Chapter Text
Branches cast eerie shadows across the trail, an illusion of gnarled limbs clawing at nothing as each gust of wind brings another scratch of dark fingers across his path, lending no comforts to the mood he rides under. Blood races through his veins and his heart makes a cacophonous racket in his ears. A wonder and mystery both that no one hears his approach from a mile out with its heavily drumming beat that deafens him and muffles the noises of the forest around him.
John tightens his grip on the reins, the young mare beneath him skittish under his touch. Two weeks since he stole her from an unwitting rancher; led her out in the dark of night with the promise of sweets - a promise he graciously upheld the moment she let him mount up and ride off, sugar cubes slipped to her with praise to buy him favour. Untested as she is, he knows the tension throughout him coils down into her by the way his knees press against her sides, but he can’t shake the unease, not when it grips him deep and unforgiving.
His fingers feel slick with a cold sweat that bleeds and blossoms from his palm; John shifts his grip on the reins, frees one hand to wipe it dry against his leg, then repeats it with the other. It’s not fear that hunts the vestiges of his composure; how he would welcome such sensations! Fear is no stranger to him, to the upbringing he’s had, and he knows to swallow down the surging fright for the sake of surviving a fight. This, though, is an unfamiliar brand of dread that quivers just beneath his skin, akin to the sensation of a thousand bees trying to escape alongside thousands of butterflies in his gut that beat their wings in discordant harmony. It threatens to bring up the remnants of his last meal, a stew some miles back in a town with a name as memorable as the stew’s watery, lacklustre taste.
Every honed instinct tells him to turn around, to ride away and maybe things will yet turn out, but reason speaks truth when it calls that an empty hope. Things won’t ‘turn out’ and experience has done naught but hammer that reality into him time and again. John gave into the temptation to run a year before and the twelve months since have given him more stress than solace. Escape is not an option in a life such as his and so he ignores instinct for the sake of pressing forward. Sits himself a small bit higher in the saddle and swallows down the thickness in his throat, holds his gaze steadily ahead to look as calm as he wants to feel.
‘Three miles past the train crossing. Take the left fork until the day's light is stolen by arboreal limbs.’
John heeds well these directions - bought for a quarter from a well-dressed man who spoke confidently of his destination. He pushes down the doubts, the tendrils of anger stirring up whispers that he’s been made a quarter poorer and a fool greater by it, but he has no choice, no other route to follow. He continues, rides deep within a forest that fits well within haunted tales and John presses on.
One small sign carries him forward, noted as he first turned down the path into the woods: Tendrils of smoke seen rising from the dense heart of the forest may seem more like ghosts rising from the grave, but he knows deep in his gut, beneath the buzzing anxiety that threatens his calm, that this is the right place. That the smoke is no apparition of death, but a sign of life. That this is the perfect place to find, but also the very worst he could be found in.
Shrubs brush against young Melody’s forelegs as the path narrows; her ears flick back, her tail swishes, and she pulls at the reins with a worried huff. His unease is catching, slivers of white peering at the edge of her eyes as it twists into fear. John quietly soothes her, pats the side of her neck in a reassurance that blunts the edge of her anxiety. She has no reason to fear any of this. She’s not marked, not a dead mare walking the way her rider is a dead man in the saddle, a living body come to deliver himself to the reaper. Ruefully, he hopes that she’ll be well cared for when this is done, for she did not choose to be stolen. It’s not her fault that he rides to what can only be his death and she does not deserve to share his fate.
Deep within the gnarled forest is where he’ll meet his end, and though his instincts fight to see him survive, John feels an odd calm about it, unsettling and out-of-place. An acceptance worn into his flesh and bone after months in search of peace out there amidst a cold, inhospitable world. A realisation that the only solace the world has ever cared to grant him was the very same that drove him away.
The same that will kill him today, if luck favours or fails him.
This truth hurts, yet he takes comfort in the idea that, at least or at last, his heart will stop beating before it breaks the way it did before. When things once simple were made complicated by stupid words on his part, by trying to be better and making everything worse. And what a damn fool he is to think it on the threshold of his death, but he is and will always be a damn fool, so he’ll call it poetic justice and be done.
