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Chapter Text

He knew it was a bad idea. Dutch knew it too, he was just too prideful to admit it. Hosea and him had been arguing all night, the older man trying to convince Dutch what he knew deep down to be true. Colm O’ Driscoll would never agree to a treaty. He would fight with Dutch tooth and nail, despite the common enemy between them. Despite the fact that it will take both of them to an early grave. Dutch just wouldn’t listen. Last night, Hosea’s soft pleas turned to desperate cries begging him to change his mind. To not let their son come on this mission that was so clearly a trap. However, in the past few months Dutch has started to listen to Hosea less and less. His grip on his ideals loosening, growing ever more comfortable with revenge rather than safety. It seems these days he was more fixated on vengeance than anything else, clouding it in this vague excuse of doing what has to be done. But Hosea knows the truth. The gang knows the truth. It’s just nobody has the balls to tell Dutch themselves, nobody but Arthur.

“I don’t like havin’ eyes on us,” Arthur grumbled, glancing up at the men on horseback uphill. His horse was uneasy under his grasp. Friend had always been a little skittish, he isn’t the bravest horse, but Arthur knew him well. Spent time brushing and feeding and riding the stallion after he grief strickenly replaced Boadicea following Blackwater. His trusted horse was completely terrified, and in turn Arthur was too. He had learned to trust Friend’s instincts, as quick to fear the young stallion was, he was often right.

Dutch didn't respond. Whether it was because he was lost in thought or because he didn’t give a damn what Arthur had to say he doesn’t know. He assumes the latter. That’s how business's been going lately. Arthur speaking his mind and getting in shit, or worse, the silent treatment from Dutch. He knew not to tread the line too much, he was careful with his words with Dutch, always. It just seems now no matter what he does, there is a flaw with it. Like every word he says, every action he takes needs to be as careful and steady as his voice when calming an animal. That’s what Dutch was slowly becoming, an animal unleashed.

Instead, Micah spits out another disingenuous platitude about how Arthur will be the eyes soon enough. Then, he presses into this falsified empathy deeper.

“Maybe he’s right, Dutch.” Micah agrees with Arthur. For a brief moment he thinks it's belated caution, but then he continues, “Maybe I have pushed too hard. Got us into situations that… could’ve been safer. I just… I see all those mouths we got to feed, and I… I dream too big. Caring too much, that’s my problem.”

Arthur tries to stifle the laugh that builds in his throat. Although this is no time for laughing, Micah saying he cares about anything other than himself is a funny prospect. He thinks Dutch picked up on the insincere nature of Micah's words and will have something to retort, a single sentence that cuts deep enough to silence, something he does so well. But he nods along.

“Carin’ too much? There’s no such thing.” Dutch’s voice laced with pride. Arthur had seen their dynamic grow the past couple of months. Micah had that blind loyalty that Dutch loved so much, seemingly easily manipulated. But there was something hiding under the surface. An ulterior motive that Arthur just couldn’t place.

“This is horse shit. From the both of you,” He scoffs, the chuckle he was trying to bury surfacing alongside his words. Dutch wasn’t always this malleable yet hardened. He hadn’t noticed the change in his leader until it was too late.

“It might be! Micah might be full of shit. Colm O’Driscoll might be full of shit. The promise of this great nation, men created equal, liberty and justice for all… that might be nonsense too. But it’s worth trying for. It’s worth believing in. Can’t you see that, friend?” Dutch barks out. Speaking of platitudes, Dutch is full of them. He speaks like a lawyer, like the conman he is. Arthur can read through the lines, he knows what Dutch really means. Everything is bullshit. Just do this for me, son. Dutch’s words were gospel, and Arthur was his favourite apostle.

Arthur sighs, mumbling out a shaky “I don’t know”. Dutch asks him to try, and that’s the end of that conversation.

They reach the fork in the road and Friend screeches to a halt. Confused on why the loyal horse has stopped so suddenly, he gets off him and walks around to his snoot. Patting his nose gently and whispering comforts into his steed. There is a fear in the horse’s eyes that he’s never seen before.

“The hell are you doing, Arthur?” Dutch calls out. He knows this tone. It lacks patience, lacks empathy. Dutch is trying to wield Arthur like a weapon and the thing standing in his way is a skittish horse.

Arthur sighs again, lifting an apple into Friend’s mouth and mounting him, urging him to keep going. He does, reluctantly as he can. Micah explains the vague plan he has, and points to a cliff edge where Arthur is going to stand guard from afar. Arthur tells them to meet him at the fork in the road after, no matter what, and Micah flashes him a smile that doesn’t meet his eyes, “We’ll be there, partner.”

Arthur makes his way uphill to the cliffsedge. About halfway, his horse skits to a halt again. Not wanting to cause Friend discomfort but knowing that he needs to get to the top quickly, he tries to shoo Friend away. However he just stands there, whinnying and bucking like he’s trying to send Arthur a wordless warning. Arthur pats his nose one last time before jogging up the hill, turning to see his horse standing still with pleading eyes. It’s like he knows something Arthur doesn’t.

Arthur gets to the cliff and squats near the edge of it. He readies his rifle and tries to steady the scope, but his hands are shaking. This isn’t normal for him at all and he knows it, which just worsens his anxiety. He’s used to dangerous plots, used to fighting for his life with a bullet instead of words, but everything about this is wrong. For the first time, his body is trying to force him to choose flight over fight, but he can’t. He needs to protect Dutch. He knows their dynamic is changing and he can’t take it. That’s his father, his god, the man who saved him and the man he’s killed so many good men for. He’s the only reason he agreed to go on this suicidal plan, because for Dutch he would walk into a battlefield blindfolded.

His hands tighten around the gun, trying to steady his grip and shaking hands. His heart is pounding as he tries to read Colm’s lips, a playful smirk stretched across them. He is silently praying for them to finish up quickly, watching O’Driscoll’s movement like a hawk. He should just take the shot now, while he has the chance. Kill the man that has been taunting and tormenting his father for years. But two of his men have rifles aimed at Dutch’s head, and he knows he isn’t quick enough right now to get all three. If he had control of his nerves, he could do it, but his aim is too shaky right now and he can’t afford any mistakes.

Suddenly, he hears rushed steps behind him. He swings his rifle around, an uncharacteristic panic in his eyes, and gets met by the stock of a gun.

Chapter Text

“Hello, sugar!” a slanged drawl broke through his consciousness. He tries to focus his vision but his eyes couldn’t lock onto anything, he could’ve sworn one of them wasn’t opening at all.

“You ain’t dead, is you? Not yet anyway,” a different voice speaks harshly. It feels like he’s dead. There’s a strange buzzing in his ears that is seemingly unrelenting. He can’t see himself, but he knows he’s swollen to shit. He’s sticky all over, and he assumes it’s his own blood. He hopes it’s his own blood. He tries to focus on more, to drink in his surroundings as much as he can, but it’s fruitless.

Plus, he doesn’t have time. A boot slams into his shin, sending a spike of pain up his leg. A muffled grunt escapes his lips despite him. A second blow to the face makes him cry out, followed by a two more hits before he’s knocked unconscious again.

He’s awake again, barely. A ringing resounds between his ears, incessant and unapologetic. He’s been left alone for a moment. There are men huddled by a campfire in front of him, no chains or ropes on his arms or legs. They must’ve thought he was too weak to run when he woke up. If he woke up. He thinks so too, frankly. The soreness in his back and knees made his breath shallow. Everything hurt. But he wasn’t tied up or being watched, and this might be his last chance to escape, so he takes it. The men by the fire are talking loudly about their plans but he can’t quite hear them. Between his racing mind, pounding heart and that goddamn ringing that just won’t stop, he can barely focus enough to stumble onto his feet. His feet scream with soreness. His left eye is still swollen shut and his right is clouded with tears but he tries to run. He hears the men behind him yelling something about shooting him which doesn’t sound all that bad right now, but they trip him instead, dragging him backwards by his foot and flipping him over on his back. He opens his eyes as much as he can, trying to focus on the men above him. All he can really see is a toothy smirk of satisfaction.

“Did I kill ya’? He barks out, leering down at Arthur with false sympathy. He doesn’t feel like he’s still got his wits to him but he coughs out a “not yet” with as much grace as he could muster. They could beat his face in, call him names and mess with him all they want. He will not kneel, will not beg and will not plead for salvation. Not that he deserves it. He’s a bad man, has done worse than this to innocent people with masked guilt. This is the way he should go out, being punished with ironic torture. Like God was staring down at him asking, How do you like it? Doesn’t feel good, huh?

Go out? What the hell was he thinking? He won’t die here. If he can’t save himself, something he’s done far too often, then surely Dutch’ll send someone out for him. Marston would come find him. Charles, the expert tracker he is, was going to follow the trail of blood he left behind and come find him, right? He wasn’t going to die like this, someone, anyone, would come and save him.

“Not yet, but I will,” a taunting voice pulled him out of his thoughts. The cool metal barrel of a gun is pushed against his shoulder, and a broken scream tears out of him. The pain is excruciating, hot and piercing like someone put dynamite inside his shoulder and rigged it to blow. Luckily, it didn’t last long as he passed out from the agony, being lulled back into uncertain unconsciousness.

He awoke again on the back of a horse, groaning in pain. Every step the horse took made his body buckle back up and slam against the horse's hide, and in turn his fresh wound. A white hot pang shot through his shoulder and he whimpered, a pathetic and foreign sound escaping him before closing his eyes and letting the world fade away from him.

Next he knew, he was hanging upside down, a cloth bag covering his face and making him breathe quick and shallow. He couldn’t see himself but he assumed he looked as bad as he felt. The ringing in his ear has turned to a rushed swimming as his blood pools in his skull, exaggerating his already swollen face. His face felt sticky, a mixture of blood and tears caking his swollen-shut eye. The aching in his shoulder was unrelenting, every time he swayed on his chains it sent a white-hot spike of pain through his shoulder and into his arm and neck. It felt like someone was holding a torch to his shoulder. He felt vulnerable, more vulnerable than perhaps he’s ever felt in his life. He felt like a boy again, his efforts to defend himself meaningless against the much stronger force of his father. But he wasn’t a boy anymore, he was a man, and he needed to act like it.

His face hardened. His mind screamed, screamed for him to plead for mercy. To beg, to be as pitiful and pathetic as he felt. He wanted to beg for his life, but he knew it would fall on deaf ears. So he summoned all the pride he had left and tried to look as stoic as he could, attempting to steady his breath under the suffocating cloth.

A creaking above him stirred him from his thoughts, the sound of a man opening a trapdoor against it’s rusted hinges. Boots thundered down the stairs, following by a light chuckle and the unsheathing of a blade. Fear gripped him for a moment as the faceless assailant trailed the knife ever so gently down his stomach and towards his chest. The gentleness of the moment unnerved him, soft like a lover. The man then takes the knife into the air, slicing down on the cloth bag covering Arthur’s face and ripping a sliver down the center, nicking Arthur’s chin and the tip of his nose in the process.

He bites his lip to prevent the whimper building in his throat from escaping. Colm paced slowly in front of him, like a feline ready to pounce. A predator inspecting his prey. It isn’t far from the truth, the way he’s strung up like a deer to be dressed and butchered.

“Arthur Morgan… it’s good to see ya’” Colm croaks out, his voice strained from years of yelling commands and smoking cigars. Not dissimilar to the shrill in his own leaders voice. The comparison makes him feel guilty and a little sick. How dare he compare the two? But after what feels like weeks, but he knows is actually probably closer to a couple days, he can’t help but start to lose faith. Maybe Dutch and Colm really are two sides of the same coin, two men determined to kill each other because they can’t kill themselves, and seeing the worst of themselves in each other. Maybe Arthur was always a pawn not worth retrieving.

No, he thinks. Dutch’ll come. He always does.

A grumble falls from Arthur’s mouth as he musters all his wit to reply. All that comes is “Hello, Colm,” followed by a few wet, ragged coughs.

Chapter Text

“What the fuck did I tell you, Dutch?” Hosea was seething. He had spent three godforsaken hours the night before trying to convince Dutch to change his mind, though he knew it wouldn’t work. He wasn’t sure what had changed between them. It felt like in the last couple months they had gone from devoted confidants and partners in crime to colleagues who pretend they get along. Dutch stopped coming into Hosea’s tent at night and trying to lure him into his own after Ms. O’Shea had gone to bed. He didn’t mention it though. Hosea and Dutch’s relationship had always been peculiar. If anyone around the camp had picked up on it they were very careful as to not bring it up to the men. The two of them have always been defiant, fought against an ever burgeoning society and its expectations, but their relationship was still taboo. For over two decades the pair had a relationship that was delicate and unspoken, shared with one cheap cigar between the two of them and hot hotel bed sheets. Neither of them said what it was, maybe out of fear of voicing it making it too real. Maybe because they thought if they said it, the other would reject the prospect of them being anything even close to lovers. But their tried and true intimacy was lacking these past few months, the touch of a man he had grown so familiar and comfortable with that he didn’t even notice it until it was fading. The men hadn’t shared a hushed kiss under the moonlight in ages, and it was weighing on both their minds.

He should perhaps be more careful with Dutch, but he doesn’t care enough right now. He knows his standing with this gang, the gentle hand to Dutch’s iron fist. He couldn’t be kicked out without leaving at the very least a very long, very deep scar across the values of this ragtag group. A sharp reminder of what would happen if they stepped out of line. Dutch wasn’t willing to take such a risk, especially not with Hosea, but he was treading the line with him.

“Keep your damn voice down!” Dutch hisses, his voice wavering between a whisper and a desperate cry. Dutch had a panic in his eye, but an ever-too-familiar sense of pride as well. He would never take the blame, no matter how much it belonged to him.

Dutch and Micah had returned to camp without Arthur yesterday. Micah had a grin on his face when they came back but said nothing, knowing the temperament of the gang and Arthur’s good standing, at least for now, he wasn’t willing to shoot himself in the foot too hard. But there was a silent message that Hosea could read off his face. He’s glad Arthur’s disappeared. Dutch cited Arthur disappearing on them before as a reason why he is probably safe the second Hosea had brought up the lack of the young man they had raised together. It wasn’t untrue, the man had a tendency to disappear for days on end just to return with exorbitant amounts of game and a wad of cash. However, he would never disappear after a mission like this. Not without letting the others know where he was going. Besides, none of it was sitting right with Hosea before his son disappeared.

Dutch’s eyes met his and shot him a silent message. Drop it. But Hosea wasn’t going to relent. If it was about anyone else, for Dutch, he would’ve let up. But this was their boy, and Dutch had ignored his pleas. He deserved Hosea’s vitriol. “I told you to not let Arthur walk into that damn trap but you, like the prideful fool you are, didn’t listen to me! When have my instincts about this kind of thing ever let you down? When did what I think truly start meaning so little to you?” Hosea lowered his voice at the end of the sentence, allowing the unspoken to be heard. Why don’t you love me like you used to?

Dutch dropped his eyes to the floor, his clenched fist loosening a bit. His walls were breaking, just a little, but enough for Hosea to see the quick flash of guilt on his face. He knew Hosea was right.

“It’s not that I don’t trust you, Old Girl, it’s just–” Dutch cut himself off. To Hosea’s frustration he didn’t continue, his words falling flat. It was rare to see Dutch in this state, completely spent and at a loss for words, but Hosea has seen it time and time again. Instead, Dutch approached him and tentatively placed a hand on his hip. This was a Dutch he could talk to. At least, he was about to, before Dutch shoved passed him and into the main area of the camp. The others tried to pretend they weren’t eavesdropping, hurriedly returning to whatever chores they were attending to. All but John. John noticed Dutch’s presence immediately. The man had been hiding since he got back last night, refusing John and Charles’ requests to know where Arthur had gone. But now Dutch was in front of them all, and he couldn’t run away.

“Where’s he gone off to, Dutch?” John demanded, hurriedly walking over to them. Dutch cleared his throat before calling for everyone’s attention, ignoring his youngest son completely.

“Everybody, I know. I know it has been a stressful time recently, and I know you all are worried, but I would like to remind you that everything is okay. This is not the first time Arthur has disappeared like this and I promise you, he is fine!” He sounds confident as ever, but Hosea notices his face twitch slightly when he says Arthur’s name. He’s lying right through his teeth and it makes Hosea’s blood boil. He can’t make any such promises.

“For now,” Dutch continues, “we must continue on with our day to day! It is too risky to be leaving the camp right now, with the Pinkertons and Colm so hot on our tail. We must wait a few days for it to die down,"

A fury ignites in John’s eyes, but he says nothing. He just starts trekking over to his horse. Dutch notices this move and goes to follow him.

“Are you deaf, John?” He yells out from behind him.

John whips around with barely contained rage. It bubbled up so quickly, the hours of uncertainly morphing into pent up anger. All the anxiety and heart-wrenching worry took shape as pure fury.

“I heard your bullshit excuses loud and clear, old man!” John bites back, “Arthur wouldn’t disappear and not tell us Dutch, you know he wouldn’t! Are you really going to standby and let him die? If Arthur can’t handle it quick then somethin’ is wrong, damn it!”

The outburst spreads a stunned silence across the camp. People aren’t trying to hide their prying eyes anymore. Hosea stands at the entrance of Dutch’s tent, watching with heavy hesitation. John was following in the steps of Arthur, doing whatever he damn well had to to protect his loved ones. Even if that meant walking headfirst into the gun of Dutch Van Der Lin. Not literally, at least not this time.

Dutch is quiet for a moment, watching as John mounts his horse. Nobody talks back to him like that, not with that level of unapologetic and unconstrained anger, and gets off scot-free. But Dutch couldn't fight back quite as messily, not with everyone watching. When he finally speaks, it’s slow and low, one last warning. “You left us once, Marston. Do you really think you can get away with it again?”

“Arthur would do the same for me.” John spits back immediately, his hands shaky with anger. He doesn't care about his standing in Van Der Lin's gang of drunken misfits. He wants his brother, safe and intimidating as ever, back at camp. Him and his drunken singing that he hates hearing about the next day, and the way his every word tells John that he hates his guts but his actions say the polar opposite. Even if they weren't as close nowadays, Arthur will always be John's role model. The pinnacle of masculinity, of what it means to be an outlaw. Of what it means to take care of people. Not that he would ever tell the man that.

All Dutch says in reply is a hushed,"You ain't no Arthur." before turning on his heel and storming into his tent. It unexpectedly stings, and John takes this as a sign to leave, but Charles is approaching expectantly. He waits for Charles to say something but the words never come. He just mounts his horse and nods at John, and the two of them silently depart after Arthur.

Chapter Text

"Hello, Colm,"

Colm paced the room impatiently, like he was the one who was trapped and not the other way around. The lantern he’s holding clatters onto a table. He walks up to Arthur and hovers a spoon-full of soup near his mouth. Arthur hadn't noticed how hungry he was, between his throbbing headache, swollen features and the dried blood from the top of his head to his heels, but now that he could smell something other the his own metallic stench wafting off of him his stomach growled. He was starving. He hadn't eaten since before he left on the mission. Holy fuck the mission, he had completely forgotten about that. For however the hell long it'd been, the only thing he could think about was how much pain he was in. But in this moment of lucidity, worry gripped him. Was Dutch okay? Was the gang okay?

He tried to swing his body forward. He knew Colm was teasing him, knew he wasn't actually providing for him, but he thought if he was quick enough he could get to the spoon before Colm could react. The problem is, he has never been so slow in his life. Even as a kid, his wit and leanness had been able to get him out of most situations. But here, now, he was completely at Colm O'Driscoll's mercy. 

"How's the wound?" His voice drips with false sympathy.

"I hardly feel it," Arthur croaks out. It comes out in a hushed drawl, but it isn't shaky or scared and that's the best he can hope for right now. 

Arthur grips Colm's wrist and Colm doesn't shake him off, letting Arthur futility try to pull his mouth towards the spoon. A pained, long grunt spouts from his lips, followed by a few shaky coughs. He continues to hang off of Colm for a moment.

"You will...Septic, it ain't nice," He rips his hand away from Arthur, a cry of pain spilling from him. Colm takes a bite of the soup, the spoon ratting between his teeth.

"Now, tell me. A fine gun like you... why you still runnin' around with old Dutch? Could come ride with me and make some real money," Colm speaks nice and slow, like he's savouring every minute. Was that a job offer? If this is how they typically recruit people, Arthur is going to pass. It was strange though, a part of him felt like if he took Colm up on the offer all of this would end. And he needs it to end, but he knows better. Nothing he says now could save him. This isn't the first time he had been tortured, it was just usually roughing him up a little. Sending him home with two black eyes and sending Dutch on a scorched warpath. Dutch. Surely Dutch had noticed his disappearance by now. He should have noticed the moment Arthur didn't meet him at the rendezvous point. Someone had to be coming after him.

"It ain't about the money, Colm," the words are meant to be confident but they come out trembling and slow, each one hitched and pushed out like he had to take a breath between each word. He groans again involuntarily at the aching that felt like it went down to the bone. 

