Archive of Our Own ^beta

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.

Chapter Text

Hollow are the voices that laugh and joke around him; a discordant buzzing that persists with the endless background droning of the gramophone. John feels dizzy still, days after his return. Days that passed in the whirlwind of unexpected welcome doled out at Dutch's insistence. Acceptance and forgiveness proffered upon a gilded platter and he cannot sort his senses long enough to seek out the tarnished truth that must lay beneath. Nothing in this life is free, much less fairness nor forgiveness; he warily waits for the cost to become known.

The whiplash of welcome leaves his neck aching, pain that worsens each time he cranes it towards the camp's borders, towards thickened trees that serve as walls. A natural fortress over which the van der Linde name holds sway absolute. Dutch parades John about on beaten paths that say the gang's been secluded here some time, but each time he asks why, his attention is pointed towards new names and faces – the Callendar boys are the muscle and guns made to replace him, Jenny a young lady pickpocket with no small skill in knives. Old acquaintances shower him with warm greetings that mask wariness, for none know why he came back and fewer have asked. Dutch cares not, instead lauding the merry state of the gang with impassioned words that dress up and dance about the plans they can do now that John has come home.

This place feels no more like home than any of his past year.

Buried within the forest's heart as they are, safety is assured per Dutch's grandiose speeches, but John remembers Arthur on watch. Their security is not so certain as to abandon the posting of guards and it speaks the volumes that Dutch does not. The man is busy, pleased to speak of plans, of wealthy patrons passing through the nearby town. Sparks glint in his gaze as he proposes divorcing them from the burden of their wealth, of placing bonds and bills into the hands of poorer citizens not once graced by the silver spoon.

Irony, bitter and bold, sits at the heart of this plan – one formed by a band of outlaws hidden in the deep wood. John knows the story of Robin Hood and finds his thoughts distracted from the promise of success by the arrogance it takes to play the role of outlaw turned hero. The role suits someone else, anyone but Dutch, but the one time he speaks to it sees Hosea hush him. Indulge Dutch, he's told; have faith in him is the message woven within. John stops his dry retort out of respect for the older man, but remains jaded by the same bitter reality he met outside the gang as he knew in the years of his youth.

Insulated here, that reality remains out of reach, disconnected where it resides with the world outside. John is too recently experienced with the laws and bounties that await them all beyond the forest's embrace. Too often did he read long newspaper columns deriding what he'd once thought proud victories against an unjust system – but knows now to be robberies, plain and simple. Here, in camp, they can espouse glory in being outlaws for life and it seems the gang is content with that.

The year away jaded him, renewed his understanding of the potent truths found in ways and means which Dutch cannot refute, but refuses to hear in discussion. Between this and the betrayal of being welcomed without punishment, John finds he no longer reveres words nor praise from Dutch. He questions him instead, silently, all the while with eyes turned towards the camp's borders, looking for the only person he'd come back for. The only person he'd suffered most being separated from.

No matter how long he looks nor how late he holds watch, Arthur does not ride back in on his fiery mare. Does not greet him, does not forgive him, and for all that John had run from the painful conflict in his heart, he now faces it day in and out with the unknown of Arthur's return hanging over him.

Three days back and John stands outside his tent, the structure erected as canvas shrine or memorial to the van der Linde's lost son. Abigail and Jack used it some in his absence, but it's just him now. They had no fight, no words about it; seems they ain't meant to get along together, but sure as hell know what to do separate. Abigail came through, picked up hers and the boy's things while Hosea offered them space in his tent – too large and open for an old man like him. She accepts it with more dignity than John's ever possessed, all the while watching him with dry eyes – whatever tears she shed dried up months before his return.  She disappears into Hosea's tent, works with the old man to set up canvas partitions, carves out a home for her child in the absence of his father's affection.

John frowns, unbothered by the implication that he rejected them. It's much more complicated than that, but if he can't have the closure he rode back to find, he refuses to grant it in turn. Stubborn and a fool that makes him, but stubborn and a fool he has always been, will always be.

When John draws a cigarette out of the scratched, matte case he carries in his vest pocket, he stops to stare at it.  Damaged beyond fencing, it keeps his smokes safe from fire, water, and 'whatever damn trouble he gets himself into' – that's how Arthur gruffly said it when he gave it to John some years ago. Each cigarette drawn is a reminder thrown at his face of Arthur, of times when things were good, of life before he'd gone and landed them here.

Absently, he tucks the cigarette between his lips, turns the tarnished silver case over in his hands. John knows that beneath that black burnish, the shallow scratches over the surface don't impede its reflective shine. It's one reason why he let it get so tarnished: To hide from himself, because as stubborn and a fool as he is, he's too much of both to be able to accept or mend this chasm of his own creation.

He pockets the case, lights the cigarette, and wills the ashes which drift from its tip to fill that broken ground. Lungs warmed with each caustic breath, it soothes the ache in his chest that he now knows will persist month after month, year after year, through to a death a figures won't come soon enough.

John never wanted love, never had seen much worth to it. Not after the stellar example his father set with derisive, biting remarks that five dollars'd been worth the woman, but not the bastard child that stole her life.  Told time and again how John'd cost him a good whore and left him saddled with a penniless fool. Ain't no wonder he went out his way to avoid love, growing up the way he had and knowing it a curse more than blessing. Maybe love weren't quite what his parents had, but suffering the blame of losing it made John search for anything but that.

Pathetic, then, that his years of intending to live, to be an outlaw, a person what could stand alone culminated in what?  Love found him. Pierced him with feelings more painful than the searing of a bullet through flesh, leaving scars that'd never be seen or known. Turns out that love ain't no recipe to happiness; no matter how much is there, it means nothing when he's still alone. And alone he'll be, because the one he loves ain't so much's looked at him with affection in years, much less the kind of infection that strangles the heart slowly when it ain't returned.

Smoke wreathes about him, the shake in the breath's exhale the only thing what'd give hint to the turmoil that still knots tight his stomach. He feels the itch of it creeping under his skin and moves through camp, towards the woodpile. Needs something to do with his hands because otherwise he has to watch everything slip through his fingers. This reality sours his mood when he lingers on it, so he shifts the cigarette along his lips to rest at the corner of his mouth. John leans down to grab the axe, pauses long enough to set a log on the battered stump, and then he loses himself in the catharsis of chores for the rest of the morning. Logs turn into firewood before long, empty buckets become laden with freshly drawn water, haybales turn into scattered offerings for the horses. He slips Melody an apple on his way through, tells himself the bold lie that he ain't there to check the herd, to make sure Bodicea's not there. Nor's it his chance to spy up the trail, out of camp as though the man and mare will ride in at his willing gaze.

Damn him for leaving and damn him for coming back. Damn him for the sin of loving Arthur Morgan, but protecting Abigail Roberts.  John curses himself, same as he has for too long now. Yet still he lingers to brush down Melody, holding and hiding that small hope that maybe Arthur will come back and- What?

John laughs, bitter and dry as a desert wind. 'What,' indeed. There ain't no fixing this, no changing things. Arthur values little of himself, any ol' fool can see that, but the bonds of the gang?  That's everything to him and John's the one that shattered those unspoken scriptures when he ran.

Melody coaxes another apple from him before he abandons both his post and his denial that he ain't keeping watch for Arthur's return. Leaves the mare to her spoils and makes his way back towards the main fire. Coffee sits brewed and simmering most of the day; seems the right distraction for him. And if he can slip in some whiskey in place of cream, maybe that'd dull the anxious edges that prickle over him.  Feels like a dozen porcupines surround him, too ready to loose their quills at him, and he welcomes the armor alcohol gives.

When he gets there, John finds a fresh pot brewing and an apologetic look from Tilly for taking the last cupful. "Don't worry about it none," he assures her, content to wait the ten minutes it'll take for the water to boil and coffee to brew.

Tilly gently blows the steam from her cup, lets it dissipate before she takes a sip and makes a face at the hot sting. Younger than him by a good measure, she hasn't held his disappearance against him, but life's sour experiences have her guarded in the welcoming on offer. They've spoken once or twice since he came back, but never more than a few words, cautious greetings rather than heartfelt reconnection.

"Abigail says little Jack looks more and more like his daddy every day," she ventures, a mild reflection in her tone.

John snorts loudly. "I'll bet," he grumbles. He drops onto a log dragged into the half circle of rugged, rigged-up seating around the fire. There's a long furrow in the ground that leads back into the trees, making clear the tale of the work it took to get this bench in place.

Skirts sway and fabric rustles as Tilly comes to sit next to him, quiet and thoughtful. Where John grew up with one gang, her experience with another makes her grateful for the freedoms Dutch offers. Though he has known her less time than others, she carries the experience of growing up, willingly or less so, within a gang of sorts. John feels something of a connection to their roots, feels something of a comfort to have her not turning aside outright.

Tilly settles herself with an air of dignity, only to rumple it when she nudges him with her shoulder. Each familiar face seems to seek a one-on-one conversation with him about his return and now appears to be the time for theirs. "I saw that you ain't sharing a tent," she remarks. There's a nonchalance to it, as though she's trying to say she means no judgement by the comment. Tilly drinks from her cup once more, this time without the wince of burning liquid, and keeps her eyes on the fire.

"No point," is his bland reply. John nudges her shoulder back, a game of theirs from when she'd been newer to the gang. Wide-eyed and suspicious, careful with her trust; John remembers the day that caution broke and she shoved him into a muddied puddle. Fair to say that'd been after he put a mouse in her bedroll, for no reason than to get a reaction – and hell had she given him one, holding him down in the mud with a boot against his jaw while making clear that she had no interest in nothing untoward in her bedroll, vermin or ver-men, if he caught her meaning. He had, and since then they'd had something of a camaraderie that came out in small nudges and little games of the like.

