Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There is a countdown on Charles’ left wrist.

As far as he can tell, it’s been there ever since the day he was born, numbers glowing impossibly bright even during the day, starkly white against his dark skin. 

It is one long number that stretches across his wrist in neat print. It’s a massive number, to Charles, who has only just learnt how to count up to thirty, but he points to his wrist and reads them aloud anyway: one, one, four, four, four.

Eleven thousand, four hundred and forty four, is what his parents say.

A countdown of days - is what they discover when the next day his wrist reads: one, one, four, four, three.

Eleven thousand, four hundred and forty three.

The number dwindles over a time, like a calendar stamped onto Charles’ wrist and Charles’ wrist alone. His parents have no idea what to do about it. They have no idea what it could entail, its origins, or what might happen if some people, the wrong kind of people, manage to find out about it.

So Charles takes to wearing long sleeves, even in the hottest days of summer, which he spends most of the time in the shade and picking at the cloth confining both of his arms with uncomfortable warmth.

It’s a lot easier to pass off in the winter and autumn, but as soon as spring trickles in people start asking questions, and when summer replaces it people stop asking and start trying to pull his sleeves up.

After Charles punches another boy in the face for trying to see what’s underneath his sleeves, his parents - or his father - decide that enough is enough.

So, one day, Charles’ father arrives home with a silver band, too small for himself. It looks expensive, shining and polished quality, and Charles’ mother berates him for buying something that could very well get Charles killed .

But she doesn’t stop him from bending down onto his knee, taking Charles’ wrist like it is more fragile than glass, and cinching the band around it. 

“Don’t let anyone take this, alright?” his father tells him, pressing a kiss onto the bracelet. 

Charles isn’t very old, but he is old enough to understand the literal weight now on his arm. He nods, a gentle bob of his head, as his mother stares at his father from behind him, eyes sharp and full of reprove. 

Later, Charles is laid to bed and they assume he is asleep, but the moonlight that streams into the bedroom through the rickety window lands squarely on his eyes and he’s not quite smart enough to know what to do about it. In other words, he’s completely awake. 

In the next room, he can hear them arguing. 

“He is a child ,” his mother hisses, coiled like a disturbed diamond rattlesnake, venom just to the left of well-meaning. “Why would you give him such a thing?”

“Would you rather he be hunted for witchcraft? He will already face enough strife in his life because of whose son he is, I will not give him anymore,” his father replies as stiff as the band, voice pressing past gritted teeth and clenched fists.

“If that is your argument, you are only adding another target on to his back. It is not enough that he is half Native and half African, no, he also has valuable possessions!”

“Would you rather he spend his entire life with long sleeves? Someone will notice eventually.”

“So, rationally, you go out and buy something worth some people’s entire lives . Could we not have resorted to bandages? Simpler bracelets? The people on the reservation would not have minded, but we both know why we are no longer travelling with them.”

“Cheona , bandages on a boy that young? It will only give them more reason to take him away from us,” his father whispers, pausing when he hears the creek of a hollow floorboard, continuing when he realises it is only a mouse, “Compared to everything else he will face, this is nothing.”

There is silence. Then a long, drawn out sigh, filled with weariness, exasperation, and the tinities trickle of fear . The floorboards creak again as someone moves, and a moment later, the bedroom door opens. 

Charles is deathly still as he slips his eyes closed and tries to keep his breathing even, despite the fact he’s never been able to fool either of his parents in the past. His mother - he can tell because her steps are much lighter compared to his father, and because she settles down on the edge of the bed and runs her hands through his hair - sighs. She tucks loose strands of hair behind his ear, and her fingers carefully and gently trace the curve of his cheek.

“I’m sorry, Askuwheteau,” she breathes, barely audible even in the quiet of the night. She hums the start of a song, unfamiliar, sombre, but cannot bring herself to finish it. She leans down to press a light smile onto Charles’ cheek, and leaves without another word. 

Charles expects her to stop by the door. For her to turn her head over her shoulder, smile that smile that wrinkles the corners of her eyes, and tell him that she can see his feet twitching, or the way his face scrunches up at her ministrations. She does not. The door squeaks shut behind her. 

Charles shifts, near silently in his bare mattress, to stare at the silver band wrapped around his wrist, obscuring the countdown on his wrist.

Charles gets good at lying through his teeth. 

Sometimes, Charles wonders about what the countdown could mean.  

Who wouldn’t? It is ever present, no matter how long he spends hiding it under his bracelet and not looking at it, no matter how harshly he scrubs at the skin there, until it is red and raw, no matter what time of day it is - the countdown remains. Never smudges, doesn't fade, remains glowing like it is inked from the stars and the moon. 

What is it even counting down to?

Maybe the turning point of his life? he wonders frequently.

Then:

His mother is abducted by men with guns and tailored suits. 

His father turns to drink, becomes a violent, angry man with a short fuse - just like those men that took his mother. 

Perhaps it is counting down to his death.

If so, living until he is thirty seven - a number he had worked out after sitting down and doing the maths - seems almost idealistic, especially after he has to crawl away from a bad bar fight with a knife in his side and blood seeping from between his fingers.

He is fourteen.

Eight thousand, four hundred and thirty eight days left on the countdown.

The silver band no longer fits his wrist, and he barely has any money to keep himself afloat, but he refuses to sell it. Beyond his mother’s necklace, which he still wears around his neck, even as dangerous as that is, and the photograph of his family, the silver band is the only thing that he can remember his father fondly by. 

A reckless, unpredictable man, who used to hold Charles like he was glass and dance in the street with his mother if a busker played a particularly jaunty tune. 

A reckless, unpredictable man, who left Charles with scars as bright as that wretched countdown on his wrist, spindly and crawling up his jaw like lightning, drawing stares no matter where he went. 

Charles takes to wearing bandages around his wrist instead. 

He barely has enough money to take care of himself and Taima - a wild horse that had shown up to his camp one night and never left - let alone buy a piece of jewellery from someone who would probably upcharge him simply because of how he looked, and keep replacing it every time he outgrew it. 

It’s less suspicious than long sleeves, in the sweltering heat of the southern states, which he tries not to spend much time in regardless. His arms are already covered in various scars: nicks from knives drawn during fist fights, grazes from bad falls and too-close bullets, so another injury that will simply turn into yet another scar doesn’t make anyone bat more of an eye at him than they already do. 

Charles gets good at ignoring the countdown - the numbers, slightly raised on his skin, the glow of them, a whole damn light source by themselves if he doesn’t cover them up. He changes the bandages every time he notices them getting dirty, which, in his situation, is every few days, but that’s quick, easy work. 

It is simply pulling the bandages off his skin, chucking them into a pot of boiling water and rewrapping his wrist with whatever spares he has. 

Maybe the countdown is predicting his love life, something along the lines of finding his own true soulmate at the age of thirty seven, but Charles is less sure of that theory. Wandering like he does, from state to state, never staying anywhere long enough for people to learn his name, doesn’t prove very productive for a love life. 

He doesn’t find himself becoming attracted to anyone either, sexually or romantically, man or woman. There must be something wrong with him, he feels, but when he sits and remembers all that love has done for him - taken his mother, taken his father, taken himself from himself - he realises that he doesn’t care for it much. 

Charles runs with a gang and almost gets gutted in his sleep. Keyword: almost, because he can’t sleep around so many strangers, and the snap of boots against the twigs he may or may not have scattered around his bedroll sends adrenaline spiking through his veins. He doesn’t sleep without a weapon, not anymore, keeps his knife by his side and tomahawk well within reach, so he has something to defend himself with when a particularly deranged man tries to stab him through the fabric of his bedroll. 

He never learns why he almost became another corpse on the ground, because he doesn’t stick around long enough to find out. He shoves his knife into his attacker’s shoulder, hears the man scream gutturally into the night, the ensuing shuffle of the gang members waking up because of the ruckus, and Charles bolts . 

He abandons his bedroll and his knife - has the rest of his things either on him or in Taima’s saddle, which remains loosely tacked on her at night. His feet skid on the ground as he shoves the man away and sprints towards Taima.

The other gang members are only just properly waking up as he tightens the buckles on Taima’s saddle, his fingers working quickly and expertly, even in the dark.

He can hear shouting, can hear his name and insults spat behind him, but he hauls himself on to Taima and disappears into the night before any further harm can be done.

Thirty seven.

The countdown ends when he is thirty seven.

What happens to people once they reach thirty seven?

Maybe he’ll have an epiphany, finally realise that a life in forced solitude is barely a life at all, but with no one to talk to and so many thoughts crowding his head, he’s already realised that, and there isn’t a lot he can do about it.

He circles back to finding true love - would that be so bad? If he could find that special someone to settle down with, spend the rest of his days with… him.

He circles back to his death - it seems like a more rational number now, since he’s nineteen and has been able to survive by himself. Thirty seven. Still doesn’t feel like a great age to die, but older than he ever thought he would reach.

Charles meets Dutch van der Linde, the Dutch van der Linde, on a snowy day in the mountains. Dutch sees Charles’ bow before his face and long hair, sees the freshly hunted deer over Taima’s back, and offers company for the winter in the form of his ragtag gang of twenty something outlaws.

Three thousand, nine hundred and twenty three days are left.

Charles accepts. It’s been a long few years by himself, and the occasional gang he runs with rarely lasts longer than a month. He doesn’t know why he keeps doing this to himself - keeps surrounding himself with people he maybe, maybe can’t trust, usually can’t - but…

There are no buts.

Charles is a desperate, lonely man. No matter where he goes, he’s too African or too Native - and if not that then he’s not African enough, not Native enough, not man enough to fit in anywhere, so he clings to the outskirts of society, the criminals, the outlaws.

He meets Arthur Morgan.

Three thousand, nine hundred and twenty three days are left.

Charles almost falls off a goddamn roof because of a bank robbery gone sideways.

Hosea rushes them out of the building and up onto the rooftops as soon as he spots the law, somehow managing to get his hands on the city’s outline and already figuring out a straight route back to camp sometime earlier.

Hosea leads the way, Dutch right after him. Bill, Lenny and Sean follow him, easily jumping over the small gaps between the buildings. Arthur and Charles bring up the rear, in case any of the law gets uncharacteristically bold and follows them up.

Lenny strays too close to the edge. 

Charles sees him, and the cop below pointing a revolver at his head. Charles moves faster than what his head can process, lurching forward, wrenching Lenny backwards before he can get shot. He twists away from the bullet that’s fired anyway, turns his ankle on the edge of the building, tips over the side, loses to gravity, fingers just barely managing to catch on the building’s edge.

Bullets hit the brick around his body, chunks of concrete flying into the air. Charles breathes through the pain and the panic - tries to climb up - but his grip isn’t sure enough, isn’t solid enough to support his weight.

A bullet whizzes too close to his head; he can feel the heat of it by his ear. He tries futilely to haul himself up onto the rooftop, but he loses his grip, and feels his stomach drop as his fingers slip from the building and - 

Vice-like fingers catch his forearm - damn near his yanks his shoulder out of its socket - and Arthur Morgan’s blessed face appears, close in a way that means he’s pressed against the rooftop himself.

