Emile
And I ain't one either.
Thomas
To Algernon Granville, it seemed that there was always work to be done in Briar Ridge. And after the full moon of January 1929, more work presented itself than ever. 
He did all he could to ensure he was makin' himself useful to anyone that needed it. Hunts could be forgotten in the aftermath of such bloodshed - it wasn't as though the deer were the worst of anyone's worries for the time bein'. His strength could be used for other endeavours, when so many of the townsfolk had had theirs stolen from them by teeth and claws. Algernon could haul wood and coal with the best of men, and his traps in the woods had proven fruitful, rabbits and squirrels alike no doubt frightened into 'em by all the howlin' and barkin' that had gone on through the night of the twenty-fifth. He left the meat with Em Aiken, and the pelts wrapped all neat and clean on the doorstep of the tailor. Mayhaps Miss Calhoun could find some time to stitch 'em into blankets for the wounded. Algernon thought he remembered that losin' blood like that could make a body cold. Briar Ridge needn't go cold nor hungry in the wake of what could only be described as battle.

Since returnin' from the sanctity of Florian Barca's place after the blizzard to find his tent in tatters, Algernon's been somethin' of a vagabond. He's still lackin' in those he'd call friends in this town, and of those, most don't have the time nor space to put up an extra person in the house. Fine by him. He don't mind sleepin' under the stars now and then. The shack at the back of Noah Owens' place does him well on dry nights, and when the snow falls or the moon glows brighter than he'd like it to, Rafael doesn't lock the jailhouse door - knows he comes, lets him bathe and sleep the night on a cot. Sometimes even brings down a dinner they can share.

They were lucky, full-moon night. Nothin' came to burst down the doors and threaten the wounded sheriff. Algernon had no reason to raise his gun until they both heard the cries from the square. And even then, it had seemed the wolves' vicious work had been done before they got so far as the end of the street. 
Algernon had carried a wounded man to the doctor's ward. It had felt for all the world like carryin' a body back from no-man's-land, 'til the man started to cry and Algernon felt wicked for findin' that a relief. 

It's been a few days since, and the dust is settlin' slowly. They say the doctor's ward holds only those most injured - there's neither the space nor supplies for everyone to stay there, and it stands to reason most will heal their best in their own beds, families around them takin' care of their every need. Blood runs real thick in the holler. It's unlike anythin' Algernon's seen before, and he only sees it from a distance. He's no blood relation to speak of. 

What he does have is Rafael Guerrero. The sheriff's been snowed under, both physically and metaphorically, for the past few weeks, what with the storm and the death of the lycan mayor, and surely a half-dozen behind-the-scenes problems Algernon's not privy to the details of. If not stuck to his desk as though there's tar keepin' him there, he's been all over town, pickin' up the pieces.

Which is why it comes as such a surprise, one evenin', when Algernon swings by the jailhouse intendin' to ask to be caught up on the state of the town's affairs. There are names he doesn't know in the brief conversations they've had, and Rafael has a much better handle on the overall situation than anyone else. He'll be able to tell him just where he'll be best suited to helpin' out. Because that's all he can do right now - *Help*. He's useful for somethin' other than his own selfish desires for the first time in years, and honestly, it's an unfamiliar but not unwelcome way to feel. 

Sheriff Guerrero is not at his post. 

A short walk up to the cabin proves he ain't at home, either. 
Algernon knocks on a couple doors. The neighbours haven't seen him come nor go. 

Thus, the night becomes a search. He checks the back of the houses as though Rafael will be found in the bushes somewhere, investigatin' things he won't explain. He walks back to the town and glances down every street and alley. Hell, he even checks the doctor's ward. The nurses ain't seen hide nor hair of the man. 

Algernon's at the very end of main street when he hears music. The barn must be back to open. Lord knows the good people of the ridge need somethin' to give 'em a little joy. Or just a pour of 'shine to drown their sorrows and numb their pain.

...
... ...
His blood turns chill in his veins as he realises he knows damn well where the sheriff is. 