"Arthur seems to think otherwise."

The name clouds the fondness of the memories and he frowns. "Arthur ain't here to do nothing about it," he says. The rush of words comes fast, each clipped off to keep the bitterness from sounding. "I never came back for them anyhow," he continues. The next nudge he gives is to the tin kettle with the toe of his boot, but there's no escaping steam to reward his hope for coffee.

"That's not what folk are saying," Tilly notes, curling her hands around her cup.

"Folk like to say lots of things, but that don't mean it's true."  John pours the words out in place of asking what, exactly, folk are saying about him and his 'relations' with Abigail, his connection to Jack.  Rumours busy idle minds and he's heard crazy stories over the years born from nothing but the boredom of a lazy afternoon.

The betting man inside him wagers that there's money laid out on why he came back. Ain't no secret that folk look to make a quick buck and betting on whether John Marston grew up, came on back to accept responsibility for messes that he made? That'd keep them going a while, with the odds against him.  Against them all, truth told; joke's on them, their monies good as lost because he ain't come back for none of them reasons. He refuses to say the why of it, refuses to settle their accounts by confirming or denying nothing.

"Why did you come back?" Tilly asks, hers a sincere curiosity. "There're thousands of miles to wander out there, John. Why'd you wander here?"

John thinks about the question far longer than he'd need to have the answer; he knows the answer, carries it with him all the time, but he ain't so quick to put it to words. He looks at Tilly, sat there and breathing away the steam that still lingers in tendrils about her mug. A survivor, as hard or harder as any of them, but Tilly Jackson is sweet more than shrewd. All the betting that'd be going on about him and he doubts she put any money for or against him, doubts she stands to profit from his telling it.

"Thought there might be something out there," he offers with a shrug. John fixes his gaze on the tin kettle, watches the lid start its dance as the water comes to boil. He reaches over and pops the lid to the side, dumps the coffee grinds in from the open container set near, then returns the lid and sits back to let it brew. Mundane actions that let him piece together a way of saying it without saying it. "It's a real big world and I felt penned in, like there weren't no way forward nor back."

Tilly makes a thoughtful sound, almost a hum, as she sips her coffee.  "I thought that, too," she says after a moment. The tilt of her head is admission that the context ain't quite the match to his troubles.  "Thought I was gonna die if I stayed with that gang I'd been running with, but guess that's not how things were meant to turn out."

The allusion to fate makes him want to laugh, an ironic echo of despair. He settles on shaking his head to keep from the sharper, darker humour. "The only thing that worked out all year was..." John trails off, unsure of what it was he learned out there that he ain't already known. The world's a cold, lonely place that wants to see a man suffer just as much as succeed.  Didn't take no great wanderings to know that, not when he'd learned it as a child and saw it drilled into too many others. "Reckon that's why I came back," he admits finally.  "Things never work out for me," is his reflection and realization too. "Didn't take long to remember that, only a long time to accept it."

John quiets the truth, masks it under these admissions and hushes it to stay unspoken. That truth?  Nothing here will work out for him neither, but if he's meant to suffer the consequences of his survival, he's selfish enough to do so near the very thing he ain't meant to have.  Years now he's been drawn to Arthur, a child's hero worship morphed into something too real, too much to find safe expression. And when he was ready to face it, to look Arthur in the eye and say that he wants?  That's when it fell apart. Frustrated and cornered by things outside his control, he ran – left Arthur with the remnants of a family ideal. Thought that maybe the older man could find peace in raising Jack, by being the man his supposed father couldn't be, but no.  Selfish John Marston came back because he didn't want to give up the one thing he can't have nor take.

"Don't be so hard on yourself," Tilly suggests, gentler than he deserves. "If things never worked out, then I'd think you'd find no trace of the gang to lead you home."

That only adds an acidic sting to the irony that weighs thick on him. Tracking down the gang and riding in for an execution that Dutch stayed are proof that things ain't about to sort out, fate's sights set on keeping his life a right mess. There's nothing peaceful or calming here, only the twisted knot in his gut that never relents. John pours himself a mug of coffee and leaves Tilly to the fire, excuses himself for some chore needing done. He is long ready to lose himself in the endless toil, use it to escape the miresome swamp of his reality.

-

Another four days pass before Arthur rides into camp, time enough that the novelty of John's return wears away and the mundanity of life settles in. John fills the hours with the unending chores needed to keep a camp this size running; any time beyond that he splits between sleep and staring outwards for any sign of Arthur Morgan's return.

John is dishing up his dinner of watery stew when Mac calls challenge and he near as drops the bowl at the too familiar rumbling drawl that replies. Warm in ways absent their reunion and he bears the sting of it. He straightens and watches as Arthur rides in, betrays nothing of the sudden rampancy of his heartbeat, feels the phantom pressure of that Cattleman against his head. The ghost of it haunts him at night, wakes him with the phantom creak of the hammer, teases him with the crack of a bullet never fired.

Murderous is the look Arthur shoots him when he drops a stag carcass on the butcher table. Cold is the shoulder that turns from him, the man's path leading him to the tithing box. Hears the whisper of bills and the clink of coins as Arthur pays tribute to the gang's financial needs. The scratch of graphite as the ledger tallies are updated.

Heat radiates from the tin bowl of stew, bleeds into his hands as John watches this deliberate show of priorities. A show that he no longer ranks in the list, that Marston's no more than dirt underfoot. He needs no rallying of nerves to start towards Arthur, meaning to talk to him, determined to, but all too soon is Arthur walking away.

John moves to follow, distractedly setting down his meal on a crate. There's no saying how long Arthur will remain in camp, his time to talk – or challenge, patch things between them – ticks down with the steady burn of a fuse he knows not the length of. Five minutes, five hours, five days; all equal one chance, though the reminder of John's existence will like as not shorten it.

The tents mid-camp cluster close, with narrow alleyways that snake about; it allows folk to sneak between them, shortcuts for the hurried soul. John moves to slip past Hosea's tent, knows it'll bring him closer to the lean-to Arthur most often sleeps beneath, when a boney hand falls on his shoulder, stops him in the shadowed path before he can slip free.

"Times are that you can grab a bull by the horns and come out unscathed," Hosea remarks, holding John back with an iron grip. "Today's not such a time, John. You do this, it won't end well."

John flexes his fingers, loosens the instinctive first formed at the touch. Hardly harmless, Hosea Matthews is, but more of father and family to him than his own had been. Bears him respect for it, fealty even, so long as no one calls it such – his taste for such terms has become bitter since his death denied upon the altar of Dutch.  "I doubt it'll end well no matter what I do," he says, flat and dry, eyes unmoved from his goal even as his chance to try slips away.

"Come with me, son."  Hosea makes the suggestion, but the grip on his shoulder pulls and turns him, invites him into the dark recesses of the man's tent and away from the reckless disregard that calls to him.

The fuse burns still, but John heeds the request. He reckons it more an order and it's with that acknowledgement that he changes his path to duck inside. His eyes fall on the canvas partition that gives Abigail privacy and space to live on in her proud, self-imposed exile from John's tent. It's not one he's looking to end neither, the signals and system tangled too much to weave it worse by sharing a canvas roof. Hell, that'd good as set her the role of his wife and Jack his son – things he ain't in no rush or want to do.  Don't matter whether there's truth in it or not, he aims to never encourage the thought.

"She and the boy have settled in nicely," Hosea says, interrupts his thoughts with the observation. Or maybe it's an assessment to how well they'd do without the Marston name to anchor them, to drag them down the same way lake water swallows him whole.

"Don't matter to me if they do or don't."  John shrugs like it don't matter, acts callous to build a guard around the truth that whirls restlessly in his thoughts. He doesn't want it to matter; wants to be free of this idiotic web he wove with stupid words at the outset.

"Of course it matters," Hosea good as tells him, surety backing those words as he drops down the canvas panels to give them a sense of privacy from the rest of camp. The ties remain loose, an action to make it feel less formal, less like he's been cornered. "You're not that cold, John. Never have been."

John turns an empty crate on its side with a nudge of his boot, sits on the impromptu chair and drops his elbows to rest on his knees, hands hanging in the spread between them. "I been gone a year, Hosea," he points out bluntly. Shrugs up his shoulders again, because there ain't no changing that fact. "The world out there's cold; maybe I become the same to fit in."

Hosea moves to a small table off the side, where two cups of fine porcelain stolen from a richer man's house are set out. The matched pot, gilded edges and painted flowers, sits nearby with steam drifting from the spout and the scent of mint rising in the air. "You don't mean that."  This time it's an order, not an observation –though it's impossible for John to become the heartless outlaw all the bounty posters and news articles paint him as.

Thing is: Hosea's right. John spent a year enduring that bitter cold society, not once succumbing to it. Heartless and unfeeling are traits that'd make Arthur's visceral reaction sensible, tolerable even. It'd make his own position less volatile, less vulnerable. Those were two things he'd barter his soul to have and two things he'll never possess. "Sure wish I did," he admits, hanging his head to stare at the dirt-and-plank floor.

"No, you don't."

