Vows of Returning - goodbyelisahoney (2024)

Chapter 1: i. The Royal Court: A standoff

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The bullet nicks the webbing between Arthur's left thumb and forefinger, a comical, bite-shaped half-moon. Then, the blood.

"We've got to get out of here!" He roars to Dutch, now beside him, gunshots pummelling the wood panelling of the saloon's outer walls. There is not enough cover and so many men. And, the blood. Arthur pulls the bandana from his neck and winds it around his injured hand, nerves screaming in protest. The blood blooms over the paisley print; a dark, menacing stain that shines in the centre. He winces and risks a glance above the overturned tabletop.

A bullet greets him instantly, whizzing past his eyeline and punching through a windowpane, showering them in bits of sparkling glass.

"We've suffered worse, Mr. Morgan!" Dutch responds, casually swiping his arm over the brim of his hat to shake off the glass before turning face and firing two calculated shots. One. Two. A man falls from his horse. Another, from the balcony and into a horse's trough. He looks at Arthur, an impish dimple celebrating his marksmanship, only to fade when his eyes rest on Arthur's hand.

"You have to get out of here," he says, gravely. Arthur notes the change in subject:wetoyou.Dutch'sinstructions are immediate and leave no room for protest. "Don't wait, just go; I'll see you back at camp." Imperceptibly, unfazed by gunfire, Dutch stands, runs along the boardwalk. Arthur runs in the other direction, towards an alley, on his horse, away from Valentine. Each hoofbeat and distant gunshot a steady refrain, a prayer for Dutch.Live. Live. Live.

*

Arthur rides for hours, his legs nudging his horse along. His right hand stops squeezing its bleeding twin only to swig from a bottle of whiskey, which numbs pain and panic both. The bandana is soaked through as the daylight dims and the sun hangs low, cradled against a mountaintop. He hears the howling of wolves in the distance and knows that resting outside with a bleeding hand will only bring them closer.

The setting sun winks at him through the trees, a fiery pink light in inky darkness. His horse walks towards a quiet cabin, sun glinting off the windows, chimney smokeless. Arthur pilots his horse around the back, dismounts, and ties him to a tree. He takes tentative steps towards the darkened rear windows, seeing through them only the disappearing sunlight that beckoned him here. The hearth is cold and table bare.

He enters the cabin from the front, finding it unlocked. Strung along the back wall, invisible to his first reconnoitre, are various plants and flowers, hung upside down and drying - the only décor in an otherwise abandoned, one-room hunting cabin. He drops his bandana in the washbasin, where it lands with a splat. Arthur tears a strip off of the dusty bedsheets and considers the bullet hole dispassionately, looking at the blackening, crusted scabs with their raw, pulpy centre as one might a map of somewhere they're only somewhat inclined to go.

The chair creaks as Arthur sinks into it, resting his left elbow on the table to get a closer look at the wound. The bleeding has stalled; but how much blood he's lost versus how much whiskey he's drunk is unclear. Soon his second elbow joins his first, his forehead naturally settling into his right palm. He squints at the wound and blinks a few times, trying to clear his head and unite his vision.

Arthur sits like this for much longer than he means to, but his reverie is no less cruel. The door swings open, a bottle of gin crashes to the floor, and a woman stands behind the round pupil of a pistol, levelled at his face.

Chapter 2: ii. The Royal Court: A meeting

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Arthur feels the surprise first, in his heart. He blinks pointedly at the black mouth of the pistol gripped in her hand. His own hands are decidedly far away from his revolvers, holstered at his waist below the table. Meeting the surprise is fear in his belly, already swimming in whiskey. He's fast on the draw, normally, prides himself on it; but doesn't trust his luck nor his speed. He opens his palms instead, beseeching, squinting at the woman behind the gun.

"What are you doing in my house?" She says, her voice lilting and musical; foreign. The broken gin bottle gurgles its last drops onto the floor. Arthur says nothing. The sky in the open door behind her is the lavender of very-early morning. The inside of his mouth is thick, teeth fuzzed and sticky; another indicator of how much time has passed.

"Well?" She pulls the hammer back on the pistol slowly, a telltale click that causes his fear to do backflips in the whiskey bath he's drawn for it, regretfully.

"I...it didn't look like anyone's house, miss." A slight upturn in his palms, signalling,aw, hell, didn't realize, my apologies.It's a clumsy and graceless gesture, but her head peers around the gunsight nonetheless, her eyes narrowing, then widening, at the wound in his hand.

"You're hurt." It's a fact. She continues to aim, crouching lopsidedly to slide the saddlebags draped over her shoulder to the ground. The gun stays fixed on him as she rises again and approaches the seated Arthur. She kisses the pistol's cold snout to his temple and reaches under the table, locating one revolver, then two, with a gentle, searching hand, carefully guiding the weapons to the floor and out of his reach. With each gun, she stops to look into his face, and he looks back, taking in deep, brown eyes fringed with thick eyelashes, black hair in a ropy braid, a cupid's bow mouth set into a pale, clever face.

"You won't go for those, will you?" A brief, urgent press of the pistol into the side of his head. He shakes it, almost imperceptibly. Satisfied, she tucks her gun into the back waistband of her skirt. "Bravo."

Her hands encircle his left wrist, one thumb pressing into his palm so that she can better examine the wound. Arthur, craning his neck back, can see the grip of the pistol nestled into her spine, but there's no easy way to reach for it, not without tipping her off. She follows his glance and, shocking to Arthur, she smiles.

"Eh, hey," she singsongs, scolding him. "Do you want me to fix this-" here, she gives a gentle shake of his wrist "-or no?"

Arthur feels a wash of shame, the same he always does when he recognizes his instincts have led him wrong. "Sorry, miss," he says, sinking his head below his shoulders as he continues to hold his hands aloft. "Old habits, you know."

She continues smiling, releasing his hand and moving to the array of hanging plants along the far wall, dragging the spare chair behind her. Stepping on the chair to pluck some dried flowers from their place, she looks back at him. "I am Lena," she says, putting a hand on her chest.

He mimics the gesture, earnestly, but it returns that self-smile to her face. He feels foolish. "Arthur," he says, nonetheless.

"Ar-toure," she repeats, unable or unwilling to pronounce the 'th.' She selects a few more plants and descends, pulling the chair back to face him, sitting down. Lena pulls a starburst-like cluster of tiny yellow flowers out of the posy she's holding and offers it out to him.

"Eat this," she commands, as he takes it from her. As if anticipating his distrust, she takes a small pinch of the flowers back and pops it in her mouth. Arthur asks what it is and she smiles, chewing. "Anice, for the breath."

He feels his cheeks burn as he stuffs the flower in his mouth; a pleasing, licorice-like aroma spreads up through his sinuses as he chews. His teeth feel decidedly less furred. Arthur pledges to eat whatever else she gives him, figuring death by poisoning preferable to utter embarrassment.

Lena cleans around the bullet hole with some water and a clean cloth. She grinds some larger yellow petals and small red blooms in a mortar and pours a small amount of oil in. This she pours onto the wound, rubbing the concoction along the ragged edges of his skin. It hurts, but she approaches healing him with the same gentleness she used to disarm him, and he appreciates her light touch. She retrieves the forgotten, torn sheet from the tabletop and winds this around his hand, knotting it securely - but not tightly - at the back. Last, she pours a few drops of something she retrieves from a saddlebag into a small tin cup, filling it the rest of the way with water. "Drink," she says, and he obliges.

"Is that your horse outside?" She asks, gesturing towards the window. Arthur nods. She leaves without a word, returning in moments with his bedroll. She opens the roll and lays it out in the corner opposite the bed.

"Sleep, now," she says. "We'll talk in the real morning." He feels his eyelids leaden and, vaguely, those gentle hands guiding him to the corner and onto his blanket.

"Lena, what'd you give me?" He mumbles, eyelids closing, sleep taking hold.

Chapter 3: iii. The Royal Court: A conversation (a goodbye)

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Arthur awakens, daylight and the scent of coffee greeting his senses. Indistinct memories come next; the bullet, the blood, his retreat to the woods. Lena. He starts, rising to seated, looking quickly around the one-room cabin. A dull fire sends up a few crackles of protest against its death in the fireplace, and sunlight beams through the rear windows, but Lena is gone. His right hand goes instinctively to his left; the last place she'd touched him. His fingers meet the sheet, her careful knot. He sniffs at the wrappings; herbaceous, but no trace of decay or foulness. Arthur exhales forcefully, unaware he'd been holding his breath in the first place.

He stands and makes his way to the coffeepot and tin cup perched on the hearth, helps himself. The coffee smells slightly of chocolate and pours out thickly; his first sip is bitter but welcome. Arthur exits the cabin, brew in hand, and sees his horse, hitched up next to a smaller brown mare with white around her hooves and halfway up each leg.

Arthur's horse stomps and tosses his mane in greeting, and Arthur steps up to affectionately rub his neck. "Hey, boy." The horse is new to Arthur, after losing his old girl Boadicea in that sordid Blackwater business. His blond coat reminds him of the yellow flowers bursting from Lena's outstretched hand. "Anice," Arthur tries, the syllables clumsy. His horse snorts, and Arthur chuckles. "OK, boy, not that name."

As he pats the horse and sips at his coffee, Arthur takes in the cabin's surroundings in full daylight. It looks much less abandoned, now. He sees a coop with a few chickens milling about near the cabin's north side; a small vegetable garden is stationed at its south. Judging by the sun, it's nearly noon; but the air is still crisp and cool. Just beyond the shadows cast by the pines lies a weatherworn fence with more than a few beams fallen out of place. Perched on one of the remaining, intact fences is Lena, precariously balancing, overlooking the mountain view.

Lena is dressed haphazardly, in dark men's dungarees and an old, faded work shirt, her hair loose over her shoulder. Arthur approaches but she seems not to notice nor care, he's not sure which. He's mystified by the configuration of her body, hunched as she is, birdlike, with a book held open in one hand and, miraculously, both a coffee cup and a cigarette in the other. He watches as she takes a drink of the coffee and then brings the cigarette to her lips, eyes never leaving the page she's on.

Arthur can't help himself. "What happens when you want to turn the page, miss?" She whirls around, her back compensating for the sudden change in balance by arching dramatically and then curling forward again. Lena hadn't noticed. Now resettled, realization dawns on her face and she glances back at the book, exhaling smoke through smiling lips.

"It is my favourite part," and then, "Good morning."

"Morning." Arthur inclines his head towards her and steps through one of the breaks in the fence, leaning on a post nearby. He lights a cigarette of his own, pulls deeply. He takes a sideways look at the book's cover.Vergilio, it reads, in glinting, gilded letters.

"How is your hand?" She tapsthe bandages on his hand with hers, that impossible configuration of coffee cup and cigarette entreating him and bringing forth a short laugh from Arthur.

"Much better, thank you," he replies, raising his cup in a sort of toast. Lena clicks her cup to his, knocking an ash loose and another laugh of his, too.

"Salute," she says, nodding to him before turning back to the book.

Arthur scratches the sandy hairs at the nape of his neck, removes an errant piece of glass from his collar. The events of the previous day come rushing back to him. The shootout in Valentine. Dutch. "I have to go," he says aloud, to the mountains beyond. Lena hops down beside him, landing heavily in too-large boots.

"But you should eat, stay for lunch." He doesn't expect this protest; but then, he doesn't know a lot of women who'd keep a wounded outlaw after finding one, uninvited, on their property. He doesn't know a lot of womenwith property. He doesn't know several of the words she's said to him. The differences between the little he knows of Lena and most other women compound before him, and yet, they don't change where he needs to be.

"I'm sorry, I can't stay." He moves past her to search the cabin for his guns. She follows him in, leans in the doorway, the book held open at her side. She'd put the revolvers on the table after his rapid descent into sleep, and he holsters them now, looking about him for anything else he may have brought in. She hands him the bedroll, wordlessly placing a small roll of bread on top. He places it in his pocket, nodding.

For the first time, he sees her in full light. Her eyes are honeyed brown in the sunlight, her black hair shines. Her lips are pink and pursed, and she's biting the inside of her mouth. She alternates between looking at him and looking away. At her next glance, he opens his arms in a half-hearted shrug. "I don't know how to thank you for what you've done for me, here."

"No, you don't." She sounds angry. She looks away again. Another difference. Another woman would respond politely. Lena crosses in front of him and plunks down into a chair, her arms locked together, head decidedly turned away.

Arthur waits a moment. When it's clear she's not going to acknowledge him further, he mutters a final "thanks" and exits the cabin.

As he ties his blankets to the rear of his horse's saddle and tucks the roll into his satchel, Arthur hears the cabin door bang open. Lena scrambles down to the horses, a piece of paper clutched in her hand. She hands it to him. "To write, sometime, if you want," she says. On the paper is writtenLena Giarre, c/o Wallace Stationin hasty script. Arthur stares at the paper, dumbfounded by her sudden about face in demeanour.

"Or at least to replace my gin, hey." He looks up and she's smiling.

"If you're lucky," he returns the smile, albeit briefly, and pulls himself up into the saddle, a twinge of an ache in his bad hand.

"Goodbye, Arthur," she steps back, giving his horse a berth.

"Goodbye." He clicks his tongue and pulls the reins so that his horse turns around, and then spurs him off and away from the cabin.

Chapter 4: iv. Troubles in Carthage: Moving on

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After riding through the day, Arthur bursts through the treeline at Horseshoe Overlook, sunset casting its last riotous bands of colour, washing the camp in pinks, oranges, golds. His smile to Karen fades as he notices she's taking down laundry from a line and folding it directly into a trunk. Surveying the rest of the camp shows more signs of a retreat ere long; wagons packed and shut, tents vanished.

Dutch is in quiet conference with a few of the men and Susan Grimshaw by the smouldering campfire, one hand resting on his hip, the other pensively tugging at his beard. His eyes leave the group and catch Arthur's, and he raises an index finger to them, excusing himself.

"Arthur," he barks, approaching at a fast walk. Arthur dismounts and hands his horse's reins off to Kieran, no time for a usual jab about the young man's past with the O'Driscoll gang.

Dutch grabs at Arthur's shoulders, rests a hand very briefly on his cheek. "Arthur, my son" - Arthur's chest swells at the word - "I can't say how happy I am to see you back here safe."

"Likewise, Dutch," he says, clasping Dutch's shoulders in turn. He'd grown up seeing Dutch as a surrogate father, but cherished, counted, catalogued the moments when Dutch acknowledged the same.

Arthur steps forward and gestures at the camp's proceedings. "We leaving?"

"And none too soon, Mr. Morgan," Dutch confirms. "Before that business in Valentine follows us here. Mr. Bell has word of a good site just over the border in Lemoyne. I need you and Mr. Smith to be the vanguard on this and make sure it's safe and ready for us all."

"'Course," he nods deeply and waves to Charles, whose bow is already shouldered as he tightens a saddle onto his Appaloosa, Taima.

"Hey O'Driscoll, go fetch my damn horse!" Arthur shouts, savouring the instant pout on Kieran's face. He'd got his jab in, after all.

*

Ain't nothing easy, thinks Arthur, throwing a lit match into a gathered bundle of sticks and twigs. The air is heady and thick, swarms of insects visible in the moonlight by the lakeshore. He's alone again; Charles having rode off to connect with the rest of the gang and lead them to their new home. Arthur's tasked himself with building a fire to greet them, as well as removing the corpses the two had created in securing the land.

He and Charles had surveyed the Dewberry Creek campsite Micah'd suggested - "Could see this working for a damn snake like him," Arthur had snorted, eliciting a bark of laughter from Charles - but this was much preferable. Water on two sides, wooded on the rest. Lots of flat land for wagons and tents, and scrubby grasses for grazing horses.Plus, it's kind of pretty, he finds himself thinking, looking at the wild islands lit by the moon to the west.

After burying the bodies in shallow graves in the nearby forest, Arthur reenters the camp to see the first of the wagons rolling in, Charles and Dutch riding point on their horses in front.

"Not bad, Mr. Morgan, not bad!" Dutch crows, spreading his arms wide theatrically, swivelling to look at the other gang members and back to Arthur. "We could really make a home here. Excellent work. Miss Grimshaw!" Here he flourishes his wrists and looks back at Susan, seated on the lead wagon. "Work your magic, if you please!" Then, slightly quieter, "Mr. Morgan, Mr. Matthews, Mr. Bell. A quick word, please."

Arthur joins Dutch, Hosea, and Micah by the treeline, giving a minute shove to the latter man.

"Watch it, Morgan," Micah snaps, looking to Dutch. "You think you'd be grateful after I found this place."

Arthur scoffs. "You found a dry-ass creek out in the wide open. May as well've had a sign'd said, 'Wanted Van Der Linde Gang, right this way.'"

Dutch puts a warning hand in between the men. "Now, that's enough from you both. We're here, we're safe, and we're together." He draws out that last word, fist in palm, taking a long look at each of them in turn and ensuring their silence before continuing. "Tomorrow, we're going to get the lay of this land and find some work. We need money, and all kinds of ways to get it."

A chorus of "Yes, Dutch" from the men. Dutch nods and looks, for the first time, at Arthur's bandaged hand.

"Arthur, I want you to have Herr Strauss take a look at that hand, and then get some rest. I don't know where in the hell you got off to last night, did you even sleep?" Arthur opens his mouth, but Dutch interrupts- "Don't tell me, just get that hand sorted. I see the women have set you up over there."

Arthur does as instructed; his freshly bandaged hand slathered in one of Strauss' storebought ointments. He splashes water on each cheek and behind his neck and settles into bed, letting the murmurs of his fellow gang members and the chirping of insects lull him into sleep.

*

Lena has the pistol pressed against the side of Arthur's head, her eyes not leaving his, as her free hand searches out his revolvers; first the one at his right hip, which she lowers to the ground, then the one holstered in front of his belt buckle, also, to the floorboards.

The hand comes back up, gently tugging at the buckle, fingertips grazing down the buttons at the front of his pants, stroking along his inner thigh. He feels the pistol's snout pull away from his temple as Lena's arm encircles his neck instead, throwing a leg over his lap, straddling him. He turns his head to find the pistol but it's the coffee cup, the cigarette; that bizarre way she held both simultaneously that so astonished him.

She pulls his face back towards hers, those brown eyes shining gold, eerily in the early light, that thick black hair. They kiss, hungrily, and she grinds down into his lap, his hands leave their state of surrender to cup her ass and pull at her hair, and-

Arthur awakes breathlessly; a hard-on pressing painfully against the jeans he'd stupidly fallen asleep in. He rubs his eyes with the heel of his good hand, blinking and trying to adjust to the changing light. The new camp is still silent, a few wheezing breaths and light snoring the only human sounds. There's no going back to sleep after a dream like that.

Chapter 5: V. Troubles in Carthage: Reflecting

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And I met a woman out in the woods trying to find a safe place to fix my rotten hand.

Arthur writes this in his journal, pausing for a drink of coffee and a quick survey of his surroundings. He's been awake for a few hours, hanging a leg over the end of a dilapidated dock that overlooks those few islands, rife with water birds and god-knows what else. He'd taken advantage of the early morning quiet to chronicle the wild last few days: the shootout in Valentine after trying to pass off some stolen sheep, the flight from Horseshoe Overlook, the (next) shootout with the gang members that they'd found at their current campsite. The gang is still mercifully asleep, so he keeps writing, about Lena.

She must be some kind of witch, out there in a cabin all on her own. Real strange and fiery with a thick accent like I'd never heard of. But fixed up my hand well and good using a few flowers and herbs. Drank too much like a fool but didn't even feel my whiskey the next day from something she gave me.

He stops again, his bit of pencil poised over the rest of the page. He feels another wash of shame about his dream from the previous evening, thinking his mind - among other things - had gone behind his back and misinterpreted his and Lena's brief encounter to be anything more than that of a Good Samaritan's help. Then, he recalls having received the leather-bound book from Hosea on a birthday past, his only instruction from his mentor and friend, "We're dishonest men, Arthur, but you can be truthful with yourself in this." Arthur sighs and resumes his writing.

She must've made some kind of impression on me because I woke up in a sweat just from thinking about her. Way she holds her coffee and smoke damn near killed me more than once. Looking out on the view with Lena that morning reminded me of a time before the gang started all this running, when I felt like some of this world was still mine for the taking.

Arthur frowns and strikes out the last sentence with a decisive pull of the lead across the page. He quickly sketches how he remembers Lena best; her face in profile, smoking and drinking coffee.

His own coffee finished and with the activity in the camp behind him approaching full bustle, Arthur rises, dusts off his pants, and makes his way to Dutch's tent, awaiting his next assignment and forcing Lena from his mind.

Chapter 6: vi. Troubles in Carthage: Bearing gifts

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Days, then weeks passed at the camp at Clemens Point. Arthur had found himself in a dizzying series of events; embroiled in a decades-long feud between Montagues and Capulets of the hillbilly variety - the Grays and Braithwaites. And, Dutch had cozied up to the local Sheriff's department in the town closest to the new camp, Rhodes, to the point that he, Bill, and Dutch himself had been deputized. Arthur gazes down at the brass, star-shaped badge pinned to his jacket now, conveniently (and ironically) covering a stubborn bloodstain that had heretofore resisted all scrubbing. He's smoking a cigarette on the front porch while Sean McGuire loots the rest of a homestead the two had decided to rob, relishing a moment's quiet.

The warmer temperatures that had seemed welcome after brisk nights in Horseshoe Overlook - to say nothing of the frigid conditions at Colter - had become oppressive. Dutch and Hosea seemed convinced of mountains of gold stashed away by either or both of their wealthy, established southern marks, and tasked the gang members with increasingly odd and increasingly thankless tasks. Those who were not frenzied to commit wild crimes were instead snappy and quick-tempered. Only last week, Arthur had pulled his shoulder holding the Adler widow back, she just inches shy of gutting Simon Pearson, the camp cook.

Something about how Mrs. Adler brandished her gun had recalled Lena to his mind; long absent after the bizarre "work" he'd been put to. He found himself composing snippets of letters in his mind to send to Lena at the address he'd kept safe in his breast pocket, next to his cigarettes, starting with Sadie's outburst:

Mrs. Adler and you: two women I've had the good sense enough to be afraid of.

After he and Hosea had started a ruckus at the Rhodes saloon, distributing Braithwaite liquor:Hosea'd got me to play a damn mute lummox - perhaps a sight familiar to you after the state you found me in. I thought about replacing that gin of yours with a bottle of the Braithwaite shine, but pretty sure it's just a couple more days in the still away from pure kerosene. Let's just say I've spared you a headache and saved your intelligence.

And after he'd stolen some prized Braithwaite horses on the Grays' behest:Three beautiful beasts for a measly $700. And all this while the two youngest are damn in love with each other. A waste of absolutely everyone's time, mine especially.

It was when he tried adding to these fictional letters that the whole exercise seemed pointless. Lena could read; but could she read English? If she could, what could he write that would make her laugh? All of these minor excuses Arthur repeats,ad nauseam, to shield himself from the worst of all; that he imagines she's forgotten him. In such an instance, a letter from Arthur would be confusing at best, pathetic at worst.

"Oi, big man," Sean shouts, breaking Arthur's train of thought, "Catch." From the doorway, Sean lobs a bottle of something Arthur's way. He casually places his cigarette in his mouth and catches it with both hands, turning the bottle over to read the label.Two Fist Prairie Moon Gin. It's a sign, Arthur thinks. He knows just who to bring this to.

*

Arthur packs a spare change of clothes on his horse and rides out early in the morning, before the sun has crested the treeline. Priest, his finally-named horse, takes him through back country and in wide arcs around towns, homesteads, and any signs of campfire smoke billowing into the sky. He's wanted in New Hanover after the shootout in Valentine, and wishes that this fact - a potential cavalry of bounty hunters - was the only cause of the fluttering in his chest.

He'd borrowed a hair ribbon from Mary-Beth and picked handfuls of wildflowers to affix to the bottle of drugstore gin, thinking the hedge-herbalist in Lena would find the gesture sweet. Now, he grits his teeth in the bracing cold of the Dakota river, wading out to bathe and wishing he was still welcome in a town with a public bath.

Still shivering, Arthur dresses in dark slacks, a checked cotton shirt, a wool vest. He's saved a stolen pocketwatch from the camp coffers to affix to a buttonhole and sink into one of the vest's pockets. He carefully parts his hair with a comb and drags his razor over his cheeks and chin, periodically checking his reflection in the relatively calm river water. He shines his boots and runs a brush over Priest's neck and flanks. It's when Arthur's smoked and crushed his third cigarette by the riverbank that he admits to himself he's stalling, so he climbs into the saddle and makes for Lena's cabin.

It's lighter now than it'd been the first time he'd come upon the little house in the woods, and the mountain view where he and Lena had shared coffee is awash in glorious sunset.

The cabin, though, is silent and abandoned. The chickens that had been pecking at the ground by the door are gone, as is Lena's brown-and-white horse. He peers through the windows to see that the flowers strung along the back wall are also gone; the side garden is overgrown and rife with opportunistic rabbits gnawing at vegetables left behind.

Arthur sits on the front, sunken step and rips the flowers away from the bottle, pulling the cork out with his teeth and spitting it, bouncing, onto the grass. He takes a big swig of the gin until its heat courses down his throat and ignites his belly, feeling sorry for himself.

*

When he rides into camp the next day, Micah waves him down from the front of Dutch's tent. "Mr. Morgan, don't you look fine," he snides, noting Arthur's unusual clothing.

"Shut up," Arthur mutters, heading into his own lean-to to change. Micah and Pearson appear in the entryway as Arthur shrugs out of the vest, unbuttoning the shirt. He wants his old clothes back, to forget about the fool's errand he'd made for himself.

"Arthur," says Pearson, averting his eyes and shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

"What is it?" Arthur snaps, louder than he means to.

Pearson stammers, "There's- there's talk of a parley with the O'Driscolls," and then jumps when Arthur barks a laugh, pulling a plain work shirt, already buttoned, over his head, before pulling it back off.

"It's a trap," he says plainly, shouldering past them both to root around in his trunk for clean long underwear.

"Not this time, Morgan," Micah says, standing in front of Arthur as he tries to reenter the lean-to.

"Oh, yeah?" Arthur draws himself up to look down in Micah's pale eyes, knowing he's taller and broader than Micah and that this pisses the man off.

Dutch appears from the side. "If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times, knock it off, you both." Arthur blows air through his nostrils, pushes past Micah. It's silent before Dutch continues, "I know you're skeptical, my boy," he speaks through Micah and Pearson, directly to Arthur. "But isn't it worth a shot? To be free of all of this fighting?"

Arthur looks up from where he's seated on his cot, into Dutch's pleading face. He sighs, feeling the impossibility of a reconciliation with the rival gang as much as he does his own need for Dutch's approval. He pictures a version of the parley without him, Dutch and Micah going alone - a bloodbath, guaranteed. Finally, he says, "I reckon it would."

"Excellent, Arthur," Dutch claps his hands together, rubs them. "Put those on, Mr. Morgan, and some more clothes besides," he chuckles, gesturing towards the red union suit in Arthur's hands. "We have some peace to make."

Chapter 7: vii. Destruction, a Storm: A scheme

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Through the scope of Arthur's long-range gun, the parley looks like it might be going all right. Arthur is stationed on a cliff overlooking the meeting; an "insurance policy" in case of any acts of ill-faith from the O'Driscolls. He smirks to himself and refocuses the sight on Colm O'Driscoll.The irony.

He sees Colm and Dutch standing close to each other, their men - Micah, and two O'Driscolls - surrounding them. Colm makes the occasional gesture with his hands, but Dutch stands stock still. The sound carries surprisingly far in the pass, but Arthur can't make out any individual words, just murmurs of the leaders' voices.

It's perhaps because Arthur's straining to hear the parley below that he misses the sound of approaching footsteps, and rolls onto his side to find a man directly above him. The man brandishes the butt of a rifle and brings it down on Arthur's head, knocking him out instantly.

*

"Ain't sure if he's the one we should be going after."

Arthur blinks slowly, awaking on the ground, surrounded on each side by tents hastily assembled. He sees a group of O'Driscoll gang members - the same ones that had stopped roadside to give him an impromptu beating - gathered around a fire.

"They killed Seamus, f*ck the whole lot of them!" Another exclaims.

Arthur starts crawling away, begging for his legs to pick up enough muster to stand. He sees a path up ahead, a river. He doesn't know where they've taken him but he figures he can make sense of it, if he can just get away first.

But soon, the footsteps. He's quickly surrounded by mud-stained boots, one of which decides to deliver a sharp kick in the ribs before turning him over roughly, so that he's looking into all of their cruel faces.

"Not so fast," one says, levelling a repeater at Arthur's face. At the last moment, he pulls the gun left, shoots Arthur point blank in the shoulder, and the pain joins that in his ribs as he returns to darkness.

*

Arthur is hanging by his ankles in some kind of cold cellar, barely lit by a single candle. Colm O'Driscoll has just told him the real purpose of the parley; to kidnap Arthur and lure Dutch and other gang members to his rescue, where the law would be waiting for them. Colm's men had done their fair share of beating Arthur, and Colm had got a few shots of his own in on Arthur's ribs during their conversation with the grip of his pistol - to say nothing of the repeater bullet lodged in his shoulder - but it was the idea of being the bait that would bring doom to the Van Der Linde gang that brings unwelcome tears to his eyes.

Arthur's jaw shakes and he feels a few thick tears fall from the corners of his eyes into his hair. Colm smiles, baring his teeth. "That'll be the sepsis, setting in," he jeers, mistaking Arthur's sorrow for pain. Colm gives one more jab right to the bullet wound, causing bile to drop right into the back of Arthur's throat and forcing him to spit on the ground, crying out. "See you later," Colm coos, cruelly, and leaves.

Arthur tries to quell his rising panic, taking a few haggard breaths. There's so much blood in his head from hanging upside down that it's hard to think, and his vision is partially occluded by a burlap sack they've tied around it. He's wearing only the red union suit he'd remembered putting on the day they'd set out for the parley - what seemed like a lifetime ago. He forces a deep, slow breath out through his nostrils and pulls his body up to look around him.

On the nearby table, he sees a small metal file, glinting in the candlelight. He lurches for it, and all of his injuries and beatings sing out at once. Arthur pants for a moment, letting his arms dangle, closing his eyes. He tries again, slower, more rhythmically swinging himself instead of trying to bend his bruised ribs -Broken?he thinks, then,don't think about that, now- and, after a few swings, manages to snatch the file. He pulls up on his legs, wincing against the onslaught of renewed pain and picks at the lock, the telltale click and release of the manacles unceremoniously dumping him onto the floor.

Arthur stands, feeling new mettle coursing through him at the possibility of escape. He sits at the chair Colm had recently vacated, grips his knee with his left hand, and forces the file into his shoulder with his right, gritting his teeth and twisting until the bullet slug pops out, pinging once on the table before falling to the floor. He exhales again. The area around the bullet hole is hot to the touch, and Arthur tries to dispel Colm's words about sepsis.

He notices a spare shotgun shell on the table and rips it apart with his teeth, pouring it into the wound. He picks up the candle and hesitates for only a moment, one more tear shaking free of the corner of his eye, before forcing it against the powder, which crackles and ignites before singeing the wound closed, filling the small room with the scent of cooking flesh.

Arthur groans through his teeth, fighting a wave of nausea, squeezing his eyes shut.Hard part's over, he thinks.

He hears the cellar door swing open somewhere above him and his eyes snap open. "Guess I should go check on our side of meat, hey?" Says one of the O'Driscoll boys. Arthur flattens himself against the wall next to the stairs and waits for his captor to descend, and grabs him as soon as he enters the room, wrapping his arm around his neck and pulling on his wrist with his free hand, strangling him. Arthur picks the now-dead man's pockets and finds a few knives.

Those knives in turn find a target once Arthur climbs the stairs - an O'Driscoll unceremoniously picking through what has to be his things - he notices his discarded satchel to one side as the man examines one of Arthur's silver revolvers, chuckling to himself. Arthur throws two knives into the man's back and he slumps forward. Arthur gathers his things swiftly, pulling loose cans of food and spare bullets back into his bag and bundling up his weapons in a roll of canvas.

He looks about at the O'Driscolls roaming around the area, mercifully turned away from him, and then sees Priest, a golden beacon, hitched up by some other horses. Crouching, Arthur makes his way to his horse, patting his neck and whispering a hello, returning his guns to their places on his saddle. Taking one look back to make sure he hasn't been noticed, Arthur pulls himself up onto Priest and nudges him away from the camp, urging him into a gallop as soon as he thinks he's out of earshot.

"Come on, boy," Arthur says, hoarsely, "get me home." Priest's ears twitch and he breaks into a full run; Arthur slumps forward in the saddle, dead to the world.

*

Arthur's wound is what wakes him, an angry, throbbing heat. He doesn't know how long he's been asleep for, and the sun is too bright to take in. Eyes squeezed shut, he risks touching his shoulder, only to wince at the instant, sharp stab of pain. The bullethole is still hot, not good. Maybe Colm would get his sepsis after all.

When the starbursts behind his eyelids subside and he feels a cool kiss of shade, he opens them, tries to pull himself up to sitting but only manages a forward, hunched curl, resting his head against the side of Priest's neck. From his vantage point, he sees his surroundings aren't the dusty, scrubby grasslands of Southeastern Lemoyne, but the alpine area Arthur knows only as the way to Lena's cabin.

And suddenly, there she is. Priest walks carefully down the front path to reveal Lena, her back turned away from these unexpected visitors, wearing a simple dress and knit sweater, feeding the chickens next to the house.

Arthur reaches for her but misjudges his balance, to say nothing of the little strength left to cling to Priest, and rolls forward, to the ground, on his back. He hears a gasp, and then Lena's concerned face fills his field of vision. She gently cups his jaw with her hand.

"Arthur," she says, and the way she says his name,Ar-toure, is a poetry he'd forgotten.

Chapter 8: viii. The Hunt: A reunion

Chapter Text

"Porca miseria," Lena murmurs, peeling away Arthur's union suit from his wounded shoulder. He hisses through his teeth. She had helped him inside the small cabin and guided him to the old, iron bed in the corner of the room. He's conscious of everything; how clean-smelling she is in contrast to his filthiness, how her eyebrows keep knitting and unknitting themselves as she discovers each new injury, each blemish on his body. Most, he's aware that the relationship they have is limited to his being held at gunpoint and a few words shared over coffee; everything else, he'd invented.

And yet.I told Priest to take me home, damn horse brings me here.

"This is home?" She asks, their heads jolting up to look at each other, as if they shared the same name and it had been called. He'd said it aloud. Arthur feels himself redden, starts to stammer, but she smiles to herself. "How very American, Arthur," she says, twisting away to grab a bottle of alcohol and a cloth on the nightstand, "You find a home, and now it's for you."

He lurches forward, mortification helping him ignore the pain exploding in his left shoulder, his bruised ribs, seemingly countless other injuries and ailments. Arthur tries to rise to sitting, to standing, to get out as fast as his broken body will allow.

Lena sets down the bottle and cloth, reaching out to ease him back down. "Corica, stop, please," she soothes, "a bad joke, please." He's still tense, his failing muscles pulled taut and causing his whole body to shake. Her small hand again rests on his face, her brown eyes searching his blue ones.