The bandages on Charles’ wrist move, reveal the very bottom edges of that damned countdown, and it’s the only thing he registers as Arthur somehow manages pulls him up enough that he can crawl on to the rooftop himself.

“Shit, they got ya,” Arthur curses as Charles adjusts the bandages on his wrist and tries to catch his breath. Arthur points to his calf, where a splotch of bright red is steadily staining his pant leg.

Charles doesn’t notice it until he looks, doesn’t feel the ache until his eyes catch on the blood. “Shit,” he says. It’s the only thing he can say. They still have ten or more rooftops to jump over, not to mention the ride back.

He takes the bandages from his knee - spares, in case he ever gets injured and needs something to staunch the blood - and wraps them around his calf, tightening them until it hurts.

You should leave me behind , is on the tip of Charles’ tongue, but he doesn’t get the chance to say it. Arthur grabs his arm once he’s finishing bandaging his leg, slings it around his shoulders and draws them both to their feet.

“You’re a right heavy bastard,” Arthur grunts, hooking his hand on Charles’ waist, leading them away from the street side. “Can you make the jumps yourself?”

Adrenaline acts as a powerful painkiller, and Charles is chalk-full of it. He nods, gritting his teeth, because if he can’t they’ll just end up at square one again.

“Good,” Arthur mutters. “ Great .”

Later, after they make it back to camp in one miraculous, bloody and sweating piece, Charles takes the time to hide behind a wagon and peek at the numbers on his wrist.

Three thousand, eight hundred and seventy nine days left, and he had almost died again, for what must be the hundredth time now.

If he really is going to last another ten years, then the universe must really love constantly putting his life in danger. 

A leaf crackles softly beneath a shoe. Charles hastily pulls the bandages back up and over the numbers, glancing to where the noise had come from.

“Didn’t mean to startle you, Charles,” Arthur says in lieu of greeting, holding his hands up in surrender. “Actually didn’t know you could be startled…”

“Arthur,” Charles greets warily. After they’d twisted the bullet out of his legs, it started hurting like a right son of a bitch, and hadn’t stopped hurting. He’s stubborn, but not stupid, so he’s staying off his feet.

“…How’s your leg?” Arthur asks, looming over him some sort of guardian angel, haloed by the slowly setting sun. It is literally blinding to look at him. 

“It’s fine,” Charles answers, lying with ease. Except it’s not a very believable lie, and he knows Arthur knows it  too. “It’s a little sore,” he tacks on as an afterthought.

“No trouble with it?”

“No trouble.”

Arthur shuffles awkwardly, shifting his weight around but only subtly. He doesn’t seem to know if he’s allowed to sit or not, but he obviously feels uncomfortable standing while Charles is on the ground. 

“What about your arm? I think I heard a crack when I pulled you up,” he says, chuckling slightly, rubbing the back of his neck.

It’s also ‘a little sore ’ and has been since they returned. 

“It’s fine,” Charles repeats, and decides he should try to stand. His leg throbs as he plants his feet under him and he’s forced to use the wagon behind him as support.

Arthur frowns his disapproval. “You sure?”

Charles bobs his head and breaths through a groan, his leg reminding him harshly of how painful bullet wounds are. Maybe that countdown is counting down the days until his last bullet wound - and if that’s the case, he doesn’t really know how he’s going to keep going until then.

“Should you, er, be standin’ like that?” Arthur asks, but without the urgency of the situation, he seems hesitant to lend Charles a helping hand.

Of course. They’ve only known each other for maybe three months, four if they were being generous.

“It’s fine,” Charles says for a third time, and it feels like each time he says it, it loses a little of its meaning. He carefully makes his way around the wagon, limping slightly towards his things. Once he settles onto his bedroll, he realises Arthur has followed him, for whatever reason. “Need something, Arthur?”

“…No,” Arthur says, faltering. 

Charles frowns at him, and figures Arthur is just being Arthur, socially awkward at the best of times, entirely inept at the worst of them.

Arthur opens his mouth to say something else, eyes fixated on where Charles’ hands are resting on his knees, but one of the Callander brothers calls him away. He hesitates, clicks his jaw shut, but ends up leaving without saying a word.

What a strange man.

Charles rubs his thumb idly over his wrist. 

Three thousand, eight hundred and seventy nine days left.

What in the world could happen in ten years that hasn’t already happened?

Maybe he’ll get married in ten years.

Hah.

What a thought.

Blackwater happens. 

It’s a shit hole for everyone involved, including the civilians who get caught in the crossfire, and worse.

Charles shoves a shotgun away from Tilly, moves without thinking, and gets half of his hand burned for it, skin peeling and bright damn red. His left hand. Sean gets taken in the chaos, and no one knows where Davey has been hauled off to.

Charles isn’t the only one hurt, and his burn is far from fatal, unlike Jenny, who’s pale face only gets paler as the days after Blackwater drag on, and Mac, who can barely walk on his own.

Jenny dies. She succumbs to her wounds, infection and fever blotching her skin bright pink, as pink as Charles’ hand. They bury her in the soil but the snow climbs atop of it within minutes, suffocating her body and her grave marker.

Mac dies. Because of the cold, or the hunger, or maybe the hole in his gut, no one is certain. They leave his body with two gold coins on his eyelids for the ferryman and in the abandoned town of Colter.

They acquire one Sadie Adler, and Dutch tells Bill to bury her husband, but Charles doubts he even bothers moving the body in the first place l, because Bill returns to the gang within five minutes.

Charles would go back and check, hell, he would have volunteered himself for the grim task, if it wasn't for his damned hand. Because of that damned hand though, he gets a chance to hunt with Arthur. It’s a quiet affair, grief hanging heavily around Arthur, but they make progress.

Charles cannot understand it.

Jenny, he supposes, deserves to be mourned. Her humour was whiplash and sharp and cruller than it needed to be, but beyond it she could be kind.

Mac and Davey? They were right bastards while they were alive, to Charles, to Lenny, to Tilly. Charles only regrets not telling them so to their faces, but Arthur is mourning them, so they cannot be all too bad.

Three thousand, seven hundred and eighty six days left.

He has known Arthur for half a year. He had said he would only stay for winter, and even though surviving in the Grizzlies is as harsh as any other winter, winter came and it went.

And he stayed.

The gang heads down to Horseshoe Overlook, a proper home compared to the icy landscape of Colter. There aren’t any real structures, but the gang has been living out of wagons and tents since its conception.

Charles’ bandages come off - but only the ones around his hand. He hadn’t let anyone touch his hand while it was burning and throbbing, and Grimshaw had only allowed it, because he was already full of scars and clearly alive and well.

Arthur’s eyes snag on his hand once the bandages are removed - there’s rough skin on his palm, healed but scarred over. His expression twists with bemusement, and Charles realises his eyes are on his wrist, not his hand.

“Arthur?” Charles questions.

Arthur snaps out of his stupor, distinctly embarrassed at having been caught staring. “Uh yeah, Charles?”

“Do I got something on my face or is there something behind me?” Charles asks him, pulling the axe and resting it against his shoulder. He had been chopping wood for a few minutes when Arthur had wandered over and spent a long time just… watching him.

“No… er…” Arthur frowns immensely, unsure of himself, his lip twitching downwards. “I don’t mean anythin’ ‘bout it… but that wrist of yours. Is it alright for ya to be workin’ like this?”

Once Charles’ hand had healed enough for him to work, he had set on all the chores that Arthur had been forced to complete in his absence, which, unfortunately, was a lot. Arthur had looked tired over the past couple of weeks, and it wasn’t entirely Charles’ fault, but his injury had been contributing to it.

“Yeah,” Charles says shortly, because he doesn’t want to explain the mysterious numbers on his wrist that have been there since he was born. He can’t properly explain them either.

“…If it’s ever botherin’ ya… you could always talk to me about it.”

Charles raises an eyebrow at Arthur - I would rather talk to my horse than most people - Morgan, and shifts his weight, placing his foot on the edge of the tree stump they use for firewood chopping. “Really?” he questions, the singular word incredibly unconvinced.

Arthur bobs his head, hiding his face under the brim of his hat, fingers still pinching it lightly. All Charles can see is the curve of his jaw and the slight stubble on it. Arthur’s hair is longer than how he used to wear it before Blackwater, but not nearly as long as Charles’. It brushes the nape of his neck, and Charles sees him swiping at it all of the time, as if it bothers him.

“Yeah,” Arthur says after a moment.

How is this degenerate murderer and thief so endearing? Charles wonders, staring blankly at Arthur. Staring. At Arthur. Charles curses a God he doesn’t believe him and drops the axe onto the log.

“Let’s go on a hunting trip,” Charles says abruptly, walking over to clap a hand onto Arthur’s shoulder. 

Arthur regards him curiously, pleasantly surprised, and nods. “I’ll go tell Dutch,” he says, and ducks away to do exactly that.

Charles watches his retreating form, thumb rubbing the bandages applied to his wrist. He finds himself doing the action whenever he’s deep in thought, an annoyingly unconscious thing. He doesn’t do a lot of things unconsciously, especially not anything that would draw attention to himself.

Damn , he thinks, pulling his hand away from his wrist. He makes sure no one is watching him and glances down at his hand, sliding the bandages down.

Three thousand, seven hundred and eighty two days.

Charles and Arthur head south, a bit too far in Charles’ opinion, but he assures himself things will be just fine. They scout the area and there are no other people, but no animals either. It’s dark, though, and Charles would rather not travel at night in the state that they’re in, so he suggests they set up camp and Arthur obliges.

Taima nickers and nips at Atlas like she always does, chasing the other mare, a tall and proud Dutch Warmblood that is largely brown with burgundy colouring around its joints. 

Charles throws a few sticks into a small pile, hoping they can risk a small fire for the night. He wrinkles his nose at the thought of attracting trouble for a little warmth - but that’s how the rest of his life has been shaped by, so…

“Charles?” Arthur calls, pulling him out of his thoughts like he so often does. Charles makes a low hum of acknowledgement, grabbing a match and striking it to put to the kindling. The kindling catches within moments, and he drops it into the collected firewood. 

“Got anythin’ to eat?” Arthur asks. 

Charles snorts a little and runs his hand through his hair, loose over his shoulder as they settle in for the night. “Hardtack and salted pork. But I think I saw a trap a few paces away, if you want me to have a look.”

“If you don’t mind,” Arthur says with that lovely, crooked smile of his. He might have spent all of his life on the run and eating whatever he could get his hands on, but he had never developed any taste - or tolerance - for hardtack. Charles guesses it has something to do with Pearson’s stew, which isn’t amazing , but it's sure better than hardtack. 