"Oh no... it's Dutch's famous charisma." He emphasizes his point with a sturdy kick in the ribs, flat and harsh. Arthur grunts, drawn-out and weak.

"You killed a whole bunch of my boys... At Six Point Cabin," Colm is pacing again, getting carried away as he monologues.

"I ain't got no clue what yer talkin' bout," He knows exactly what Colm is talking about. That day he, Kieran, John and Bill road up to an O'Driscoll camp and let them have it. Despite the gory nature, Arthur remembers that day fondly. Perfect weather, alongside his brother-in-arms, picking on Kieran and Bill. Kieran saved Arthur's life that day. He hopes, silently, that maybe he can do it again today.

"Oh, you lie, my friend," It comes off as a laugh, but its harbouring something much darker. A sloppily veiled sadism and a secret. He pulls a revolver out of his pocket and aims it at Arthur's head, and Arthur silently prays he would just pull the trigger already before snapping out of it. This is not how he will die, rotting alone in an O'Driscoll cellar. 

"and I thought Dutch preached truth."

"Let me go, Colm.." the desolate words leave him before he can even think about them, and he immediately regrets them. He doesn't want to beg for his life, he would rather die in silence then be dragged along a pleading, fumbling shell of a man. But he keeps speaking, trying to disguise his desperate plea with truth. Disguise the vulnerability with wit, as always.

"And end all this crap between you two... we all got real problems now," Arthur's right. Between the Pinkertons, the law, the ever-increasing bounties on their heads and towns growing to metropolises in the wake of the industrial revolution, they should not be going after other outlaws. But this line of logic didn't work on Dutch, so it most certainly wasn't going to work on Colm.

"The way I see it.. they get him.., they forget about me." He pulls the gun away, both to the benefit and the chagrin of Arthur. A small, quiet part of him wanted this to end by any and all means necessary.

"They ain't the forgettin' sort. If I were you, I'd run as soon as I had the money,” It was true, mostly. He didn't want to leave Hosea or John behind, he couldn't betray Dutch and the gang like that, but sometimes he thinks i'd be easier. I'd be better for him. He is more than capable of protecting himself. Evidently, by the chains around his ankles and his swollen shut eye, he can defend himself just fine. He could’ve run. Could’ve started a life, with Mary, if he had been brave enough to try. When he had the chance, at least. He lets himself briefly fall into a daydream of his life if he had run away with Mary, if they had started new lives elsewhere. Maybe, if he got out of this, he could go find her again. Colm's laugh breaks him out of it, the delicate landscape he was fantasizing about fading away as the dark cellar refills his vision. No, he silently begs, take me back to her.

Colm chuckles, "Oh, I know you would...but see," He steps closer, a little too close for comfort.

"We lure an angry Dutch in to rescue ya," Colm's hand lands on Arthur's hip as he speaks, slowly trailing over to his belly button and then down his chest to his chin. It makes Arthur's stomach stir with nausea, a creeping and not-at-all welcome feeling of a bad man's hands touching him so softly. He wasn't unfamiliar with touch of another man, he had many unexplained and unspoken moments with one or two fellow men, but this felt different. It made his skin crawl, made him want to curl into his own body until he was nothing. Reminded him of when he was a boy, of experiences he would never breath to life in fear that he would be precieved as less of a man for it. Colm pulls his hand away, a performative act of grace.

"Grab all of ya and hand ya in... then disappear." Arthur finally, finally catches on to what Colm is saying.

"So you only met with him to grab me?" The words are laboured and breathless.

"Of course... he gonna be so mad. He gonna come ragin' over here... and a whole lot of ya... and the law'll be waitin' for him," The smile that is stretched near unnaturally across Colm's face makes Arthur's stomach twist.

This is a trap. They chose Arthur on purpose, they knew he was Dutch's right hand man. Colm knew Dutch wouldn't trust anyone else to protect him on such an important mission. This was all an elaborate scheme, and a perfectly executed one at that. Dutch was coming, he knew he was, and he knew he had to get out before Dutch got here.

Oh, my dear and trusted friend, with you watching over me, I would walk into hell itself.

Dutch's voice rings in his ears. Hell, that's what this is. He's in hell, and he'll have to get out by himself. Before Dutch can find him. Even now, he needs to protect his family. Stop Dutch from walking into his so-aptly described hell, the hands of the law because of a deal cut by Colm O'Driscoll.

"Oh, Arthur." He's almost giggling, clearly enjoying himself, "Arthur, I missed you."

He takes his gun and hits Arthur repeatedly in his abdomen with the stock of it. Arthur tries to stifle his grunts, cries of pain muffled by the biting of his own lip, drawing blood. He can taste hot iron as it fills his mouth. His shoulder wound is pounding alongside his heartbeat and headache, a perfectly synchronized symphony of pain rippling through is body. It almost became secondary as Colm spoke, cold fear and somehow still alive defiance filling his body instead of the throbbing constant ache. As Colm hits him again and again with the blunt end of his revolver it all comes back in full force. After the fourth hit with his gun, he stops trying to muffle his cries. A loud, guttural scream of agony rips out of him as Colm hits the sickly-looking shotgun wound on his shoulder with the sharp metal of the barrel. It gushes slightly, pulsating and grotesque. He screams, animalistic and afraid. He coughs blood onto the already blood stained floor. His head is screaming, the buzzing sounds from earlier resounding back and forth between his ears. He can't breathe, quivering and devastated breaths being gulped down greedily as he passes out from pain and exhaustion.

Chapter Text

Pearson, being surprisingly guilty about how ultimately his plan shook out, had given John the location of where Colm and Dutch had met up. John and Charles sat in silence for a while. Boiling rage was tempering down in John's chest, the residual nerves from his argument with Dutch dissipating into the cold night. Charles was typically a man of few words already, but he had barely said a peep since Dutch came back without Arthur. John didn't know why Charles was so shaken up about Arthur's disappearance. It was obviously cause for concern, but Charles seemed more off-put then most. He and Arthur had never seemed particularly close, at least not to John, but then again John wasn't the most attentive of men. Maybe they were better friends than he thought. 

"Do you think you can track him?" John finally spoke up as they were reaching the fork in the road between the main path and the trail towards the top of the cliff. The reins of his horse pushed harshly against the insides of his bare palms, hands clenched tightly. 

Charles cleared his throat before speaking, thick and slightly strained from disuse, "I can try."

John thought he was going to continue, but he doesn't. They watched their step as they went, the moonlight not providing much for visibility. Going out to track someone at night was probably not the best plan. Given the line of work they are in, and the fact that John frankly can't see shit, it wasn't the safest idea. But he couldn't wait anymore, and for some reason, neither could Charles. Speaking of Charles, the bastard seemed like he could see just fine. He lead the way, eyes trained on the ground, face scrunched with focus.

"It's better that he wasn't on the main road, with the traffic and all, but it's been a day. I won't be surprised if the tracks are faded." Charles speaks in a hushed, tired tone. They reach the edge of the cliff and dismount, approaching on foot to look for evidence of anything, any trace of Arthur. John's blood runs cold as he sees splattered blood against the grey rock.

"Why didn't they-!?" He cuts himself off, pacing backwards before turning back around to look at red stain again, running a hand down his face. John's sudden outburst caught Charles off guard. The man was now standing tentatively, staring at John with an unreadable expression, waiting for him to elaborate.

"Why didn't Dutch just check up here? Seems second nature to if Arthur don't show up after somethin' like this," John voice is lower this time, noticing his sharp start slightly scared the man who volunteered his night to help find his friend.

"Micah probably told him it wasn't a big deal," Charles scoffs.

John furrows his brow, "and Dutch'd just believe 'im?"

Charles pauses for a second, lips pressed together in consideration. It's clear he knows what he wants to say, he just doesn't know if he wants to say it right now. John is not patient enough to let him think on it. 

"What?" John says, turning his head to the side before taking a step towards Charles, "What do you know?"

Charles sighed. There was a thousand thoughts going through his head, a thousand things he was told about their leader and his proverbs that he wishes to repeat, but all he says is, "Do you think Dutch is… different?"

John just stares back. It’s a decently neutral statement, but he wants to get hostile, wants to defend Dutch despite their argument mere moments before. He wants to protect his honour and yell at Charles for ever doubting him. Instead of red hot anger, he felt a sickly sinking feeling in his gut. Dutch had been sour on John since he came back. For the sake of his son and wife he had been trying be closer to Dutch, to win him back, but he watched as Dutch pulled away from everyone. Spent nights drunk and in bed with Molly instead of by the campfire, or sitting by the lake with John, Arthur, and Hosea reminiscing on their upbringing and first missions and that time Arthur somehow broke John's nose while fishing. Charles was right, it felt like something had shifted. Something beyond a grudge for running off for a year.

His mouth refused to form the words, refused to give life to the doubts building in the back of his head. So he tries to move on from the topic entirely.

"Can you see if there's a trail of-“ He stops. Tears threaten to form and he coughs, trying to clear the frog in this throat. Great, so his conversational options were discuss mutiny or cry. Pretty slim pickings.

A look of understanding crossed Charles' face, and he nodded, continuing on silently. The blood splatter lead into the woods behind them, periodic drops and muddy boot footprints that were impossible to spot by John, but Charles could somehow see faintly with his expertly trained eyes. The forest itself was pretty enough. Though not what he should be focusing on, he couldn't help but notice the way the moonlight broke through the canopy of leaves. 

Arthur would love this, he thought. Little things like this Arthur always had a soft spot for. No matter how hardened the outlaw thought he was, John knew what he was really. He knew the nineteen year old version of Arthur who proudly bragged to him about sketch of a landscape he did, claiming he had finally mastered prospective. He hadn't seen a drawing of Arthur's in years, beyond passive glances while walking past his tent. Thinking about it was making him sad, the slowly growing distance between him and his brother-in-arms, so he tried to focus on something else.

The walk through the woods was slow. They lost track every once in a while, Charles having to trek back a few steps while mumbling curses. He was more worked up than John had ever seen him, and Charles didn't like it. Coming off as collected was important to him. He was calm, and intelligent, and just as respectable as any other man despite what the common rhetoric is. In this moment though he couldn't help but let his frustration slip through. It felt like he was letting John down. The brush of the forest gave way to a clearing, a few abandoned camping supplies scattered around. Their pace sped up, a clear sign of activity among the vague promise of faded tracks reigniting their fervor to find their friend. A campfire was placed in the middle, and when Charles rushed to check coals they were still slightly warm to the touch. 

"They've been gone for a while, but less than 24 hours," Charles explains as he rubs the soot off his hands and onto his pants. John hums in response. He wondered around the campsite for a minute, kicking at things and ducking around, trying to find any clues. A strangled gasp from Charles makes his head snap to the side, and John hurriedly walks towards him, sidearms clanking.

"What-" the sight in front of him answers his question before it has the chance to leave his mouth. There's a patch of dark red painting the hillside a few metres away from the camp rubble. A shotgun shell lies next to the blood. John goes blank, blinded by anger, staring at Arthur's blood. He clears his throat, trying to mask his despair as well as he can while he is in the presence of another man. He doesn't need to be seen like this, no matter how understandable it would be. The grass and dirt the blood had soaked into was disrupted and mangled, suggesting that the gunshot was done close. No man can survive a shotgun wound point-blank and survive, not even Arthur. That man was the strongest person John had ever met, had gotten himself out of scraps that would've killed anyone else, but he wasn't invincible. He reaches down and touches the patch of blood. It's dry, mostly, with a few spots still slightly gummy and congealed due to the sheer amount of blood. There was no body here, no sign of a dead man. He rushed to check the surroundings deeper, pushing to look behind trees and scratching his hands digging into bushes. The corpse of his brother was nowhere to be seen.

"John-" Charles voice snapped him out of his thoughts. The voice was stern and direct, louder than he was used to hearing him. Charles was trying to get his attention, but he stopped speaking the moment their eyes met. Tears pricked at John's, his throat tight and sharp with the desire to sob. 

"There's horse tracks leading off this way," Charles continues, notably more gentle than before, "Let's go." 

About six pairs of horse hooves all lead off into the same direction. How Charles could tell the difference between horse versus deer tracks John didn't know but he followed nonetheless. He has nothing better to go off of. They follow in silence, a newfound grief weighing heavy on their minds. There was a denial they hadn't noticed they were carrying until it was gone, killed at the sight of that blood caked onto the ground. The small belief that Arthur was just fine was dwindling quick. Maybe the blood wasn't Arthur's. Maybe a hunter shot a deer on that cliff hours after Arthur left and followed it to that clearing, before finishing it off and setting up a camp to cook it for dinner. That must be it, surely. Arthur's fine. He always is, no matter what. Despite the horrible cards Arthur's been dealt, he's always had a perfect poker face. He was an expert at bluffing. He was always okay.

They follow the tracks for about an hour. The moon hanging over them was an irritating reminder of how long John had been awake. He hadn't slept since the night before the mission, and the stress of Arthur's safety was tiring him quickly. Abigail had tried to get him to sleep, between whispered affirmations and gentle hands, but it hadn't worked. He yawned, and Charles glanced over.

"We can set up camp, if you want," Charles' strong voice spoke through the quiet of the night. 

"No, I don't want to risk losin' track." John replied immediately, a little harsher than he had intended. Charles just nodded before turning back to the trail and focusing on the task at hand. They went on for a while longer, John leaning softly on the neck of his horse for quiet comfort. The tracks led to a small crick before disappearing completely.

Charles' brows furrowed, "They must've gone up or downstream, I'm just not sure which way. We should camp here for tonight and then split up, one of us going either direction."

"I told you, 'm fine" John mumbled. He didn't bother bringing up how dangerous that plan sounded. Charles isn't a stupid man, nor a naive one. He knew it was risky, and he didn't care. Neither did John.

"If we split up, you need to be rested. You're going to fall asleep in the middle of a shootout at this rate." Charles smiles slightly, futilely trying to lift the mood a little. Right now, being miserable isn't serving either of them very well.

John relents wordlessly, dismounting his horse and pulling the bedroll out of his saddle. Charles collects some sticks and twigs from nearby, and soon enough, they had their very own little campsite. Charles agreed to take watch, and so John stuffs himself inside his bedroll and stares at the star-pricked sky as a hollowness carves out his chest.

Chapter Text

Arthur imagines this is what eternal damnation feels like. Hanging like a rabbit caught in snare, mauled and lying in wait. A cold, tingling feeling shivered across his skin, melting with the pulsing heat of his shoulder. He was feverish and dull. Alone in the cellar for hours, he had some time to think about how he ended up here. This was surely retribution, a karmic debt built up over his three decades of sinning coming crashing down in one, merciless blow. Every debt he’s collected, every wife he has widowed, every child he has orphaned, they are all being compensated in the unholiest of ways.

Logically, he knows the gang shouldn’t come for him. He had wanted them to, so desperately wanted someone, anyone, to come. Someone to cut him down and hold him as he wept. It was pathetic, really. He felt foolish, yearning to be held like a grieving child. But he felt his like mind was shattering slowly, like a palm on a window pane slowly cracking the surface of the glass.

It was so obviously a trap. Hosea said it was, he always knows better. There’s no way Dutch would risk the safety of everyone just for one man, as monumental as Arthur was. It just wasn’t worth it. He wasn’t worth it.

The cellar door creaked open again and Arthur went wide-eyed, his swollen shut eye stretching uncomfortably at the movement. His breath caught shallowly in his chest. As bad as it was to sit alone in this disgusting, wet basement, the company provided was much worse. In his lonesome, he could whimper and cry and be as pitiful as he felt.

His face hardened as footsteps trampled down the stairs, miserably holding onto his last sliver of pride with white knuckles. No matter what they do to him, he will do anything to hide the terror. He will not succumb, will not be broken in, at least not with an audience. Piercing terror made his blood stained hands shake. He dug his nails into his palm to try to steady himself, taking as deep as a breath he could through his swollen lips and tight throat. He is usually a man with a steely resolve, with a quick tongue and a fast draw. Convincing himself that is still the case gets harder every dreaded minute he hangs here useless and afraid.

Two men in mismatched clothes land at the bottom of the staircase, neither of them Arthur recognized. The one on the left grinned widely the moment he saw Arthur. One of his yellow teeth were missing, and his blue eyes glistened with delight. 

“Well, who’s do we have here, hm?” His voice was shrill and laced with a thick accent. Irish, maybe? It made him miss Seán, which seemed impossible, seeing as he had been nothing but a pest since they’d met.

A lot of this was starting to seem impossible. This kind of thing only happens in plays, or in those drama books the girls at camp are always raving about. It doesn’t feel real at all.

Arthur didn’t bother responding. Quick-wittedness had always been a shield of sorts for him, but right now he was speechless. No prayers he uttered here would reach God’s ears. This cellar is a prison and its prisoner is faithless and unclean. Salvation wasn’t in the cards for him, he had given up on it years ago. Lost his chance at a life of goodness when he was sold a lie by a false prophet.

The other man leaned himself against the decaying door frame. Ratty blond hair fell down to his pale grey shoulders, and his brown eyes bore into at Arthur. He was wordless, just stared, which was almost worse than the taunting. 

The irishman approached him slow, his eyes greedily dragging down Arthur's thinning frame. It made him feel awfully seen in a way he was not quite familiar with. His skin crawled with unease. A crooked grin appeared in his vision as the man squatted down to be at eye level. 

“You do not look good,” A cold hand reaches up and touches Arthur’s swollen face, looking into his good eye that was now red with blood, “Why’d they have to rough a pretty thing like you up so much?”

“yer lucky i’m tied up r’ now,” Arthur croaks out. It’s breathless, quiet and broken but it’s a moment of defiance nonetheless. Sickly nausea builds in his stomach. He knows playing along would make things go easier, but he can’t help but try to bite when he’s cornered like a bad dog.

“Get on with it, would ya’, Peter?” The man in the doorway finally speaks. It comes out harsh, his accent rougher and deeper than his friends. The man he now knows as Peter turns quick to look at the blond man snarling in the doorway. 

“Why, you anxious to watch, you feckin’ queer?” He teases, smiling widely and swaying. Arthur had been so busy smelling his own blood and the rank, festering wound pulsating in his shoulder that he couldn’t smell the alcohol until one of them got close enough, but the stench is undeniable. It just scares him more. He’s seen what uninhibited men can do to someone. 

Arthur bites down hard on the inside of his cheek. This whole time he had been trying to focus on anything other than the throbbing, unrelenting pain in his body but he was starting to think it may be some sort of respite. I’d be better if all he could feel was pain. He silently wishes he could dig his fingers into his open wound. 

Peter gently rubs his hands over Arthur’s chest, slow and tender like a lover would. His stomach drops, bile building in this throat. Realization is dawning on him quick, a horrifying understanding on what is about to happen to him. 

“We’ll have t’ cut you’s down,” Peter whispers, a hand trailing up Arthur’s waist and landing on his hip. A thumb rubs circles around his hip bone. If it had been someone he trusted, it would’ve been a comforting action. But this wasn’t a lover or a life-long friend, this was a man with greedy desire.

“Come help me, would ya, Billy?”

The blond man at the doorway grunts in annoyance. He walks over quickly, roughly shoving his hands underneath Arthur’s head to cradle it. The movement isn’t nearly as gentle as Peter, his calloused hands digging into Arthur’s scalp. He hears a knife being drawn, and suddenly drops to the ground with a loud, painful grunt. Billy had managed to save his head from cracking open on the muddied concrete, but his body slammed against the ground. Hot pain shoots through him, his weeping and fevered wound pulsing in pain. A shaky whimper escapes Arthur's throat.

They flip him over, quick and practiced hands reaching up to hogtie his wrists. For a brief, brave moment, he thinks this could be his opportunity to escape. To kill these men and flee with at least a scrap of his pride still in tact. But he can’t bring himself to move, his limbs heavy like lead.

They drag him upright and hitch the ropes to the hook his feet were attached to. Back to hanging, but now upright. A brief moment of relief washes through him as the blood pooling in his head washes down. How long had be been hanging upside down? How long has he even been here? It feels like he’s starting to forget how he got here, too. Is this what his life had always been? A plaything rotting in a cellar?

His feet hung lazily, his arms strained above him. With his wrists now holding all his weight, the rough ropes around them start digging into the sides of his hands. It hurts, sure it hurts, but if he can focus on that maybe he won’t feel-

A knife slices down the seam of his pants. Cold, dank air wafting onto his now bare skin. He shivers, from the cold or the dread he doesn’t know. Another quick slice discards him of his shirt, and he becomes painfully aware of just how vulnerable he is. He didn’t think it could get worse, thought he had found the limit to how much terror one man could hold in his body. But as he hangs here, cold hands exploring his for once fragile form, he can feel nothing but absolute and all-consuming dread.

Bile builds in the back of this throat at the sound of a mason jar opening. Billy, who had since returned to the doorway, smiles slightly at the sound. Suddenly, cool oil softly brushes the seam of his backside. He jerks forward, agony slicing through his body at the quick moment, pure panic taking over.