"I'm happy to see you," Lena says finally, breaking her gaze away and blushing in turn. Arthur's body relaxes, his shoulders, then head settling back into the mattress. Her hand leaves his chin to lift the bottle and cloth, soaking the cloth through with clear alcohol. "Next time, you could even try to come without being shot."

Arthur begins to laugh, which turns into a few ragged coughs, each rattling around in his ribcage. "Dare to dream, Miss Giarre."

She looks at him in confusion. "Gy-ar?"

"Your name." Her stare doesn't leave him, but then, her eyebrows pop up and she laughs, delightedly, one hand returning to her chest.

"Gi-arrr-e," she emphasizes, rolling the rs deftly over her tongue. "But please, just Lena. I don't even know your family name."

He hesitates. "Arthur Morgan," he says, deciding on honesty.

"Well, Signore Morgan," she discards the cloth, the bottle, claps her hands together. "You need a bath before I can do my work. I'll fill the tub and go out to get the few things I need."

He feels twinned excitement and fear at the thought of bathing in her presence (even though he's pretty sure she means to be elsewhere during his wash). Then, and for the second time in this cabin, Arthur remembers his priorities lie elsewhere.

Lena's rolling a large washtub towards the fireplace after putting the first - of many - large iron kettles on the fire. "Lena," she turns to him, mostly obscured by the tub. He's struck for a moment at how he'd never noticed her height, or lack thereof. "I need you to send a letter for me, an urgent letter."

"What, why?" She tips the tub down and rests it on the floor, checks on the kettle. She's lifting a second and heading for the door.

He winces as a new injury reveals itself in his right ankle as he tries stretching his legs. "There's some people need to know I'm OK, is all."

She frowns. "The same people who keep making you shot?"

He lets out one short laugh and his ribs scream in protest. "Yeah, 'at's 'em." He looks to her to join in on the laugh, but she departs abruptly instead, the door banging shut. When she returns, she has a scowl on her face he gathers is due to more than just the heaviness of the spare kettle she's lugging.

After pouring the first of the kettles into the tub and replacing it with the second in the fireplace, she digs a piece of paper and pencil out from the nightstand drawer. "Here," she huffs, throwing them onto his chest, and then in a mocking, nasal voice, "'Please come to find me, I am shot like you asked. Maybe next time I'll die!' Va' in malora!"

He raises his eyebrows, shocked at her outburst. He remembers her attitude once he'd told her he was leaving the first time; she'd almost not said goodbye.Fiery, was what he'd written in his journal. It remained an apt observation. "What is that," he asks, trying to sound conciliatory, possibly distract her. "Spanish?"

She looks furious, her flyaway hairs nearly standing on end. She seizes the now-empty kettle and leaves again. "Spanish!" He hears from outside, beside the cabin. As she repeats the process in an angry silence, boiling water over the fire, pouring it into the bath, fetching more water, Arthur scratches out a quick, coded letter to the gang.

After that brief meeting with our old friends from back West in the Heartlands, they had me over for a spell. Could hardly get away as they wanted me to bring in all of us, capture our attention for a good long time. Papa O'D was about as hospitable as you would expect, but I ended up seeking out a Priest and having him take me to sanctuary.

To ensure they'd know he was safe from the O'Driscolls, that the letter was really from him, Arthur adds:

I told you so.

*

Arthur is nearly asleep in the warm, sudsy water when Lena returns. The dour expression she'd worn up until she'd left the cabin is now gone, and she even chances a smile at him, holding up a dead turkey and a fistful of herbs, which she deposits on the table to take something out of her saddlebag.

She holds out to him a new union suit, maroon, before setting it on a chair next to the tub. "I'll leave you to dress," she says, and then adds, "I mailed the letter, Arthur, priority express," before departing the cabin again.

Arthur grits his teeth, seizing the sides of the washtub with his hands and trying to hoist himself up enough that he can get his feet underneath him, but the left shoulder sears with pain and he sinks back down. He tries again, immediately, forcing himself out of the tub and grabbing at the pyjamas, lurching towards the bed. He knows he's sloshed water all over her floor, and is also certain that there's no way he can muster the strength or finesse to dress himself. Instead, he pulls the bed's quilt up to his chin, panting. He's found the end of his adrenaline.

Lena finds him like this, clinging to consciousness, eyelids fluttering. "Rest, Arthur," she says, and he grimaces, his eyes darting down towards his lower half, shielded only by a blanket. "It's all right, Arthur." She folds back the quilt only as far as his chest, presses a firm hand on either side of his stomach, tucking him in securely. He collapses into a fitful sleep.

*

For a length of time he can't specify, Arthur is only somewhat aware of Lena moving around him, of light appearing and leaving the cabin. One moment, he raises his hand to a poultice adorning his left shoulder, packed with pungent herbs he smells through the cheesecloth that holds them to his skin. Another, he finds himself with a cool cloth on his forehead, Lena spooning a broth into his mouth. Sometimes, he can hear her reading aloud in her language.Not Spanish, he thinks, and emits a single, erratic laugh, startling her from the page of her book.

Once, he opens his eyes to see her asleep and in vigil, lit by the embers of the fireplace, sitting on a chair with her feet up against the mattress, a book open in her lap.

The next time he's aware of his eyes opening, it's to see Lena leaning over him with a small, sharp knife, cutting carefully at his bandages to release them from blackened skin underneath. He notices the prepared bowl of new greens and flowers on the nightstand, the fresh cloth she'll place on the wound. He feels the old poultice resist, cling to the shredded and burnt flesh of his shoulder, and a few errant tears spill from his eyes. She notices him awake, the tears, and he feels her free hand hold his atop the quilt, a tiny life raft in the form of a small, warm squeeze.

"Corragio," she whispers, a lock of black hair escaping her bun to hang in front of her face. The poultice comes free and she casts it into the fireplace, rinsing her hand in a bucket of water before applying the new poultice. He realizes she's doing it all one-handed, not letting go of him. He returns the squeeze, weakly, grateful.

Lena lays the cheesecloth over the thickly-applied herbs, leaning into the press until her chin hovers over his face. He feels the short bursts of warm air from her breathing tickle his grown-out whiskers.

She looks down, suddenly, the tip of her nose inches from his own. "Corragio," she says again. Arthur thinks the statement sounds like it's more to herself than him, but then he can only think of her lips kissing his; a revelation, a marvel.

Chapter 9: ix. The Hunt: A reckoning

Chapter Text

Arthur is surprised by the kiss for only a moment, then he feels old habits returning, blooming within him. He grasps her hand tighter. Lena's mouth tastes like blackberries; his tongue probing gently in search of the sweetness. She lets out a small hum of pleasure, rewarding him with a small bite on his lower lip. It's all it takes; he feels, then sees himself harden, telltale shadows on the quilt pointing to a growing beneath.

His free hand trails down her arm, grasping at her wrist and pulling her closer to him. Lena's leaning so far forward already that she loses her balance and lands with her chest against his, one knee against his stomach. Her hand is now buried in his hair, the remnants of herbs and oil on her fingers entwining with his own scents of smoke, minty pomade, and cedar. He pulls free of her lips to paw at her blouse and kiss the small indentation at the base of her neck, and her head collapses next to his. Arthur feels her hot breath in his ear as she whispers, "Bravo, bello Arthur," the kiss of tongue against teeth as she says his name provoking another stirring of his co*ck under the quilt.

She climbs her other leg off the floor to join him on the bed, but the sudden shift of weight drives her knee into his ribs. Arthur feels a flash of pain and cries out involuntarily, and she leaps away from him, panting. Even in the firelight, he can see the flush that's crept across her exposed chest and neck, her rosy cheeks and reddened lips.

"Pay me no mind, Lena," he says, grabbing for her hands, trying to pull her back to the bed, to him. "C'mere a minute, it's OK, I'm fine." Arthur can feel the desperation in his voice, his hunger. Her eyes, heavy-lidded mere moments ago, are alert and awake as she shakes her head, denies him.

"You are hurt, still," she says, a small tremble in her voice. Her wrists dodge his beseeching hands and move to the quilt's hem. In one decisive pull of the blanket, she exposes his body down to his waist, revealing the mottled blues, blacks, and yellows of the bruises that cover his torso. A tear appears from nowhere, rolls down her cheek. "You arehurtso." She turns away abruptly, taking the chair with her to some of the flowers strung above the washbasin.

"Not with the damned plants, Lena, please," Arthur sighs heavily, feeling frustration at the moment passing, his erection subsiding. Most of all, his brokenness. She ignores him, plucking dried golden petals from the flower and crushing them in a bowl with a small slick of hog fat. Lena slathers the mixture over his bruised stomach, her hand warming the fat and spreading it along, the sweet, sage-like smell of the flower petals filling the room. He seizes her wrist again, tugging on it gently. She pauses, finally meeting his gaze.

"Who did this to you?" She asks, voice slightly quavering. Before he can answer, she says, "Was it Dutch?"How could she know?Arthur feels a jolt of fear deep within, which must register on his face. "You say it in your sleep, 'Dutch, Dutch.'"

He feels tears come to his own eyes, a guilt that he's carried with him spilling over. She makes a soothing noise and murmurs something to him, combing her fingers through his hair with one hand and grasping his hand with the other. He forces a brief laugh.

"You could say he's the one wh'keeps getting me shot, like you say," he starts. Her eyebrows flare in sudden anger but she keeps herself still. He feels himself rush to Dutch's defense, immediately. "He's like a mentor to me, raised me up when I was orphaned, taught me things. There's a small group of us who owe near about everything t'him."

"And what does he owe to you?" Lena practically seethes. Arthur's again taken aback by her sudden rage, how it comes on like a prairie storm.

"It ain't like that," he says. He's desperate to make her understand, feeling foolish and without the proper words or time to explain. "We've got a rivalry with a nasty gang Dutch used t'run with sometimes, they promised a chance to make amends, a parley. Do you understand?" She nods, jaw set. "But it was a trap to get to me, bring Dutch and the gang running to save me. That's how much he cares, that he'd risk it all, you see?"

He's imploring her, but Lena's face is dark. They sit in silence for a few moments, her thumb tracing a path between his sideburn and chin repeatedly, before stopping. "How did they know you would be there?" She says, finally.

The question surprises him. "What?"

"If the parley was for Dutch and the other gang, why were you there? How did they know you would be?"

He's bewildered a few moments, the ramifications of her question forcing him to relive the past days, what he can remember. Then, it's just deep shame, a hot lump in his chest.Foolish, loyal dog, Morgan, he thinks, berating himself.They'd have had nothing if you'd just stayed in camp, but they knew you wouldn't.They played you like a goddamned fiddle. He exhales heavily, eyes downcast. "They just knew," he says finally, utterly defeated. He lets loose a couple of low growls with his exhale, trying to break up the feeling in his chest, a weight pinning him to the bed.

Finally, Lena ducks into his eyeline, no trace of vindictiveness on her face, only a bittersweet smile. "I'm going to have to give you back, yes?" She leans her upper arms on his chest, stroking his cheeks with the backs of her hands. His eyes widen and he returns her smile, grasping her wrists and spreading her arms wide, pulling her into him. She nuzzles into his neck, joining him on the small bed so delicately, an arm across his chest and the other behind her own head, body pressed along his side.

"'Fraid so," he murmurs into her hair, and they both fall into a deep sleep.

Chapter 10: x. The Hunt: A long rest

Chapter Text

While healing from his encounter with the O'Driscolls at Lena's cabin, Arthur settles into a kind of life he'd seldom imagined, let alone experienced; a cozy domesticity. Lena wakes before dawn to make the day's bread, returning to the bed to sleep while it bakes, flour dusting her cheeks and fingertips. She takes her morning coffee with him the first couple of mornings, bedside, until he gains enough strength to join her outside at the fence overlooking the mountain range. They eat blackberry preserves and butter on the bread at breakfast, hard cheese and salty green fruits -olives, Arthur, really?she introduces them to him with a laugh, her lips shiny with brine - for lunch. Lena sometimes hunts something for dinner - a rabbit or duck - but other times they eat eggs from her chickens, or a soup made with vegetables from the garden. He'd never eaten so well or so routinely.

His relationship with Lena stagnates, in the passionate sense. She touches his face, holds his hand, sleeps curved into him on the small iron bed; but pulls away whenever he signals that he'd like to go further, touching a warning hand to his stomach or shoulder; injuries that she's decided bar her from him. Arthur's advances subside, eventually, contenting himself with her gentleness and constant proximity.

And, there's so much to know. He drinks in the stories she tells him; growing up in Sicily, studying classics in Rome. She reads him her favourite passages from the poetry books that are hoarded about the cabin; tucked into eaves and cupboards, stowed under the mattress and lining the mantel. Lena leaps from chair to table in these zealous recitations; pausing only to take another drag on her cigarette or explain something emphatically in English, looking down upon him, imploring him to understand. "A love that moves the sun, Arthur! The thought!" To which he'd reply, suppressing a smile spreading over his cheeks, "how 'bout that."

They stay up late playing cards; English games like poker and gin, and Italian ones she teaches him with her unfamiliar Sicilian deck, scopa and briscola. She's a fierce competitor and the sorest loser Arthur's ever met, brooding over bad hands and once, throwing her cards down in a fit and leaving him for fifteen minutes to chuckle to himself.

When he's well enough, they lead the horses on walks around the woods and she teaches him about the plants that surround them; which mushrooms are safe for eating and which will make him ill, an herb for wakefulness, a flower for muscle pain, a tree bark for cramping. He draws them in his notebook dutifully, writes their individual purposes in his practiced hand.

On one of these walks in the warm afternoon, he takes her pale wrist in his sun-weathered fingers. "You're livin' practically outside, Lena," he says, "but you ain't picked up any colour."

She slides her arm out of his grasp, taking his hand instead. "I'm not here all the time, Arthur," she replies, matter-of-factly. His memory of his lonely visit to the cabin, downing a bottle of gin on the step, floods back to him. She's given his hand a squeeze and released it, moving to stroke the nose of her brown-and-white mare, Quasette, her back turned.

"Where do you go?" He asks, quietly. She looks back, smiles ruefully, shakes her head. He's learned that this means the conversation is ended, that he's asked the wrong thing. But, no matter; he fills these silences with stories of his own, to which she's a captive audience. He tells her about the gang; Hosea, his genteel mentor; Lenny, the sweet kid with whom he'd drunk himself stupid, his doubts about Micah. She peppers him with questions and he feels himself opening up, revisiting, missing the gang. He surprises himself, beginning an anecdote with the words, "My brother John had just run away," having not referred to John as his brother in quite some time.

Arthur also tells her about Dutch, desperate to change her opinions. She's always resistant to these stories but comes around; softened by a begrudging approval of Dutch's taste in Italian operas, and of course, Arthur's evident fondness for the man.

"You two'll get on like a house on fire, trust me," he says after one of these stories, leaning over to nudge her side playfully as they share a nip of whiskey outside in the chilly evening. She leans down from her usual perch on the fence and kisses his cheek in response, holding his gaze before looking skyward, watching the stars emerge one by one.

And so, Arthur passes two weeks away from the gang with a stranger who'd become a friend, the bullet hole healing into a puckered scar, mottled bruises fading, spilled ink disappearing into paper.

*

The morning after their night of stargazing, Arthur awakens to the clunk of boot hitting floor and Lena's hissed, "merda!" She turns to him sheepishly.

"Scusami, Arthur," she apologizes, pulling on the offending boot. She's wearing what she calls herabiti; the clothes she wears when going to the station for supplies or mail - a good skirt, blouse, and day jacket. "I'm going out for a few hours, go back to sleep. There's coffee and breakfast for when you wake up." He returns her smile sleepily, face half immersed in the pillow, and she leaves.

He hears Quasette's hoofbeats pick up speed and recede into the distance, and pulls himself from the bed, rotating his shoulder. He seizes his coffee cup and a piece of the bread spread thickly with butter, a bit of cooked egg she'd made, a slice of tomato. He eats quickly, alone, with nothing to say and no one to say it to. The daylight is decidedly early, the mountains a blur of pastel blues through the window.

Arthur's rifling through his satchel, looking for his notebook, when he spots his fishing pole.Could do to fish up some dinner for Lena, he thinks, and then feels slightly ashamed he hadn't thought of it sooner, so encompassing and effortless was her care. He pulls his jeans and shirt on, affixes his gun belt, dons his jacket and hat. He feels so much like himself that he prepares his shaving kit, too, thinking it might be time to lose some of the length he's gained on his beard.

As he rides Priest out to the small stream he'd spotted a few sockeye in nearby, he thinks about how he might cook the fish, what he'd serve it with. She'd shown him the transformative power of garlic and herbs, how to crackle the skin of an animal in cast iron, using the leftover juices to prepare side dishes, like potatoes and asparagus. He may miss the gang, but not Pearson's cooking.

Arthur baits the line, casts, and sets his pole in the mud on the riverbank, resting against a nearby tree and keeping an eye out for the telltale bend in the rod. He trims his beard down to a manageable stubble before catching up his journal on the week that's passed; drawing sketches of the Sicilian playing card figures, transcribing snippets of poetry that Lena had translated for him. Priest grazes happily nearby, glad to be out, just the two of them (Quasette, like Lena, is temperamental, and prone to biting).

A couple of hours pass before he sees the tip of the rod swing dramatically down. He jumps to snatch the handle just before whatever he'd hooked pulls the whole pole in and digs his heels into the ground, wrenching back on the rod and grasping the reel to stop any more line from going out. He struggles with the fish for a few minutes before it stops fighting him momentarily to wallow on the surface of the river, and he sees a flash of red flesh. Arthur yanks the rod as hard as he can and brings the sockeye in. It's a decent size - eight pounds or so - and he wraps it up in newspaper before storing it in one of Priest's saddlebags and mounting up.

He feels giddy as he rides back to the cabin, excited to cook for Lena for a change. A twinge in his lower belly betrays his ulterior motives and he shakes his head at himself as if to banish the thought of them together, but can't dispel the warm flush in his cheeks. Quasette is hitched to the post at the front of the cabin as he and Priest approach and Arthur co*cks an eyebrow, surprised to see Lena back already. He ties Priest up next to Lena's horse, muttering, "play nice, now" before giving a pat to each of their necks and noses, an oatcake to each of them.

Brandishing the salmon like an offering, he kicks the cabin door open, smile fading as he meets Lena's red-rimmed eyes from where she's seated at the table, hand wrapped around the neck of a gin bottle.

"Lena, wha-" is all he manages to get out, before she bursts from the chair, which clatters to the ground behind her. She points an accusatory finger at him and screams, anguished, "Youleft!" More tears spill from her eyes as she lets out a deep sob, clutching at her middle with one arm.

Arthur is gobsmacked, blindsided by the glut of emotions she can conjure at any one time. He sets the fish down, gingerly, and reaches for her keening body, her eyes squeezed shut, mouth wordlessly open. "I didn't leave, Lena, I'm right-"

She interrupts him again as her eyes fly open, and behind the honeyed brown is a burning rage. "You left and you didn't even say goodbye! You left me and you said nothing!" She repeats these invectives in a garble of English and Italian, pushing at his chest and beating at him with her small fists. Arthur holds up his hands in mock defense, trying with all of his might not to laugh. He bites down on his lips held between his teeth and tries to look conciliatory, but he's fading quickly against her onslaught, which is funnier to him with each tiny hit.

"Hey, hey, easy killer," he says, finally, and then comes the chuckle. It's enough for her to freeze, eyes still wild, chest heaving. She takes a few feeble strikes at him and he catches both of her wrists this time, holding them and her gaze. Quieter, she says again, "youleftme." She juts her pointed chin towards him, defiant. It stirs him, the twinge in his belly turning to an aching heat he feels pressing against his jeans.

"Oh, I left you, huh?" He growls, and she's visibly taken aback by the change in tone. Arthur steps forward, increasing his grip on her wrists just slightly to keep her from stepping back. He lowers his face towards hers. "I'm gone, am I?" His cruel demeanour cracks with a smirk, and he catches the briefest glimpse of a smile on her face before she rails again, pulling at his grasp.

"You did!" She's playing the part he wants, and she knows it, a corner of her mouth turned up in a half-grin. "You were."

"I was," he says, through his teeth, tipping that defiant chin up with one hand to meet his urgent kiss, his other arm pulling her body to him.

Chapter 11: xi. Intermezzo; An embrace, fleeting

Chapter Text

When Arthur kisses Lena, a fortnight of pent-up desire - if not months' worth, since that first dream - fuels the contact. His hand moves from holding her chin to palming the back of her head, fingers entwining in her thick black hair. He crouches slightly, sliding his other arm from her waist to below her hips, lifting her. She clings to him as her feet leave the ground.

Lena pulls back, her face level with his, eyes searching. She touches his shoulder tentatively, where the bullet and burns had been. Arthur lets go of her hair, holds her probing hand, brings it to his lips.

"Nnn-nnn," he tuts, mouth buzzing against her palm, before releasing it, "You fixed me up too good, darlin'." She raises an eyebrow; he's never called her that before. Lena stares at him so long that for a panicked moment he doubts it all, and is about to put her down when she breaks into a radiant smile, climbing her legs up around his waist and holding his face in both of her hands, above him. She kisses Arthur, wrapping her arms around his neck, plunging her tongue betwixt lips and teeth to taste him. They separate again and laugh, delighted; their movements becoming clumsy in their urgency.

He fumbles with the pearl buttons on her blouse until she grows frustrated, pulling down the front of the shirt, sending the buttons flying to clatter along the floor in all directions. She looks around at the departing buttons in disbelief and back to Arthur, saying "tropp'forte, ahimè," before laughing again, clapping a hand to her mouth. He doesn't join in this time; the effortless Italian, the r's rumbling in her bare chest pressed against him, pushing him towards a renewed need.

"New rule, darlin'," Arthur whispers, "no more English out of you." He looks for her reaction to find her smiling wickedly. "Sì, Arthur," she replies, before leaning in to whisper in turn, her breath warm as it rushes past his ear, "ho bisogno di te." Arthur strains against his fly in response, painfully restricted.

He lowers Lena to the ground to remove his belt and she shoulders out of the shirt, stepping out of her skirt and bloomers both. When he looks up after unbuttoning his fly, he finds her completely nude, pale skin glowing in the midday light, dark pink nipples capping small breasts, a small tuft of black hair between her legs. She is scarless, soft. Arthur stares, overwhelmed, suddenly unconfident.

Lena steps to him. Holding his hand, she presses it to her cheek, kisses his trembling fingers. "Venga con me, amore," she says, sweetly, and leads him to bed.

*

Lena smokes a cigarette in sheets as tangled as her wild hair as Arthur frees the caught salmon from its wrappings, shirtless, the arms of his maroon union suit tied around his waist. He runs his knife along the fish's belly, pulling the head and guts out in a swift motion and into the washbasin. He splits the fish into two generous fillets, and then drops them skin-side down into the waiting skillet on the woodstove, where they hiss and sputter, filling the cabin with the scent. He remembers the creeping thyme and garlic scapes he'd foraged to go with their meal and returns to the table to retrieve them.

A letter sticking halfway out of Lena's saddlebag catches his eye, addressed toTacitus Kilgore, c/o Lena G., Wallace Station. He seizes the letter and holds it up to her, wordlessly.

"Oh, that," she says, suddenly remembering. "The clerk did not let me leave without it this morning, said there were no other Lenas around, that it was sent priority." Arthur feels a panic rise in his chest at the familiar pseudonym, the name the gang used to communicate with each other when away. "Ain't no other Lenas in these parts," she mimics the clerk, poorly, blowing a ring of smoke and laughing. When Arthur doesn't react, she rises from the bed, gathering the sheet around her.

"What is it?" She moves to him, concerned, resting her chin against his upper arm to peer around him at the letter. Arthur cracks the seal, opens it slowly, dreading what's inside. It reads, in Dutch's telltale combination of upright script and block letters:

The Gray family had us into TOWN while you were gone, Tacitus. Our Irish friend left us to go with Mac, Davey, and Jenny. The Braithwaites didn't want to be outdone by their southern hospitality and invited little JACK over before asking his mother. We're going to pick him up TONIGHT, would really hope you could join us after being GONE for so long.

Arthur decodes the letter, word by heartbreaking word. Sean, dead. Jack, kidnapped. And the gang demanding his help - even if he left immediately, he'd barely make it back to Clemens Point in time for the night's ride on the Braithwaites. He glances down at Lena, who's squinting at the letter, painstakingly mouthing the words. "Che difficile, inglese," she remarks, looking up at him, her smile fading after catching his eyes.

"Lena," he exhales, feeling the guilt press against his chest, wrap around his heart. She looks at the letter again, sees "tonight" in the block writing, starts shaking her head.

"No Arthur, no," she stands back from him, clutching the sheet to her chest, lower lip quivering. He tosses the letter into the fireplace, turning from her, picking his jeans up off the floor, pushing his arms into the sleeves of his long underwear. "You can't leave me. Don't leave me."

He tries to ignore her, fishing his shirt out from where she'd tossed it, playfully, behind the headboard, seemingly eons ago. Her voice becomes more desperate, piercing through the hasty wall he's built around himself. "Please, Arthur!" He hears Lena break into a sob and the hate he feels for himself, for the gang, is instant.

He rushes to gather her into his arms, holding her close, kissing the tears from her cheeks. "I'm sorry, Lena, I'm so, so sorry," he says, "I have to go." He hears a plaintive "No!" from her, buried into his chest, more hot tears spilling against him. He holds her by the shoulders, at length, rubbing her soft skin with his thumbs, cupping her chin in his hand.

"You listen to me, darlin'," he says, forcing the words through the lump in his throat. "I'm comin' back. I swear on it." Her face screws up and fresh tears well in her eyes as she lowers her chin to press her lips against his palm.

"Goodbye, Arthur," she says, kissing his hand, and then his mouth, before breaking away from him to leave the cabin, barefooted, in the sheet. He finishes dressing, locates his hat, his guns, his bag.

He departs the cabin, packs Priest's saddlebags, and mounts up, refusing to look at the woman wrapped in bedlinen, clutching at the fence and sobbing over the mountain range, knowing his heart will break completely if he does.

Chapter 12: xii. False Mercury: Reaffirmation

Chapter Text

Priest's neck and flanks are thoroughly lathered as Arthur steers him into Clemens Point, the grounds and horizon washed in the colours of late dusk. "Jesus, Arthur," Javier says from his guardpost at the mouth of the camp, a hint of disbelief in his voice, "it's good to see you alive, amigo."

There is a sombre, anxious mood hanging over the camp, an added thickness to the humidity and swarming gnats. Several of the men are loading rifles onto their horses, or eating hurried bowls of stew, standing up. Arthur spots Dutch in conversation with John and Abigail, a wince etched into the lines under his eyes and around his mouth. As Arthur strides towards them, handing off Priest to Kieran, the gang's heads turn, one by one. "Arthur." "It's Arthur." "Arthur's back." His name is whispered and echoed as a kind of Greek chorus, trailing him on his lonesome walk, a dread in his stomach.

"Arthur!" Abigail says in surprise. The young mother has been to hell and back in these short hours, and her face shows it, blotchy, and with the parched look of someone who's been crying. She wraps her arms around his neck, sinking her forehead down to rest on his shoulder, "They took my son, my sweet Jack, Arthur."

He pats her back, murmuring, "I know, I came as soon as I heard," catching John scuffing the toe of his boot in the dirt, embarrassed for them both. He releases Abigail as Dutch snipes, "So good of you to join us, Mr. Morgan. Breaking off your little retreat while the rest of us got killed and had our children stolen."

The words are merciless and as good as a slap; Arthur rubs his cheek and feels the guilt that had subsided during the long ride home roar to life, rushing in his ears, constricting his throat. All of the excuses he has - that he himself had been stolen away, that he'd nearly died; even, merely, that he'd beenhappy- die unspoken behind his lips. He removes his hat, instead, holds it to his chest, a mourning gesture. Dutch's disapproval rolls off him in waves.

"You're here now," Abigail breaks the silence. "Go and get my son back, boys. Bring'im home to me." She stretches to kiss John's cheekbone and walks off, only to fall into Susan Grimshaw's arms, sobbing again. The three men stare after her for a moment before heading to their horses in silence.

Dutch swings his leg over The Count's back in front, his fervent, "We ride!" provoking a string of hollers and "yahs!" from the men. Arthur slouches in the rear of their rescuing party on a borrowed Walker while Priest rests, riding next to a panicked, silent John, which suits him just fine.

*

The raging heat coming off of Braithwaite Manor, engulfed in flames, casts a preternatural glow over the faces of the Van der Linde gang, the corpses of Braithwaite men littering the lawn. Despite the law likely on their way, the Van der Linde men are anchored to their places, watching the glass explode out of the windowpanes, a doric column succumbing to the fire and collapsing with a sickly groan. Catherine Braithwaite, who ran back into her burning home, had stopped screaming a quarter hour before, and yet, her voice carries on the wind, ringing in Arthur's ears.

Never had a shootout where all the men had survived felt like such a loss. They had just found out that Jack was elsewhere, with some business acquaintance of the Braithwaites, an Angelo Bronte. "He could be with Bronte in Saint Denis," the Braithwaite woman said, spitefully, as Dutch held her upright by her arm, "Or on a boat halfway to Italy by now." John is next to Arthur now, his face bound with worry, lips pressed so firmly around a cigarette it's bent upwards.

"I'm sure Jack's in Saint Denis right now, safe, John, just over there a-ways," Arthur says, quietly; then, risking a joke, "boats tend t'bring Italians to America, not the other way round." He turns to see if he'd managed to crack John's expression at all, but John's eyebrows only furrow in anger, and he throws the useless cigarette to the ground.

"What the hell would you know, Arthur?" He shouts, breaking the trances of several of the men around them. "Where the f*ck have you been, anyway?"

Arthur feels his face grow hotter still, his olive branch snapped in two. "Bit rich, Marston, comin' from you," he glowers, and John recoils at Arthur's bald reference to his year away from the gang, the scars across his cheek an italic on his angry, hurt expression. Dutch is staring at them both, furious. Arthur looks away first, scowling to himself as he walks off, pretending to fuss with his borrowed horse's saddle.

He hears Dutch behind him, "mount up, men!" and they tear themselves from the burning house to begin the ride to camp. Again, Arthur rides at the back of the group, ashamed and alone. Over the hoofbeats, he hears Dutch's mollifying voice speaking to John at the vanguard of their group, the occasional encouraging chime from Hosea.

Somehow, despite all he'd tried to do, it had happened again. John, the golden son, the one in need of comforting and appeasem*nt; Arthur, the brute, the one left bloodied and forced to care for himself. He exhales sharply a few times to rid himself of some of the excess adrenaline he'd built up at the manor; always a skilled marksman, quite a few of the Braithwaite casualties could be attributed to him.Another goddamned bloodbath courtesy of the butcher Morgan, he berates himself, shaking his head, the familiar cold sinking into his heart, the one he feels after killing other men.

The cold spreads through his chest, settling into his stomach, crawling up into his mouth and thickening his tongue.All the killing I've gone and done, he thinks,and I thought I could play house with some woman like I deserved that kind of life. He allows himself to think of Lena; not keening over the mountains, wrapped in the sheet earlier that day, but crouched in front of him, smiling, holding out a cup of steaming coffee. Slapping her winning poker hand down on the table, gloating over him until he scoops her, cursing and laughing, over his shoulder. Snoring softly an inch from his face, hair and cheeks streaked with flour in the early morning. Soft lips pressing against his jawline, trailing towards his mouth.Like I deserved any other life than the one I'm livin'. The cold spreads even there, memories dissolving into darkness.

As the last one to file through the trees and into camp, he arrives just in time to see Abigail collapse at John's feet, wailing. John crouches over her, pulling her into his arms, laying together in the dirt. Arthur feels his own loneliness all the more acutely and heads for his wagon, pushing past Micah, who smirks, "No little tyke with you, Morgan? Couldn't be the big hero today?" Arthur spins on his heel, winds his fist back, and punches him across the mouth, sending the smaller man flying across the camp. Micah scrambles to his feet, wiping blood from his mouth and flicking it away. Catching Dutch's eye, Micah yields with a scowl, his hand moving towards, then away from, the snakeskin-handled grip of a pistol. "Touchy, are we?"

Furiously embarrassed that Micah had got the better of him yet again, Arthur ignores the looks of his fellow gang members and curls into his cot, nursing his newly-bruised knuckles. For the first time in weeks, he sleeps alone, and, despite the muggy Lemoyne air, he shivers.

*

"Uh, Dutch?" Lenny's voice carries, reverberates off of the lake, awakening Arthur from his fitful sleep. "We got a problem, here." Suddenly alert, Arthur pulls himself out of bed at the sight of Lenny behind two Pinkerton agents, walking slowly yet confidently into their camp. He emerges from his lean-to at the same time Dutch exits his tent, and for better or worse, they're standing shoulder-to-shoulder as they face Agent Milton and his associate, Agent Ross. Arthur feels for the grip of his revolver; is comforted by its presence.

"Not a problem, visitors, a solution," Milton says, addressing the gang members arrogantly, despite being surrounded by them. "Good day, fine people. Mr. Van der Linde. Mr. Matthews, I presume. Ah, Mr. Morgan! How...wonderfulto see you again. And-" addressing John, who's half-concealing Abigail on Hosea's right side "-who are you?"

"Rip van Winkle," John jeers, his right hand hovering dangerously close to his gun.

As Dutch and Milton trade snippets of their warring philosophies wrapped in masked insults, and Milton threatens to take Dutch in and leave the gang to fend for themselves, Arthur is gripped by a strange calm, the same he always has before a firefight (the dread, the cold he experienced the night before - that comes after). When Dutch says, "You came for me? Risked life and limb in this den of lowlifes and murderers, so that they might live and love? Ain't thatfine," Arthur's laugh isn't the loudest in camp, but it is the first.

Likewise, his gun is the first out of its holster when Dutch feigns his surrender to the Pinkertons. Arthur stands behind his leader, shoulders squared, defiant. Susan Grimshaw sneers, "I think your friend should leave now, Dutch," and Arthur nods his agreement, staring Milton down, his revolver pointed right at the agent's chest.

"You're making a big mistake. All of you," Milton warns, and Dutch chuckles, waving his hand to indicate to Lenny to escort the unwelcome visitors out.

"Yeah, dreadful," Dutch muses, "We have got something, something to live and die for. How awful for us, Mr. Milton. Stop following us; we'll be gone soon." Lenny prods Ross in the back and seizes Milton, who jumps and looks at the young man in disgust. As he takes them away, Dutch turns to consult with Hosea, Arthur, and John, his co*cky, oddly benevolent expression disappearing.

"We have to get out of here, and quick. Any ideas? Arthur?" Dutch fixes him with a gaze that speaks volumes, that says,I know you were ready to fight for me, and I am grateful for that.Arthur clears his throat, trying to hide his relief at being invited back in, his joy at the four of them, conspiring together, thick as thieves again.

"I know a big old house, hidden in the swamps outside Saint Denis. I'm sure they'll find us eventually, but it should buy us a few days." Dutch nods, encouraging him to continue. "It's a spot out by Shady Belle. Lenny and I got into that dispute with the previous occupiers. Place is well hidden."