Again, with the confidence of an expert wordsmith and no avenue open to refute him. Hosea chuckles, traces of regret sprinkled through the sound. Shifting cups about and shuffling motions busy him briefly, then one of the cups is held out in John's line of sight with a gesture inviting him to take it.  "Stop staring down that path, John," he chides, waiting for the cup to change hands before he sits on the edge of his bed – a fancied-up cot with blankets and a thick pelt John recognizes as the prize skin he and Arthur scored shortly before he left and ruined things.  "It's the kind of route that leads you becoming a man like Colm O'Driscoll."

Ain't no hiding, nor no point in hiding, the shudder that inference triggers. His grimace is vivid and John straightens up, meets Hosea's gaze – the man is unflinchingly serious. The very idea of being anything like an O'Driscoll puts a sour taste on his tongue that he tries to clear with a mouthful of mint tea. "Don't joke about shit like that," he says, aims to shrug it off as poorly timed jest, but Hosea holds firm the course, shakes his head.

"I'm serious. You think that Colm thinks twice about the lives of his men? The man only mourns his brother as a means to claim righteousness for his bloodshed." Hosea pauses to down some tea, an old remedy that he claims manages aches, pains, and the times his stomach kicks up a fuss about some food or other.

"I got more to worry about than Colm O'Driscoll," John says, looking down into the cup he holds. It is quite the finery in the midst of patchwork tents, something unnaturally cultured among mannerless thieves and outlaws. "Can we not talk about him?"

Hosea watches him, holds him to some measure he ain't aware of, then shrugs. "Fine," he says. Relents the point almost too quickly. "Why don't you tell me why you were hellbent on talking to Arthur out there?"

The sinking feeling hits with all its heavy, murky weight – same as the water did the few times he's tried swimming. Sudden and dark, it chokes the air out of him while stirring the same panic that sent him riding from the gang a year before. John, midway through a mouthful of calming tea, coughs and breathes it in. Takes him more than a minute to clear his airway again, face flushed with effort and heartbeat erratic in his chest.

There's no easy answer to the question, apart from his being bullishly stupid to even try approaching Arthur given the near execution of their reunion.  "Let's go back to talking about Colm," he decides, a weak and transparent attempt to avoid this even more uncomfortable topic.

Hosea doesn't give up with the same ease, setting his cup aside so that he can clasp his hands, rest them on his knees.  "It won't be so easy to gain Arthur's forgiveness as it was Dutch's acceptance," he cautions.

"I don't deserve forgiveness," John is quick to say, falling into the baited trap in his rush to make that clear. "And I don't want it neither."

This gets him an assessing look, Hosea leaning back to catch what other tells John has that'll give him the information that words won't. "Then why not keep your distance?  It's certainly safer for the pair of you."

John is not afraid that Arthur will retaliate against his return with violence. Vengeance is a fool's game and the sort that Arthur'd never engage in, not with the lessons they've had over the years, but grudges are different. Arthur bears grudges for too long and it's true that avoiding the man would solve most of his problems with the thrumming, buzzing energy that crackles beneath his skin. But keeping his distance is the very thing that made John come back – more because he ain't able to keep away.

"There's no good reason to it," he offers with a shrug. "Arthur... he ain't wrong, hating me for what I done. Just feels like if there's even one thing I could do what'd explain it so he could understand, then maybe..." When he trails off, it's under the hopelessness of that thought, because it ain't about to happen. Arthur'd as much stroll in and ask him to put it to words as Uncle'd pass by a crate of liquor without emptying it.  "I don't know, Hosea."

"Arthur hates what you did," Hosea interjects before he goes on.  There's no nonsense nor teasing slipped amidst his words, only a serious tone that tells him to listen and well.  "Arthur doesn't hate you, John."

Dragging him to the altar of his disloyal sacrifice, then leaving camp for days and riding back looking fit to murder?  John knows the way it feels to be on his bad side; the sharp comments, the annoyed shoves, and the little punches that slowly unwind whatever clock spring he ran up too tightly. That always comes with an air of something gentler, something that looks to soothe and smooth over whatever idiot thing he done to annoy Arthur at the outset. This, though, feels different and dangerous, as though any words will turn into bullets fired with ill intent. As though Arthur wants or needs to inflict on him a fraction of the disappointment and rage he feels about John.

John finishes the last mouthful of tea, sets the cup aside and pushes himself to standing. "Don't seem that different to me." 

"Give him time, John."

Hosea knows he's done talking, always knows what's going on around him, but squeezes that bit of advice in all the same.  "What he's dealing with... it's a lot.  He's hurting, and sometimes it's better to let the wounds heal before you get back in the saddle."

"Feels more like they'll fester if I do," John says. He nods a quick farewell before ducking out of the tent, resolve not blunted by the cautionary discussion. Don't matter if it's suicide to try when the whole reason he came back was to face this mess. If he gets served a lead pill in the sorting of it? Then that's justice come 'round to claim his dues.

-

Fifteen minutes talking with Hosea over tea turns out fifteen minutes too long. It's time enough that Arthur disappeared from camp once more and John has to scrounge together clues to figure that, and to trace what route he took.

Seems Hosea ain't the only one angling to keep things from coming to a head, because ain't no one admits to knowing a thing when he starts asking, and they keep up their veneer of ignorance when he keeps at it.  His one saving grace is Tillly, who looks towards the southern edge of camp when he asks, but says she doesn't know where Arthur went, honest to all of god's green grass. 

The fact that he missed Arthur – that the man slipped through the window what Hosea'd forced open – burns at him. Days of waiting, months of denying, and now that he aims to do something about it, it's in time to watch it lying out to rot in the sun. He feels a surge of irritation and lets it take hold; like hell he'll stand by and do nothing.

Melody stamps at the ground when John unwinds her reins from the hitching post; she stands saddled and ready, as he'd been looking to head out, hunt down some leads or meat – anything but sitting around with the discontent guilt that plagued him. He smooths a hand down her neck, grips the saddle horn and cantle, then hauls himself into the seat. Each second lost ticks louder in his mind, delays that cost meters and miles if he means to catch up with Arthur.

John pulls his mare around, rides her at a canter along the boundary of camp. This risks Susan's ire, Melody's hooves passing near the unseen borders in his haste to make up time. No yelling chases him as he slips away and John breathes out a sigh, sets the mare on the southern trail, but not before his final glance back settles on Abigail. She stands with the boy balanced on her hip; a pained confusion sketches details in her expression that are visible even at this distance, but he shakes his head and looks away.

-

The distance that grows between him and camp does nothing to calm John, no freedom found in escaping its confines. Instead, he wipes sweat from his palms as Melody keeps up a steady pace, content to be free from the strange herd she'd been folded into on his return.  John swallows against the thickness of his tongue and it feels dry, as though he's had no tea, no water, no nothing all day but sand and grit forced into his throat.

The traces he finds ain't much to follow and an hour passes before he finds the first real indicator that Tilly sent him the right direction with her glance. John feels a trickle of relief when he spies a campfire's glow visible through a break in the trees. That relief flares hope that this is the right person, that this is not just a camp, but the camp he needs to find.  That hope soars when he spies the fiery mare – Boadicea, he's learned her name to be – where she stands proud at the edge of the fire's light, confirmation that he's come to the right place.  Where Arthur is.  Everything uplifting in him plummets to the bottom of his stomach with that realization, sudden stones that weigh him down.

This is it. This is Arthur, and the last time they met, the man held a gun to his head. Threatened to pull the trigger for his betrayal in leaving, his cowardice in returning. Despite that, as John slows Melody and lets her amble into a small clearing, it is not the fear of death that makes his heart race. No. Give him bullets and beatings over this fear that fills him, the fear of losing something that he ain't never had the right to have.

Downwind and downstream of camp, the site shows signs of frequent use. Echoes of prior days and nights show in the depth of charcoal in the fire, the flattened grass paths pressed into the earth. He realizes it to be where Arthur comes when his need for privacy, for space to himself, pushes harder than his need to serve a gang that is more family to him than his own blood.  The patchwork of stones circling the fire add a sense of permanence to it, earth uprooted shows where tent poles have dug into the ground and been pulled away – temporary shelters raised and lowered as need called for it.  There's a blocky hitching post built up that gives it a sense of vague permanence, but his attention is drawn to the pup tent erected on the far side of the camp. To the man that sits there, eyes drawn from the fire to glare at him for this intrusion.

"Runnin' again, John?"

The use of his name is biting, borderline cruel and that tells him Arthur ain't any more ready to talk about this than he is, but they're here now and backing down won't do nothing but prove John the runaway fool. Mockery threads throughout the challenge, a tone that scratches deep lines through his resolve to sort this out. To not resort to fisticuffs to vent his frustration.

Flight or fight rears up, but already there ain't no flight possible nor wanted.  This here's pursuit and John jumps from from the saddle, lets Melody have free rein to wander or graze. Proof that he's come here with intent, not stumbled out in a fit of childish avoidance. Not no more.  "I could say the same!" he says hotly, striding over to where Arthur rises up to his feet.  Strength radiates from him, testament to how he's come up against the odds and survived time and again, and only an idiot would challenge him. So, ain't no surprise that John's the one stepping up in his face to throw them words at him. "You're the one what ain't been back since I rode in."

Arthur stiffens, neck flushed red and veins marking a dangerous map of tension and anger as he makes to swallow, to hold himself back. "That time away knock something loose?" he asks, drawing out the words slow, their edges sharpened to something cruel and jagged. "Folk need money and meat to survive. Them things don't manifest like some divine blessing."  His arms cross over his chest, threat evident – but restraint also, all that power folded back in on himself.

Salted or sour, the callout to what Dutch did in forgiving him, in opening his arms wide to welcome John home, burns both of them in the airing of it.  "I ain't been gone so long to forget that," he throws back, shoulders drawn back and body straightened up to his height – a match to Arthur's, even an inch more than he had in his youth.