”No.” He squeaked out, his voice strained and shattered. His courage was draining quickly, flaming terror mixing with the vomit slowly swelling in his stomach. Squirming like a fish on the line.

A soft, playful chuckle leaves Peter’s lips. He walks around to the front of Arthur, gently placing his hands on his waist and leaning his forehead against Arthur’s. He has the urge to jump out and bite him, but he stays still, his one good eye shut tight to avoid the other’s piercing, hungry blue ones. 

The back of Peter’s hand reaches up off his waist and gingerly brushes Arthur’s cheek. It’s so intimate, intimate in a way he has never experience before. Not even Mary had held him like this. Outlaws like him don’t get held so tenderly. 

“It’ll be easier if you relax, sweetheart.”

Chapter Text

Young women and whores are used to this kind of thing, he's seen it. It’s always been a point of detest for him. He’s saved people from this sort of fate, and heard tales of it from the girls at camp, trading horror stories like cigarette cards. But this kind of thing, this form of violation, it doesn’t happen to men like him. Men don’t touch other men like this. It’s emasculating and sinful and impure. He knew this entirely, it laced every lustful thought he had of Charles, guilt swirling in his chest when he'd imagined Charles lying next to him in his cot.

Peter walks back around Arthur, a single finger trailing over his bare skin. The blond at the doorway is watching with contained pleasure, palming the growing tent in his pants. It makes Arthur feel dirty and seen, this voyeur in the corner drinking in Arthur’s palpable displeasure.

Cold rendered down animal fat prods at Arthur's ass, being rubbed in gentle circles by two chilled fingers. His chest tightens, tears welling in his eyes. A single finger pushes into him and he yelps in pain at the foreign feeling. A single, drawn out shriek of terror. He squeezes his thighs together, trying to expel the man from his body. Peter just grunts in amusement.

“You’re only making this worse for yourself. Just lean into it, baby. I promise i’ll make you feel good.” Peter whispers into his ear. Hot, dirty words that make Arthur feel anything but pleasure. It hurts, the feeling of another man inside him. It burns and it makes his mind swim. He hates it. Feeling so exposed and used and futile. Short, shallow pants of strain and exhaustion escape him.

"You ain't the prettiest doll i've played with, but you'll do."

Peter pushes another finger into Arthur, stretching him unnaturally. Another yelp of pain and surprise jumps from Arthur's lips. Tears well in his bulging eye, the pain mixing with complete and utter shame. The man at the doorway laughs as he unbuttons his pants and takes his dick into his hands. Arthur wasn’t a stranger to seeing another mans privates. Privacy was a luxury they couldn’t often afford back at camp. But revulsion rolls in his gut as he sees Billy stroke himself while staring, trying to catch Arthur's eyes.

This isn’t happening. There is no way this is real, he must be dreaming. It has to be a dream. Some prolonged, sickening nightmare that he’s sure to wake from soon. It disturbs him that his mind is even capable of conjuring such a scenario, but he knows his head is rotted. A tainted mind is better than this. Anything would be better than this. He's never been much of a coward. He gnarled and bit and fought with everything he had to cling onto his life, no matter how tragic and sinful it might've been. The sheer amount of times he's dodged a noose, it was strange to be craving one now. They won't kill him though, at least not intentionally. He's the bait, and bait isn't any good if it's dead. Given the state and the smell of his shoulder he figures he'll die soon enough, whether they want him to or not. Ironic, how that'd be his last act of retaliation. Maybe he can goad them into beating him unconscious. Again.

Finally, Peter pulls his fingers out of him. For a brief, precious moment he foolishly chooses to believe that’s the end of it. It was humiliating and made him feel small and worthless but at least its over now. That is, until he hears the sound of Peter slicking himself with the cooking oil and squaring himself up to Arthur’s hole. Arthur lurches forward again, coiling and thrashing his body in a feeble attempt to escape. Anguish wracks through his body as he twists his shoulder, ripping at the gooey, slowly scabbing wound.

"NO! Get off a'me, getch' yer fuckin' hands off me! i'll kill you dead, boy!" Arthur bellowed, with more strength and fervor than he thought he had in him. His throat feels like sandpaper and he had the voice to match, now that he's heard it above more than a mumble.

Peters hands reach out and grip his hips with more aggression than he’s seen from the man this whole time. Arthur’s resistance was turning from arousing to frustrating. Teeth bite into Arthur's shoulder with a low growl, ”Stop being such a damn tease and stay still, you feckin' brat.”

Peter lines himself up again, his gentleness lost in the action. He thrusts into Arthur, rough, deep and impatient. Arthur screams, really screams. Like he had just been shot again. In this moment, he would love to get shot again. He vomits forward, his upright position not providing much as far as where it could go. With no food in his stomach, the handful of bile sputtered out of his mouth and onto his face, dripping slightly onto his chest. His throat burns as the vomit wedges itself into the tears in his esophagus.

Billy groans in pleasure, his face contorting as he fastens his pace on his own dick. That just makes Arthur gag more, wincing as his empty stomach clenches. Peter starts his pace sickeningly slow, pumping in and out of Arthur as if they were young lovers exploring each other's bodies. Tears spill down his face, good eye closed tightly, tears rehydrating some of the blood that had dried on his cheeks. If his eyes were closed, at least he didn't have to see anything. He could pretend he was somewhere else. Playing poker with Lenny or fishing with Kieran. Just not here. 

An arm hooking around his throat unfortunately snaps him out of his thoughts. Peter's got him in a chokehold, his pace quickening. Arthur grunts every time Peters hips slam against his ass, not out of pleasure but the sheer impact of another man pounding into him. It hurts so fucking badly, the hot blood dripping down his thighs only assisting in the defilement. The arm around his throat tightens, making him breathe quick and shallow and then not at all. He squirms, lungs screaming and burning desperately for air. His arms twitch and pull at the ropes around his wrists, instinctively trying to claw at the pressure around his throat despite the bondage. 

"Yeah, fight back, baby. God, you're so fucking tight. No wonder Dutch keeps you around." Peter growls, leaving soft kisses on Arthur's shoulder blades. The mention of his mentor makes him bite the inside of his cheek, shame washing across his body. Dutch can never know this happened. None of them can, they would never see them the same. Just imagining the looks of disgust or disrespect, or worst of all, pity makes him want to fold in on himself.

He doesn't have it in him to fight back, to clarify Dutch has never and will never touch him the way these men are. He just hangs there, taking the beating like a bad dog. Peter's grip on his throat loosened only slightly, just enough for him to greedily gulp down as much dank, sweaty air he could. He considers pleading for it to stop, pitiful words sitting on the tip of his tongue. Maybe if he just says please, or calls them sir, or begs and begs and begs they'll stop. But the last bit of his dignity clawed the words back. No words will bring him reprieve, nothing he could say would end this chaotic cacophony of pain. He just needs to wait for it to stop. 

Peter raked his hands across Arthur's torso and in the inside of his thighs, calloused palms groping and exploring every inch of him. He had overheard one of the girls at camp saying sometimes your body reacts to the pleasure despite you not wanting it. This did not apply to him. He silently thanked God that he found absolute displeasure in being sodomized by a stranger. A brief moment of gratitude that had no good standing in this graceless place. Peter touched him like he was a girl, and he hated it. Silently, he had yearned for this kind of touch. Not here, not like this, but when he had been with Mary or the late, drunken nights with nameless men in hotels. Being held softly yet urgently, like his body was a temple to be worshiped and not a war machine to be wielded. This was no worship though, they are desecrating him. 

A hand buries itself into Arthur's hair. It struggles to reach his scalp, dried blood sticking his hair together in spikes. He didn't tug at the dirty blond hair, just held his hand on the top of Arthur's head and rubbed soft circles into his scalp. Peter's actions were giving him whiplash, they way he was so tender and so violent at the same time. His movements are getting erratic and painfully fast. Arthur's feels him twitch inside him as Peter finishes, pulling out slowly and slapping his dick on Arthur's ass cheeks a few times. The man touching himself in the doorway finally approaches Arthur, unloading his cock onto Arthur's stomach. He softly slapped Arthur's face a few times, not hard enough to hurt. It was degrading, more than anything.

Billy lights a cigarette and takes a long, slow drag before holding it up to Arthur’s lips. He brushes the filter over his lip, a silent invitation to take a hit, but Arthur clamps his mouth shut. Billy reaches down and burns the cigarette out on Arthur’s inner thigh. He just grits his teeth at the smell burning skin before going slack.

Arthur hangs there numbly. The fight has drained from his body. There's no point. He was completely helpless in this state, hanging like a hunted animal. That's what he was ultimately, baited and hunted and skinned. They unhook him and tie his feet again, lofting his body back up to hang upside down. Blood rushes back into his skull, head pounding and exacerbating his throbbing headache. The men didn't give him the decency of cleaning him off, they just left wordlessly. They got want they wanted, and they were done with him. Discarded, defiled and deformed, he hangs deadened and dumb. Abandoned with a newfound feeling of emptiness and disgust.

Chapter Text

Arthur has come to the conclusion that this isn't real. Whether is a dream or the shotgun wound killed him and he's now in hell, he doesn't know. But he knows it isn't real. It can't be. This sort of brutality was strictly fiction. He's done horrible things, made people suffer more than any one human should, but nothing like this. No man should be able to sustain this much damage and stay alive. He should be dead, and a quiet part of him wants to be. Another is begging to live. To make it out of this, to make it home. He can't die here, not like this, not without telling the others about the trap Colm has set for them. He has to save his family, he has to. 

His shoulder pulsed and oozed, lines of purple and yellow reaching across his arms like spiderwebs. He has started to get more feverish, the sickness making his mind delirious. Thoughts shoot off like buckshots, cycling through a million contradictory feelings. He's never wanted to live so badly. He's never wanted to die so badly. The delirium is a crutch of sorts though, acting as a catalyst for his derealization. Delusional and numb, he stares forward blankly. The sickness in his mind is crafting daydreams of fishing trips and long adventures on horseback. Visions of a setting sun over the pond at Clemens Point, his family laughing and drunkenly singing songs by a campfire. 

He vaguely hears footsteps pounding down the staircase. A day ago, that sound would've made him quiver and shake with an all-consuming fear. Now, he's weightless and stupid. Colm lands at the bottom of the stairs, glaring down at Arthur with a sadistic smile. 

"How'd my boys treat ya' hm? Did ya’ have fun?" He spoke, finally pulling Arthur out of his hysterical mind. Arthur's one good eye tries to focus in on Colm, tries to focus on his face, but he his eye can't land on anything. Blood was swirling in his ears from hours on hours of hanging upside down. Starting to remember where he is, what those men did to him, he finally starts to tremble. He squeezes his eyes shut tight, trying to clear the visions of Billy ogling him. Trying to shake the feeling of phantom hands trailing down his chest and to the inside of his thigh. 

Colm's hand is laying at his side, holding a small sharp object. Arthur doesn't care very much, destitute and unfeeling. 

"Got nothin' to say?" Colm teases, taking long, slow strides towards him. A file twirls between his fingers, unnaturally sharpened to a point. Colm trails it teasingly down Arthur’s arm, the sharp tip softly scratching his skin. Arthur scowls at the sensation. The gentleness of the action made him nauseous. These men have a fascination with soft violence— 

In the blink of an eye, he stabs the file in his hand into Arthur's weeping wound. Arthur screams, voice shaking and raw. The sound resonates around the room, bouncing off the walls and back into his ears. Colm laughs, unrestrained and uproariously, like Arthur just told the funniest joke he's ever heard.

“Please! Please, stop, fuckin’ hell, please god stop, Please. Please.” The words fall from Arthur before he can stop them, a visceral uncontrollable plead for deliverance. His voice was desperate and hollow, akin to a grieving mother slumped over the body of her child.

Embarrassment builds in his chest. Colm won’t stop, he knows he won’t stop. All he’s done is show him pathetic he’s become, how much strain he’s put on Arthur’s soul. Colm has broken him in like a wild horse being tamed.

Delight glistened in Colm's eyes. Arthur sobs, wet hot tears unapologetically streaming down his face, mixing with dried blood and dropping diluted red onto the floor. He writhes involuntarily, the file twisting as he flailed in pain. He pants uncontrollably, a grunt leaving his mouth with every exhale. Colm pulls the file back out, brutal and slow. Arthur lets out another shattered scream as Colm digs around in his wound with the small metal object. Blood and puss poured down his arms, drooling down his hands and splashing onto the concrete beneath him. The file finally slides out of his skin and Colm clatters it onto the table a few feet away from Arthur before turning on his heel to walk up the staircase.

He glances back one last time, "Doesn't look like your daddy is coming to save you. Disappointing. I would've loved t' see his reaction to yer mutilated corpse, see pathetic little thing you are."

And with that, he leaves.

Arthur grimaces, heavy, panting grunts falling from his mouth like teeth. He is going to die here. If he doesn't do anything, he is going to die here.

Something in his mind snaps. An unfounded, ill-fitting bravery courses through his body. Maybe it's the delirium giving him false confidence. Maybe it's because he's been pushed as far as he could go. Maybe the idea of those wretched men coming back and making use of him again is worse than any beating. He doesn't really care where the newfound power is coming from, all that matters is it's here, waiting to be harnessed.

It's subconscious, almost, way he starts swaying his body from side to side. His crater of a wound tenses and bends, searing pain streaking through him. Before this moment, it would've disabled him. It would of sent him spiraling, shaking in pain and whimpering like a shot deer. But right now, determination invaded his mind. He will not die here. He's a grown man, a killer and an outlaw. He's been shot a dozen times. Been prodded and poked at, been at the mercy of wealthy and powerful men time and time again and somehow fought his way out. This is nothing.

It had to be his fevered mind talking. He was delusional, really, genuinely believing he could get out of this. It was jarring, the way he went from yearning for death to fighting for his life with every last ounce of strength. To fight instead of freeze. But none of that mattered right now. He had one goal, to get the fuck out of here. If he could just get his body to swing a little bit more to the right he could—

He grabs the file, thinning hands gripping onto it tight. The still wet blood coats his hand. He takes a breath, slow and deep, before tensing up and pulling his torso upwards to cut the ropes that have him dangling. His body screams at him to stop. It’s too much, the agony and the strain of his decaying, starving muscles. He doesn’t relent, sawing at the ropes until they buckled and dropped him onto the floor. 

He grunts at the impact, splayed on the floor with four free limbs for the first time in what feels like months. Scrambling up off the ground, he quickly takes a seat at the small desk in the corner of the room. He needs to cauterize the wound somehow. If he doesn’t, he’ll bleed out before he can ever see daylight again. Hosea had taught him a few tricks. He always said he wasn’t much of a herbalist, but Hosea was crafty and a quick-thinker, as well as a great teacher. In an emergency, gunpowder, a candle and a file will have to do. 

He holds the file over the candle, turning it to heat it evenly before plunging it back into his wound. The pain knocks the air out of him, and he tries to get the image of Colm doing this very thing moments ago out of his head. He twists it, grunting and wincing as he cooks his flesh before opening the gunpowder and dusting it into his seeping cavern of an injury. He lifts the candle to his wound, taking a few shaky breaths before pushing the wax into his wound. He cries out in pain as the fire boils his skin, haphazardly sealing the severed skin. The sour smell of burning blood and cooked meat hits his nose. It will work, for now.

His scream alerted the men guarding the cellar. Peter’s voice yelled down the stairs telling him to shut his hole. Cold, gripping fear ran through his mind for a terrifying moment before he remembered he wasn’t hanging anymore. He was uninhibited, besides the boiling in his shoulder and the aching in his muscles. Rage followed the panic, electric and unnerving. 

Peter starts ranting about wanting to go home as the stumbles down the stairs to check on Arthur. It’s ironic, Arthur feels the same way. He, too, just wants to go home. But only one of them can, and neither one of them deserve to. He stumbles over to hide behind the wall, bracing himself for a fight despite his left arm being completely out of commission.

Peter reaches the bottom of the stairs and walks forward a bit, looking at the empty hook. “What the hell?”

Arthur leaps forward and hooks his arm around Peter’s throat. A memory flashes through his head for a brief second, the image of Peter holding Arthur in a chokehold while he violated him. He snaps Peter’s neck quickly. If he had it his way, he would’ve made the man suffer, but he’s already on borrowed time. 

Arthur winces as his shoulder sends a spike of pain up his arm, blood stained fingers tentatively brushing over his newly cauterized wound. He picks up the throwing knives Peter was carrying on his person and stumbles up the stairs. A voice echos from the top of the staircase, and he squats down to avoid being seen. For a moment, he thinks he will have to kill him too, and he’s happy to do it, but the man just walks past the open trapdoor, complaining about Peter and his lack of time management. Arthur glances back for a brief moment at Peter lying on the concrete floor, neck bent unnaturally. Fucker got what he deserved. 

Arthur takes slow steps up the stairs, a combination of careful stealth and his mauled body being unable to provide him much. A small moment of elation hits him when he breaches the top of the stairs, breathing in the fresh, crisp air. He can’t see too much, between his swollen-shut eye and pain blurring his vision, but he tries to take in the camp around him. The warm, orange lamps against the blue grey sky. He thought he would die staring at dark, bloodstained grey concrete. The world had never seemed so colourful.

He feels like he is on fire, between the ache in his body and the fury in his heart. Fear subsides for a moment. He is finally free, and he will not let any more of that freedom be taken from him. 

Where is his horse? Guilt spills through him as he realizes he hadn’t worried for Friend since he got here. Had the O’Driscoll’s killed his trusty steed? Scanning the camp as quick as he can, his eyes land on the hitching posts. Somehow, someway, his cowardly horse had thankfully been spared.

He thinks for a second about searching for his belongings, for his satchel, and more importantly his journal. But the adrenaline was fading fast. Anxiety settled in the pit of his stomach. He slumped over a little, breathing heavily. Suddenly, he’s exhausted, the manic hysteria subsiding slightly. He’s out in the open and he’s vulnerable.

He runs. A depleted, panicked hobble over to Friend before mounting him as quick as he can. The horse bolts away, Arthur’s legs squeezing as hard as he can muster. Hollowed out breaths leave him, the horse jolting around his body and making him grunt in pain. Fuzz starts to cloud his vision.

Slight screaming sounds out from behind him, gunshots firing out, but the ringing in his ears is slowly drowning it out more and more. A bullet wizzes by his ear, barely missing his head. He doesn’t really notice.

His body slumps over slightly onto the neck of his horse, breath shallowing slightly. He flings his body backwards, trying to look up and steer in wherever he thought the direction to camp was, but his head slouched back over.

”C’mon, boy… get me… home.” He muttered, voice tired and strained, before he collapsed onto his horses neck.

Chapter Text

John barely slept. It felt selfish, given Arthur’s disappearance. What if the time he spent napping like a drunkard was used to kill Arthur? What if he lost his chance to save him because he was ‘tired’? He rested his eyes and body at the very least, but it filled him with guilt. 

Charles, the hypocrite he is, hadn’t slept a blink. He sat upright, guarding John as he pretended to sleep. Eventually, dawn broke, warm purples and yellows reaching above the horizon. John sat up quickly, rolling up his sleeping bag and stuffing it back into Old Boy’s saddle. 

“Upstream or down?” Charles asks tentatively. He had noticed how high strung John was becoming, uncertainty and anxiety churning in John’s chest.

“Up.” John speaks, harsher than he meant to. He didn’t know why he was so certain he wanted to go that direction. It just felt right. The two of them mount up, give each other a slight, silent nod, and then part ways. John starts up the stream slowly, before tensing his legs around his horse and speeding up. The cold air bit at his cheeks as he bolted up the stream. 

Arthur could be dead by now. He could’ve been killed two days ago. The thought was eating at him. Arthur and him weren’t nearly as close as they used to be. Arthur held a grudge for John abandoning his wife and child, but deep down, he was bitter that John would leave him too. They had been raised together, and Arthur thought they would die together, fighting side by side for the rest of their lives. John had betrayed their unspoken brotherhood, and now Arthur was going to die before he had the chance to reconcile with him. Before he could tell Arthur how sorry he is, how he has always looked up to Arthur as some sort of untouchable god, an idol he would never live up to. 

He went as fast as he could, cold water splashing onto his pants and seeping through. It didn’t bother him. Eventually the crick lead into shrubbery and he slowed slightly. He was moving slower than he wanted to, but he also wanted to be conscious about how he was treating Old Boy too. If Arthur taught him anything, it was don’t get tunnel vision. Don’t hurt things you care about for a mission, no matter how important you think it is. Dutch surely hadn’t taught them this mentality, but Hosea did in hushed tones, to Dutch’s detest. Hosea had always cared more for the people than the goal. All Dutch wanted was blind loyalty, his will to be enacted without question, no matter how deluded and myopic it was. 

Twigs scratched at John’s face. This was all taking longer than he wanted it to. As the sun reached the top of the sky, he finally broke through the forest and into a clearing. It was a small camp, a few O’Driscolls running around in a panic. Something was happening, or had happened, given how hurriedly the men were running around camp. It would be easier and safer to stealthily pick them off, but it would be slower, and the rage building in his chest was as impatient as he was. 

