A/N: A re-worked tag for the The Lawman. It would be better if you've seen the episode to understand what's going on here. Thanks!

Next of Kin

It was obvious he wasn't going to ride alone five feet, let alone five miles. Obvious to him anyway. The thought of Murdoch actually carrying him sent a cackle through his brain which in turn sent shards of pain behind each eye and to the rather large knot behind his right ear. So he needed to get beyond his present situation and get the job done, because Barker had just become a liability. Or maybe he had been all along.

At least he and Johnny had seen him that way. Murdoch, not so much. Perhaps. Hard to say. Scott couldn't read minds, after all.

Don't think about it, he told himself. Don't think about any of it. They would just get back to the ranch, and put it all behind them.

Scott felt his father's eyes on him, and so he tried to straighten, tried to be all right, just tried to will himself. Damnit, he could hardly keep to his feet. Five miles through rocks and pasture to the ranch. Five miles wasn't that far, was it?

"You stay here, Scott," Murdoch said, everything an order now, "I'll take Barker and get a wagon and come back. We'll get to the hacienda. I can patch you up then."

"Sir, I can ride," Scott found himself saying, wondering where the hell those words had come from because no way in God's earth was he going to make it five miles. He'd fallen when he'd gotten up to stand, was even now leaning against Frank, trying to look like his blood hadn't run a river down the front of his shirt.

"You stay here," his father repeated. "You look like you've been bear-wrestling."

For what he knew of him, Murdoch wasn't one to make jokes, so Scott assumed he must look fairly awful, would be a burden. He had blood all over him. And he really didn't want to think about why.

"Stay here," Murdoch said for a third time and Scott wasn't too sure what he meant by it, he had ears, didn't he? But Murdoch steered him by his good arm to an abandoned rock. Scott was in shadows again and he hoped Murdoch wouldn't feel how hard Scott gripped his arm as he was slowly lowered down.

"I'll be a few minutes." His voice changed, and Scott knew Murdoch was smiling. The grim smile, the one that he put on when he was trying to talk Johnny into something his brother didn't want to do. "You're safe here."

As if he was going anywhere. And Barker had been found out, so there was that.

But Murdoch was gone by then, and Scott leaned his head back, trying not to think. It was relatively easy: not only did he have lots of practice thinking about nothing, but his body was in rebellion and doing its own thing quite separate from any rational thought. He didn't know what was wrong—well, apart from the bullet hole in his shoulder, hard to miss that—but he'd lost time after being shot.

The shoulder was distraction enough, was red-hot agony. Awful, just having his arm hanging there so he reached round with his right hand, laid his left forearm across his chest, and held it tight to his body by the cuff of his ruined shirt, breath hissing between clenched teeth. He slid down to his side, trying to take some of the weight off the injured shoulder. Frank was talking but the words just buzzed in his ears.

Murdoch took longer than a few minutes. Maybe he'd been wrong about the distance, maybe it was more than five miles. He didn't think so. Perhaps he had misjudged the time.

Or maybe Barker had another man waiting for Murdoch.

Scott tried to sit up when he thought that, but nothing cooperated. He felt the creeping twilight getting into his bones now that the adrenaline was gone. He wiped the back of his hand across his face. Sweating, despite the chilliness of the air.

He amused himself by trying to remember the name of the trail he'd followed. Just an old game trail but there'd been a name. Ciervo—something? He tugged on his cuff again when his arm threatened to slip down, feeling sicker than anything else.

At Lancer for less than a year and he'd already gotten shot twice. Grandfather would be horrified. He felt it then, a desperate clawing fear that had nothing—and everything—to do with Barker and the presumed partnership. He wanted to run, go fast enough to leave the thought behind. All these years, Murdoch had never asked. Never sent word to Boston. It felt like a slap, a betrayal.

Scott held very, very still then, trying to contain thought and body and injury all together in a way that actually meant coming apart.

The familiar rumble of wheels and hooves, encompassing as a warm blanket, and his father barely braked before he got out and came at a slow trot. The unhurried forward movement of the great Murdoch Lancer. He almost laughed.

Scott's vision hopscotched, kept jumping ahead, because one minute his father was beside the wagon, and then Murdoch was crouched in front of him, one hand touching Scott's face before falling on his right shoulder. Even that made Scott wince.

Murdoch helped him to sit, took his left sleeve and slid it across Scott's chest pinning it with one of his shirt buttons, taking off some of the weight. What was he? Some sort of frontier doctor?

"Here," Murdoch said, opening Scott's clenched right hand, pushing something round into it. "Take a drink. It'll be a few miles before we reach the ranch. You'll lay down in the back." The smile again and Scott lifted the canteen unquestioningly to his lips, but his mouth was dry. He moved his tongue around, trying to work up spit enough to swallow.

And drifting, because the next thing he knew, his father—and the canteen—were both gone.

Murdoch was clearing out the wagon bed, shoving a used saddle and hay rakes to the side, grousing mildly about the mess the hands had left the wagon. Finally, he was back and Scott knew from the look on his face that his father wasn't looking forward to the next bit.

"Can you stand?" Murdoch asked, but it was no question, because he was already gripping Scott under the armpit, hauling him up and for the life of him, he couldn't stop the shout of pain that caused. Half-dragged to the wagon, and now he was laying in the back, bad shoulder braced against a rolled-up saddle blanket.

The next thing he saw were early twilight stars sweeping rhythmically across the sky. Murdoch was humming something under his breath, and Scott felt like he could melt into the wooden boards. He idly wondered if he was getting blood everywhere, but couldn't actually move to check.