Charles nods and takes his shotgun into the woods with him. He had noticed the trap while they were riding into the spot that they would make their camp, and is pretty sure it had something in it, hopefully something they can. He’s a little reluctant to steal from someone else’s trap, but hardtack is… disgusting, to say the least, and he’s sure if the trapper knew where his catch was going, he would understand their situation. 

Indeed, the trap is full with one, plump rabbit. Charles takes care of it quickly and painlessly, heading back to camp with slow, sure steps, even in the dark. He had asked Arthur out on a hunting trip for one: to hunt, since Pearson had spent all morning complaining about a lack of protein again, and two… talk to him about the countdown. 

Arthur is an understanding man - had understood Charles’ aversion to alcohol without question, his wariness about other people, and his quiet nature. So Charles is sure, or really, really hopes that man understands that he isn’t practing witchcraft and is genuinely clueless about the countdown. 

He isn’t really sure why he’s telling Arthur of all people. 

If he wants answers, he’s better off asking Hosea, who might have heard something about the mysterious numbers, somehow, like how he somewhere hears all the whispers and details needed to pull off his crazy schemes, or Lenny, probably the smartest - book-wise - of the all the gang members. But Charles doesn’t particularly want answers, not when he can share a secret he’s been keeping for so long with someone who he trusts with his life. 

It's a little like the day they were moving from Colter into Horseshoe Overlook. He doesn’t usually spill his far from pleasant childhood and heart out to a couple of strangers, but Arthur had been all understanding looks and quietly supportive smiles. Charles likes to keep himself to himself, and that includes anything that could hurt him, physically or otherwise, but Arthur, like so many other things, seems to be an exception to that. 

By the time he returns to camp, to Arthur cheering at the sight of the rabbit in his hands, he makes up his mind. Arthur volunteers to handle the rabbit, since Charles had fetched it and was the one to see it in the first place, and Charles hands it over, simply because after himself and Javier, Arthur is the best with knives. 

He works as quickly as Charles might, and just as respectfully. Soon they have the butchered rabbit roasting over the fire. Arthur washes his hands off with a flask and sits down beside Charles with a quiet sigh, warming his drying hands in the fire. 

“Arthur,” Charles says, tipping his head back to stare at the expanse of space above them. It's a damn pretty sight. His hands are cold, but he doesn’t put them out like Arthur does. Instead, he puts his right fingers to his left wrist, fiddling with the bandage there. 

He’s sure Arthur sees it, notices it right away with those perceptive blue-green eyes of his, because he takes a beat to respond. “Yeah, Charles?”

“Ever heard of someone having a countdown on their wrist?” Charles asks, definitely the smoothest talker in the entire world. He cringes, internally, but he supposes it's better to rip the bandage off than beat around the bush. 

Arthur is silent again, but only for a few moments. He shifts where he’s sitting, and the fire crackles between them, utterly unaffected by the thick, stormy tension in the air. “Not really, unless they put it there themselves,” he offers, which Charles supposes is as good an answer as anyone can give, in this situation. 

Charles’ fingers snag on the bandages, and he slowly pulls them off, wrist facing inwards, away from Arthur. He can’t help but frown slightly to himself as the numbers are revealed. He rubs his thumb over them, wondering if his left hand is somehow cursed with all that’s happened to it. 

“...You alright, Charles?” Arthur asks, staring at him openly now, brows furrowed in confusion, a frown tinted with concern pulling at his lips. 

Charles doesn’t say a word. He just turns his wrist until the numbers face the sky, and offers his hand to Arthur. Arthur, who’s blue-green eyes go from Charles’ face to his wrist, which widen in confused surprise. Arthur, who takes his hand like it is made out of glass, and skims his thumb just above the numbers, so softly it hurts Charles’ head just a little bit. 

“I…” Arthur trails off, staring, staring, staring, his eyes boring into Charles’ skin. Charles finds that he can’t bring himself to look, to know the sort of expression Arthur is wearing, so he tilts his head back up and stares at the sky, twinkling stars glowing as brightly as those numbers. “Do you… know what this is?” Arthur askes eventually. 

“No,” Charles replies, the simple truth. “I just thought…” Nothing. He had no thoughts about telling Arthur about the countdown, just thought he should know. “Just thought it’d be fine if you knew… I ‘spose.”

“...What’s it counting down?” Arthur asks, still holding his hand like it is valuable, priceless jewels and not damaged and scarred like how it truly is. 

“Days, I’m pretty sure. Right now… It’s about ten years and a few months,” Charles answers. He does the maths every once in a while, when he can’t help but give into the curiosity. The number on his wrist gives him a bit of dread, sometimes, seeing how small it is, after considering that it represents days. 

Only three thousand days, and every single one in the past month has felt like it only lasted a second. Doing the maths brings him a certain type of comfort - because the number may seem small and about the same amount they get out of a good bank robbery, but ten years is a damn long time.

In his opinion, anyway. 

“Ten years,” Arthur mutters, sounding both mystified and mortified. Charles frowns deeper and finally turns to look at him. Unexpectedly, Arthur’s expression appears to be a mix of shock and terror. Charles almost yanks his hand out of his grip at the sight of it. 

“What?” Charles blurts out before he can stop himself - what is so shocking? What is so terrifying ?

“Only ten years?” Arthur asks him, eyes strangely filled with some fatalistic determination and lips set in a grim, grim line. Charles nods, hesitantly, wondering if he messed up by telling Arthur about the countdown. “And you ‘ave no idea what it’s for?”

“No idea,” Charles confirms, finding it hard to hold his piercing gaze.

“...It can’t be countin’ down to your last days,” Arthur says lowly, mostly to himself. He squeezes Charles’ wrist a little, firmly but gently, like when he squeezes Jack’s shoulder after Abigail and John scream at each other loud enough the birds go flying. 

“What are you talkin’ about?” Charles asks warily, less afraid now, but still rather confused. 

“Your last day. Or death. It just can’t be countin’ down to it, that’s all,” Arthur explains, like he’s trying to reassure himself, but that’s clearly not all. His expression is twisted with an emotion Charles can’t name anymore - it’s the exact same one his mother wore when his father had bought that silver band and clicked it around Charles’ wrist - which he still has with him, tucked away in a secret pocket he’d sewn into the back of his calf. 

“Why not?” Charles asks, because he has told himself that exact same sentence before but he has never found a good enough reason to believe that it's not true, other than a depressing and cynical - I probably won’t live long enough to get to thirty seven in the first place. 

“Because you’re a damned good man and a young one at that. No way in hell are you dyin’ at thirty seven.”

“Good men die all of the time,” Charles points out. It is the truth, and they both know it, even if Mac and Davey barely count as ‘good men’ to Charles. “On who’s watch am I’m not dying at thirty seven, Arthur? Unless you’re actually the Lord playin’ cowboy.” 

Charles thinks he’s as funny as the hell white men condemn him to. 

Arthur doesn’t, clenching his jaw, obviously not finding the humour in the situation, which Charles finds greatly unfortunate. “Mine,” he says resolutely. 

Charles blinks. Isn’t quite sure how to take that. “What, you’re gonna make sure I don’t get to thirty seven instead?” he asks, assuming it's the safer option. Judging by the war Arthur’s expression tightens even further, it’s not. Damn. 

“Don’t say things like that,” Arthur chides with reproach, even though he’s saying stuff like that all the time, saying that he won’t make it to fifty and that at least he won’t be a mean bastard and an old one at the same time. “You ain’t dyin’ at thirty seven. You just ain’t, Charles,” he drawls in a way that makes his words almost believable. 

Charles raises his eyebrows at the pure determination in his voice. Arthur doesn’t seem like the person to get worked up about another person’s lifespan, especially when you take his entire life and career into account. 

“Okay,” Charles concedes, surprised but somewhat… pleased to have someone show so much concern over him, which is a little messed up. You can’t blame him, since the only other people who have cared about him this much are his parents, and one is probably dead and by now the other should be. 

Arthur gives Charles’ wrist one last squeeze before he relinquishes it. He averts his eyes to the ground and eases a sigh out through his nose, his fingers digging into his pocket.

“You should share,” Charles says as Arthur pulls a cigarette out and uses the goddamn campfire to light it.

“‘S my last one,” Arthur replies regretfully, the corner of his lip pulling to the side. He takes a drag, considerably dry lips pursing around the end of the cigarette, releasing the blue-tinted smoke after a moment. He offers the cigarette to Charles. Charles takes it. Lets the smoke seep into his lungs, warm and bitter. “Maybe ‘s countin’ down to meetin’ your true love, or something…” Arthur says out of the blue. 

Charles almost chokes on the smoke. He carefully lets it out, handing the cigarette back to Arthur. “What’re you even talking about?”

“The numbers,” Arthur answers, gesturing vaguely at him with a jerk of his hand. “You know. Ten years ‘till you meet some nice lady and settle down with her.”

Charles stares at Arthur, and his blue-green eyes that are more blue than green against the dark of night, and his dry lips, and the curve of his jaw, the lines of his fingers as they pinch the cigarette. He wants to laugh at the man’s face. Thinks about the cigarette they’re sharing. Bites his lip to keep from smiling. 

“Maybe,” he says, unconvinced and a little unimpressed. Maybe. Maybe in ten years he’ll tell Arthur how much he cares about him, finally figure out that nice, cosy feeling he gets whenever he appears. 

Maybe in a decade. 

They settle in for the night, finishing off the cigarette quickly, between the two of them. Charles watches the last digit on his wrist turn from an eight to a seven. He stares up at the sky, and wonders if he has stardust embedded into his skin. 

Ten years and a few months. 

A part of him never wants that moment to come. He wants to stay in this quiet, gentle moment with Arthur, out hunting and beneath the night sky, for as long as he can. 

The rest of him knows that the wheel of time is relentless, and stops for no one.

If he is to die in ten years, so be it. He will simply spend the rest of his days with the people - or person - he cares about. 

They move from Horseshoe Overlook into Clemens Point. Things go downhill from there. Arthur and Charles are too busy to even go hunting, most days. Arthur either visits Rhodes for provisions, since Charles cannot, and Charles hunts sparsely, alone, in the surrounding woods. 

Arthur disappears for three damn days, and no one does a thing. Charles spends a day ‘hunting’ and brings back a deer to keep Dutch from asking why he is so ragged and exhausted once he returns. Hosea knows damn well why - Charles had crossed multiple state lines looking for Arthur, hunting the deer on the way back to camp, and still turned up empty. 

On the third day, when Charles is about to head off once again, Arthur appears slumped over Atlas, bloody, missing his beloved revolvers, and only in his union suit. 

Three thousand, seven hundred and sixty one days left. 

It means nothing to Charles, as Arthur screams deliriously into the night, as they try to clean his wounds, try to convince him that the danger is over. But is it really? When Dutch doesn’t visit Arthur while he’s healing, not even once , and Micah proves to be the least trustworthy person Charles has ever had the displeasure of meeting. 

Three thousand, seven hundred and thirty two days left.

Sean is shot in the middle of the street. Arthur asks Bill to bury his body, but Bill gets to camp and he gets drunk, and starts spilling that he dragged Sean’s body off the road but left it to rot. 