"No, you was gone because of it," is the accusation in turn. "Couldn't handle supporting a wife and kid, so left it for others to do!"

That sets them off, Arthur tearing out the gate with no Dutch here to intervene, no Hosea to temper anger with logic. It's the two of them and though John's been back less than a month, it's the year and more of space built up between them that forces apart the cracks and shatters the dam to bring down a flood overdue.

John surges forward, risks limb and life to push into Arthur's space, shoves a hand against his chest and it stumbles them both away from the fire, the makeshift camp. Ain't no need to add flames to this, with words burning scars into them from the truth and frustration, fermented and sour, that surfaces after too long being buried.

"I ain't left nothing that was mine!" he shouts, the forest around this clearing too dense to carry the words back towards camp. "Jack ain't mine and anyone what thinks Abigail belongs to any man ain't got a clue about her!"

Arthur drops his arms, one hand clenched tight into a fist, the other half held out – a barrier to keep him at bay as they begin slow, measured steps around. A rough circle prowled as openings are sought, two predators baring fang and fury in the ominous, storm-like stillness that otherwise hangs about them. Face dark with anger and teeth showing in a sneer, he sniffs like this is something foul he's come upon. "You keep running from them, but that ain't how it works, John! That ain't what they deserve, being left by a selfish son of a bitch."

Layers hastily thrown together don't hide the meaning there, the accusations that masquerade under the man's self-righteous anger. The grief of past loss rises up, the abandonment of everything sacred is abrasive grit that coarsens this tangled mess, and the squandering of a chance Arthur'd never been afforded again sits sorely beneath it all.  John knows some of the dark shadow that haunts the man, that sits beneath the indignant shroud.  The grim angel, death's shade, that hangs over this, but he's angry, frustrated, and at his nerve's end. He spits out words that mean too much and not enough, no pause to if he should give voice to them, only that he can.

"You's the one obsessed with it. Always have been!" he accuses, his words a white-hot brand that sears soul, not flesh. "Ranting at me to take on the boy like he was mine, all because you was too-" He falters, fights to say it against the sudden darkness that spreads through Arthur's eyes.  Danger writ clear, but he's come too far to step himself, so he scowls and lets it all spill out. "What was you, Arthur?  Too weak to take them on yourself?"

Hindsight bellows loud that he should've expected the fist that connects with his jaw, snapping his mouth shut with force that his lip splits against, but John is too wrapped up in his defiance to catch anything more than disoriented stars and his own staggered weight when Arthur crashes it forward. "Watch them words, Johnny," he warns, voice cracked by the sudden cold of it. "You ain't gonna like what'll happen if you don't."

Don't matter that he knows Arthur bears the guilt of it; John still brought it up. He spits blood to the ground, wipes its traces from the corner of his mouth. No point to hide from things already said, to pretend things ain't happened the way they did, so he accepts the savage pain – embraces it for the chance to feel the adrenaline of it. "You want a son so bad?  Claim him!" he throws the words down, lets them break against the man.

'Too far' is where he went; he realizes that when the darkness of his vision clears and he finds himself sprawled on the ground. Roots press uncomfortably against him as his senses come back, dazed by a second punch that came harder and faster than the first. Never one to take the hit and back down, he pushes himself to sitting and rubs the throbbing ache that is his jaw. Arthur towers above him, a bastion torn between anger he deserves to embrace and something darker. An unspoken conflict and that is what John means to strike at.

Blood roars in his ears and his heart thuds in his chest as John gets to his feet. "Never wanted no kid," he says again. "Ain't no real proof he's mine."  Senses scattered by being punched twice, he ain't about to step himself from rubbing the salt in deeper if it'll get the reaction he seeks.  "You want him to have a real father, then there ain't no one stopping you."  His laugh rings hollow and disjointed, an echo of his caution thrown to the wayside. "Bet you'd be a real great dad when all he's got is this shithead to start," he adds, gesturing to himself.

Arthur grabs his shirt front, twists his fist to lock up the hold and it drags him up until the man's forearm bears part of John's weight, his toes just brushing the ground. "You don't get to throw away something that precious," he breathes out, cold and barely controlled.

John latches a hand to Arthur's wrist, a brace for his balance, and can't help but laugh at the incredulity of it all, at the painful truth that hides in what they both refuse to say. "Precious is what that boy cost me," he spits out, a wild animalistic anger surging against the helplessness that's all but swallowed him this past year.  "I had what I wanted! And I ain't never faltered in it. But I lost it anyhow because ain't no one else fool enough to let Abigail claim him."

The grip on his shirt falters, then disappears completely and they stumble apart. Conflict wages its war over Arthur's expression, torn between actions and options that don't end well for one or both of 'em.  John bends forward, breath heaving and hands on his knees to hold him up. He feels scattered, light-headed from being beaten like the tough chunk of meat he is.  Saliva and blood pooled in his mouth splatters wide on the earth when he spits it out and still he feels the strain of laughter pulling at him, bordering on a wild panic that this all is out of control and he needs it to be.

"That it, Arthur?" he asks, straightening unsteadily.  "You want the boy to have a father? You damned set on not being it?  Fine."  John pushes his hair back from his face, strands tangled and tossed about by the fight; defiance feeds the fire of his temper, goads them both on. "I ain't never slept with Abigail, you damned well know it!"

John raises his head high and ain't ready to be beaten down. He spent a year running from this – from them – and all because he let Abigail call him a father. All because she trusted him to know that weren't no one from camp that fathered the boy, a holdover from the profession she'd been masterful at before Uncle hauled her into the ranks.  All because he'd figured that'd give Abigail, a fine woman and finer friend, the chance to raise the baby with the protection of the gang, tied to it with a claim of blood connection. All because Arthur heard him claim it and ain't never listened to the truth underlying it – that John cheated at dominoes and cards, but never cheated on them held close in his heart.

When he left, it'd been because Arthur cast him aside. Pushed him towards the fanciful dream of a family and fellowship that he ain't never wanted. Told him to be with his woman, to raise up the child, and that tore him in all manner of directions – none of them giving him peace. So he'd denied it all, reneged on it in his desperation and that sent everything spiraling into a hell of his own making. One that he's about to make worse.

"I'll do it," he vows, fists clenched as he glares at Arthur. "I'll claim Jack. Give the boy a father, let Abigail play happy family all she wants, but you?  You, Arthur, stop pushing me out. Stop this stupid, hateful bullshit because for all I left?  I came back and it weren't for Abigail or the boy. It were for you, y'damn jackass.  You're why I came back. Why I was ready to die, because I'm done with losing what matters, y'hear?"

This assault, words wielded as weapons, penetrates the invisible armor that shrouds Arthur, carves away the instinctive reaction to deny or reject it. Slack-jawed silence meets him, but it's no buffer to slow him.  John marches forward, grabs at Arthur's shirt – two handfuls of fabric creased and clenched in his grip. He pushes at him, a steady and firm pressure that Arthur ain't fighting as it moves them back into the small camp, his eyes unreadable but for the twitch of movement in search of something.

When he opens his mouth, John sees the resignation, knows the man about to cast aside his argument on the grounds of not being worth any of this. That annoys and angers John in equal measure; makes him react first. When he pushes Arthur back against the tent's poled edges, he pulls himself in and crashes their mouths together in a kiss long wanted, too long absent.

The shock of it, the grunted noise is swallowed by it, but Arthur does not push him, does not turn away. Shock at his sudden gesture does not stop John from the savouring it. He angles his head and Arthur responds, reciprocates and maybe it's muscle memory, but they're kissing now and John can feel his heartbeat run rampant in his chest. He feels it brand him as Arthur lifts a hand, cards fingers through his hair – and then there's a sudden, strong grip in his hair as Arthur holds it to position them better.

John lets his eyes close and allows the warmth to spread; all the while he keeps his hold, refuses to relent. Tongue and teeth come into play as he claims tastes he'd near forgotten – they tease him deeper and seems that maybe this stands to be sorted. Maybe they can make something of them from what'd always been quick and quiet in the dark. Satisfaction in the moment, something heady after a good job or comforting after a rough patch, but it's never been enough for John. Long has he wanted more, only he screwed up, led them into heartbreak, but now?

Heat builds and coils within him, burns and spreads through his body. 'Perfunctory' is what he's had since he left, a hand half-dry in the dead of night, grimace more than groaning for the sake of half-hearted release. Absent was the lightning that courses through him, the way it sparks across nerves and leaves him wanting more. He drops his hands, runs his palms down Arthur's chest. Smooths his shirt, feeling the firm muscle as it tenses and twitches under his touch.

Emboldened, John hooks his fingers in Arthur's suspenders, follows the straps down to where they button onto his trousers. He grabs the older man's hips, holds him there and lets his own wanting moan smother its sound into the kiss. John pushes his leg forward, knee parting thighs as he chases the feel, the desire that spirals down in him, cock half-hard with the southern rush of blood. He rocks forward, Arthur pliant and permitting for a moment, and then-

Nothing.

Fast as the emotions flooded after the dam broke, damnable logic or reason comes back to Arthur and he stops. Gets hold of himself, tightens the grip he has of John's hair, and yanks him back. The shock of pain does not smother the arousal, that shared spark of desire, but Arthur has always been better with control than John.

