Author's Notes: Wow, I actually am writing a fic for Seven Brides for Seven Brothers!! It's kind of funny, I have loved this movie for so long that I used to make up in my head possible things that could happen with the Pontipee brothers and their wives long before I ever even heard about fanfiction! This movie is definitely one of my all time favorites. Finding fanfiction for it is hard, I don't think there's much out there at all.

Anyways, this fic will be told in six chapters, one chapter per couple. I am writing this in the order that I feel the girls forgave the guys in. You are free to disagree with me about the order I have chosen, but I have watched these movies so many times that I have reasons for the order I've chosen.

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters or the situations they find themselves in, nor do I own the movie. I am making no profit in writing this, except having the joy of finally having something to read about one of my favorite fictitious families!

Chapter One: Benjamin and Dorcas

The silence among the six girls made Dorcas Gailen uncomfortable. She knew that the other five were all awake, even though all of them were supposed to be sleeping. She suspected that none of them would be sleeping that night.

She didn't know if the other girls had realized, but they were sleeping in the very beds of the men who had kidnapped them. It didn't make her afraid; she knew that they weren't going to try anything. They were holed up in the smelly barn, but it was not nearly as much as they deserved. Her heart swelled with anger as she thought of the younger six Pontipees.

Benjamin, second oldest of the seven brothers, was her captor. He had pulled her out of her bedroom window right as she had blown out the candle. She could only imagine what had gone through her poor sister's head, hearing Dorcas scream and then relighting the candle to an empty room.

The image of her sister made her very angry, but the biggest cause of her rage was that she had really liked Benjamin. When they met at the dance, she had been smitten. Her father was one of the few townsfolk who recognized that the fight at the barn-raising hadn't been started by the Pontipees and that they really had no choice but to fight back. She was sure that had Benjamin come to town wanting to court her, her family would have let him. She spent two months wishing he would come for her; she had even almost told her suitor, Matt, that she wanted to stop seeing him. She hadn't expected Benjamin to come for her like this.

He had treated her different at the barn dance. He was sweeter to her than Matt ever had been. Matt had acted like he had a right to her, whereas Benjamin treated her like just standing near her was a gift. He had stirred up feelings in her that she had never felt about Matt. The biggest difference, however, was that Matt never would have taken her against her will. Cocky though he was, he never would have crossed the line.

Dorcas heard sniffling in the next bed. It was Alice Elcott, the youngest of the six kidnapped girls. Alice was easily the sweetest and most innocent of them. Dorcas wanted to comfort the younger girl but she didn't know how. She was still in need of comfort herself, especially since it was so dark in the room. Even though she knew the actual danger was over, and that Benjamin wouldn't come near her, especially with Milly so close, being in the dark was making her nervous. Every time she would think back to earlier that night when she had blown out the candle and then been grabbed and pulled out the window, her heart jumped.

She was going to get back at him. Benjamin Pontipee was not going to get away with what he'd done. She didn't quite know how yet, but she had several months to figure it out. And so she spent the rest of that sleepless night wondering how to exact her revenge, and wishing she hadn't turned out to be so wrong about the one man she had thought she could have fallen for.

He had to apologize to her. That was about the only clear thought that ran through Benjamin Pontipee's head as he attended to his daily chores on the farm for the entire first week that the girls were on the farm. All six of them were still inside; not one of them had come out and he hadn't seen a single glimpse of any of them. They were angry, and they had a right to be. Thinking back, Benjamin couldn't believe that he and his younger brothers had followed Adam so quickly in his idea to kidnap the girls. Not one of them had seen anything wrong with what they were going to do; it wasn't until afterwards and the deed couldn't be undone that they had seen their gross mistake.

Benjamin had gotten used to sleeping in the barn quickly, aside from having to put up with the smell. Milly had given them all their things; she had dropped off their clothes and food the very first night so they wouldn't have to come to the house for anything. There was always something to be done on the farm so the boys at least could never say they were bored.

It was a week to the day since the kidnappings. He and Gideon had wondered as they ate their cold breakfast that morning when they would be seeing the girls next. Frank had walked by and said they probably wouldn't see them at all until spring. They had frowned at that thought but then quickly finished their food and went out to get some wood chopping done before more snow came in.