Melody steps on a twig and the snap draws a rustling from the brush clustered close on the narrowing path. The sun cannot penetrate the canopy’s thick foliage despite the midday hour, so it is one more shadow he can barely make out that steps onto the path. John does not need much definition to know the dark length of a carbine held. The unsettling calm staggers with his breath, slips from him as the man’s silhouette fills familiar shapes drawn from memory. Gut-wrenching dread surges up because this is it. This is his final moment. The reason he ran and the reason he rides back and the voice that calls out is one he’s missed desperately, but knows the danger of too.
“Best you turnabout, stranger, ‘fore you stumble onto things you ain’t meant to.”
Arthur Morgan offers the warning in that low, rumbling timbre of his. It makes the hair on the back of his neck stand to attention. The man speaks steady, almost congenial, but his every breath bleeds a lethal promise to be fulfilled if his advice is brushed aside.
The noose loops tight about his neck, a phantom pain that stirs better memories of being found and saved, given purpose and life both. Even now, when John readies to pull the metaphorical lever and drop the trap door that keeps him from hanging, he finds comfort in hearing that voice again. Yet still he stands on gallows of his own creation, all but ready to fall. To snap that rope tight and let it choke the life out of him, because he knows now, a year later, that he is a bastard that deserves it.
“It’s me, Arthur,” he says, too clearly to be missed. “It’s John.” He wishes he could sound remorseful, or that his voice has the strength to convey such. He sees how Arthur stiffens, how the recognition brings not the surge of relief, but a sudden rigidity that barely conceals the trembling grip on the repeater when it falters that brief second.
All the world stills, time itself stretches too long this reunion and John holds his head high, refuses to hide from this nightmare created by his own cowardly hand. He looks down from the saddle and waits for god to strike him down, for Arthur to take the first move. They both know John’s the faster draw, but Arthur’s the more lethal shot and if god above won’t be the one to smite him, then Arthur won’t be the one to miss. This is the moment of his penance and punishment both, so John waits for it to be doled out.
Anger is what snaps the deadly calm, the quiet broken by a dangerous snarl that’d put predators to shame. Melody starts, threatens to bolt by the dancing of her hooves and it takes his focus to calm her. It’s a distraction he is fool to afford, for in that moment, Arthur shoulders his repeater and moves quick. Closes the distance to grab at the mare’s bridle before she can toss her head or shy away – a gentle grip, always, for a horse, but it will not be so for her rider.
Close now, John can see the crystal blue shades that highlight Arthur’s eyes when adrenaline runs high, when death comes calling. Sees them clear as a cloudless sky, bright with dozens of emotions that go without name before a blanket settles in place, obscures those vulnerable feelings that are more risk than reward in his experience.
When the decision is made, he sees it reflected in the man’s gaze. Anguish and anger fuse into something unrecognisable. Rage darkens his gaze, no doubt felt at John and everything about this unexpected and unwanted reunion, but there is a duty to be done and he is never one to shirk his part.
Arthur pulls the mare a step ahead, pushes against her shoulder to turn her, and then his hands are on John. Part of him wants to fight back, lives for the fight, but he controls the reflex same as he suppressed the instinct to turn away. John lets himself be dragged bodily from the saddle, to be cast to the ground, treated no better than a sack of stale goods as Arthur turns to face him, a scowl drawing deep lines down his face.
“John Marston, you are the goddamned worst of fools!” he snarls, rich the conflict in his voice, poorly masking the deep hurt underlying it. “You goddamned idiot! You got any idea what you done?”
Smeared with dirt and debris from hitting the forest floor, John wipes the detritus from his face and throws his head back to look up at Arthur. His heart pounds and his muscles coil tensely, the fight solely against himself, his need to strike back when struck. His mouth is dry, but his gaze is unwavering. “I know,” he says, voice grating hard over this simple truth.
“You goddamned know nothing!” Arthur grabs his collar roughly, jerks him to his feet and shoves him down the path, deeper into the trees and John knows that this is the start of his final mile.
“I don’t regret this, Arthur,” he says, stumbling over a root on the unfamiliar ground. The grip on his collar steadies him, keeps him anchored like Arthur has so many times before and he does not fall. John keeps his arms held away from his body as they walk, half-raised to show he does not intend to draw arms and make worse a situation already beyond salvage, no matter what muscle memory screams for him to do.
“You’ve got no clue,” comes out shattered, sputtered between curses as Arthur marches him forward. “Showing your mug after what you done? You disloyal bastard.”
More underlays it, a brokenness that John knows well and maybe this is what he regrets. That he returns and now Arthur must make him answer for the wrongs he committed, that Arthur faces punishment from his own heart for what he needs to do.