It's a table in the corner where he finds him. There's no dancin' in the barn tonight - most of the town's wounded too bad to even walk this far. A solitary musician plays the piano. A song the boys once sang on the boats to France. It had kept their spirits up then. Now, it weighs heavy with what's been lost. There's not half so many people here as there were the first time Algernon came, when Noah brought him and showed him the best the bootleggers had to offer. 
Rafael has a bottle before him, a short glass beside it half-full with the clear liquor. By the looks of things, it isn't his first glass, nor his second. His head is down, and there's a lit smoke between his fingers, but he doesn't seem to be payin' attention to smokin' it. The other chairs around the table are empty. Looks like he's drinkin' alone. 

Algernon slides as quietly as a man of his bulk can into the seat beside him. 

He brings a hand to Rafael's shoulder, fingers givin' the slightest of squeezes. He hopes it's a comfort, if comfort can be found anywhere right now. 

"Thought I might find you here, *Hermano*."

He'd asked Raf what that word meant, a week or two ago, over heavy-poured nightcaps. The sheriff had been fixin' up his string board, addin' bits and pieces here and there, and Algernon had held the pins. He hadn't been able to hold his tongue about it - Rafael uses it all the time. 
It means *'brother'*, in the Spanish that serves as the man's mother tongue. 
Algernon likes it. He and Rafael have shared enough in their respective pasts that it doesn't feel unfamiliar on the tongue. He's picked up on it a few times, in the dark, with whiskey-loosened tongue and trouble hangin' over them. 

"Been lookin' for you all over - nothin's wrong, don't worry. Everyone's alright."

He bites his lip. 

"Are you?"
Susan
As a sniper, Rafael was no stranger to a need for patience. There was nothing in-between and nothing at all a good majority of the time, and every time he fired his trigger, he hit his target. He had one of the highest accuracy ratings in his squadron — not like anyone was willing to count, to make the lives of other people across enemy lines into some kind of statistics game, like they were some athlete keeping up with wins and losses. For Rafael, it was a game of survival; if he didn't hit his shot, he'd blow his cover, and blowing his cover, most of the time across enemy lines, meant his own death. There was nothing that was going to stop him from surviving. There was nothing that was going to stop him from protecting.

As an Army soldier, you took upon the oath - or, more likely, that it was thrust upon you - that you would do whatever you could in your power to protect the American people. That was why after his own attack did he exacerbate his own wounds over and over again — even now, underneath this shirt, he wears a layer of bandages keeping everything in place. Even now, his arms show the results of that fight, half-healed wounds that need constant cleaning. The Sheriff's oath was something similar; when he was deputized, he took on the oath to use the authority that had been vested in him to protect the citizens of Briar Ridge, no matter the cost. It was an easy thing to do, really, when you'd been serving all of your life.

_ _
No one tells you that a soldier's worst enemy is their own mind. The *Screaming*, the *Terror* Of the January moon put him right back into the trenches of Poland, of Austria, listening to his peers scream and do nothing but pick off soldiers one by one when they lined up with his rifle scope. He needed a drink then, and he needed a drink now, but how could he go and wallow in his own pain when the hospital was overflowing with this madness? How could he stop when he needed to keep going? How could he put it all down when there was no one else to hold it up?

_ _
He was down half a bottle of shine when one of his dogs lifted their heads, and Rafael, like an old hound himself, follows the gaze to Algernon. The bottle — Cooper Shine — sits in front of him; the haze in his eyes would reveal to Algernon that the good sheriff was more than two sheets to the wind, but a rough constitution meant he didn't get shitfaced that easily. Rafael snuffs out his cigarette on the side of the table - bad manners, he knows - and looks to Algernon. He's tired. Angry. Grieving.



"Sit," He says, gesturing to the seat in front of him, "Drink. Sorrow isn't contagious— use my glass. Or th'bottle. I don't... *Ay, dios mio,* I don't care."
Thomas
"Sure. Sure, you're fine." Pressin' right away won't solve shit, even if Algernon's bitin' his tongue against what it is he has to say. As much as he's got some words for the good sheriff, they can wait, because takin' in the state of him he don't seem all that prepared to listen to 'em. "Jus' glad I could find you, started to worry you'd run out on us." He knows Rafael wouldn't do that - he cares too much about this town and the people in it to back away, to abandon what he cares for and that which he's devoted his life to servin'. The problem with that, it seems, is that he don't know when to quit, and he's workin' himself to blood and bone right before their eyes. Algernon's not sure how nobody else has noticed yet - or if they have, why the hell they ain't done nothin' about it. Without Rafael they'd be nowhere - Algernon's new to town and he can see that, and he doesn't like to fancy their chances should the sheriff find himself incapacitated with exhaustion and thus, Briar Ridge find itself without its first and best line of defence against the encroachin' werewolf problem.

