Chapter Text
Surprise was the first feeling that seeped through Charlie’s dulled perceptions. Next came the feeling of cold, hard earth underneath his back. In the grand scheme of things, Charlie Prince was not supposed to feel anything at all because dead people do not feel. Yet something was apparently very wrong with that equation.
Then came emptiness. Even before Charlie’s brain registered the gunshot wound in his chest, there was emptiness, the endless dark void where “Charlie Prince” used to be. Was “Charlie Prince” even real? Without Ben Wade to orbit and a gang to manage in the enigmatic outlaw’s name? What was he now? Not even a corpse. Just a body with a gunshot wound that, through some miracle, had not ended his life, lying on the now likely dark station of Contention. No name, no nothing.
Then came the pain. First dull, then increasingly acute. It was hard to breathe, and almost impossible to move.
And then came the first choice Charlie faced on his very own, with no gang and no Ben Wade to guide his decisions – he stays and dies, or he makes himself move and gets a slightly better chance of living another day.
Staying there and letting himself finally leave this world was easier and almost alluring. But deep down, from the parts of Charlie’s being that Charlie himself rarely visited, there came a quiet but insistent “You are not done yet, Charles Prince.”
The pain was getting stronger, and the earth was getting colder.
He had to move. A brush of a finger against the sand, a turn of the head, an attempt to straighten his leg…
Against his better judgment, Charlie kept his eyes closed. Opening them meant facing the world, and he would rather postpone that part, thank you very much. So, Charlie had to rely on his hearing and touch to move himself around, preferably without alerting the whole town that Ben Wade’s second-in-command was still among the living.
By the time Charlie managed to turn on his stomach, the pain in his chest had reached an excruciating level; every breath was torture. Cracking an eye open was another action that was not supposed to take as much effort as it did.
It was dark, indeed. Charlie could distinguish the shapes of corpses lying around – probably his gang. Ben Wade got rid of them, too, and no one bothered to collect the corpses of the animals they were. Was it an execution, or did Ben Wade get rid of the things he no longer needed?
“No time for this, you idiot. Keep on moving,” came from the emptiness inside. Since when was Charlie Prince so introspective?
“No time for this either. Keep. On. Moving,” Charlie’s insistent inner voice continued.
With the next movement, Charlie’s right hand encountered something that felt like one of his Schofield guns. “The one Wade shot you from,” the spatial part of Charlie’s brain helpfully provided.
It took enormous effort and at least ten minutes for Charlie to get himself into something resembling a sitting position and locate his second Schofield. The guns were heavy in his hands. Not the “comfort of a loaded weapon” heavy, but a “I struggle to lift it” kind of heavy. Charlie did not like the feeling, not at all. He would have gotten very frustrated if he could. But his mind was too preoccupied with pain and organizing himself in space to spare any brain power for frustration.
It took Charlie another five minutes of struggle to lift his guns and place them into holsters. It used to be an easy and elegant affair; now it was a nearly impossible undertaking accomplished with weak, trembling hands and a body resisting any movement, breathing included.
Guns in the holsters, mission accomplished. Lifting all that – holsters, guns, and the rest of Charlie – seemed inconceivable, considering how hard all the previous efforts had been.
Stabilizing himself with his hands on the ground, Charlie Prince shifted onto his knees, then carefully and wobbly raised himself on his feet. His vision got all hazy, the pain in the chest got even more unbearable, and there seemed to be not enough air in his lungs. It was through the sheer power of will, with some added grain of miracle and heavy infusion of adrenaline, that Charlie managed to stay vertical. Wobbly, but vertical. He would clap himself on the back if he knew the action would not send him facedown into Arizona sand.
He had to find a doctor now. With the wound bleeding and body weak, every step was an effort, but one step after another, Charlie moved.
One step after another, one after another…