Windchaser was aware that he didn’t respond to her touch, but it didn’t bother her. She knew that he was recounting a very deep trauma , and was probably barely aware that she was even there. For now she had to try and behave like he was any other victim of trauma and not someone she cared about so much.
“And that was another reason I didn’t stay. I didn’t want to add to that.” Windchaser murmured, barely raising her voice above a whisper. She remembered some of the tings she’d had to do in order to eat, to survive, before she found her feet, they were things she was ashamed of. She had even attempted eating horse, but had been physically sick at the thought she could well have been eating the stolen Noodle. Now she didn’t eat meat unless she knew where it had come from, leaving her practically vegetarian.
At his words about what had happened to Maria, who Windchaser had loved too, her free hand rose to her lips, pressed there so tightly that the skin of the knuckles went pale. She didn’t cry, far too angry and outraged. She rarely did now anyway. She had been taught from a child that it achieved nothing, bought nothing back.
“Three…Fucking cowards!” She couldn’t stop the words as they emerged , holding all the rage she could possibly inject into them. As she joined the dots and realised Alle had been forced to watch that, she felt the tears begin to form behind her own eyes, which were almost black with anger.
Maria speaking aloud should have been a joyous day, but instead it had been made disgusting and bleak. Windchaser also felt a deep shame. Why had she left them? People she had loved, for a family that, while still blood, had made choices that effectively cut her off from them. “I should have stayed and helped you to protect her. I’m so sorry; I should have been with you.”
As he began to cry Windchaser moved to hold him. He wasn’t a normal trauma victim. And she had held people that she had only known for the length of a conversation, so why not now? She knew the answer, not her unaffectionate upbringing that he had helped to wean her out of, but because she didn’t want to be misconstrued. As for why he had been let alive? She couldn’t answer that, her experience of the new world as a Drifter told her he should have been killed. In spite of herself, she couldn’t help but quirk a tight smile as he mentioned that field, the one with the oak tree at the back.
“I know what you found. I did too.” She wanted to be angry with him, wanted to tell him that she hadn’t just found a burnt corpse. That it had been attacked by insects and torn up by animals. That she had moved the body by hand and had to both dig and fill the grave with whatever she could find, mostly bits of burnt wood and her bare hands, because the tools had been looted. That after three days and some burbled Spanish religious words that she remembered from Rosa, she had stumbled away.
She had stayed in the shell of the ranch for ten days, driven into deep shock and had simply sat dazed and calling Alle’s name. From what he had told her he had already been long gone, she wouldn’t tell him, he obviously felt bad enough as it was.
“D-did you ever find out what happened to Sparrow?” Windchaser asked softly, remembering how nuts she had driven and their bond had been nothing like that between Alle and Sparrow. The loss of the horse, even against the joining of a tribe, must have destroyed him. She couldn’t bear the thought of losing Cabello.
His next words hit her like a blow. That Alle was gone and this shadow sitting in front of her dared to apologise to her for it. “If he’s gone who are you? His Clark Kent?” She rocked back on her heels. “If…Who am I? Who am I to Ryder?” Windchaser asked softly. “Why did you, whoever you are now, respond to that letter, when I’d said you could ignore it if you wanted to?”