"Good," Dutch says, and then repeats it, clapping Arthur on the shoulder, "Good work, son. You and John head out there, make sure no one else has moved in." As John opens his mouth to protest, Dutch addresses him, "John, we'll get Jack back, and we'll get gone. Rest of you-" this, shouted out to the gang at large, a finger pointed in the air "-get packing!"

Arthur heads to Priest, followed by John, who's muttering, "This is crazy. We should be going after Jack."

It is crazy, thinks Arthur.This life is crazy, but it's mine, and it's good enough.For the second time at Clemens Point, he firmly pushes Lena from his mind, committing to the gang, to Dutch, and to never leaving them again.

Chapter 13: xiii. False Mercury: A toast (or two)

Chapter Text

Priest trots after Dutch's prized horse The Count as Dutch and Arthur depart Shady Belle for nearby Saint Denis, which he'd known before only as a haze on the horizon during the day; a sickly glow at night. Then, through the willows; Arthur catches his first glance of Lemoyne's only metropolis; a half-dozen stacks belching dark smoke into the air. It is a repugnant scene, to him, and not even subtle. Idyllic pasture to his left; unchecked development to his right.

The horses turn onto a bridge and right into the belly of the industrial part of town. Arthur fights the urge to pull his bandana over his mouth and nose, so fetid is the air. Dutch notices his fingers plucking at the cloth and smirks.

"I'd like to say you get used to it, my boy, but you don't." Arthur briefly nods, cracking a smile. To have things fixed between them is all he needs to cope with city air. "And we'll be spending some time in it, yet," Dutch continues, "at least until we can track down that boy, and some money to get out of here, besides."

"Welcome to Saint Denis, mister!" An urchin, dirty, no older than eleven, chimes, drawing the attention of the two mounted outlaws. "This here's the cradle of southern civilization." He does a strange, lopsided bow and dashes off through a break in a nearby fence.

Arthur watches after him a moment. "Suppose I'm off to be cradled by civilization," he says, tipping his hat to Dutch, who barks a laugh, replying "I'll see you later, Arthur." He and Dutch split off down different, but equally dreary roads, off in search of one kidnapper, an Angelo Bronte.

*

The ensuing week is an exhausting string of single, overpriced whiskeys in saloons asking after Bronte; the uncomfortable press of thousands on Saint Denis sidewalks; a constant vigilance of Arthur regarding his own person - protecting it from cutpurses, street salesmen, overfamiliar beggars, a deplorable eugenicist. When he collapses into his cot on Shady Belle's second storey at night, he lies awake listening to Abigail sobbing in the neighbouring room, harder and longer with each passing day without Jack.

It's almost to be expected when Arthur, nearly dead on his feet and following more street urchins - yet more, the city is rife with them - suddenly finds the familiar weight of his satchel absent. He turns as if in slow motion to see the bigger kid of the two he'd been following - his first lead in days on Bronte, and promising until this particular moment - running off with his bag, the cut strap flapping in the wind, almost celebratory, a taunt.

Arthur sighs and takes off after the big one, Cleet, who may have swindled him out of his satchel and all of his cash but was honest about one thing; he clearly does know the city. Their goose chase is one over roofs and balconies, through alleys and courtyards. Cleet hops on the Saint Denis trolley, on horse wagons, throws doors shut and goods down to slow Arthur's pursuit. Arthur chases Cleet through a market and catches him, seemingly at a dead end, only to see several more children emerge from the shadows.

As the last thing he needs is for these kids to laugh at him, Arthur tries to conceal his windedness as he enquires after Bronte.

"Well, sure, mister," the oldest of them says, though he, too, pronounces it in that way endemic to children of the area,mista. "He lives in a real nice, big house on Flavian Street, right across from the park. Can't miss it." Arthur snatches his bag back, rifling through it quickly to make sure nothing's amiss, before tying the strap back on and storming from the market. He distinctly hears the kid chirp, "Wait 'til Mista Bronte gets a load of this hayseed" and the whole lot of them laugh at his expense. Arthur's too tired to retaliate, and instead whistles for Priest, riding back to camp to bring Dutch - and John - the good news.

*

Priest steps gently towards Lena's cabin in the fading light, guided by Arthur's legs. He's holding a bottle of gin for her, swathed in wildflowers, freshly shaved, in his best clothing. When he enters the cabin, it's not just unoccupied, it's empty. The plants strung along the ceiling, the furniture, the poetry books tucked into every corner; all gone. He notices a patch of white through the windows at the rear of the cabin, exits to investigate.

Treading carefully through what was the vegetable garden, lain fallow, Arthur spots the white that had caught his eye, a corner of bone-coloured linen, poking up through freshly turned earth, in front of a simple grave. Three graves, side-by-side. He sinks to his knees, wanting to cry out, but can't. A dark-furred coyote lopes into view and takes a sidelong look at him before seizing the cloth in its jaws and pulling.

"No," Arthur mumbles, and it's like speaking through a mouthful of plaster. "Mm-no!" Arthur tries again, dropping the gin and rushing his hands to his mouth, trying to clear whatever obstruction is there. He pulls out cluster after cluster of yellow flowers, the licorice taste cloying. The coyote remains unbothered, continuing to tug on the cloth. The turned earth gives, and a slender, white hand tumbles from the linen. A hand that had cared for and caressed him, held his own a hundred times in a tenth of the days. Lena's.

Arthur awakens with a jolt, bathed in sweat. His heart hammers in his chest and he rests his palm there, exhaling through pursed lips. He'd lay down for just a moment after delivering the news to Dutch, and in the intervening deep sleep had dreamed a horror renewed, one that had left his slumbering hours years before. The light is that of early evening, with the last shafts of sunlight arcing through the trees surrounding the old mansion at Shady Belle. He's bone-tired, but dares not risk going back to sleep, after his nightmare.

He seizes his hat and descends the staircase, exiting through the front doors and spotting Abigail, standing over John, who's well in his cups by the campfire.

"I'm celebratin', Abigail," John slurs loudly, sloshing the bottle of bourbon he's holding towards her, "We're going after Jack tomorrow." She slaps his hat clear off his head.

"A real father would be on his horse tonight!" She shrieks, "I'm so sick of your absolute half-assedness, John Marston!" She storms off, unintentionally shouldering into Karen, who's approaching the fire with her own bottle of liquor in hand. Karen and John both look after Abigail's retreating frame, before Karen notices Arthur watching the whole scene.

She gestures for him to join them. "You just going to stand there, Judge Morgan, or will you join us drunken reprobates?" Arthur ponders the question.Drinkin' sounds about right, after a day like this, he decides, approaching them both and sitting cross-legged next to Karen, their backs resting against a large log. She hands him the bourbon she's toting and he raises it to them both, taking a deep drink.

"To us lovelorn sacks of sh*t," Karen toasts, causing Arthur to snort bourbon through his nostrils.

"Hear, hear," John says, again overloud, raising his own bottle and tipping dangerously towards the crackling firepit. Arthur, still sober, moves to sit next to John, discreetly holding him in place with his shoulder. John, as if just noticing him, squints through one eye and peers into Arthur's face. "Hey, Morgan," he says, clapping his hand on his shoulder, "you havin' lady problems, now?"

Arthur seizes John's bottle and takes another healthy swig. He starts to feel a warmth around his temples, a pleasant dulling of his senses. He looks back to John, about to speak to his time away, when Karen interrupts.

"It was that damned Mary Gillis botherin' him again, way back when we was in Valentine," she says, sagely.

"MaryLinton, now," Arthur corrects over the mouth of the bottle, taking another deep drink.

John reaches for his bourbon. "Linton, no sh*t," he says, and Arthur holds his hand up to John's face to pause him, draining another couple of ounces yet again. The bottle was half-full when Arthur'd took hold of it, and now sat at around a tenth left. Arthur could really put it away, when he wanted. It had been a spell since he had.

Karen snorts. "So was she lookin' to have her fancy Linton cake, eat her outlaw too? That it, Arthur?" John guffaws, coughing up liquor.

Arthur's cheeks redden, but he appreciates Karen's implied defense of him, smiles because of it. He knows the next bit will rile her. "She just wanted me for fetchin' her brother from some damned turtle cult, weren't after this outlaw at all." The drink motivates him to stand and do a little swivel of his hips at "this outlaw", which sends John into a howling fit.

"Typical!" Shouts Karen, pointing an accusatory finger at the sky, before slapping her knee and breaking into laughter of her own. The three of them continue in this way, gently ribbing each other, bursting into clumsy rounds of songs, consuming still more bourbon all the while.

The rest of the camp is dead silent when Arthur leaves, his bladder screaming out to him, and when he returns, his vision splitting and reuniting, it's to notice Karen meandering off in the direction of the house and John stumbling to and fro, mumbling, "best get back to Abigail." Even in his state, Arthur knows: this is a terrible idea.

"Besttake my bed tonight, Marston," Arthur says, giving a few slow thumps to John's back, "return to yours a hero tomorrow."

"Sure thing, brother," John thumps Arthur's back in turn, lurching from him towards the front doors. Arthur wavers on the spot, staring after him.

He hears a voice pipe up to his rear left. "Have to say I'm pleased to see you and John talkin' like this again," Hosea emerges from the shadows of the gazebo, smiling. "Hope it doesn't wear off once you both sober up."

"Hey, Hosea," Arthur returns the grin, scratching under his hat brim before taking a few uneasy steps towards the outbuilding. "What're you still doin' up?" Hosea meets Arthur and guides him up the few gazebo steps and on the bench seat built into its interior. Arthur nods to him, places a cigarette in between his lips, strikes a match.

"Could ask you the same thing, my boy," Hosea counters, not unfriendly. Arthur brings the lit match to the cigarette's tip - eventually, more than one close call of the match nearly touching to his beard, his coordination has suffered so - and inhales, then blows the smoke through his nostrils. The cigarette clears his head somewhat and he blinks heavily, looking up to Hosea.

"I-" he starts, considers lying, and then lets out a deep sigh, knowing Hosea, the old grifter, would see right through it. "I don't want to go back to sleep."

"Nightmares, again, son?" Hosea sits next to Arthur, crossing ankle to knee, resting his interlaced fingers atop. Arthur nods, silently, staring into his lap. "Same one?"

Arthur raises his head to stare sadly at Hosea, who breaks his fingers apart to rest a warm, comforting hand on Arthur's back. "Damn mind thought addin' a grave might be fun for me." An unwanted tear spills from his eye, which he wipes away immediately with the sleeve of his jacket, ashamed. He'd told Hosea about the dream years ago, when the twin losses of his son, Issac, and Issac's mother were still raw. Its cruellest trick to play was that the scene was always new to him in his dreaming state, doomed to play out as if he'd no idea what was coming, the two, now three, graves a grim realization, every time.

Hosea's hand moves just slightly, laterally across Arthur's shoulders, squeezing at the base of his neck. Arthur is sixteen again, immensely comforted. "It was the woman's, I know that," he continues, unbidden, his breath shaky. "Woman who saved my life from what the O'Driscolls gone and done to me."

"That's where you went, Arthur, who you were with when you were away from us," Hosea states, and Arthur nods again. "You like her."

Arthur smiles in spite of himself. "I do, but it don't matter none," he says, looking at Hosea, shouldering out of his grasp, not because he's uncomfortable, but because he's done needing it. "I ain't ever gonna see her again, anyway."

Hosea scrutinizes Arthur's face. "But something in you is worried about losing her. Or worried about being responsible for losing her."

"Yeah, maybe," Arthur looks away again, tapping his fingers against one of the gazebo's posts. Hosea smiles at his protégé, who'd never picked up his skill with the spoken word.

"In any case, Arthur," he continues, "If she put up with your moping around for a couple of weeks, she can likely handle herself OK."

Arthur laughs, rises to stretch. "I should head to bed," he says, beaming another smile down on Hosea.

"John's got your bed, remember?"

"Guess I'm sleepin' here, then. Night, Hosea." Arthur stretches out on the bench, places his hat over his eyes, and lets the crickets lull him to sleep. The older man feints towards his lean-to, but doubles back to the gazebo, keeping vigil over his troubled, beloved son.

Chapter 14: xiv. False Mercury: Debts paid, others accrued

Chapter Text

Arthur awakens to darkness, a faint pink glowing in the periphery of his vision. His head pounds with the previous evening's bourbon, and his back aches from sleeping on the gazebo bench. He removes his hat from his face and is immediately assailed by the daylight, squinting.I could not be less prepared to retrieve little Jack Marston in Saint Denis today, he thinks.

Rising to seated and gazing out over the lawns of the old plantation confirms a small comfort; that John is in the same boat. Marston holds a hand to his forehead and winces at Abigail talking to him incessantly, ignoring his pitiful state. She suddenly places a hand on John's shoulder, and travels it down his back, to his waist. His eyes widen briefly and he pulls her into an embrace, kissing her forehead before resting his chin upon it. It's a touching scene that turns hilarious - at least, to Arthur - as John tries to surreptitiously breathe into his hand, only to belch loudly and earn a slap from Abigail.

As she marches away, shaking her head, a chuckling Arthur approaches John, who's now leaning forward, hands on his knees, breathing deeply. "How're you feelin', Marston?"

"How's it look?" John rasps, spitting a few times into the dust.

"Looks 'bout right," he replies, pinching at the bridge of his nose. Arthur has a moment of déjà vu, that same pinching motion triggering a memory of Lena batting his hand away from his face and giving him a steaming cup of something after a particularly long night playing cards. He rifles through his bag and finds the rumpled wild mint he'd picked yesterday on the way home from Saint Denis, and stuffs a few leaves in his mouth. The sharply-sweet fragrance blooms up through his nostrils as he chews, and disrupts the headache enough that he can bear the sunlight. He hands a bunch to John, muttering, "eat these."

John groans, swiping the plants from Arthur's hands. "f*ckin' lettuce?" He risks looking up at Arthur, feels a bout of dizziness, returns his gaze to the ground.

"Up to you," Arthur shrugs, pulling a smoke from the pack with his lips, patting his pockets for his matches. "Where's Dutch at? Thought the three of us was off to get Jack today?"

"We're meetin' him there," John says, through a mouthful of mint, then, "holy hell, I can think." He stands up straight and looks at Arthur, blinking heavily. "Shall we, then?" The two head for their horses, John placing a hand on Arthur's shoulder to steady himself. It's going to be that kind of ride.

*

When they arrive at the park on Flavian Street, hitching their horses next to The Count and spotting Dutch reclining on the steps, Dutch can only chuckle at the sorry state of them both. "I look better than you boys, but not by much," he says from his perch on the park steps, surveying each of them and then his own, worse-for-wear vest and slacks. He clears his throat. "So, what do we know about Bronte?"

John lends Dutch a hand to stand as Arthur squints at the impressive mansion across the street, the two guards at the front gate. No, three - no, four. Arthur counts and recounts, the number growing each time, seeing men patrolling the mansion on the front porch, around the side of the house, visible through one of the second-floor windows.

"Got a small army of fellers, for one," Arthur says darkly, looking back to Dutch, "if we go in there and start shooting up the place, the boy's gonna get shot. That I guarantee."

"Ain't no one getting shot, Arthur," Dutch says, cavalier as ever. He beckons them to join him, crossing the street, "Just relax, we'll charm him. Trust me. John, you OK?"

John, as if for the first time, takes notice of the armed men swarming the property. "I guess," he says, unconvincingly, his eyes darting from gun to gun. Dutch proceeds, unbothered and confident, striding up to the front gate. A mild threat on Dutch's part to the guard at the front gate, and the three outlaws receive an escort-by-gunpoint into the house, their hands in the air.

They enter into a hallway that just hints at the gilt and lavishness of the mansion's décor, and are prompted to head left, where they're faced with the man himself, Angelo Bronte. Arthur is surprised by Bronte's relatively small stature and frame: he could be a banker. Sitting there, languidly, in a silk robe and dressing cap, Arthur feels a dissonance between the guns pointed in their direction and the man who commands them.Another thing to hate about cities, he thinks,ain't no way of knowing where the real danger is.

Bronte is trading words in rapid Italian with the lead guard, repeatedly gesturing at the three. Dutch steps forward, hands raised higher to counteract any perceived aggression, and says, loudly and slowly, "Why do you take his son?" Bronte starts, and then his eyebrows furrow.

"Excuse me?" he hisses, in gently-accented English. Dutch quickly realizes his mistake, renders his question more grammatically complex, speaks softer and faster to accommodate Bronte's obvious fluency with the language.

"I said, 'why did you take his son?'" Dutch extends his palm to gesture at John before resting it on his own chest. "We ain't got no problems with you, sir, nor you with us. But if you want to start one," here he pauses, looking into the eyes of several of the guards, "there is gonna be a lot of folks dead in this room before it's done."

Arthur winces at the threat, at the sounds of small adjustments to weapons he can hear surrounding them; a bullet being thumbed into a waiting chamber, a finger caressing a trigger.

Bronte seems to take Dutch's words equally badly. "So, you walk into my city, stinking of sh*t and looking like this, and you come into my house, and you tell me how to act?" His voice rises with every invective, his face is furious. "You ask me to show compassion? Have I not shown you almost infinite compassion already, by simply allowing you to breathe in my presence?"

"Indeed you have," Dutch says, in as conciliatory a tone as he can muster, sitting on the sofa across from Bronte. "Now, we are simple country folk. All we have is each other. And you have gone, and you have took his son-" he gestures back at John "-over some dispute with some inbred ex-slavers. It ain't got nothing to do with anyone of us."

Angelo counters, his cheeks suddenly flushed with rage, "You had nothing to do with destroying the liquor business?" Arthur notes how far the grip of his revolver is from his raised hand, starts looking about for places where he might be able to conceal reaching for it without a guard noticing. But they're everywhere, observing him from all angles.

"We was innocent bystanders," Dutch insists, a chuckle limning his voice, "and that which we weren't innocent of, well we- we most surely were ignorant of."

"You," Bronte seethes, "you twist words, you lie shamelessly, you think you are better than everyone else..." Arthur's heart pounds in his chest as he begins to lower his hand for his gun, preparing for the worst. But Bronte breaks into a sudden laugh, startling him.

"Te adoru," he says, in a tone of pleasant disbelief. He half-raises from his seat to take Dutch's hand, shaking it. "Angelo Bronte." The shoulders of Dutch, Arthur, and John noticeably slacken, the danger passed. Several of Bronte's men lower their guns, also visibly relieved, echoing the smile of their boss.

"Dutch van der Linde," Dutch says happily, and then gestures to Arthur, who steps forward for a handshake. "This is Arthur Morgan, and John Marston." Bronte shakes each of their hands in turn, a smile to them both revealing pearly white teeth and sharp incisors. He returns to his seat, and indicates for the men to join Dutch on the sofa. They do, shoulders tucked under ears on the crowded seat, Dutch, then Arthur, then John. There is an awkward pause.

"So," Dutch says, with trepidation, "can my friend...have his son?"

"Of course!" Bronte says, and Arthur feels John's exhale of relief, tension leaving his body. "But first, a drink, to new friendships, eh?" One of the guards makes for the small bar to Bronte's right, but he dismisses him, saying something in Italian and then yelling towards a door in the back of the room. "Sorellina, i bicchierini!"

Arthur's still marvelling about how this room, this house, seemingly revolves around Bronte - how his wish for a drink instantly put a man in motion to supply him with one, how his rising anger has the readying weapons to justify it - so he's the last to look up when the man introduces, "Elena Bronte, my sister."

The woman who emerges from the door, holding a tray of drinks, is dressed in an impeccably fitted gown of rustling, dark green silk, with skin as pale as a doll's, black hair pinned into an elegant chignon, a loose curl left to hang by her face. In puzzling out the disconnect between those clothes and that face, Lena recognizes Arthur before he does her. The tray flips forward off of her startled hand, crashing to the floor. A flush rises in her cheeks as she holds his bewildered gaze for a moment, before breaking eye contact, rushing to kneel next to Dutch, pulling a handkerchief from a pocket and blotting at the alcohol spilled on his boots and pant legs.

Dutch reaches down to grasp Lena's trembling hand, saying kindly, "It's quite all right, lamb, there's been much worse than a little liquor on these boots." He chuckles but she persists, gasping out, "Mi dispiace, Signore."

"Ciuca, we have staff for cleaning, enough," Bronte scolds, seizing her upper arm and pulling her forcefully next to him, where he holds her wrist, keeping her still, balancing on an armrest. "My sister is beautiful, eh? I thought you lonely cowboys might like to see her," he laughs wickedly at Dutch, who nods his polite assent, clearly uncomfortable. "Too bad she's clumsy, like a new foal, and has no head for your language." Arthur squints at this, and Lena catches his eye for a millisecond, giving him a near-imperceptible shake of her head. "In fact, Elena has been spending much time with your son, Signore Marston. Tell him, speak good English, go on."

John, who's also been made to feel deeply uncomfortable by this exchange, suddenly stares at Lena. She smiles at John, her accent purposely made thicker. "Your son is- he is good boy." She reaches forward to touch John's knee gently. "Good, smart boy."

"Thank you," John replies quietly, astonished. Arthur is equally so, wondering how long Lena's hidden her English from her brother: he'd once joked to her that she spoke two languages better than he did one. Though, Arthur supposes she's really hidden this much larger part of herself from him, or, merely that he was too blind and foolish to see it. The years of studying, the new amenities like the woodstove and beautiful books in her cabin, the pure-bred horse - they are the trappings of a rich girl, not a hermit.

She turns to address her brother in a playful tone, and he says in English, "Of course, my manners. Quest'è Signore Marston, Signore van der Linde, e..." Bronte smiles at Arthur. "Sorry, friend, your name again?"

"Morgan," he mumbles, reddening. Lena rises from the armrest, approaches each of them in turn, grasping their hands and kissing them on each cheek. "Signore Morgan," she greets him, saving him for last, her face so close to his that he can see each individual eyelash, as if they were painted on by an artist. He closes his eyes to better feel the gentle brush of her lips on his weathered cheeks, and opens them again to see her smile at him, radiant, and knowing. "Piacere."

*

Arthur leaves with John on Bronte's chosen errand - stopping a band of local graverobbers - gladly, unable to sort fact from fiction from feelings back at the mansion. The night air is still oppressively hot and humid, and he can sniff a few lingering fumes of bourbon seep through his pores, the smell doing nothing for his roiling stomach. John is too distracted by the prospect of finally bringing Jack home to notice Arthur's quieter than usual, or that his face is blanched.

The job goes bad, as it so often does, and the two men have to sneak out of the graveyard to avoid the searching town policemen. Arthur's thankful for the danger, ruminating on spending a night in a jail cell over returning to the mess of emotions waiting for him at the Brontes.Bronte, not Giarre, he says to himself, you utter fool, Morgan. He crouches with his hands clasped open to boost John over the fence, and then reaches his arms for John to pull up on. They land, twin thuds, on the other side of the graveyard wall and disappear into the shadows, returning to the mansion by side streets and alleys.

Waiting at the front steps of the house are Dutch and Lena, her hands resting protectively on Jack's shoulders. When John spots the boy, he cries out, "Jack!"

Jack beams and waves to him, and turns briefly to give Lena's legs a hug before running to his father, nearly tripping over his own feet. "Pa!" He launches himself into John's arms, and John cradles the boy's head. "Am I glad to see you, Jack."

Lena briefly grasps Dutch's hand and waves to John, before retreating into the house without any acknowledgement of Arthur. He's surprisingly stung. Dutch joins them, mounting his horse and telling Arthur about the party they'd been invited to at the mayor's house, at Bronte's insistence. Arthur's half listening, distracted by a light turning on in one of the mansion's upper rooms. He sees her silhouette, unmistakable, raising her hand to him in farewell.

*

The gang's party, celebrating Jack's return, is in full swing. Javier strums out the camp favourite "Cielito Lindo," and Arthur finds himself joining in on the refrain, adding his gruff voice to the chorus: "ay, ay, ayay!"

As the song ends and gang starts to leave the circle, for drinks or dancing or sleep, John swigs from a bottle of beer and asks Abigail to dance, but she shakes her head, casting a furtive, panicked look at Jack in her lap. "I'll watch him, Abigail," Arthur offers, pulling the boy onto his knee, "you go have a dance with your man."

"Thank you, Arthur," she says, pressing a hand to his wrist, and he knows she means for more than just a moment alone with John. Jack leans into Arthur's broad chest, yawning. Javier, plucking at his guitar, smiles at them both and at the whirling couple, changing tempo to something slow and pretty.

"You're sure you had fun with them people, Jack?" Arthur asks the boy quietly, his breath ruffling the tawny hair on his head.

"Oh, so much fun, Uncle Arthur," he replies, sleepily. "We had a bath every night, and ate pasta, and Zia Lena told me the best stories I ever heard." The boy had been calling Bronte 'Papa Bronte' on the ride home - much to John's chagrin - but this nickname for Lena he hadn't yet heard.

Arthur tries to remain still and slow his quickening heartbeat, asking, "Oh? Like what? Can'y tell me one?"

Jack sits up from Arthur's chest to look at him, his enthusiasm besting his tiredness. "Once upon a time," he recites, and Arthur bites back on a smile at the boy's seriousness, "there was a sad, lonely Queen who lived all by herself."

"As lonely Queens often do," Arthur nods.

Immune to his teasing, Jack continues, "She was a nice Queen, too, and one day, she was giving the poor people in her kingdom food when a horse came up to her and pushed her in the back, like this-" Jack gives a gentle headbutt to Arthur's shoulder, coaxing the smile out "-and she turned around and there was a handsome knight on the horse and he fell off because he had arrows sticking out of his body, like here-" Jack touches Arthur's arm "-and like here-" he touches his shoulder, again "-and here." Jack splays his small hand against Arthur's stomach.

"That's a lot of arrows to be in one knight, no matter how handsome," Javier pipes, and he and Arthur trade grins over the fire.

"Itwasa lot," Jack insists, looking at them both, and they efface serious looks again. "The knight was dying, but the Queen saw his face and thought he was so handsome that she brought him to her castle. She called all of her own advisors from all over the kingdom to help, Ser Achillea to pull out the arrows without the blood coming out, Lord Arnica to stop the pain, Lady Passiflora to help him rest. Even though the knight's body got better, he was still hurt on the inside. She called more advisors and more advisors, but no one could see the hurt and no one could help."

Jack pauses to make sure Arthur's paying attention, and Arthur nods to him, a small lump forming in his throat.

"So the Queen talked to the knight every day, and she made jokes for him, and she ate her favourite foods with him, and she showed him that even if he was hurt, she still loved to be with him. But the knight came from a different kingdom, and needed to go back to fight the war that he left.

"And the Queen said, 'You can't fight if you're still hurt on the inside, because you'll die.' But the knight didn't listen. So instead she said, 'give me your hurt and I'll hold it for you so you won't die in the war, and then you have to come back to get it.' So the knight gave his hurt to the Queen and she ate it up and he left to fight in the war."

Jack looks at Arthur brightly, to find his face crumpled. "Uncle Arthur, it's just a story, don't worry."

Arthur clears his throat. "How does it end?" He says, hoarsely.

"Oh, yeah!" Jack slaps his hand to his forehead lightly, a comical gesture that Arthur sorely appreciates. "So the Queen waited with the knight's hurt in her belly, and it scratched at her and she felt worse and worse every day, but every day she hoped that the knight would come back to take the hurt away from her."

"And did he come back?" Jack shrugs at the question, climbing off of Arthur's lap to rejoin his mother, who's waiting nearby with an outstretched hand.

"Zia Lena said I got to decide," he calls back over his shoulder, "that's why her stories are the best."

Chapter 15: xv. False Mercury; A gilded cage, pt. 1

Chapter Text

In the week following his unlikely reunion with Lena in the Bronte mansion, Arthur does whatever he can to distract himself from the swell of guilt, confusion, and sadness (and their old, neglected cousin, lust), the cacophony of his self-abuse; from chopping firewood to lugging sacks of grain and feed and buckets of water to and fro across Shady Belle's expansive lawns. Miss Grimshaw frequently embarrasses him as her model member of the gang, screeching at whichever unfortunate soul to "be more like that fine, hardworking man, Arthur Morgan."

Finally free of Abigail's sobbing with Jack's safe return, Arthur instead keeps himself awake in the oppressively sticky evenings, poring over his candlelit journal entries from his time with Lena to compare the woman he'd known - thought he'd known - with the flawlessly dressed and mannered Elena Bronte, to whom he'd just been introduced.

I picked up my first single-game win of 'scopa' last night, 11 points in one round,he reads in his own hand, on an entry following one of their late nights at cards,Lena's the only one who knows how to count the points, and I kept asking her if I'd won, winding her up a bit. She threw the cards down and left, slammed the damn door behind her. God that woman's temper makes me laugh. She took a quarter-hour to come back after her little fit and I'd made an award for myself out of a bottlecap in the meantime, set her off again. We do have our fun.

He smiles briefly at the memory, but then wonders where that spirited Lena had been at the house. She'd sat blankly as her brother insulted and demeaned her, tolerated being displayed before three strange men - not to mention, the countless guards watching - like a pony at auction.

The same thought that had crossed Arthur's mind a thousand times in that week - the one he'd been trying to avoid - forced its way in once again.Is she pretending with me, or with him?He'd poured out so much of himself in their walks, during their morning coffees, in whispered conversations under the quilt, huddled together against the cold blowing off the neighbouring Grizzlies. Until last week, he'd thought she'd been upset at his leaving because she cared for him. But maybe it was just because she'd had him where she needed. The arguments and counter-arguments spin and dance around each other, and, like every time he starts ruminating, settle on the tiny glimmer of hope he has about Jack's story; the one with the sad, lonely Queen, the knight who left her behind. She couldn't have known that Jack would remember the tale so well, or that the boy would tell it to him.

He hopes he's right. The implications - that he's sold out the gang for a charming stranger, an enemy - are too much to bear.

*

Perhaps because of his fervent, self-imposed penance of chores and gang errands, Arthur had nearly forgotten about Bronte's invitation to the Mayor's house. He's lightheaded and exhilarated en route to the party, squished into a closed carriage with Dutch, Hosea, and Bill, dressed in unfamiliar formalwear and sipping on champagne, being delivered right into the jaws of civilization's worst to offer. The men surrender their weapons at the door to the palatial house, and he and Dutch carve off after one of Bronte's underlings to pay their respects to the boss, on a private terrace overlooking the party.

Luca, the lackey, waves them onto the balcony, which is populated with a handful of men in heated conversation, Bronte among them. Arthur is again taken by how Bronte is the sun around which these men orbit; lighting his cigar, refilling his brandy glass, deferring to his every statement. Against the sky of black tuxedos is Lena, a lone star shining in a silvery-white dress festooned in complex, black velvet scrollwork that hugs along the shape of her waist, her hair half-piled on her head with a few loose curls trailing beyond the nape of her neck. She's smoking a cigarette in a short holder clutched in her silk-gloved hand, gazing out over the railing.

Luca approaches her to whisper something urgently in her ear, looking over his shoulder at Bronte, and she whirls around. Arthur isn't prepared to see her like this, the glasses of champagne in the carriage conspiring with the smile beaming through her rouged lips to rush to his head, destabilizing him.

"Signori! Buona sera," she greets warmly, stepping forward to them, kissing Dutch, then Arthur, accepting a chaste kiss from the former to her gloved hand. "State'ben?"

"Elena, scema!" Bronte booms from the settee, the men surrounding him all staring at them, now. "English!" A dark look crosses her face and then disappears just as quickly, her smile returns and she rolls her eyes at him and Dutch, playfully.

"Gentlemen," she says, in her laboured accent, "howareyou?" All while making a show of curtseying repeatedly to them both, throwing glances back at her brother with each display. Dutch chuckles.

"I'm quite well, Miss Bronte, and you?"

She dips another curtsey, a jewelled hairpin catching the light and twinkling in her dark hair, to match her twinkling eyes. "I amfine,thank you."

Bronte rises, crosses to them, pushes her aside.

"Basta, enough," he chides, shaking his head before looking to the two men. "Ah, my cowboys, you've arrived- and you've washed!" Bronte shakes their hands, an underhanded grin on his face as he says something to his men, who laugh, almost in unison. Lena, behind him, fits another cigarette into her holder and demands a light from Luca, who's eager to give her one (in fact, Arthur notices a few lighters and matchbooks return dejectedly to pockets after her first exhale).

Dutch launches into the flattery that Arthur knows simultaneously sickens and enthralls him to listen to; so effective it's been in all their years of cheating and thieving. One of the Bronte men hands Arthur a cigar and he seizes the wrist of poor Luca, still holding his lighter, mooning over Lena. He puffs in the richly-scented smoke and tunes Dutch out -he's got this- nudging the smaller man out of the way and daring to join her at the railing. The party mills about below them, various clusters of finely dressed men and women coming together and then breaking apart, white-jacketed waiters circulating with precariously balanced glasses of champagne.

She glances at him out of the corner of her eye, which travels up and down his body, taking in his unusually formal clothing, the cut of the tuxedo highlighting his build, hair slicked with pomade, carefully trimmed beard. She smiles around the mouthpiece of the cigarette holder, murmuring, "che bell', Arthur." The way she says his name,Artoure,plucks urgently at him, and he coughs slightly at a too-deep inhale of the cigar.

They both smile bashfully, looking away from each other and back to the conversation between Bronte and Dutch, to see Angelo pointing down at various partygoers. "...and that is Hobart Crawley. A Confederate major in the war. A big hero they say, but that is his- his very young wife. I mean, a youngmistress, that's the natural order of things, yes? But a young wife, it's unseemly. Take it from me: my father took up with her putana of a mother after mine died, and look what that marriage has left me!" Bronte says this last part laughing, gesturing towards Lena, which his men follow in on uneasily. Lena's eyes flash dangerously, the bashful smile from moments ago plastered across her face, her free hand gripping the railing, knuckles visible through the silk glove. "A half-sister with more brains than sense, a zitella- surely, you have this word in English?"

Dutch laughs nervously, glancing over at Arthur and Lena. "I'm afraid there's no way for me to know," he says politely, trying to move the conversation on.

Bronte continues on, undeterred. "Zitella, zitella, like an old lady with no husband, a burden on her family." He elbows his closest guard, who joins him, overloud in laughing at Lena's expense. She suddenly releases the railing, flying towards the door, spinning to drag the back of her fingers under her chin and flick her hand towards her brother. Angelo's face immediately darkens at the gesture as she leaves, the black-and-white train of her gown swishing around the corner. Arthur raises his eyebrows in surprise;there's my Lena. A few of the men gasp and laugh surprisingly, only to halt as one when Bronte crushes the bulb of his brandy glass in his fist.

Seizing a napkin and brushing away the broken glass from his own glove, Bronte smiles anew, an eerie expression for a man who'd just been so furious. "Where were we, Mr. van der Linde? Ah, I'm probably keeping you from the party. Go, enjoy yourselves among the vulgar scum down below, it'll make you long for the days when you could shoot each other and screw cows out on the open range."

Dutch labours to return his smile to his own face amid the derisive laughter of Bronte and his men. "Those sure were the days." He makes an overture towards the door, and Arthur starts to follow.

