WARNING! CONTAINS MILD DT7 SPOILERS!

Disclaimer: I don't own Roland, Jake, Walter, Dark Tower or anything else used in this story. In fact, I don't yet even own copies of all the DT books (I'm up to DT5 and waiting for the other two to come out in paperback).

Summary: At the end of Dark Tower, Roland is given the chance to redeem himself by repeating his life from the day he met Jake. Here is my guess as to how he does it…

Author's Note: One-shot. The ending is open to the reader's interpretation.

X x X x X

from The Gunslinger by Stephen King

"Metal ripped and sloughed beneath them; the rails canted through a slow and dreamy twisting. The boy plunged, and one hand flew up like a gull in the darkness, up, up, and then he hung over the pit; he dangled there, his dark eyes staring up at the gunslinger in final blind lost knowledge.

"'Help me.'

"Booming, racketing. 'No more games. Come now, gunslinger. Or catch me never.'

"All the chips on the table. Every card up but one. The boy dangled, a living tarot card, the Hanged Man, the Phoenician sailor, innocent lost and barely above the wave of a stygian sea.

"Wait then. Wait awhile.

"'Do I go?'

"His voice is so loud, he makes it hard to think.

"'Help me. Help me, Roland.'

"The trestle had begun to twist further, screaming, pulling loose from itself, giving…"

X x X x X

Roland opened his mouth. Half-formed the words 'then I shall leave you'. Then something shifted on his belt, and he stopped. Looked down.

The Horn of Gilead, which once belonged to Arthur Eld himself, lay at Roland's hip. But it was not Arthur Eld that Roland thought of now. It was Cuthbert Allgood, his best friend. Cuthbert, who had died at Jericho Hill, holding this very brass horn in his hand. And a single imperative thought formed in his mind

(oh how cuthbert would have loved this child)

not so much words as a powerful force urging him forward to the edge of the broken rail, dissipating every doubt in his mind, telling him what he must do. Leading him to redemption.

Kneeling precariously on what he judged to be the strongest points of the snapped rail, Roland reached down into the deepening gloom and slid hands under the boy's armpits, gripping him tightly enough to leave bruises. He supposed later that it must have been the work of mere seconds to lift the boy into his arms, into safety, but at the time everything seemed to be moving incredibly slowly.

As he lifted the boy, as he drew him back from the unknown depths of the oblivion, he saw the dark man's features twist into the first completely honest expression Roland had ever seen on them – his mouth a round o of surprise, his eyes wide with bewilderment instead of narrowed cunningly.

Then Roland had Jake safe in his arms, and Jake buried his head in the rough material covering the gunslinger's shoulder, sobbing incoherently with shock. Roland looked at the boy for a moment, in wonder but by no means in regret; then he looked back at Walter o'Dim as he stood silhouetted in the entrance to the cavern.

"I need nothing of what you have," Roland called, and the dark man seemed to cringe away from his defiance. "I need none of your aid to reach the tower; I have my own strengths and need not rely on yours as you intend to rely on my weaknesses!"

The dark man continued to stand for a few seconds, his mouth hanging open stupidly. Then, with the inhuman speed granted him by the evil which he had long ago embraced, he turned on his heel and fled with the elegance of a wildcat. Within seconds, he was no longer visible.

Roland turned his head slightly and murmured into Jake's ear, "Hang on, and stay still!"

He took two large steps backward, hesitated, and took a third. He then judged the distance to be right. He began to run and, just before his leading foot could come down on empty air, he leapt and landed neatly a few feet further up from where the rails picked up again.

He walked briskly onto the solid ground of the opening, then hesitated for a moment. The sunlight streaming through was incredibly bright after the days spent under the mountains. He shaded Jake's eyes with his free hand and squinted his own eyes until he felt they could take the strain of the sudden direct light.

Then he stepped out onto the sun-drenched ledge.

After the shock wore away and he could see again, he sat down with Jake in his arms and with his back leaning against the rock. The boy had opened his eyes and was blinking dazedly, perhaps reflecting upon the fact that, barely five minutes ago, he had believed he would never see the sun again, of this world or of his own.

Then, for the first time since his appeal to Roland for help, he spoke.

"I thought you were going to let me fall," he whispered.

Roland hugged the boy close to him, feeling the beat of his heart, which was just beginning to steady again. He rested his face on top of the boy's head, breathing in the scent of his hair, unmindful of the dust which had accumulated over the past few days. Eventually, when he deemed himself ready to speak again, he said,

"I thought I would, too."

He felt Jake's body tense, and went on before the boy's previous mistrust of him could return.

"But I couldn't. It seems I'm not yet so lost in my search for the tower that I'd let a child die."

Jake looked at him, half-indignant, half-teasing. "I am not a child," he scolded. "I'm eleven and three-quarters. That's nearly teenaged."

Roland laughed. It was just about the first genuine laugh since before Susan had died, and who knew how many years ago that had been. For wasn't that statement a perfect caricature of his own attitude at the beginning of this bizarre quest, when he was just fourteen? Hadn't he believed that he was at the height of his knowledge and maturity back then?

Eventually he managed to stop laughing. The puzzled, amused look on Jake's face almost set him off again, but he fought off the impulse this time. Instead he slung an arm around Jake's shoulders and gave the boy a brief kiss on the cheek.

"Do you think you're ready to start moving again?" he inquired.

Jake nodded and stood up, apparently raring to go. "Where to now?" he asked.

"The Western Sea," Roland replied. "One more turn over the horizon should do it."