[Amnesty Day] [The Wild Wild West-related] Scars

[insaneladybug.livejournal.com]

Title: Scars
Day/Theme: June 17th - You'll either leave this war bloodied, or with my blood on your swords
Series: The Wild Wild West (based on The Night of the Poisonous Posey)
Character/Pairing: Snakes Tolliver, Little Pinto, Lucrece Posey
Rating: T/PG-13

COMPLETELY REVISED. Deeply involved in my WWW story verse, and it may seem a bit confusing if one is not familiar with said verse (and the episode).


By Lucky_Ladybug

The wounded boy groaned, turning his head to the side and pressing his right cheek against the softness of the pillow. He was thoroughly miserable, bruised and battered and beaten from an unfair and cruel fight.

The most painful injury was to the left side of his face, still covered in bandages from the inhuman attack. But perhaps the most damaging injury was to his very soul. The more he lay there, the more embittered he felt over the fact that he was in this mess—and the fact that he could have avoided all of it.

He closed his eyes, weary, allowing himself to be caught up once again in the past.

“Help! Help me!”

Samuel Tolliver looked up with a start at the panicked, desperate, whispered voice. He was on guard duty at the camp that night, with the instruction to look out for Union soldiers who might be attempting a surprise attack. It wasn’t something he relished, really; he hated putting himself into active danger.

He didn’t really like being under someone’s command, either. If he had the chance to do it over again, he would most certainly never join the Army. It had been a stupid, split-second decision made when he was seventeen. He had lied about his age to get in, desperate to get away from the orphanage where he had lived most of his short life. He should have tried something else.

But it was too late for such thoughts now. He didn’t want to desert, so he had to keep pressing on. Gripping his rifle in front of him, he moved towards the brush.

“Who’s there?” he demanded. His Southern voice sounded a lot more gravelly in his nervousness and while whispering.

“I know it’s probably hopeless to think I’d get any help from you,” the voice replied. “I’m the enemy. But some of my comrades turned against me and are trying to kill me. If you want to take me prisoner, at least I’d still be alive.”

Samuel raised an eyebrow, pushing aside the bushes with the barrel of his gun. “You’re a Yankee?” He spotted the dark blue cap and frightened blue eyes gleaming in the night. “You have to be off in the head to think I’d fall for something like that.”

The kid really looked scared, he had to admit that. But maybe it was his first mission and he hated the thought of killing the guard.

“Please!” The Union soldier raised his hands in the air. “They’re after me. I know you can’t hide me, so if you just take me prisoner, they won’t try to get to me any more. You can search me and take away any weapons I’ve got.”

Samuel stuck the barrel against the enemy soldier’s heart. “Why do your own comrades want to get you so much?”

Sadness filled the other boy’s voice. “I thought they were my friends, but they’ve always hated me. Tonight they thought they saw a chance to get rid of me and blame it on a Johnny Reb.”

Sounds not far behind made the Union soldier jump and cringe. “Here they come!” he moaned. “There’s no time.”

Samuel clenched his teeth. It could all be a trick. He still thought maybe it was. But he wouldn’t know for sure until what was making the sounds appeared. And that could be any time. He had to make a split-second decision.

“Get down,” he ordered, taking the gun away. His stomach knotted at the thought that he could be putting himself in mortal danger from a Union attack, but he swallowed hard and clutched his rifle all the tighter.

“Thank you,” the Union soldier whispered in grateful and touched amazement. He dived into the bushes once more.

Three men crashed into view, all holding rifles. They looked to Samuel searchingly, their weapons all pointed at him. Despite his knees quaking, he held his ground.

“Did you see a Union soldier come through here?” one of them growled. “Blond hair, blue eyes?”

“I didn’t see anyone,” Samuel answered. “But all three of you are Union soldiers yourselves. And in case you didn’t know it, you’ve walked into a Confederate camp. Now you’re all my prisoners.”

The men exchanged looks and turned back to him, seemingly unconcerned. “We’re Confederates too,” said the leader. “We infiltrated the Union camp nearby. The guy we’re looking for found us out and we chased him here. He’s the only one who knows. If we get rid of him, we can go back to our assignment.”

Samuel frowned. It could be on the level. He honestly didn’t know.

“I didn’t hear about any infiltration mission,” he said at last. “You’ll have to tell it to Lieutenant Jacobson.”

Now the men seemed a bit edgy. “He wouldn’t know,” said one. “We’re under the command of someone else.”

“Who?” Samuel challenged.