"Before you go," says Bronte, halting their exit. "What exactly are your plans, here?" Dutch hesitates, telling Bronte finally that they're looking to make some money. Bronte gives them a tip about a trolley station in Saint Denis, flush with cash, and then all but waves them away. Luca Napoli, blushing, leads them back to the party, stopping to pull an adjacent door shut before descending the stairs. "Ciao, gentlemen," he says, pointing towards the door.

Arthur glances at Dutch, who shakes the dejected look from his face and straightens, readjusting his top hat and striding out to Hosea and Bill. "Gentlemen," he says, the confidence back in his voice, "let's go ingratiate ourselves."

Arthur plods off towards the swelling crowd of people, unsure where to begin. Three women gossiping in overfull taffeta gowns try unsuccessfully to flag a waiter for more champagne, so he seizes a bottle from a nearby table and offers it to them, one arm tucked behind his back, a caricature of gallantry.

"Oh, thank you! You are quite the gentleman!" One of the women gushes as she accepts the refill, a hand to her bosom. "Clearly not from this swampy hellhole." Her friends demur, echoing their compliments and proffering their own glasses to him.

"I don't know," a telltale voice sounds from behind him, and he turns to see Lena, holding a coupe of champagne between her thumb and ring finger, her cigarette holder tucked between her index and middle, smiling devilishly. "He looks like a killer, to me."

Chapter 16: xvi. False Mercury: A gilded cage, pt. 2

Chapter Text

"I beg your pardon?" The woman closest to him asks, her eyes narrowing at Lena, who's sidled up next to Arthur.

Lena waves her free hand in front of Arthur as if showing off a new house. "Look how he grasps that bottle!" she says, in a simulacrum of terror, joining the throng of women to face him. "By the base; the same circumference as your neck." She chokes at her own throat, her tongue lolls briefly from her mouth. The women shake their heads in disgust and move away from her, off to another, less strange, quadrant of the party.

Arthur hears the lead woman remark, "They'll letanyoneinto the country these days," as Lena releases her neck, winking at him, sipping at her champagne. He returns the bottle to the table, moves closer to her to whisper, "We're kind of trying to be discreet, you know."

She spits some of her champagne back into her glass, eyes widening, a coy smile pulling at the corners of her reddened lips. "Then why did you bring him?" Lena gestures her hand of vices - the champagne and cigarette - to Bill, who's audibly gagging in front of several concerned observers, a recently-voided oyster shell in his hands. Bill seizes two champagne glasses from a nearby waiter and guzzles them, one after the other.

"OK, fair enough, have your fun, Miss," Arthur salutes her, makes to walk away. It was one thing standing next to her in polite silence on the balcony; being able to talk to her freely, to see all of her affectations up close -that damned way she holds her smoke -is a privilege that comes with complex emotions he doesn't think he has time for.

"Oh, come on, I was hoping you'd have some with me," she pouts, taking a drag from her holder and blowing smoke out of the corner of her mouth, taking the sleeve of his jacket in her silk glove. His heart leaps at the contact, he feels temporarily frozen, his tongue numb.

"I-," Arthur fumbles the first words out of his mouth, trying again, "I have to talk to the Mayor, if I can even find where he's at." He makes a show of scanning the party, a polite excuse to look away from Lena for a moment. He'd been attracted to her since that dream at Clemens Point awakened him, but she was particularly intoxicating like this, all of her charms and best features sharpened, on full display.

She brightens. "Well, I can introduce you, but later," she says, pointing through the crowd to a man in small oval spectacles and a top hat, mutton chops limning his narrow cheeks, intently listening to a pair of Native Americans. "I don't want to interrupt them; those men never get that kind of time."

Her genuine concern unlocks his early impressions of Lena, before he'd learned about her family. He lets himself stare at her, feels his heart ache for having left her behind, and then, a miracle: lets the shame go, rolling off of him. Choosing to see this party as a gift of more, unexpected time, Arthur breaks into a smile and holds out his arm for her to take, which she does, happily. "Fun it is, then."

*

They wheel about amongst the guests. Lena is the natural lead for them both; not only providing a safe inroad to Arthur's sudden shyness around the debauched-yet-snotty Saint Denis elite, but a safe one for herself to ensure that her brother doesn't know what she's up to. For any existing Bronte contacts, she speaks in Italian and moves on quickly, tugging at Arthur's sleeve.

But; for people she hasn't met, there is a gleeful trying out of all manner of identities and configurations. Arthur finds it increasingly difficult to hide his laughter at the elaborate introductions she invents, and the faces made by her conversation partners, wavering between polite confusion and then, either laughter or a slow anger as they find that they may have been insulted or duped. Arthur and Lena move on by the time that perception lands, snickering together and seeking out another person to "meet."

"...and this is my husband, Louis Fitzhampton - lost all of our money at the poker table but made it right back selling walnuts, didn't you,caromio?"

"Just wait until my Stephen hears this! My husband, Stephen Swinehound, yes, how do you do - Stephen, this woman fired her housestaff when she realized she could hire Mexicans for a third of the price! Isn't that the most deplorable thing you've ever heard, in absolutely every way?"

She swans among the crowd naturally, and he's delighted to follow after the train of her gown, stands proudly next to her, wincing-yet-willing to accept whatever ridiculous backstory she's applied to him. So, when he hears her introduce herself as "Mrs. Timothy Withers... oh yes, Italian actually, my Tim ordered me from a catalogue..." he shakes his head, chuckling, and steps forward to introduce himself - defend himself, more likely - to whomever she's said this to.

Meeting his eyes as he reaches for a handshake are the warm, brown ones of Hosea, whose grin matches Arthur's agape look in its intensity. "Mr. Withers, a pleasure," he crows, "what a find you've got in the Missus, here." Lena looks between them, smile belying a growing confusion at their apparent familiarity with one another.

"You may've some idea about that, already, Mr. Lafonde," Arthur intones, giving Hosea a knowing look, using his alias. Realization dawns on the older man's face as he recalls their conversation at the gazebo and he looks closer, appraisingly, at Lena, whose smile is fading slightly, her eyebrows knitting together. Hosea takes her gloved hand again in both of his, a flinty tear gathering in his eye.

"I'm just so delighted to meet you, my dearMrs. Withers," he says, planting a kiss on her hand and clapping Arthur's shoulder. "So glad to see you both enjoying the party. Maybe you should enjoy each other's company a little, don't worry so much about meeting everyone here? Take care now." Hosea leans in to Arthur as they shake hands to part ways, "I like you with that fiery one." Arthur returns his grin, and then crooks his arm for Lena to take as Hosea vanishes back into the milling tuxedos of the party.

"Are we in trouble?" She murmurs, flagging a waiter for them each to grasp a glass of champagne.

"No, you just met Hosea." Her eyes fly open wide, and she beams up at him, astonished, looking back to the spot where they'd just spoken. "Really?" Arthur can't wipe the grin tugging on his cheeks, so much it's nearly painful. There was something so normal about that decidedly abnormal interaction - taking Lena to meet his father. He gives himself a shake, dispelling the foolish hope that rises in his chest, the grin finally subsiding into something manageable.

"He liked you, too." He leads her to a half-wall on the fringe of the party, and they lean on it, a small relief against standing on the flagstones for hours.

"Good," she smiles to herself, clutching her champagne glass to her chest. "How is little Jack?"

Arthur smiles. "He's good, spoiled as hell after you got to 'im." She laughs, and he continues, "always talkin' about 'Zia Lena' this and 'pantofola' that. But serious now, I know his mama's real grateful you were there to take proper care of 'im."

"He is a joy," she murmurs.

"That he is," Arthur replies, but seeing her eyes grow wistful, quickly jokes, "you ain't never getting that little outfit back you dressed him in, though. John tore it to shreds, feral man he is, can't stand to be around fancy things."

Her mouth drops open, about to laugh in delighted surprise, but closes again, quickly, as she leans towards him. "The Mayor is free, Arthur," she whispers. "I'm going to introduce you, but I can't speak much - he knows my brother."

"OK," he nods, taking her proffered, empty champagne glass. "The Mayor doesn't smoke, so come and offer me a light in a minute," she continues, holding his gaze for a moment and smiling before making off to the Mayor in his brief moment alone.

The Mayor's face alights as she approaches. "Ma chérie Elena," he coos, grasping her hand and kissing it, to which she demurs.

"Mayor Lemieux," she replies, giving him a gentle curtsey, moving her hand, once released, to her cigarette holder and case. They speak for a few moments, she occasionally laughing and batting at his chest or arm, playfully, and then she fits a cigarette into her holder and, presumably to Arthur, asks the Mayor for a light.

He pats his pockets and Arthur begins to approach them, but another man steps up, first. "Allow me, little lady," he slurs, proffering a lighter and stumbling towards her with it. She makes an obvious face of disgust and looks for Arthur, saying, "Scusami, no English," in her put-upon accent.

"Ah, another one for your collection, Mayor?" The man says crudely, hitting the Mayor with the back of his hand. "This one loves the darkies, and apparently guineas, too!" He laughs at them both, but the laughter's cut short by Arthur, who's seized him by the elbow and begins marching him forcibly away from the pair.

"Hey!" The man retorts, trying to twist from Arthur's firm grasp. "Hey, nothin'," Arthur says darkly, "you're pretty drunk, friend, why don't you go and sleep it off." He gives the man an unceremonious shove towards the outskirts of the property and returns to the Mayor and Lena, wiping his hands on his jacket.

"Thank you, sir," the Mayor says, reaching for Arthur's hand. "Henri Lemieux... I hope you're enjoying my party."

"The Mayor?" Arthur pretends, co*cking an eyebrow. The tip of Lena's cigarette is still cold, and he reaches forward to light it.

"Allegedly," Lemieux smiles, "And this is Elena Bronte, the charming sister of one of my- my benefactors."

"Tacitus Kilgore, how do you do?" Arthur asks her, and she makes a motion with her hand, gathering her fingertips together and bobbing them in front of her chest.

"Non capisco, scusi," she says, shrugging, looking to Lemieux as if for guidance.

"She hasn't bothered to learn English, if you'll believe it," Lemieux says conspiratorially to Arthur, "But quite charming all the same, as I'm sure you'll agree."

"Quite," Arthur nods, sneaking a wink at Lena, when a bang sounds off and the patio guests are briefly illuminated in a wash of golden light. The crowd "oohs!" in unison.

"Enjoy the fireworks show, the party, Mr. Kilgore," Lemieux says, stepping off from them. "Thank you, again." Lena and Arthur are alone again, staring up at the dazzling explosions of colour and light above them.

"So," Arthur leans sideways to murmur in her ear, "everyone in this town speak Italian or somethin'?"

She can't quite tear herself away from the display in the sky, the fireworks glittering in her eyes. "I was speaking French to the Mayor, Arthur, our guttural cousin." A smile plays on her lips.

"And what's this one?" He mimes her hand gesture from moments ago, pinching his fingertips together and shaking his hand in front of her face.

"That one is Italian, it means, 'what are you saying? I don't understand.'" She mimics the gesture to him, using both hands and pulling a face.

He smiles back. "And what'bout this one?" He drags his fingers across the bottom of his jaw as he'd seen her do at her brother on the balcony, but her eyes widen like saucers and she grasps his hand in both of hers, whisper-shouting, "No! Stop!" She's laughing at him, clutching his hand between her own, the smooth silk of her gloves delightfully cool and soft against his calloused palm.

"What'd I do?" He asks innocently. "That's the bad one," she hisses, "you can't do it!" She leans into him, releasing his hand with one of hers to cup his ear and whisper, "It means, 'go f*ck yourself.'" And then she laughs giddily, clutching his hand to her chest, tears of mirth forming at the corners of her eyes.

The word, "f*ck," breathed hotly into his ear is too much for Arthur. He grazes his free hand down her side, resting it at her waist. She feels the warmth of his palm, stops laughing, meets his eyes. "I want you so bad, darlin,'" he says, as if strangled, the hand on her waist clutching briefly, yearning. She rests her hand there, over his, reaches her other one towards his face, when Arthur's pushed from behind, setting them both off-balance.

"Pardon, sir, so sorry, miss, excuse me," a servant rushes past them, forcing his way through the collection of firework admirers to get to Lemieux.

"Can't it wait, Pierre?" Lemieux grumbles, gesturing at the show in the sky.

"Mr. Cornwall was quite insistent, I'm afraid, sir," the servant replies, and Arthur tunes out the rest, his ears rushing with the name of the man who'd nearly had them gunned down in the streets of Valentine, Leviticus Cornwall. He springs away from Lena just as Dutch's telltale top hat approaches him, whispering, "Did he just say something about Cornwall?"

"Yes, I'm followin' 'im." Arthur makes off after Pierre, who's marching purposefully back towards the mansion, in the opposite direction of the rest of the partygoers. In pursuit, Arthur slips between them effortlessly, always better at evading, rather than seeking, notice.

He allows himself a moment, trailing Pierre, to curse his rotten luck. Stealing a kiss from a beautiful woman during a fireworks display seemed like something out of one of Mary-Beth Gaskill's romance novels and not something that could have happened in his own life, but he'd been damned close, for a change.

He realizes with a guilty pang to his heart, too, that he'd just left Lena standing there, alone.Damn loyal dog,the familiar refrain blooms in his mind while he waits for Pierre to finish talking to a patrolling guard at the side of the house. Their conversation finished, Arthur follows the man through the house without incident and observes him entering a room on the second floor, the door of which Luca Napoli had hastily closed only a couple short hours before, placing a document into the writing desk inside. As Pierre moves off from the room, Arthur enters, quiet as a ghost, jimmying open the desk's drawer with a letter opener.

"Mr. Leviticus Cornwall, top secret, extremely confidential. Very interesting," Arthur murmurs to himself, scanning the document before folding it carefully and slipping it into his breast pocket. He hears the open door click shut behind him and whirls around, seizing the letter opener as his only defense.

Lena holds up her hands in mock-surrender, glancing at the blunted knife gripped in his hands before returning her gaze to meet his eyes. The rosy flush in her cheeks is creeping down her neck and across her exposed collarbones; she bites her lip, brief, startling white on a red field.

Arthur doesn't think, just acts: he drops the knife to the floor, where it bounces dully off the carpet. He doesn't embrace so much as gather her, collecting both of her wrists and holding them against the door above her head in one hand, lifting her willing body to wrap around him with the other arm. They kiss, deeply; he tastes champagne, her strange brand of cigarettes, and a sweet clarity that is unmistakably Lena - crisp alpine water in this southern hellmouth.

He thrusts to her, instinctively, a gentle meeting of his clothed hips to hers. She breaks from his kiss to moan despairingly, "too much clothes," her breath hitching in his ear, rousing him further, pressing his mouth to her neck and exposed chest. He lifts her skirt, her crinoline, to see what she means - she's corseted, her undergarments a complex architecture. Arthur finally clues into what she's saying - there's no way to get her out of, and back into, this dress.

Arthur releases her wrists, lowers her to the ground, trying to conceal his disappointment. He half-sits on the desk, closing his eyes. Their first time together, in the cabin, he'd been so tentative; afraid of being with a woman after so long. He had been ready for her tonight, he realizes. Ready to reciprocate her eager playfulness, her attentions and affections. Foiled by underwear.

He's about to apologize to Lena, at a loss, but she's not paying attention to his miniature tantrum. She's retrieved the letter opener from the floor and has worked under her dress with it. He's dumbfounded, and she steps to him, just past him, squeezing the expression from his cheeks with her hand, putting her lips to his ear again, how she knows he likes. "Una soluzione," she whispers, reaching past his hips to return the letter opener to the desk, trailing her hand back across them, brushing against his hardness.

Arthur sweeps her up from the floor and she squeals, returning her back to the door, her arms around his neck, fingers in his hair. He holds her up by her thighs, fingers kneading into her flesh, pushing into her with a shudder, moaning into her mouth.

"f*ck, darlin'," he growls into her neck, pressing his lips there, on her shoulder, nipping at her earlobe. She grasps his jaw to stare at him, kiss him, murmuring, "m'fai impazzire," before panting hotly into his ear, biting down on his shoulder.

Arthur finishes with a cry, pressing Lena's whole body to him, just as they hear a voice echo up the stairwell outside the office. "It really is urgent, I might just bring the letter to Monsieur Lemieux and have him sign it down at the party."

Luca, she mouths at Arthur, sudden terror replacing the bliss in her eyes. He drops her as gently as possible, she seizes his hand with one of her own, using the other to keep her skirts hitched up as they run into the adjacent room, and then through a set of doors to the house's front balcony, thankfully deserted and darkened. They sit under the window, chests heaving. Arthur hands her his pocket square and she kisses his cheek, cleaning herself before throwing it over the balcony, letting the small white cloth sail into a shrub.

"I would'a kept that," he growls playfully into her ear, and she reddens. "Che osceno," she whispers back, hitting at his shoulder, resting her hand there, fingers trailing over the old injury. They straighten out their clothing, their hair, her makeup.

Arthur's about to rise from their hiding place when they hear Luca's voice ring out from the room, "Is- is someone in here? È qualcuno qui?" They sit frozen, listening to Luca's tentative footsteps come closer.

Lena turns to Arthur suddenly, grasping his hands. "You'll come to the opera with me, next week? Saturday, eight o'clock. Meet me at the theatre."

Arthur's slow to react, still coming down. "'Course I will, but-"

"Wear that suit, amore," she winks at him, planting a hard kiss to his mouth before rising from seated, crashing through the door.

"Luca!" He hears her crow, "Mi sei mancat', Luca Napoli." She says his full name in a feigned drunken singsong, and he hears the lackey stammer something to her in Italian. Arthur risks a glance over the windowsill, and sees Luca struggling to lead her out of the room, back towards the terrace where her brother lies in wait. Arthur rises from his place, slipping through the balcony door, the anteroom door, out of the study.

On the stairs, nearly free, Arthur hears Bronte bellowing at Lena in Italian, the unmistakable sound of a slap. His heart rises in his throat, but he presses on, finding Dutch and the others making their way to the carriage.

They retrieve their weapons from the chest by the front gate, start filing into the carriage. "Did you get it?" Arthur pats his pocket, nodding.

"Were you followed?"

Yes, Arthur thinks, and feels a heat rise in his cheeks. "No, don't think so."

"Took you long enough," Dutch admonishes, making room for Bill to climb in next to him.

"Well, had to make sure I weren't followed, didn't I?" Arthur retorts, and Dutch chuckles.

"Fair enough, Mr. Morgan," he says, raising his hands apologetically, and the carriage begins its slow trundle back to camp.

Chapter 17: xvii. A Sorceress' Plans: Declarations, unmade

Chapter Text

In the week after the party and leading up to his attending the opera with Lena, Arthur finds himself in an electric mood. He'd assumed one of his lazier aliases, Arthur Callahan, onboard the gambling ship the Grand Korrigan to discreetly rob a poker game. He'd done it gladly, without the usual grumbling - even when he, Javier, Strauss, and Josiah Trelawny had to unexpectedly abandon ship with their ill-gotten gains.

"Has this one been touched?" Trelawny later crowed theatrically, gesturing to Arthur, that night surrounding the main fire. "I positivelywincedwhen we had to swim for our lives, thinking it might be easier to drown than suffer Arthur Morgan's complaining." The attendant gang had laughed, and Trelawny scrutinized Arthur's placid smile. "Look, nothing! Most definitely touched." Hosea had gazed across the flames at Arthur, knowingly.

Others also seemed to notice his change in demeanour. When he'd brought his waterlogged suit to Tilly to have it cleaned, he'd wordlessly placed a chocolate bar and new adventure novel next to it, prompting her bewildered, "Um, thanks, Arthur? Is it my birthday or somethin'?"

Of course, it was his unexpected, glittering evening with Lena at the Mayor's party that'd changed his perspective. He filled the intervening days channeling her opinions and mannerisms. It was Lena's voice, speaking through him, that maintained a charming, affable disposition in the face of Desmond Blythe, his mark at the poker table. He was composing little letters to her once again, really, more of an ongoing dialogue, seeking out her guidance or reflections on all manner of things happening within the gang. The furtive relationship blooming between Mary-Beth and Kieran, cut short by the young man's unexpected departure from camp; Charles heading north to assist the Wapiti tribe in protecting their land from encroaching government forces; Micah's continued brooding around the campfire at all hours of the night. All catch his quiet notice and are saved up to tell her on Saturday, along with - if he can muster the courage - his growing feelings.

*

On Saturday, Arthur eats a can of peaches by the low morning fire, drinks his coffee, has a cigarette. He spots the Adler widow, Sadie, cleaning her rifle by the front of the house, and makes his way over to greet her. "Mrs. Adler, how do you do?"

"'How do you do?'" She repeats, wrinkling her freckled nose, laughing. "I'd heard you'n Dutch'd joined high society of late, but didn't quite believe it 'til just now." Sadie glances down at her gun. "I think my society days are behind me," she says quietly, almost to herself. Arthur gives a gentle punch to her shoulder, leans forward conspiratorially.

"Well, I just saw Bill Williamson at a party at the Saint Denis' mayor's house. If he can do it, anyone can." They laugh together, until Dutch beckons from the front door for Arthur to join him.

"When am I gonna get to come robbing with you all, Dutch?" Sadie calls after their retreating backs, as they make their way up to the balcony. At her insistence and doggedness, Arthur's again reminded of Lena, and he smiles to himself as he takes a proffered cigar from Dutch, settling into one of the rickety chairs overlooking the property.

"You know, I've been looking at that trolley station," Dutch says, taking a puff and leaning against one of the supporting columns. Arthur looks up at him, imploring him to go on. "The one Bronte told us about. I think we can hit it."

Arthur bristles at Bronte's name, remembering his cruel treatment of Lena in front of his associates; the distinct slap he'd heard after escaping the Mayor's study at the party. "I ain't never robbed in a city before," he replies, somewhat absent-mindedly.

"You'll ride with me, though?" There's a slight hitch to Dutch's voice, a faint neediness.

"Always," Arthur affirms, fixing him with a steady gaze, to which Dutch brightens.

"I reckon we'll need a third," he says, twiddling the cigar in his fingers pensively.

"I say Lenny," Arthur states, quickly, staving off what he knows is coming.

"Not Micah?"And, there it is. "I guess it depends," Arthur replies, standing to join Dutch against the railing. "Do you want a massacre, or a pay day?"

Dutch huffs out his next exhale. "Now, I wish there was something I could do to make you two get along better...hey now, what's that?"

Their conversation is interrupted by a lone rider making their way into camp, indistinct from this distance. Arthur squints, making out a bloodied stump, a dark-haired head cradled in the horseman's hands. Mary-Beth's horrified scream confirms what he's realized in the pit of his stomach: "It's Kieran!"

Dutch crouches down, pulls at Arthur's jacket to have him do the same, "Look, along the treeline." Arthur sees armed men dart about between the gaps in the tree trunks, his revolver flies into his hand by practiced habit. Dutch booms out to the camp: "O'Driscoll boys are comin'! Everybody take cover!"

The chaotic firefight that ensues is a rude awakening to Arthur's real life. He dashes down the stairs to stand in front of the women rushing into the house, including a sobbing, hysterical Mary-Beth. He shoots two O'Driscoll riders clear off their horses, a third who half-crouches behind the gazebo. His fellow gang members make similarly fatal shots, but to no avail; the O'Driscolls keep coming. A bullet grazes his jacket sleeve, tearing a ragged line through the fabric. When a wagon pulls onto the property, laden with men, Arthur and John fall back to join the rest of the gang, holed up inside the house, pulling an armoire in front of the doors.

"Is that all of us?" He asks, breathlessly.

"I think so," John replies, equally winded.

"You think? Or you know?" Arthur says angrily, prompting a scowl from John. A woman's scream from outside disrupts their staring match.

"That's Sadie, sh*t," Arthur mutters, rushing to the back of the house and taking a flying leap through one of the already-cracked windows, surprising the O'Driscoll hunched nearby with a shower of glass. Arthur's bullet finds the man's forehead and he runs off in the direction of the scream.

He finds Sadie, not in mortal peril - but perhaps moral peril - drenched in blood and taking immense satisfaction in carving a decisive line through an O'Driscoll's neck. "Jesus, Mrs. Adler," Arthur remarks, and she looks at him, almost serenely. He swallows, unnerved. "We need you back in the house."

"And miss all this?" She relieves the dead O'Driscoll of his revolver, holds its barrel skyward. "Come on, Arthur."

*

When all of their killing is done, the Van Der Linde gang is miraculously alive down to the last - save for Kieran - and the lawns of Shady Belle are strewn with dead rival gang members. Arthur ignores the familiar cold that settles within him at first, dragging corpses to the narrow river running along the property's northeast bank with John in silence. The last man dispatched to the murky water in the early evening, Arthur waves John off and sits on the small, dilapidated jetty alone, trying to breathe out his adrenaline, settle his heartbeat.

The cold is still there, creeping through his veins and cottoning his ears. Something new accompanies it, a shaking in his hands he can't stop. He smokes a cigarette through trembling fingers, closes his eyes, sees the headless figure of Kieran broadcast across his eyelids in startling clarity. His eyes open just in time to see an alligator slither through the water and snap up one of the corpses in its jaws, and Arthur's stomach turns; he vomits peaches and coffee over the side of the dock.

Wiping his mouth, he notices the clouds of mosquitoes leap to attention, slaps one against his neck, barely feels the hit. Numbly, he remembers his engagement for eight o'clock, walks to Priest as if in a dream, mounts up and rides off to the city, his freshly-cleaned suit forgotten on the bed upstairs.

*

Arthur arrives to the Théâtre Râleur early, and leans against the low wall that surrounds the nearby park, smoking one cigarette after another, trying to rid himself of the tremors in his hands. The temporary marquee that occludes the building's usual "Vaudeville" sign reads:

Orfeo ed Euridice | Milanese Opera Company | 1 night only

He squints at the text, tries his hand at pronouncing the name. He rubs at his shoulder, is greeted by the fresh rip in his old, brown jacket. Arthur perceives everything dully, as if through yellowed, leaden glass. Including Lena; she steps out of a carriage and marches to him out of the fog that plays out only for his eyes to see, her face furious.

"You're not dressed, Arthur, what's wrong with you? We have just ten minutes and this is how you look?" As if to put a finer point on her anger, she's dressed exquisitely, her hair carefully styled, lips rouged. Arthur regards her dispassionately, raising the palm of a shaking hand up in a shrug. Her eyes move to the hand, noticing the tremor, and her tone softens. "Arthur, what's wrong?"

He moves to take out another cigarette, finds his pack empty, throws it behind him. "Kieran's dead - murdered," he says, as if issuing a report. The cold rears its head in his heart, constricts around it. "O'Driscoll bastards cut his head clean off and had him carry it in to us." Lena's lip immediately trembles, she grasps at his hands.

"Arthur, no, that's terrible," she squeezes his fingers in hers, beseeching him to look at her with searching eyes. He barely registers her touch, meets her gaze and emits a single, empty laugh, from which she recoils slightly.

"I killed a bunch of 'em, though," he says darkly, an eerie smile brightening his face. His hands writhe out from her grasp, hold her wrists in turn. "I'm a killer, Lena. You called me a killer; it's true. It's who I am." The cold relishes in this, blooms outward from his chest into his throat and stomach. He leans down to stare at her, her imprisoned wrists on either side of his head.

Unflinchingly, she opens her hands and holds his face, so gently that he doesn't feel it at all. She stretches up to press her cool forehead to his clammy one and breathes deeply. They stand like this until the other operagoers enter the theatre, until the street is nearly deserted.

Suddenly, his breathing lines up with hers; he feels a warmth spread from where their foreheads touch, into his cheeks, caressed by her hands, into his own hands clutching her wrists. The cold retracts, the shaking stops. He lets out a shuddering breath, releases her arms to clutch her body to him. "Oh, lord," he murmurs into her hair, blinking back tears at the onslaught of senses coming back to him at once.

"There you are, amore," he hears her soothe from somewhere against his chest, feels her hand rub up and down his back. She pulls from him and he finally sees her face in full, a mottled, brown-yellow mark under one eye disrupting her features. He clasps strong fingers to her chin, scrutinizing the bruise.

"Did your bastard brother do this to you?" He growls, but she hits his hand away and turns to her unblemished side, obscuring the mark from his view. "It's nothing, please don't talk about it," she hastens to say, holding his hand and leading him to his horse. He feels a fury at Angelo Bronte rise in his chest, savours it. To feel, again.

"I'm sorry about our evening," he says, genuinely, gesturing sheepishly back at the theatre.

"Why?" She smiles, and no bruise can get in the way of what it does to him. "It's only just beginning."

*

"Don't go too far ahead, darlin'," Arthur cautions, watching the lantern bob further in front of him. Lena, holding the light, turns back to him. In its pale glow he can see the ridiculous outfit she'd cobbled together from his saddlebags - spare pants rolled up several times to adjust for her (lack of) height, an unbuttoned workshirt over her own white corset. Ridiculous, yet somehow, sexy. He flushes as she returns to him, an impish grin on her face.

"I didn't take you to be one afraid of the dark, Arthur," she chides playfully. They're tromping through a small wood on the outskirts of Saint Denis, hunting for orchids.

"Not the dark," he mutters, hands tightening around the rifle he'd brought along, "'gators." Despite his dull hum of fear, he's delighted to be out walking with her, invoking fond memories of his days at the cabin. She steps towards a nearby tree to take a closer look at a small spray of white, smiles, stretches for it. Arthur reaches over her head, plucks the spray from the tree, hands it to her. She cups the small clutch of wild orchids in her hand, holding up the lantern to better peer at it.

"Thought you'd be more afraid of 'gators anyhow, Lena," he continues, grinning, "one o'them bulls could snap you up in one bite." He pinches at her ass and she shrieks, dropping the orchid and narrowing her eyes at him in mock anger as she stoops to pick it up.

"Basta," she scolds, tucking the flower carefully into her - Arthur's - breast pocket so that it pokes out, an impromptu boutonniere. Every detail is precious to him after his episode - a nervosis, Lena had called it.

"So anyway," he continues, moving to walk beside her as she scans the trees for more orchids. "We're goin' after that trolley station job, it looks like." Lena stops, looks at him, co*cks her head to the side.

"What, the Saint Denis trolley?"

"Well, the station," he clarifies, and she looks even more confused.

"Why would you rob a trolley station? How much money could be in there?"

"A lot, according to Angelo Bronte," he says, slightly irritated at her questioning.

"Well, maybe he's trying to trick you," she says, moving towards another tree, and Arthur stops, looking after her. She turns back, the lantern held at her chest casting a ghoulish light on her face. "He doesn't like Dutch, why would he help him?"

"I just think you don't like Dutch," he retorts, slinging the rifle over his shoulder. Lena sighs.

"What does it matter what I think?" She asks quietly, leaning against the massive tree trunk, rubbing under her eye. He joins her, clipping her downcast chin with a curled finger, imploring her to look at him. "It matters a great deal," he whispers, and she leans into him, settling her head into his chest. He strokes her hair, the loose curls she'd left down, still one part of her dressed for an upper-crust evening.

They stand like this in amicable silence, Lena soothed by the slow beating of Arthur's heart, he by the warmth of her body pressed against him, pinning him gently to the tree.I love you, he thinks, wills himself to say it, falls short.

He opens his mouth again, the words on his lips, but she turns to look at him, suddenly. "Don't do that job," she orders, her face set.

It takes him a moment to reorient himself to their earlier spat, so contented he'd been against the tree. "It ain't that simple, Lena, we need money so we can get out of here. We had O'Driscolls on our front lawn today, if you forgot."

"You don't need money," she says defiantly, "you can come with me, we can live in the cabin, the two of us. No one will find you there. We can go, tonight!" She's forceful in the declaration, and he's blindsided by it.

"Lena, I have people countin' on me, I can't just take off and-"

"Don't speak to me like I'm a child, Arthur," she spits, cutting him off.

"Was doing no such thing," he says, the anger creeping back into his voice, which he tries to subdue, only somewhat successfully. "But you need to understand that I don't live some charmed sort of life where I can pick up and leave people behind whenever I please."

Her lower lip quivers and she places the lantern on the ground, stalking to another tree, her arms crossed. A heavy silence overtakes them both.

"I don't live a charmed life, either," he hears her say, just an outline in the light thrown from the lantern on the forest floor. She steps forward and her face is illuminated, the bruise staring accusingly at him. His stomach drops, and he reaches for it, cupping her cheek in his rough palm.

"I know," he says quietly, "I'm sorry." Her face briefly presses into his hand, she kisses his palm, holds his arm with her slender fingers.

"Do you know whatOrfeo ed Euridiceis about?" She says, and he's relieved. She's changing the subject.

"No, tell me," he encourages, brushing her loose hair behind an ear.

"A man, Orfeo,loses his love, Euridice, and goes into hell, arguing and charming the fates to retrieve her from death," she starts, looking into his eyes. In the darkness, her irises are black, the lantern light picking up the whites of her eyes. "They let him take her out, on the condition that he not speak to her or look at her on the way out of hell. She starts to think that he doesn't love her, because he won't speak to her, and laments that death is preferable to not being loved by Orfeo.

"So he gives in and looks at her, and she dies again. He sings in grief, and the fates are so moved by his grieving that they bring her back to life, and they're reunited in happiness."

"So a happy ending," Arthur says, "good." He smiles down at her, but her lip is trembling again.

"You don't understand," she says, and a tear rolls down her cheek.

He thumbs the tear away, holds her face in his hands. "Tell me, darlin'."

"It's about love, Arthur. Who you'd go into hell for, charm the fates for, for whom you would think life wasn't worth living without."

"It's beautiful," he says, nodding at her.I love you, Lena.Say it.

"No," She sobs out the word, breaking free of his hands and pulling at her hair, anguished. She stares him down, pointing at him. "It's your gang, Arthur. It's Dutch. You're following him into hell and there's no way out."

He is winded by her words, feels them as a blow to his chest. Through a lump in his throat, he croaks, "Maybe I should just take you home." She nods, through tears. They ride back to the Bronte mansion in silence, Arthur's heart feeling sicker with each clatter of Priest's hooves on the paved Saint Denis streets.

He leaps from the saddle to help her down, squeezes her proffered hand too long, can't bring himself to remove his hand from her lower back.Say it.

"See you soon, then?" He says instead, his hopeful tone so wrong for the tension between them.

She shrugs her shoulders, and more tears spill down her cheeks. "Buona notte, amore," she whispers, reaching up to kiss his jaw before approaching the house, exchanging a few words with the guards.

Arthur heaves a sigh, watching her retreat. He remounts Priest and watches for the light to turn on in her window, but it doesn't come, so he rides back to camp, the gang, his love.

Chapter 18: xviii. A Sorceress' Plans: A trolley problem

Chapter Text

Though they're unsure as to why, the gang notices that Arthur is back to his usual, surly self in the days following his night out with Lena. His journal, pried into, could offer them some perspective:

Lena could shatter my heart with a word but I'm still the one that can't pick up the damned courage to tell her how I feel. She didn't give a lick about missing the opera - Orfeo ed Euridice - but thinks the story is my life and destiny. The worst of it all is that she's right. If that's the love she expects, I already have that lady in my life, the gang, and she isdemanding.