Loss of contact in the kiss is his first disappointment. The second comes with the blur of movement. John loses hold of Arthur, blinks and then chokes out protest as he's shoved to the ground. One arm gets twisted up behind his back, pressure applied as his cheek digs into the dirt. One eye can open to make sense of sights and what he sees is conflict – the way it always turns out with them.  Clouded and distracted, but Arthur is there – kneeled down to pin him there, breath hot against his face. The man breathes hard and his skin is flushed, takes a second and licks his lips before he speaks.

"Stop promising fool things you ain't never going to mean," Arthur warns him. Lowly spoken, voice troubled and trembled with an effort of control. Then he's gone, pushing away to stand, but when John tries to turn over – to stop him from stopping them – he gets a boot in the middle of his back to hold him down.

"I ain't lying!" he manages, protest spit out with the dirt stuck against his lips. That earns him the near full weight of Arthur on his back and it drives the breath from him.  "I mean it, Arthur," he manages to gasp out, still fighting.

No words acknowledge his avowance, only the pressure shifted to his heel in warning. Then it's gone – so is Arthur by the time John gets his bearings, knees scrambling in the dirt as he pushes himself off the ground, stares at the emptied space. The tent, the makings of the camp are abandoned along with him, no sign of Arthur in the haste of his departure. Fresh tracks from Boadicea being ridden out, and Melody contently grazing to the side, but no Arthur. Denied, rejected, and still half-hard, John curses at himself. He runs a hand through his hair and drops onto his back, staring at the sky as he wonders how the hell he can prove his truths when Arthur no longer trusts him to touch, much less talk.

"Well, shit," is what he mutters, admonition at himself as he struggles to his feet.  Ain't even bothered to brush the dirt off his clothes, he just whistles for Melody and readies to ride back to camp –still as empty and alone as before, and all the more worse for the wear.

Chapter Text

Words mean nothing to men like them. Men that were near as raised by con artists and liars, folk for whom words are one more weapon in an expansive arsenal.  John ponders that reality as he spends the next few days searching, edging deeper into his desperation for some way'll make Arthur see that he came back for and because of him, nothing else. Words did nothing and the actions he tried, well... ain't no surprise that they both wanted it, but in the end it'd been one more selfish showing of John pushing his luck. Ain't been enough about what Arthur needed, ain't never been enough about what Arthur wants and that ain't fair. That's what John comes to terms with around the same time he understands what he has to do.

Foolhardy actions mean about the same as words do, when all's said and done, but honest actions speak louder than them same words, action's what he does. John makes every effort to ignore Arthur when they are both at camp, suppresses every urge to follow and throw himself against the invisible walls erected by his absence until they start to crumble and fall. Maybe it's idiocy, or maybe it's defiance, but he aims to do what Arthur claims impossible for him: John distances himself, braces himself, and though he swears there'll never be a day when he feels ready, he picks today to make his move.

The day itself ain't so special, more the generic sort; there's irony writ all over when the mundanity of it is held against what John means to do.

Davey and Mac, spitting images of each other, are away scouting the route local stages use for payroll runs with an eye to lighten their loads. Tilly bears the repeater and holds secure the unmarked boundary of camp, her sure shot and sharp eyes turned to detect the threats without. Uncle snores beneath the shade of a pine tree, needles and sap stuck to his beard in an unpleasant emulation of some sort of grotesque gnome. Dutch and Susan are both out in town to fetch supplies needed and gain a breath of civilized air one craves after weeks being campbound. Others linger about, sleeping or drinking as the mood calls to them, but none of them have the seniority to be comfortable lounging within the holy trinity of tents at the camp's heart unless summoned.

This is when and where John makes his move, after more than a day spent whittling down a block of wood into a crude whistle, blowing shavings into the fire as the toy takes shape. Early evening is the stretch of time he does it, with scents drifting from the stew pot that promise of savoury satisfaction at dinnertime. It's the lazy hour before the mealtime rush and he stares towards the tents, sets his thoughts in order. Arthur and Hosea are sat at the table outside Dutch's tent, have been for a couple hours now in a rare show of rest.

John tucks the whistle into his back pocket, his knife sheathes at his belt, and he brushes sawdust from his legs before he walks boldly forward. He moves with purpose, seems like he might walk straight to where Arthur sits mid-game with Hosea and a fine bone set of dominoes. The game and Arthur freeze when he is noticed, a domino held halfway to its placement.  He locks gazes with the older man as he approaches, each step more tightly winding the clockwork spring between them until it feels fit to snap.

Then, just as he reaches what would've been his chance to address Arthur, John makes a point of looking away. He crosses his arms and leans a hip against the knife-scarred edge of the table; this turns him to face Hosea more than it does Arthur and that's the whole point.

"I been thinking," he starts.

"That explains the smoke in the air," Hosea jabs with an amused cant to his expression. It's an old dig, a joke that he and Arthur both have been subjected to time and again. Behind the humourous cant, his eyes are curious and cautious both as he watches John.

Ain't the newest joke in the book, but John grants it a chuckle nonetheless, decides to take the opening and make this light for all that everything stands in sharp definition for him. His breath keeps trying to short itself and his heart beats faster than Melody's hooves when she's given the full rein to run. Fight and flight are awake and in conflict within him; the adrenaline surges high because this will make or break everything he wants or needs. 

"Reckon so, maybe," he allows with a shake of his head. "All the same, I been thinking real hard about a few things and figure... well." John pauses, breaks his posture to rub at the back of his neck as though chagrined, but not once looking away. "Maybe I ain't done right by Abigail and the boy." He draws a breath, keeps his eyes on Hosea as he sets the padlock in place. "Might be time I remedy that."

A pin dropped will shatter the stillness and silence that stifles the air. John forces his attention to stay on Hosea, despite every fibre of his being wanting to see Arthur's reaction. For his part, Hosea appears shocked, mouth hung partly open but he is too practiced, too familiar with hearing something outlandish to be tripped up for long. Con artists don't live to see the grey hairs creep across their brow the way Hosea has unless they can talk fast and think faster; a consummate pro, he recovers fast.

"You don't say," Hosea muses. He rests his forearms on the table's surface, body leaned slightly back to assess the moment – if John's messing with them, or too drunk to know what he's saying. "This remedy you're talking about...?"

The way it trails off, he knows the intent is to bait him into saying more. John knows it, knows they expect him to avoid being trapped by his own tongue, but this time he means to take the bait. Needs to take it – hook, line, and sinker – if he wants this chance to stick. He shrugs up his shoulder and casually scratches the side of his neck. "Seems that how I've treated them... it ain't right," he explains slowly, lets each detailed layer settle over the last. No point rushing this, for his sake if naught else; run words too fast and the whole table'll know it a bluff and this ain't meant to be that. "That boy never chose to be born into all this mess. Ain't right to make him suffer for it."

Part of that's experience, a truth carried from a childhood of being unwanted. Part of it, well, ought to be true because ain't that Jack meant for anything to happen. Jack had no part of the process, had no impact on it until his first shrieking cry. The kid doesn't have the sense yet to realize that neither, and maybe he'll be lucky enough to never possess the sense of knowing the disruption his birth'd caused.

"Keep skirting around the subject and you'll have a fashionable gown before you make your point."

Hosea's dry wit nudges him towards the precipice of the teased point and John raises up his chin, puts the thoughts of reasonableness to the side. "Guess what I'm saying here's that the kid deserves better," he says, commits it to words in front of witnesses – makes sure that it can't be taken back.  "Now, I ain't better, not in a long shot, but maybe a shitty dad's better than none at all."

Domino tiles scatter as his words wind down and John glances to the spread, sees the fist that disrupted the neatly laid playing tiles. Seems Arthur had himself a reflexive twitch, one he's clenched his fingers against as the meaning of John's statement settles in. His forearm trembles under the strain of not repeating it, not giving credit to John for triggering such a reaction.  Hard and penetrating is the look he shoots John, the blue of his eyes murky. No longer does the crystal clarity of rage reflect at him, but the these ain't the richer shades of approval or joy that'd ease his apprehension. Doubt is what he names the emotion and John stares right back at him, defiant.

"I mean, I ain't gonna fight the claim of it no more," he says, clear and firm, but this time directs the words at Arthur. It dares him to call out, to cry foul because there ain't no way John Marston's come to accept his responsibility, no sir. But he gets nothing more than a curled lip and a bewildered twitch before the older looks away.  "Jack needs a father," he continues, still staring at – near as through in his intensity – Arthur.  "So why the hell not me."

Hosea shifts his weight in the seat, reaches out to realign the bone tiles with a fastidious touch. It's motion to fill the gaping holes in what's been said, the accusations and rejections what'd been the way of John and Arthur communicating right before he ran off that ain't taking traction yet.  "And Abigail?" he presses. Hosea means to force John to double down on his decision, but it's with the delicate balance of caution and worry intermingle in his tone. The man is patient and more caring than most, but that caring goes in equal measure about camp.  He won't stand for John Marston staking a claim and then abandoning it to heartbreak when his mood shift.  Especially not when a child's involved, or when a family's got the chance to be made or broken by it.

Irony that it's heartbreak that led him here, seconded by desperation, to be making clear an intent to be what the gang figures he ran from: A father, dedicated to his son and caring for the boy's mother. He knows the still ain't the right way of going about nothing, but John wants. He is selfish enough to do what it takes to prove his point, that there is no price Arthur can set too high for him to pay. That if Arthur don't want him, it's got to be because he don't want John – none of this smoke and mirrors about what needs to be done, what grave John's dug for himself.

"Don't much think I could do one without the other," he replies easily. His eyes are still on Arthur, feels a bit like he's staring down the rifle barrel. Expects smoke to billow out and lead to bite him, but it's uneasy silence that stagnates in its place.