“Lieutenant . . .” Suddenly the man attacked, swinging his rifle at Samuel in desperation. Samuel attacked back, forcing the other weapon away from him with the barrel of his own.

“I could fire off a round and wake up the whole camp,” he said, leveling the gun at the would-be assailant’s heart. “If you three want to live and be free, you’ll turn tail and get out of here now. Otherwise, I’m sure we can find room for you in a prisoner of war camp.”

They exchanged looks. “I think he’s serious,” said one.

“Let’s not wait around to find out,” another insisted.

The men fled without protest.

Samuel sighed, watching them go before looking to the bushes. “You still in there?”

The Union soldier peeked up. “Yes,” he said quietly. “Thank you, so much. What are you going to do with me?”

Samuel thought it over, his heart racing. “Run off in another direction,” he said at last. “The prisoner of war camps are awful, on both sides. You don’t want to get caught in one. It’s probably worse than dying.”

Relief and surprise filled the blue eyes. “Thank you!” he said again. “I won’t forget you.” He turned and fled.

Samuel stared after him, his shoulders slumping. Had he made the right decision? He hoped so, but he wasn’t sure. He just hoped he wouldn’t have to make another decision like it any time soon.

A heavy hand came down on his shoulder. “What was that, Tolliver?”

Samuel went stiff. Of all the people to wake up and see what he had done, it had to be Private Dawson. The man was bad-tempered in general and hated him in specific, mainly because Samuel had won money from him in several poker games. And because Dawson insisted Samuel was a coward.

“Just a rabbit,” he said.

Dawson gripped tighter, spinning Samuel around to face him. “Rabbits don’t talk,” he hissed. “You had a Yankee here and you let him go.”

“He wasn’t trying to get in,” Samuel said defensively. “He was trying to get away from some people. They came after me trying to get at him and I shooed them off.”

Dawson struck him across the face. “Idiot! They were all in it together. Don’t you know anything other than poker hands?”

Samuel’s head snapped back at the blow. His left cheek stinging, he turned to face Dawson again. “I wasn’t sure whether to believe him, either,” he said.

“But you believed him enough to let him go.” Dawson grabbed the rifle, wrenching it away from the younger and smaller Samuel. When Samuel lunged, attempting to get it back, Dawson hit him smack in the ribs with the gun, sending him to the ground. “I think this time I’m justified in doing whatever I feel like with you, Yankee lover.”

Again and again the rifle came down, this time on Samuel’s back and shoulders. He clenched his teeth and gripped the grass, struggling to push himself up. Dawson kicked him harshly in the stomach, sending him back down.

Samuel snatched Dawson’s leg and pulled as he fell, tripping the sadist off-balance. Dawson crashed to the ground, his lantern beside him. With fire in his eyes, he drew his knife. “You snake! You rotten, yellow, smooth-talking snake!”

He shoved the knife into the lantern, heating it with the flame. Samuel stared, horrified and transfixed. “Help!” he screamed.

He fought to stand in spite of the pain that shot through his ribs. He gripped at them, stumbling, trying to run towards the sleeping camp.

Dawson tackled him from behind, dragging him back to the ground. Samuel struggled, soon being hit in the side with Dawson’s boot for his efforts.

“You’re going to get court-martialed for this, Dawson!” Samuel cried. “No one’s going to stand for this, no matter what I did!”

Dawson paid him no heed and straddled him from above. He drove the hot blade into Samuel’s left cheek. “You’re a snake, so you should be branded as one for the world to see,” he sneered.

Samuel went absolutely stiff in disbelieving pain and terror. When he recovered milliseconds later, struggling to push his enemy away, he could barely do a thing. Dawson was inhuman in his ferocity, a carnal beast who cared only about the pain he was inflicting. And he continued to bring the knife down, cutting and melting the flesh at the same time.

“There,” he sneered at last, rising up and away from the scene. He stabbed the knife into the grass, red with Samuel’s blood. “Now everyone will know what you are.”

A hand flew to Samuel’s cheek. He trembled in disbelief, his eyes wide as the crimson liquid got all over his fingers. At the moment he could not tell what Dawson had done. He only knew it was horrible.

“Go on and get out of here,” Dawson taunted. “Go back to camp and let them see you. They won’t treat you.”

Samuel’s heart pounded as he fought to get to his feet. He could barely stand after the beating Dawson had given him. And the loss of blood was making him very dizzy. He staggered ahead, his ribs screaming for mercy, and soon fell to the ground again.