He accepts the drink, because it's there and he needs one and his pocket's been awful light on coins lately. He wants for little, and what he does require he's usually got enough to trade for without the use of conventional money, but the speakeasy only trades in cash and he tries to save that for emergencies and smokes.

Speakin' of, he produces cigarettes and matches from his pack, and doesn't have to ask Rafael whether he wants one. They've fallen into this habit of wordless sharin', and so Algernon lights two in his mouth at once and places one between the sheriff's fingers to replace the one that's been stubbed out on the table. He licks his thumb and scrubs at the ashy mark left behind, seen as how they're best off not causin' damage if they can help it. 
The shine burns down his throat as he swallows, mixin' with smoke in his chest. It tastes like years gone by, but in all the years, it's become a taste associated with solitude. It's different with a man beside him, with a brother at the table. So many things are different just by way of them bein' in Briar Ridge. He exhales, and his clouded breath in the air joins Rafael's before it drifts up to the barn's ceiling. 

He's quiet only for a moment. 

"You said sorrow ain't contagious. And I know it ain't passed by sharin' a glass or bottle, but I don't think it's fair to be sayin' a body can't go spreadin' it in other ways." It's an oddly insightful bit of speech, comin' from him. He's not too sure where he's findin' the words in the first place. "If a man finds himself in misery, it's real easy to share that burden without even meanin' to, which stands to reason that if he tries passin' it around, it might feel a little lighter on his shoulders than before. And I got real strong shoulders, so I been told. Why don't you tell me what's troublin' ya? And don't go sayin *Nothin*. I might be a fool when it comes to readin' and writin' but I ain't blind, Raf, and I ain't all stupid neither. So I'll listen now. You talk when you're ready."

||
Susan
*I was worried you'd run out on us,* Algernon says, and Rafael almost looks a bit more despondent. What about him gave them that idea, that Rafael would turn his back on this town? Hasn't he given enough? Hasn't he bled enough already? If only he knew Algernon had already drawn that conclusion whereas Rafael continued to struggle with it in his own mind. Once Algernon hands over the cigarette, Rafael takes it wordlessly - he's not going to say no when Algernon offers, but he knows how light on paper his friend is, and plans to replace this cigarette and then some for it when he's not busy drinking himself half to death.

He's already a bit drunker than intended, so when he takes the first drag of the cigarette, it's a miracle he doesn't light himself on fire (in the metaphoric, hyperbolic way, of course). He listens to Algernon talk, and in a matter of moments, he is back in a bar in France, somewhere, listening to his companions share a flask of something or another and talk about all of the things they wished they still had. Rafael never related—he didn't have a wife, didn't need one; he didn't have children, didn't need them. He might have had a dog back then, but if he did, he couldn't remember its name.

Rafael Aguilar Guerrero. The man who had both all of the weight of the world on his shoulders and simultaneously nothing in his arms.

_ _
"I'm back in a war, Algernon," He replies, because he knows better than to say nothing when a fellow man has asked him not to. He lets that statement hang; it is a wild statement to compare the War to whatever is happening in Briar Ridge, but to Rafael? There's just enough bloodshed to match, and the anguish is just as heavy. He sniffles a couple of times, the tip of his nose cold from the near-Arctic breeze outside, "And this time, I can't fuckin' win it. What are we supposed to do, here? Every time we get a leg up, their pack grows. I'm not stupid; I see how many of our friends and family are being turned by them every time I turn around, and there is nothing I can do about it. We don't have enough silver to kill them, we can't herd them into the Cage that the Cooper girl and her friend has built. What do we do?"