Charles goes to Saint Denis and finds Sean without any trouble - a testament to the bastard that is Bill Williamson. He takes Sean’s body and buries him at Flat Iron lake, under some shading trees, overlooking the body of placid water. He doesn’t linger.

Little Jack is taken. They don’t get him back right away. 

The Van Der Linde gang destroy two families in the same night in the process, but at this point, who cares?

They move from Clemens Point into Shady Belle. 

It is a rotting, and creaking manor in the middle of a swamp crawling with crocodiles, mosquitos and cottonmouth snakes - all of which remind Charles subtly of one Micah Bell. 

Charles hates it, wishes they were back in Clemens Point, or in Horseshoe Overlook, hell, he would even take Colter if it meant they managed to get out of the shithole Dutch and Hosea dragged them into, but they don’t have the time . Hosea and Dutch plan one final scheme to try to crawl out of the hell they have dragged the rest of the gang into.

They get Jack back, and they celebrate, but it is so hollow that Charles ends up walking away from it all midway through. He’s not bold enough to walk out of sight of the manor - not in fear of crocodiles but in fear of the ire Dutch will bring upon him - so he wanders back and ends up at the gazebo. 

He unwraps the bandages on his wrist. Spends a long, long moment staring at the numbers, no less dim despite the night and despite his own worries, wondering to himself, distantly, not quite there, what would happen if he tore them out of his skin. 

“Charles,” Arthur interrupts, stepping into the gazebo. Charles doesn’t bother covering them up again. Arthur has seen them… three times now, underneath the stars. A fourth means very little when gang members are dropping like flies and it feels like the rest are bound to follow. “Not joinin’ the party?”

He can still hear it, even with an entire house dividing them. Can hear Abigail’s delighted voice above all else, accompanied by Javier’s guitar playing, reminding him of when his parents used to dance together while he watched in the awe of love. 

“You’re here too,” Charles points out. He can’t muster any enthusiasm into his voice, but its usually monotone anyway. But monotone in a specific way, so specific that the tone he uses now makes Arthur frown. 

“Lookin’ for you,” Arthur tells him, sounding unaffected by the way Charles holds himself - tense and curled in, either making himself smaller or getting ready to attack. “...You alright, Charles?”

“Are you alright?” Charles shoots back immediately. He hadn’t had the chance to talk to Arthur since Sean’s death, too busy with hauling the camp away from Clemens Point, then having to provide food when all that surrounds them is mud, swamp and more mud. 

“Fine,” Arthur replies, and it’s such a bad lie a laugh actually startles past Charles’ lips. Arthur looks nonplussed - eyes widening, lips parting - but he says nothing. 

“You’re fine, I’m fine, Dutch is fine,” Charles snaps, practically spitting the words. He pauses in shock of himself. He forces a breath out slowly, trying to rein in his anger so he doesn’t lash out at someone who doesn’t deserve it. They - or at least Charles - know how Arthur so often takes the wrong things to heart. “You don’t hafta lie to me, Arthur. I mean, if you want to… Go ahead, I ‘spose, you wouldn’t be the first.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” Arthur says lowly, like it's a warning, but Charles can see the concern gleaming in his eyes. What a strange man Arthur Morgan is. A man Charles, unfortunately, has come to love. 

“I want to get out of here,” Charles tells him bluntly, eyes meeting sober ones. Arthur hadn’t really been enjoying the party himself either, it seemed. “I want…” My mother. And my father before my mother was taken away from us, and I want to know what the hell this damn countdown is counting down to. “I want Dutch and Hosea to get it together before they kill us all for some cash .”

Arthur bristles, always does with someone, consistently Charles in recent days, criticises Dutch and or Hosea. He can’t help it - raised a guard dog, always a guard dog, but Charles hates thinking of Arthur as nothing more than a dog, like the law and the Pinkertons do, so he attributes Arthur’s stubbornness to foolish loyalty. 

He has to remind himself that Arthur was raised by Hosea and Dutch, but he doesn’t have to force himself to understand, because a too-large part of him still hopes his alcoholic father is doing better after everything.

“They have a plan,” Arthur retorts, words sharp and forged by twenty years of tempered loyalty.. 

They have a plan. Charles has heard it a million times before. He’s sick and tired of it all - the tepid tension that runs through camp nowadays, a constant smog exacerbated by Dutch’s unpredictable outbreaks and the humid hell they’re in, and the death, and the violence. 

He digs into his pocket and pulls out the silver band his father had given him that fateful day. He considers wrapping it around his wrist, for old times sake, maybe cutting the circulation off from his hand.

“They always do,” Charles murmurs, because a plan is what Hosea and Arthur were trying to pull before Dutch and Micah screwed them over with the Blackwater job. Afterwards was a mad scramble for security, safety, shelter, not proper plans that they could get something out of - money robbing the Cornwall train, sure, and the Pinkertons on their heels for the rest of time - Arthur taken and tortured so that Dutch could continue his petty spat with Colm O’Driscoll - Sean killed and Jack taken just to burn down the Braitworth’s Manor like it was worth nothing. 

“Never mind I said anythin’ you damn…” Arthur trails off. He can’t bring himself to call Charles a bastard anymore, as hilarious as Charles finds it. His mood has been ruined, but Charles figured his mood wasn’t so great in the first place, considering he had snuck away from the party as well. “Just never mind.”

Charles takes his eyes away from Arthur, from his familiar frame and the familiar, righteous anger that coils in his body. Sometimes, Arthur is too like Hosea: brilliant, for all the wrong things, stubborn and quick to take new things in. A lot of the time, recently, Charles finds he is too much like Dutch: constantly lashing out on people who do not deserve it, angry at the world, angry at himself, blinded by a fantasy that is out of reach for the likes of the gang. 

“Least we know this ain’t about the gang’s last job,” Charles sneers, rewrapping his wrist. Arthur freezes midstep. Spins around and stalks forward until Charles can smell the smoke on his shirt. 

“What’re you talkin’ about?” Arthur asks, and beneath the anger is a very small sproutling of desperation. 

Charles doesn’t need to say anything. He tilts his chin upwards and stares at Arthur directly in the eye. His words mean a million things, and every connection Arthur makes is likely the truth. They both know he’s talking about the countdown. 

Ten years. 

If things keep going as they do, the gang won’t even last another month, not with Micah and Dutch at their head, manipulating everyone as they see fit. Even if the gang lasts more than a year…

Charles is sick and tired of it all.

He’s not going to stay ten years - not with Dutch, not with Micah, unless…

“Go back to the party,” he tells Arthur, tone perfectly even. 

Arthur’s fingers curl into a fist, one by one, but he uncurls them a beat later. How… reassuring. “What’s been wrong with ya recently, Charles?” Arthur asks instead of what Charles wants him to say. 

Tell me to stay , Charles pleads in his head, face an impassive mask. Tell me to stay with you and I will . 

But Arthur is a good man, even if he refuses to believe it, and Charles is too selfish to speak his own thoughts aloud. 

He won’t ask Charles to stay because deep down he knows everything is going wrong and has been going wrong since Blackwater.

He won’t ask Charles to stay because it’d be like dragging a Saint down into hell, to him.

“I’m just tired,” Charles answers. It feels like a lie, because tired doesn’t encompass all the different ways his head and heart ache and throb. 

Arthur’s expression softens in the gilded moonlight. He’s so out of it he doesn’t catch onto Charles’ lie, doesn’t call him out on it like he might have few weeks ago. So much had changed in so little time. Charles squeezes his covered wrist as tightly as he can. 

“You should get some rest, Charles,” Arthur tells him, painfully soft. 

Charles doesn’t tell him that its an impossible task with how loud the other gang members are celebrating and the type of thoughts filling his head with cotton. He just nods instead. Let’s the resignation settle over his features like freezing snow on top of soil. “Alright.”

Arthur’s lips try to smile, but it falls flat. He turns to leave again, though not before casting his gaze over his shoulder, one last time, expression twisting. He says nothing as he leaves. Charles suspects it will the end of them - all the words unspoken between them seem numerous enough to suffocate him. 

He squeezes his wrist again. 

Ten years and a few months. 

What the hell are they doing?

Kieren is brutally killed.

They don’t even see it.

Charles buries his body.

Arthur rides out of Shady Belle and returns three days later with a bruise marring his knuckles and no excuses.

A bank robbery in Saint Denis. Nothing more, nothing less. Everyone is in top shape, aside from Arthur, who’s starting to get a nasty cough. He ignores the concerned looks Charles gives him, ignores everyone else who just wants him to sit down for a minute. 

One last job before they’re off to Tahiti. Charles doesn’t want to go to goddamned Tahiti, he wants to go home, but he doesn’t even know where that is anymore.

Like everything else that Micah has ever gotten his hands on, it goes to shit. 

Hosea gets shot, gets killed , and Dutch at least gives him the courtesy of watching him bleed out. Lenny isn’t so lucky. Charles stays with Arthur and Lenny is still alive when Bill and Micah race past them. Javier falters, glances back, but keeps running and Dutch just yells at the two of them that they need to move.

They find some old, abandoned apartment, somehow. Charles is too exhausted to care, and the stupid coat and vest he’s wearing only makes him hotter and sweatier. Dutch shoves him out of a chair and onto the floor. Charles near throttles him right then and there, but they’re supposed to keep quiet.

Charles doesn’t look at his timer for a long time, but knows it’s in his skin, probably in his goddamn bones with all the luck he has in life. He creates a distraction so the other can escape - so Arthur can escape.

He doesn’t look at his countdown, but he knows it’s still there, numbers slipping away as the days trickle past and Arthur still doesn’t show up.

He, Sadie and Tilly steal Hosea’s and Lenny’s bodies to give a proper funeral, a pretty burial on a pretty day while they ignore the painful deaths looming above them all.

The numbers on his wrist are not counting down until Charles’ heart is broken, that , he is at least certain of, especially once he sits down with Rains Fall and lets his hair be cut for the first time in twenty years.

But Arthur returns, some unknown time later - because Charles refuses to acknowledge the passage of time while the one person he loves most in the is probably dead. Maybe the countdown had known. Maybe they have the time.

But they don’t really, because Dutch and Micah appear as well, and so does Javier and Bill, and the abandoned town Charles and Sadie managed to secure is torn apart with bullets.

Moving, moving, moving - Charles thinks that he settled in with the Van Der Linde gang for some security, but that doesn’t seem to exist any longer.

Grimshaw shoots Molly.

Charles never got to know Molly properly, but he remembers one afternoon at Clemens Point, an eternity ago, where they had shared coffee as they watched the sun rise over a new day, and griped about the people they cared about.

He remembers bitter coffee and bitter company.

He volunteers to cremate the body for Pearson and Bill. He doesn’t. He buries Molly’s body where he knows Dutch won’t find it, and wonders if this is all he’ll ever do in life, burying people he once knew, in the quiet of night.