“Can’t you walk, snake?” Dawson took up the rifle and brought it down hard on first one leg, then another. “You should crawl anyway. Crawl, like the serpent you are.”

Samuel jerked, gritting his teeth in pain. He did not dare scream. “This . . . this isn’t about the Yankee,” he gasped. “You just hate me. You’ve always hated me.”

“Darn-tootin’. Now get out of here or I’ll start using your rifle for what it’s made to do.”

Samuel stiffened, hearing the click of the weapon behind him. He did not want to crawl, to demean himself in that fashion. But when he tried to push against the ground, to rise up and walk, his legs gave out from under him. They were not broken, as far as he knew, but the attack from the rifle had rendered them useless for the time being. He tried again and a third time, only managing to stumble several inches before collapsing in the grass.

Dawson cackled with sadistic glee from somewhere over him. “Crawl!” he ordered. A bullet fired into the dirt next to him.

Samuel flinched. Dawson would shoot him down if he didn’t move. He was sure of it. And even if it was only a threat, Samuel did not want to wait to find out. He did not want to succumb to Dawson’s cruel whims, but he wanted to live more than anything else.

Again he rose, this time supporting himself with his elbows and forearms. Steeling himself against the shame, he pulled himself forward. Dawson’s raucous laughter echoed in his ears.

He had no idea how long or how far he crawled through the grass and dirt. The pain and the fear of death eclipsed all other feelings after a while. He had to keep going, to keep pulling and dragging his battered body until he found help. There would be help, in spite of what Dawson tried to make him believe. No one else would let him suffer like this.

But at long last Samuel slumped into the grass, too exhausted and too hurt to move or even cry for help. He dared not; he could further damage his face. He could feel the blood dripping now, pooling next to him from the ghastly wound.

Another soldier swore in horror as he knelt down next to him. “What happened?!” he gasped. “Are you okay?”

Samuel had made it back to someone with a heart.

“No,” he moaned. “Help.”

The soldier stared at the wound and the torn, burned flesh. “Medic!” he screamed.

Samuel let his eyes close, not wanting to look at his surroundings any more. But he could still feel. And he knew enough to know that he had been scarred for life.

He opened his eyes, staring blankly across the medical tent. He was physically healing by now; he could get up and limp around, and the bandages were coming off soon. He dreaded it, though. He knew what he would see.

He reached up, gingerly touching the white gauze. The doctor had been alarmed by the wound. It was indeed in the shape of a snake, starting next to his eye and traveling to his jaw. And even though the skin was knitting together, it was twisted and raised up. It was sickening.

Dawson had gone through a court-martial for what he had done, just as Samuel had predicted. Samuel still wasn’t sure what kind of punishment was in line for him for letting the Union soldier go; he had realized that it was his word against Dawson’s, and so he had lied and continued the story of it being a rabbit. He wasn’t sure he had been believed, but the whole camp was aware that Dawson hated him. It was logical to think that Dawson could have simply snapped and brutalized him for no particular reason. In any case, as far as Samuel was concerned, he had already received the worst punishment.

This was what he got for trying to help someone. And really, he didn’t even know but what Dawson might have been right. Maybe the Union soldiers had all been in on it together, trying to distract him and get into the camp. He didn’t really believe that, and yet . . . well, it could be true.

He would be more careful next time.

No, there wouldn’t be a next time. He had been picked on and beaten up enough at the orphanage all his life. He wasn’t going to let this happen again, ever again. He was going to learn to be strong, feared, deadly. He was going to only look out for himself.

“You called me a snake, Dawson,” he muttered under his breath. “Well, that’s what I’ll be. Who I’ll be. Snakes Tolliver. I won’t go by Samuel again. He’s too weak.”

He slowly peeled off the bandaging, fumbling to take hold of a mirror and see the result. The snake-shaped scar looked back at him. It was ugly and twisted.

Like him.
****
“I won this round.”

His opponent leaped to his feet, eyes flashing, outrage written all over his face. “You cleaned me out of everything!” he snarled. “And you cheated to do it! I saw you take a card from your sleeve!”

“Your eyes must be awfully bad, Pal. I beat you fair and square. It was your choice to bet everything. I didn’t tell you to do it. I didn’t even encourage you.” He started to draw the chips and cash and coins to his side of the table.

“You’re a sneaky, smooth-talking weasel!” the other man howled.

He lit a cigar and leaned back, smirking up at the loser of the poker game. “I’m not a weasel,” he replied. “I’m a snake. And we’re clever and crafty. Next time, you’d better think twice before getting into a game with me.”