As he gathered up some dry wood for chopping, he thought about how he would even get near enough to Dorcas to apologize to her. He couldn't go into the house, and Dorcas wasn't coming out. He didn't dare ask Milly to talk to her; his sister-in- law would probably wring him with her bare hands if he so much as mentioned Dorcas.

Eventually she would have to come outside, Benjamin decided. But the resolution of that problem brought up an even tougher situation.

How could he apologize to her? Exactly what was he supposed to say when he went up to her? What he had done was unforgivable, and he probably shouldn't be reminding her of the hell he had put her through. Perhaps he could ask Milly how to bring up the subject.

With a heavy sigh, Benjamin remembered that Milly wasn't even talking to the boys. She was angry and ashamed of them. In many ways, Milly reminded Benjamin of his mother. She had died when he was ten years old, seventeen years ago. He didn't remember her as being quite as strong-minded as Milly but he knew she would have been furious with her sons for what they had done. She had always expected the very best from them, just like Milly did. He hated that Milly was so angry with them.

The feeling he hated most of all was his own shame. He kept thinking back on Dorcas crying on the porch with the other girls, Milly's furious face as she told them they weren't to step foot in the house while the girls were there, and the awful feeling he had in his stomach as he realized that it wasn't okay that the girls were crying. It wasn't okay that he and his brothers had carried the girls off.

And then to top off everything, Adam had left. Benjamin knew his older brother could take care of himself, but he was still concerned. Things in the family had run fairly smooth up until a week ago, and now everything seemed to be in disarray.

So he was determined to fix things with Dorcas. Or at least, apologize to her. That was about as right as he could probably make it, but he was going to do at least that much. He figured that he could probably live with her never talking to him again so long as he knew that he had told her how badly he felt.

Frank jerked his older brother out of his thoughts by calling out his name, nodding his head towards the house. They were done chopping wood, so they were to leave most of it on the porch of the house and take the rest to the barn to keep themselves warm. He nodded towards Frank and Gideon, gathered up his pile, and followed them to the house. Along the way, his two younger brothers stopped at a window. Sarah and Alice were smiling at them from inside. Then, with a quick look at each other, the girls glared at them and threw snowballs straight at their heads.

Gideon and Frank quickly turned around, dropping their wood, and tried to cover their heads with their hands, as if the snowballs were hurting them. Benjamin couldn't help but laugh at his two youngest brothers.

"What's the matter, afraid of a little snowball?" he asked them, still laughing. As soon as the words were out of his mouth, something sharp hit him square in the back of the head. He turned quickly, his hands flying to his head, to see Dorcas standing at the doorway behind him with a wicked glare on her face. He looked down to see the crumbled snowball she had thrown at him.

Bending down, he picked up the rock that lay in the middle. "Snowballs with rocks in them!" he told his brothers, picking up his wood. "Them poor little dears!! Sobbing buckets of tears." The girls continued to glare after them as the brothers walked away.

The three brothers arrived back at the barn just a few minutes afterwards to find their other three brothers there. Benjamin quickly realized that all six girls had collaborated in showing the brothers just what they thought of them. Caleb appeared to be fine, as himself, Frank, and Gideon were, but Daniel and Ephraim were soaked. Both were up in the loft changing clothes as Caleb explained to the other three that Martha and Liza had dumped bowls of cold water out the window, straight onto them.

"Are you two all right?" Benjamin demanded as the two descended the loft onto the ground.

"Yes, just a bit cold," Daniel assured him, shivering a bit.

Benjamin immediately grabbed the nearest blanket and gave it to Dan. Gideon followed up and gave one to Ephraim. "Make sure you don't get pneumonia," Benjamin told them. "You two should get a small fire going and get yourselves warm."

"There are a lot of things that need to be done!" Daniel protested. "Especially since Adam's gone and we have to pick up his share of the work."

"There are still four of us working," Caleb pointed out, quickly agreeing with his older brother. "Your hair is still wet, and so is yours, Ephraim. Things'd be a lot worse if the two of you got sick."

"Then again, Milly would probably let us into the house," Ephraim pointed out.

"Yeah I don't reckon she'd be happy if she found out the girls made us sick," Daniel added.

