for them.