I seem to do nothing but make Lena sad. She even offered me a way out, to run away to the cabin with her, but the hard truth is that she's better off without me. I'm too damned selfish to rid her of me just yet, if she'll even see me again.

Of course, without access to his innermost thoughts, the gang has to adjust to his abrupt downturn in mood without advance warning. So it is that Uncle is unceremoniously kicked awake by Arthur, storming between the front porch and kitchen wagon and nearly tripping over the older man; Reverend Swanson suffering Arthur's cruel rebuke when succumbing to his addictions; a sniffling Mary-Beth to whom he tells, "We're all sad about Kieran, but all of us ain't cryin' about it all day and night."

And if the gang was Arthur's demanding lady love, Dutch was her capricious heart. Overhearing Arthur's admonishment of Mary-Beth, Dutch lays a fatherly hand on Arthur's shoulder, pulling him back a ways towards the staircase. "It's good to see you angry again, son, we need you angry," he pats Arthur's back as they ascend the old, creaky manor stairs, "I just want to make sure you're angry about the right things."

Arthur sucks in a breath as they settle into their places on the balcony - Dutch leaning against the railing, Arthur hunched in a small chair - exhaling loudly through his nose. The sun is again painfully bright, the cicadas buzzing a droning chorus to the gang members moving about their daily duties. Dutch opens his arms, palms out, a trail of blue-grey cigar smoke carving in front of him. "It's a beautiful day to rob a trolley station, don't you think?" He stares expectantly at Arthur, who rubs at the back of his neck and into his hair, avoiding his eyes.

"I-I ain't too sure about that job, Dutch," he says, and Dutch's face immediately sours.

"And why's that, exactly?"

Arthur can't give his source - the sister of the crime boss he's not supposed to know any more than anyone else - but he doctors up her warning, anyway. "Don't think we made the impression we wanted on Angelo Bronte, maybe he's tryin' to trick us, or somethin'."

"Now, Arthur," Dutch sits down on the other chair, their knees nearly touching, "I don't trust that rat bastard of an Italian any further than I can throw him, but a tip is a tip. What would he have to gain by tricking us? You saw how he wanted us to be his little errand boys for this, that, and the other. We're much more useful to him happy. Right?"

His "Right?" is a challenge, however slight. Arthur sighs, knowing he's no verbal match for Dutch. But he has to try.

"So, we're just goin' to be 'errand boys' for Bronte, now? Seems a kinda low aspiration for the great Dutch Van Der Linde," Arthur says this with a carefully practiced smirk, finely honed after years of carefully questioning Dutch's leadership.

Dutch returns the smirk, breaks into a chuckle. "Well, of course not, Arthur," he claps Arthur on the knee before standing back up to survey the camp. He puffs on his cigar and turns back to Arthur, "We'll be long gone before anything like that happens."

"Back west, y'think?"

"Realwest, son," Dutch intones, his eyes alight, "Australia, or Tahiti. I found a ship captain that can take our lot there, set us up with some land. Real freedom away from all of this nonsense."

Arthur had heard of Australia; Tahiti was new to him. Foreign lands, anyway, ones that would shatter any hopes of his future with Lena. He shakes his head, to himself, but it strikes Dutch as him disagreeing. "Arthur, I don't want to hear it. You know as much as anyone here that there's no places left in America for folk like us. If we want to stay together, our only option is to leave, together. And to leave together, we need money." Arthur leaves his head hanging between his shoulders and Dutch's expression grows steely. "Shall I spell it out to you again, Mr. Morgan? Or can we get on with our day?"

The barely-masked cruelty of the words crawl along Arthur's neck and spine, prickling him. "Let's go," he mumbles, wrenching himself from the seat and heading to his little room for extra ammunition. He pushes a few more shotgun shells into the bandolier diagonally bisecting his torso and meets Dutch at the top of the stairs. Dutch smiles at him, seizing his shoulder once again. "Like I said, Arthur, it's good seeing you angry," he says, his eyes sparkling in the dim interior of the house, "We just want you to be angry at the right things."

They exit the manor together, tack and mount their horses, and head to meet Lenny in Saint Denis.

*

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is what we call a robbery," a masked Dutch announces to the handful of people in the well-appointed Saint Denis trolley station, brandishing his gun. Arthur and Lenny follow, pointing their guns into the faces of one patron to the next, their faces similarly covered by their neckerchiefs. "Do what I tell you, and none of you will die. We're just here for money, not your lives." Dutch's voice drips with honey - "the most charming larcenist in the United States," Hosea'd once said - and the people inside cower with their hands in the air, behaving. "Mr. M," Dutch orders, turning back to Arthur and Lenny, "relieve these fine folks of their valuables. Mr. S, check that room back there. I got this one."

Dutch heads towards the clerk's office as Arthur moves about the room, taking lazy aim at the man to his right, holding forth his left hand to enjoin him of his cash and valuables. He pockets the silver watch and few dollar bills and swivels to the next person, his heart momentarily stopping when his gun fixes on a dark-haired woman in a cream-coloured dress. She's much too tall and about a decade Lena's senior; but all the same, Arthur mutters gruffly, "just keep it" when her shaking hand proffers the gold ring off her finger, trying to calm his flustered nerves and erratic heartbeat, hoping Dutch hasn't noticed he's being choosy with who he robs.

Lenny calls from the back room, "there's nothing really here!" and Arthur's heart gives a few more ill-timed pumps, dreading the seeming inevitable.

"Get out here and get ready for company, Mr. S," Dutch orders, a slight hitch in his voice betraying his own doubts. "Mr. M, could you kindly check the safe?" Arthur moves forward, gesturing for the clerk to open the safe.

The clerk fiddles with the combination wheel with trembling fingers, stammering, "I don't think they keep much cash in here." The safe opens and Arthur feels around inside with his free hand, then looks, seeing just a small stack and a few spare coins - maybe a hundred all-told. His heart sinks as all that he'd feared comes true, and then bottoms out when he hears Lenny call, "We got a problem. There's a ton of cops out there."

"Get out, with your hands up! We have you surrounded!" The bark of a lawman sounds, echoing through the station, which is quickly feeling like a prison.

Dutch takes a frantic look around, spotting the approaching trolley heading up the street. "The trolley, boys! Let's go!" They dash out of the building to a rain of bullets from the lawmen, hopping miraculously unharmed onto the trolley and forcing the driver out.

"That greasy son of a bitch, he set us up!" Dutch yells back to Arthur, who bites down on his lip, thankful he's still masked. He does as instructed and refocuses his anger on the lawmen that seemingly spill out of every alleyway and onto every balcony, firing with abandon and making a few new widows of Saint Denis women married to the city police. The cold approaches Arthur early, comingling with his killing calm and simmering anger, an impossible combination to reckon with. The trolley continues to speed through town, clipping a horse and carriage before screeching around a corner.

"That bastard must have called in every cop in the city!" Dutch continues his invective against Bronte, leaning out of the opposite side of the trolley as Lenny switches between each side. "Oh damn, we are really moving here! Arthur, slow us down! Slow this thing down." Arthur retreats into the trolley and rushes for the brake, only to find it broken.

"Brace yourselves!" He roars to the pair, grabbing onto two poles and crouching as the trolley smashes into a horsecart, flying onto its side. Lenny had heeded Arthur's warning but Dutch is dazed, picking himself up from the ground, stumbling, holding his head.

"You OK, Dutch?" Lenny asks, his hand hovering over Dutch's, trying to make eye contact with him.

"I've been better," he grumbles, shaking his head a few times.

"We gotta move," Arthur orders, shoving Lenny and pulling on Dutch's elbow, blocking the injured man with his own body, firing up at the lawmen lining the balconies like sentries. They shoot their way through the streets, taking out mounted police and finding an unattended wagon, the two draft horses tethered to the front whinnying and stomping in protest to the gunfire.

Lenny helps Dutch into the back and then climbs into the front to seize the reins, quickly whipping the horses into a gallop. Arthur pulls the rifle off of his back, kneeling backwards on the wagon bench to dispatch two pursuant riders. Dutch fires his own pistol at the never-ending lawmen but can't seem to land any of his shots, uncommon for him: "It's like there's three of everything!" he complains, his hand returning to his head, wincing.

As Lenny guides the wagon onto a familiar street, Arthur's distracted by the Bronte house, scrutinizes the black windows reflecting the bright day back at him, seeing none but a few guards perk up at the commotion thundering through town. Dutch barks, "Arthur!" and he comes to, noticing the lawman that had bravely jumped horse to land in the back of the wagon. Arthur scrambles into the back and grapples with the man, using him to shield against a few bullets and dumping his body unceremoniously over the side.

He returns to the bench to see the bridge out of the city blocked by two huge wagons, and Lenny confirms the same: "Damn, they blocked the road!" Dutch passes something hissing and sparking towards the front - dynamite - and Lenny stands temporarily to throw it forth. Arthur draws his revolver and takes careful aim, the world slowing around him to do this one thing, the anger coursing through him building his resolve. His bullet meets the dynamite in midair and blows the police wagons away, their own wagon flying through the gap and tearing through the swamps outside of town.

Once they're sure there's no pursuing lawmen, Lenny pulls off of the road and guides the horses to a stop, exhaling deeply. "I think we're clear."

"Thanks to you," Dutch looks on him fondly, "You're a good kid." Arthur's still raging, the conflicting anger and numbness doing a number on his disposition.

"And we pulled about 15 dollars each, oh, and a quarter! Best not forget the quarter," he seethes, counting out the pittance they'd racked up a mighty bounty to get. That glimpse of the Bronte house had riled him, a reminder of Lena's words to him from the other night -"You're following him into hell and there's no way out"- now ringing in his ears.

"Shut up, Arthur," Dutch warns, rubbing at his head, "Bronte set us up. Played me like a yokel. Put the law on us. What did we do to him? What did I do to him?"

"Guess he just don't want to share," Arthur replies darkly, holstering his weapons. He notices a dejected-looking Lenny, counting the change in his hand and sighing. "Hey, you did real good back there, kid," Arthur softens, patting Lenny on the shoulder. "Just wish it could have turned out a little better."

Arthur hops off the wagon and Dutch crawls over the seat into his place. "I'm taking you back to camp, Dutch," Lenny says, whipping the horses into a canter. Arthur raises his hand in farewell, whistling for Priest, glad to have the ride back to camp alone to collect his thoughts.

*

"Hey, Arthur," Sadie greets him from the guard post, "ever plan to return to camp sometime without bein' covered in blood?"

"You're one to talk," he replies darkly, in no mood to joke. He rips his spare workshirt out from his saddlebag and tugs at the buttons of the bloodied one he has on - a bullet had grazed his arm without him even noticing, and had now soaked halfway down his left arm. Arthur stomps over to the laundry and balls the shirt in, furious. He blandly notices the gang members giving him a berth, turning abruptly or averting their gaze as he passes. Tilly, having just laid out a game of dominoes, wordlessly packs them back into their case and retreats for the house.

He shoulders the arm out of his union suit and cleans off the excess blood with a wet cloth - the wound underneath little more than a deep scratch and already clotted closed. He pushes back into the sleeve and then pulls the spare shirt on, his eyes noticing a small spray of white poking out of the breast pocket. Arthur fingers the clutch of orchids out, slightly wilted now, but still resplendent, the near-alien white flowers standing out of his palm. His hand, holding the flowers, starts to shake.

"Look at those little beauties," a warm voice pipes. Hosea approaches, holding Arthur's wrist to ostensibly take a closer look at the blooms, but really, Arthur knows he's trying to still his tremor. "A gift for a lady, perhaps?"

Arthur meets Hosea's wizened grin with a shake of his head, offering the orchids to the man while he buttons up his shirt, figuring keeping his hands moving might distract from their trembling. "Let's have a coffee, son," Hosea says, using his free hand to gesture at the gazebo. The men settle into the wooden structure and Arthur sighs, leaning against the entrance.

"Sounds like the trolley job was a bit of a disaster," Hosea says, "A bad tip from our friend Mr. Bronte?"

"Not that you could convince Dutch any differently," Arthur replies, sullen. "Now I'm wanted in the city, going to make that bank job a hell of a lot easier." He intones sarcastically, tucking in the shirt, the tremor thankfully calming.

Hosea co*cks an eyebrow, looking at Arthur slantwise from under the brim of his hat. "It's not just the bank, though, is it?" He asks, always able to question Arthur in a way that was warm and free of judgement. "Can't hunt orchids in the swamp if you're wanted out there, either."

Arthur smiles in spite of himself.Nothing escapes the old man. "That was its own disaster," he smirks, pulling out his cigarettes, striking a match on the sole of his boot. "Woman gone and told me to leave the gang behind, run away with her." He says this to Hosea as though it's the craziest thing he'd ever heard, but watches closely for the man's reaction over lighting his cigarette, all the same.

The same, flinty look that Hosea had given him and Lena at the Mayor's party enters his eyes once again. Unexpectedly to Arthur, he leans forward, pats his hand, beaming. "What a wonderful thing for you, son," he says, a happiness in his voice.

Arthur sputters on an inhale of smoke, coughing. "What?"

"I said, I think it's wonderful," Hosea continues, leaning an arm back along the gazebo railing and crossing his leg at the knee, sipping his coffee. "I'd never begrudge you leaving, Arthur, especially after that time I had alone with my Bessie. That time was - it is - precious to me."

"But what about-" Arthur finds himself at a loss for words, instead sweeping his arm in the direction of the camp, the rest of the gang members.

"You help us with this bank job, then get the hell out of here," Hosea mock threatens, prompting Arthur to laugh. "I don't think they have Miss Brontes in Tahiti." Arthur's heart swells at Hosea's seeming blessing, but then constricts.

"I just don't know how- I can't-" he stammers over his words again, familiar guilt warring with newfound elation.

Hosea fixes him with a look, his eyes rimmed with tears, anticipating Arthur's objection. "You've done enough, my boy, you've given enough. Let me talk to Dutch. We'd miss you dearly, but we'd understand." Arthur's heart rends in two, the gains and losses impossible to measure, unsure of the right thing to do.

"Thanks, Hosea," he mutters. "Somethin' to think about, anyway." He feels his face blush, and then doubly so when Dutch wanders into the gazebo, looking at them both suspiciously.

"Well," he says, looking at the blush in Arthur's cheeks and Hosea's shining eyes. "Ain't we a conspiracy of two?"

"We were just discussing how young Lenny might've outshot our Arthur, here," Hosea says, burying the topic of Arthur's leaving for now. Dutch is mollified, pulling on his beard and joining Hosea on the bench, affecting a similar, relaxed pose. Arthur feels his shoulders up around his ears and forces himself into calm, wondering if the guilt in his heart is reflected on his face.

"He did very well," Dutch confirms. "But we'll let him sit out the next job, all the same."

"The bank?" Arthur asks, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, flicking his spent cigarette over the side of the gazebo. "Thought we was all hands on deck for the bank."

"Not the bank," Dutch responds, a fire in his honey-brown eyes, "we're going after that bastard Angelo Bronte. Right to his damn house. Time to really show him what this yokel is capable of."

Chapter 19: xix. A Sorceress' Plans: A reckoning (reprise)

Chapter Text

Dutch's words hang in the air of the gazebo, igniting a riot in Arthur's chest. A showdown at the Bronte house could mean nothing but disaster.

"How- how hard did you hit your head, Dutch?" Arthur attempts a joke, the words scraping against the roof of his mouth as they make their fumbled exit. "We can't go back there, we just shot the damned streets up."

Dutch smiles wickedly, his hands rubbing together in a schemer's prayer. "I thought of that, but met a boatman out in Lagras who's none too fond of Mr. Bronte, and he'll take us right to the banks of the property. We avoid the city entirely." Dutch cuts his hand confidently in front of them, a gesture Arthur can only see as violent. His mouth gaps open, no protest he can think to conjure. A hum of panic starts to build in his ears.

Hosea's gaze rests on Arthur in clear distress for a moment before he turns casually to Dutch, an open hand attempting to allay any concern that he cares one way or another. "Do we really have the capital for revenge right now, Dutch? I mean, we hardly know the man."

"We know he runs that city with an iron fist, Hosea," Dutch closes his eyes, shakes his head in a way that shows more annoyance than anger. His eyes open again, looking at each of them in turn. "It's like Arthur said; Bronte don't want to share. And we can't hit a bank in that town without making sure Bronte's under control."

"So you're gonna kill him?" Arthur forces out, louder than the delicate conversation warrants. Visions whirl in his mind of the gang's most seasoned killers swarming the mansion and shooting anything with a pulse. Lena, bloodied on the floor. His heart clenches and tears in his chest.

"This is starting to sound mighty personal, Dutch," Hosea adds, giving Arthur a knowing glance, his only comfort.

"Well, of course I'm not going to kill him! Just want to kidnap him for a spell, is all, give him a taste of his own medicine." Dutch chuckles alone, and then squints at them both, sensing a united front that he hopes to cleave. "Well, it sounds like you're a no, Hosea. Can I count on you, Arthur, son?" The word,son, makes its usual way to Arthur, but is halted by the fear monopolizing his thoughts. He knows that there's no way he's going to talk Dutch out of this, but he might be able to control the situation from inside, protect Lena if it were to come down to it. His heart lurches again as he imagines, however briefly, turning on his gang.

"If it's just a kidnapping, 'm in," he says slowly, trying not to notice Hosea's eyes widening. "We bring John, and Charles - level-headed folks."

Dutch ruminates on these demands. "John's fine, but Charles stays; we take Bill." Arthur exhales deeply.Bill's better'n Micah. "Fine." He nods, and Dutch's smile returns as he rises to standing, squeezing Arthur's upper arm.

"My boy," he says, giving two gentle slaps to Arthur's cheek, a playful, fatherly motion through which Arthur grimaces a smile. "I'll meet you at the boat launch in Lagras, tonight! See you there." Dutch departs the gazebo, taking the stairs at a jig-like trot, striding off to talk to Bill by the tents. Unblocked from view, Hosea shakes his head, resting his forearms on his knees. Arthur moves to join him, mirroring his posture on the bench.

"I- I can protect her this way," Arthur says, trying to convince himself as much as Hosea. "I can tell her about leavin'." Hosea lays his hand on Arthur's back, pats him.

"I hope so, son."

*

Arthur sits in the back of the hired skiff to Bronte's at nightfall, Bill in the front and John in the middle, next to Dutch, who's talking the ears off of them all with a diatribe about "European peasants" and "savagery." The boatman, Thomas, glides effortlessly through the murky swamp water with his rowpole, a silent witness to the one-sided conversation.

"Interesting way you got of preparing for a kidnapping," Arthur snaps, sick of it, the anger a welcome distraction from his dire thoughts.

Dutch sighs. "I'm sorry I wasted my life trying to teach you boys, love you though I do."

Arthur continues, "Well, leaving love aside, you think we got this?" The hope in his heart comes out in the last few words, echoing through the buzzing swamp, the mangroves.

"Don't you never leave love aside, Arthur," Dutch replies, "it's all we got."I won't, Arthur thinks, recalling Lena's tear-stained face, steeling himself for what's to come. They proceed the rest of the way to the Bronte mansion in silence, the stars overhead slowly disappearing into the soupy glow of Saint Denis at night.

They reach the banks of property and pull themselves up and over the stone-hewn fence, creeping through the back of the carefully manicured garden - John and Arthur on the left, Bill and Dutch, the right. John and Arthur come upon two of Bronte's men, chatting, their hands resting casually on their repeaters. John bends his neck towards them and nods at Arthur, who sighs, drawing his revolver.

In two practiced shots, the men are down, and the firefight starts. The men that Arthur had counted the day they'd rescued Jack are all here, plus more: they flow from the upper balcony door and through the back, descending the steps at a run towards them. He hears John shooting from his left; Dutch and Bill further to the right. Between the four of them, they clear the backyard of Bronte's impeccably-dressed guards, and Arthur shoots the back door open, running into the house without warning.

He dispatches several more guards, moving through the first floor of the mansion like a wraith, shooting and stabbing in careful, balletic movements. He's determined to get to Lena before anyone else does. He darts up the stairs, shouldering into and then braining a guard who'd appeared on the landing. "Arthur, slow down!" He hears John rasp, far below and away.

He bounds first to the east-facing room he'd seen her silhouette in that first night, hoping to find her in what he'd guessed was her bedroom, but it's empty; the two beds inside precisely made. He goes into the next room, a bedroom suite. He finds a guard behind the bed - who he fatally shoots, without a thought - and none other than Bronte himself in the deluxe bathroom, who takes aim at Arthur with an old Mauser, immediately pulling the trigger. It clicks hollowly, empty.

Bronte drops the gun with a clunk, raises his hands in surrender instead, imploring Arthur, "My friend, surely we can discuss this? Surely you have a price?" Arthur sours, thinking of the bruise that blossomed across Lena's cheek.

"Weren't no hesitation to shoot at me,friend," he hisses, advancing on Bronte faster than consciousness, seizing him by the shirt, "same as there weren't none to lay hands on your own. Damn. Sister." Each word is punctuated by a punch to Bronte's face, and Arthur drops the passed-out crime boss to the ground, his nose pulped with blood. So much power at Bronte's fingertips, and yet.

He's looking down on Bronte when John calls out from across the hall, "I got the sister!" Arthur's veins run cold.

He leaves Bronte in a crumpled heap, flies into the opposite room, the library -the library, of course- a scene that had played out only as a nightmare scenario, all afternoon, suddenly come to life.

John has Lena seized by his left arm around her neck, his pistol pressed against her temple. Held there in front of John's tall frame, she looks impossibly small, in a white nightgown with her black hair loose, her hands each grasping at John's forearm and bicep, slippered feet on tiptoe. Arthur reaches his hands out, immediately, looking into Lena's eyes with his own as if trying to transmit to her that he'll save her, that things are going to be all right. "Don't struggle, darlin'," he says, hoarsely, and John's eyebrows furrow at him, confused.

Footsteps thunder to the doorway behind Arthur, and he turns briefly to see Bill, whose dark eyes glitter dangerously in the dim lamplight. "Yeah, Marston, kill the bitch!" Dutch's face appears in the doorway next, taking in the scene with a measured, yet wholly inappropriate, calm. John looks past Arthur's beseeching hands and Bill's devilish glare to Dutch for guidance. "Well?" He asks, and Lena wrenches within his hold, whimpering, eyes wet and shining.

"Don't matter to me whether she lives or dies," Dutch starts, and John's eyebrows rise significantly, just as Lena's dart into angry, disbelieving dark slashes on her forehead. "The brother would be the one to pay her ransom, and he's comin' with us, if we can even find him."

Arthur tears himself away from Lena, forcing himself to look at Dutch, a man he'd known for decades, now a stranger. "Bronte's in there, passed out," Arthur croaks, pointing a shaky hand across the hall.

"Obliged," Dutch nods, "Go get him, Bill." He and Bill exit the library, but Dutch returns momentarily, resting a leather-gloved hand against the doorframe. "You know, John," he intones, in that same eerie calm, "I know what I'd do if someone'd taken you, my son." He smiles widely, an alligator's savage grin, and leaves the three to play out on the stage he'd set.

Arthur's heart bottoms out as he looks back to John and Lena, and sees it - John's hand infinitesimally tighten his grip on the pistol's trigger, on Lena's neck.

"Arthur!" She cries, her eyes spilling over with tears, her fingernails digging into John's arm.

Arthur reaches his hands out again, switching his gaze from her panicked eyes to John's, growing increasingly resolute. "John," he starts, clears his throat, tries again. "John, please. She didn't kidnap your son, John, it was all Bronte, and the Braithwaites."

John snarls at Lena's scratching, small, bloodied half-moons visible on his forearm, pulls her tighter to him. "C'mon John," Arthur tries again, "She made sure Jack's life wasn't a hell here, you know this. She took care of 'im, he loves her, he talks about her all the time." John's eyebrows furrow again, but his grip doesn't slacken. Lena's eyes clench shut as she pulls her head as far from the snout of John's gun as she can, teardrops beading on her eyelashes.

"Please, John," Arthur can't conceal the desperation in his voice, nor his intentions, anymore. He draws his revolver, pointing it at the man he'd once called a brother. "It's her, John, she's the one I was with when I was away. I didn't know she was a Bronte." John's eyes widen at the gun pointed at him, scowling at Arthur. "I love her, John, don't do this, please."

After an eternity and yet, no time at all, John pulls the gun away from Lena's head, his arm from her neck. She falls forward, sobbing. John fixes his gaze on Arthur for a moment, an indecipherable expression on his face, and then leaves the two alone in the book-lined room. Arthur rushes to her immediately, dropping to his knees, pulling her up by her arms to face him.

"We got to work fast, darlin'," he says, trying to bring her back to calm. He rubs her back, her arms, holds her face with his hands. She blinks slowly at him, and he brushes the tears from her cheeks with his thumbs, still in disbelief that they're together, that she's safe. "You hear me?"

Lena nods, taking a deep, shuddering breath, meeting his eyes.

"There's gonna be all kinds of hell breaking loose in here in a minute, OK? When you hear us go down the stairs, I want you to take cover, start screamin' loud as you can for help so those cops don't come up here shooting. Dutch made some damn plan to ransom your brother but you're gonna be long gone by then, sweetheart. Head to the cabin and I'll meet you there, soon as I can." He sweeps a hand along her chin, rubs his thumb over her lips. She seizes his hand and presses her lips to his palm. "Goodbye," she murmurs, releasing the hand and scrambling behind a wingback chair.

Arthur rises and turns to see Bill, with Bronte over his shoulder, in the doorway, followed by a curious Dutch, and John, a dark look etched across his face. He joins them wordlessly, drawing his revolver and nodding in a show of solidarity. As he fires at the first two lawmen he sees stationed at the base of the staircase, Lena's bloodcurling scream rings through the house. "Aiutami! Help, please!" He knows it's what he'd told her to do, but it breaks his heart all the same to hear it.

The four battle through hoardes of lawmen in the back garden, back to the skiff at the dock. Bill and Arthur wrangle Bronte's body into the front of the boat, and jump in with Dutch and John, aiming their guns towards anyone who might be in pursuit. The boatman, Thomas, poles away from the house, slipping them into the night.

*

Thomas informs Dutch that they're close to Lagras, and Dutch slaps Bronte about the face, waking him. "Hey, big man," he greets, as Bronte looks about him, fearfully, not recognizing the boat nor his surroundings. "We gonna ransom you, or what?"

Bronte scowls. "You're pathetic." He offers money to the first man to kill Dutch and release him, but Arthur, John, and Bill are unmoved. His eyes, deep brown like Lena's but with none of her warmth or vivacity, search each of theirs, snorting out his exhale as he remains ignored.

"What now, Bronte?" Asks Dutch, opening his arms in a vindictive, dishonest shrug.

"They are even bigger fools than you," Bronte spits. "And the law will find you. Already the dogs are on the way."

Arthur, sitting next to Dutch, sees his pupils dilate until they've absorbed his irises. With this black look, he seethes, "Oh yeah. Oh, you're right. You aresoright," Dutch moves towards Bronte at the front of the boat, seizing his shoulders. "Those law dogs are good at smelling filth, huh? So filth has got to be disposed of!" Dutch submerges Bronte forcibly under the water, pulling him up only to scream in his sputtering face, "You waiting on your friends the Pinkertons? Call them! Call them now!" Arthur and John stand in the boat, their mouths agape at Dutch's brutality.

He pushes him underwater again, Bronte's hands grasping at Dutch's wrists losing grip, turning grey. When Bronte ceases kicking, Dutch upends him, his body sliding into the water and disappearing from view. Dutch is panting as he turns back to them, his pupils retracting back to normal.

"Jesus, Dutch!" John calls, looking between Dutch and the water, only a slight ripple hinting at the atrocity just committed.

"It ain't nice," Dutch huffs, skimming his hands in the water and rubbing them together. "I know it ain't. But it was us, or him." He fixes a look to each of them, rests on Arthur. "I'd do anything to protect our family."

These words would have softened Arthur in the past, but no longer. The twin horrors Dutch had wreaked that evening; dismissing Lena's life, and ending her brother's so barbarically, were as if to notarize Arthur's decision to leave. There was no guilt left for their "family"; only the look of terror on Lena's face, her screaming, haunted him.

The boat butts against the launch and the men step off, one at a time, making for their horses. Arthur reaches Priest, tethered in front of a small bait shack, and pats his neck and nose. "We got a ride ahead of us, boy," he whispers.

Chapter 20: xx. Intermezzo: Paradise

Chapter Text

Priest snorts and nickers his way up and down - mostly up - the hilly terrain towards Lena's cabin, Arthur pushing the Turkoman on with encouraging words and, occasionally, a piece of apple; anything but rest. Every mile he puts between himself and swampy, backwards Lemoyne is a still greater weight off of his chest, but he doesn't dare stop until he reaches Lena. The distance growing between himself and Dutch's constant tests and commands seems not enough until he can be with her, as if she could shield him from the gap again closing.

The long ride gives Arthur opportunity to dissect his relationship with Dutch in a way he'd always resisted, after seeing how Dutch had openly urged John towards his whims. The unbearable cruelty of his actions at the Bronte mansion - dismissing Lena's life and leading John towards ending it - seen from the outside trouble him, deeply. Had he always been so easily manipulated? How many times had Dutch pulled the strings; Arthur beating, killing, on command? A warm handshake or squeeze of the shoulder, an invocation of the word "son" to a lonely orphan's ears, just before asking of Arthur another godless act? He releases the reins with a hand to wipe at his face, as if to brush away the memories of countless people who'd suffered at his hands. Unending diatribes about living free, when he'd paid the cost, time and again.

Arthur leans hard to the left of the saddle to pull out a bunch of alpine poppies by the roots, slowing Priest momentarily to a trot to trim them with his knife. He recognizes the tall stand pines and glimpses the Grizzlies range through them; he's close. The sunlight is white-bright and warm on his skin, as it'd been during his escape ride from the O'Driscolls, and his eyes continuously adjust between the pools of shadow cast by the forest and the stretches of open path. He tries to spur on Priest to take the rest of the journey at a renewed run, impatient to make the cabin, but the horse gives a low whinny, enjoying the slowed pace after their extended ride Northwest.

So it's not until afternoon that he pulls off the main trail towards the cabin, trepidation in his stomach at the possibility that she might not be there, yet. His heart swells when he spots Lena's horse Quasette, tethered to the old fence to graze on some of the long grasses that had grown around the posts, and nearly bursts when he sees Lena herself, carrying her large iron kettle two-handed around the side of the house, towards the well. Arthur allows himself a moment to watch her, how she makes her way in the world without anyone else around her. She sets down the kettle to stroke the comb of one of her chickens clucking about her feet, wipes her forehead with the back of her arm against the encroaching sunlight as she pumps water from the well, gaining leverage by alternating between a crouch and standing on her toes. The intimacy of seeing her like this, unencumbered and free, fills him with want.

He lets out a low whistle and she turns, recognition, then happiness dawning on her face. "Arthur!" She calls, dropping the kettle and running to him as he dismounts, his two boots barely flat on the ground when she leaps into his arms, nearly knocking him off balance. They kiss, deeply, her fingers up and under the brim of his hat, fingering at the strands of his hair.

"My god," he breathes into her neck, overwhelmed. She disentangles herself from him, touching down, hitching Priest to the post and then grasping Arthur's hand, walking backwards and pulling him towards the house. "I was just drawing a bath, but you might need it more than me, cowboy." He hands her the poppies and she smiles through trembling lips, "they're beautiful, Arthur."

The tub is mostly full and steaming invitingly in front of the low fire when they enter the cabin, Arthur's eyes again adjusting to the now dimmer light of the indoors. Lena kisses him again, the poppies cast aside on the tabletop, her hands fumbling to undo his belt buckle and unbutton his trousers, easing his shoulders out of his jacket. He's a willing mannequin, bending his limbs as she needs and letting her skillful hands do the work. Her hands pause their roaming once his torso is unearthed from shirt and long underwear, and then resume, stroking along his chest and stomach, trailing down. He reaches for her shirt but she tuts at him, seizing his hand and kissing it before forcing it to his side.

"So I'm just wearin' nothing, that it?" He says, mock-aggrieved. She grasps his waistband at the hips and eases his pants down, moving with them to avoid his guns dropping too quickly to the ground. She looks up at him, glancing, and smiling, at his hardness, her eyes glinting in the scant firelight. "Yes."

Lena stands and presses five strong fingers against his sternum, pushing him towards the bath. As he settles into the warm water, dirt blooming off of his skin, she returns to the table, tucking one of the poppies behind her ear, twining the stem in her dark braid, the vibrant red reflected in her cheeks and lips.

She takes one of the chairs and sits behind him, removing her sweater and plunging her now short-sleeved arms into the water, drawing her hands up his chest and neck, into his hair. He's instantly calmed, his eyes closing, relishing her touches along his upper body. She stands to reach further down his chest, her head appearing over his left shoulder. She plants a kiss to the old bullethole scar, then his neck, and then his waiting mouth. He cups her cheek, drinking her in.

Lena breaks the kiss to move around to the side of the tub, hitching her skirt and stepping in, to Arthur's surprise and delight. Her clothes take on water as she lays atop him, the skirt growing heavy and billowing to the water's surface, her dark nipples visible through her white cotton shirt. She kisses him again and he starts to feel the heat ache in his belly, his yearning reach a peak. "You make me crazy, darlin'," he whispers, making two wet trails along her still-dry back with his searching hands.

"And you, me," she replies, gazing at him adoringly, pulling one of his hands to her lips.

"Hey, now," he chuckles, suppressing a groan as she takes one of his fingers into her mouth. "I thought we had a rule about English." She shakes her head, releasing the finger and nuzzling into his neck.

"You don't know Italian," she murmurs into his ear, pulling his hair out of the way. He hears a gentle rushing, brought on by the contact of her soft lips to the whorl of his ear.

He fingers the poppy in her hair, trails his hand down her neck. "Well, maybe you could teach me." The rushing increases as she pulls away from him, meeting his eyes once again, tears in hers.

"Not when you're so far away, Arthur," she says, smiling ruefully, the tears spilling over and dispersing across her wet cheeks, the fire hissing out as water flows suddenly through the hearth and over the floor. The sunlight from the window begins to ripple, greenish water rising rapidly on the other side of the glass.

A sickening crack splits one of the windows and water teems through the shattered panes behind her, and Arthur jumps, trying to move from where she has him pinned into the bath. "Why didn't you come, when you said?" She says sadly, and he turns his terrified gaze from the cold water filling the cabin to Lena, crying, the tub lifting from the ground, unmoored, carried on the current.

"I- I went to camp to get the pictures of my mother, of my dog, Copper," Arthur stammers, remembering slowly. "I saw Hosea, planning the bank job."Just one more job. "We tried robbing the bank, but-"Hosea, falling to the ground, a Pinkerton bullet in his back. Arthur's heart wrenches and Lena pulls him so that they're holding each other, sitting, bobbing closer to the cabin's levered ceiling.

"We lost Hosea, Lenny," he says, a hot tear falling from his eye.To the boats, come on."John's taken, too." Another window smashes open and Arthur slouches in the tub, the ceiling dangerously close to them. Lena holds his panicked face and nods at him, imploring him to continue.