Long-honoured is the code instilled in them, the rules they both know better than the revolvers they carry – life-and-death balances on the intimate familiarity of a man with the gun that separates him from the dozens dead in his wake. This is the same; etched in them clearer than any commandment, they know that no one what leaves can ever come back. Not in the way that John left, without a word, nor the way he chose to ride back. The betrayal of familial bonds established first by Dutch’s hand is treason of the highest sort – death is the sentence for it and his regret is forcing Arthur to take on the role of executioner.
Gnarled trunks thin and spread as they walk, the trees drawing back with their shadows as John steps into a glade that thrums with life. He tastes traces of campfire smoke in the air and hears faint murmur of conversations, signs of the gang established here. He blinks against the sunlight that beats down, hot and dry after the cool darkness of the forest, squints against it to make out the shape of wagons and tents clustered about.
Arthur pushes him by the clenched grip of his collar and he feels the shaking of his hand despite the iron control asserted over his route. Hears the strain of each breath, drawn in and heaved out with words that claw at the chance to be spoken, but are pushed down into the pooled anger that churns within.
John keeps walking, knows where Arthur wants him to go. ‘Wants’ is the wrong term, but he knows what Arthur needs him to do. Unspoken is the clear understanding that a year has done nothing to fragment that connection between them, that they can still speak without words and know the intent. He lets surface a sad, shallow smile, because he needs this connection. Needs that hand at his back more than he needs life, but it is a one-sided understanding.
Figures mill about the glade, some, like this camp, are unfamiliar to him. The layout of wagons is one he sorts out quickly, the new faces ones he does not bother to learn. People move between tents and wagons; John catches sight of Tilly by the butcher’s table, sees Susan pause in her remonstration of one bad behaviour of another. Others are new to him, bodies brought on to replace his, to fill the ranks and vision that Dutch van der Linde has for his gang, and he is not surprised.
“Davey, you go on and cover the forward position!” Arthur bellows the command and a tall man with light hair and a thick beard gets up from what must be a scout fire near the perimeter. Another fellow stays there, watching with measured curiosity, a near spitting image of the first.
“What you got there, Morgan?” the second asks, tucking a bundle of tobacco neatly into a roll of paper as he looks John over.
“We got us a lesson being learned,” Arthur growls, the warning in his tone thick and dangerous, warding off the foolishness of further questions.
John moves forward without words, without questioning who these men are, because he knows it won’t matter all too soon. When his feet stray from the path, the pressure at the back of his neck shifts and he heeds the corrections. And for all that this is the end, he accepts it. Dares to take comfort in it because months on his own were months that ran hollow, but this is warmth – burning with anger, thrumming with danger, but warmth of connection he wants. This is where he needs to be, where he wants to be, and Arthur, well… John needs Arthur more than he means to admit; such facts are what he stands to take to his grave. Maybe that is the one pain, the one aspect of grief that he can save Arthur. A parting gift to remain ignorant of what he means to John so that he can mourn him as a bastard traitor and nothing more.
Many souls stir throughout camp at the ruckus, folk new and familiar both drifting in their wake. Silent and oppressing is their shared curiosity, their distance kept more a solemn procession than parade. John catches sight of Abigail where she sits beneath the shaded canopy of a wagon, of the bundled toddler in her lap that plays with blocks that have letters scored into them. Something painful twinges in his chest when she meets his gaze, when she moves to stand, but holds back from intervening. He does not feel the surge of blame, no wave of bitterness to see them, only an ache from knowing they remained.
The heart of camp is where the fires and lean-tos all lead towards; John wonders exactly how much intent is in the layout. There’s little mistake in its parallel to a congregation, of heads bowed in reverence to the messiah wrapped in prophecy and promise that stands at its core. Or maybe it’s a stage, laid out to awe an audience, to draw back the curtain and show the man behind the marionette strings. The one that rules here with the strength of a king and the vision of a man becoming more than the laws forced upon him.
Three tents make up the holy trinity of the camp’s heart, positions of honour that some would clamour to claim. One he remembers as Hosea’s, sun-faded and worn, but resilient, sturdy against the elements. Another he recognizes as the one he left behind, erected for whomever won the right to the spacious tent in his absence. Third, and most prominent, is the grandeur of Dutch van der Linde’s canvas palace, panels drawn shut against the sun and bustle both.