He drew his Cattleman, gripping the familiar worn handle. Ducking behind a barrel, he leans to the right and shoots a blond man directly in the neck, his body clattering to the ground with a thump. The other men scatter behind cover at the sound. 

“INTRUDER, GET HIM, NOW!” A voice rings out from inside the camp. John glances over the barrel he’s hiding behind and sends another shot towards someone, their body slumping to the floor. 

“WHERE IS HE?!” John screams, anger bubbling over. Blind, unrestrained rage fills him to the brim.

He runs over to a crate, firing off bullets as he takes cover. Two more men drop to the ground. It’s quiet for a moment, and he glances up to see why. There were less men than he thought there would be. The final O’Driscoll was running away like a dog with its tail between its legs. John couldn’t let him get away. No men involved in this scheme were getting off scot-free. 

He runs after him, pulling a lasso out from his satchel. Dutch had taught the boys young that sometimes an alive man is better than a dead one. Dead men can’t be beaten into spilling secrets. 

He throws the rope, the loop coiling around the O’Driscoll and tripping him. He pulls the squirming man closer to him, revelling in the way his face was scraping against the dirt. He hogties him quickly and flips him over, straddling him. Before he could even think about it, he slams his fist into the mans face over and over.

“WHERE IS HE?!”

Blood spills from the O’Driscoll’s nose. John grabs him by the neck and slams his head into the ground hard. 

“WHERE THE FUCK IS HE, HUH?” John screams in his face, grabbing him by his hair and ramming his head into the ground again.

The man’s eyes are clouded and dull. His head lolls to the side slightly. John slaps him.

“WHERE’S ARTHUR?!”

The name makes the man stir, looking up at John with bleary, blurry eyes. John slaps him again, staining his hand with blood and spewing some across the ground.

“He—“ The O’Driscoll coughs, red painting his lips, “H-he got out, ran off this mornin’” He chokes out. The man smiles, teeth red with blood, “Not b’fore he got a good beatin’ though.”

John puts his revolver to the mans forehead and spills his brains onto the ground, the dirt drinking up his blood and turning a muddy maroon. 

John stands, staring blankly at the corpse in front of him. He got out? Arthur was alive. He fucking escaped all on his own. Of course he did, the stubborn bastard. A small smiles twitches at his lips.

He looks around the camp, scanning his surroundings. He needs to get back to his own camp, to his gang and to hopefully his brother. A silent prayer echos in his mind, a wishful thought towards Arthur and his safety. After nearly three days, who knows what state he’s in. Who knows if he will be able to make it home on his own. Guilt is still swirling in his stomach. If he and Charles hadn’t taken that break, John would’ve found him before he escaped. He would’ve been able to guarantee Arthur safe passage home. He would’ve saved Arthur, a small payment in a lifelong of debt towards him and all the times he’s done the same for John. But Arthur had to save himself, as always.

The lack of O’Driscoll’s made sense now. They were all out looking for Arthur. The bitter irony hits him, the O’Driscoll’s care about Arthur’s location more than Dutch does. John decides to dig around their camp a bit more. He doubts Arthur would’ve had the time to find his belongings, and if he couldn’t save him in time, the least he could do is recover his possessions. 

An open trapdoor catches his eye. He approaches it quickly, stomping down the stairs. The room is small, air thick and dense. The sour smell of iron and vomit hit his nose. He looks around, taking in the cellar and all its horrors. A hook hangs from the ceiling. Beneath it, a severed rope lays amongst stain after stain of dried blood. A small desk is sitting in the corner of the room harbouring the sleeve to a shotgun shell, an extinguished candle with a strange amount of burnt blood on the end, and a red file. Dread settles in the pit of his stomach. This is where Arthur was held, was imprisoned and abused. The objects on the table implied some sort of last minute medical care, a battlefield cauterization. What had happened to Arthur down here? How could he be so foolish as to not find him before he was tormented to the point of needing surgery?

He scans the room quickly, looking for any sign of Arthur’s belongings. There is nothing here of Arthur’s other than his blood. He leaves quick, trying to escape the smell of Arthur’s rot. Once again, shame hits him. Arthur had to put up with this for days, and he couldn’t even handle it for a minute.

The fresh noon air gives him fleeting relief. The camp is small, and his eyes circle in on the supply shed. He rushes over, swinging a chest open and digging around. Finally, he finds Arthur’s satchel. He checks the contents of it, making sure everything is there. The worn, leather-bound book is sitting at the bottom of the bag. John grabs it, holds it in his hand gently as if it will crumble under his grasp. Curiosity pricks at him, and he almost opens the journal and peers inside, but he forces himself to put it back. Arthur has had enough of his dignity stripped away, the least John could do was respect his privacy. Despite the fact that he so desperately wants to look inside and see the doodles and deep, unspoken thoughts of Arthur Morgan.

He swings the satchel over his shoulder before whistling Old Boy over to stock his saddlebag with Arthur’s various guns. Moments before mounting up, he glares at the cellar door. He walks over and lights a stick of dynamite before chucking it into the cellar opening and closing the trapdoors behind it. The explosion pushes the doors into the air before they slam back down again with a rattle.

John mounts up wordlessly, rushing to camp and praying he will see Arthur when he gets there.

Chapter Text

Soft light cut in and out of Arthur’s vision. He didn’t know where he was or what was happening, couldn’t tell the difference between consciousness and his fevered dreams. All he felt was the soft thump of his body against his horse as he rode towards perceived freedom. He hoped his horse knew where he was going, the way home, or the very least the way to some town with a doctor. The only thing he could hear was the ringing in his ears and the gentle buzz of crickets.

After what felt like ages, he vaguely spots canvas and campfires in the distance. Mary-Beth’s voice breaks through the fog with a worried cry. He slumps off his horse, his back gracelessly slamming against the floor with a shaky groan.

“Arthur!” Her face is twisted with horror, concern, and worst of all, pity.

Karen’s face enters his limited field of vision, followed closely by Dutch. Dutch. He has to warn him, has to tell Dutch about the trap before it’s too late.

“I told you it was a set-up, Dutch…” Arthur drawls out, mind muddy and clouded. He can’t really tell where he is. But Dutch is here, so he must be safe. They must’ve come for him. 

“My boy,” Dutch’s strained voice breaks through his thoughts, “My dear boy, what?”

Arthur starts to remember how he got here. The shotgun, the beating, those men and their greedy hands and dirty words…

The fact that he escaped on his lonesome. With no aid and no plan. He had rescued himself, once again. Nobody had come to save him. 

“They got me… but I- I got away-“ Arthur chokes out, trying to hide the heartbreak in his voice. Did nobody care to come help him? He was capable, more than most, and he knew it. But he thought that maybe he was as important to this gang as they were to him. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe he was always just a tool to be used and not a man to be loved. He blinked, slowly, with his one good eye. A feeble attempt to clear the rapidly budding feelings of abandonment. He tried to breathe deep through his battered lungs, but it came out shaky and uncertain, shattered exhales leaving his lips.

”Yeah, that you did,” Dutch tries to smile down at Arthur, weary and proud, but Arthur can’t see him past the floating specks dancing in his vision. Wheres Hosea? Dutch places a hand on Arthur’s head and he flinches away, breath quickening slightly. His mentor moves his hand away hastily, concern mixing with muted curiosity. What had Arthur seen? What could Arthur have told Colm?

“Ms. Grimshaw, I need help! Reverend Swanson-?”

”He was gonna set the law on us..!” Arthur growls out, deep, desperate and enraged. He did it, he warned them. He can rest now. Ease melts through his body, before immediately being stripped away at the feeling of foreign hands on him. His body is screaming at him to run again, to rip the gentle, violent hands off his body and put a bullet in the head of whoever the hell is touching him. But he can’t. The moment he heard a familiar voice, all the fight he had left drained from him. He was practically immobile, and completely at the whim of his gang. The idea scared the shit out of him. What if those men come back, what if they find him, what if—

“Oh, of course he was.” Dutch snarls, once again stirring Arthur from his mind.

“I’m sorry, Arthur,” Pearson starts, before immediately being cut off by Dutch.

“It is a bit late for apologies!” He snarls, calling for Swanson over his shoulder. They start slowly sitting Arthur up.

”Mr. Morgan, Mr. Morgan you are safe now.” Dutch says. The words fall on deaf ears. Arthur has never been safe, that hasn’t changed now. Going back to camp is just a temporary reprieve, and he was starting to think it was a mistake. What if Colm had followed him? Quietly, Dutch was thinking the same thing, but he didn’t breathe the words to life. Not here, not now. Not with everybody watching as the attempted to hoist up Arthurs mangled form.

”Let’s get him to bed.” Susan speaks, quick to action as ever. She’s never been one to show affection with words, but her fast movements speak louder. That and her face contorted in grief. 

Arthur grunts, low and shamefully pathetic, as they wrap his arms around their shoulders and start shuffling him over to his tent. He’s scared, really, genuinely terrified at the feelings of hands on his skin, and tries to wriggle out of their grasp despite them only trying to help. The movement is small and in vain, their hands only gripping tighter to his arms and more horrifyingly his waist.

“You are safe now, Arthur,” Dutch rasps, helping Pearson as they sling Arthur’s body into his cot. ”You’re safe now.”

”That’s pretty Dutch…” Arthur smiles, a strained and empty smile, “…That’s real pretty…”

Arthur’s blood-filled eye start fluttering the moment his back meets the familiar cloth of his cot. He fights the sleep creeping up on him, a dull panic telling him he needs to stay awake. But his eyelid is heavy, and the rest is well-earned. 

He vaguely hears Dutch ask Susan to sit with him, and betrayal raises in his chest once again. Why can’t Dutch stay with him? Is he really that dispensable? Susan agrees, grief coating her voice. 

“You’ll be okay, Mr. Morgan. You’re home.”

He doesn’t believe her, but he doesn’t have the energy to fight back. As his eye is closing, he hears a cry from Hosea, and then it all goes black. 

“WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM?!” Hosea screams, voice breaking and raw. He runs over, despite the aching of his knees trying to buckle underneath him. Dutch catches him as he tries to rush by, hooking him by the waist and attempting to pull Hosea into him. 

“Not right now, Ol’ Girl.” Dutch whispers softly, trying to bring Hosea closer to his chest. Hosea pushes back, fists slamming uselessly on Dutch’s chest.

“Don’t you touch me!” Hosea barks back. Dutch just stares at him wide-eyed as he rushes over to Ms. Grimshaw and the crumpled body of his son.

He brushes the back on his palm underneath Arthur’s nose, trying to check his breathing. Soft, warm air blows onto Hosea’s knuckles. He exhales a breath he didn’t know he was holding in.

He had never seen Arthur in such a condition, and he has known this boy a long time. Raised him like he was his own. Never did he think he would see the young man he fostered like this.

A thick, dark bruise spread across Arthur’s neck. One of his eyes were swollen completely shut, sticky with blood and dried tears. His other, according to Susan, was completely blood red. The vessels in his eyes must have popped on the impact of something, a fist or a boot. His face was so swollen it was near unrecognizable, Arthur looked nothing like the boy he knew. There were twin rope burns on either of his ankles, deep and raw and barely scabbed at all. Similar ones lay on his wrists but not nearly as extensive. Small lacerations cover him head to toe. Cuts litter his face and Hosea can’t tell if they are from the impact of something or a knife. As they start cutting away it his clothes to see the damage underneath, Hosea notices a cigarette burn on the inside of the mans thigh. He quickly pulls a blanket over Arthur’s lower half to hide the mark.

The worst of them all was the shotgun wound his in shoulder. A crater of an injury with yellow and purple lines streaking out, reaching up his arms and towards his heart. Pure anger fills Hosea at the sight, quickly followed by grief at the clear signs of self-cauterization. The poor man had done surgery on himself, and from Hosea’s knowledge, the action was essential. The wound was so deep, so large, that Arthur surely should’ve bled out. He should’ve been dead. But his son made it home. By himself. He was breathing, and that’s all that mattered right now. 

“What happened?” Hosea repeats quieter, looking back at the unnecessarily guilty woman behind him.

”We don’t know yet.” She squeaks out

“Could you-“ Hosea gestures vaguely at Ms. Grimshaw, his voice small. She silently stands and steps back a few step, looking at the pair of them with sad eyes before leaving them to their privacy. Hosea pulls the chair closer to the cot, hand slowly reaching out and holding Arthur’s. 

Arthur’s eyebrows were knit in distress. His breath quickened and he twitched a little. He was having a nightmare. Hosea had seen him have nightmares before, when he was a teenager and was getting over the trauma of his old man, but they had fizzled out over time. That, or Arthur had gotten better at hiding them. Arthur squeezed Hosea’s hand subconsciously, lacking the strength he once held. Hosea rubs his thumb on the top on Arthur’s hand slowly, trying to lull his son into a more peaceful rest. But Arthur hadn’t felt peace in a long time, and after this, Hosea didn’t know if he would ever feel it again. 

It was clear from the damage that something horrible had happened in his three days from camp. Hosea wishes he could take the pain away from him, could hold him in his arms like the child he was and take the demons from his head. But he can’t, this damage was Arthur’s and Arthur’s alone. 

“ARTHUR!” John’s voice suddenly rings out throughout camp. Hosea glances over his shoulder at the sound, and is met by the sight of John sprinting over as fast as he can. He stops in his tracks when he reaches the cot, his eyes catching onto Arthur’s mauled face. Anger flashes in the younger man’s eyes, and he roughly slings the satchel off his shoulder and shows it to Hosea.

”I—“ John’s voice is strained and small, his eyes a melting pot of heartache and anger, “I got h-his bag back. I found the camp they were holding him. I killed—“ John’s words got caught in this throat and trailed off, eyes glued to Arthur’s bloody frame. 

John himself was covered in blood from the tip of his fingers to his elbows. From the looks of it, it isn’t his. A small smile graces Hosea’s lips. 

“Thank you, son.” Hosea takes the satchel from John’s shaking hands and places it on the table. “Thank you for looking for him. You did good, my boy.”

John pried his eyes away from Arthur to look Hosea in the eye, eyes wide and face slack with fear.

”Is… is he…?” John couldn’t bring himself to voice it, but Hosea knew what he was trying to say. Is he dead?

“He’s okay, for now. He’s home.” Hosea says soft as ever, glancing back over at Arthur and squeezing his hand. 

John just nods quickly, as if it will convince himself. It doesn’t. He fiddles with his hands, feet fidgeting back in forth. John doesn’t know what to do with himself. Arthur and him had never been especially emotional towards each other, but with Arthur just lying there like a corpse, he wishes he had told Arthur just how much he meant to him before it got to this.

Hosea catches the mans hesitance and gestures for him to pull up a chair. John does so wordlessly, sitting a little closer to Hosea than he cares to admit. Hosea notices John’s uncharacteristically quiet, how his hands haven’t stopped shaking since he got back, and takes his free hand up to cup the side of John’s head, pulling him into Hosea’s shoulder. John stiffens a bit, the physical intimacy foreign, but eventually melts into the fatherly touch. 

They sit there, together in silence, waiting for Arthur to wake.

Chapter Text

Arthur hadn’t woken up yet. Hosea, to his brittle bones dismay, fell asleep in his chair with his head leaning back. Similarly, John had passed out on Hosea’s shoulder. At some point in the night, John had woken up and noticed his mildly embarrassing predicament and snuck away into his tent with his waiting wife, but not before draping a blanket over the old man he deemed his father.

The sun rose along with Arthur’s fever. Hosea awoke to daybreak prying at his tired eyes, hand still resting in Arthur’s. The man on the cot looked sickly pale, sweat dribbling down his forehead and soaking the pillow beneath him. Hosea lifts his wrinkled hand to Arthur’s forehead and feels the heat radiating off of him. The wound in his shoulder was starting to look gooey and nauseating, puss oozing from the centre.

The other gang members tried to hide their prying, curious eyes, but Hosea could feel them bearing into him. Susan decided to extend Arthur’s tent outwards to provide a little more privacy. With the assistance of some of the other girls, they weaved some more canvas together to create walls on either side of Arthur in timid silence. It’s a bit more roomy than necessary, but it’s nice. A gesture of pity and goodwill, if nothing else.

Hosea had cleaned Arthur’s lighter injuries by himself, wrapping the wounds on his ankles and lightly bandaging his face and torso. Arthur’s face was puffy and unsettling, greens and purples spread across his swollen features. While cleaning off the boy, Hosea kept finding more and more scratches and bruises. More cigarette burns on his forearms, what looked like nail scratches on his thighs. Dried blood stuck his undergarments to his backside, and a shiver went down Hosea’s spine, the gripping implication making his stomach twist in rage and disgust. It was exhausting work, but Hosea knew Arthur would rather nobody see him so vulnerable. Nobody else, at least.

But it would be unsafe to tamper with the gunshot on his own. Cleaning it was one thing, but doing anything else was dangerous. He was planning to use the assistance of Charles, but he had left with John and had yet to return.

John hasn’t said a word since last night, which was strange for him. It looked like he was getting lost in thought in the middle of tasks, but was trying to help nonetheless. He carried buckets of cooled-down boiled water to Hosea, who dipped a cloth into the water and placed it on Arthur’s forehead and eyes in an attempt to temper his fever and reduce the swelling to a somewhat recognizable level. John brought Hosea a bowl of stew and a cup of boiling hot coffee, which the old man gratefully accepted.

”Thank you, my son.” Hosea says softly. John just silently nodded, glanced at Arthur, and walked away.

Arthur would scream in his sleep intermittently, and nobody could tell if it was physical pain or mental. Swanson shared his morphine anyway, the crutch dulling Arthur’s pain and quieting the slowly dying man.

This routine went on for about four days. Hosea’s back and knees ached from being upright for days, sleeping slumped against Arthur’s bed. On day three, Susan and Tilly moved Hosea’s cot into Arthur’s tent. They insisted that he at the very least sleep there, for the sake of his old joints, but they kept catching him sleeping in a sitting position by Arthur’s bed. His cot felt too far, he couldn’t hear Arthur breathing. Eventually, the pain got too much, and he just pushed his cot against Arthur’s at night. Nobody questioned it, noticing the older mans eyes were more sunken than normal. He was exhausted and anxious, and everyone knew he had every right to be.

Arthur was looking sicker by the hour, and still wasn’t waking. For a few moments, he had appeared awake, but it was just half-asleep, delirious pleas.

”You’re okay, Arthur. You’re safe” Hosea whispered, rubbing soft circles on Arthur’s palm.

“…no…getch’ yer fuckin’ hands off me…” Arthur mumbled, barely audible through his strained throat and swollen lips.

Hosea just grimaced, swallowed the sob building in his throat, and continued whispering to Arthur.

Charles came back on day four to collect more supplies before going back out to search and was taken aback to see Arthur’s tent had been modified and his horse being tended to by Kieran. Stumbling over to see why the tent had changed, he caught a glimpse of Arthur’s mutilated body inside. He pushed into the tent, closing the door flap behind him. Hosea sat dead eyed at the mans bedside, whispering barely audible reassurances to Arthur as he restlessly slept. Arthur, despite being dead asleep, looked disturbed, face scrunched in displeasure. A lump formed in Charles’ throat at the sight.

“How is he?” Charles forced himself to speak, voice thick and strained. Hosea just shook his head, reluctantly ripping his eyes away from Arthur to look at Charles.

“He’s alive… but…” Hosea’s voice was scratchy and dull. Charles nodded back silently.

“We need to do something about his shoulder, and quickly. I’m no medic but I think he has an infection. I’ll need your help.” Hosea says hastily, trying to mask the emotion in his voice. Leaning to the side, he lets Charles closer to look at Arthur’s shoulder more attentively.

“He does. This sort of thing however… my medicines will only provide a temporary solution. He needs a real doctor.” Charles declares grimly. Hosea shakes his head again.

“We are wanted men, Charles. Especially now. Colm will be looking for us, the Pinkerton's and the law… Not to mention, Arthur is in no position to be transported. Leaving camp is a risky move.”

“Will all due respect, sir, if he doesn’t see a doctor, he will die anyway.” Charles retorts, soft yet firm. Arthur’s pale skin was sheened with sweat. The infection in his shoulder reached outwards like the hands of the damned.

“Would you watch him for a moment? I need to go speak with Dutch.” Hosea finally replies. The tone implies it’s more of a demand than a question, but his eyes bear no anger, just finality and need. He wordlessly stands and walks out, and Charles takes his place.

“Hey, Arthur,” Charles says softly. The sleeping, fevered man beneath doesn’t respond. His hands are itching to reach out and touch him, to hold his hand, but he stops himself. Hosea has a good excuse to hold the man, he raised him after all. Charles was just a friend, and a new one at that.

Hosea stomps over to Dutch’s tent, knees clicking and threatening to buckle with every step. Opening the tent flap more aggressively than expected, he sees Dutch sitting on his bed with his head in his hands, Molly rubbing circles on his back. Seeing Hosea so angry was a rare, and Ms. O’Shea took it as a warning to leave quick and quiet, awkwardly shuffling past Hosea and out the door.