_ _
He is not a man who cries, often, but the liquid courage becomes liquid weakness as tears streak down his cheeks, his fingers trembling around the cigarette that was handed to him. He cannot waste it; Algernon gave it to him. He cannot throw it down, cannot drop it on the wooden table — the last thing they need is the Barn catching flame — he cannot do anything but hold it. Just like he holds everything else. 

His lips purse. The bottom one quivers. The tears stream silently down wisened cheeks, across dimples, down smile lines — who taught him to be so happy, once? Why only now does his mouth tremble? He shakes his head, wiping his face with the back of his hand, taking another shaky drag. "I'm tryin' harder than I've ever tried before, but this time, I don't know where or when I'm supposed to go. I don't know anything about this — *Disease, maybe?!* — and I don't know how to *Help.* I don't want them to die, Algernon, I just fuckin' don't, but what is the alternative other than huntin' them down? Killin' them when they are just a man? What do we do when the women, and the children, get afflicted? What do we do if you or I do?"
Thomas
Algernon's large hand shifts, to come to rest between Rafael's shoulders, at the point where his neck becomes his back, where he carries the weight of Briar Ridge and the wider world beyond. His cryin' is disconcertin' to say the least, for Algernon was raised in a world in which tears were somethin' to be punished, but he knows this ain't that world no more. Here carries a pain that needs more words than he knows to describe, that's incomparable to all but the worst horrors of wars, because Rafael is right when he says they're back on a front line all of their own. Except now, here, there's no tanks nor trenches to back up the fight they've found themselves in, there ain't a general in sight barkin' orders and keepin' all the boys in check. The whistle of shells has been replaced by the howlin' of wolves through the full-moon nights, and this town is a battlefield bearin' snow streaked in blood, frozen too solid to soak back into the earth. 

Rafael Aguilar Guerrero has been punished enough for all the things he's done, and he's about the last man on earth deservin' of any more of this unavoidable pain. If Algernon hadn't already signed up all he had for the man beside him, now would be the moment he did so. The truth is that that decision was made at some point in the weeks gone by since their first meetin'. And the question is whether Rafael understands yet that he ain't goin' through a bit of this on his own, no matter how long and dark the nights might seem of late. No matter what cost winnin' might come with, Algernon ain't about to let this be the end of things. 

"We ain't go into that last war thinkin' we was gonna come out the winners of it," He says quietly. "I won't pretend to know how it was for you, but leavin' here to go to fight in it, we all half-expected to come home in boxes with pieces missin'."

He and Rafael haven't shared more than the absolute simplest details of their wartimes. It opens up somethin' in his chest he's always said he'd rather forget. "But somehow, we came out this side no matter how hopeless it ever seemed out there." He scrubs his free hand across his face, almost sets his beard alight with his cigarette in the process. He takes a long drag of the smoke and holds it in his lungs until it burns his throat. 

"You're a damned smart man, you know. And I got every faith in you that you'll be the one to end all'a this, even if it don't come to you right away. You're doin' all you can to answer your own questions and there ain't a man - or a woman or a child - in this town that'd be expectin' any more'a you than you're givin' em. And if they do come demandin', well, they gotta go through me 'fore they come even close to givin' you a piece of their minds." There's a reason he posts himself up at the jailhouse door when the to-and-fro of Briar Ridge don't call for him to be elsewhere. "You ain't alone on your post, Raf. Don't gotta shoulder it all without someone to lean on."

He's never been good at words, but he thinks at least his message is half comin' across the way he wants it to. 

"I been watchin' more than you might think. Seen all the work you put into makin' everyone feel like it's all gonna be alright. Know how you sent that flag to that grievin' family." He sighs.

"Know you ain't been sleepin' in your bed neither, for the record. What's it you're hopin' to get from runnin' yourself into the ground? Think the solution to all your problems is plannin' on showin' up like a ghost in the middle'a the night? 'Cause I can tell you for free it ain't. All you're gonna do's cause more hurt to yourself. Or to somebody else who finds themself on the wrong end of your gun when you're hallucinatin' with the lack'a sleep." 