They stop before Dutch’s tent, the altar upon which John’s blood will spill to mark the lesson that no one, not even a favoured son, can leave without word. No one can abandon Dutch on the eve of greater things and expect absolution upon their return.
John stares blandly at the bound-shut panels, finds it odd that the thrumming of adrenaline is not so visceral here. Calm certainty drapes over him as he eyes this place where he will die, breathing growing steady in place of the rampant nerves that stalked him from the rail crossing until his feet crossed the threshold of van der Linde territory.
Arthur shifts his grip, fingers steel bands that dig into his shoulder to force him down. A boot connects painfully with the back of his knee and John grimaces as he crashes to the ground, denim scuffed with the mud that lingers through well-trodden paths between infrequent rains. Hears the whisper of leather, then the cold press of iron is at the back of his head. Arthur’s pistol, one he remembers looting from a bounty hunter that thought to get the drop on them, but John found him first. Killed the ambitious bastard and took his gun, a blackened iron piece with fine nickel filigree. Gave it to Arthur wrapped in the paper of his bounty poster, recalls the burst of pride at being told he’d done good, finding the hunter and the gun both. Recalls the nod as Arthur turned it over in his hands, the warm smile that drifted absently over his lips as he praised the quality of the weapon.
Gentle praise and warmth that are absent now as he feels the muzzle push through his hair, pressing against his skull as he kneels there, hands raised fully in surrender, and waits for the bullet’s bite. Hears the too-smooth slide of the hammer, sign of a weapon deeply cared for - wryly does he permit himself a grim smile that the pistol that Arthur so cares for is the one that will put an end to the caring John feels for Arthur. Irony, maybe, or destiny; he’s no believer in greater things, but this he can make an exception for.
The hand on his shoulder remains painfully tight and the soft click tells him the hammer is cocked, ready as he is to be done with this.
“Dutch!” Arthur shouts out, voice hoarse around words that come with effort, breath struggling to maintain the steady pattern of control.
For all the bodies that followed and the eyes that watch, there is naught but silence in the wake of the bellowed name. No heads raise to call injustice, no hands reach to lift John from the ground, and no words are spoken to ease Arthur back from the dangerous precipice he stands upon. Tension runs tight as the hangman’s noose when the trap door drops, but no one dares step forward to slack the rope and give them all the chance to breathe. The only fool to ever speak against Arthur is John Marston, and that simple folly had landed him in the enforcer’s sights with a greeting long absent. It’s not courage that feeds him, nor bravado that sees him keep on his knees, staring forward. Irony bears its heavy mark in the cowardice that underlays it all, because after turning from every person and every value that has ever given him purpose, John could do nothing to stay away. John could not die out there alone.
Selfish cowardice is what it is, to ride long miles and trace longer leads over landscapes varied and unfamiliar to find the van der Linde gang once more. To return with his head held high and be satisfied that this means an end to him, that it comes at Arthur’s hand. It’s not fair to the older man, to force on him the role of executioner, but John has long indulged these more selfish instincts. They protect him where society does not and are engrained in him, deeply so. He accepts them and can barely hear the regrets that sound distant. The ones that call from the recesses of his heart to save Arthur from bearing a mantle of guilt that will all but smother him. Pity that he’s too selfish a bastard to hear them out.
Seconds pass in that dull reflection and he becomes aware of the tremor of the muzzle against his head; oddly soothing to feel it and know that he is not alone. John stands empty of the adrenaline-rich rushes of before and the other now drowns in them. Arthur draws in a strained breath with his jaw tightly clenched, calls for Dutch again. “We got ourselves a bundle of trouble come riding in like he goddamn belongs!"
John refrains from the truth that begs to contest the claim, that he does belong here, more than he has ever belonged anywhere. That this is right and real and there is nothing more natural than being shot by Arthur for every transgression he has ever caused. He bites his tongue into silence, distracted from his reality by the rustle of canvas that precedes the slow sideways sweep of tent panels.
Knees sore from the packed earth beneath the churned mud, John looks up at Dutch as he emerges from his tent, face schooled impassive as ever when faced by some new conundrum. Hosea comes second, a newspaper folded in his hand, eyes bright, alert and measuring as he looks over John, then Arthur. Neither betray the barest hint of shock, both too skilled in the con of men to give such insights to their state.
“Hey, Dutch,” John greets with a grimace, a grin so dry and cracked that the humour in it has long bled away.