He can’t look Grimshaw in the eye anymore, he finds. He doesn’t believe Molly had ratted them out either, but he seems to be the only one.

Javier and Bill get snappish, start being paranoid about everything and anything. Abigail and the others skirt around camp amongst themselves. Karen deteriorates further.

Arthur gets sicker.

Arthur tells Charles that he’s dying.

(Arthur breaks his heart a second time, but doesn’t need to know that.)

Charles tells him that he’s lucky to know, to have the opportunity to make amends. He finds himself resenting the countdown on his wrist, because if only he just knew what it meant his life and choices would be so much easier.

They break Eagle Flies out of Fort Wallace.

Dutch agrees to help rob the Oil Refinery, and Charles knows that he’s not doing it out of the good of his heart, but what can he say when Arthur is going along with it and Eagle Flies looks happier than ever?

Dutch tells Eagle Flies he never had a son of his own. 

Right in front of Arthur.

Charles instinctively reaches for his hand to offer any modicum of comfort he can, but it’s batted away and Arthur turns sharply to Atlas.

Charles’ heart squeezes.

And it shatters in its entirety as he tells Arthur that he has to stay back for the Wapiti, because the succeeding chief is dead as a result of his meddling, and they have so few men left that are uninjured and they need to move so desperately that Charles would be condemning them if he left them on their own.

Arthur volunteers to stay with him, but Charles can tell by his blotchy skin, his hoarse voice and the sickly jaundice in his eyes that he is dying. However long he wants to stay will not be enough, and Charles knows him so well that he knows Arthur will never forgive himself if he leaves the gang, his family, even as hacked to pieces as it is.

“Take this,” Charles tells him, pressing the silver band into Arthur’s hands. 

“This is-”

“-In case the gang needs some extra cash,” Charles says, managing not to scream at Arthur that he loves him and has loved him all for the nine months they’ve known each other. “Please. Just take it.”

Arthur looks at him in the eye - still beautiful blue-green, even if they’re ringed with red and heavy eyebags - and nods. “Thank you, Charles.”

Charles has no words. He flings his arms around Arthur, ignores his stuttered protests, ignores the way Arthur's voice breaks when he rasps, “ You’ll get sick.”

“Good luck,” Charles whispers in his ear, selfishly trying to hug him so tightly he breaks a rib and has to stay at the reservation. But because time is endless, he has to step back before he gets a chance. 

“I’ll see you around, Charles,” Arthur promises, hacking a lung out as he climbs atop of Atlas. 

Arthur lies.

Charles watches him go, feels an invisible hand slide past his ribs and wrench the shell of his heart out of him. But because time is endless, he does not have time to grieve, and neither do the people of Wapiti. 

They bury the dead.

They heard north. 

Charles does as much as he can. He feels a certain sense of deja vu wash over him, as he runs around the temporary camp the Wapiti have set up, chopping wood, digging latrines, attending to the wounded, preparing food, mending clothing. He is reminded of when Arthur was sick in bed, after that godforsaken parlay, and only Charles was keeping the camp afloat, except there are so many more people and they are so much better than the gang members of the Van Der Linde gang.

He finds himself pacing back and forth in the early hours of the morning - so early that the sun is beginning to rise over the mountains - soothing the yowling cries of an infant to give its family a chance to sleep. 

The bandages on his wrist slip downwards, but his hands are full, so he cannot tug them back up, not before seeing the remaining number on the countdown. 

Three thousand, six hundred and fifty. 

It is exactly ten years. 

Charles freezes in place, unsure why the number feels so significant, but the infant begins wailing anew and he has to keep walking. He keeps his eyes off the countdown. Keeps them on the sunrise instead, which he had never particularly liked compared to the sunset but Arthur had loved. 

Oh, Arthur , he thinks, wishing they had more time, always wishing he had more time.

Charles is buying provisions for the tribe when he sees the newspaper, and its headline, in black, bold screaming print. 

[VAN DER LINDE GANG KILLED - WANTED CRIMINALS BROUGHT TO JUSTICE]

It is only experience that keeps him from dropping all of his supplies and grabbing the daily print. He secures them all to Taima first, then heads back into the general store to buy the paper as well. He tucks it away in one of his saddlebags and gets the provisions to the tribe before he sits down and reads through the newspaper.

He sees the words. Doesn’t quite absorb them until a droplet of water falls onto the paper, smudging the ink, and he realises that it is a tear.

The daily paper - ruined by an embarrassing amount of tears - is the only thing he can bring to Rains Fall’s tipi. Rains Fall, who knows grief as well as he knew his son, just wishes him good luck and promises that he is welcome to return whenever he would like to. 

Charles returns to Beaver Hollow, and finds the remains of Susan Grimshaw. He buries her, because he feels like it is the only thing he is good for, and searches through the camp for the others. 

He finds a trail of dead law, and Atlas. Atlas, the most innocent of them all, undeserving of the fate she had met. Charles has already accepted Arthur is dead - his beloved horse only solidifies that belief. 

He finds Arthur. 

A silver bracelet clutched in his fingers. 

He chokes on his own sobs and holds the man he had loved so viciously for the last time. 

Wraps his body in soft linen and wishes Arthur could have had such softness while he was alive. 

Knows exactly what to engrave onto his grave marker. 

Blessed Are Those Who Hunger And Thirst For Righteousness. 

Time ticks away. 

Chapter Text

Seven hundred and twenty eight days left. 

Charles barely pays the dwindling number any attention any more. He just isn’t interested in it. He returns to the Wapiti, but he doesn’t stay for long. He helps as much as he can, but leaves before the end of the month to tend to Arthur’s grave.

He always returns to that mountain side to tend to Arthur’s grave. 

He meets Mary Linton, formally, after sending a letter to her last residence that Arthur is dead and then listing his burial site. She’s a pretty woman, calm and polite, so unlike Arthur, so unlike Charles .

He wonders if she’ll ever fully understand the gift she had - Arthur’s unending love and devotion. loved 

John is alive, so is Uncle, somehow , and Sadie is doing well, despite everything that has happened. Abigail and Jack are doing well. It’s painful. They're a happy family in the ranch house that Charles helped build. 

He wonders if he and Arthur could have built something like that. Realises it's no use, because he held his tongue for too long and never told him how he felt. 

Sadie tracks down Micah, or the gang he started, and Charles doesn’t really want John to come along since he has everything Charles ever wanted right there , and he’s going to leave it for revenge - but since when did John ever listen to anyone?

Micah’s death feels inconsequential. 

John doesn’t give them many details, and Charles is in too much pain to really care. Deliriously, from that pain, and the lack of air so high up in the mountains, and the bloodloss, he’s reminded of Arthur - returning after three days of absence wounded, shot in his shoulder.

Arthur always comes back to him at the worst of times.

Charles leaves the Marston - or Milton - Family Ranch when his wrist reads: Six hundred and sixty five. 

A little under two years.

Tells the family merrily wishing him off that he’s heading north, into Canada, hoping to settle down with someone and start a family of his own. 

Who is he kidding? 

He’s just leaving them before they can leave him first. 

It has always been like this. 

He manages an entire year before he returns to the states. Arthur’s grave is fine. It’s lonely, but he assumes Mother Nature has decided to soothe the unending ache in Charles’ heart for a short moment, as he gazes at the flowers growing all around the grave. 

Flowers Arthur would have loved to draw, or pressed into his journal for safe keeping. 

Charles has mourned Arthur for longer than he knew him, and he can’t stop remembering all the little ways he was Arthur Morgan and no one else. 

Three. 

Charles tries half-heartedly to rub the number off his skin. A disconnected sort of dread floods through him - like all the dread he felt after Blackwater, but distinctly muted and locked too far out of his reach for him to feel. 

He goes about his day as usual. 

Goes and lingers by Arthur’s grave for a while. Tries to carve Atlas out of a piece of wood as she was, tall and proud, warm brown and burgundy. It's a poor imitation, but he leaves the finished statue by the grave marker anyway. 

Talks to John - who definitely notices that he doesn’t have a family yet, but doesn’t say anything about it - and realises that the last time John saw Arthur alive was ten years ago.

John gives him Arthur’s journal for him to keep. 

Says that he’d had it for so long, he could recreate the thing from front cover to back cover in his sleep. 

He doesn't know how to feel about that. About anything. 

He misses his mother and father. 

Two. 

Two days left, after a lifetime of waiting. Charles wakes up in the Marston’s guest room, sunlight streaming through the rickety room squarely into his eyes. He takes Arthur’s journal and visits Arthur’s grave again.

Goes through the pages like he is reading something holier than the original copy of the bible. 

There are a lot of drawings of him, in moments where he hadn’t realised Arthur had been looking and sketching. His hair shining silver in the moonlight, when he hadn’t cut it long yet. His scars drawn with intricate care and detail.

[Charles is a better man than I am]

It’s a phrase he reads a lot in Arthur’s neat, painfully endearing cursive. 

[I think I’m in love with Charles Smith]

It’s a phrase he reads less. He’s glad for it, because every time he sees the words he thinks his chest is going to cave in. 

[I want to tell him There isn’t a lot of things someone like me can give someone like him Maybe in another life]

[I wish we had more time]

One. 

Charles gives the journal back to John. 

John stares at him in bewilderment and thinly veiled concealed concern. 

“You keep it safe for me,” Charles tells him, tucking his hands into his pocket, hiding his wrist and the single digit it holds from the world. “I’m glad we got to meet, John. Tell Uncle if I don’t show up tomorrow mornin’ that he can have my hunting knife, but Jack gets my bow and Abigail and Sadie get a tomahawk each.”

“What are you… What are you saying, Charles?” John asks, holding the journal like it is the only thing keeping him upright. “You’re not gonna… do somethin’ are you?”

“Nothin’ like that,” Charles replies, faintly and morbidly amused. “I’m just gonna walk around Saint Denis.”

“Well, you keep yourself safe, alright, Charles?” John tells him. He’s frowning immensely, and shifting his weight like he has a snake in his boot. 

“I will,” Charles promises, but he doesn’t say a word about the number on his wrist. 

Nor about the page that he tore out of Arthur’s journal, something John will notice if he ever flips through its pages again, because it was the very last one. 

Charles heads out like he said he would, and he simply wanders through the streets of Saint Denis for a few hours - hours that slip past him like every other day in his life, hours that he doesn’t notice going until the sun is setting over the horizon.

It’s beautiful.

“Charles? Is that you?” A familiar voice drags him away from his thoughts.

He blinks and looks away from the purpling sky, meeting eyes with one Tilly Jackson- er, something else, since John had told him that she had gotten married a few years ago. “Tilly,” he greets, nodding and not quite ignoring, but not quite looking at either, the young child at her side.

“Mind if I sit? My husband will be out of the tailor in a few minutes,” Tilly asks, politer than Trelawny on a good day. Her daughter stares at Charles in silence.

“Go ahead,” Charles replies, shuffling over on the bench he, even though there’s no need to. 