"We left," he says softly, voice failing, "on a boat."The ionized, metallic scent on the air, lightning shattering through a charcoal sky, a black wave rising storeys above their heads."I jumped overboard."

"Find your way back to me," rings Lena's sharp whisper in his ear, before the tub keels sideways, tumbling him from the warmth into the cold, briny water, falling away from her.

Arthur's eyes snap open, his face half-buried in the grit of wet sand, lips cracked. His whole body sings out for water, for relief from the sun, but more still, for Lena. He meanders along the scorching beach, barefoot, blandly taking in unfamiliar palms, a bright-green lizard scrambling over sunbaked black rocks, the crashing of the waves on the shoreline.

He doesn't know how long he's wandered when he comes upon a small column of firesmoke spiralling lazily into the sky. When he sees Dutch, Javier, Bill, and Micah sitting fireside, he feels a grudging relief, and accepts Dutch's embrace tiredly, leaning his physical weight on the gang leader to better bear his emotional weight alone.

Arthur spends two unfriendly weeks on the island nation of Guarma in a fugue state of gunfights, starvation, and hostile locals, and an irretrievable number of days in transit to and from. When he miraculously escapes the island with the men on a small transport vessel, Arthur is still trying to reconcile his dreams with reality, stepping onto the shores of Van Horn alone, determined to heed Lena's whispered beckon, to get it right the second time.

Chapter 21: xxi. Defying the Gods: Second chances, sought

Chapter Text

The last gasps of a bar brawl can be heard further down Van Horn's only street; but by the lighthouse, where Arthur has disembarked, the ill-reputed town offers only nighttime silence. And, a blessing: an unattended mare, saddled for riding. He mounts up without a thought - horse theft the least of his crimes - and kicks her on south to Shady Belle, hoping to find Priest, his things, and his fellow gang members, alive, before continuing on to find Lena.

The jungle heat and sea air - not to mention surviving on little more than canned kidney beans and one, ill-gotten pig on Guarma - had done little for Arthur's constitution. He feels thin and drawn, a shadow of his former self. The truths he's grappled with - awake and dreaming - in his weeks away wear on him; settle in the newfound hollows of his cheeks, nestle within his grown beard.

The horse dutifully hammers her hooves along the wood plank paths in the swamps outside of Saint Denis, skirting the illuminated city and the stinging memories harboured within. The treasured ones seem to needle the most; he hears his name whispered on the wind -Artoure -provoking an involuntary clutch in his chest, another agitated clearing of his throat.

Arriving at Shady Belle in the early morning, Arthur's heart sinks, noting the table from Pearson's cook station, overturned; trash and garments strewn about the lawn; the firepit cold. He dismounts the horse and runs into the house, shouting, "Hello?" He's temporarily buoyed by the absence of blood or bullet holes riveting the mildewed walls, and then again defeated by the thought of the bar that's been set so low for himself; that anything shy of a massacre is welcome. His little room on the upper storey is torn apart; there are none of the arms or ammunition he'd kept there, nor his personal effects - the few photos and trinkets that had meant enough to him to delay his safe reunion with Lena, now indefinitely.

He lets out a low growl of frustration, sending his fist through one of the few windowpanes not already cracked or shattered, relishing the temporary bite on his knuckles. But; the growl prompts another deep cough, and Arthur withdraws from the window, noticing a small slip of paper on the bed as he wipes at his mouth and hand.

Nestled within the folded page is a photo - himself, no older than eighteen, sitting next to a then-blonde Hosea, a clean-shaven Dutch behind him, holding his shoulder - he almost crumples it but pockets it, instead, and reads the letter inscribed hastily on the page.

Dear Uncle Tacitus,it reads,I do so hope you enjoyed your vacation. Lucky you! Leaving like that. And you always suggested you were too old for travel.He recognizes the bite in the words as unmistakably Sadie's doing, and suppresses a small smile at her cheek.We have gone to visit relatives (from my Daddy's side - you are not yet acquainted with them) in Lakay, a small village just north of Saint Denis.

So, he knows where they are. He's slipping "Caroline's" letter - how Sadie'd signed off - alongside the photo in his breast pocket when he hears multiple hoofbeats approaching the house. He hastens to the front sitting room - the camp ledger, the donation box, also gone - to see the yard populated with a small dispatch of Pinkerton agents, dismounting in front of the stone fountain and gesturing towards the house. He panics for a moment, thinking they must have spotted the large, black and white mare he'd rode in on, but spots her grazing a ways off in the nearby field, escaping the agents' notice - for now. As two of the agents circle around the side of the house and the rest enter through the front doors, Arthur slowly eases one of the windows open, clambers out onto the roof. The moss-flecked shingles seem to shift with every step and he touches down with a hand to help with his balance, drawing his revolver in the other, in case.

But; a blessing, again. One of the agents cries foul of one of the outbuildings at the back of the property and they all go running towards it, leaving him to shimmy down a porch column and make for the horse, undetected. He mounts and pats the mare's neck, murmuring, "you got another ride in you, girl?" before nudging her en route to Lena's cabin.Sorry, 'Caroline,' he thinks.I've wasted too much time already.

*

When I first came upon that drunken, bloodied cowboy in my cabin, I had been only partly convinced that I was going to end my life. I'd stolen the heavy, overly-ornate pistol from Angelo's study, rode off on Quasette. Bought a box of bullets, and the gin to steel my courage enough to use them.

But something happened seeing him there, slumped at the table, armed to the teeth, a golden warhorse tethered outside. I wanted to fight for my life, beyond any doubt. And, another surprise.

He was so bashful, so damaged, a beaten dog with the scars to prove it. And yet, so beautiful, with fawn-coloured hair, broad and solid, a rumbling accent I'd yet to hear from any of my admittedly few American acquaintances. Sparkling, sea-blue eyes; not the brackish sludge off the Saint Denis coastline, but the glittering waters of home.

I wanted to fight for his life, too.

*

Arthur and the horse make their way through eastern Lemoyne, over the Heartlands, up the mountain paths heading towards Ambarino. He stops a few times to forage for wild carrots for the mare; a handful of berries for himself. The horse chews happily during these breaks; but the berries bring him little strength; the acidic juices irritate his throat and he spits nearly as much as he eats. It doesn't help that he's severely underdressed for the northern climate; the wind ripping through the thin dress shirt he'd worn since the bank job, now yellowed, the light wool pants.

A sense of futility sinks into him; again returning to Lena a mess of injuries, hunger, filthy clothing. Only once had he been in any way presentable when meeting her - the tuxedo at the Mayor's party, the fresh haircut and shave - and it was a mask, a farce. He tries to shake the feeling, recalling her blushing admission as she tended to the then-fresh O'Driscoll bullet hole that had ripped into his shoulder: "I'm happy to see you." Lena's cadence of the words, her small smile, her fingers featherlight around his injury; he's stirred by the memories of them all, and renewed, pushes the horse on with a light kick to her flank.

The sky is overcast when Arthur rides the wooden path surrounding the cabin, the windows reflecting mercury-like back to him, hurting his eyes. Quasette is absent from the hitching post, but Lena could be out. He dismounts, ties the mare to the empty post and heads inside, looking forward to a respite from the cold, to surprising Lena on her return.

The fire is out and the cabin is swathed in funereal dim, the table, bed, and floors covered in something rustling, white and shredded. Paper. He moves further inside the room, his feet skidding on objects cast about the floor. He seizes a piece of paper on the table at random, peers at the words printed on the scrap:altri poeti onore e lume, vagliami 'l lungo studio e 'l grande amore che m' ha fatto cercar lo tuo volume.Another scrap, and another. Fragments of unfamiliar language, wriggling before his eyes. With a shaking hand, he crouches to lift one of the objects underfoot, textured, stiff cloth against his fingertips.

It's the covers of a book, clinging feebly to their spine, bereft of its pages, save for a toothy maw of ragged edges. Lena's beloved books, destroyed. Arthur sets the covers down and sinks into a chair in disbelief. A stubborn cough fights its way up through his chest and he clears his throat twice, a third time, the feeling quaking gently, trapped behind his sternum. He sweeps as many of the scraps on the tabletop into his arms as he can reach, lays his head down onto them, his light, wheezing breaths rustling the papers in front of his nose. He remains there until the cabin darkens completely, and then forces himself out back to gather a few logs, starts a fire in the hearth.

Freezing and bone tired, he wraps himself in the quilt, fighting, and then losing a battle with another series of wracking coughs that rattle menacingly in his chest; he should never have gone this far north without a jacket. He should have gone north weeks ago. He considers the dried plants lining the walls but goes to sleep fitfully in the bed, instead, refusing to acknowledge what it means to be there alone, surrounded by the ghosts of Lena's idols, torn asunder.

*

Arthur had insinuated my life was a charmed one that night in the woods, and for most of it, he would have been correct. My early childhood was marred by the casual cruelty of my older brother, Angelo, then a sullen, pockmarked young adult - my plump baby flesh riddled with his pinches, scalp aching from hair-pulling. I was just three when they sent him to America, to try and win fortune for the Brontes.

His absence was welcomed and my life quickly became happy, a favoured only child to a doting mother and distant, but kind, father. Mama nurtured my fledgling intellect, encouraging me to read widely and outside of our Sicilian dialect, and papà would look on, proudly, puffing on his pipe, calling uschiare, his bright ones.

Mama cried when they put me on a boat to Naples, where I found a carriage to Rome. The Italian I'd been speaking in theoried, whispered conversations with my mother came to vibrant life on the mainland, surrounded by academics and artists; dynamic, stylish peers. I learned to speak, to dress less like a country girl; attended parties, smoked cigarettes, took lovers. None won my heart so much as the classics; the Latin and Greek stories of adventure, betrayal, and deep love suffusing my dreams at night, poetry ringing mellifluously in my ears.

*

Arthur awakens with the dawn, subconsciously reaching for Lena's familiar body in the space next to him, his arm finding only absence. In the early light he can see a drop of blood on the pillow, recoils from it just as he tastes it in his mouth. He rises from the bed, his chest heavy, the torn paper eddying in the draft his footsteps make. He retrieves water from the well outside, pours some into a cup, chokes it down. He debates making coffee, but the cabin in the morning without her and all that comes with her - her light snoring, loose hair fanned out on the pillow, the mouthwatering scent of fresh bread - is tomblike, unfathomably grim.

He pats the patient mare, his breath steaming in the cool morning air before his open mouth in fits and starts - so ragged his breathing's become - and pulls himself into the saddle. He rides for Wallace Station, arriving quickly, hoping to inquire after her whereabouts. It's a hope that glows weakly, but he clings to the possibility.

As he enters the log cabin that serves as this area's train station, post office, and general store, the clerk simultaneously greets and admonishes him. "Howdy there mister, why, you must be freezing! We've got some new coats in, if you like."

Arthur draws breath to respond, but only coughs, instead, the sharp exhalations bouncing against his chest and throat as they make their exit. He bends forward, resting his hand on his knee, holding up an index finger to the clerk in a way he hopes isn't impolite. "Coat'd be great, thanks," he forces out, clearing his throat repeatedly.

The clerk looks at him, concern evident on his face. He lays a navy blue coat on the counter, lined with plush cream sheepskin peeking out of the rolled cuffs and turned collar. Arthur pats it with his hand, nodding, silently approving the purchase. He reaches for his moneyclip but remembers he's without any of his things, sighs, waves away the coat.

"You ain't happened to see a Lena around here lately?" The question comes out gravelled, and he repeats himself, his voice clearer. "A Lena Br- Giarre? Little lady, dark hair." The clerk beams.

"I have, as a matter of fact," he starts. "Know just who you're talkin' about, little Italian gal. She's the one who has me bringin' in all these odd products. But she's buyin', so I ain't complaining!" He gestures to a small shelf of jarred olives, dark coffee, luxardo cherries. "She checked in after her mail, hmm-" his expression fades slightly "-would have been two, two and a half weeks ago?"

Arthur had walked into the station hoping she'd been spotted by someone there; facing that reality now, he realizes it weighs much heavier on him. She had been through this area, meaning whoever had ransacked her cabin of her precious books was much less likely to be random brigands. No, it was someone who'd wanted to hurt her. He recalls her scream for help, the last thing he'd heard her say, and his heart twists.

She had trusted him and done what he'd told her; escaped to the cabin as soon as she could. He'd broken that trust, yet again. The guilt drags further on his heart and he feels another cough swell out of his lungs, doubling over. "Hey, you OK, mister?" The clerk asks, moving around the counter to stand closer to Arthur, his hands outstretched.

Arthur attempts a reply, but still more hacking coughs come out, a vertical line burning down his chest from neck to navel, as if they're trying to find an alternate route out of his body. The man lays a tentative hand on Arthur's back and immediately pulls it back from the icy sweat that's collected there. He takes the coat from the counter and drapes it gently over Arthur's shoulders. "I'm off to get the doctor, mister, you just sit tight." He says kindly, leaving the room; Arthur hears a turn of key into lock. He lets out a few more barks, gathering the warm coat around him, kneeling, then gently falling forward onto the cool planks of the log cabin's floor; in complete surrender to his body, rioting against him.

*

The journey from Rome back to Sicily for Easter, 1894, was my first time home in three years. My town had changed - the red flags of the Fasci Siciliani flying above burnt-out buildings, the hardened young paramilitaries hired to quash them outside the bar; where there were previously smiling, toothless old men playing cards.

I clutched my things about me and passed them as they leered and gestured, chin in the air. They made a crude comment - when kings die, how fast princesses become whor*s - and I deposed of all civility to run the rest of the way home, tears streaming down my cheeks, running to confirm the truth I already knew.

They'd been killed in their bed, mama and papà, holding each other. The paramilitaries blamed the Fasci, the Fasci the paramilitaries; but a note left on their corpses - greetings from America - showed it could only be related to one of Angelo's enemies. Even hundreds of miles away, my brother's influence twisted my life in ways I couldn't fathom.

*

"Get up, mister." A firm hand gently rocks Arthur awake by the shoulder; his eyes take in the stern, but not unkind face of the doctor from Valentine, the clerk hovering anxiously behind him. Arthur starts and scrambles to his feet, a few grizzled coughs escaping his lips. The doctor "hmms" at the noise, leading Arthur outside.

He sits him on the back edge of a wagon, peers into his eyes with a magnifying glass. "How long have you been coughing like this, mister?"

Arthur shrugs. "Two, three weeks, maybe."

"Is there ever blood?"

The dark dot on Lena's white pillow."Yeah, sometimes." The doctor fits a stethoscope into his ears, places the resonator against Arthur's chest.

"Breathe," he commands, and Arthur takes a deep breath through his nostrils, the clean, mountain air suddenly stuttering in his lungs. "Again." Arthur obeys. The doctor pulls out a wooden stick and depresses Arthur's tongue, he "ahhs" willingly. The doctor scrutinizes the inside of Arthur's mouth and then withdraws, making his way over to the water pump and dousing his hands, rubbing them together. Arthur notices he's avoiding his eyes.

"Well, what is it?" Arthur says. The doctor sighs, twirling one of his moustache's waxed ends pensively.

"I'm just going to come out with it, mister," he says finally, fixing his gaze on Arthur. "You have tuberculosis."Arthur looks away from the doctor suddenly, as if slapped by the news. The mountains are a kinder sight for the cruel words to come. "It won't get much better than this, and likely a whole hell of a lot worse." The doctor delivers some recommendations -useless, thinks Arthur,when the hell do I get any rest?- and awkwardly pats Arthur's shoulder.

"Best of luck to you," he says, gesturing for Arthur to get off the wagon as he climbs into the driver's seat, whipping his horse into a canter. Arthur watches him leave dully, his wheezing breath again his only companion. He realizes he's still wearing the coat and returns to the station, holding it forth to the clerk.

"You keep it," the clerk holds his hands up and waves them dismissively, prompting a confused look from Arthur that he addresses. "Miss Lena asked after someone who looked like you, mentioned she'd been waiting on you," he says, "she's been real kind to me over the years, little as I see her. I'm happy for you to have it."

"Th-thank you," Arthur stammers, bewildered by the stranger's kindness. He shoulders the coat back on. The clerk nods.

"'Course, sir," he bids him farewell. "Be well, now." Arthur departs, climbing back onto the well-mannered horse and nuzzling his cheek into the sheepskin of the coat's collar, a tiny comfort in his sea of loss. He heads for the gang at Lakay, hoping he can find Lena returned safely, if angrily, to nearby Saint Denis.

*

After the death of my parents, I became obsessed with the healing arts. I was laughed out of every academy and apprenticeship I'd tried, women decisively unwelcome. Instead, the local Strega Maddalena - who we'd always consulted for births and other women's problems dismissed by men - took me under her wing.

She taught me the names and uses for dozens of plants, including ones from overseas that I'd never seen, drawing careful pictures in ink that I'd label. The townspeople started calling mepiccola Lena- little 'Lena - following her around as I did, helping where I could. I preferred it to Elena immensely, shedding my old name.

But still, Elena followed me in the form of a curt letter from Angelo summoning me to America, he my only remaining guardian. I wept at Maddalena's feet at the idea of leaving; she took my head into her lap and stroked my hair with her old, withered fingers. Courage, child, she said to me, eyes thick with cataracts, I've given you the power to cheat the fates.

To defy death itself.

Chapter 22: xxii. Defying the Gods: Second chances, squandered

Chapter Text

Even after his day-long detour, Arthur arrives at the dreary, swampside camp Lakay before Dutch or Bill, falling wearily in with the gang members. He accepts a bowl of stew gladly from Pearson, trying to suppress the coughs each spoonful provokes in his chest. Tilly gives him a nudge, asks him if he's feeling all right.

"'S the sea air," he lies, and she nods, for which he's grateful. He's not ready for pity, nor kindness. His upset at his days of terrible news, of worry, is a whistling kettle in his ears, threating to boil over.

That evening, Arthur is finally dressed in his old clothes, in real boots, food in his stomach. The door to the kitchen cabin - where he's also set up to sleep - swings open, and Dutch, looking grizzled and sunburnt, enters. He's immediately rushed by Abigail, shouting above the cheers and surprised noises: "Dutch! Dutch, they got John." He holds out a hand, stopping her in her tracks.

"All in good time, Abigail," he says, calmly, "John'll be just fine, for now."

"He's in Sisika, on a chain gang," Sadie adds, steadily, noting the look of despair on Abigail's face. "Might swing any day now."

"In goodtime, Mrs. Adler," Dutch repeats himself, his tone growing short. Abigail's face falls, and she holds Jack's head to her hip, hiding him from view. Arthur's rankled at the hypocrisy and speaks up, clearing his throat.

"John's been taken, Dutch," Arthur emphasizes, fixing Dutch with a look. "Ain't that what you said? 'If you'd been taken, son, I know what I'd do'?" They stare at each other, Dutch's eyes narrowing at Arthur's mocking quotation, when Bill bursts into the house.

"I had to ask all over the damn place where y'all got to," Bill rages, indignant. He demands a drink from Sadie, which goes over exactly as well with the woman as Arthur's come to expect. There's no time for anyone to react, because another, less-yet-still familiar voice rings out from the dirt yard at the front of the house.

"This is Agent Milton from the Pinkerton Detective Agency, on behalf of Cornwall Kerosene and Tar, the United States Government, and the Commonwealth of West Elizabeth!"

"sh*t," Arthur mutters, grabbing at the arms of Tilly and Mary-Beth closest to him, pushing them behind the doorframe, followed by Abigail, Mrs. Grimshaw. He's just nestled Jack in between them all and gone to stand by the window when the deafening whine of a gatling gun starts up and the walls are immediately riddled with bulletholes.

The ensuing fight is chaotic, flashes of gunfire in the black night, echoing off the marsh, and it's another miracle that none of the Van Der Linde gang is dead after it. Sadie and Arthur had made their way through a network of hatches under the buildings to take some of the Pinkerton agents - notably, the one on the gun - by surprise, but not Milton; he was already there and gone. The two sit together, legs hanging off of the wraparound deck outside of the house, cleaning their guns and speaking low.

"Dutch seems off, hmm?" Sadie whispers, her face still. "Real impulsive, scattered, I mean. Like he's lost sight of things." Arthur only nods. "We gotta get John back," she continues, and he nods again, assenting. "Just you and me, if they ain't helping. It's all we need."

He huffs out a brusque laugh. "'S all that's left." With Hosea dead, and Dutch a stranger to him, he believes it to be true. He and John were well and truly orphaned, now. Alone in the world. The realization dawns on him and leaves just as swiftly; no room at the packed inn that houses his troubled thoughts.

There's no staying at Lakay with the Pinkertons at their necks, so Arthur and Charles ride off in search of a new camp the next day, on Dutch's advice, a place in northern backwoods country called Beaver Hollow. The apocalyptic scene they find there - bloodied bodies chopped into pieces, a lone, terrified survivor among them - only prove to Arthur how far down the gang's sunk.

They clear the camp of the Murfrees - dozens of men who share both a bloodline and a penchant for violence - and Arthur offers to take the survivor, Meredith, home to Annesburg. After leaving Meredith with her mother, he sees a familiar face. The widow of Thomas Downes, her once-proud face wearied and scarred with a pox, ducking into one of the mining cottages with a man.

Two things are clear at once: she's had to resort to nefarious work to support herself after her husband died, after the gang's moneylending bankrupted them. And, that Downes was the only person Arthur'd known with tuberculosis, and he'd hacked a bloody cough into Arthur's face after he'd beaten him for the loan's return.

On returning to Beaver Hollow, he settles into his cot on the ridge, feeling the disease amble in his chest. The new camp is grim, damp, and hard on his lungs, and he dully bridges the events in his life to this point; a fate he feels he deserves.

*

Furious at the complete loss of freedom in America, in my first months in Saint Denis I rebelled however I could, unmoored. I stayed out until the early hours, engaging in the city's parochial arts scene, drinking myself stupid on Sazeracs and embarrassing Angelo in front of any business contacts he let me see.

He didn't stand for it for long; bought me a horse - the equally rebellious Quasette - and told me to ride west to work with his associates for a few weeks, until I'd settled down. He'd sent along gifts, including an ornate, silver mantel clock. On the ride, I saw a man bleeding from the leg on the trail in front of me, followed him. I fixed up his wolf-bitten calf outside of a small cabin he had - modest, but overlooking a glorious view of the Grizzly mountains; true splendour. I gave him the clock, which he happily took for the deed to the cabin, and some spending money, besides.

I ordered foods I liked, ordered books; poetry and herbal guides, both. The cabin became a refuge from Angelo's temper, from his string of hideous suitors he wanted to use to rid himself of me. I dreamt of starting a practice out there, like Maddalena did, back home, and begged off to the cabin as often as I could, staying as long as I could until ordered to return. I started treating adventurers I spotted on the trail and in the forest; wild animal bites, gunshot and stab wounds, toothaches. But it was a dangerous business. I became better at telling the difference between weary eyes and wild ones, and realized the only way to be truly safe was to be alone.

Until Arthur. My lonely life was a pale existence, I'd only realized after he'd entered it; an alternative in riotous colour, like the sunsets over the mountain range, irresistible.

*

Get John back, then find Lena. It's a mantra that plays over and over in Arthur's mind, one he uses to self-soothe away from coughing. After his and Sadie's perilous raid on Sisika, bringing John back by the skin of their teeth, it simplifies:Find Lena. And then complicates again:Find Lena, avoid the law.John's rescue came at a price - they're wanted across the eastern seaboard, roving bands of Pinkertons and opportunistic bounty hunters seemingly on every path and crossing.

The lines between the gang members seem to draw ever deeper. To anyone he thinks might be receptive to the idea, Arthur advises them to think about leaving. But there they stay on the rocky outcrop, paralyzed by malaise and by their memories of what once was.

John, immeasurably grateful to Arthur for his rescue, comes with him on covert rides to Saint Denis, seeking information about Lena's whereabouts. On one of these rides, he tentatively asks about her, in his way. "I ain't ever seen you so sure of somethin' before, Arthur, with that girl," he says, looking at the road ahead. "Almost shot me, I mean."

"Weren'tve been the first time." Arthur lets out a single bark of laughter, and then puts his fist to his lips, quelling a cough. "Glad I didn't have to," he adds, quietly, remembering his great relief when John had pulled his gun away from Lena's head, at last. The pair ask around hotels, saloons, track down the urchins in the alleyways. Particularly emboldened during a city law shift change one early evening, Arthur and John hop the fence of the boarded-up Bronte mansion, prying back one of the window coverings with his knife and slipping inside.

The gaudy décor of the mansion is swathed in dropcloths, bloodstains from their shootout still dimly visible in the low light. John stays by the window as Arthur enters the library, reverent and sad. He pulls a book at random from the shelves, slips it into his bag. Something for Lena when he sees her again; of her, if he doesn't.

After every unsuccessful sortie into the city, Arthur despairs, grappling with his mutinying lungs on his cot, yearning for her comfort. He imagines her on tiptoe on one of the wooden chairs, pulling carefully-selected flowers down, making some untold concoction for him from her collection of plants. Her hand in his, atop his shuddering chest, lips brushing against his ear.

*

I waited for a letter from Arthur that never came, but one from Angelo did, so I returned to Saint Denis for awhile. The next time I was at the cabin, Arthur came to me in pieces; a mess of wounds and misgivings about his leader, Dutch. I longed for him, but was so afraid to disrupt the easy life we were creating, turning the forest refuge into a temple, a place of happiness. When I came home to find him gone, my body revolted, but his leaving was false, for a few sweet moments.

He came on to me like a storm but then grew suddenly afraid, and how I loved him, then. My hardened outlaw; blushing, virginal. We were tentative, coaxing and gentle by turns to each other, like newlyweds. A letter to his false name conspired us apart, and another to mine brought us back together. I'd intended to burn the letter forwarded to Wallace Station from my brother, demanding that I come home and care for some little boy he'd kidnapped. But with Arthur gone, I felt no need to stay.

The boy was miraculous, and I delighted in his company despite myself. We played games, drew pictures. My ailing heart told him stories I shouldn't have, but he drank them in all the same. More miraculous, still; he was from Arthur's gang. Jack Marston brought Arthur back to me.

*

A month passed. Micah whispering into Dutch's ear is a daily occurrence, and any of Arthur's efforts to interrupt them is met by Micah's scathing, "mind your own business, blacklung" - which Dutch does nothing to rebuke.

The gang grows more depraved and sad, more wayward. Molly O'Shea, Dutch's paramour, was shot dead for traitorousness. The moneylender, Strauss, was thrown out by Arthur's own hands. Pearson packed up and left in the dead of night, so they're all starving, subsisting on hastily cooked scraps of meat the men think to bring in, when they remember. On top of it all, they're tangled up in business with the Waipiti Indians, at first benevolently, but then to what personal ends of Dutch's, Arthur has yet to find.

With almost two months since he'd grasped Lena in the mansion, imploring her to run, Arthur's desperation reaches a fever pitch. He sneaks off one night, heading for the Mayor's house, his final card to play in Saint Denis after weeks of nothing. He creeps around to the back of the expansive house, knocking on the glass, attracting the attention of a butler stalking around the main floor.

"Who are you?" He asks, squinting at Arthur's unkempt appearance, his perpetually red-rimmed eyes, his clothing hanging loose off of his ailing body, thin with sickness.

"Tell Mayor Lemieux; it's Tacitus Kilgore, come to see him. I helped him at his party." For a moment, the uppity butler looks as though he's considering shutting the door on Arthur's face, but nods instead, retreating upstairs. He returns after a moment, beckoning Arthur forward, ushering him to the small office where Arthur'd discovered the letter about Cornwall, where he'd been with Lena. His hand grazes the desktop involuntarily, his heart aches.

He spots Lemieux first, in the plush armchair facing the door. His companion's face is visible in profile. Arthur tears his gaze away from the other man and looks to Lemieux, who greets him unkindly. "Mr. Kilgore, I'd say it's nice to see you, but I can't say that you're looking well." The man in the other chair turns to look at Arthur, something familiar about his dark eyes, stoic expression. Arthur ignores him.

"Mayor," he starts, no patience for small-talk. "You ain't seen Elena Bronte around, have you?" Lemieux chuckles lightly, gesturing at his guest.

"I've been wondering where she's gone to, myself. Guido - Mr. Martelli here - has been quite cagey with his intelligence on the matter." Lemieux leans forward to playfully slap at the man's - Martelli's - knee. "Keeping her all to yourself, eh, mon ami?"

Arthur's attention immediately shifts to the man, those dark, unblinking eyes still fixed on him.

"Where is she." It's not a question, so much as a statement, a firm downward shift of inflection. Arthur's not asking.

"It's no concern of yours, cowboy." Martelli sneers, waving his hand in a way that's reminiscent of Bronte, but Arthur sees that the man has none of the comedic stylings of his predecessor, none of the false warmth.

"Look, I ain't tryin' to interrupt, I just need to know-" Arthur feels the barrel of a gun nestle into his spine. He'd completely missed the fourth man in the room, and berates himself for it as he raises his hands, slowly; Martelli's eyes remain eerily unmoved.

"Get out," he orders, his accent thick but clear. "You are interrupting."

*

After the men from Arthur's gang stormed the house, I left, just as he'd said to do; rode for the cabin the very next day. I lived a short hour of hopeful anticipation, ruined by another immediate arrival. Guido Martelli, my brother's second, stormed into the cabin with two of his guards, his bruiser Ardennes outside. I'd been followed.

Your brother is dead, and you're here playing with books, he snapped. You can stay as long as you like,stronza, just give me the combination to the safe, the deed to the house.

I sneered at him. Ask me nicely, I said. Stars burst behind my eyelids as his hand collided with my cheek, sending me reeling.

*

Arthur hears the footsteps behind him as he exits the mansion, moving slowly and deliberately in the opposite direction of Priest, towards the city bridge leading out to the swamps. In the small roundabout, outside of the streetlamps, the footsteps pick up, and Arthur draws his gun, whirling around.

The sickness, his exhaustion, has slowed him; one hand grasps his wrist easily, prying the gun from his fingers, another pair of arms twists his other arm behind his back. He's immobilized, breathing heavily. He watches Martelli's solid silhouette emerge and disappear between the pools cast by the streetlights, his face suddenly moon-illuminated in front of Arthur's; waxy and unflinching. The two guards hold Arthur up, and Martelli slowly removes his necktie, wrapping it deliberately around the knuckles of his right hand. He winds back and punches Arthur in the stomach, winding him. He bucks with wretched coughs, and Martelli smiles for the first time, cruelly.

"Angelo may have been blind to the way you sniffed around Elena at that party, but not me," he says, adjusting the tie where it's slipped on his hand. "I saw you both, watched as you strung along after her." Arthur remembers the subtle shake of Lena's head, a tug on his tuxedo sleeve, pulling him away from a stern man by the oyster table. "Not him," she'd whispered, before identifying a more suitable target. The memory seems a hundred years old, as if it'd happened to another Arthur. He supposes it had. He's rudely awakened from his reminisces by another punch to his stomach, and he tries to double over, pulling weakly against the two men holding him up by the arms.

"She let you in the night Angelo was murdered, a traitor to her own blood," Martelli continues, and Arthur shakes his head, spitting onto the ground.

"No, no," he forces out, lifting his head to look at Martelli. "It ain't true, that had nothin' to do with her."

It's not what Martelli wants to hear; he strikes Arthur across the face, and he hears a dull crack in his jaw, holds it in misalignment, breathing shallowly to avoid provoking another cough. "You lie, just like her," he seethes. "She's a liar and a thief, and I did what her brother didn't have the courage to do."

*

Guido screamed for me to come with him, his men pulled my books from their hiding places, tearing them to pieces in front of my eyes. As the last volume dropped to the floor, shredded words milling about our feet, I stared into his hateful eyes, drew a deep breath, spit on his shoes. He hit me, again, so hard I spun and collapsed against the table. Pulling myself up, I smiled through bloodied teeth. I didn't think you had the balls to take over from my brother, and I was right.

Forcing myself upright, I stormed past him, making for my horse. A shot rung out, whistling past my ear. Quasette let out a horrible whine, kneeling forward, her legs giving out from under her. He'd shot her right between her ears.

*

"Where is she?" Arthur wheezes, desperate. All of the fears he's experienced as to her whereabouts congregate within him, his worst ideas manifesting before his eyes in the form of this soulless man.

"I took her where she should have been going all this time, if Angelo had ever bothered himself to check." Martelli scowls at some of Arthur's blood, spattered on his white shirt. He troubles one of the stains with his handkerchief, blotting at it, eyebrows knit together.

"Where," Arthur demands again, a low bellow, realizing he's in no place to make one.

Martelli abandons the stain, but the scowl remains. "Our associates have use for a strega; they see a lot of scratches, the French disease, births, the odd stabbing or two." Arthur's weary mind puts together what Martelli is saying, blinking heavily, then coughing.

"Wait, a cathouse? Only so many of those," Arthur feels a glimmer of hope, summoning whatever bravery he has left. "You can't keep me from getting her back." He convinces himself, imagines returning to Priest, hitting every town until he finds the right whor*house, finds her.

*

I wept over Quasette's dying form, screaming incomprehensibly at Guido. You will come with me, he said, again, seizing my arm and dragging me towards his horse.

Arthur will get you, I screeched, laughing through tears, pointing at him and his men, all cowards. Unlike you, he hits other men, doesn't grow weak on women. He'll kill you all, slowly, and I'll smoke a cigarette and laugh at your funerals. I'll drink champagne on your graves! I spotted one of the guards crossing himself, as if I'd cursed him. Peasants and their superstitions.

But Guido was unmoved, tightened his grip on my arm to vise-like. You mean that filthy cowboy, from the party.

Yes, my cowboy, I hissed. He smiled, then, his eyes still black with anger.

He handed me a folded piece of paper, worn at its edges. I have something here that says he won't, he said, vindictively, and I opened it with trembling fingers.

*

"I can't keep you from going after her, it's true," Martelli smiles, unwinds the tie from his hand, drapes it around his neck. Arthur's taken aback by this concession, knows something's off. "But others will."

"What?" Arthur exhales, and Martelli indicates for his men to release him. He stands alone on unsteady feet, rubbing at his jaw.

"I hear you're none too welcome there,Morgan, is it?" Martelli passes him a folded piece of paper, and then signals for his men to follow him, heading off into the night, leaving Arthur behind.

Arthur retrieves his revolver from where it was knocked onto the road, holsters it. He unfolds the paper slowly, a broadsheet. His heart sinks. Even in the dim light, he can read the woodcut type.

ARTHUR MORGAN.

Wanted Dead or Alive.
$5,000 Reward.

Then, the artist's rendition of his own face, clean-shaven, squinting for his imagined sitting. At the bottom, the most damning of all:

By Order of the Sheriff.

Blackwater, CMLTH of West Elizabeth.