“I’ll never get into a game with you again,” was the furious reply. “Maybe I can’t prove you cheated, but someday someone will. Then you’ll be the loser, just like you should have been today!” Grabbing up his hat, the now-broke poker player stormed out the door.

Snakes watched him, holding his cigar between his fingers. It was true, really—he had cheated. And it wasn’t the first time. He was good enough to not need such tricks, but he always kept a card up his sleeve during a high-stakes game, just in case.

After all, he did not want to lose.

He could not lose, ever again.

Other people had cheated him all of his life and come out on top for it. Now he had thought and smooth-talked his way to a relatively safe and profitable station, and he was not about to be brought down. It was his turn to be the cheat, to come out on top.

Dawson would probably hate him all the more now. But he didn’t care. Actually, he found it ironically amusing in a way. It was Dawson’s attack that had changed him. If Dawson hated him all the more, he had himself to blame for it.

That thought made Snakes grin.

“Snakes Tolliver?”

He looked up with a start at the smooth, female, British voice. A lovely blonde in Spanish attire was standing over his table. A cowboy stood silently by her side.

“Yeah, I’m Snakes Tolliver,” Snakes said, not even trying to conceal his pleasure at the visit. He got to his feet, removing his hat out of courtesy. “What can I do for you, Ma’am?”

She smiled—a satisfied, dangerous smile. “My name is Lucrece Posey. This is Little Pinto.” The cowboy smirked in greeting but said nothing. “We understand that you’re quite an explosives expert on the side.”

Snakes replaced his hat. “I dabble in it here and there,” he said vaguely. “I perfected a lot of it during the War Between the States.”

Lucrece nodded. “We have a proposal we would like to talk over with you,” she said. “If you accept, you could be making a far greater profit than you are right now.”

Snakes’ eyes glittered. “You’re talking my language, pretty lady,” he said, pulling out a chair for her. “Sit down and we’ll talk about it.”
****
He had long ago decided he hated being subservient to anyone. He had known it during the war.

Why, then, had he allowed himself to get into this situation, of being part of Lucrece Posey’s organization?

He knew the answer to that—greed. And his continuing obsession with coming out on top. The way Posey and Pinto had pitched the idea of consolidated crime to him, it had sounded like an operation that could not miss. And, he supposed, he had liked that they had deliberately sought him out, feeling that he was good enough to be one of the regional leaders.

Over time, however, he had liked the set-up less and less. But he had known there was no way to get out, not unless he either killed Posey . . . or she killed him.

He had decided it was a chance he was willing to take.

She had almost immediately become suspicious of his doctored gavel with the pink ribbon. And when he had shied away from using it himself, she had all but known that something was amiss. Brutus had brought it down instead, revealing its true, explosive nature. And now he was standing, trembling, as Pinto kept him from running and Posey stood in front of him, taunting him, running her hand over his cheek.

He knew what was coming; he just wasn’t sure when. Then her poisoned fingernail raked across his cheek, the same cheek Dawson had disfigured.

He felt the pain instantly, the sting of the open wound as well as the fact-acting poison. He reached up with the back of his right hand, wanting to quell it. With his other, dominant hand he fumbled with his gun, trying to draw it out of its holster.

He knew he was dying. No one survived Posey’s attacks. But he did not want to go down alone. He would take her with him.

The darkness swept over him before he could manage to pull the trigger.
****
“Pinto! Pinto, stop. Please! . . .”

Pinto sneered, the sadistic delight obvious on his ghostly face as he wrenched Snakes’ arm behind his back. “Why should I stop?” he drawled. “I’m only dolin’ out your just punishment for what you tried to do to Lucrece. You tried to kill her twice. Now we’re dead instead and I can never even be with her anymore. And since we’re stuck here in our afterlives, at least I can have a little fun with you.”

Snakes gasped and choked, dizzy as he heard and felt something crack. It was not the first time Pinto had come after him and tortured him now that they were both dead, stranded in Justice, Nevada and unable to move on, but it seemed like every time got worse.

“It wasn’t anything personal,” Snakes protested. “I just wanted out.”

“In something like that, you don’t get out. Not unless you do something stupid and end up goin’ out for good, like you did.” Pinto bent down and smirked at Snakes, upside-down in his blurry line of vision.

Snakes slumped back into the floor. He knew there was no point in resisting. Pinto always caught him and always managed to keep going until he tired of the abominable game. By now, Snakes was too hurt to fight back or even to think of any of the smooth talk that had sometimes saved him in the past. Pinto had never fallen for that, anyway. He had usually been quiet, but he had always been an attentive thinker. He still was.