No fool – not like the boys he's near as raised – Hosea sets the final tile straight, his final tile from the hand dealt. The win goes unnoticed and he looks between them, senses the lightning that crackles and thrums unseen. This won't be sorted so quickly, so he licks his upper lip, stands up, and sets a hand on John's shoulder.  "Well, son," he begins, careful in his word choices, "if that's how the tiles are going to fall..."

"It is," John asserts, voice stumbled over the knot in his throat.  He's caught up in the conviction that he needs to do this, for all he risks too much by it.  All it takes is disbelief, a thing Arthur is rich with, to sentence him to his foolhardy decision, yet still he has to try.

Arthur starts, draws back as though the dominos were tiled snakes lashing out to bite him, and stands with a rough shove at the table. John feels it against his hip, a force to bleed out the mess of everything that John Marston insists on doing and being.  "Your game," Arthur snaps quick, the veneer one of an ungracious loser.  Maybe he is, because here John stands to call his bluff, making a claim to parentage rooted in lies, doing what Arthur says is right, heeding demands shouted angrily at him over a year ago and there ain't nothing he can do about it.

"She said he was yours."

"You made your bed, Marston. Don't bitch at me when you gotta lie in it."

"This here's called a consequence and it ain't something you can shoot or rob to be rid of."

"That I doubt very much," Hosea murmurs as Arthur stalks away, throws himself into the act of chopping wood without a backwards glance. No doubt, each log will be envisioned as John's face, each swing meant to cleave away his likeness until the sour anger fades.  They both watch him go, Hosea's expression impassive and John's forced to stone.  "I hope you know what you're doing here, John."

John laughs, his smile more a grimace as he drops into the vacated seat, still warm from Arthur's body heat.  "Don't you worry, Hosea," he offers in fruitless assurance. "I got no damn clue."

-

There is no watershed moment, no breaking of the floodgates like when he first returned.  Word spreads that John accepted Jack as his son and, by extension, Abigail as his woman and no one much fusses about it. She gives him a dubious look at the announcement, but offers a grateful hug – a visual reunion of two non-lovers all but trapped in their roles.

"You're a damn fool, John Marston," she breathes into his ear, fingers gripped tight at his shoulders.

"Don't I know it," he says, rueful and self-deprecating. And yet it is truth, openly admitted, because who else would go to the things he has for the sake of maybe getting through to Arthur 'Thick-Headed' Morgan.

"Well, I ain't turning it away none either," she reminds him. It's an echo of the offer he made, now a promise kept, to ensure her inclusion and that of the child's in the protective bonds of the van der Linde gang.

"You better not."  At the cost paid, John figures he might well see one person happy in this. Or, in the least, content to live in an illusion brought into reality.

"I won't."

It's a strange vow to hear, but strange is all he seems to stumble through nowadays.  Abigail is a strong soul that does what she needs to survive, and it don't matter what the cost is to secure the guarantee of it.  That's no fault in John's eyes. Hell, it's why he made the damnable offer of claim in the first place, when she was in a tough spot and he thought to help.

Abigail knows more than the others, knows the why and the who that John chases. The day Arthur heard about her delicate condition and John's purported role in it is the same day she sat down with John and told him he was a damn fool to promise her protection when it cost him his chance with Arthur.  When he'd agreed about his idiocy, she smacked the back of his hand and ordered him to find a way to talk with Arthur, make sense of it, because for all she wanted the gang's protection for a child created from one of her final clients, she weren't consenting to John dragging his heart through the mud to make it happen.

Nah, he ain't done that. John went and dragged himself through mud instead, sullying the promises and pressures set on him until he broke from the gang and rode out, but that's a year and more past. Now, he's come back, claimed the boy, and tells himself to damn the consequences.

Dutch lauds the commitment when he learns of it, relayed the campfire three times or more during celebrations that evening. In this life, any reason to get drunk's considered good reason and folk flock to the bottle at its slightest beckon. That 'good' news triggers it makes the gang all the more raucous, cheering and singing off-tune ditties late into the night.

There resides an appraisal in Dutch's gaze even as he speaks proudly to John becoming a man; the words feel hollow, as though absent the judgement and opinion that would give them weight. The man holds it distant, away from curious comments or vague allusions he makes in what feels like a performance for the gang. It reminds John of the pivotal moment when Dutch threw over the intent of his return, forced him from condemnation to exaltation. John does not quite trust it, nor the platitudes that are given voice, and it sinks, unsettled, in his gut. A small instinct brought alive warns him that he has set in motion something more than proving a point to Arthur, but exactly what is beyond his reach.

The rest give over no marked measure of approval or derision. Susan comments it about time, Tilly gives him a strange look but says nothing more. The rest are too new to understand the implications, too drunk to care, or too blind to the history of strife that played prelude to this decision.

-

Morning brings hangovers and late sleepers, but John ain't been in a drinking mood. He wakes earlier than the rest and helps move Abigail and the boy into his tent. Once bleary-eyed souls start to stir, he makes an awkward show of giving Jack the whittled whistle. It barely bleats under the strongest lungs, a godsend by the way the boy runs around, face red with the effort of trying to elicit even one squeak.

All the while, Arthur is present, but despite his proximity, it feels like the Great Plains stretch between them. They barely speak and his words stay clipped, temper short, and expression too intense, too focused on what John is doing – searching for the lie, no doubt. Seeking the cracks in the dike hastily erected to slow the tide of his anger, his rejection. But watch is all he does; Arthur does not strike the blow to shatter this newfound 'family' façade, only stands and waits for when John will inevitably slip.

The folly's on him, for it makes John double down on his stance. They are the pair of them stubborn to any number of faults and one day's statement turns into many more of stalemate. Life continues on, unaware or uncaring of this emotional siege, and he readies himself for a long haul.

Weeks pass like this and John finds routine amidst the expectations, the responsibilities he piled upon himself. Weeks pass with nothing more from Arthur and the adrenaline surge each time he sees the man lessens with each encounter that ends in civility or silence. The scattered dominos remain the only reaction Arthur's shown – a display of shock and doubt, but nothing since. John begins to understand that what he's done ain't proven nothing, only served to strap his boots to a boulder and leapt from the dock into deep waters. Some part of him still hopes that Arthur will buckle, will leap in and save him from drowning, but that hope diminishes with each day that passes.

John spends more of these days in camp, a show made of sitting with Abigail or playing some silly game with Jack. There are times he reads to the boy, who sits there with wide eyes as his gives voice to paperbound words. He doesn't hate them, never has. Abigail remains sharp, cutting his ignorance with reason, but she's not cruel. And Jack? Hardly three and the boy knows words and joy, but emulates the ullen quiet of his apparent father.  It's almost cute, the sort of thing that softens the razor-sharp edges of this new life he navigates, but still John looks to Arthur, for Arthur, because this is at its core still him being selfish in proving a point.

Two months flee from them all and Dutch begins talking about moving northeast, steering them towards budding civilization. He paints a stunning vision of twisting arms and charming souls into freeing themselves from the chains of their wealth. Doubt, seeded in the moment of his unwelcome welcoming, begins to stretch thin roots in response to the plan and John doesn't admit to seeing more tarnish than garnish in it.  He goes where he's told, does as he's told; this is life in the gang and he accepts that. The wanderlust is gone, glory of it spent and dulled; he no longer seeks for those things he ain't have the right to want, the fountain of his hope left fractured and dry from the drought of Arthur's good graces.

Each night, after the fires are banked against the dew that will settle in the dawn and when the souls of camp are abed, John makes towards his tent, where Abigail and the boy are both asleep. Each night, his steps carry him to the threshold, and each night he does not cross it. Easier to carry past the tent, to walk away from the brash commitments made that remain unanswered. No claim will ease the weight in his chest, the hollowness left where anticipation lies dead. Claim them he did, but John leaves Abigail and Jack their freedoms, tries to keep his own foolishly squandered measure of it in turn.

And so each night, he walks past the comforts of his tent until he finds the hitching post, pulls free the reins and mounts Melody. Each night, he rides out to the secluded camp where he vowed his intent to claim the boy as his son. Little disturbs him there, leaves him to check for snakes that may've made home in his absence, then sheds his boots, strips down to his union suite, and crawls into Arthur's abandoned pup tent to sleep until the early taste of the sun's light. Then he rouses and returns to the gang in a cycle that he cannot help but believe will be unbroken for the rest of his days.

-

Late in the night, he wakes with a start and makes to shout, but a gloved hand presses over his mouth and forces back the sound. John struggles instinctively against the weight that crept up on him, against the hand that pins his wrists to the ground above his head. Fight, ever kept close to the surface, comes alive, bares his teeth to the leather glove, but it's too thick to bite through and all he gets is the taste of worn hide, oils, and gunpowder.

Frantic thoughts raise alarm, curses break against the hand muffling him, and John thinks brief to the foolish, selfish decision that brought him out here, away from the gang. It leaves him ripe for trouble without no one to watch his back.  Adrenaline surges, but lacks the strength to shed his attacker and John opens his eyes to orient himself. Tries to gauge what he's up against, but shadows and haze obscure too much. The glow of a lantern set outside the tent backlights the man above him and John looks past the form at the canvas. Readies himself to thrash about, to lash out with a leg and strike down the poles holding the tent up – means to bring it down atop them both, then-

"Quit that!"