Chapter 23: xxiii. Defying the Gods: All'inferno, pt. 1

Chapter Text

The sky is still dark when Arthur steers Priest into Beaver Hollow in the early morning, rubbing his sore jaw from where Martelli'd slugged him. He hitches Priest up with the other horses and veers clear of Micah, so still as to seem asleep at the main firepit, if not for the flames dancing in his pale eyes, and heads to the scout fire, instead. The divide between the men at camp plays out most clearly between these two fires: Micah, Bill, and Dutch sprawl lazily around the roaring fire at the centre of camp, while Arthur, John, and Charles skulk at the small scout fire located at its edge. Only Javier moves easily between the two; but even he's retired playing guitar, the mood too sombre to bother plucking out an old gang favourite.

John emerges from the darkness in the low firelight there; Arthur starts in surprise. John scoffs. "You'd think I'd be the one afraid of you," he says quietly, so as not to wake the gang or draw Micah's attention. "The hell happened to your face?"

Arthur scowls, pacing in front of the fire, clenching and unclenching his fists. "Same f*cker w'did this to me's got Lena," he seethes, through gritted teeth. John's mouth hangs open.

"Who?" Arthur pauses his frantic marching to answer John, but a cough swells up from his chest and he turns away to spit, behind him. He wipes his mouth with his sleeve. "Don't know, some Martelli feller. The new Bronte." He closes his eyes to gather himself, but the damning lettering on the wanted poster - his wanted poster - dances across his eyelids.ARTHUR MORGAN. Dead or Alive. Blackwater.He forces his eyes open and sinks onto one of the crates surrounding the fire, holding his head up with one hand, a log erupting into sparks in the pit glittering in his free eye. "She's in Blackwater." He lets out a stuttering exhale, and John lets out a low whistle.

"sh*t." John says, after a spell. Arthur's hand moves from covering the vertical half of his face to his mouth and chin. "Yep," he says through his fingers.

A twig snaps behind John, and the men look up, their thoughts interrupted. "Who's in Blackwater, now?" Sadie's husky voice rings out, and she steps into the light, smirking.

Arthur mutters, "no one" at the same time as John's "girl he's sweet on," and Sadie focuses on the latter, moving around the log John's sitting on to join him, staring at Arthur, an incredulous look on her face.

"Girl, hey? My lord," she laughs, and Arthur reddens, shooting John a look. "So, what's her story? She in trouble down in Blackwater, or somethin'?" Arthur shakes his head, his lips pressed together, so John continues.

"Same feller who fixed up Arthur's face here took her down, for no good, I'd gather." Sadie takes in the bruising along Arthur's jawline, the spot of blood at the corner of his mouth, and nods, the smile fading from her face.

"So, you two going to get her?" She asks, turning to John next to her before looking back across the fire.

"sh*t," John repeats, "I got a bounty up near three thousand out there." Arthur lets out a small cough.

"Five thousand, me," he says, gazing up at them both from where his head hangs below his shoulders. "Don't matter, I got to go." John's eyebrows disappear up into the brim of his hat.

"That's suicide, Arthur," he extends a reasoning hand forth. "Place is crawling with Pinkertons, still, from the boat job. They never left. Let alone the bounty hunters." Arthur gulps, shrugging.

"What choice have I got?" His gaze leaves them again, returns to the licking flames in the pit. Then, murmuring; "I'd follow her into hell to get her back."

*

Martelli sat me in front of him on the saddle of his monstrous horse all the way to Blackwater, my jaw clacking from the uneven ride, his hot, sour breath against my neck. We arrived in the early evening, Guido slowing the Ardennes in front of a Victorian house, third on the street from the shoreline, painted the colour of cranberries. "La rosa rosa" is handpainted on a sign creaking in the wind on the front lawn, surrounded by carefully pruned rose bushes. Martelli pulled me from the saddle by the waist, pushed me towards the front door. As we crossed the threshold, the front path glittered back at me, winking in the streetlights.

We entered, Martelli guiding me roughly past women in tawdry dress grouped in doorways, leaning against the heavy wood banister; past men puffing on cigars, eyes narrowed at my face, crawling over my body. I hugged my arms tighter around myself and lowered my head, blinking tears back into my eyes.

The woman in the office, Signorina Grassi, did all the talking, while her partner and brother, Signore Grassi, slobbered on a pipe. "We loved Angelo, didn't we, fratello?" She simpered, pausing to pour herself and Guido grappa from a crystal decanter. "Such a shame, his passing." She went on to tell me why I was there; to act as both servant and doctor to the working women.

"Take those fine things off, Elena," she instructed, tugging at my sleeve and skirt before handing me a uniform: a plain white shirt and black pinafore, grey stockings, a blush pink kerchief. "You'll wear this while you're here." I stared at them, waiting for a moment of privacy that didn't come. "Hurry up, dear." Her voice, saccharine, limned with malicious impatience.

Like pulling away a poultice, I told myself, unbuttoning my blouse to pull the new shirt over my head, kicking off my shoes and bloomers to slip on the itchy grey knee stockings, taking off my skirt last, after the pinafore was already on. The male Grassi looked on, a disgusting string of spittle trailing from his lip to the mouthpiece of the pipe. I made to pick up my shoes, but Signorina tutted at me, slapping my hand before retrieving them herself, gathering them up with my other clothing.

I thought her power trip knew no end - I couldn't keep my plain, brown shoes? - until later that night, when I made to escape the brothel from the damp, basem*nt room they'd stashed me in; where they kept the wine. Surprised to find my door, and then the front door unlocked and unguarded, I crept out on stockinged feet, figuring I could ask for help at the saloon. The sparkling path revealed its true self in the bits of shattered glass that quickly embedded themselves into the soles of my feet. I cried out instantly, bracing myself upright to keep from falling down into the shards of glass. As painful as the first few steps out were, the walk back was infinitely worse.

A pair of whor*s in the front parlour snigg*red as I re-entered the house, tears running down my cheeks. Their feet were bare, too. There was nowhere to go but back to bed, to pull glass from my bloodied feet, to despair over my new life.

*

Sadie claps her hands together. "OK," she says, "so when are we going?" Arthur laughs in disbelief.

"You ain't coming, it's way too dangerous."

"So what,dangerous," she scoffs, crossing her arms over her chest. "We broke into a damnprisonto get this one out-" here she co*cks a thumb at John "-in case you forgot."

"I can't ask you to do this," he says, shaking his head. Sadie rises from the log, moves to rest her hand on Arthur's shoulder. "Good thing you ain't asking, Arthur," she smiles at him, kind resoluteness in her eyes. "What about you, scarface?" She turns to John. "You in?" Arthur shakes his head again.

"John, you got a family," he says firmly, holding up his palm as if to warn him.

"Yeah," John nods, throwing a stick he'd been toying with into the fire. "But I could come for the ride, keep an eye on things from the shore, help y'all back." Arthur's overwhelmed, gestures at them both before letting his hands fall to his sides.

"Yeah, you're welcome," Sadie chuckles, clapping his back a couple of times. "Do we know anything about where she's at?"

"It's Lena, Lena'ser name." Arthur says suddenly, trusting Sadie with this fragile piece of his heart. She fixes him with a steady gaze, nodding, imploring him to continue. "Martelli let slip that they got her in some kind of cathouse out there, carin' for the girls."

"What d'you fellas know about the cathouses out in Blackwater?" Sadie snickers, causing both of them to blush. John rises from his seat. "Can get that information pretty quickly," he mutters, "Follow me, Arth." Arthur rises after him, marching purposefully towards Micah in his fugue state by the main fire, Sadie looking on.

"Hey, Micah," John rasps, stepping a boot onto the end of the log where Micah's seated, interrupting his trance. "Settle a bet for me, will ya?"

"What is it, Marston?" He grumbles, spitting before looking at him. John smiles, almost affably. "Arthur here seems to remember the saloon girls in Blackwater being the best, but I said you'd see it different."

Micah squints at John, then returns the grin, resting his hands on the snakeskin grips of his pistols. "Blackwater saloon girls ain't nothin' but slags, Morgan, like you'd know any better. There's the Vixen, which is a little ways outside of town; that one's alright if you're tight on cash and ain't counting teeth." Arthur's stomach turns in revulsion, but John only laughs, always the better actor of the two.

"Hardly sounds like the best, if you're countin' teeth," he chides. Micah nods, leaning back on his arms.

"The best is the rosy-rosy; more like a gentlemen's club, just down the street from the saloon. For discerning tastes." He gazes into the fire as John and Arthur look at each other, knowingly. Micah catches the glance and his expression sours. "Why you asking, anyway? Looking to get your dick wet before you die, black lung?" Arthur shakes his head and turns to walk away, and Micah shouts after him, in disregard of the sleeping camp. "I could recommend you somewhere a little closer. Or are you hoping for a quick way out once they shoot you for turnin' up in Blackwater?"

Arthur turns to look over his shoulder, chuckling in disbelief. "You are loathsome," he says slowly, before returning to Sadie, John trailing behind him.

Once back at the scout fire, he coughs surreptitiously into the crook of his arm, eyes switching between each of their faces. "We leave today, each separately, meet by the peninsula where the Upper Montana flows out into Flat Iron Lake, this side of the river. I'll go first, get a wagon and a boat." Both of them nod, and he reaches a hand out to each of their shoulders, too overwhelmed with gratitude to speak. A brief squeeze will have to do.

*

Weeks passed at the brothel that felt like years. I dreamt of Arthur coming to visit me at the cabin, a dozen alpine poppies in his fist. He wound each one through my hair until I was crowned with them, and then kissed me, deeply, stroking my forearms before pulling me to him.

I woke up alone, on the little cot in the sour-smelling wine cellar that crawled with vermin. My forearms, so smooth in the dream, alighting at Arthur's touch, were chapped and blistered from the lye I used to wash the sheets. I'd complained about the rats crawling across my hair at night, and the Grassis'solution was to chop it off with the pruning shears they used on the rosebushes, the uneven, blunted ends falling to my chin. I was wretched, unlovable.

From the corner of my eye, I saw the pink kerchief I'd placed in the barred window - my signal to Arthur, in case he'd ever come - disappear. "Hey," I whispered, rising from the bed, and a pretty face descended, blowing smoke from her mouth. It was one of the whor*s, wearing a pair of men's shoes loosely on her bare feet.

"Didn't realize they kept you down here," she said plainly, adding a second cigarette to her lips and lighting it before passing it down to me. I took the proffered smoke, inhaling gratefully. "Thank you."

"No trouble," she said, sitting down, legs crossed at her ankles. She was wearing a man's jacket, too, against the encroaching autumn chill, one quickly overtaking my only moth-eaten blanket. "You've been real kind to me, last doctor we had was a real prick." She exhaled again, looking at me sidelong through the window. "Sorry they're treating you so rotten."

I shrugged, taking another deep inhale, passing my wrists through the bars to let the smoke out into the alleyway. She placed the kerchief back into my free hand, curling my fingers around it, keeping her manicured hand there.

"I'm Trixie," she said, smiling. "We can stick together, in our way." With that, she patted my roughened hand, winked, and left, stubbing out her cigarette with the heel of the man's shoe she'd no doubt borrowed from a john too drunk to notice. I'd made a friend.

*

Arthur and Sadie paddle out towards Blackwater in the wide-bottomed canoe he'd found under the cover of night, leaving John, the wagon, and their horses - Bob, Priest, and the black-and-white mare Arthur'd kept - behind on the peninsula.

They give the town's shoreline a wide berth, heading south past the main stretch of buildings, past the outskirts of town, until they reach a rocky beach cove. Arthur pulls in the canoe, hiding it behind a stretch of bushes, then himself. He needs a moment, his heart hammering in his chest from the exertion, the sickness rumbling in his lungs. Sadie gives him the space and time to recover, checking and rechecking her repeater, adjusting her neckerchief. He's immensely grateful to her already, but still more so now; that she'd grant him this small kindness of privacy, of pretending he's still well.

Once his lungs quell and he's caught his breath, the pair move quietly along the shoreline, John's campfire on the peninsula a tiny, flickering light in the distance. They keep to the shadows, watching one, then two patrols of Pinkertons ride past, lanterns held aloft, but thankfully missing them, flattened against tree trunks, crouched behind shrubs.

Arthur hears the faint yips of nearby coyotes, draws himself up to appear as a threat, realizing dully that his chest doesn't quite square like it used to. Panic momentarily freezes him, that Lena won't want him this way, but Sadie clicks her tongue at him, spurring him onward.

"I ain't a horse," he hisses, rejoining her on the edge of the town, crouching. She grins.

"Sure spook like a horse," she replies, pointing at a row of manor-type houses lining an east-west road, before the main street. "What do we think about those?" Arthur takes out his binoculars, focuses them on the backyards. They're silent, save for one, a spired Victorian that's painted deep red, the third from the right. A low stone wall fences the perimeter of the yard, and he sees two men smoking on the back porch. If he were pressed to describe them, he might have said that they look like Micah.

"Third from the right," he whispers, handing her the eyepiece. Sadie peers through the binoculars, sees the men, a gloved hand reaching from the door to pull one of them inside. "That's a cathouse, alright," she confirms, nodding at him as he returns the binoculars to his bag. So close to it, the fear returns to his stomach. That Lena won't be there. Or that she will, and won't want him, for anger or disgust or a million other reasons the old cold in his heart feeds to him. He coughs, burying his face into his arm to muffle the sound.

Sadie rests a calm hand on his back, lets the coughing run its course, before speaking. "Let's go, Romeo." He mock-scowls, secretly glad of the taunt. They'd decided on the boat ride over that Sadie - warrant-free in Blackwater - would go into the brothel to run some kind of distraction while Arthur cased the house from the outside. She makes for it first, falling in naturally with the nighttime ebb of pedestrians moving about the town, disappearing around the corner to approach the brothel from the front.

Arthur leaves next, crouching low and darting for the backyard, creeping along the back of the stone fence, only about three feet high. He rests his hands against the stone but recoils, a deep cut appearing in the soft, fleshy centre of his palm. The fence is studded with broken glass, poured right into the masonry. He sees it glittering on the ground outside the house, too.Sick bastards, he thinks.

He makes his way around the right side of the house, figuring he's less visible in the alley than out in the open, wrapping his neckerchief around his injured hand. It's a motion that triggers a memory, of his meeting Lena for the first time. He runs his right index finger along the old scar knit into the webbing of his left hand, a rattling exhale leaving his chest. How far they'd come, and yet, not at all. Arthur's shaking his head when he spots a glimpse of pale cloth on the otherwise dark ground, in front of a small basem*nt window cut into the side of the house.

*

The Grassis made me check the girls weekly for pests and infection, for signs of pregnancy. We established a hidden rapport, fuelled by Trixie's kindness, trading gossip and insults for our captors as soon as the doors were closed.

But still, the Grassis found ways to make my tenure at La rosa rosa intolerable, especially once they'd found out Iwas making friendswith the girls. One night, they'd let two of the cruel men who called themselves the Skinners come in, assigned their pleasure to one of the youngest and sweetest whor*s, Joanie.

They woke me in the early hours to stitch up the carvings they'd made in her pretty face, apply a poultice to her maimed right eye. I held her in the room long after they'd retired to bed, saving my own, animal weeping for when I was alone.

*

The cloth is too clean to be accidental, placed there deliberately, folded like a dinner napkin and pointing directly at the window. Arthur approaches on tiptoe, crouching to a squat and lowering his head to look down into the room, lit only by a slim taper set into a candlestick.

He almost can't believe it's her, curled into a wool blanket on a small cot, her sleeping face set into a scowl, fists bunched under her chin. His heart swells into his throat, he chokes back a sob.

"Lena," he croaks, and he delights at her brief stirring, how she wriggles her nose before her face settles into a calmer expression, the scowl dissipating, dark eyebrows relaxing. He risks removing a coin from his pocket, tapping it against the bars. Her eyelids flutter, and then fly open; she scrambles to sitting, looking up at the window.

Arthur spends an eternity in this moment, one where she stares at him, eyes saucer-like, before any recognition dawns on her face.

But then, sublimely, the recognition comes. Her eyes fill with tears as she rushes to the window, standing on a stool to reach through the bars and grasp at his face, drawing his hands to her, pressed up against the iron, her lips warm and perfect against his knuckles. He brushes the tears away from under her eyes, rubs the blunted ends of her hair between his fingers.

"M'anno fatto brutt'." She mumbles, turning away from him. "I'm ugly."

"No," he insists, head swimming in the sudden Italian. Her short hair softens her face, making her doe-brown eyes and their long lashes enormous, all irresistible to him. "My beautiful Lena," he cups her chin, that chin that drives him so crazy, angling those eyes to look right into his. They smile at each other, after so long.

A bang sounds from within the house, and she whips her head back, trying to source the noise. "You have to go, Arthur, it's not safe for you here."

"We're here to get you out, darlin'," he says, "I ain't leavin' without you." She nods.

"Tomorrow, amore," she says, giving a final kiss to his hands gripping the bars, "around noon is when I hang the laundry. I'll be in the back. They watch from the porch, to make sure I don't run."

"OK," he says, absorbing the information but remaining grounded to the spot, unable to move. "Go," she hisses, returning to the bed and drawing the blanket around her. She chances another glance up, waves her hand, dismissing him. "Tomorrow!"

He tears himself away, rises from his crouch, steps back from the window just as her door swings open and a parabola of light sweeps into the room.

Arthur reunites with Sadie back at the cove, the two of them huddled under the overturned canoe to sleep, risking a small fire nearby for warmth; the cold is hell on Arthur's lungs. He's trembling, holding his hands together to try and stop their quaking.

Sadie, her head not far from his, notices and reaches out a kind hand, patting his shoulder. "We've got her, Arthur," she whispers, giving the shoulder a pointed squeeze. "Hard part's over."

For a blissful moment, he believes it, turning onto his back to look up at the bottom of the canoe, his shoulders relaxing. He believes right up until the canoe's lifted, the stars overhead paling in comparison to the lantern held in front of his face, momentarily blinding him. He hears a gun being co*cked by his ear.

"I'm agent Fellowes, Pinkerton Detective Agency. You're under arrest."

Chapter 24: xxiv. Defying the Gods: All'inferno, pt. 2

Chapter Text

After Signorina Grassi closed the door, satisfied with her spying, I returned to the window to watch Arthur's retreating feet, my cheeks still hot - despite the drafty cellar - where he'd touched me. I couldn't sleep, terrified and excited for the day to come, my body still humming from our meeting, from the knowledge that he was still mine.

I rose before sunup to prepare breakfast for the house, submerged the first round of bedlinens in caustic lye. Six hours. The dull thudding of the whor*s' bare feet on the stairs, the clacking of Signorina's kidskin boot heels back and forth across the hall, imperfect clocks measuring the minutes that remained between this dreadful life and freedom, with Arthur.

*

Arthur's pupils constrict painfully in the glare of the lantern, making it difficult from his position on the ground to see the Pinkerton agent, Fellowes, and his two colleagues; one holding a lantern similarly in front of Sadie, the other, younger, hovering anxiously nearby, clutching a repeater. He moves to shade his face from the light, and the young agent starts, a slight, pubescent yelp detectable in his voice: "Stay where you are!" Arthur lolls his head to the side, which provides temporary respite from the lantern and allows him to get an eyeful of his young foe. Sandy-haired and freckled, he gulps, clearly uncomfortable with the sudden, steely-eyed attention from the outlaw.

Fellowes sees this, co*cks a pistol and points it at Arthur's chest. "You look at me, understand?" Arthur slowly turns back, squinting again.

"Be a lot easier to look if you got that goddamn light out of my face," he grunts, trying to keep his voice, his lungs, calm. There's a riot in his heart, conspiring against these seemingly simple objectives. He can't fathom a way out of this that doesn't end in his bloodshed, or Sadie's, nor one that does where he's back at the brothel, rescuing Lena from the washing line. He feels a wavering in his resolve; the Bronte raid, Dutch, Hosea, Guarma, his diagnosis, and Martelli a long preamble to this final insult, the last time he would let Lena down.

Fellowes only scowls. "I'm not here to make things easier for you, Morgan, you piece of sh*t." He steps back, keeping the gun levelled at Arthur. "Tie him up, Wallace." The young agent starts forward and then rocks back on his heels, afraid to approach. "Now." Fellowes commands, and Wallace takes a few tentative steps, shouldering the repeater and pulling some rope taut between his hands. At gunpoint, Arthur allows himself to be pushed to seated, his wrists and ankles bound, not hogtied completely. Sadie suffers a similar fate; the two arranged back-to-back, their tied legs sticking out in front of them, arms behind.

The Pinkerton agents circle their prizes, guns still aimed in their direction. Fellowes is an angular man; high cheekbones and a bottle brush mustache, slate grey hair with lighter grey licking at his temples. His yet-unnamed associate, who'd detained Sadie, is putty-like, with wispy brown hair that flies upward off of his head unbidden, his skin unflatteringly yellowed in the lantern light.

"I don't know who this Megan feller is," Arthur tries, "real unkind of you to interrupt the wife and I's camping trip here."

"Real clever,Morgan," Fellowes emphasizes. "Old Milton said you'd be a comedian. Lucky us, right, McCallum? Wallace?" Arthur's retort is interrupted by a cough rising in his chest; he leans to the left to bark a few times towards the ground, before sitting back up, wheezing. A sad*stic grin splits the agent's severe face.

"He didn't tell us you were a dead man walking! Guess Dutch Van Der Linde decided his old right hand man was expendable, on account of the consumption," Arthur feels Sadie's fingers grasp his, her small act of solidarity. "Thought you'd come in to try for the money, one last hurrah before you croak?"

Arthur looks up at Fellowes, spitting into the sand. "You caught me," he says, then adds, nodding his head backwards to Sadie, "this one didn't have nothin' to do with it, though - she just guided me in here."

McCallum goes red, the cornsilk wisps of hair standing on end. "That's the Widow Adler; she killed near twenty men with Morgan at Sisika Penitentiary." Arthur and Sadie, both of their heads turned towards the Plains, catch each other's eye.

"Quite the nickname, 'the Widow Adler,'" Arthur mutters.

"Oh, shut up, Arthur," she hisses back, rolling her eyes.

Fellowes lowers to a squat, so that he's looking into Arthur's face, his pistol dangling casually from his hand. "You're going to swing, Morgan. Ain't no way out of it this time." As if to punctuate his point, Fellowes suddenly grips his gun, fires three shots into the belly of the canoe, rendering it - their only escape - useless.

The surge of energy Arthur usually feels in moments like this, the killing calm; they've all abandoned him, now. Lena's tear-filled eyes, behind the cold iron in her little prison, seem fixed, irreversible, two knives to his heart that nothing can dislodge.

*

I carried out the basket of wash after lunch, dogged by Signore Grassi, a snub-nosed shotgun holstered at his shoulder. He lit his pipe and mumbled "quickly, pet" over its mouthpiece, making the sum total of words he'd spoken aloud to me in two months around fifty. His talent was watching, ever watching, slackened jaw belying the alert eyes sunken into his face.

I felt my heart fluttering in my throat, a perceptible shaking in my fingers and wrists as I raised the first sheet to the line, affixing it with the wooden clothespins I'd stashed in my pinafore, temporarily disappearing from Grassi's view.

Reappearing again, with the second sheet, tossing it over and spreading it out, forcing the fabric through the first clothespin, the second. Only one sheet remained in the basket.

*

As the hours pass and day breaks, Arthur and Sadie's fingers and toes grow numb from their prolonged binding while the agents take turns guarding them, making use of their fire to cook; the wafting scents of rabbit and coffee torturous to the captives trying to sleep sitting up. Young Wallace, now emboldened by their restraints, stops in front of Arthur to wave one of the rabbit's legs inches from his face. "Smells good, don't it, Mr. Morgan?"

"A lot better than dog," gravels a familiar voice, before a shot rings out and the young man slumps forward into Arthur's lap, blood oozing from a fatal wound to the back of his skull. Arthur worms out of the way of the corpse as best he can while restrained, staring at John's grinning face in disbelief, then even more so at the two other agents, equally slumped, their backs pincushioned with throwing knives.

"Jesus, Marston!" He exclaims, in equal parts horror and appreciation. He and Sadie rise clumsily to their bound feet, leaning on each other for balance. John steps forward to cut through the ropes around their wrists, allowing them to take their knives to their ankle bindings themselves.

"Yeah," John says casually, surveying the bodies. "What do you reckon my bounty is here, now? Six thousand?"

"Won't get higher if we don't get caught," Arthur says, slightly short, grabbing Wallace under his arms and dragging his body into the bushes.

John persists. "But if wedidget caught, I think mine would be higher, now. Rowing into Blackwater to kill three Pinkerton agents, I mean-"

Sadie scoffs nearby, pulling the knives from McCallum's back and wiping them clean before handing them to John. "What a stupid thing to have a pissing contest about," she remarks, moving to put out the fire. "Either of you remember why we're here in the first place? Or am I after Miss Lena on my own in a couple hours?"

Arthur notices how high the sun's gotten, his stomach turning over for the briefest of moments before the calm washes over him.Hello, old friend. He seizes the reins of an agent's horse and swings himself into the saddle, suddenly spry. "John, finish hiding these bodies and row that boat closer into town. Mrs. Adler, on me." Sadie grins, happy to oblige the order, choosing the chestnut-coloured stallion remaining of the two. They gallop off, leaving John to grumble about being left as cleanup crew, hoping there's still enough time to make the brothel by noon.

*

I pulled the sheet out of the basket, slowly, deliberately, telling myself not to look at Grassi. But I did; his watery eyes fixated on me, unmoving. I felt the tears come and threw the sheet hastily over the line, biting my lip to keep the fear down. The past-noon sun burned down accusations of abandonment, loneliness, rejection. I pushed down the first clothespin, reached for, and fumbled the second, bent low to retrieve it from the grass, waited.

"Elena." I heard Grassi call in his gruff voice on the other side of the sheet, heard him manoeuvering himself out of his chair on the porch. I shut my eyes tightly, forcing the tears back as I rose to stand, girding myself for disappointment. Instead, as if by magic, the view to my right of the stone fence, the other houses on the street, the tall grasses and the water beyond; replaced by a blonde woman crouching in masculine dress, her face fierce and beautiful under the brim of her black hat.

She squeezed my shoulder, whispered kindly, "Arthur's right behind me," and pushed me to the ground, pulling down the sheet with one hand while aiming her pistol with the other. The clothespins flew into the air at the same time as her bullet, landing true, squarely within Grassi's chest. She fired again, a third time, until he slumped back into the chair, those watchful eyes still open, staring at nothing.

*

As La rosa rosa comes into view among the clutch of houses at the southern end of Blackwater, Arthur succumbs to a sudden coughing fit, the worst he'd had since the one at Wallace Station. Unable to speak, he gestures for Sadie to go ahead without him, his mouth buried into the crook of his elbow.

She stares for a moment, concerned, before dismounting, scrambling down the hill towards the house, sliding to cover behind its low stone perimeter. Arthur watches her chance a peek over the stone, and follows her gaze to the person hanging a sheet in a row of three.Lena. He'd forgotten momentarily about her cropped hair, glimpses shining black poking out from under the pink kerchief tied over her head.

Sadie vaults the stone fence just as his cough quietens, and he runs as fast as he dares towards the space she's just vacated, behind the wall. When he hears the first shots ring out, he conceals his hand in his jacket and leaps the glass-studded fence, crouching behind the sheets as they're pummeled with bullets, heading towards Lena, laying face down in the grass.

He reaches for her, grasps her upper arms and pulls her up to join him in a crouch, gently nudging her cheekbone with a curled knuckle, coaxing a smile onto her otherwise terrified face. "How's our girl doin'?" He whispers, peering through a gap in the sheets.Not good.

Sadie's arms are raised, staring down a well-dressed woman brandishing a shotgun. "Elena!" The woman roars, fixated on Sadie. "Come out, and no one else will be hurt." Arthur looks up, noticing some of the johns in various states of undress leaning out of the brothel's windows, quizzically, guns held loosely in their hands.

Lena moves to go, but he grabs at her wrist, shaking his head, his pained expression matching his troubled thoughts. Her face crumples in turn, nodding, pulling her wrist from his hand and stepping out from behind the sheet, hands up.

"There you are," the woman hisses, turning her gun to Lena momentarily, but back to Sadie once she reaches for her gun. She barks something in Italian, and Lena turns to Sadie, pleading, "don't go for your gun, Signora, please." From the gap, Arthur helplessly watches Sadie nod, step away from the discarded pistol in the grass, the shotgun trained once again on Lena.

He can't bear it, after being so close, pulls a revolver from its holster, tries to steel his resolve. As he pulls the sheet back and stands to shoot, the back door to the brothel simultaneously swings open, and a whor* jams a knife into the woman's side. Arthur lowers his gun, astonished, as Lena gasps, "Trixie?" The whor* smiles, reaches down to pull the kidskin boots from the woman's feet as her mouth gapes, for air, or salvation. She throws them to Lena, who catches them in a gathering motion to her chest, pulls them on.

"Run, Doc!" Trixie yells, winking, and Arthur, Sadie, and Lena dash for the stone wall, listening to her bellow, "What are you all looking at, gentlemen? I sure as hell know y'all have better things to do!" Their laughs and jeers punctuate the trio's escape over the wall, along the back fences of the neighbouring houses, towards the water, to freedom.

*

Arthur waits for the hammer to drop as they flee Blackwater, but none comes; and so it is that Lena is nuzzled into him inside his sheepskin-lined coat in the middle of the canoe, with John and Sadie paddling their way back to safety across the lake.

Near the shoreline, he kisses the crown of her head and her hand starts to roam, down from his shoulder towards his chest, finding the new hollow that the sickness had burrowed into him. She looks up to him, as if for an explanation, and in response a cough comes, low thumps in his chest that become wracking growls over the side of the boat. He returns to see her still staring, face set into an expression of concern. "I, uh," he starts, wiping his mouth, "I'm sick."

"Sick," she repeats, her eyes searching his until he looks away.

"Yeah," he tries to sound level, casual, but his voice is tight, "ain't too good."

The boat grinds onto the shore, interrupting their conversation as the foursome run for the horses tethered just up the natural embankment from the shoreline. Lena looks back to him, again, as he wordlessly lifts her onto the black-and-white mare he'd taken from Van Horn, the exertion bringing another swell of discomfort in his chest. The four ride in silence, avoiding the roads and heading into the dense forests near the timber company camp.

The horses break into a secluded clearing and Lena suddenly jumps from her saddle, landing in a crouch and seizing Priest's reins, forcing the party to a halt.

"Lena, what're you-"

"No, Arthur, what areyou?" She seethes, and John and Sadie turn curiously back to see what the commotion is. "What are we doing?"

He's deeply embarrassed to be shouted down in front of the others, raises his hands in a conciliatory fashion as he slides off of Priest's back. "I'm taking you back to the cabin," he reasons, gesturing vaguely north.

"You and me,weare going back," she says, pointing at him, and then herself in turn. He steps towards her, holds her shoulders, gives them a brief squeeze.

"Darlin', no," he soothes, "I can't have you catchin' what I got, and things have got so bad with the gang-" His explaining is broken off by a sudden slap to his cheek, troubling the bundle of injured nerves that Martelli'd left along his jaw. Sadie claps a hand to her mouth and John suppresses a laugh.

"That's not only your decision to make, Arthur Morgan!" Lena yells, driving another slap to his arm, a push to his chest. "We went through all of this, and for what? For what?" She hits him again, and again, beating at his chest and shoulders.

He tries hushing her, and sees a white rage burn within her pupils. "Hey, c'mon, now," he whisper-shouts, "you going to hit a sick man?"

The joke backfires, instantly. "What do they need with a sick man?" She screams again, tears spilling out from her fiery eyes. "I need you! And you need me!"

"She's right, Arthur," Sadie chimes in. "We managed to keep everyone alive the first time you left us, we can do it again." John nods, his wicked grin at Arthur's humiliation giving way to a soft encouragement.

"Take some time to yourself, Morgan, for chrissakes," he counsels. Arthur looks between them and Lena, whose own face is softening, a gentle smile returning. She steps forward, taking his hand in hers, pulling it to her chin, against her lips for a kiss. He stands there, uncertain, his heart and his sense of duty at odds once again.

Sadie drops from her saddle, approaches the pair. "I'll come and find you if things get real bad," she says quietly, giving him a knowing look that this is what he needs to hear. He draws a hasty map to Lena's cabin up from Wallace Station, chokes out, "this is where I'll be." Sadie smiles and nods, takes the proffered page from his fingertips.

"Bye then, Arthur," she returns to Bob, mounting up.

"Thank you," he says, his voice unable to climb past a whisper.

"Yeah, yeah," John smiles, waving him off and saluting them both before putting the spurs to Old Boy, Sadie crashing into the woods after him on her horse. Arthur and Lena listen for their retreating hoofbeats for a moment, until they're absorbed by the forest, and then it's just their hearts beating, together, after so long.

*

Lena clings to Arthur's back on Priest's saddle, the riderless mare trotting dutifully behind, approaching the cabin. He slides down from the saddle slowly, days of tiredness catching up to him as he helps her down, pausing with his hands resting against Priest's flanks. "Time for some rest, amore," Lena says kindly, her rage in the clearing long past, tethering the horses to the hitching post and leading him into the cabin. She has her back turned, looking into his face and smiling as they go through the front door, but his expression belies the destruction that's still there, the tattered books covering every surface.

Lena turns, takes in the wreckage. "Oh." He hears her exhale, frozen in place.

"I'll-" he's interrupted by a short cough, "I'll take care of this, darlin', you wait outside." He rests his hands protectively on her shoulders, runs them up her neck and back down, pressing his thumbs gently against her collarbones. She whirls around, stroking his jaw with the backs of her fingers.

"No, amore, it's all right," she says, "please, lie down." He thinks to protest but it's so much easier for his ailing, exhausted body to oblige. From the bed, he watches her leave the cabin, return with a few logs and some twigs for kindling. She arranges them in the fireplace and gathers a handful of the torn paper from around her feet, hesitating for just a moment before shoving them under the twigs, lighting a match and sticking it in. She moves through the cabin, meticulously lifting every last scrap of paper, tearing the book bindings in two and feeding them to the growing flames.

When the cabin is cleared of paper, the daylight, then sunset, gone from the windows, Lena seizes the kneesocks and pulls them down and off her legs, throwing them into the fire one after another. With a growing intensity, she pulls the pinafore over her head, balls it together and shoves it in after the socks. She lets out a single sob as she rips off the dingy white shirt and tosses it in, standing naked before the fireplace, an arm across her chest. Her free hand tears the kerchief from her head, but Arthur's eyes widen, and he leaps to her, grasping her wrist and turning her to look at him.

"That's how I found you," he says quietly, taking the square of pink cloth from her and placing it into his pocket before returning his hand to her face, pulling her into an embrace, his hands trailing down her spine. She moves to kiss him, but he hesitates, staring at her sadly.

She nods, leads him back to the bed instead, gestures for him to lie down, crawls in next to him. He strokes her cheek, brushes the blunted ends of dark hair out of her face.

"Will you do somethin' for me tomorrow, darlin'?" He whispers, pulling the quilt over her body, tucking it under her.

"Anything," she whispers back, brown eyes fixed on his blue ones.

His heart rises in his throat, and the words come out in a rush. "I need you to come with me to see Hosea's grave. I can't go by myself." Her eyes fill with tears at the sad news, she nods emphatically, shaking them from her lashes.