“I hate being dead,” Snakes whispered helplessly.

At least when he was alive there was always an escape from the torture. Here, the only escape was when Pinto got bored and moved on. And after that, there was always the pain, filling Snakes’ senses until there was nothing else.

He had started lying to himself all the way back when he had decided to become what Dawson already thought of him as being. He had taken up pretending to be rough and harsh when in reality he was still a boy. Of course, he knew that he had forced himself to grow up when he had started to play in the big leagues, but behind the mask of the self-assured gambler and unrepentant explosives expert he had been insecure and weak.

He had realized that when he had stared death in the face. And now after death, he was almost always whimpering, trembling, begging for the pain to stop. Pinto had stripped away all of his facades during the long months and years of their imprisonment here. By now he was ragged and without hope. This was his Hell, for all eternity.

He looked up, hearing the footsteps of the lady whose kitchen was being used for an unseen torture chamber. She walked the floor, going to the kettle on the stove.

“Help me,” Snakes pleaded, even though he knew she could not hear him. “Please help me.”

He was a twisted and garbled soul. He knew that. And he had done things he regretted ever since he had determined to live up to Dawson’s cruel brand on his cheek.

But it had not stopped the torture. He was still the one being tortured.

When Pinto finally left him alone, unspeakably broken in the corner of the kitchen, Snakes could only lie there, swallowed up in his agony and praying for the restoration that had so far been eventually coming to his ghostly form whenever it was damaged.

The woman continued to work at the stove, never knowing that she was not alone.

“I want to live again,” Snakes whispered. “I want to have the chance to be alive and do things over.”

Dr. Faustina was attempting to arrange such a thing, but he had no way of knowing if she would ever succeed. Right now, it sounded like a fantasy too good to be true.

At last Snakes groaned, his eyes sinking closed.

When he came to himself some time later, still on the floor, he had mended again. He sighed, pushing himself up and staring at his hands.

This was only a temporary reprieve. As long as he was trapped here, Pinto could get at him any time he wanted and the whole thing would start all over again. Snakes could not imagine a worse Hell than this.

He snapped awake, his eyes filled with sleep and horror as he gazed upward at the darkened ceiling. With a groan he rolled over, gripping the pillow and staring into the shadows of his apartment.

“It’s just a dream,” he whispered to himself. “I’m not dead; Pinto’s not here.”

He was alive again, thanks to Dr. Faustina, and had been pushed into a new time. He had fought to stay alive and had almost gotten himself killed trying to eliminate Pinto and the others before they could get him.

But he was whole, save for the new burns he had acquired when he had set off that explosion. He had almost caused his own death, he thought in disgust, without any help from any of them.

He dreamed about the explosion most nights. Other times, such as tonight, he dreamed instead about the unreal torture Pinto had forced upon him in Justice. Sometimes he tried to tell himself that it could not have really happened, that he could not have even been dead. Perhaps he had been in a coma for three years and had imagined up all kinds of horrors.

But he knew that none of that was true. He had really been dead. And Pinto had really done everything in his power to bring eternal torment on him because of the reason why he was dead.

He sat up, the quilt falling from his arms as he gripped his shoulders. He was whole now, wasn’t he?

He shuddered. Of course he was.

It was kind of strange. Chronologically, he should be about 31 now, or 32, since he had been killed at age 28. But of course his body had not aged; it was still the body of a 28-year-old. And in his mind and heart, after being dead those three years and tortured for most of them, he didn’t feel 28 or 31 or 32. He wasn’t sure what he felt, but in some ways it was a lot older.

In other ways, he still felt like a young, scared kid.

He sank back into the bed, pulling the quilt up around him again. He had wanted to start his life over if he was given a second chance. Instead, he had been spending it and wasting it trying to keep the Posey gang away from him and getting into more trouble than ever.

He jumped at every little sound. He woke up in a cold sweat from his nightmarish memories.

He hated what he had become—such a pathetic coward. He was so frantic to hold onto life that everything else had become unimportant.

But he couldn’t even properly keep hold of his life. He couldn’t explain how or why he had survived the explosion he had caused on Mt. San Antonio. He should have been killed. He had realized in his panic and horror that he was going to die and would probably wake up with a dead Pinto coming after him again. Instead, to his astonishment, he had revived and limped away, bleeding into the snow. That certainly hadn’t been because of any of his doings.