Words that are hissed out more than growled, a sharp warning to not go making this worse. Any other soul telling him that and John would fight back all the more, but this voice's familiar lilt brings him pause. He realizes it's Arthur that's sat across his midsection, knees pressed to his sides where they can still his squirming.  He hesitates, swallows back the instinct to strike. Maybe he ought to be cautious being that they ain't spoken real words since his vow, but caution ain't so much there as relief that it is Arthur and nothing more nefarious. Quick as the fight roused, it bleeds away and John sinks back down against his bedroll, eyes wide and brow raised up. Confusion floods in the space that adrenaline vacates, a questioning glare offered up that nets no reaction.

Grasshoppers chirrup faintly beyond the tent, kept from the heart of his meagre, usurped camp by the lingering embers of the fire. An owl calls low from some hollowed tree, but the only other sounds are his heaving breathing through his nose, the whisper of leather and jingle of spurs as Arthur shifts warily. The man's eyes are shadowed in this poor light, but he can make out the stern line of his mouth, an unchanged and disappointed look that seems reserved just for John Marston.

Neither of them move for a long moment. Arthur says nothing and they stare at each other. John realizes, a fleeting and teasing thought, that this is the closest they've been since Arthur held a gun to his head, finger readied by the trigger – and all had been right in this world for that brief instant. His chest hurts – not by the weight sat on it, but by how the man's presence, his proximity soothes John more than any tonic can. Even now, it's not fear that Arthur came to finish the job, but acceptance that if it is, then that'd make things right again.

Things might've been different, if only Arthur felt an ounce of what he did, but Arthur rightly hates him for what John did in leaving. Moreso for coming back and some voice in his head warns that he'll blame John, somehow, for being welcomed and not reviled. For casting into sudden question the values and rules that they lived by, the only ones they knew how to live by.

The warmth of Dutch's welcome lingers still; it pesters and chases John because of how wrong it feels. It stands contrary to years of preaching the values and lifestyle of loyalty. His memory is vivid still of Arthur drawing his pistol to shoot dead the last bastard that betrayed the gang. Preaching and practice woven together to justify his expectation that he'd meet the same end. All that upended with a few baffling sentiments exchanged before the unwitting audience of outlaws around them. It felt off, wrong, and John wants the bitter aftertaste of his newly sown seeds of distrust to wash away, but no amount of whiskey drowns them, not with other things that demand his focus. Like Arthur being here and staring down at him in the dead of night, no one else around to bear witness to his execution, if that's what is meant to be.

This ain't happenstance nor coincidence, that much he knows.  He had to find John to get here and traitorous is the fleeting thought that maybe Arthur came looking for him, not hunting him.

Ashen hopes that will too readily scatter at a stiff breeze, yet John hoards them, shelters them from that dismal fate. He lies still and opens his hands to rest them palm up, showing that he ain't aiming to fight no more.  Not right then, not in the way a man awoken without warning might.

Arthur grunts and lifts his hand from across his mouth, taking with it that greased gunpowder smell and, more slowly, releases the grip on his wrists. When John does not buck or shift him off, he settles his weight over his midsection, hands come to rest on his own thighs. His expression is wary, his presence heavy and grounding in ways that ain't right to put words to.

"This where you been turning tail to hide?" he asks sharply, a pained accusation rusting about the edges.

"I ain't been hiding," John snaps back, hackles up at the insinuation that he's the one what's been avoiding this. He fights the urge to cross his arms, to unseat him when he does not yet know why Arthur is here. That them words hit upon poorly concealed truths is no less a reason for this voice of defiance, for all that he holds back the violence that comes easily in the sorting of it.

John leaves the boundaries of camp, retreats to this meagre haven, because he does not want to be there, in the heart of assumptions and conclusions made in the wake of his claim. Hiding ain't what he's doing out here, nor's he trying to be alone; if he wanted that, then camp offers that the form of facades and fallacies which hide too much of him.  Arthur's choice to hold back, to be nothing more than a judgmental presence waiting for him to fail, has left him isolated and this site lets him embrace that. Alone and alive, two things he sought to avoid in returning to the van der Linde gang.

"You ain't quite easy to find neither," Arthur grumbles, thumb tapping distractedly against his thigh. Now that John is awake, the older man is shifting and the intensity of his gaze less piercing. A change, yes, but caution blooms alongside this realization. It's an admission that he came to find John, not the easier accusation that John took over his old camp.

"Never seems to stop you," he replies, dry wit waking with his growing awareness.

Arthur tenses and something dark threatens to spill from his lips, his expression matched to the murky blur of anger and anguish seen on his ride home. The motion of his hands still, fingers pressing down against his trousers to betray nothing more of his agitation.

The callous onslaught of his comment dawns on John and he moves his arms slowly, braces his elbows against the ground to lean a few degrees up as he watches the other. Those eyes, ocean and tempest both, flicker briefly away but that don't disguise the pained highlight sparked there. The final vestiges of sleep shed as he comes to understand why his words triggered that, the pieces that he ain't realized before. "Except it did," he says, more an affirmation of his own understanding. That for all Arthur has always found him, how he always seemed to be there when John needed him before, it weren't no mystic connection that linked them.  No. Because Arthur went looking for John when he left.

And Arthur came back empty-handed.

Tightness latches bands about his chest and his heart creeps up into his throat. Arthur rode out in search of him, rode out to find him, and coming back with nothing must've doubled-down on whatever hurt he left in his wake. John swallows against the thickening sensation that he will choke on this revelation, this insight to how much he'd mattered, the sudden fear that he ruined things worse than already thought. He looks away from those eyes, avoids seeing too clear that pain; this remains his only way to run from what his actions did to Arthur.

"You got no idea what you left behind."  The words come low, dancing dangerously with a bitter threat not focused at him, but on him.

"I left a lie," John protests, eyes closed. He steadies his breath against the rising beat of his heart as it hammers out a frantic pattern to break the seemingly iron bands that replaced his ribs.

"You left a boy, a woman what you were meant to protect," Arthur says. "Abigail called you the father and you damn well left." There's so much hurt in his voice, in the echoes that ripple from his own life of losses, and all of it triggered by John. By his words and actions and that's a reason beyond others, a reality to justify the why of him leaving. Beyond the selfish measures he accepts as his own, it was to save Arthur this pain. To let it fade into an ache of memory for them both – only he folded his hand, came back, and that scratched and clawed it all back to the surface, raw as the day he left. One more disservice done that no amount of apology will mend.

Yet, the pain and hurt is in him as well and it leads him back into fighting.

"I left a lie!"

John all but shouts it, snaps his gaze back to Arthur. The fire roused, he pushes up and near throws him off with the struggling surge. Hands latch onto his shoulders and slam him back against the ground, but he fights back this time. Tries to squirm free until Arthur needs to use a bruising force to hold him there.  "What Abigail said was what I told her to say!" he adds, grunts and growls as each shift is countered. John kicks a leg out, digs his heel into the bedroll for leverage. "It weren't even her idea! I just – Hell, I told you already! I was tryin' to help her and look at what it done!"

John bucks his hips up, rolls his body to the side, and finally it works to crash Arthur down next to him. He knows he should move, take this advantage before he can be pinned again, but he just falls back, breathing fast, and stares at the canvas above. "Lost me everything," he admits to the air, the stillness that falls on them.  "The minute you heard it, there weren't nothing I could've done to prove otherwise."

Why he expects an answer, when it's never been coming, is nothing sensible or reasonable. When there is nothing still, John sighs and rolls onto his side, away from Arthur.  A reflection of the way Arthur turned from him when Abigail called out Jack's parentage.  Only then it'd been words Arthur used to shut him out – words hollering what were right to do in the face of being a father, not what was wanted by John, or by Arthur. Years of closeness, of attachment and connection; all of it cast aside in the face of, what? Something Arthur once lost and John never wanted; all he'd meant to do was give Abigail a means to stay safe, but best intentions ain't never served no one and he knows that well.

"You never tried."

Arthur's accusation is quiet, too easy to miss, but he's always been attuned to the older man. Years growing up beside him and then years chasing after him make it near as impossible to miss any whisper of sound associated with him. Ingrained when life and death stand separated by a warned shout, embraced when it is the one thing that eases the nightmares of a life lived hard and violently. Even if he'd never returned, John knows he would've remembered that voice, this man, until the end of his days.

John laughs to chase that reflection off, curls an arm up and under his head to act as pillow against the hard earth beneath.  "What point was there in trying?" he asks instead, an imperfect deflection, same as always. Lethal aim in a gunfight, both of 'em, but never could speak an honest, emotional truth whether or not a life depended on it.

There's a shifting movement; half the presence beside him fades as Arthur sits up. No answers surface because that challenge speaks more to this tangled mess than either of them can. John tried, hell knows he did, in them first days after Abigail's claim – days when Arthur treated him akin to a plague, while Abigail whispered that John could call it sham and be free, but he'd known then that Arthur wouldn't believe it. Wouldn't let him rescind it. Too stubborn and set, too focused on making sure John ain't made the same mistakes he did to miss him making these new ones.

"Weren't no point." John says it for him, for all the times Arthur's had the chance to relent and all the times he kept the pressure up to have John be what he can't. "All you had care for were my being a father, my having a family, but no care about what I wanted in all that."

John means to go back to sleep in the absence of objections, or of anything in the silence that quickly engulfs them. His heart still beats an unfair pace, hammering against his ribs with the razor sharp clarity of how close they are. But with the things left unsaid, that small distance feels the same as miles and he curves inward on himself. A few minutes and this'll be left unsorted, the same as every other time he's tried, and he needs to learn that leaving things lie can be better than the tumultuous mess trying to fix something that ain't got the parts nor instructions on how to do it.