Tilly sits down beside him and pulls her daughter up on the other side of her. Ridiculously, Charles avoids looking at either of them, fixing his eyes on the sky again. 

Tilly hums slightly, taking her daughter’s hands in hers to warm in the cooling weather. Charles still doesn’t look, which a stranger might consider impolite. Those who know him know it’s just something he does. 

Tilly stifles a giggle. “Charles?”

Charles hums in response, wrist pressed against the jeans he’s wearing. He’s… a bit terrified. Last time he had to deal with a kid, that kid was thirteen - Jack.

“You don’t want to see Arthur the Second?”

Charles flinches. He whips his head at Tilly, who is grinning like she always does when someone accepts a game of dominoes with her - or er, always did when someone accepted a game of dominoes with her. 

“Did you-” he can’t finish the question. 

Tilly dips her head as she hides her smile, giving away her trick. Her daughter frowns immensely - adorable - and prides at her mother’s cheeks. “Nah, I’m just kidding ya, Charles.”

Charles has absolutely no idea why, but a sigh escapes him. Maybe because he knows that Arthur would be both overjoyed and mortified that Tilly had straddled his legacy to a kid he would never know. 

“She’s…” What do people say about other people’s babies? “She’s real cute, Tilly.”

“Ain’t she?” Tilly says fondly, turning slightly to pinch at her daughter’s cheeks, while she makes an offended noise and tries to get away. Charles is so unbelievably glad that she managed to find happiness after everything - she deserves it. A golden ring glints on her ring finger, and she’s dressed in fine, high-society clothing. 

“...What’s her name?”

“Jennifer Morgan Pierre,” Tilly answers, her grin prouder than anything he’s ever seen, eyes full of devotion. 

But the name choices do make Charles pause. Even though it’s been so long… “Jenny?” he questions. “And Morgan?”

“She was like a sister to me,” Tilly tells him softly. Her eyes flicker up from her daughter to meet Charles’ and they are soft with an accepted grief. “I know she could be a bit cruel with her language, but she pretty much took me in when I first started running with the gang, and Arthur… We both know he was a good man.”

Charles nods his agreement, thinking that Arthur would still be begrudging, but he’d accept his last name as middle name far more readily than a kid being named Arthur the Second.  

“It’s a good day,” he murmurs, off-topic, and Tilly loses a bit of the tension in her shoulders.

“How have you been doing, Charles? You look just about the same since I last saw you, which was…”

“Ten years ago,” he answers quickly. Arthur’s death anniversary, as it comes every year. And the end of that countdown.

“An entire decade,” she says wondrously. 

“Time flies,” he remarks, but he’s lying, because every day without Arthur chips away at his soul. Ten years had passed in spite of that.

“Anyway, how have you been? I heard you stay with the, er, Miltons’ from time to time,” Tilly intones, unused to calling them by their false names.

Charles glances at her daughter, Jennifer, and the little girl swinging her legs is a spitting image of Tilly, with round cheeks and doe eyes. 

“I’ve been doin’ alright,” he tells her. It’s a half-truth, because time had dulled the ache like the rest of his wounds, but like the rest of his wounds, the hole Arthur left in his life never quite healed. “You seem well.”

“Married a real nice feller after everything,” she explains, idly comparing Jennifer’s hands to her own. Jennifer’s hands are tiny. Absolutely minuscule, even compared to Tilly’s lithe fingers. “Actually got him out of a rough bar fight and apparently he fell for me right then and there.”

Charles smiles to himself. That sounds like a good ending- and almost jumps out of his skin when Tilly taps his forearm. “Tilly?” he questions.

Tilly has pulled Jennifer onto her lap, and is holding Jennifer’s arm by the wrist, splaying her tiny fingers out.

“You’ve got the biggest hands I’ve ever seen. C’mon, just a second,” Tilly pleads, gesturing with her daughter’s hands.

Charles’ brows creases, and he thinks about the glowing one on his wrist, and the fact nothing is covering it up besides his sleeve. He looks to Tilly, who looks like she’s about to burst into tears if he declines. Damn. She’d always been a good actor.

He sighs and lifts his hand off the knee, offering it up to Jennifer and Tilly. Without hesitation, Jennifer smacks her hand against his and keeps it there. Tiny. Her hand is utterly and ridiculously small against his.

Jennifer pouts immensely, apparently upset by the size of her hand. She leans in to whisper in Tilly’s ear, but because she looks about two years old, she’s terrible at whispering. 

“Will my hands ever get that big?” she asks, while Charles suppresses any sign that he had heard it and Tilly’s smile goes mischievous. 

“Maybe,” Tilly tells her daughter - lying to her face. “If you study hard. Why don’t you say hello to Mister Smith?”

Jennifer frowns and awkwardly turns, her hands folded politely in front of her. “Hello Mister Smith.”

“…Hello,” Charles replies stiffly, unsure of how to hold a conversation with a toddler.

Fortunately, he doesn't have to. Jennifer’s attention is immediately torn away from him and her face lights up. “Papa!” she squeals, and is lifted up by a pair of hands.

“Hello! Jennifer,” her father, presumably, exclaims as he twirls her around. He sets her on his hip and uses one hand to support her while he uses the other to fuss over her hair. Once he’s satisfied, he turns his attention to Charles. “Excuse my rudeness, my name is James Pierre, father of this lovely gal here and husband of this beautiful woman over there.”

Charles blinks, and is very glad he had never felt a desire to join high society. He accepts the hand that’s offered to him mechanically. “Charles Smith.”

“ …That Charles Smith?” James asks Tilly, who quirks an eyebrow back at him.

Charles glances at Tilly, unsure of what would warrant such a reaction to his name alone.

“ That Charles Smith,” Tilly replies apologetically.

Charles’ hand is suddenly being vigorously shaken. He feels his eyes go wide, as James puts all he has into shaking Charles’ hand. 

“Thank you so much! I cannot stress that you are the best thing to ever grace this forsaken planet!” James practically shouts into his face.

“Uh,” Charles vocalises, glancing at Tilly again, though this time far more frantically. 

“You saved Tilly’s life, young man!” Charles doesn’t feel so young. He’s a year older than Arthur ever was. “And without you, I never would have been able to meet my soulmate and create this beautiful soul!” James exclaims, finally letting go of his hand. 

“Right…” Charles says slowly, though he has no idea what he’s talking about. Sure, he’s saved the gang’s collective asses a couple of times, but Tilly specifically?

“Blackwater,” Tilly tells him helpfully, smiling to herself a little. “I never did get the chance to properly thank you for that. For everything .”

Charles didn’t think he did very much, besides be selfish and pine over Arthur. “I… didn’t realise you noticed.”

“I didn’t, at first, I thought you were just helping me up,” Tilly admits sheepishly. “But Arthur told me about what happened when some of the girls were wondering why your hand got injured, so I’ve known for a while.”

“...It was nothing.”

Tilly gives him a distinctly unimpressed look as James sits down beside her and Jennifer settles into his lap. She is the picture of everything anyone should want to be - wealthy enough to dress well, in high society, a daughter and doting husband by her side, happy. 

“It was everything , Charles,” she says, her words ringing sincere. 

Charles is at a loss for a moment - like Arthur, he has never been good at accepting praise for what he thinks is expected of him, for example, saving Tilly’s life. He had done it because she deserved to live, not because he wanted a thank you… but he suspects she wouldn’t understand. And he supposesthat it's alright if she doesn’t.

Charles nods once. “I’m just happy you’re happy.”

“Thanks, Charles,” Tilly smiles. “Are you happy?”

Charles falters again. Today is full of surprises, and when someone asks if he’s okay he can usually tell them that he’s just fine, because fine means normally, and normally he is frowning in his grief. But Tilly is asking if he’s happy , and he’s already found it hard to lie to the honest, good people. 

“I will be,” Charles answers after too long. 

Tilly’s smile shifts into something more sombre, and her hand lightly rests on his shoulder. “Good.”

Then:

Someone screams, high-pitched and shrill. They both flinch, and beside Tilly, James gets to his feet. 

“We need to go,” James tells Tilly, taking her hand and pulling her to her feet. Down the street, some sort of ruckus is happening. Charles gets anxious just at the sight of the law surrounding a building. 

“Charles- We’ll see each other again, won’t we? Write sometime,” Tilly asks of him, and he can do nothing but nod in agreement and hurry her and her family along to their carriage - which would be the strangest thing if he was in the mind to notice it. 

James quickly lifts his daughter into the carriage, climbing halfway in himself and offering a hand to pull Tilly in beside him. A bullet pierces the air, and Tilly jerks away on instinct. It's pure luck that she did, because a beat later a horse is tearing through the place she had just been standing. Charles catches her, neck twisting to see what’s going on, and there are four, five, masked bandits running straight at them.

Shit , is the only thought that goes through Charles’ mind as they register him. He gets a repeater levelled at his face and Tilly for his fumbling. At this point in life, you’d think he’d be better at things like this. 

“You his missus?” one of them snarls, gesturing with his gun from Tilly to Charles. They both freeze at that - because what the hell are they supposed to say?

“Oi, Andrew, what the hell are you doing?” one of the other bandits questions incredulously. “We got our money, let’s go .”

“Look at these two idiots, they’re rich!” Andrew yells, taking their silence as confirmation. The other three bandits glance at the two but keep running. 

Charles tries not to think of Lenny. 

“A few dollars ain’t worth being stringed up for! We need to get out before the cops realise it’s a distraction,” the other robber hisses. 

“If you don’t want money then piss off! I ain’t leavin’ until I get what I’m due!”

“ Andrew -” his sentence is caught off as he crumples to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut. Blood seeps into the cobbled streets. A smoking revolver peeks out of the carriage. 

Andrew has a moment of shock, only a singular moment, registering who’s blood is all over his face, before he snaps out of it. He points his gun at Tilly, face twisted in rage and terror, and Charles sees his finger squeeze on the trigger and he just-

Pushes Tilly out of the way. 

Hits the ground as something lodges into the chest. 

Sees - or hears - another body thumping down a few paces away from him. 

“Charles- Charles, you’re gonna be okay, you’re gonna be okay,” Tilly is whispering, like being too loud will kill him quicker, hands frantically pressing against his chest, hands becoming slippery with red. “Hey, you with me?”

Charles chokes on his answer. He’s dying, and the only thought he can manage is: I was right . 

All those years ago. 

That countdown really was just counting down the days to his death. 

“Tilly-” he croaks, and they had never been particularly close - on account of Charles being a bad conversation partner - but there are tears wetting her eyes and she can’t suppress a sob. 

“Yeah? You’ll- you’ll be just fine. We just need- A doctor!”

“It’s too- late- for me,” Charles rasps, using what little strength he has to grip her arm. His wrist glows with the number one. This is his last day. He is so sorry that it is Tilly who will have to deal with the aftermath. He is so damned sorry, but at the same time he’s not at all because she deserved to live. “Tell John ‘m sorry. I said I’d… keep m’self… safe.”