The two hadn’t spoken since the first night Arthur slumped into camp, half-alive and petrified. Dutch hadn’t bothered to come check on Arthur. He had asked Grimshaw for updates, and she just glared and told him to go look for himself. He didn’t. That just fuelled Hosea’s rage more.

“What did I tell you, Dutch?” Hosea growls, low and intentional. He probably should’ve started with a greeting, should’ve picked up on Dutch’s palpable pity and treaded more lightly, but he didn’t care. Dutch was the most to blame, and Hosea was going to make sure he knew it. Dutch slowly looked up at Hosea, eyes red and sleepless.

“It was Pearson’s idea, Hosea, don’t take that tone with me.” Dutch dares to retort back. He flinches a little when he sees Hosea’s face twist with rage, eye twitching.

”Pearson isn’t the one who calls the damn shots! Pearson isn’t the one who ignored Arthur’s warnings and pleas! Pearson isn’t the mentor and damn near father to that there boy!” Hosea stepped closer, finger waving in Dutch’s face as if he were scolding a child, not his partner.

“You couldn’t even sit with him when he got back. You can’t bear to look at the man! And I think it’s because you know this is your damn fault.” Hosea is seething, voice raising with every sentence.

Dutch stands, trying to find the words he could weaponize to win Hosea back, but nothing comes to him. He instead, once again, goes on the defence, redirecting the guilt to anybody but him.

“How dare you blame me for this? This was Colm, Colm and his pathetic attempt at misplaced revenge.” Dutch matches Hosea’s tone, stepping closer to the smaller, older man to emphasize his point.

“You’ll put the blame on anyone but yourself. It’s pathetic, really.” Hosea snarls, “I’m taking him to the doctor in Saint Denis.”

Hosea turns on his heel and leaves, storming through the camp with a radiating anger. Dutch follows in suit.

“You will not take him anywhere without my permission!” Dutch barks, bringing the fight into the open. Eyes turn to watch, and clearly Dutch does not care. Right now, neither does Hosea.

Hosea turns to look at Dutch. The two of them were in a standstill, and were putting it on display for everyone.

”Your poorly thought out permissions are what got him in this position in the first place! Do you really have no empathy? Is your pride so large you can extend no mercy to the man that pledged his life to you?” Hosea steps to Dutch, nearly nose to nose with the man. He couldn’t ever beat him in a physical fight, Dutch was younger and faster than Hosea had been in years, but vitriolic words were doing the trick so far.

”Why did Colm take him, hm? Maybe his undying loyalty isn’t as firm as we thought. Maybe the rat didn’t want squeal anymore—” Dutch’s suggestion turns the tempered flame in Hosea’s eyes to a forest fire. This didn’t sound like the Dutch he knew at all. In truth, it wasn’t Dutch. It was paranoid thoughts being whispered to him by Micah and festering in his ever-active mind.

Hosea doesn’t care where the words come from. He swings at Dutch’s face, small fist clenched, fragile knuckles making impact with Dutch’s crisp cheekbones. Dutch stumbles backwards, holding his face with betrayal in his eyes. Hosea stretches his aching hand as it spasms from the impact.

Dutch lurches forwards to grasp Hosea but is pulled backwards, Ms. Grimshaw and Lenny hook their arms around either of Dutch’s. He shakes them off hastily before storming back into his tent wordlessly, hands shaking. Micah followed him in, trying to mask his smirk.

Tears prick Hosea’s eyes. How had they come to this? It felt like months ago, this very same hand was stroking that mans face delicately under sweaty bedsheets. How could Dutch think such a thing about Arthur? The boy had always been as loyal as a hound to its man, enacted violence without question to appease the ungrateful god he didn’t dare to call his lover.

John watched from the outskirts of camp, a few feet away from Arthur’s tent. The moment he made eye contact with Hosea he walked towards the wagon and started creating a makeshift bed, cushioning the back of the carriage in preparation. 

Hosea blinked his tears away as he walked back over to Arthur’s tent. Inside, Charles sat digging through a bag of ointments. Hosea knew he heard the confrontation outside, everyone heard it. Charles fished out some yarrow and ginseng, rubbing it over Hosea’s bruised knuckles before wrapping them in gauze. Hosea gives him a nod as thanks, and the pair start wordlessly prepping Arthur for transport.

Chapter Text

Getting Arthur upright and into the wagon was a feat unto itself. Slicked with sweat and boiling hot, his comatose state provided nothing in terms of assistance. They couldn’t blame the burly man, and he was lighter than he would’ve been if his muscles weren’t slowly eroding from malnutrition, but he was heavy even for John and Charles to carry. The two younger men hoisted Arthur upwards as gently as they could, pitiful groans falling from Arthur’s lips. The night he keeled into camp, he was still awake and provided at least some help in walking over to his cot. Now, the man was slack and heavy, his entire weight resting on Charles and John.

Eventually, they managed to get him to the wagon bed. The girls of the camp, mainly Tilly and Abigail, had readjusted the cushioning John had attempted to set up. It was a kind gesture from John, but the man knew little about comfort and homemaking, and his original bedding proved it.

Kieran brought over Silver Dollar and Old Boy, hitching them to the front of the wagon. The former O’Driscoll, a title he despised, had asked Hosea if he wanted Friend to come along for the ride, but Hosea declined. The poor horse had done enough for their family, he wanted to let the animal rest. Let Kieran give him all the brushes and treats the stallion deserved for saving Arthur’s life. 

Charles hung back, saying he didn’t want to slow them down. He reassured Hosea’s anxious mind that they wouldn’t need him, and it was better he stay at camp and pick up on the chores that they were falling behind on in Arthur’s absence. Arthur did a lot more for the gang than any of them had realized, and him being out of commission was wearing in them. Chores were slipping through the cracks, and they were running low on rations.

When they finally departed, they decided to move relatively slowly. Time wasn’t dispensable by any means, it never was for them, but they didn’t want to jostle Arthur around more than they had to. Hosea held the reins as John rode in the back with Arthur. He couldn’t do much in terms of helping Arthur, he was more of a killer than a healer, but John sat with him anyway. Stared at the slowly dying man in silence.

John still hadn’t spoken since Arthur got back. Hosea was very worried about the uncharacteristic quiet, but he had so many things wearing on his mind already he decided to not bring it up. John can be tended to later, Arthur is on already borrowed time. 

After what felt like forever, they finally pulled into the gates of Saint Denis. Hosea stuck to the main roads. He knew the faux civilized city was riddled with crime, some more brutal than the outlaws could ever commit. They pulled up in front of the doctor’s office, with the back of the wagon as close as they could get it to the door.

Hosea dismounted and bursted inside, doors swinging. A small woman sat at the front desk with big eyes and even bigger glasses, her petite hands folded simply over the top of the desk. Despite his frazzled and chaotic entrance, the woman was calm and collected. Curly brunette hair fell to her shoulders. Her eyes shone and she smiled up at Hosea.

“Hello, sir! I’m Mrs. Barnes, how can we help you today?” She chirps, tone much happier than expected in a doctor’s office. 

“My son—“ Hosea’s voice cracks before being interrupted by movement.  

Right on time, John stumbles in with Arthur slung over his shoulder. His face was twisted in strain, and Arthur’s head hung like he was already dead. Sweat pooled down his face, his hands pale and hanging loosely by his sides. 

The woman at the desk jumped up and went pale at the sight.

”Joseph! We need assistance out front!” She called to the back. 

A man emerged with salt and pepper hair and a grey beard. He felt familiar, in a way, but Hosea couldn’t place his finger on it. His face went slack when he saw Arthur hanging off John. 

“Bring him back here, quickly.” He spoke, before rushing back into the room he came from.

Hosea hooked Arthur’s arm around his shoulders and tried to help John carry him, but it was more a thoughtful action than actually helpful. John still bore most of Arthur’s weight as they carried him to the back and set him down on the chair Joseph was directing them to. 

The room was quaint, a series of medical tools spread delicately across the room. What looked like a desk sat next to the chair, but the top of the desk was wrapped in cloth-like material. It’s safe to assume it was some sort of medical cot. It was strange for them to be in such a civilized place, to use the modernity that had been eroding their lifestyle to their advantage. For once, Hosea was thankful for the technological advancements. 

“I’m Dr. Barnes,” The doctor introduced himself, clasping his hand over Hosea’s and shaking it, “There’s the matter of my payment, but we will discuss that later, for now…”

The doctor examined Arthur, brows furrowed and face grim. 

“We will have to move him onto the cot. This injury is drastic, and the infection… He’s in a bad way.” Dr. Barnes shakes his head. 

John and the doctor move Arthur to the cot, a soft groan leaving the dying mans lips. Hosea grimaces at the sound. After what feels like forever, Dr. Barnes finishes digging through his medical supplies and sets them up particularly on a sliding tray next to Arthur. 

“Amie, my dear, would you come assist me?” Dr. Barnes calls to the front. The small woman walks in quickly, pulling her curls up into a small ponytail as she strides over to a sink and washes her hands.

”What are you doing?” Hosea asks. Leaning into his natural curiosity feels better than thinking about how with every passing moment, every precious second wasted, Arthur is getting closer and closer to the veil of death.

”I’m washing my hands in preparation. Lowers the likelihood of sepsis or gangrene.” Mrs. Barnes replies with her signature smile. How is the wife of a doctor so positive? It’s kind of annoying how she smiles so lovely in the presence of his dying son, but Hosea would never say that. He has watched far too many people get their natural shine dulled by tragedy, and is thankful she is a light in the darkness.

“—Sir?” Dr. Barnes stirs Hosea from his thoughts.

”Alfred Lafonde.” Hosea replies, his alias slipping off his tongue as naturally as his own name.

”Mr. Lafonde, I’m sorry but I will have to partially amputate your son’s arm. I don’t think i’ll have to cut it off completely, thankfully, but he’s borderline necrotic. And whatever caused this wound is still in his shoulder.” The doctor paused for a moment, choosing his words carefully, “What happened to him?”

“Tacitus was robbed on the way to Rhodes, they tortured him, shot him with a shotgun.” Hosea replied. The explanation was short and vague, and it didn’t look like Joseph Barnes was buying it, but the doctor nodded anyway.

“I believe the bullet is still in his shoulder, which is causing a lot of this swelling. That and the infection. He is very lucky he isn’t dead yet. No man I know would be able to sustain this sort of injury and live.” Dr. Barnes spoke. The implication wasn’t lost on Hosea. That was doctor jargon for i’ll try my best, but…

”Can I help?” The words left Hosea before he could stop himself. He felt useless, standing here watching the couple prepare to dig into Arthur’s flesh. John had left with the horses to get them stabled somewhere, so Hosea was just alone with his damaged son and the two strangers he was placing Arthur’s life in the hands of. 

Dr. Barnes smiled gentle, eyes softening as he looked into Hosea’s. 

“It may be better if you let us handle it. My wife cannot be legally educated in this field, but I have tried by best to train her. She and I are very capable. You may not even want to be in the room—“

”I’m staying.” Hosea cut the kind man off, a little more harshly than intended. He flinches at his own tone. 

“Apologies, doctor, it’s just—“ He looks away, trying to hide his wet eyes, “I can’t leave his side. If he— If something happens to him and I’m not there… again… I don’t think I’d ever forgive myself.”

”You are okay, Mr. Lafonde. You’ve done a great thing for your son, bringing him here. I’m not sure my father would do the same. You’re a good man.” Mrs. Barnes says softly. Her hands move like she wants to pat Hosea on the shoulder, but she pulls back, remembering she just sanitized said hands. Instead, she offers another radiant smile. He is far from good, and he knows it, but he tries to smile back anyway.

Hosea goes and sits near Arthurs head at the top of the bed. The doctor, or rather doctors, finish setting up. A plethora of cloths are splayed around them, within arms reach for quick access. A bucket sits underneath the surgery point, assumably for the flesh and blood that is about to be ripped from Arthur’s body. 

Hosea squeezes his eyes shit tight to try to silence his thoughts. Arthur is going to be irate when he wakes up. He has always prided himself on how capable he was, and now Hosea is going to let some strangers mangle his arm. Hosea shakes his head. The mans arm is already mangled, and Hosea did nothing to stop it the first time. 

“Doctor— Doctors are you sure this procedure is necessary? Is there no other option?” Hosea squeaks out, voice strained and grief-stricken. He doesn’t want to take anything else from Arthur, wants to preserve as much of who he used to be as he can. Joseph just shakes his head. 

“He’s lucky he doesn’t need the whole thing removed. This sort of damage… unfortunately this is the only solution we have. Are you sure you want to stay for this?”

”Yes. If he has to have this happen he will not be alone.” Hosea answers quickly, hands shaking. His old joints ached, the labours of the past few days weighing on him. But he cannot and will not stop until he hears Arthur’s voice again. Until he sees Arthur’s sarcastic smirk again. Though a part of him knows, even if Arthur does wake, he will never be the man he was. 

The screaming started the moment the scalpel met Arthur’s skin.

Chapter Text

Dutch was pacing up and down the dock, hands clenched in tight fists. It was hard to get him so wound up, and even harder to get him to show it. But right now, he was anxiety-riddled and careless. He had always been tightly wound and paranoid, but over the months it seemed the plans he was hatching were getting more and more deluded, fuelled by the growing dissent and prying suggestions from Micah. 

Micah slinked up behind Dutch. Dutch, lost in thought, jumped when Micah spoke. Micah smirked a little at the movement, before masking his face with false concern.

“They disrespected you, boss.” Micah says, attempting to sound genuine through his yellowing teeth. Dutch nods.

”I am aware, Mr. Bell.” Dutch grits his teeth, annoyance bubbling in his chest.

“You should cut them loose.”

The suggestion is cold and quick. Dutch whips his body around to look Micah in the eye.

”What did you just say?” Dutch speaks slow, predatory eyes digging into Micah. Fear flickers across Micah’s eyes for a brief moment, before being replaced with his signature charisma.

“Hey, I’m just sayin’,” Micah lifts his hands as if surrendering, but his eyes look hungry, “They’ve been insubordinate for months. And now that cowpoke’s trigger finger is deformed. What good is a crippled gunslinger? Should just put the damn mutt down.”

Micah had been speaking in a similar way for the past couple months, but never this directly. Something within Dutch snaps, Micah’s words swirling in his ears. Micah had been pushing this narrative for a while now, repeatedly telling Dutch that Arthur isn’t as monumental as he seems. That anyone can shoot like him if they are trained enough. It wasn’t true, of course, but it wasn’t blatant enough until now. Paranoia and plots had clouded Dutch’s vision. Guilt digs into his ribcage, twisting his gut. How long had he thought his family of three was pushing away from him and not the other way around. How stupid had he become to let someone who had only been around six months drive a wedge between him and his sons? Between him and his partner? In crime, of course. Partners in crime and nothing else.

“…and what of Hosea? John?” Dutch speaks, stepping closer to Micah. It was a test to see how far Micah was willing to go with this. Maybe, just maybe, he would backtrack. Would prove his intents less selfish than Dutch was beginning to think.

”John openly disrespected you in front of the whole gang, what good is he? Other than to prove to the others they can do whatever they want with seemingly no consequence. And that old man has always held you back. He’s turned against you, blatantly ignoring your order to keep the cripple at camp. If there is no punishment, there will be an uprising.” Micah smiles, a futile attempt to convince Dutch. 

Dutch blinks. Micah wasn’t necessarily wrong about John and Hosea. The sheer disrespect they had displayed in their respective fights, in front of everyone no less, was insolent. But now, looking into Micah’s dull eyes, he was starting to realize why. Dutch doesn’t like to say when he’s been wrong, because most of the time, to him, he isn’t. Over the past six months, Micah hadn’t fought him on his plots and exploits. He had encouraged Dutch instead of poking at him or doubting him. He had faith, faith in Dutch and his plans. But, without Arthur, John and Hosea’s input, he was slipping. Hosea’s expert mind and Arthur and John’s defensive safety had been an asset, not the sacrilegion Micah had said it was.

Finally, it clicked a little. Micah had been the whisper in his ear that was pulling him away. Hosea had been trying to push back into Dutch’s life but Dutch was convinced Hosea was unfaithful and not to be trusted. For the first time in a long time, Dutch felt utterly conned and stupid. How had he not noticed sooner? Was it too late to save his relationship with those he loved the most? 

Arthur… oh Arthur… He hadn’t even checked on the poor boy. He had forbid anyone searching for him. He had discouraged Hosea from getting him help. Dutch practically tortured the boy himself. It was even Dutch’s fault he was taken in the first place. Colm had treated him as a pawn in a game, and now, Dutch realized he did too. A dog to be beat, an apostle to be used, not a man to be respected. 

“Mr. Bell, do you think you know what is best? If you are so sure, then why don’t you lead this gang? What makes this sheer insubordination any better? What makes you think you can tell me what to do? I suggest you bite your tongue and walk away, before I have you killed.” Dutch steps to Micah with gritted teeth, nearly toe-to-toe with the man. 

An anger flashes in Micah’s eyes. He had thought he bided his time properly, that this was the perfect time to strike. He thought this would work. He was wrong. Nothing he said right now would convince the easily angered Dutch, and he had nothing nice to say at all, so he turned on his heel and stomped back towards his tent. 

Dutch turned back towards the water. Water that Hosea loves to look over with a hot cup of burnt coffee. Water he and Arthur had gone fishing in. Water John had boiled and brought to Arthur as he died slowly in his tent. 

Dutch reaches up and touches his own cheek, wondering why its wet and ticklish. He looks at his finger tips and sees a droplet of water. He’s crying. For the first time since Annabelle, he was crying. His shoulders shook as sob heaved through his body, followed by another, and another. Palms pushed against his eyelids, he wept. Cold, gripping realizations whipping through his mind. 

“What have I done?” He whispers to himself. He digs his nails into his palms and then wipes the tears off his face. 

The doctor in Saint Denis. That’s where Hosea said he was going, a doctor in Saint Denis. So that’s where Dutch will go too. Dutch rarely left camp, but this mission was of the utmost importance. Dutch had been insensitive and stupid enough for a lifetime, and he had to see Arthur again. He had to tell Hosea just how horribly sorry he was, though he knew Hosea wouldn’t forgive him. He had seen it in the older man’s eyes during their fight the day before. Hosea wasn’t just angry at Dutch, he was completely heartbroken. Nothing Dutch did now would take back his actions over the past few months, let alone his heartlessness these last couple of days. 

“Charles!” Dutch called over the camp, walking off the dock. In the middle of chopping wood, Charles dropped the axe he was holding and looks at Dutch. 

“Yes?” Charles speaks, lacking his usual warmth. He was growing cold and calculated towards Dutch, not insubordinate but not necessarily loyal, and Dutch finally knew why. And he knew he deserved it, so he didn’t fight against it. 

“Can you, Pearson and Ms. Grimshaw hold down the camp until I get back?” Dutch asks. A confused look creeps across Charles’ face. 

“Where are you going?” The way Charles says it sounds accusatory, and Dutch can’t blame him.

“I need to fix something.” Dutch mumbles, lacking his usual booming charm. 

Charles raises an eyebrow before nodding and recollecting the axe to continue his task.

Dutch rushes to his tent, grabs a fistful of cash, and mounts up on The Count.

Saint Denis, here he comes. 

Chapter Text

Hosea didn’t think his heart could break any further. Yet here he was, at the head of Arthur’s bed, watching as he screamed and attempted to thrash in a fit of half-conscious agony. 

“Sedate him! Do something, you’re a doctor, damn it!” Hosea yelled, voice cracking. 

The doctors face hardened, “I can’t. He’s too unstable right now, morphine is the strongest thing I can give him, and he’s had the highest dose he can. Anything stronger and… he might never wake up.” He gestured at Hosea.

”Hold his arms down. I’ll work as quick as I can.”

The old man stood and walked around to the side of Arthur’s bed, shaking hands grabbing either wrist and pinning him to the bed. A strangled gasp left Arthur’s lips and Hosea flinched.

“…no…” Arthur mumbled, hips buckling forward as if trying to run from something. Hosea grimaced, cold guilt possessing him. The nightmare in Arthur’s mind swirled, the harsh grip of Hosea causing unholy memories to flash through his fevered semi-consciousness. Hosea knew why Arthur was afraid, he had seen the bruises on his thighs and the blood on his underwear, but this was the safest way to quickly hold him down right now. 

The doctors went back to work, plunging the scalpel deep into the festering gun shot. A sickening popping sound filled the room as the shotgun bullet flung out of the hole. Arthur screamed like his life depended on it, his subconscious fighting against the hands on his wrists. But he was weaker now than ever, his muscles decaying and the morphine providing a little sluggishness. That, and Hosea was determined to not let go. To not let Arthur get any more hurt than he has to.

Dr. Barnes started peeling flesh off his shoulder like bark off a tree. Chunks of skin and blood clattered into the bucket underneath with a nauseating splat. Working quickly, he expertly carved Arthur’s shoulder as if molding a sculpture, not defiling a man who was once a pillar of strength but now lies weak and half-alive.