It ain't meant to be cruel. But Algernon's not the tip-toein' type - he's too big, too loud, too rough around the edges to go turnin' stones with kid-gloves. Someone's gotta tell things the way they are and this might be the only time he can do it, when the ears his words land on lead into a head heavy with the moonshine, as the hour grows late and the seconds stretch to minutes between the two men and the bottle. 

"Can't pretend I got answers for you right now. Well, I could, but I ain't gonna sugar-coat shit, 'cause I know you won't appreciate it and I ain't gonna enjoy lyin'. What I do got is a promise to be beside ya. Til it's all figured out and beyond, to when it's over. You done right by me from the moment I walked into that office of yours, think it's fair to offer the same in return. You hearin' me? Tomorrow, when the day's new, we can put heads together. Maybe haul in some'a those young things lookin' to take on the mayor's responsibilities and ask 'em what they're wantin' to do around the place. Have somebody else help carry the load."

He rubs his thumb in a slow circle on the back of the only real friend he's got. 

"Tonight, you done enough to deserve your break. An' I'll be sure to get you home in one piece no matter what."

||
Susan
`TRIGGER WARNING: This reply will have a vivid description of a disassociative episode and mentions of war-induced PTSD, referred to by its time-relevant name, 'shell-shock'.`

*We all half-expected to come home in boxes with pieces missing,* Algernon says, and Rafael wonders what pieces of him he left behind. Surely there is a ghost that haunts Polish lands somewhere whispering hymnals about the death of a lamb in the shape of a girl. What an obedient *Dog* He was, so quick to do what the master said. When the commander said jump, one said *How high?* When he was told to bark, he fired his rifle—the impact of the bullet taking off sounded far too much like the bark of a hound. Sounded *Far* Too much like the world at large.

"Who the hell is here to help me, Algernon?" He asks, a brow arching as he looked over at his friend. Yes, sure, Algernon would be willing to help in the ways that Algernon knew how to, but so much has already slipped through his fingers, and with each passing day he cannot help but feel like a decaying shell left on the tree by a cicada. He cannot help but wonder how much of him was lost to the war then, and how much of him is lost to the war now.

He looks down at his hands, sees their scars and their calluses from the labor on his family's farm. Sees how they have held gun after gun after gun. He imagines wolves staring back at him through a sniper's scope, grinning their Luciferian grin, laughing, taunting him. *The monster you know is better than the monster you don't, isn't it, Rafael?* Somehow his name blurs with his title, and he's listening to Algernon's words, desperate to find grounding comforts in them. It's Algernon's face in the scope, now, and his hand trembles around his cigarette. The only thing keeping him here in the Ol' Davis Barn is the comforting touch of his friend's hand between his shoulderblades.

_ _
*I know you sent that flag to that family,* Algernon says, and Rafael nods. Of course he did. He was there with William moments before he died. He turned his back to a fellow veteran, a fellow soldier, so that one of his children could shoot him. (To this day, he doesn't know which one it was; all he knows is that there were two gunshots, and he flinched at both. Rafael has never flinched at a gunshot before.) Justice is not justice if it does not benefit the needs of the many; was he, too, a murderer for allowing the *Kids* (they were just children to him, still so young, still so soft, still so brave) to take their hand to their own father? His jaw sets, and he closes his eyes. In the nose, out the mouth. In the nose, out the mouth.

*Have someone else carry the load,* Algernon says, and Rafael deflates. (*Who am I if I can't carry it all? If I falter?*) Still, he has been in Algernon's position before, and he knows how frustrating it is to yell at a brick wall. Algernon will never know the secrets in Rafael's mind, the de facto skeletons in his closet, not if Rafael can help it. They, too, will die with the pieces of him still lingering on the ghost in battlefields of countries he never thought he'd see. He doesn't know who could carry the load, even — if they wanted to, wouldn't they have, already? No, these young people with their eyes bright like fire and their grins as wicked as the Hells that Dante walked had their own idea of justice. No matter — there were still many things to be done. There were still so many things to do. If it had to be him or them, he would die a thousand times over. He had lived life to the fullest, best he could, whereas these others were the beginnings and ends of Briar Ridge's legacy. They still had more to do.

_ _
Rafael had already done so much.

He puts out his cigarette. 