Time is the only matter left to manage and through it he waits for the trigger to be pulled. Waits for his end as it’s only Arthur he trusts to do it right. He waits with the same bated breath the whole of camp does, waits as Dutch slowly looks over his near prostrate form. Perceptive eyes skirt along the loose seams of the threadbare fabrics he wears, trace the concave dip of his shirtwaist where he has lost too much weight; the man sees the signs of hollow hunger, knows the shallow valleys of skin that stretch between his bones. Forgets, maybe, that John has always been skinny, more bones than meat, but twelve months distant blurs the memory. It allows Dutch to judge these as signs of failure away and leads the man to but one self-satisfying conclusion. John can see the glimmer of light in his eye, the twitch of indulgence to his lips as Dutch finds him enfeebled, names it failure found in the arrogance of striking out alone, and sees his bent posture as a show of learned humility.
John realises too late that every expectation he had for his reception is wrong, that every thought he had upon returning, to being killed for his impunity, is flawed. Fundamentally flawed for not predicting this judgement, for not knowing the hubris of Dutch van der Linde would find worth in his worthless return.
“Now, Arthur,” Dutch begins, tone light and chiding, a magnanimous undertone running richly beneath it. “That’s not how we treat family.”
All that he knew to expect upends, scatters like leaves in a sudden gust. Calm abandons John, the adrenaline lost returns in a rush that hammers his heart into rampant beating. Cold sweat rises to his skin and the idea that he came home to make peace, to shown peace, is stolen from his fingertips all while Dutch looks on with a knowing expression.
“What?”
A single word that is the loudest and closest to insolent that he has ever heard from Arthur breaks the stillness, slows his frantic slide into unwanted acceptance. The pressure against his head falters, the grip on his shoulder becomes slack, then recedes fully and John is robbed of his end, selfish or deserved. It is taken from him with all the aplomb of the master thief that stands before him, one that passes judgement so fondly as to turn sin into saintly behaviour.
“No-“
John starts his protest, jerks forward and reaches for Dutch. It’s too similar to begging, but his arm stretches out all the same, shock making a fool of him and Arthur both.
“He left,” Arthur says, struggling against the dangerous rage that burns beneath his every word. “He left and there’re rules, Dutch. There’s a code we got to follow.”
Pleading barely concealed, scratched sore and doubtful, stirs Hosea into his role, the mediator when tempers flare up. He snaps another fold into his newspaper, a crisp sound that focuses attention to him, and steps forward with an arm outstretched to his eldest son. “Come now, Arthur,” he soothes, his voice an aloe to soothe scorched egos. “The-“
“John is my son,” Dutch cuts in, diamond sharp edges not quite masked beneath a father’s pride. “Family is everything to me. To us. You know that more than most, Arthur.”
Shame cast back at Arthur strikes him with a fury unmatched, the strength of it such that he staggers back one step, then another. The pistol’s weight is fully gone now, the grip on John’s shoulder now a memory, the weight of his presence nothing in the sudden vacuum. John feels alone and exposed, his every intention thrown over and now Arthur, not he, is the one facing recrimination. Resentment sparks amid indignance and shock, but he and Arthur are both bound, paralyzed by the truth of the decree.
“Welcome home, son.”
Dutch holds the reins, hands come to rest on John’s shoulders. Helping him to his feet and he can’t help but allow it, senses dulled by this reversal. Mouth dryer than any drought-ravaged savannah, he cannot speak even had he the words to protest it, even as something sparks in him, finds insult in this warm welcome.
With this blessing from Dutch, a proclamation that comes hand-in-hand with forgiveness, gang members both old and new spur into motion, milling about in a crowded wave of welcome. Of greetings and introductions that make his head spin, but the only voice he wants and needs to hear is silent. John tries to turn, but all he can do is look back, helpless to intervene as Arthur holsters his pistol, expression darker than pitch when he turns, marches away from the sea of smiling faces and bolstering hugs that threaten to drown John. His each step is heavy with the rage of being both denied and saved from killing turncoat Marston.
John feels a stab of betrayal, not unlike what Arthur must have at being stopped from dispensing the only justice he knows to uphold, the only laws declared to mean anything to him. Paces stretch into invisible miles, the distance between them greater than any time in the past year as Arthur unhitches his horse, a fiery red mare he doesn’t recognize, and all he can do is stare.
Stare, helpless, as Arthur does exactly what John did twelve months before: Leaves him behind.