“Please! please, stop, fuckin’ hell—“ Arthur slurred out, unhelpfully twisting his shoulders. The doctor pulled away until Arthur stopped squirming, a grimace painted across his face. The moment Arthur stilled, he got back to work. 

“…please, god, stop, please. please.” The desperation in Arthur’s voice was nothing short of animalistic. His eyes widened, but when Hosea leaned his face over Arthur’s, there was no recognition in the boys blood-filled and cloudy eyes. 

Tears pooled in Hosea’s eyes, dripping down his face and landing on Arthur’s bare, bruised chest. With the swelling and the blood in Arthur’s scleras it should’ve been harder for Hosea to read his face. But Hosea had raised this man since he was a boy, and he had never seen Arthur look so terrified. The steely resolve that was such a cornerstone to Arthur was erased and replaced with the terror of a cornered animal. 

Blood pooled on Arthur’s shoulder, quickly being dabbed away by Mrs. Barnes. It was fleshy and raw, layers of skin peeled away to reveal the muscle underneath. To the doctors’ credit, they were working incredibly quickly, removing the borderline necrotic skin in clumps.

The feeble screams of Arthur turned to forlorn mumbles and pleads. Colm’s name left his lips a few times, and Hosea had to be careful as to not tighten his grip on Arthur more. Anger and despair and everything in between hit Hosea in waves, the image of Arthur in so much agony being burned into his eyes.

Shallow breaths pleadingly entered Arthur’s lungs, panicked and desperate. Eyes wide but absent, swollen lips ajar. Eventually, the doctor pulled away. Blood drenched him to his elbow, some splattered across his creased face. The shoulder, in all its gore, looked better all things considered. It was raw and red but the rot had been carved away, reducing the size of his shoulder. It was indented, a crater of a wound spanning across his bicep and shoulder. Mrs. Barnes hurriedly wrapped Arthur’s shoulder best she could while her husband went to wash his hands and face. 

Hosea rubbed his thumb over the bruises on Arthur’s wrists before pulling away. Air still struggled to enter Arthur’s lungs, his chest shakily rising up and down. The doctor came and gave him a steroid shot, and Hosea didn’t bother asking why. Words caught in his throat every time he went to speak, so he decided to save the questions for later.

Hosea wasn’t aware of time passing, but eventually, John came back with a coffee and a meal. Hosea gratefully accepted it when John handed it to him wordlessly, before John’s eyes raked over Arthur’s sleeping body, finally stilled. 

“Is he…? Is he alive?” John finally spoke, voice scratchy from disuse.

It had been days since he last said anything. Hosea’s chest fluttered a little at the sound, relief he didn’t know he needed. A small smile graced Hosea’s face as he looked up into John’s eyes, eyes that have gotten duller and duller every day Arthur didn’t wake.

“He’s going to get better, i’m su—“ A loud clambering interrupted Hosea, the sound of the front door slamming open. Distantly, he heard Mrs. Barnes welcome someone and seconds later Dutch’s large frame entered the threshold of the room. Rushing over to Arthur, he reached down and gently clasped a hand onto Arthur’s good shoulder, taking in his swollen features and carved shoulder. Arthur stirred slightly before stilling once more.

”What are you doing here?” Hosea spoke quick, defences rising. John was tense behind him, like he was preparing for another fight. 

“Hosea, I need to talk to you.” Dutch squeaked out, voice barely above a whisper. His face was sullen and defeated, a vulnerability scarcely shown making his eyes shine.

Vulgar words itched at Hosea’s throat, an anger growing all too familiar begging for him to bite back. The moment his eyes met Dutch’s, the anger melted like snow on the first warm day of spring. For a precious second, he saw the man he allied with in that bar all those years ago. The young buck that had a fury in his heart and a mind of pure genius. Dutch has always been Hosea’s greatest weakness, and those eyes of his always had a way of getting what they want.

Hosea looked back at John, scanning his face for any sort of insight. John’s eyes locked with Hosea’s and a silent understanding passed between them. Hear him out, I got this.

John pulled the stool from the head of the bed and put it beside Arthur before plopping down onto it. Hosea looked back at Dutch, meeting his uncharacteristically desperate stare.

”Fine.” Hosea said, before leading Dutch out to the waiting room.

Chapter Text

“What the hell are you doing here, Dutch?” Hosea whispers through gritted teeth. The last thing he expected was Dutch to follow them, and every reason he could think of as to why he did was far from good.

”Please, Ol’ Girl, just listen to me for a second.” Dutch pleads, eyes wide and desperate.

He was unravelling, mind racing with contradiction. The whole way to Saint Denis he had been thinking of what to say, wavering between excuses and accusations or apologies and pleas. In years past, he wouldn’t have had to say anything. Hosea could tell what he meant merely from the look in his eyes. The distance had created a barrier, and Dutch couldn’t decide if he wanted to take the blame that was rightfully his. 

Hosea waits silently, watching as Dutch’s eyes flicker with contemplation. They are both quiet for a moment, and when Dutch finally speaks, the words are precious and rare. 

“I’m sorry.” Dutch finally starts, locking eyes with Hosea. The phrase feels foreign coming out of his mouth. As he takes a step forward, he doesn’t break eye contact.

”I’m sorry, Hosea. Micah he—“ He cuts himself off, shaking his head slightly. 

“I let myself be doubtful. Everyone keeps pushing and pushing and pushing me and I— I took it out on you. You don’t deserve that.”

Hosea fidgets on his feet a little. Dutch was never one to bare his heart, even in the privacy and comfort of Hosea’s warmth. There’s no deceit in Dutch’s eyes, and the anger that had found home in the pit of Hosea’s stomach was untangling with every word. 

“You always preach of faith, Van der Linde. Yet you completely lost faith in us. When did my loyalty to you ever falter? You—“ The words catch in Hosea’s throat, but he forces himself to speak anyway. 

“You know how I feel about you.” His voice cracks, eyes pulling away from Dutch’s. The implication of the words was obvious, and Dutch’s heart tightened. It was unfounded for either of them to speak their relationship to life, but Hosea didn’t know what else to say.

Dutch doesn’t really either, and he feels bad side-stepping the borderline confession that has been unsaid for nearly two decades now, but Arthur’s wellbeing has been eating at him.

“Is Arthur awake?”

The question makes the dying rage in Hosea flair up again. 

“Since when do you care?” He growls, his glare searing into Dutch. 

Dutch flinches a little, and Hosea expects a retort of sorts, but Dutch just nods.

”That’s fair.” Dutch’s eyes flicker with sadness, twitching back and forth in a flurry of thoughts. He wants to say something mending, but everything he says falls flat. 

“I brought money, for the doctor—“ Dutch offers, before being cut off by Hosea. 

“I already took some from your personal funds.” Hosea retorts.

”You took from my personal funds?” Anger flashes in Dutch’s eyes for a moment.

“Do you really think you have the right to be angry about that? After everything you did to prevent Arthur’s survival? The least you could do is pay for his treatment.” Hosea bites back, stepping slightly closer to Dutch. Dutch can’t help but pridefully argue back.

“Hence why I brought money! You could’ve had the decency to ask.” The moment the words leave Dutch’s tongue he knows they are unfair, and Hosea knows it too.

”Ask? You’ve been apathetic and cold for months. To the three people that have been with you since the start. I would lay down my life for you, so would Arthur, and recently, it’s felt like you want us to. That boy has killed too many good men for your pride. And look where that got him! You didn’t let us search for him, you didn’t care to come check on him when he miraculously did make it home. You didn’t even want Arthur come here! What makes you think I’d consider you to be anything other than a roadblock?” Hosea’s voice raises with every word. Mrs. Barnes glances over at them but doesn’t say anything. Hosea frowns with embarrassment. 

The words echo in Dutch’s ears for a moment. It’s harsh, but Dutch knows it’s true, and it feels like it’s tearing him apart. He stares wordlessly and slack-jawed at Hosea. When he doesn’t say anything, Hosea keeps going.

“You came to apologize yet all I hear is excuses. If you have no care I suggest you leave.” Hosea turns to go back into the operating room, but Dutch snaps forward, grabs him by the hip and pulls him into his chest.

Hosea tenses but doesn’t pull away, glancing a little at the small woman at the desk. The hug isn’t exactly friendly, more intimate then most men would be towards each other, but if Amie is uncomfortable or even noticed at all, she doesn’t show it. 

Dutch buries his head into the crook of Hosea’s neck, hands loosely placed on his waist. The position makes Hosea blush a little, the delicacy of Dutch’s touch making his stomach flutter. They hadn’t held each other in months, especially not like this. Hosea doesn’t hug him back, just lets his hands hang at his side as Dutch holds him.

”I’m so sorry, ‘Sea.” Dutch whispers into his neck, voice hushed and pleading. 

Hosea notices moisture on his neck before he realizes Dutch is crying. The moment he does he buries his hand into Dutch’s hair on instinct, the other gently finding the small of Dutch’s back. 

Dutch’s hands tighten around Hosea’s waist as a sob wracks through him. Hosea hushes him as he would a child, but it doesn’t stop Dutch from sobbing more and more. Dutch mumbles apologies again and again, some incoherent, some not. Some laced with excuses, some taking the blame entirely. It was like Dutch simultaneously knew he was in the wrong and was also trying to find any reason not to be. But ultimately, he was apologetic, and Hosea knew he meant it.

Dutch was just stubborn, and he always had been. It was something Hosea had grown to love. Some nights he’d be debating his partner until dawn broke. But right now, the stubbornness was acting as a wedge between Dutch and the truth of the matter. 

Not enough of a wedge to let Hosea stay mad. Not right now, at least, he had more important things to lend his energy to. The knot of anxiety he had been carrying for months and had tightened to nauseam over the past few days loosened a little. This wasn’t a solution by any means, but it was a step in the right direction. They had both said what they had been thinking for what felt like forever, and it felt like Hosea could breathe for a second, holding Dutch in this ever familiar way.

Dutch’s sobs turn to sniffles before he sits up stiffly, hastily wiping his face. He clears his throat and sniffles a little, looking around as casually as he could muster to make sure nobody was staring. Mrs. Barnes had silently left the room at some point, to Dutch’s relief. 

The action made Hosea smirk a little. The strong and mighty Dutch van der Linde wouldn’t be caught dead crying, and his little performance to appear like nothing had happened was kind of endearing.

”To answer your question,” Hosea breaks the silence. “He isn’t awake yet, but you missed the worst of it. The doctor took some of his shoulder off. Said it had to be done, but—“

”Arthur will be angry.” Dutch cuts him off, clearing his throat again to shake the remaining remnants of his breakdown. 

Hosea just nods, before grabbing his hand and gesturing they walk inside. Dutch hesitates a little, apprehension painted on his face. Hosea squints at him in confusion.

“John isn’t exactly fond of me right now.” Dutch says, guilty eyes staring into Hosea’s. 

“And the solution is staying out here? You have to speak to him eventually, Dutch.” Hosea responds defiantly. 

Dutch just sighs and relents, following Hosea into the operating room where John and Arthur are. Hosea lets go of his hand as they enter the threshold of the door, an action second hand to the two of them.

The two younger men aren’t stupid, they know Hosea and Dutch had a closer relationship than most men. But they also respect the men, and frankly think it is weirder to care what another man does in the privacy of his own tent, so they have let it be for years. They wish Dutch and Hosea knew they don’t give a shit, but they weren’t going to tell them that. It wasn’t exactly polite to tell two men it’s okay if they are gay, in fact, they would probably get shot if they said that to someone. 

John turns and stares warily at Dutch as they enter the room. The look was growing more and more familiar, but it still burns a little every time Dutch sees it. John notices Dutch’s red and puffy eyes, but tries to hide it, too stubborn and angry to pity the man.

“Stand down, John. It’s fine. He’s sorry, right, Dutch?” Hosea says, holding a hand up to John and turning to look at Dutch. 

“Right.” Dutch mumbles.

“Yeah, you seem real sorry.” John barks back, rolling his eyes before turning back to Arthur. He dips a cloth in cold water and places it on Arthur’s forehead. 

Hosea glares at Dutch before going to stand next to John. 

“How is he?” Hosea says gently, placing his frail hand on John’s tense shoulder. 

“He’s okay, I guess,” John’s voice softens a little. “He’s still breathing, at least.”

Dutch decides to stop standing awkwardly behind them and goes to stand next to Hosea. He hadn’t really seen what Arthur looked like properly. Dutch was there when he keeled into camp on horseback, of course, but it was dark and Arthur was drenched in blood. Under this glaring hospital lighting, and all cleaned up, he looks mauled and on the verge of death. Bruises and small lacerations riddle his body from head to toe, and the skin Dutch could see was sickly pale. His face was still swollen something unsightly, tight inflamed skin swallowing his features. The worst of it was Arthur’s shoulder, he knew that, but he couldn’t quite see it. Gauze was wrapped around the shoulder, but Dutch could see how it was now concave. Arthur’s hair was still thick with blood, not yet washed clean.

A sob hitches in Dutch’s throat at the sight of Arthur. The sound is loud enough for the two men to glance over. Hosea’s expression mimics what Dutch assumes his own to be, but his eyes are filled with understanding. He knows exactly how Dutch is feeling right now. John just looked concerned for a brief moment, before quickly focusing back on Arthur as if he didn’t notice. 

The small family moment was interrupted with a knock on the door. 

Chapter Text

The doctor leans into the room, knocking on the open door to announce his arrival.

”Mr. Lafonde…” He glances around the room at the two new men. “…and company, your son should be ready to leave tomorrow. You seem… uncomfortable in Saint Denis, and I know you’d like to be on your way, but Tacitus has to rest for at least the night.”

The implication of their supposed discomfort isn’t lost on the three of them. Arthur’s injuries aren’t typical of a robbery, or even one round of torture. These are continuous and extreme injuries, ones that are typically born out of a life of crime. Dr. Barnes is an evidently smart man, and he seems to take more pride in saving lives than turning in outlaws. For that, Hosea is grateful. 

“Thank you so much, Doctor.” Hosea manages.

Dutch steps forward, a forced and practiced smile on his face. 

“Archibald Smith, it’s very nice to meet you, good sir.” Dutch says, clasping his hand over the doctors. 

“Doctor Joseph Barnes.” Dr. Barnes smiles politely back.

John didn’t bother introducing himself, staring blankly at Arthur’s still body.

”Doctor Barnes, I am forever grateful to you for saving young Tacitus’ life. Please, allow me to thank you more financially.” Dutch continues, placing a hand on the doctor’s shoulder and leading him out of the room.

Hosea can’t help but feel a little sour about him leaving. Dutch just got here. He didn’t bother to come see Arthur the entire time they were at camp. He didn’t have to clean the boy after he, by the grace of God, found his way home half-alive. He didn’t see the blood in his underwear or the animalistic fear in his eyes. He didn’t see his shoulder get carved out, didn’t hear the guttural screams of Arthur being sliced into chunks and tortured with memories. And now he’s leaving the room the moment he can.

John tapped out of the conversation the moment it wasn’t about Arthur. He didn’t think he could feel more guilty about leaving for a year, lord knows Abigail won’t let him forget, but with Arthur in this condition, the guilt makes him feel like he’s going to follow Arthur to the grave. Arthur had always been unstoppable, unbreakable. He had always bounced back. And he had always been there for John. When he left, a part of him knew it would hurt people. He thought the person who would hold a grudge would be Dutch, or the mother of his child, but Arthur took it the hardest. He had been cold to John since he got back, and John was too arrogant to try to mend the bridge between them. If he only knew he might lose the man he’d come to see as his brother, he would’ve swallowed his pride and talked to the man. He would’ve never left in the first place. Maybe if the two of them were getting along, they could’ve talked about Dutch. Then Dutch wouldn’t have drifted so far from them, and he would’ve listened to Arthur when he told him that he didn’t want to go on that goddamn mission. This is his fault. He—

“—ohn? John?” Hosea’s voice breaks through his guilt-ridden train of thought. 

John whips his head over. “Y-Yeah? What?” He mutters, voice wavering a little. 

Hosea eyes crease, and turning his head in contemplation. 

“Are you okay, son?” Hosea asks gently. 

His eyes feel like they are burning into John. John looks away, grimacing slightly.

“I’m fine, old man. Just worried is all.” He replies, trying to mask the emotion in his voice. 

“Why is Dutch here?” John says Dutch’s name like it’s a slur, anxious to change the topic. 

“Belated guilt. But—“ Hosea lowers his voice a little. “He actually seemed apologetic. I know you are angry, John. And you’re a grown man. It’s up to you if you want to hear him out.” 

“I do not.”

Hosea frowns a little, but nods anyway. “That’s fair, I think. I’m weary too.”

“Sure.” John responds stiffly.

Hosea sighs through his nose before trying to hand John a small wad of cash. “How about you go grab us something to eat? I’ll watch him.”

”I’m staying here.” John says, faster and harsher than he meant to. 

Hosea flinches a bit before continuing. “Well then… I will go get us something. Play nice with Dutch while I’m gone, please? You are allowed to be angry, but the Barnes’ have been very gracious hosts already. Don’t destroy their fine establishment with your infighting.” He smiles down at John, hoping his lighthearted tone with brighten the mood a little.

John just nods annoyedly and stares back at Arthur. Hosea sighs again, leaving the room as Dutch moves to go back in. 

“Don’t push him.” Hosea cautions as Dutch walks by, maintaining his pace towards the front door and exiting. 

Dutch tentatively enters the room. Finding a chair, he pulls it up to the side of Arthur’s bed, parallel to John. The younger man doesn’t look up at him. John is watching Arthur like he’ll die the moment he looks away. Like he will stop breathing, or someone will come back for him. If anyone tries to hurt him again John will gut them like a fish without hesitation.

Dutch pauses for a second, trying to decide if he wants to try to talk to John. In hindsight, he was deeply embarrassed about his argument with him. Once again, he was bad at admitting his wrongdoing, and a part of him didn’t want to at all. But for some godforsaken reason he had tried to stop John from finding Arthur, and he knew he was wrong for it.

”Where did Hosea run off to?” Dutch tried, deciding maybe small talk would be better than a confrontation right now. 

John doesn’t respond at all. His eyes don’t move, he doesn’t say anything. It’s like the only people in this room are him and Arthur. 

“John? Did you he—“ 

“Shut the fuck up.” John snaps, glowering at Dutch. “Hosea told me not to fight you here, but I swear to God, if you say another word, I will paint the wall behind you with your blood.”

The words cut through the room. Dutch falls silent, dumb-struck and offended. He was also given instructions by Hosea, and right now he wants to maintain as much good standing with Hosea as he can, but his natural urge is to fight back. He doesn’t, just lets the uncomfortable quiet fill the room  

The only sound is Arthur’s shaky breaths rattling in and out of his swollen lips. John leaned closer to Arthur protectively. Dutch has proven his judgement to be skewed, and John hates how close Dutch is getting to Arthur’s fragile form. He shouldn’t even be here, let alone this close to the man he marched into his death and then didn’t even bother to look for.

John had never felt so many things at once. Anger, heartbreak, grief. A sliver of hope, buried underneath it all. He tried not to focus on any of them, taking the now-warm cloth off of Arthur’s forehead, dipping it into the cold water, and placing it back on his head. If Arthur had at least looked like himself, it would’ve given John a little bit of comfort. The swollenness made him unrecognizable, and all John wanted was to see his brother again. To hear his voice again, as annoying as it sounds. 

Arthur stirs a little, and John panics, leaning over to check Arthur’s breathing and see if he had moved his shoulder in an uncomfortable or unsafe way. Arthur hadn’t moved much at all, just nodding his head to the side a little as he mumbled something incoherent. John settled back into his chair, unsteady breaths leaving his lips. Being on edge wasn’t a foreign feeling, but he was feeling more paranoid than he thought he was capable of. 

Dutch just looked at John, eyes creased with sadness and concern. The black circles around John’s eyes were deep and glaring. The skin around his fingernails had been picked at, tiny scabs littering his fingertips. It was an anxious habit he had since a kid, but it died down over the years. It only really flared up when he was especially stressed. Based on their circumstance right now, and where they are, Dutch didn’t blame him for it. 

Hosea came back after a bit with some food, handing it off to the other two before taking his seat next to John. He attempted to make conversation a few times, noticing the uncomfortable, palpable silence. His attempts were fruitless, however, as neither of them seemed especially keen on keeping the conversation going. 

Later in the night, Mrs. Barnes brought in some fold-out cots from a side room for the three men. It was a tight squeeze getting three cots into the small room, but they manage to squish them together, pushing them side to side against Arthur’s bed. 

John moves to the chair Dutch was previously occupying, denying the fact that he was tired despite Hosea’s insistence that he needs rest. Hosea lies down on the cot closest to Arthur, with Dutch on the one next to him. For a second, Dutch glances at Hosea and considers getting closer to him, but he doesn’t. Partially because there was an audience, partially because he wasn’t sure Hosea even wanted that anymore, after everything that’s happened.  