"Just stay here and get yourselves warm. When you're feeling better—and dryer—you can come back out and help. Make sure you don't come out too soon," Benjamin told them with a stern look.

"Hey, you're handling this big-brother bit in Adam's place really well," Ephraim told him with a slight smirk.

"I've always been your big brother," Benjamin snapped, taking all his brothers aback, and then stormed out of the barn. He wasn't mad at them, but for some reason the comment about being an older brother in Adam's place really bothered him. He had always been their older brother, just not their oldest brother. He would have reacted the same way even if Adam had been there.

And he was mad at Martha and Liza. This was their first winter at the farm, but it certainly wasn't their first winter and they should have known better than to dump cold water on anyone, no matter how mad they were. One thing was for sure: the girls were not going to keep doing this. Today was the first and last time. Now that they had shown themselves to the boys, maybe Benjamin could find Dorcas alone and somehow convey to her his apologies.

His chance to apologize came that evening just before sundown, which was quicker than he had expected. He had been working all day shoveling out paths with his brothers, chopping wood, and feeding the livestock, and they were just about to head back to the barn. Daniel and Ephraim never ended up joining them, so Benjamin wanted to check on them and make sure they were all right; besides he was getting awfully hungry and was ready for dinner. He sent Caleb, Frank, and Gideon back to the barn while he finished up the very last of the shoveling. He was just about to head for barn himself when he saw Dorcas standing by fence on the side of the house. She looked to be alone, and when he met her eyes she looked away quickly. Slightly suspicious that she'd been watching him, he slowly approached her.

"Bit of a cold night to be out when the sun goes down," he told her. She glared at him, so he stopped walking towards her, putting his hands up to show her that he wasn't going to do anything.

Dorcas seemed to be hesitating, like she didn't know what to say to him. "Are you… I mean… your head doesn't hurt anymore does it?" she blurted out finally.

"My head? Oh… No, it's fine." Suddenly he felt very awkward.

"Good. I mean, well… not good, but I just didn't want you to have another concussion."

"It was just a rock, Dorcas," Benjamin assured her, failing to hide a smile. "Not nearly like having a hammer thrown on you." He thought back to the day of the barn raising, when he had first met her.

Usually when he remembered that day, he would remember how beautiful she looked and how she had smiled at him when their eyes had first come in contact. Now he was remembering what Dorcas had been referring to when she mentioned having a concussion: just before the fight had broken out during the actual raising of the barn, Dorcas' town suitor, Matt, had thrown a hammer down onto his head. He'd had enough adrenaline to fight well and had luckily still been standing with his brothers at the end, but he'd given them and Milly quite a fright later by falling asleep in the wagon on the way home. He had woken up to their terrified faces; apparently it had taken them nearly ten minutes to wake him up, though they hadn't given a thought to him being asleep until they'd gotten back to the farm. Milly saw to him first, wrapping bandages around his head that remained there for a week, and the day afterwards she refused to let him out of bed.

"Right, well.. I'm glad you're all right, even if I was the one who threw it at you," she told him, still apprehensive about talking to him at all.

"Listen, Dorcas… I've been meaning to talk to you, but I haven't gotten a chance until now. I just want to tell you that I'm sorry… for what I did. I'm sorry that I kidnapped you, really I am. If I could take it back and make it so it never happened, I would. But I can't, so I just wanted you to know that I know it was wrong and that I feel awfully for it."

She was quiet for a minute, causing dread to sink back into his stomach. Suddenly he was more anxious about what she was going to say than he ever had been about anything before.

"I'm not saying that I forgive you," she explained carefully. "But I accept your apology."

He nodded, knowing that was the best he could get from her. He started to step away but she stopped him. "Benjamin, wait. If you… if you want to meet me near the fence on the opposite side of the barn tomorrow right about this time, maybe we can talk some more."

She watched him closely as he smiled at her, nodded his head, and said he would be there. She smiled back as he turned around and headed for the barn. He didn't know it, but he had said to her exactly what she wanted to hear; and suddenly her heart was melting again at the thought of him being near. Even though what he had done was wrong, knowing that he knew that was somehow gratifying; having an apology suddenly made things much better. And now she knew that he had returned the feelings she felt for him.

She didn't know what they would talk about or how things would eventually turn out, but she did know one thing that he did not: she had just forgiven him.