"You're a good man, you know that, Algernon Granville?" He says, his eyes soft as he looks down at the back of his hand again. His lips are turned into a gentle smile, something that only a friend who shares the pain of another could have. There is still good in this world — there are still people who see an act of kindness as something to be repaid, ping-ponged back and forth until the quiet nature of mutual reciprocration became muscle memory. "We need more men like you in this world, and less of those... Oh, Wall Street fuck-asses wearing their suits and their..." He idly waves with his now-free hand, unfamiliar with finding the word in English, yet too inebriated to find the word in his mother tongue. "—*Yeah,"* He sighs, finally, giving up, shaking his head. "What I'm trying to say is that if the world had more people like you in it, we would be a better world. Might not need wars, at that point."
Thomas
It's the first time in his life, he thinks, that Algernon has ever been called *Good*, much less a good man. His earliest memories are of scoldings and slaps on wrists, evolvin' to worse as he aged and first matched his father in size and then outgrew him entirely, as he outgrew the hand-me-down shoes on his feet and the town in which he was dragged up to almost adulthood. He has not been called good because he has not *Been* Good, historically - he thinks of his fists raised, his jaw set and eyes ablaze, time and time again William Granville's shadow down to the tangles in his beard. He knows that the first and often only thing anyone sees in him is the bulk he carries, that which lends itself to violence and hurt so easily. He thinks of the first gun he raised and the faceless figure it felled, and he thinks of each drop of blood spilled thereafter onto soil both foreign and all too close to home, man and beast alike left without breath in their lungs at the very hands that now rest, respectively, on Rafael's broad back and on the worn tabletop.

He drinks, for what else is there to do? 

Throughout his interminable years he has not known good, has never been taught to perform it nor experienced it in others that stay long enough for it to resonate.

That changed the day he came here, marched his way into Briar Ridge and for the first time (again, another; there have been so many firsts, since that morning, too many for him to keep a good count of) did not need to force the place to become his. Instead, Briar Ridge has moulded to his odd shape, and instead of a suffocating cloud, this holler is a warm blanket, a balm to old wounds. And it is all thanks to those who have extended him their handshakes and hospitalities that he no longer finds himself the cat amongst the pigeons, so to speak, but simply another member of the flock. 

The simple word, *Good*, well, it strikes some kinda chord in the back of his head, though he doesn't know the significance of it. It'll be somethin' to dwell on some other time when there's less at the forefront, when Rafael ain't so close to crumblin' beneath his touch. 
A touch that comforts, that don't cause no more pain.
The touch of a good man.

He smiles, just a little, mirrorin' the curve of Rafael's lips. "I ain't so sure about no more of me, if I'm honest. But I 'preciate you sayin' it all the same. Not somethin' a man hears every day. I don't know nothin' of your... What was it? Wall Street fuck-asses?" Algernon has never heard of Wall Street. Wonders if it's nearby. Makes a note never to visit it, judgin' by the look on his friend's face when he thinks of the men that frequent it. "But whoever they are, they ain't got nothin' on you and I and what we got right here."

He uses the hand holdin' his cigarette to gesture out to the barn. Though it's not half as heavin' with life and laughter as it's been in days before this, he doesn't just mean *This* - what he has, what Raf has, it's more than a speakeasy hidden away in an old barn, more than walls and wooden beams.

It's this town and the people in it. It's the spirit keepin' them goin' through night after night, phase of the moon be damned, because Briar Ridge is *Alive* And it's kickin' and screamin' its way through all that's been thrown at it and *They're gonna make it*. That much he's certain of. He doesn't know how to voice to Rafael just how sure he is, because he ain't sure *Where* That certainty came from. He just knows that when he locks eyes with the man by his side then he feels it in his bones, as much of an old fool as all'a that makes him sound. 

"I want this to be the last war either of us ever gotta fight," He says, instead. "An' I'll be doin' all I can to make it so. We done enough. Seen enough for a lifetime."

For a moment, he closes his eyes and imagines how that might look. In his mind, the sun is shinin' and they're sittin' out by the creek watchin' the light filter through the leaves. They ain't alone, either - faces familiar and strange surround their patch. He doesn't need to see the features up close to know they're smilin'.
In his little fantasy, Rafael is smilin' too.