Hosea mumbles a sleepy goodnight to them, and Dutch responds in turn. John says goodnight to Hosea specifically, though his voice has no indication that he is going to fall asleep anytime soon.

Chapter Text

At some point in the night, John wakes up to Arthur’s laboured breathing. Hosea had migrated over a little in his sleep, now tangled up with Dutch on the cot farthest from Arthur. Arthur’s head shakes from side to side, inaudible mumbles mixing with heavy pants. 

John jolts forward off his seat to stand over Arthur’s body. He freezes, unsure of what to do. John was never exactly good at comforting people, but Arthur wasn’t awake and couldn’t be put at ease by John’s presence alone. Tentatively, John places his hand on Arthur’s good shoulder, awkwardly rubbing his thumb back in forth unsteadily. 

“Hey man, you’re good.” He whispers down to Arthur.

The mangled man beneath doesn’t respond, quick breaths barely making it past his bloated lips. John grimaces. What is he supposed to do here? He can’t wake Arthur up from the nightmare he is clearly having, he hasn’t been awake since his fever worsened. John doesn’t even know if Arthur can hear him. He considers waking up Hosea for a second, the old man has always been more emotionally intelligent, but looking over at the two men coiled together, the thought vanishes. Hosea hasn’t looked this at ease in months, and seeing his two father figures back together like this, he can’t bring himself to interrupt their brief moment of tranquility. No matter how much he wants to wake up Dutch merely to inconvenience him.

Arthur’s eyes suddenly open wide, shooting around the room panicked. The red blood in what was previously the whites of his eyes make his blue pupils glow. The eye that was swollen shut is now just slightly open, and he can barely see the eye beneath the taut skin attempting to scan it’s surroundings. John leans above his face, trying to catch Arthur’s eyes, but it’s fruitless. His eyes are open but nobody is home, bleary eyes darting around.

“…ello, Colm…” Arthur sputters out, barely loud enough for John to hear.

“Arthur, man, you there?” John mutters. For a second, it seems like Arthur is looking at him, but then his eyes race away from John’s. John knows what Arthur thought he was seeing, he had found that dank cellar. A godless place that reeked of sweat and iron.

Tears pricked at John’s eyes. He felt useless, staring down at Arthur helplessly. There’s nothing he can do here. He’s a gunslinger and a killer, emotion was typically unproductive for him. A barrier rather than an asset. Hesitantly, he took Arthur’s hand gently into his. Arthur’s fingers clenched lightly back, and John’s stomach twisted. 

“You awake?” He said softly, rubbing his thumb on the back of Arthur’s hand. Arthur doesn’t respond, but his eyes slowly close as John trails his thumb gently across Arthur’s skin. It’s a bit awkward, as they don’t really touch each other, let alone hold each other’s hand, but John was grateful for any solution he could find. Arthur’s breath started evening out, and John let out a sigh of relief. 

He didn’t fall back asleep. Wide awake, hand-in-hand, he stared at Arthur’s chest shakily rising up and down until dawn broke through the windows, fuming in silence. After Arthur got better, and he will get better, John is going to find Colm. He’s going to find him and make him hurt the same way he hurt Arthur, he swears it. Whether or not Dutch ”allows” him to.

Hosea stirred a little before sitting up, bashfully trying to untangle himself from Dutch. Dutch wraps his hand around Hosea’s waist and pulls him back down a bit. As Hosea turns to glance over, John pulls his hand out of Arthur’s. Not that Hosea would judge him, but there’s an underlying embarrassment that comes with holding your brothers hand, even like this. Hosea looks at John shyly, down at Dutch, and then back again at John.

”Have you been awake all night, my boy?” Hosea asks quietly, clearly wanting to just ignore the intimate predicament he and Dutch have found themselves in. 

John shakes his head. “I slept a bit, don’t worry about me.” He muttered, looking away from Hosea’s concerned eyes. 

He picks at the skin around his fingers a little, uncomfortably fidgeting in his seat. Hosea frowns at the sight. It was hard to get any of them to unravel to the point of it being visible, but they were all growing more and more unkept. Gaunt and exhausted from the unrelenting anxiety and grief. 

The room was silent for a moment. Hosea wants to ask John what’s wrong, but he already knows what, and he also know’s John isn’t going to talk about it. He shut down completely and didn’t speak for four days after Arthur came back. He never told Hosea what he found at the camp Arthur was held. Hosea can’t help but think about what was clearly so horrible it rendered John mute, aside from the evidence beaten into Arthur’s face.

“He had a nightmare, in the middle of the night. Said something about Colm.” John says, voice thick and heavy. 

Hosea waits for John to elaborate, but he doesn’t. 

“Was he okay?” Hosea offers. It isn’t often he sees a chink in John’s emotional armour and he’s going to take the opportunity as it comes, despite the evident wall John is building higher and higher. The longer Arthur doesn’t wake, the more strung-out he’s beginning to look, cheekbones thinning and eye bags deepening to dark purples.

“I don’t know. I think so? He seemed really—” John squeezes his eyes tight and clears his throat. “—He seemed really panicked. I didn’t really know what to do.”

Hosea smiles sadly, nodding a little. He had to tread carefully. Getting John to open up was a puzzle he never could quite figured out. He turned from a cagey boy to a defensive man, deterring any act of vulnerability or even kindness like he was allergic to it. He and Arthur were alike in that way, among other things.

”Are you okay? I’ve been there for a few of his nightmares, it’s hard to see.” Hosea says, tapping Dutch’s arm as he speaks. Dutch loosens his grip before flipping over and continuing to sleep while Hosea scoots off the bed and over to John.

“I’m fine. Like I said, just worried. I’ve—“ John exhales through his nose. “I’ve never seen him look like that before.” 

He peers over Arthur’s face. It’s still, and calm as far as he could tell beyond the puffy purple. The look in his bloody eyes during the night feels like it’s burned onto the back of John’s eyelids, utter terror in Arthur’s red and blue eyes piercing into his heart.  

Hosea reaches the side of John’s chair and places a hand on his shoulder. To Hosea’s complete surprise, John leans his head into him and rests it on Hosea’s stomach. Hosea softly reaches his bony hand up and cradles John’s head, trying to steady his own heartbeat. Neither John nor Arthur have done this often, usually while drunk and melancholic, and always without talking about it the next day. He basks for a few moments in the feeling of his son resting comfortably on his stomach.

Mere seconds into Hosea gently hugging John’s head, John pushes off of him and rubs his arm awkwardly. 

“Sorry, Pa. Feelin’ sentimental, I guess.” John mumbles sheepishly. Another old habit from when him and Arthur were younger. During their younger and teenage years, they typically called Hosea “Pa” and occasionally called Dutch “Dad”, but as the two of them got older they used their real names more and more, until the paternal nicknames were lost completely. It was a mixture of the new gang members giving them weird looks and growing up in general, Hosea assumes, but it still saddened him more than he admits. Hearing it again was heartwarming, but it worrying all the same.

”It’s okay, my son. It’s going to be okay.” Hosea smiles down at John, returning his hand to the younger mans shoulder.

John stares off in thought for a moment, and then looks up at Dutch. 

“You told him it was a trap. He didn’t listen.” He glares at the sleeping man, shoulders tensing slightly as he speaks. 

“He is… complicated. There’s a lot to figure out now. I think with Arthur like this, he’s being forced to confront something that he doesn’t like.” Hosea tries to reason, but spite flickers in John’s eyes.

”That excuses this?” John gesticulates wildly at Arthur on the bed. “Because he couldn’t be a goddamn man and own up to his shortcomings?” 

Hosea sighs, something he feels like he’s been doing a lot lately, and leans against the wall. His old bones crackle as he attempts to rest against the hard plaster. Glancing up at Hosea for a moment, John stands up and offers him his seat, and Hosea gratefully takes the chair with a nod. John stands near the top of Arthur’s bed, calloused hand protectively placed on the bed frame close to Arthur’s head. 

“You’re not wrong, John.” Hosea relents. “We’ve all made our fair share of mistakes but this… this was preventable.” 

As much as he was an expert at making up excuses for Dutch, John could see right through his facade, and Hosea can’t think of anything else to explain why Dutch impeding Arthur’s survival was in any way valid. If Hosea doesn’t have it in him to be mad, John will be angry enough for the both of them.

John doesn’t respond to Hosea. Being mad at Dutch was easy, but Dutch wasn’t awake to be angry at and he didn’t want to direct it at Hosea by accident. He didn’t deserve it, no matter how irritating it was to hear Hosea play both sides. Ever the mediator, Hosea notices John’s furrowed brows and fidgety hands and decides to leave him alone for now. 

Chapter Text

Dutch wakes up about fifteen minutes later, brushing off his clothes and leaving to get coffee, as well as retrieve their horses for their departure. Shuffling in, the doctor hands Hosea a bunch of syringes and starts explaining what they are for, when to administer them, and how. John tries to focus on what each one does, but his mind keeps slipping away, guilty thoughts churning through his head.

Dutch comes back with five coffees unsteadily balanced in his hands, dropping two off at the front desk before bringing the other three into the operating room. Hosea accepts the coffee gratefully, but when Dutch holds the coffee out to John for him to take it, he doesn’t respond. Dutch stays for a second, thinking maybe John just hadn’t noticed, but John remains unresponsive, staring numbly at Arthur.

”O-kay… this’ll be over here then.” Dutch places the coffee on a side table nearby.

The doctor comes in to check Arthur over one last time, replacing the gauze on his shoulder and giving him another shot of morphine for the ride home. Dutch looked away as Dr. Barnes worked, a mixture of shame and a lack of curiosity to what Arthur’s shoulder really looks like. On the contrary, John stares dead-eyed as the doctor reveals the wound. The once gooey yellow swell was now an indented red, a central brown and red bullet hole still lightly charred from the candlestick Arthur used to self-cauterize it. The infection lines sprawling down his arm have receded a bit and faded slightly. Watching John’s emotionless expression as the doctor moves, Hosea’s face twists with concern at the disquieting sight, but he bites his tongue.

Once Joseph Barnes finishes working, he washes off his hands and walks back over to the three men. He shakes John and Dutch’s hands in a line as he speaks. 

“Thank you for trusting me with Tacitus’…”He pauses for a moment, hand raised in pause, before reaching out to shake Dutch’s hand. “…condition. He should be well enough for transport, as long as you do so safely. I have a stretcher that can get him to your wagon, but unfortunately you can’t keep it. I only have the one. If his fever doesn’t break soon, send someone back to pick up more medicine.” The doctor smiles as he lands at Hosea, holding his hand out. 

Hosea clasps his hand and shakes it, smiling warmly back at the man. “Thank you so much again, doctor.”

The doctor just nods before wordlessly leaving to grab the stretcher. A few minutes later, he walks back in with his wife, the stretcher horizontal a few feet off the ground. Landing at the side of the bed, they hold it parallel to Arthur, before looking up at the three men with expectant faces. 

Dutch reaches out to help grab Arthur, but John shoves his arm away, wedging his body between Dutch and Arthur’s bed. 

“Don’t touch him.” He growls, sneering at Dutch with disgust.

Hosea watches as Dutch eyes flash with emotion. Anger, frustration, guilt. John is pushing Dutch to the brink of his patience. Respect has always been very important to Dutch, and John’s relentless impertinence, no matter how fair it may be, was getting on Dutch’s nerves. Despite this, Dutch raises his hands as if surrendering before leaving the room to presumably ready the wagon, shooting an unreadable look to Hosea as he exits.

John gently slides his hands underneath Arthur’s back as Hosea grabs his feet. Arthur is quiet as they shuffle him over a bit before lifting him and gentle placing him on the stretcher. The doctor, and more notably, his wife, were deceivingly strong, the tiny woman effortlessly walking backwards with Arthur and out the door. 

They gingerly transfer Arthur to the wagon, the injured man drugged out and silent beneath them. Thanking them one last time, Hosea shakes the doctor’s hand and hugs Mrs. Barnes in a friendly manner. 

“Thank you, Mrs. Barnes, you’re much too kind.”

”Oh please, Amie is fine. And don’t mention it, you’ve been lovely as ever.”

Hosea smiles and nods, before hopping in the back with Arthur and John. Dutch leads the way out of the city. They have to be careful in Saint Denis, the polished streets and dark alleyways give way to a level of crime crueler than expected for the faux civilized city. 

The bumps in the road make Arthur jolt a few times, which are accompanied by John scowling and cursing at Dutch under his breath, but they make it home fine.

”Who’s there?” Sadie hollers out, eyeing the wagon. Surprise flickers across her face as she sees Dutch holding the reins of the wagon Hosea, John and Arthur had left in.

”It’s just—“ Dutch starts, before instantly being cut off by Sadie.

”What did you do?! Where’s Arthur?!” Sadie screams accusatorially, causing a few heads to turn at the sound.

Before Dutch can bite back, Hosea moves to respond.

”He’s right here, Mrs. Adler, it’s alright!” Hosea yells back, shakily standing to look over the edge of the carriage.

Sadie just frowns stubbornly, before trying to focus back on keeping watch. She tries to subtly peek in the wagon as they drive by, but can’t see much past the blankets and bodies. 

They roll up to Arthur’s tent, the canvas still extended at the sides with door flaps added on for privacy. Charles, quickly noticing their arrival, drops the bag of rations in his hands off at Pearson, before speed-walking over. Approaching the wagon, he nods to Hosea and John, who were opening the back of the wagon so Arthur could be moved into his bed. Charles looks up at Dutch hesitantly before nodding politely, a tentative look in Charles’ eyes. Moving past Hosea, he helps John shuffle Arthur off the wagon and gently places him in his bed.

”Is he going to live?” Charles evenly asks Hosea, ever the straight shooter.

“Supposedly. If his fever doesn’t break soon, we’ll have another problem.”

”I have some mint salves that should help with cooling him down.” Charles offers. 

Hosea nods, and Charles hastily walks to his tent to retrieve his personal medicine box. Dutch is fidgeting near the tent, hesitantly watching the other three men work on securing Arthur and applying treatments. He felt like an outlier, watching the other three work like cogs in a machine. It was his own fault, of course, for not being more involved sooner. He finds a chair and pulls it in front of the door to Arthur’s tent, sitting there in silence. 

John retrieves more cooled-down boiled water, wets a cloth in it, and then places it on Arthur’s forehead. Gently, Charles rubs some sort of mint and aloe ointment on Arthur’s temples, before leaving to continue his chores. 

The camp looks more dishevelled than normal. Wood is lying unchopped, Pearson’s station seems more empty than normal. They were all feeling Arthur’s absence, from the lack of meat to the water bowls not being changed out frequently enough. The small chores has typically gone unnoticed, but with Arthur out of commission, they were all starting to realize just how much the man does for their gang.

Dutch catches Micah slinking around the outskirts of the camp, whispering to Javier and Bill. He scowls and turns away. Micah has stepped out of line, he knows that, but a part of him doesn’t want to believe it. He had been loyal as ever since he got here, maybe he simply had a lapse in judgement. Maybe he didn’t mean it. For now, Dutch decides to keep their conversation to himself, despite itching to tell Hosea. To hear Hosea’s input, level-headed and exact. The older man always knows exactly what to say, always looks at the problem from every angle. But with the distrust between them right now, Dutch doesn’t trust Hosea to look at it impartially, though a part of him knows that’s hypocritical to say.

With Dutch so close to Arthur’s tent, John sticks around, a chair pulled up to the side of Arthur’s bed. Hosea lies on his cot, still in the corner of the tent. A part of John wants to go help Charles pick up the slack, but he can’t bring himself to leave. If it was just Hosea, he could trust him, but every action Dutch has done since this living nightmare started proves his inability to act with care and loyalty, despite them being core tenets of his preaching. John doesn’t trust Dutch, not even a little bit. The moment John leaves, Dutch is going snuff out Arthur, at least that’s what he thinks. Why else would Dutch not send people to find Arthur? Why would he try to prevent them getting him help? Dutch wants Arthur dead, and John will burn the world to the ground before he lets Arthur die, especially by the hands of their false prophet.

As night falls, Dutch returns to his own tent, to John’s relief. Despite this, John can’t bring himself to leave. So as Hosea pulls his cot next to Arthur’s, he smiles up at John.

”You can stay, John. Just on one condition, you actually sleep.”

”Abigail will want me to come to bed…” John mutters, picking a little at his finger tips. 

Hosea swats at John hand to get him to stop scratching, before lying down on the outskirts of the two cots. 

“Son, I’m sure she won’t mind. She understands the situation.” Hosea says softly, smiling at John.

John pushes his lips together and looks to the side, a mixture of embarrassment and contemplation swirling within him. A part of him knows Hosea is right, but another, louder part of him is painfully aware of the optics of the situation. Two men in their 30’s sharing a bed with their surrogate father is not going to reflect well on his masculinity or prowess. 

Nevertheless, he slides into bed between Arthur and Hosea, lying flat on his back with his hands folded on his stomach. Hosea turns his head to the side, keeping his body as flat as he could to alleviate his aching bones. 

Arthur groans a little, and John bolts upward, looking over Arthur with panicked eyes, breath shallowing. Hosea hushes him a little, grabbing his shoulder and pulling him back down to the bed.

“It’s okay, boy. He’s okay, relax.” Hosea whispers, rubbing John’s shoulder softly as he attempted to even his breath. 

“I’ve never felt like this before. After everything we’ve seen, everything we’ve done… I can’t believe I can even feel like this.” John shakily whispers back, clenching his eyes tight. 

Hosea hums in response, softly patting John’s shoulder until his breathing even out. 

Chapter Text

It was two more days before Arthur’s fever broke. Two nights of John falling asleep with his head inches from Arthur’s heart, just to know for certain he was still alive. That he’s still here. 

But eventually, one night John feels a twitching against his hand. Sleepily, he rolls over to check on Arthur, and is shocked to see his blood-speckled blue eyes staring back at him, barely ajar but open nonetheless. In contrast to his nightmares, they are focused in on John, not just agape but awake. 

“Arthur?” John yelps, sitting up to get a better look at the man.

Arthur drowsily grins back a little, the corner of his lips just barely curved into a smirk. 

“‘m alive...” He croaked, before launching into a coughing fit. He went to sit up, but grimaced at the tension in his shoulder.

Hosea stirred a little as John moved to help Arthur sit up. With a groan, Arthur sat upright on the bed, John’s hand on his sweaty back to help support him. With his other hand, he shook Hosea awake.

”Hosea! Hosea, get up!” John says, hurriedly shaking his shoulder. 

“Ugh…what…?” Hosea mumbles as he sits up, turning to look at John. At the sight of Arthur upright, a huge grin spreads across his face.

”Arthur!” Hosea remarks, trying to not let his smile waver as he stares into Arthur’s swollen, bloody eyes. 

“Hi, Hosea.” Arthur drawls out before leaning his head backwards. “Need water.”

Grabbing his glass from the small table next to the beds, Hosea hands the cup to John, who holds it up to Arthur’s mouth. Arthur glares a little at John, clearly feeling sort of infantilized, but takes a sip regardless. 

Arthur slides himself back down and closes his eyes, exhaling through his nose. A twang of pain shoots through his shoulder, and for a brief moment, the image of Colm plunging a file into his wound flashes through his mind. He doesn’t realize he’s hyperventilating until he feels Hosea’s hand on his wrist. Panicked, he pulls his arm away from Hosea, tucking it behind him. When he finally looks at Hosea through his wet, swollen eyes, he winces at the pure concern painted on the old man’s face. Shallow breaths race in and out of his lungs as he stares back at the two clearly distressed men. He raises his shaking good hand to his face, placing his fingers on the bridge of his swollen nose.

“Sorry, ‘m fine.” He mutters, voice gravelly and raw.

Hosea shakes his head. 

“No, Arthur. No, you are not. You’ve been asleep for a week. I thought—” Hosea pleads, heartbroken eyes bearing down on Arthur. “—I thought you were gone for a second.”

Arthur frowns, before glancing to the side, white-hot shame welling in his chest. “‘m sorry. I… I didn’t mean to scare no one.” He rasps. 

John scowls at Hosea, before turning back to Arthur. “It’s okay, man. You’re good.” He reaches out to pat Arthur’s shoulder, before rescinding his hand, remembering his previous reaction to Hosea. 

“Just go to bed. We’ll talk in the morning, yeah?” He offers, smiling softly down at Arthur. 

Arthur nods wordlessly before attempting to shuffle into a comfortable position, shoulder cramping at any sign of movement. 

“Is everyone okay?” Arthur mutters sleepily, lulling his head to the side slightly. 

Hosea nods before realizing Arthur’s eyes are closed. “Yeah, everyone’s fine, son.” He hollowly answers, clearing his throat as he speaks. 

Arthur hums in response before going still. Hosea and John share a disconcerted look, and John reaches his hand under Arthur’s nose to make sure he’s still breathing. 

The next morning, Hosea leaves the tent as the sun rose. He is a morning bird anyway, but today, he has more of a reason to be up bright and early. Arthur has finally awoken, and he’s excited to tell the others.