On the other hand, he couldn’t imagine his survival being deliberate on anyone else’s part, either. It was just coincidence, a bizarre fluke. One that he was grateful for, of course. But still, that was all it was.

“I wish,” he whispered to the night, “I had a chance to prove that I’m not what I am. I wish I had a chance to be something different.”

But would he even have the courage to grasp such a thing if it dropped in his lap?

He sighed in exasperation.

Maybe when he was in Canada. He planned to head out there come morning. He could start a new life there and no one would be the wiser.

That was a nice thought to drift back to sleep with.
****
“Two seconds . . .”

He fired at the doomsday device’s back-up counter with all of his might. It exploded in a burst of color, catching him and sending him flying off the thing with a scream.

He was surrounded by fire again, going down in flames.

His thoughts, his life, spun in front of him.

Both his lives.

He had always made such a mess out of his existence, from his early childhood right on through to his first death and eventual restoration. Maybe he had never been meant to have a normal life. Maybe he wasn’t capable of knowing how to have one.

Well, he wouldn’t have the chance to find out whether he could. Now, for some strange reason, he had climbed to the top of that machine and stopped it from destroying the majority of the world. It was the only decent thing he had done in years.

This had not been the chance to prove himself that he had envisioned.

He would have died if it had gone off.

But he had known he was likely to die if he stopped it. And he had stopped it anyway.

Now he was indeed dying again. The flames were lapping at him, burning into him. His body would be a twisted, ghastly mess. There would be no rescue for him this time, coincidence or otherwise.

Pinto was still alive, though. He would not be able to torture Snakes any longer.

He would rest in peace this time.

Snakes sat up in bed with a start, his bangs flying into his eyes, his heart pounding in his chest. He reached out, shakily, placing a hand over it.

“I’m still alive,” he whispered. “I’m really alive.”

He was burned, alright, but not as badly as he could have been. His clothes had taken most of the damage. His right hand, however, was likely going to be scarred.

At least it wasn’t his left hand, he thought to himself.

And at least he was going to live.

This time he knew it was at least in part due to the efforts of James West and Artemus Gordon—and absolutely unheard-of, but Little Pinto as well. They had decided to unite under a flag of truce to stop the destruction of the world.

But he had come through so many strange experiences, surviving even if marred, that by now he was no longer sure it was all a coincidence. It was an odd thought; why would any sort of higher power care what happened to him?

“I’ll never forget you.”

His eyes widened. That was what the Union soldier had told him long ago. It was a wild thought, but what if the kid had meant it? And what if he had continued to mean it long after he had died? Perhaps, if he had somehow decided that Snakes was not completely a lost cause, it could have been at least partially his influence that had saved Snakes’ life on Mt. San Antonio as well as on the ship. Perhaps he had wanted to give Snakes every possible chance to salvage his existence.

It was a nice idea, anyway.

He slumped back against the pillows, staring at the modern hospital room. It was so much different from the medical tent he had stayed in following the brutal attack during the Civil War.

And his attitude was different, as well.

He had spent far too much of his life just trying to stay alive by any means necessary, and he had gotten himself killed for it. When he had finally received a second chance, it had almost happened again. And whenever he tried to do something to help someone else, he ended up hurt, usually badly. It just seemed he couldn’t win.

What was left? What could he do that wouldn’t end up involving him being beaten, battered, or blown up?

He wasn’t sure. He had tried just about everything he could think of. But he had made up his mind to leave the Posey gang alone, if they would leave him alone. Maybe he could find salvation and peace by just trying to live his life as best as he could, as safely as he could, and even as honestly as he could.

Snakes Tolliver, going straight?

He had lived most of his life crooked. Even as a kid, he had picked up on petty illegal activities. Despite that, he hadn’t really been devoid of kindness or decency. But by the time he had been attacked by Dawson, he had decided to wipe all kindness and decency out of his life.

Still . . . had it ever completely left him? If it had, would he have done what he did on that machine?

Questions he couldn’t answer.

He reached down, unwinding the bandage from around his right hand. Yes, the skin on the back of it was growing back in a twisted, mangled fashion. He would have some more hypertrophic scars to add to his collection.

He rewrapped his hand and gingerly touched the scar on his face. He was stuck with that. He might even continue to call himself by his nickname, since that had been his real name for so much longer than even his christened name. But that didn’t mean he had to be a snake. His soul didn’t have to be twisted and ugly, as the damaged skin was.

“Samuel,” he said under his breath, remembering when Artemus Gordon had asked him for his originally given name. “My name is Samuel.”