Then Murdoch was silent and the trail was smooth. He didn't think about much of anything for a while.

~o~o~o~

"Scott."

Murdoch let down the back of the wagon and his son looked blearily around in the wan light from the house. Two or three hours maybe, since the injury. Long enough for the blood loss to set in, or any number of secondary problems, given the huge knot behind Scott's ear. "You need to get up."

"All right," Scott agreed, but didn't move. Didn't ask for help, either.

"How is he?"

Murdoch whipped around at the disembodied voice, soft but urgent in the asking. Johnny. Only then did he realize the utter chaos going on around him. Voices shouting from the guardhouse.

"He'll be better in the house. Where's Barker?"

"Right where you put him. There was a scuffle after you left." John's bruised hand was across his mouth, and he rubbed his stubble once, dropped it back to his side.

Murdoch continued to look at Johnny, feeling an ache that had everything to do with shootings and posses. Johnny took it in, then asked, all quiet and respectful, "Barker do this to Scott?"

"Evans, not Barker."

"But Barker played a hand, didn't he?"

The tone was accusatory. "Do you have something to say?" Murdoch asked, back up. The deal that was offered, that was hammered out just a year ago, pounded at the door. Goddammit anyway.

Johnny sighed, turned half away, breath pluming out in the night air. Murdoch was forced to think about the future with his two sons. Johnny took two steps away, wanting nothing more than to get away from his father.

Murdoch was sure of it.

He turned and buried his fists into the fabric of Scott's shirt. Grudgingly moved aside when Johnny joined him. They pulled Scott half out of the wagon and Murdoch got his shoulder under his and together they made it into the house without sounding like a fox was in the henhouse making a mess of things. But then he wouldn't have expected anything else. Scott was a quiet man—for however short a time he'd known his son.

He stripped the bed down to the basics, and while Scott was still nominally upright, Murdoch took off his son's shirt, threw it to the chair and in some sort of macabre dance dumped him on the bed. It made him kind of queasy, looking at that shoulder. He was about to call out when Johnny arrived with towels and whiskey.

"Teresa's bringing up a pitcher of water and some bindings. I sent Cipriano for Sam."

The first-name basis was telling. It hadn't been too long since Johnny was abed. Murdoch nodded and turned up the lamp by the bedside. "Light the one by his chair and bring it over."

There was no point in putting it off.

"Hey," he tried, but it came out scratchy. Now that the shirt was off, Murdoch noticed a big wet-looking bruise on top of the shoulder, a vivid purple and black. Damn. He must have hit it falling off his horse. Maybe it saved him from crushing his skull on a rock, yes, but at a price. It looked out of joint. Scott was lying very still, looking at him from beneath heavy lids, gaze swimming.

"Mur—." Slurred, almost sleepy. "Bad?"

Murdoch scratched his unshaven face and mustered up a smile that usually fooled no one. "I think you'll be just fine. But I'm going to need to put that shoulder right. And dig out the bullet."

"Uh-huh. Thought so." A little smile, but too forced. Not scared, but not looking forward to it, either. He glanced over his shoulder. "Johnny, see what's holding Teresa up with that water."

Murdoch was alone with Scott for the first time since the shooting, and he'd done it more to get Johnny away than to make conversation with Scott, because what the hell was he going to say?

So he looked at his hands, mentally turned the wedding band round and round his finger that hadn't been worn for twenty-four years.

Scott cleared his throat a little, seemingly unable to bear the silence. "It was no accident."

"Joe Barker…well, I'm not sure he had it all planned out as to what happened, but he was the instigator."

"Johnny was right after all."

He didn't know what Scott meant by that, only knew his son's eyes were closed.

"I got him out of the guardhouse as soon as I could," Murdoch continued quietly, because he wanted Scott to know.

"Should've never been in there." The words were garbled; his son was in pain and this wasn't the time to have this conversation because Scott wasn't going to remember any of it.

Scott looked at Murdoch through half-closed eyes and he had a bullet still in his mangled shoulder and was trying to have it make sense and damn it if that wasn't on Murdoch. All of it.

He looked away. Better that Scott stay angry for a while; it would help. Anger was better than despair. He had cause to know about that.

Scott wasn't finished. "Didn't trust Barker…you should have…" Trying to find the right words; trying to find the truth.

Murdoch waited for him to ask, because Scott was a smart boy, he knew what it meant when the deal with Barker had been made for part of Lancer.

When he didn't continue, Murdoch dragged his eyes up, imagined the judgment he'd see on his son's face.

Scott's eyes were closed again.

That was one way of avoiding the conversation. Of avoiding him.

Murdoch rolled up a towel, placing it as gently as he could under Scott's left armpit. "Here," he said, retrieving the whiskey Johnny had poured into a chipped cornflower blue cup. It had come from a set Catherine brought into the marriage. "You'll need this." A cup that lived in a box with bandages, scissors, an empty laudanum bottle, and splints. Such were their lives, but it didn't really bear thinking about too much.

Scott swallowed without complaint—when did he ever complain about anything?—and Murdoch kicked off his boot, bringing one socked foot up and got a grip on Scott's left wrist. Shoulder first then bullet wound. And if there was a God, Sam would be here in time for that job. Scott's back muscles would probably be locked tight from trying to support that arm, and from being moved around.

One moment, like a break in a relentless rainstorm, came clarity, when it wasn't just a set of injuries on an anonymous cowboy. This was his son.

He was tempted to take the blue cornflower cup and drink what was left. Thought that, then braced his foot against the towel balled up under Scott's armpit and pulled his son's arm slowly, surely, waiting for things to fall back into place.

tbc