The shaking of the bed and the noise from Hosea’s not-so-quiet departure wakes John. He didn’t bother getting up yet. Or rather, didn’t want to get up yet, with Arthur’s wheezy snore next to him. In years past, that sound was one of his greatest irritants. A pet peeve that got between him and his few hours of sleep. Now, it was nothing but a reminder that Arthur was still breathing. Still alive. He can’t see what he ever found grating about the nasally noise.

Half-way through an exhale, Arthur snorts in a hitched breath before attempting to swat at something, eyes still closed. John watches as unsteady breaths pleadingly rush in and out of Arthur’s chest. Not knowing what else to do, John reaches out and rubs Arthur’s blood soaked hair the same way Hosea would when they were boys. Instead of having the calming effect John had hoped, Arthur flinches hard, hitting his head off the cot with a bounce.

The impact is just barely forceful enough to wake him up, looking around panicked with tight fists. When his eyes land on John, he relaxes a bit, letting himself fall backwards. John decides to not mention the panic that ensued moments prior. When Arthur’s shoulders meet the cot, he grimaces at the feeling, the tight wound sending spikes of pain through him. For a second, the tent appears to be that dark, horrible cellar, before he blinks again and it returns to normal.

Feeling useless and childlike, he shakes his head back and forth, his chest unsteadily rising up and down.

”God, I feel like death.” He drawls, placing his good hand on his still warm forehead.

John lets out a humourless laugh. Though the action lacks the proper emotion, it’s still nice to hear even a parody of John’s laugh after everything that’s happened. John feels like he hasn’t laughed in months.

”You look like death, too. If you thought I looked bad after the wolf thing.” John smirks, but his eyes are full of grief. “You should see yourself now.”

”At least I got mauled by man, not some dogs in the snow, you idiot.” Arthur tries a smile, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. Despite trying to joke around, it all just doesn’t seem quite that funny right now.

”You got me there.” Relenting to Arthur feels strange, but he doesn’t feel like arguing with the guy who's newly disabled and still half-alive.

Arthur gives him a sideways look before closing his eyes. “Could you give me a minute?” He mutters, voice hoarse and hushed.

John gives Arthur a sad smile. “Yeah, I’ll go get you something to eat. Don’t go running off.”

“Oh yeah, ‘m real primed for an escape right now.” He attempts to keep his voice light, rolling his eyes as he speaks.

As John leaves, he turns to glance at Arthur for a moment. He isn’t exactly keen to leave him on his own, but he also wants to put as much power back into Arthur’s hands as possible, after him feeling completely helpless for so long.

The moment John leaves the room, the light fades from Arthur’s eyes. He’s still sickly and slightly deluded, his brain stirring with the remnants of the infection. More exhausted than he ever thought he could be, he goes slack, staring at the ceiling numbly. With nobody watching him, he can be as weak as he feels. Tears slowly roll out of his swollen eyes as he lets out a single sob before trying to steel his resolve, biting down on the inside of his cheek to settle his nerves. He had noticed his shoulder felt different, but between the gauze hiding it and the morphine and illness in his mind, he doesn’t bother trying to think about it.

A few minutes later, Dutch enters the tent with a bucket of water, some steam radiating off of it, with a cup in his other hand. A towel is slung across his shoulder.

“Well, look who’s finally awake. Good morning, son.” Dutch greets, smiling kindly.

Arthur lets out a cough, trying to look at Dutch through his dull eyes. “‘ello, Dutch.”

”I brought some water to wash the blood out of your hair.” Dutch pulls on the end of the cot, gently moving the top away from the wall of the tent. He pulls the chair to the head of the bed, placing the bucket of water on his lap. 

“Yer gonna wash my hair?” Arthur grumbles, hesitation and embarrassment lacing his voice.

”Would you rather it stay bloody? I have a feeling it’s going to be a while until you can wash it yourself.” Dutch teases, the humorous tone not quite reaching his eyes. “Can I help you shuffle back a bit?” 

“I got it.” Arthur attempts to push himself backward, but lets out a gasp of pain as he puts pressure on his mangled arm. 

Dutch wordlessly helps him, lifting Arthur’s body up slightly as he pushes himself back with his feet. Dutch helps him lean backwards with his head hanging off the bed.

“I hate this. Feel useless.” Arthur says as Dutch dips the cup in bucket of water and pours it on Arthur’s hair, the blood in the sponge of dirty blond hair being rehydrated.

”Faith! You have to have faith you will get better, Arthur.” Dutch declares, fingertips red with Arthur’s blood as he scrubs his scalp. 

“You and yer fuckin’ faith.” Arthur mutters, avoiding Dutch’s eye line. 

Dutch frowns at the retaliation, but doesn’t argue back, despite his instinct to do just that. 

He continues to wash Arthur’s hair in silence. The sticky spikes of red wash out with relative ease, the hot water loosening the caked, dried blood. Finally, his hair straightens and returns to the typical dirty blond. Arthur tries to ignore the utter discomfort at the feeling of a man’s hands in his hair, a sensation he once enjoyed now defiled by that man in that god forsaken basement.

Placing the bucket on the ground, he pulls the towel off his shoulder and scrubs Arthur’s hair, getting it as dry as he can. 

At that moment, John walks back in with a bowl full of stew, his eyes flickering with anger as he takes in the scene in front of him. 

“What the hell are you doing in here?” John snarls, attempting to mask the unbridled rage in his voice for Arthur’s sake. 

“Just washing his hair, John. I was just about to leave.” Dutch responds, voice even and calm.

“Then leave.”

Dutch sighs, handing the towel to John before grabbing the bucket and leaving the room, glancing behind him and smiling at Arthur as he breaches the door.

“The hell is that about?” Arthur questions, eyebrows furrowing with confusion. 

John tries to hide his grimace before smiling at Arthur. “Don’t worry ‘bout it. Here.” He helps Arthur shuffle back down before holding the bowl of stew to Arthur’s mouth. Lacking the energy, Arthur doesn’t argue back.

Stubbornly, Arthur grabs the bowl from John with his good hand, flinching a little in pain yet determined to feed himself, feeling emasculated post hair washing. He holds the bowl up to his mouth and takes a sip. 

Arthur hadn’t realized how nauseously hungry he was until the smell of food hit his nose. He hadn’t eaten since the morning they left for the mission. He greedily takes another sip.

John chuckles a little. “Hungry?” 

Arthur just nods in response, and John leaves to go wait outside of the tent. It’s evident Arthur wants some privacy, but John can’t bring himself to go too far, especially after Dutch snuck in.

Chapter Text

Tilly comes by at some point, as well as Abigail and a few of the other girls. Arthur gives his thanks to the ladies, and they stick around for a few moments, but it becomes glaringly clear Arthur wants to be left alone, so they do just that.

Hosea returns with more medical supplies and clean water. He plops the supplies down on the table and places his hands on his hips, smiling down at Arthur. 

”Good morning, my son. Happy to see you awake.” He smiles, moving the extra cot away from Arthur’s and pulling up a chair.

”That makes one of us.” Arthur croaks back.

”Oh, come on. We put a lot of work into keeping you kicking, Mr. Morgan. Don’t make me regret it.” Hosea teases with a smirk.

Arthur rolls his eyes and lulls his head to the side.

“I regret it” Arthur mumbles. Hosea frowns slightly. The first time he made the joke, it was funny, but the more he says it the more real it starts to sound. 

He dips a washcloth into the bucket of water and rings it out. “We need to clean your shoulder and rewrap it. I doubt it will feel nice, but you’ve been through worse.” 

“Have I?” Arthur mutters back, cocking an eyebrow at Hosea.

Hosea chuckles in response. “Fair enough. But the worst of all of this is over, and you—“ He points a finger in Arthur’s face. “—slept through it.” He smiles playfully, but it wavers a bit when he sees Arthur’s dull expression.

”You weren’t there for the worst of it.” Arthur grumbles, dreary eyes staring into Hosea’s.

Hosea’s stomach drops. “I— I didn’t mean it like that—“

“Just clean the damn shoulder.” Arthur cuts him off, huffing through his nose and turning to glare at the canvas wall.

Grimacing, Hosea starts by putting yarrow and ginseng ointment on the rope burns wrapped around his ankles and wrists, as well as on a few scattered cuts on various points of his body. Then, almost begrudgingly, he peels the sticky, blood soaked gauze off Arthur’s shoulder.

The moment Arthur catches a glimpse, the air gets knocked out of him. His shoulder, once dense and muscular, was completely indented. Gouged and serrated and nauseatingly raw. Quick breaths hitch in his throat as he bolts upward, trying to ignore the sharp, stomach-churning pain shooting through him as he scrambles forward.

”what tHE FUCK?! WHAT DID YOU DO?!” He bellows, staring wide eyed and panicked at his concave limb. His throat tightens as he stares, closing his eyes tightly and reopening them in hopes of changing the image.

Hosea jumps back in shock, before lurching forward again to try to calm Arthur.  “Arthur, Arthur listen to me—“

”WHAT HAPPENED TO ME, HOSEA?! My arm, fuck, my fucking arm—“ Arthur chokes out a sob, running his shaky good hand through his newly cleaned hair.

The noise alarms John, who comes in and takes in the scene with sorrowful eyes. He moves near Hosea to help try to physically push Arthur back down as gently as they can. Arthur pushes back weakly, hitting at John’s arms like a child throwing a tantrum. “Arthur, man, you need to relax!” John yelps, trying to grab Arthur’s arms and push him back down. The action just makes the damaged man flail more, feebly attempting to bat away greedy hands. Greedy, hungry hands, touching him—

A tear trickles down Hosea’s face as he speaks, voice cracking. “Just listen to me! It had to happen, Arthur, I’m so sorry. There was no other solution, save taking the whole thing. I’m so, so sorry.”

Silently, Arthur slowly stills, smacking them away, lying down and staring emotionless at the ceiling. He doesn’t reply to Hosea, completely quiet save the shaky sound of him breathing. Hosea moves to keep cleaning what is left of Arthur’s shoulder, and as he does, John stands and stares in shock for a second before leaving to sit back outside, trembling slightly as he walks.

Arthur is dead silent as Hosea works, numbly staring forward. Every once in a while, he clenches his jaw or fist in pain, but no audible sounds leave him. He gnaws on the inside of his cheek as he gets lost in thought. This is Colm’s doing, sure, but he is also sure it’s his fault. Divine intervention, in a way. The only way God is able to guarantee Arthur cannot slaughter any more of His creations. This is purposeful, another karmic debt bitterly repaid. Perhaps it’s a good thing. He knows he won’t get right with God, that he won’t be saved, but God is getting right with him. Modifying Arthur’s unclean form to subdue his violent tendencies.

Once Hosea finishes re-bandaging, he opens his mouth to speak, to say anything at all, but no words come out. There’s nothing he could say right now that would do anything of substance, so he just turns on his heel and leaves with a sniffle.

Closer to dinner time, Charles comes in holding a bowl of stew securely between his hands. He smiles softly down at Arthur as he enters, sitting at the edge of his cot.

“How are you feeling, my friend?” Charles asks softly. 

Arthur groans and lulls his head over to the side to look Charles in the eye.

”Bout as good as I look.” He sputters. Charles tries to ignore the wetness around Arthur’s eyes, forcing another kind smile.

”Great, then?” Charles smirks and bites the inside of his cheek. “Dinner will help, c’mon.”

Arthur grunts in response. Charles reaches out to help Arthur sit up a bit, stuffing a few more pillows behind him for support.

As Charles lifts the first spoonful to Arthur’s lips, he doesn’t fight back. With John, or even Hosea, he’s been annoyingly stubborn about feeding himself and even administering his own medications, despite Hosea’s pleads to just let him help. He even got caught almost fainting trying to get out of bed and go outside to relieve himself, which got him a very, very long lecture from Hosea about his safety. They don’t mean to make him feel weak and childish, but they certainly do. He wasn’t used to feeling so useless. He was the protector, not the protected. The strong and powerful Arthur Morgan never thought he would be reduced to this. But when Charles feeds him, it doesn’t feel infantilizing or degrading. It’s a simple act of kindness, nothing more. An excuse for closeness Arthur refuses to analyze further.

He opens his mouth and accepts the bite without making eye contact. Charles just smiles softly. After the fourth bite, Charles breaks the silence. 

“How are you, really?” 

Arthur swallows another bite before scoffing. “Already told you,” he rasps, slumping his head back slightly. “Feel like shit.”

”I know you aren’t physically well, I was talking about how you are feeling. I’m sure it isn’t easy to—“

”’m fine, Charles.” Arthur cuts him off, a little louder and harsher than he meant. He clears his throat and takes the spoon out of Charles’ hand. “You know what I’ve done. What I am. This is just a part of the deal. Bad things, bad people.” He dismissively waves his hand in the air.

Charles frowns, leaning forward slightly. His eyes are so soft and tender it makes Arthur sick to his stomach. “I don’t think you’re a bad man, Arthur Morgan.” Charles whispers, trying to catch Arthur’s blood-speckled blue eyes. 

He does. Arthur peers back at him, eyes hardened and masked. “Then you don’t know me at all, Charles Smith.” He mutters back. His eyes don’t hold anger, or resentment, or anything of the sort. They are simply steeled, a well-practiced masking of emotion. 

They stare at each other for a moment, an emotional standoff that Charles is bound to lose. Charles sighs, and Arthur sips down the last of the soup before handing the bowl back. 

“Thanks for the dinner.” Arthur says plainly. Charles picks up on the unspoken request and stands to leave with a sigh.

“Goodnight, Arthur. I’m sorry if—“ He stops, taking a shaky, deep breath in. “I’m just sorry. This shouldn’t have happened.” 

Arthur nods back blankly in response, and Charles reluctantly leaves.

Chapter Text

As night falls, Hosea makes his way back to Arthur’s tent. He stops outside the door where John is sitting with his head in his hands. 

“Are you staying here tonight?” He gently asks. 

John looks up at him with tired eyes. His gaze trails over to his families tent. “I should probably go talk to Abigail. Just…” He points a finger at the canvas door. “Don’t let Dutch be alone with him.”

Hosea purses his lips together. “I don’t think he would do anything to harm Arthur, John.”

Tempered anger flickers in John’s eyes as he stands up, matching Hosea’s eye-line. “He already has. You have no idea what he’s capable of.” He starts walking away, but turns to look at Hosea, stepping backwards as he speaks. “We don’t know him anymore. Haven’t for months.”

With that, he turns back around and walks toward his and Abigail’s tent. 

Hosea sighs, rubbing his bony hand down his wrinkled face. Once again, stubborn John isn’t exactly wrong. A part of Hosea is angry too, but he has known Dutch for two decades. Knows him in ways nobody else does. He can’t help but want to trust him, no matter how cold he’s been the past few months. The two boys aren’t his and Dutch’s by blood, but their stubbornness feels hereditary.

With an inhale, Hosea pushes into Arthur’s tent. For a second, he thinks the younger man is asleep, but as he gets closer he realizes his eyes are open. Arthur is just staring, dead-eyed and unblinking, at the ceiling. Cruel memories churn through his mind, picking at his dwindling sanity.

“Arthur?” Hosea whispers, leaning over Arthur’s face. 

Arthur snaps out of the daze he’s in and looks up, eyes bleary and afraid. It takes him a second to refocus, but eventually, he zeros in on Hosea’s face. 

“What’re you doin’ here?” He grumbles, voice raspy and harsh. 

“I’m here to sleep. You need to be—“ Hosea starts softly, before being cut off.

”No. Get out.” Arthur growls, glaring at Hosea. “I don’t need a babysitter.”

”You need to be monitored—“

”Get out now.” Arthur sneered.

“Arthur—“

“You let a stranger butcher me!”

Hosea snaps. ”You were butchered already! You were going to die!” He yells, fists clenched. He stares pleadingly at Arthur, tears rolling down his frail face.

The words hang in the air for a second, the room falling silent. After what feels like an eternity, Hosea speaks again, voice thick and grief-stricken.

“I— I couldn’t just let you die, Arthur. Whatever happened to you out there—“ He shakes his head, carelessly wiping the tears off his face. “I don’t know what you went through, I’ll never know like you do, but it damn near took you from us. What else was I to do? Watch you die? For a week, we thought you were gone. You got damn close.”

The room falls silent again. Hosea watches Arthur’s eyes move in contemplation. His mouth opens as if to speak, then closes, and then shakily opens again.

“If I can’t shoot, what good am I, ‘Sea?” The words come out as a squeak, a pitiful sentiment barely above a whisper. Arthur bites his split lip, tears welling. His hands tremble as he speaks, avoiding Hosea’s eyes in embarrassment at the admittance.

Hosea’s heart clenches at the sight. His anger dissipates, instantaneously replaced with sorrowful understanding for the boy beneath him. “Oh, Arthur.” He sits at the edge of the bed, palm placed flat next to Arthur’s leg. 

“Don’t ‘oh Arthur’ me. We both know it.” His voice cracks as he hastily wipes a tear, grown out dirty blond hair falling in his eyes. “I’m no good without a gun in my hand. No use.”

”You have no idea just how good you are.” Hosea says softly, leaning over to look Arthur in the eye. He reaches out and softly brushes Arthur’s hair back, and gloriously, Arthur doesn’t flinch.

Arthur speechlessly swipes another tear, glaring a little at Hosea sentiment, and Hosea takes it as an opportunity to keep talking, as he often does. Another trademarked Hosea pep talk. 

”You’ve buried it, sure. Tried to hide it with your father’s ill-fitting rage, or convince yourself it was drained from you over the years of hardships you never should have had to endure. But it is still there, Arthur. It’s inherit in you.” He praises, turning his hand palm up and slowly reaching out to hold Arthur’s hand. Arthur lets him with faux reluctance. His old features crinkle, a bittersweet smile gracing his lips.

“I’ve seen it since I met you, kid. A feisty one, you were. Foul mouth on you too. That hasn’t changed one bit.” He smiles, leaning closer. “I’ve seen it for years. In your doodles, in the way you care for the others. The tough love you show your brother.” Hosea laughs gently. “You’re one of the best things that ever happened to me.” He squeezes Arthur’s hand gently as he speaks, and Arthur squeezes back, just barely. 

Arthur’s eyes are downcast and sullen. “I dunno. I’ve done a whole lot of ruinin’. Destroyin’ ‘stead of creatin’. I just don’t think I have it in me to be anything decent, ‘Sea.” He gravely mutters, dodging Hosea’s eyes like bullets. His face is twisted in a cacophony of things. Shame and guilt and defiance.

”You have plenty of time to make good, Arthur. Perhaps, in some twisted way, this is your chance at a different life.” Hosea stands to pull the other cot over, but Arthur doesn’t relinquish his hand. Hosea turns and smiles at his son, expression softening at the neediness. “I’m not going far.”

Arthur continues as Hosea rearranges, watching Hosea move as he speaks. ”I already had that chance. With Mary, I had that chance. We coulda had a life, a home, a family. I had that chance with Eliza too, and look where that got ‘er.” He shakes his head, burying it in the palm of his one good hand to hide the emotion spilling from him. “I’m a poison. I don’t get to have good things happen to me. I don’t even get to have decent things happen to me.” His voice holds frustration, and Hosea can’t tell if he’s directing it to himself or the world. Maybe both. 

Hosea slumps down on the spare cot, an inch or two away from Arthur. “You don’t know yourself very well.” He says bluntly.

Arthur snorts, a snotty, half-assed laugh. “Maybe I don’t.”

“I didn’t meet you until enough had happened that you were already changed, but I wish I had known you when you were truly still a kid. You could’ve lived a very different life, maybe gone to school. Became a man of dignity and refinement.” Hosea smirks playfully, turning to look at Arthur with shimmering eyes. He says the last sentence in a mocking tone, gesturing his hands in emphasis. 

Arthur chuckles again. “Oh yeah, I’m sure. Some fancy pants oil baron or somethin’.” He smiles, a real, genuine smile that Hosea feels like he hasn’t seen since the man was a boy.

”I was thinking a business man.”

”So a thief still?”

They both laugh quietly, and Hosea’s heart warms at the sound. He tugs at the blanket a little and pulls it up over Arthur’s chest.

”Go to sleep, boy. You have been bad enough about getting your rest.” He chastises lightly, his signature playful tinge in his eyes.

Arthur groans annoyedly and rolls his eyes. “What’d I say ‘bout not needin’ a babysitter? I’m not a child, don’t think I ever was. I can choose my own bedtime.” He stubbornly murmurs. He shyly peeks over at Hosea. “Do you know where my journal is?” 

Hosea shakes his head with a smile. ”You’ll always be a child to me. Now, sleep. I’ll get your book for you tomorrow, I promise.” Hosea retorts, leaning over to snuff the lantern out. 

Arthur huffs, trying to hide the smile on his face, and shuffles slightly to get more comfortable. Well, as comfortable as he can be with every inch of his body battered and bruised. “Fine. G’night, Hosea.” 

“Goodnight, Arthur.”