“ Charles ,” Tilly gasps, tears falling from her eyes fully now. 

“Tilly. Tilly you’re a damn- brave woman, you hear? I’m so glad you- found a family.” He has to force a breath from his lungs. His ribs rattle. It comes out as a wheeze. “Just- Bury me near Arthur, please ?”

“Of course,” Tilly swears, and Charles hears it in her voice that she will, that she would go to the ends of the world to make sure he is buried near Arthur. He doesn’t understand why she would go through so much effort for someone she barely knows, but she says one more thing, and it clicks. 

“Savin’ me yet again, Mister Smith, mighty cruel of you to when you’re losin’ your own life. You and that damned Mister Morgan,” she manages through her sobs. 

Charles can’t help but smile. 

Thinks of the journal page tucked into his pocket. 

“D’n’t… let J’nnifer see me…” he whispers, so faintly he’s not sure if she hears him. 

“You considerate fool ,” Tilly weeps, voice steeped in endearment regardless of her words. 

It is the last thing Charles hears until he is plunged wholly into darkness. 

The countdown flickers into zero.

Charles wakes up.

Charles Smith wakes up, and he immediately thinks, first and foremost: I’m in hell. 

Considering that he felt the bullet hit him in the streets of Saint Denis after pushing Tilly out of the way, and felt the life seeping out of him… 

He’s pretty sure he’s dead. 

And possibly in Hell.

Unfortunately, Hell looks a lot like Colter, the abandoned mining town they fled to after Blackwater. Charles’ head hurts something fierce, which only further drives home that he is in some eternal punishment in the afterlife. He goes to put his hand on the side of his head in an attempt to alleviate the pain, but all he manages is to spark more agony in his left hand. 

Wait-

Charles rips his hand away from his head and stares at the stark bandages covering it. He is either in Hell, or having one hell of a dream .

That’s not right.

This isn’t possible.

Charles has had weird dreams before, and that- He can still remember every detail of it, down the whittling that statue of Atlas and nicking his finger- was not a dream.

He’s in Hell.

He must be.

He tears the bandages off his hand - breath catching in his throat as he stares at a familiar burn marring the surface of it. He tugs at the bandages around his wrist nearly desperately, and stares at the rapidly dwindling numbers there. 

In a blink of an eye, the last digit has already fallen three places. 

It’s not counting days, it's counting seconds . 

You’re kidding me, Charles thinks, and he also thinks that he’s about to drop dead in about a minute. He glances around at his surroundings - it's the cabin he slept in with some of the others while they camped at Colter. It's empty though, and the sun is high in the sky. 

Warily, he takes his sawed-off shotgun and leaves the cabin. Maybe he’s not supposed to, maybe his eternal punishment is something stupid like… spending an eternity alone with nothing but his own thoughts and a cabin devoid of life, but nothing stops him from pushing the cabin door open other than a creak that sets him on edge. 

He cautiously steps outside, his boots crunching onto snow, the air biting at his face and his hand. He winces, regretting taking the bandages off so hastily, and strides further into the snow. Smoke curls upwards from the largest of the cabins.

It’s a trap .

But why bother if this is Hell?

Is a false sense of security apart of Charles’ worst nightmares?

…Probably.

Charles approaches the cabin, and when no demons appear to poke him with pitchforks or whatever demons are supposed to do to sinners, he opens the door. His entrance is met with several exclamations to get inside and shut the damn door Charles, you’re letting all the cold air in. 

Lenny stares at him from a crate. Lenny. Lenny Summers - alive - with his eyebrow raised in question. Across from him is Sean, trying to do… tricks with a set of cards - alive. Hosea and Dutch stand in a corner of the cabin, speaking quietly amongst themselves, Hosea gesturing animatedly like how he always used to - alive . 

Grimshaw and Molly are also chatting together. Grimshaw and Molly, alive, talking to each other. 

Charles must really be in Hell. 

Charles feels a buzz at his wrist. He glances down and sees the numbers glowing: Three, two, one , and because of some miracle, if those can happen in Hell, he doesn’t drop dead.

The cabin’s entrance doors open, and there he is, in all his wind-tousled hair and bitterly cold glory, Arthur goddamned Morgan. Charles spends a long moment staring at him in utter bewilderment, because he’s starting to realise that if this is Hell then everyone else is down here with him - and so many people don’t deserve that. 

He’s prematurely interrupted, thankfully, before he can say or do anything stupid. 

“Mac’s dead,” Abigail tells the group as she appears from one of the rooms. “We did all we could.”

The countdown resets, buzzing , ticking up to what Charles guesses is a few hours. 

“Damn,” Dutch mutters, leaving Hosea’s side and shuffling into the room Charles remembers Mac’s body is in. Dutch closes Mac’s eyes and places two gold coins onto them, muttering softly under his breath. 

Charles feels a strange feeling of dread wind through him, remembering how he had found both Grimshaw and Arthur, and the details John had filled him in with afterwards. He wonders how Dutch went from sacrificing a bit of his beloved cash for the fallen and then leaving corpses to rot. 

“Charles, what’re you doin’ with your hand?” comes Arthur’s voice from behind him, so painfully familiar Charles wants to punch him just to make sure he’s a solid living thing and not an illusion. 

“Huh?” he articulates as eloquently as Tilly’s husband might. 

Without warning, Arthur grabs his hand and inspects it - this is new. This hadn’t happened in the past, in the very unlikely chance that Charles is impossibly in the past and not in Hell. 

“What happened to the bandages?” Arthur elaborates, frowning deeply. “You can’t be leavin’ your wounds out in the open, ‘specially in this weather. Grimshaw, can you get me some spare bandages?”

Grimshaw looks pissed off at being interrupted midway through her conversation, but she realises that it's Arthur calling, who usually never asks for help, and Charles, who is apparently just as bad as he is. 

She ducks away from Molly for a moment and produces a roll of bandages. Arthur thanks her for them gratefully, and in the middle of the cabin, with meticulous and careful hands, he wraps the bandages around Charles’ palm. 

“Charles? You with me here?”

“Hey, you with me?” Tilly’s desperate voice, her tears, his blood.

Charles stares at Arthur. Clearly, Arthur hasn’t realised that they’re in Hell yet -  but that also means that Abigail is in Hell as well, doesn’t it? And Tilly, and Lenny, and Sean, and Jack . 

No, that can’t be right, but otherwise Charles has no idea what is happening and how he’s - alive? conscious? - after being shot fatally. 

“Come with me, for a moment,” Charles mutters, pushing past Javier and BIll for the door. Arthur calls out after him, but he’s on a one track mind - trying to figure out what in the world is happening, which is turning out to be less of an investigation and more like his mind scrambling for a grip on reality. 

Arthur follows him out to stables - and there Taima is, the lovely beast that she was while she was alive. Horses don’t go to Hell, do they? Not for the sins of their owners, at least, though perhaps for their own - the Lord probably knows that Taima is only well behaved when Charles is in danger. 

“Charles, are you doin’ alright?” Arthur asks, heading into the stables with him. “You’re acting… strange . Is your hand okay? It didn’t look infected to me…”

Charles abruptly turns around and grabs Arthur by his shirt. Arthur’s eyes go wide with shock and alarm. He raises his hands in surrender, gaze searching charles’ face with bemusement. 

“You’re real?” Charles asks, looking for something, anything that will tell him that he isn't, because that reality seems kinder.

Arthur stares back at him. “I think so? I feel pretty real- Do ya need’ta lie down or somethin’ Charles?”

Charles promptly lets go of him, and runs a trembling hand - his uninjured one - down his face. Arthur watches him, all concern and worried looks.

“I’m fine, just…” Dead. Dead and in Hell. “Tired,” Charles says.

“…Yeah, the cold makes it hard, doesn’t it?” Arthur says awkwardly, taking a step away from him. Arthur, who looks strong and healthy, before tuberculosis had taken its toll on him. 

But Charles remembers that page - those words - viscerally.

[I killed a man, Thomas Downes, for some cash - and six months later he kills me. I can't even be mad at him.]

“You feelin’ alright?” Charles asks, face pinching in concern.

“I’m doin’ as good as anyone can where we are. You, Charles?” Arthur asks back, equally as concerned.

Charles nods, eyes subconsciously flickering down to his wrist without him thinking about it. Arthur’s eyes follow him, so damn perceptive, but he doesn’t see the dimishishing numbers on his wrist.

An hour. What happens in an hour?

“Charles, if you’re hurtin’ in your hand, you need to tell someone,” Arthur hums warily, and Charles almost snorts in his face.

“I’m doing… fine ,” Charles eases out. “What about Marston?”

Arthur raises an eyebrow at the abrupt change in conversation topic. He allows it anyway, letting a frown contort his features. “What about him?”

“He’s been missin’ for a while, hasn’t he?” Maybe you should go find your brother before the cold takes anything more out of him.

“Wouldn’t be the first time he up and left the gang without a word,” Arthur mutters venomously. 

“In this weather? He’d have to be a fool,” Charles replies defensively, remembering Jim Milton, and that ranch and that house he helped build from the ground up. 

“Marston’s always been a fool, since when did you care ‘bout him?”

“…I’ll go look for him, if you won’t,” Charles says, and starts pushing past him, hoping Dutch gives him permission to look.

“Hey now,” Arthur calls, sounding off put and a bit irritated. “You shouldn’t be trekkin’ through these mountains with a hand like that, ‘ specially for a fool like Marston.”

“We’re all fools, Arthur,” Charles declares bitterly, and he thinks to himself that maybe he is actually in Hell because he doesn’t remember Arthur hating John so much…

No, he does - remember the vitriol and the venomous words between the two, but the memories are blurred by the pages of Arthur’s journal and John’s fond stories.

“ Fine, ” Arthur relents, catching Charles’ shoulder before he can enter the main cabin.

“ Fine what?” Charles questions, twisting around to stare at Arthur.

Arthur’s cheeks are flushed - from the cold. He removes his hand from Charles’ shoulder - Charles doesn’t let himself miss warmth - and tips his hat over his eyes. “I’ll go lookin’ for that damned John Marston. You… you sit tight though.”

He’s not alive. This isn’t real. I am in Hell .

Either way, this Arthur barely knows him. Doesn’t love him. Probably never will.

“Sure,” Charles says, since he didn’t help out last time and therefore won’t be of any help this time. He opens the cabin door and holds it open for Arthur to enter.

Like clockwork, Abigail rushes towards Arthur, Jack in her arms. “You have to go looking for John, Arthur, I ain’t see him in-“

“-I’ll go,” Arthur interrupts, barely holding back a sigh. He glances sideways at Charles, who offers a small smile as an award. Arthur averts his gaze and ducks his face below his hat. “Lookin’ for Marston. I’ll bring him back… in one piece, if I can.”

Abigail blinks her surprise, and a soft smile curves her chapped lips. “Thank you, Arthur.”