"Yes." She settles into him, her wet cheek safely in the hollow of his chest, where they each belong.

Chapter 25: xxv. Defying the Gods: Wild hope

Chapter Text

Despite leaving in the early morning, Arthur and Lena don't arrive at Hosea's gravesite outside of Saint Denis until close to dusk. Lena's not nearly as skilled a rider, and the new horse - the black-and-white mare she had dubbed Chiazze - while a gentle mount, is huge under her small body.

And, she'd thought to have them stop and gather flowers along the way: a cheerful bunch of purple aster, morning glories, and pink oleander for Lenny, and an all-white bouquet for Hosea; puffs of fragrant viburnum, wild carrot tops, moon flowers, lily of the valley. Arthur's appreciative of her thoughtfulness and her knowledge; the officious sounding Latin names of the blooms as she cuts or pulls them from the ground distracting him from the heaviness in his heart.

Arthur lays down the flamboyant bouquet in front of Lenny's grave, first, mumbling, "I'm sorry, kid. Things should've turned out differently for you." He pauses for a moment, looking down at the modest headstone, breathing deeply and remembering the well-mannered man who had nonetheless made himself an indispensable outlaw: level-headed, intelligent, easy-going, a good shot, and fundamentally, already at his young age the kind of gang member - the kind of man - Arthur himself had aspired to be. He clears his throat, feels Lena's hand against the small of his back, comforting him. He takes the second bouquet from her, moves to stand in front of Hosea's headstone.

It was why they'd come, and yet. Seeing the nameHOSEA MATTHEWSin plain type under three letters, so benign when separate but conspiring together to mean something more, something heartbreakingly final:RIP. He had been standing in shock so long that Lena returns to him once again, a guiding hand on his arm, propelling him towards the simple marker to lay down the flowers. "Why don't you talk to him?" She encourages softly as the flowers are rested against the headstone, meeting Arthur's eyes, and then looking back to the grave.

He clears his throat again, holds open a hand as if he were merely talking with Hosea over the fire or at the barrail. "I did what you said, old man, here's Lena," Arthur begins, wrapping his other arm around her, holding her to his side, an anchor. "'Course, you know I didn't go to her right away." His voice falters, the open hand clenches into a fist, short fingernails nonetheless biting into his palm.

"I thought by staying I'd be protecting you, all the good that did. Everything went rotten from that bank job, Hosea. Dutch has gone off and goddamn do we need you back balancing him out. And it nearly ruined everything with this one, too." He clutches Lena to himself, the scent of the lilies of the valley overpowering in his nose, provoking a slight cough. "And there's no time left. I got it all wrong, Hosea. I-" Arthur's voice breaks. He releases Lena and sinks to his knees, the name on the grave blurred by the tears in his eyes. "I'm sorry," he sobs out, reaching for a handful of dirt, of anything that might connect him to the man he'd thought of as a father; better than any other, blood or adoptive, that he'd known.

Arthur feels the tears being brushed from his cheeks, Lena's cool forehead pressed against his own. Just as she'd done when he couldn't feel anything, so too she did when he felt too much. "No," she says, firmly but sweetly, "No, amore mio. It's your good heart that followed Hosea, that stayed. The heart I love." She withdraws her forehead from his, exchanges it for her lips, pressing a delicate kiss onto his hairline. He remains kneeling, pulls her standing figure to him, burrows his head under her chin. Her hand travels to the base of his neck, squeezes once. He looks up to her, reverent, and she smiles at him, her own face wet from crying.

They leave the graves, hand in hand, walking the horses around town to an abandoned, blownout building by the train tracks, where they make to camp for the night on the second floor, nestled into each other.

When Arthur awakens the next morning, in the damp hot air alone, he feels a clutch of panic in his chest, starts coughing profusely, reaching frantically about himself as if Lena were a dropped earring, a missing quarter.

He leaps down from the platform, rushing to saddle up Priest and feeling heartsick that Chiazze is also gone, when he spots the docile horse, then Lena, riding on the train bridge towards them, Chiazze's saddlebags bulging. "What the hell, Lena," he admonishes her, to which she only looks quizzically back. "I thought something had happened to you." He forces a hand to his chest, trying to quell his heartbeat.

"I left a note," she says, placing a hand over his own. He feels himself relax, the anger and fear still surging through him starting to ebb. "You didn't see it? It's up there." He squints at the half-floor where they'd slept, sees a glint of white paper folded on the bedroll.

"Well, what's it say, darlin'? Can't exactly climb back up there at this particular moment, on account of the heart attack."

She smirks, waving her hand, "so dramatic, Arthur," to which he rolls his eyes, grinning in spite of himself; she, the most dramatic woman he'd ever met. "I went to find Martelli, to make sure he doesn't bother us, anymore. I gave him what he wanted, the house, the money." The anger, which had nearly dissipated, flares in his veins once again.

"Dammit, Lé, that was way too dangerous," he grasps at her wrist, protectively, his heart aching, "and you gave it all up."For me. It's unsaid, but she reads it in his expression, smiles, strokes his chin with her fingertips.

"Not all," she pushes her fingers into his hair, rests her head against his chest. "As part of our agreement, he gave me La rosa rosa. I can give a much better life to those girls than the Grassi.

"And-" she continues, pulling a wad of cash from her bag, brandishing it before Arthur's nose. "He let me take the books. Several of them were first editions. So I fenced them." Arthur's eyes widen at the money, and then look back at her, impressed. "Cafoni illetterati." She makes a hand gesture, jutting her chin out, and then, to his delight, she giggles.

"What's 'cafoni'?" He asks her, prodding her stomach with a knuckle, trying to eke out another laugh.

"Peasants, they're peasants!" She does laugh, again, a brief shriek as she squirms in his embrace.

"Hey now, I'm a peasant," he mock-scolds, and she tucks away the money to grab his hand in her own, kissing it. "My peasant." She forces her slender fingers through his broad, strong ones, a part of his body the sickness hadn't yet touched. "There was just one I couldn't find," she says, slightly rueful, "It must have been at the cabin."

Arthur thinks back to his memories of the Bronte library, both fraught with fear, worry, and sadness, and then remembers - the book he'd stolen away. "I have this one," he says, almost sheepishly, pulling it from his satchel and holding it out to her,Vergiliostamped out in gold lettering on the cover.

She stares between the book and his face, as though he'd performed an impossible feat of magic trickery, and then leans in, her lips pressing firmly against his. He returns the kiss for a mere moment before pulling back, his eyes full of alarm and upset, wiping at his mouth as if the motion would distract the sickness away from Lena. She persists, her face full of kindness, of benevolence, of love; coaxing the arm away from his mouth. "It's been so long since we've lived, amore," she says softly, her mouth brushing against his own. "So let's live."

Trembling, he acquiesces, and they kiss, fully, before making to return to the cabin, to live while they can.

*

In the intervening weeks, under Lena's care and cooking, Arthur fills out a little, coughs less. He watches from the window as Lena cleans up the garden, feeds the chickens, returned from their sabbatical at a farm in Strawberry.

Their old routine from the summer largely returns, accommodating for Arthur's ailing lungs. Any fits are met with her infinite patience and unspoken kindnesses, like a hand to his back or a poured glass of water, a wipe of the spittle away from the corners of his mouth. She takes to smoking outside after discovering it irritates him, kissing his cheek and handing him his coffee and slice of bread before heading out with her own, cigarette primed between her two fingers in the same hand as her cup, so that she can clutch a beloved book in the other.

He makes for the window one morning to watch her, to try and catch a glimpse of her holding the cup and cigarette in the way he adores, only have his heart drop to witness her crying into her sleeve, instead; an act deeply intimate and raw, so that he feels immediately ashamed having seen it. He pretends to be asleep when she returns, feigning awake with the feeling of her lips on his cheekbone, no trace of her having cried at all on her face.

But mostly, they are happy; they laugh easily, touch each other, often, fit their bodies into the same chaste, loving configurations as they had then. One morning, they wake to see snow frosting the windowsills and blanketed on the ground, weighing down the pine branches into icy caverns for the animals taken by surprise at the sudden turn in weather.

"It's freezing," Arthur announces the obvious as she returns from the logpile with arms full of firewood, shaking snowflakes from her short hair. Lena builds the fire to a comfortable roar before sitting on the edge of the bed, wrapping her fingers around her coffee cup.

"It's not cold, Arthur, it's warm," she strokes his arm, his thigh over the blanket. "We're back home."

"In Sicily?" He grunts, smiling at her touch. She nods. "And what're we doing there?"

"We're going to the bar, to get coffee."

He looks down at his cup, still half-full. "So glad we travelled to experience a different kind of life." Shetsksat him, batting his shoulder with a gentle slap.

"OK, OK," Arthur laughs. "I go to the bar, I say hello. How do I say hello?"

"Ciao," she smiles. He opens his journal to a blank page, hands it and a pencil to her. "Write it for me." In large block letters, she carefully writes, C-I-A-O, and then runs her finger under it, repeats the word.

Arthur's brow rumples in consternation, and he squints at her in disbelief. "Ain't no way those letters say 'chow', Lena, are you f*ckin' with me?" She lets out a squawk of laughter, kicking up her legs and leaning back against him; he can't help but join in.

They laugh and laugh, but his soon turns to a barking cough, one he turns away from her to try and settle. He feels her tentative hand on his back, her fingers brushing his hair out of the way of his face. "'S'OK, Lena," he forces out between coughs, a menacing rattle in his chest, "it's just this damn cold weather."

Her face is troubled for a moment, before she alights from the bed, seizing the kettle from the fireplace and making for outside. Soon, both kettles are on the fire, a third large pot bubbling with water on the woodstove. Lena drags in more firewood in three rounds, feeds the hearth until the crackling of the logs becomes a static, a constant to join the boiling water on the stove. Into the water she feeds anise pods, dried eucalyptus, a candied orange peel and translucent piece of ginger. After pushing Arthur's coat against the bottom of the door and her own into the gap between planks next to the bed, the air in the small cabin begins to get pleasantly hot, the steam gradually filling the air spicy, fragrant, and welcome in his mouth and lungs.

Lena soon peels the sweater from her arms and throws it over one of the chairs, her hair curling into damp ringlets against her neck. Arthur's own hair crinkles, and he too finds the overshirt and jeans too much, removing his union suit from the waist up, chest bare and glistening with sweat. She reaches a hand out to him, swirls her fingers in the golden hairs over his sternum. They're panting, flushed from the heat, air growing deliciously heavy and pressing down upon them both.

He mutters, "take this off" and paws lazily at her shirt, and she obliges him, goes beyond, stripping down to her all-white combination, that too, sticking to her dampened skin. He gasps as a deep breath finds him, his first in he doesn't know how long. Another breath, another rush of energy to his heart, mind, and extremities; his chest, miraculously, finally still. He dashes from the bed to the washbasin, coughs up something viscous from deep within him, spits it there. He dips his tin cup into the concoction on the stove, takes a mouthful, spits it out as well. Arthur feels Lena's hand return to his back at the same time as a third, deep breath brings back some semblance of his strength, his sense of himself.

Enough strength to turn to Lena hungrily, catching her unawares, to kiss her deeply, tasting her remarkably cool mouth in the hot room, to lift her from the floor. Enough to toss her onto the bed and rip away her underclothes, kissing a line from her breasts on down to the thatch of hair that beckons him between her legs; enough to hold himself over her as she runs her hands over his shoulders, his biceps, forearms, tensed and strong.

Enough of himself to bend down and whisperI love youin her ear. To say,Lena, Lé, I love you. To shout it;my god, my Lena, I love you. And to accept it when she screams it back,te amo, Arthur, the pair of them completely undone, utterly each other's.

Chapter 26: xxvi. Dido's Lament: A conversation, a goodbye (reprise)

Chapter Text

Arthur feelswell, feels alive. He relishes the sweetness of untroubled breaths; of food tasted without sputtering; of lying on his back without feeling the sloshing of fluid in his lungs, Lena straddling him, her clever hands roaming his chest and shoulders. They prowl the room, stalking each other by turns only to collapse together, again and again.

The daylight ebbs into inky night, snow still falling softly outside the cabin's windows. Lena lets the fire burn low before tipping another log into the hearth, in the very early morning, returning the room to a comfortable warmth; the steam subsiding. She comes back to the bed, to him, and stifles a yawn. "I'm keepin' you up, darlin'," Arthur purrs, marvelling at his own, low voice, at his seemingly boundless energy.

"It's all right, amore." Lena puts her wrist to her mouth, suppressing another yawn, and Arthur chuckles, his eyes crinkled with happiness.She must be exhausted, caring for me, worrying, he thinks, stroking her hair behind her ear, her soft cheek cradled in his palm. She nods deeply in time with her eyelids sliding closed, and then lifts her head with a jerk, eyes wide and startled.

Arthur laughs again, gently, easing her cheek into the pillow, sliding his hand out from in between. "Sleep, darlin'," he whispers, and she yields, nestling into the quilt he drapes over her, falling instantly into rest.

He scribbles in his journal as quietly as he can until the first glow of daylight creeps into the cabin's eastern windows, shines on the cast iron pan hanging above the washbasin. On a free page, he writes,I owe you a fish dinner, Lena. See you later this morning -A; tears it out, folds the paper and tucks it into her open hand, adds a daisy she'd dried from their trip to the gravesites. Arthur pulls on his clothes and boots, retrieves his guns from the chest and coat from its position keeping out the draft against the threshold, perches his hat on his head. He eases the door open and slips out, trying to keep the cool air from touching Lena's bare arms, her serene, sleeping face, outside of the quilt.

As he makes for Priest in the paddock at the rear of the cabin, crunching through the snow, the first spike of cold air hits his lungs, and he coughs in surprise.Normal to cough in this dry air, he thinks, dismissing the light fluttering in his chest. Arthur mounts up and eases Priest on towards the stream, figuring it's fast moving enough to stay liquid in the sudden winter temperatures.

Another spike drives down his throat, and he gulps for a breath of air to dislodge it, only inviting the feeling renewed, more icy air skewering his lungs, making every breath an agony. The fluttering quickly turns into a sinister, repetitive thump; one that provokes repeated, painful coughs. He thinks to dismount Priest and hitch him to a tree, heaving a desperate breath.

A roaring bark leaves his mouth; bright, red blood spatters across the untouched snow. He feels a breach in his chest, something devastating and conclusive. As confident as he'd been in his seeming return to health in the cabin, he's doubly confident in his knowledge, now; he's going to die. Wheezing, Arthur collapses into the galaxy of red spots he'd expelled, closing his eyes, shedding a tear for the reality he'd left, the man he'd been, mere moments before.

*

"Arthur?" His eyelids slide open at the shout of his name, shutting immediately again against the bright day. "Arthur? Ar-" He hears a gasp, and then a drowned, "oh."

Lena's beside him, on her knees, touching trembling hands to his face and chest, rubbing at his arms, repeating the sound, "oh." Behind her, he can just make out the golden coat of Priest, his reins dangling loose and broken - chewed - from his bridle. He lurches up from the snow and falls back down, a dry heave lifting his torso from the ground unbidden. Lena strokes his hair, presses a furtive kiss to his icy forehead.

"I can do it," she says, desperately, "we'll bring you back and put on the kettles again, I can try-"

"No, darlin'," he says, hoarsely, forcing his eyes open, lifting his hand to her tear-stained face. "Ain't no fixin' this." She sobs into his palm as he continues, labouring breaths between sentences, "You tried, love. Now I just need you to be there with me."

She holds his hand in both of hers, nods against it, the hot tears spilling from her eyes a welcome balm running up his arm, warming his face. Lena helps him up to sitting, gives him a nip of brandy from a flask. It irritates his throat but warms him, nonetheless, aides him in standing up, leaning on her shoulder. They walk back to the cabin in slow, painstaking increments, pausing frequently for Arthur to sip from the flask, to cough. Next to him, Lena stands upright, her chin thrust forward as if to defy his illness, the unbroken flow of tears down her face the only indicator of her breaking heart.

When they return Priest to the paddock and make their way around to the front of the cabin, they're greeted by Sadie and her horse, her hat in her hand, face grave. Lena's mouth hangs open, her eyebrows darting into furious slashes on her forehead. Sadie holds up a hand to her, motioning to speak first, but the words don't find her, right away. Lena, Arthur; they wait.

"John's dead," Sadie says finally, croaking it out, her eyes squeezed shut against the horrible truth. Arthur's stomach fizzes, roils, and then just feels absent. A part missing from his body. The sound, again, from Lena; "oh."

Sadie continues. "The Pinkertons have Abigail, Arthur," she says, her open hand saying what she can't.I wouldn't have come back for anything less. Arthur nods, stifling a cough with a puff of his cheeks, just as Lena says, strangled, throwing a protective arm in front of him, "he can't help."

"Miss Lena, I-" Sadie takes the pair in, the sickly pallor of Arthur's face, Lena's quivering upset, her reddened cheeks threatening frostbite. "I wouldn'tve come if I thought I had another choice."

"He needs to stay," Lena asserts weakly, her arm thrown across his chest turning over, her face nuzzling into his side, weeping. Arthur seeks out her chin with his finger, pulls her out from his side to look at him, his eyes full of sadness, of love. "Abigail is John's girl, remember," he soothes her, cupping her cheeks, "he helped me save my girl, after all." Sadie turns from them, busying herself with Bob's stirrups, to give them privacy.

Lena emits a single sob, burying her face into his chest. "I can't deny you your good heart, amore," she says, her voice tiny in his coat. Then, a whisper; "I'm terrified of the quiet life I thought I wanted."

"You have such a long, happy life to live." He cries, now, too, clutching her to him. She presses into him before pulling back, drawing his face to hers for a kiss, their last.

She breathes, "You are my happiness, Arthur," holding his gaze before she steps away from him, pressing her fingers to her mouth, her other hand raised in a feeble wave. She withdraws into the cabin; out of sight.

*

I can't deny you your good heart, amore- Lena's words to him - ring empty in Arthur's ears on the ride back to Beaver Hollow. Abigail was saved, shot herself free of Agent Milton just after the Pinkerton revealed Micah's betrayal. The absence he'd felt since the news of John's death burns alongside the renewed sickness in his lungs. The only goodness he can see is Jack getting to grow up with his mother, and he trusts that Sadie can get Abigail to him. The rest is just blind fury, spurring him onwards to the camp, to confront Micah.

The fury clutches at his ailing heart, threatening to consume him completely, as he arrives at the camp, pulls his revolver on Micah, who points his own gun in turn. "Abigail's alive, Dutch, if you'd cared at all," he shouts, his eyes trained on the blond man in front of him. "Milton says our rat's right here, if you still care 'bout that, too." Men Arthur doesn't recognize back Micah up, and Dutch screams empty platitudes about loyalty and betrayal between them both; nothing more than static in Arthur's ears, a stranger's ranting in a foreign language that he swears he used to speak. Arthur tightens his grip around the revolver, resoluteness growing within him.

But then, a voice rings out; John's. John is alive. A strange serenity washes over Arthur, stills his shuddering breaths, breaks up his dark thoughts. Micah ceases to matter; Dutch, to matter.This is something I can do; keep this family safe, he thinks,when I've run out of time to have my own.He feels a last lurch in his heart -my good heart- for Lena, before scrambling up the mountainside away from Micah, Dutch, the approaching Pinkertons, urging John away from him, to reunite with Abigail and Jack at Copperhead Landing. When John resists, he places his own hat on his dark hair, thrusts his satchel at him; "it'd mean a lot to me," Arthur manages, and sends his brother off into the night, towards a future he'll never have himself.

The cough that he's been staving off returns, vengefully, and he feels that same breach he did in the early morning, a searing rift in his chest. Arthur manages to hold off Dutch and Micah on the mountain ledge, again, their words meaningless to him, until, in flight of the encroaching Pinkertons, they leave him.

Arthur feels the sickness wash over him, a constricting of his lungs and heart, and pulls himself closer to the ledge, his body collapsing, head lolling to the east; a gentle repose.

The birds chirping, the sweet reminder of a floured kiss in the early morning, a soft kerchief whispering between his roughened fingers, the brilliant sunrise cresting the treetops, a final breath escaping his lips; each a steady refrain, a prayer for Lena.

Live. Live.

Live.

Chapter 27: xxvii. Finale: The in-between (epilogue)

Chapter Text

Ten years later.

John squints again at the scribbled map in the mid-morning light: a crinkled mess of curved pencil lines, a hastily-drawn tree, an "X". The map lacked all of Arthur's usual evocativeness with pencil and paper; as though he'd never wanted Sadie Adler to use it in the first place. But use it, she had. Two years ago, she'd pressed the map into John's hands, almost as an afterthought, before heading off to South America.I know it was the right damn thing to do.Sadie'd said, avoiding John's eyes, grimacing.But I couldn't bring myself to go back there again. Maybe you can.

Now, John's the one who's stalling, shifting his weight between foot to foot on the sunken front porch of the small cabin, scratching under his hat - Arthur's old hat - at the hair on the nape of his neck. He co*cks his wrist, exhaling forcefully, rocks on his heels and then rolls decisively forward on the balls of his feet, provoking contact between his knuckles and the cabin's front door, its dark green paint flaking. He knocks two more times, lightly, and hears the creaking of floorboards from within.

The door swings open, revealing a well-kept, if slightly shabby, interior: a fireplace, crackling invitingly; books piled on the floor and lining the mantel, several open on the small table; all manner of dried and drying plants, strung up along the crossbeams. And, in front of it all, before him; Lena Bronte, clutching a woolen shawl around her shoulders, her brown eyes widening in surprise. A brilliant smile brightens her face, and then fades almost immediately, eyes moving from John's hat to his face.

"Oh, Signore Marston," she holds a hand to her mouth, grabbing at the doorframe with the other for support. Her voice is husky, unpracticed in English. "I'm so sorry, I thought you'd died. But, oh." She shakes her head quickly, dislodging an unwelcome tear from her eye. "I mean, I'm glad you're alive."

She hastily brushes another tear from her cheek as John tries to joke, "Sure seems that way, Miss Bronte." The words lay thickly between them, and he takes a surreptitious glance at her hand, ringless, ensuring she is stillMissand notMrs.

They stand in silence as they take each other in, never more than strangers, at best. John's broader in the shoulders and slightly fuller in the face but still slim, his hair cropped, scars white slashes into his dark, neat beard. Lena's taken on colour, skin kissed by the sun; her hair prematurely peppered with strands of stark grey. She catches John squinting at it, and offers a rueful smile, seizing the end of her braid. "After he left, it did this."

John reddens, deeply uncomfortable. He clears his throat. "It's why I'm here, actually," he says, staring at the toes of his boots. "We're headed on up to the grave today, if you wanted to come?" Lena's eyes shine at the mention of that damning word,grave, but she quells the tears, mutters "We?" with eyebrows furrowed, bending sideways to look around John's torso at a young man, waiting on the seat of John's small wagon, nose in a book.

"Jack!" John shouts, and the boy starts, carefully thumbing his place before looking towards the cabin, waving. "Hi, Zia Lena," he says, shyly, his voice not quite at its final register. "Do you remember me?"

A look of astonishment crosses her face as she approaches the wagon, meeting Jack as he descends from his perch. "Of course I do," she says in wonderment, grasping the boy's face and kissing him chastely on each cheek. "Come sei bel', how you've grown."

Jack looks from Lena to his father, who nods. "Are you coming with us today?" he asks, and she inclines her head after a beat, cupping the boy's cheek before striding back to the cabin, retrieving her coat and locking the front door. She takes John's proffered hand to help her into Jack's seat in the wagon, the boy relegated to the back, and John whips the horses forth from the driver's seat, heading east.

*

The day is pleasant, if not the company. Lena is silent on the ride as they pass brilliant fields of poppies, columns of vibrant hollyhocks, clusters of sky-blue forget-me-nots. The landscape shifts from alpine flowers to the woods of the eastern Grizzlies, awash in the fiery colours of autumn.

Jack is reading again, so it's left to John to try and fill the silence. He tells her about the homestead, Beecher's Hope. "Abigail's there now, my, uh, my wife, suppose you never met her. We got twelve head of cattle, some sheep, chickens... I can't grow anything worth a damn, but guess I got the rest of my life to figure it out." He rambles as Lena's eyes stay focused on the road ahead; if she's listening, she gives no indication.

"Was Arthur who made that possible for us. Made sure we had the money to set us up, paid off our debts." John catches himself, realizes who he's talking to. "Not sure it's a life we deserve - I deserve, anyway - but I'm real grateful for it."

Lena scoffs, her first sound in an hour, startling John. She looks over at him, eyes rolling. "Arthur is the same way," she huffs, impersonating her lover, "'I don't deserve this, I don't deserve nothing.' Rompicoglion'! Dutch did that to you both, you're not even Catholics! Arthur feels so guilty-"

"Arthurwasthe same way," John reminds kindly, gently, stopping her mid-tirade. "Hefeltguilty." Something in Lena collapses, she sinks back into the seat, staring down at the ground.

"I know," she says quietly, looking back to John, "I knew, that day in the snow. But it all happened so quickly, and then he left so quickly; it was easier to pretend he was coming back. To live in the beautiful in-between." John's heart aches for her; her decade of loneliness, living a hopeful fiction.

He notices where they are, pulls the wagon over to the side of the road. "Might be best to take it by foot from here, Miss Bronte." John climbs from the wagon and circles around to help her down, gives Jack a hand as well. They walk together around the stone ledge of the mountainside, John guiding them, until they come upon it; the headstone in front of a stunning mountain view, swathed in flowers. Lena is astonished, frozen in place.

John clears his throat, says softly, "Our friend Charles did this, buried him." She approaches the grave unsteadily, hand outstretched, tracing the carved letters on the wooden cross, running her fingers along the flower petals.

"It's beautiful," she murmurs, drawing her lips in between her teeth, eyes filling with tears. John nudges Jack, indicates for the boy to join her. He moves tentatively towards Lena, patting an awkward hand on her shoulder. She leans into Jack, already dwarfed by him, and Jack puts his arm around the shoulders of the woman who'd comforted him so many times, returning the favour.

John steps forward, patting his son's back, gently squeezing Lena's arm. She looks at him, a radiant smile spiting the tears on her face. "These are the mountains I see from my cabin," she says, bittersweet, gesturing at the view. "We've been looking at them together all this time."

"Ain't that something," John says kindly, returning her smile, pulling a torn piece of paper from his bag. "I wanted you to see this, too." He hands her the page, from Arthur's journal, a simple drawing of a young woman looking over the mountains, a cigarette and coffee cup clutched in one hand.

She stares at the paper, holding it suddenly away from her to keep her tears from falling on it. "It's me," she whispers, tracing her finger under Arthur's label,LENA. "Thank you."

They stand together until the sun moves over their heads, and then make for Lena's cabin, a comfortable silence on their way back. Lena jumps from the wagon, clutching the page of the journal in her hands. Confronted with the cabin, her shoulders noticeably slump.

John's face falls, looking at her small frame heading for the door. "You don't have to stay here by yourself, you know," he calls from the wagon, moving to follow her. "Why don't you come, stay with us?"

Lena looks back, shakes her head. "I don't need your pity, Signore Marston. You have your own family. Thank you for taking me today." She's clipped, formal, unexpected after their shared moment at Arthur's grave. She turns forward and moves into the cabin, deliberately. Something about it feels wrong to John, and he follows her in after a brief knock.

She whirls around, setting a bottle on the table. Gin. "C'mon, Miss Bronte," he cajoles, pulling his gaze away from the bottle and towards her. "I know Jack would love it. He loves to read, if you ain't noticed."

Lena smiles, in spite of herself. "I noticed." John smiles back, feeling her resistance ebb.

"He needs someone around who's all educated, like you. His mother and me, we ain't exactly geniuses. He wants to be a writer. Think it's all them stories you told him." Lena's smile broadens, but then looks doubtfully at her belongings. John presses on, "We got a wagon, don't we?" He steps for the door, leans out, bellows for Jack to help her pack her things.

*

And so it is that Zia Lena becomes a fixture at Beecher's Hope.

She creates daily lessons for Jack, teaching him snippets of Latin and Greek, and the stories that come with them; epic poems, hero journeys, gods, goddesses, and monsters. She encourages him to write, and even helps stage a few of his plays; building set pieces and crafting costumes from old clothes, playing his old crone, his vengeful goddess, his mustachioed villain with the sobriety and vigour of a guild actor.

They build fires on the lawn some nights to drink and sing around, especially when gang members visit. Lena drinks in their stories of Arthur, laughing easily at the yarns they spin about his legendary cantankerousness, smiling proudly when they talk of his kindnesses. One night, Uncle slurs out, "hey, why'd they call you Zia Lena, anyhow?"

"'Zia' is like you," she explains, sitting next to Abigail with the woman's head on her shoulder. "Like an Aunt."

Uncle guffaws, slaps his knee. "Well how 'bout that," he crows, "too bad you're old Arthur's girl, 'else you an I could've got married. Uncle and Zia."

John scowls immediately, reaching over to knock the hat off of Uncle's head. "Oh, don't be disgusting, you old pervert." Lena only laughs, clutching Abigail's arm, brushing tears from her cheeks.

When she's not with Jack, Lena cooks beautifully for the Marstons with the help of the vegetables she coaxes from the hard-scrabble earth at the farm; potatoes, zucchini, cabbages, hard squashes to help them over winters. She shows John how to pull the squashes and store them under the beds to toughen up their skins, creates thick, hearty soups from them when winter comes, the family huddled together by the fireplace, listening to Jack read from a new short story or poem.

All manner of farm scrapes and injuries meet her careful ministrations; poultices, tinctures. She walks Abigail through the nearby stand of trees to forage for wild ingredients, their tinkling laughter catching on the breeze, meeting John out in the fields.

For all of their ups and downs when Arthur was alive, she and John form an easy friendship over shared cigarettes on the porch, after everyone else has succumbed to sleep. They frequently talk about Arthur, and this unusually cool summer night, nearly a year into Lena's stay with the Marstons, is no exception.

"He was so handsome," she remembers, blowing smoke through her lips, "but more than that, so good. A good man." John starts, remembers something he'd seen digging through Jack's bookcase the night before.

"I should show you something I found last night, hold on." He creeps back into the house and then returns, holding a leather-bound book. He flips through the pages before darting a finger in to the correct place, turning the book to Lena. She descends from her usual perch on the railing, moves near the porchlight to read a passage, the last one before the handwriting turns from Arthur's lively cursive to John's formal, underlined script:

There's anAngelsleeping beside me, woman who saved my life, now more times than I can count. Never thought I'd be ready to entertain the idea of spending the rest of my days with someone else. Still some of this world that's mine - ours - for the taking.

I'm going to ask her to marry me.

John's smiling at her as she reads, but when she looks up to meet his eyes, her face is broken. "Oh, hang on, Lena-" he says, they, beyond the formality of last names, now "-I didn't mean to upset you."

She holds a hand to her mouth, forcing the book away, pressing it into John's chest. "I couldn't, ah," she pants, drawing desperate breath, "I couldn't fix it, John."

He pats her shoulder, awkwardly. "No one expected you to," he says softly. A sob forces its way out of her mouth.

"It hurts too much," she removes John's hand from her shoulder, squeezes it. After an eternity, the two standing together, she says, "I'm ready to go with him."

John squints at her in the dim light, before his eyes widen, raising a cautioning hand. "Hey, now, stop this foolishness, you can't do that." But even as he says it, he sees the weight being lifted from her shoulders, her certainty. She'd been walking crookedly, burdened with grief, and he notices it only in its sudden absence. They stare at each other, a woeful understanding between them. John rubs his face with his palm.

"I'm going to have to get used to Abigail's cooking again," he jokes sadly, and they both laugh, Lena gently headbutting him in the chest. His voice breaks, trembles, "You're going to break Jack's heart," and more tears fall from her eyes.

"Just tell him I left for awhile," she says, holding John's exposed wrist, his arms crossed in front of him. "It's easier to live in the in-between." She catches his gaze, a tear forming in his jade green eye. Her nimble fingers reach up to brush the tear away, soothing, "Mio fratello." She crowns John with the name, stretching to brush her lips against his cheek before releasing him, walking to Chiazze, pulling herself up into the saddle.

Lena extends a hand to John, a final wave, before riding off, purposefully, into the night.

End.

Chapter 28: Coda: Notes on Vows of Returning

Chapter Text

The more I wrote this story, the more resistant I was to make it a tragedy. But the whole idea of the story was borne from tragedy. I was originally moved by the operatic elements of the original RDR2 story; of Arthur's tragic hero's journey. I thought a lot about what his long absences might mean for a woman Arthur'd promised to come back to, over and over. Both of these ideas, a woman left alone and the grand themes of opera, I was trying to play with and off of each other in this story.

There's an unbelievably beautiful aria from the world of opera called "Dido's Lament," from an English-language operaDido and Aeneas, by Purcell, inspired by Italian poet Virgil'sAeneid. (Seriously, look up the Annie Lennox/London City Voices version of this song -stunning). The song is sung by Queen Dido to her lover Aeneas, as she kills herself; "Remember me, but ah! / Forget my fate." As I read more aboutDido and Aeneas, I recognized the bare bones of the story I was trying to tell, and these movements in the opera form the pre-titles of each chapter (e.g. "The Royal Court", "Troubles in Carthage", etc.).

The story's title, "Vows of Returning," is from a sea chanty in the opera (it's referenced in the story's description, you may have seen!). I gave a little nod toDido and Aeneasin the story that Jack tells to Arthur after returning from the Bronte house - as a classicist, it's definitely one that Lena would have modelled her own telling after. I tried structuring the story like an opera as well; three acts with two intermissions (usually sexy chapters, what can I say 💁🏻‍♀️), and certain thematic reprises - the reckonings that Arthur has about Dutch, their conversations ending with furtive goodbyes as Arthur runs off to rejoin the gang.

I also referenced another opera,Orfeo ed Euridice, by Gluck, inspired, again, by the works of Virgil. Lena uses that opera as an allegory for the gang as Arthur's Euridice, but it could also be thought of as a lens where the gang, and its rules and demands, are the hell that keeps Arthur from being fully with his love, causing her to doubt his feelings.

Virgil is sprinkled throughout this story, it's the book Lena is reading the morning after their first meeting ("Vergilio" is an Italian transmutation of the Latin "Virgil"), and the book Arthur unwittingly takes for her from the Bronte library. The scrap Arthur retrieves from the floor of the cabin after Martelli'd ransacked it when he returns from Guarma are Dante's words to his "mentor" Virgil, fromL'inferno. Virgil famously said, "Love conquers all," but it's the second part of that quote, "Let us surrender to love," that I think our tragic lovers ultimately do in this book.

I also had a lot of fun with the herbalist elements of the story! Fun fact: the advisors in Lena's story to Jack - Ser Achillea, Lord Arnica, Lady Passiflora - are the herbs she herself had used to help cure Arthur's wounds from the O'Driscolls, to help him sleep.

I had a blast writing this over all - it's the first story I've ever finished, which is wild. It's in huge parts to the kind encouragement and votes from readers. If you have any questions at all about it, please feel free to drop them here; I'd be more than happy to answer.

Thank you again for reading! Lots of love from goodbyelisahoney 🤠