“It ain’t nothing. Come on, Javier, you’re with me,” Arthur mutters, and that’s different too, because Dutch had been the one to pair them up.

Charles shifts uneasily. Checks his wrist. Sees the declining number and lets his eyes squeeze shut for only a moment, carefully pulling a mask over his features.

It is going to be a very long day in Hell.

Charles watches in the privacy of his corner as the time ticks into zero, and remains zero, a glowing round circle, on his wrist. He looks through his pockets in the meantime, and finds his father’s - his - silver band.

And the page from Arthur’s journal, folded up in his front left pocket.

[I wish we had more time]

Charles must be in Hell.

Arthur and Javier return with John, freezing and his face disfigured, like it had been in the past, but alive.

Charles’ wrist burns as another countdown comes alive on the skin. He watches the numbers when he can, and figures they're minutes this time instead of seconds.

Pearson complains to Arthur about the lack of food, and it’s not really complaining now that Charles can reflect on it - its desperation disguised with small talk. 

“We’re runnin’ out of food, I swear, a whole damn horse couldn’t feed this camp,” Pearson grouses.

They’re all going to starve if someone doesn’t do something.

Charles volunteers to go hunting, like he did last time, and Arthur says that he can’t go hunting because of his hand, like last time.

Arthur goes hunting with Charles.

Learns everything just as he did last time, ten something years ago, takes to hunting like a fish to swimming.

“Good shot,” Charles calls as Arthur gets the second deer.

“Aye, I bet you could do better,” Arthur replies sheepishly, their past grievances seemingly forgiven for the moment.

“Maybe, but right now I can’t. I mean it, a good, clean, painless shot,” Charles remarks. And Arthur smiles perfectly. Charles’ heart squeezes. “Hey… Arthur.”

“Yeah?” Arthur responds curiously, eyes bright and shining in the Grizzlie air. 

Charles doesn’t want to ruin that look in his eyes - Arthur seems like a bird in flight, or a doe grazing the plains, so free and liberated.

“I think I’m in Hell,” Charles says.

Arthur’s face goes blank with shock, then morphs into something like pain, before settling into hard apathy. But he’s biting his cheek, and his hands tighten around Atlas’ reins. “I know I ain’t good company…”

“Not like that,” Charles corrects as quickly as he can, berating himself for not realising that is exactly how Arthur would reach. “Never like that. I just… I remember dying, but here I am. With you. I’m either Hell, or having some very strange pre-death visions”

That cursed expression slides off Arthur’s face, replaced with something more confused. “ What ?”

Charles stalks over to him and pulls his sleeve down from his wrist. He remembers a warm night in Shady Belle, in the gazebo, and an argument. It all seems so far away.

“Look,” Charles tells Arthur. The number on his wrist shines with a hundred and twenty seven minutes. “Something is going to happen in a hundred and twenty seven minutes. It happened with Mac, it happened with you findin’ John.”

Arthur looks at him dubiously and narrows his eyes, like Charles is playing some mean joke on him. “Did you get enough sleep last night?”

Charles can’t be mad at him for not understanding. Arthur’s probably just wondering how the hell he managed to get the numbers to glow like he did.

“You’ll see,” Charles promises, tugging his sleeve back down. “Come on, let’s get back to camp.”

They find Sadie Adler. Charles doesn’t know if he could have done anything more to help her. He screams at himself that he should have realises that was what the timer on his wrist was counting down to.

He buries Jake Adler’s body in place of Bill. Prays to a foreigner’s god that it’s the last body he’ll bury in this lifetime.

The countdown starts anew.

Hosea points out Horseshoe Overlook on a map, and after filling up on Pearson’s somewhat okay stew, which is downright delicious after a decade of not having it, the gang sets out.

“The wheel is going to break off the carriage and there will be three Native Americans on a nearby hill,” Charles tells Arthur, underneath the hustle and bustle of the camp getting ready to leave.

Arthur stares at Charles like he’s speaking another language, which, fair.

It happens as exactly as Charles says it would. The carriage wheel snaps down a little way when they’re out of the freezing cold and there isn’t snow completely covering the landscape.

Arthur stares at Charles again, his eyes piercing blue in the morning sun. 

“Charles and I will hold the wagon up while you fix the wheel,” Hosea calls as he gets off, and Charles mouths along to the words, perfectly.

Arthur is stiff as he gets off the wagon and fixes the wheel. Hosea points out the three men watching from the hill. Arthur can’t keep his eyes off Charles.

His journal page burns a hole into his pocket.

“How did you know that?” Arthur hisses, as they unload the wagon and Grimshaw barks at Karen to get back to work.

“I told you,” Charles snaps back, but he regrets his anger immediately. He’s just so confused and tired and still doesn’t know what’s happening. “I’ve lived this before. I think I’m in Hell, but this is… not as bad as Swanson said it would be.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“Clearly not ,” Charles huffs. He sort of wishes he was. He hesitates on his next words - John had filled him in with as many details as he could - Micah was the rat and Dutch had lost it, but there’s a chance they can fix this, isn’t there? Even if he is in Hell. “Micah’s not a good man.”

“Yeah, I know,” Arthur mutters, dry and scathing. His lips twitch with a frown. “You don’t usually care about him.”

Charles’ eyes snag on Sean, who is alive and as obnoxious as ever. “Dutch is going to rob a train owned by Leviticus Cornwall, and it is going to be our downfall, Arthur. I’ve only been with the gang a few months, but you started this with Dutch. He’ll listen to you if you tell him not to rob that train.”

I hope.

Arthur drops his burden and glances at Dutch. Dutch and Molly sit together, all lovey-dovey and romantic. Charles needs to get Molly out as soon as things go sour.

“If Dutch ever brings it up,” Arthur agrees hesitantly. He grimaces, but whatever is bothering him isn’t worth mentioning to Charles, because he doesn’t say anything else and strides away.

Charles helps finish setting up the rest of camp, making sure all of the wagons are intact, burying tent pegs into the ground, taking care of the horses. He presses his face against Taima’s for a long moment.

He had lost her a few years after Arthur’s death, and Taima’s just as… damn mischievous s the day they met. Charles feeds her some peppermints for all the time they missed out on.

After a while, he settles beneath an oak tree to attach fletching and flint to some arrow bases he’s already whittled. Idly, because his mind gets away from him, recently, he watches the camp as it functions a well oiled machine.

How much will change in the future if he changes it now? Will Tilly still save James Pierre and have a daughter? Will John still be able to build a ranch for his family? 

-In the event Charles isn’t actually in Hell, and somehow, through means he doesn’t really want to know about, he’s in the past.

A sharp pain erupts in his finger, and looking down reveals that he’s nicked his left index finger with the point of his knife. Damn. He watches the line of crimson as it falls from the tip of his finger and slides down the curve of it down into his palm, and down across his wrist.

44 .

Forty four minutes.

Charles glances up and watches as Micah leans in to talk surreptitiously to Dutch. Bastard. Anger wells in Charles fast and treacherous, and he’s grabbing his bow and notching an arrow before he can get his thoughts in order.

Don’t get yourself kicked out the gang before you can do some good.

Charles takes a breath, his arrow still trained on Micah’s smug, piggish eyes. Micah notices something by his foot, a shiny coin, and bends down to take it. Charles notices something else by his foot, something far more dangerous , adjusts his aim, and lets the arrow loose.

A half-aborted scream erupts out Micah as he jerks back, the skin of the very tip of his nose ripped away by Charles’ arrow.

“ Oi ! Where the hell do you think you’re shootin’?!” Micah demands, his face going pink with his rags.

Charles walks towards him and Dutch calmly.

Dutch frowns at him. “Charles?” 

Charles bends down and retrieves his arrow - and the snake sticking on the end of it. He pulls his arrow out of the poor animal, shoves it in Micah’s hands, and strides off.

“Dutch-“

“Hush, Micah, Charles just saved your life.”

“ Whatever.”

Charles stares at his countdown: forty three. 

That snake was venomous.

Maybe it could have gotten Micah in the eye.

Maybe Charles should have let it.

Dutch calls for Arthur.

Three.

Hosea follows Arthur into Dutch’s tent, no doubt curious, chatting quietly to Arthur about something else.

Two.

Charles squeezes his wrist until he feels like he can hear his bones creaking.

One.

There’s yelling from within Dutch’s tent. Grimshaw snaps at the ladies to stop staring and to keep working, but there isn’t a lot for them to do. Sadie looks confused and out of place in her dress and hair down over her shoulders. Tilly is playing dominoes with Karen.

Charles feels his wrist throb as the number shifts into a zero, like his father’s silver band shrunk and embedded in his skin.

Zero.

Arthur storms out of Dutch’s tent in an angry huff, Hosea following close behind him, but he pauses and shouts over his shoulder: “We’ll talk later, you fool!”

Arthur heads straight for where the horses are, probably looking to get the bare minimum tack on Atlas and ride out of camp for a few days. He just happens to pass by Charles, who’s holding his wrist with a white-knuckled grip.

He slows to a reluctant stop, gnashing his bottom lip with his teeth. “ Charles .”

“Arthur.”

“You were right,” Arthur says through gritted teeth. His eyes fixate Charles’ hands, and they glitter with concern before anger takes over it. “Damn it, you were right.”

“You’re headin’ out?” Charles asks, prying his fingers off one by one, turning to follow Arthur to the horses.

“For a few days, while Dutch blows off his steam,” Arthur mutters in reply, whistling sharply to call Atlas over. “He agreed not to rob the train, but he sure ain’t happy ‘bout it, and he sure ain’t happy that I was the one fighting him on it. Started spewin’ about loyalty and commitment, using Micah as an example, as if that bastard-“

Charles lets him rant for a little while and calls Taima over, giving her a peppermint before tacking her up for a few days of travel. Arthur’s voice is like music to his ears, as furious and acidic as it is. Charles finishes tacking Taima up before Arthur finishes tacking Atlas up, simply because he’s so angry he keeps messing up the buckles.

“Thanks, Charles,” Arthur sighs when he reaches forward to do them for him. Evidently, he’s not actually angry at Charles - an unexpected relief. “Are you headin’ somewhere?”

“Was hoping to leave with you,” Charles answers, mounting Taima before Arthur can stop him.

“Why would you-“

“Because you’re in a bad mood, and I don’t think it’s all too safe for you to be by yourself when you’re in a bad mood,” Charles replies easily. 

He knows how easily anger and grief can twist Arthur. Arthur had been a furious thirteen year old boy, and Dutch had given him a match and pointed him where to start the fires. Violence and anger are simply how he was raised - but Charles can try, can’t he?

If they weren’t in Hell.

“…Fine,” Arthur mutters, rubbing at his face and mounting Atlas. “I’m just gonna wander though. I ain’t much company.”

“You’re fine company,” Charles tells him plainly.

The countdown on his wrist remains at zero - he can see it where he rests the reins  on his thighs. He has no idea how long that will last, but he doesn’t care.

They finally have more time.

After ten, crawling, miserable years.

They finally have more time.