Confusion flurries awake when a hand grips his shoulder and turns him flat on his back. This strays from his tired resignation, jolts him back awake, eyes wide. Arthur leans over him, unreadable and closed off, and John stares back. No sparks or fire this time, just a cool, blank, barely blinking look.

"You think I don't care about you."

Question lies absent in words that could've raised it, Arthur's exact meaning left indistinct. What he knows is Arthur's grip is steel on his shoulder. The hold is familiar what kept him on his knees before Dutch on his return, prisoner more than petitioner to their leader. Absent, too, is the pistol to his head, the trembling of anger barely restrained. Something intense lies within that grip, giving it the same strength for all that it feels distinctly different.

"No." John answers that honestly. He knows Arthur cares, no matter that he shows it in subtle ways. The mashed-up kiss he forced on them flashes to the forefront of his thoughts, lingering on how there'd been response and engagement to the point of encouragement. But even without that, he knows Arthur's been there for him more times than just duty or loyalty demands. Yet his point holds true.  This ain't about whether Arthur cares about him. "What you ain't cared about is what I was wanting in all that."

Arthur's brow furrows at that, fingers holding still strong, still a weighted stone that keeps him from turning away. Always grounding him, willing or not. "Why then?" he presses with words, with his hand. Bruises might well form from the pressure that pushes down against him.  "If that ain't what you want and the boy ain't yours, then why have Abigail claim it?"

That's the crux of it, the question with no answer – twelve months away aint'd offered insights neither. John shrugs as best he can and rests his head back on the bedroll. His eyes wander and waver, not holding to any one point as he looks for words that slyly hide from him. Abigail'd trusted him to know the babe a holdover from the particulars of employment she'd been in before the gang, trusted him to hear her fear to being cast out when it became obvious. Ain't seemed right to take that knowledge and let it bring suffering on her when he knew the bonds of the gang'd be stronger if secured to someone with roots wound deep within it.

"Same reason I do most things, I reckon," he wagers, slow and with a wince at the part he needs to say next.  "In the moment, I ain't thought about what'd happen."

Least that earns him a gruff laugh and carves the first shavings from the ice that froze into place between them since that fateful, foolish declaration. Arthur shakes his head and looks away from him, out towards the slowly dying fire. "Nothing but air between them ears of yours," comes his assessment, a tired trope brought back to life. He lifts his hand from its hold and drops back to sitting near him. There ain't much room for it in the tent; canvas drapes down near his shoulder in a space meant for one man their size, not two. He ignores it, bends a knee and rests his elbow there.  With a slow breath, Arthur pulls off his hat and turns it over in his hands. There's something lost, formless about him without the anger there to give purpose and protection to his heart and soul. But his shoulders are still tight, sign that the trouble ain't sorted yet.

John chances that it might be a bit less tangled, though. Rolls his eyes at the familiar insult, and hollow as his head supposedly is, he can challenge the same at some of the things Arthur's done over the years.  He doesn't push his luck, though; what he pushes is the moment, their having a conversation without the beatings or bullets they're better at wielding.  This ain't no wide open window to vault through and for all he came back to face death without fearing it, John grapples against the real fear that scratches through his thoughts. The fear that Arthur will leave him alive and alone; that knowing or accepting the truth'll mean Arthur abandons him for being the foolish, selfish man he knows himself to be.

Fighting that fear, he pushes words out faster than he ought; maybe he'll find something worth saying if he wades through a flood of sentiments and statements sloshing about his head. Something that'll make sense of his stupid choices in claiming parenthood, leaving his found family, and then returning into the tangled weave. With the foolishly rising desperation that he might fix it, he speaks on, even as the shattered pieces cut his skin as they spill from his mouth.

"Abigail ain't weak and she ain't bad. What was I supposed to do?  Let her say it weren't none of us what fathered the boy?"  John drags himself up to sitting in the narrow confines of the tent, faces Arthur and chases his eyes to fix their gaze together. When the man looks away, he ducks forward and to the side with the sole intent of reconnecting them, determined to press this point into firm understanding.  "There ain't no reason to keep on a woman in a delicate condition, no matter how much Dutch talks about helping those in need!  We'd've left her at the first decent town with a handful of cash and nothin' of prospects?  This boy've hers ain't got much of a future that way and that's what she was so damn scared of.  So why not claim the kid?"  He huffs out a breath, short and frustrated by the ironic hindsight that points out the dozens of reasons discovered when it all backfired on him.  "Least he'd have the gang to protect him. Ain't like Dutch'd leave them behind if he thought the boy was mine!"

John leaned on favour there, the sole clever angle in this whole foolhardy scheme. Dutch had plenty of forgiveness for John Marston's faults, had proven it time and again as John grew up with the gang, and so he'd put all his chips in on that one bet that the 'golden boy' of the gang might get away with having a child. On how that'd put the child and the child's mother as under his protection, under that of the gang.  Ain't put much thought into the rest, but that part'd worked out damn well.

"Then why'd you not just say that!" Arthur's voice cut against the reasoning, all broken edges that speak to the loss and hurt caused by his good intentions – and damn John Marston for causing both. "You had her say it and ain't thought to warning me?"

Memory flashes to the moment, the look as Arthur heard Abigail speaking quietly with Dutch, John off to the side and ready to confirm her words as truth. The way his back tensed up and his expression closed off, while Dutch took her confession in stride, nodding slow as his clever mind found value in it. The way Arthur looked at John with crystal-bright eyes, that painful shade an insight into the stupidity of his actions in that brief moment before the years of pushing, chasing, and them broke apart.

"I already said I didn't think it through," John finds himself saying, defensive at the same point being brought up, ornery as salt rubs into the wound. "What more did you want from me?"

Fingers clench, denting the hat Arthur holds in his hand. There is waver, a small tremble in his grip before he roughly sets it aside. Seems there is more Arthur wants than an apology, seems that he wanted more then that he never reached for, and more is that he figures John ought know by the strained expression exactly what that is. He sees it in the way he looks torn between disappointment and distress, and in how determination finds purchase instead. Determination to move, to take action and it ain't clear what that'll mean in this moment.

John expects to be struck again, is ready for it even as his own fist clenches. The will to fight lives now, unlike on the day he rode in, and his frustration at the failures and flaws found in each facet of this complicated mess begs the chance for release. To not be the first one hit, but to be the first one to hit. He suppresses that, even as he expects to be punched; he refuses to shy from it. If this will sort it, then Arthur can beat him bloody until it makes amends.

What he ain't expecting, though, is when Arthur moves, he clenches the front of his union suit, bunching fabric with punishing strength. Still John stares at him, defiant in the absence of an answer, a solution that'll make sen-

Shock usurps defiance when Arthur jerks him close, drags him from sitting until his knees catch on the crumpled bedroll. He crashes their mouths together and John stares. Blinks, struck stupid, and stares into Arthur's eyes where they are locked on his briefly. Then the kiss settles, takes his focus as harsh and punishing, but also telling him more than any words can. Tells him that this is what Arthur wants, this is what Arthur's wanted – not the excuses from John or the absence of him, but John himself and he feels the stress, the disappointment of his unfulfilled return lift briefly.

John braces his fisted hand on the bedroll, takes on the weight of this awkward extension, and his free hand wraps around Arthur's forearm to hold tight. They fight in this, a different scuffle in the way teeth scrape and tongues push, but John feels Arthur in it. Feels the desperation of anger and abandonment, of trust fractured and he understands why it matters now. Or, at least he thinks he does.  Arthur ain't mad for the sake of their code, for the rules that keep order in their otherwise lawless lives. Arthur is mad for John turning his back on that, yes, but more for John turning his back on him when they ain't been something. For John breaking away and shattering that delicate phase when they'd been something more than brothers-in-arms.

John learns, dawns on the revelation that his heart ain't the only one broke by the rejection from his claiming Jack's parentage. By the pressure of expectations, by the flawed idea that he's any sort of father. No, weren't his heart alone what'd been torn apart. Arthur's heart – his soul – bears similar scars and, like any wound he's suffered, it is one he's borne in silence. Arthur never speaks plain to his true pains, nor to his pleasures; always kept contained, as though giving them breath will invite hell itself to visit sin upon it, and though a year has passed, that keeps the wound raw as when first inflicted.

John learns that by claiming Jack, he made Arthur think he wanted something normal, the very something that they couldn't never be, and the something that Arthur damned himself for losing the brief time he had it. Arthur is hurt and conflicted, same or worse than John is, and the clarity of that realization surges in him. Has him leaning forward, crossing the narrow tent with a reaching arm and-

John falls back on the bedroll, the breath driven from him, the kiss ended and the hold on him released with a shove. They stare at each other, Arthur's hand flexing instinctively in its vacated grip and John winded at being cast down hard.

He scrapes together sense as Arthur gathers his hat and makes to move away. That single move threatens everything John just pieced together and he knows, at least, that nothing will mend if this moment gets away. "Wait!" he rasps out, voice roughened from heaving dry air in. The call fails to stop Arthur, to stop the retreat being made. Does nothing to dampen the sudden need the man seems to feel to get away. John grabs at the bedroll for traction and leverage both, manages to latch hold of Arthur's wrist before he slips from reach, and stops him from running out before this becomes a damn habit between them.

Arthur freezes, holds still as though made of stone as he stares out of the tent towards the halo of the lantern's light. But the haste and force of leaving does not carry into an attempt to pull free, a small hint and hope that propels John to get up onto his knees, keeping firm his hold in case his guess is wrong.

"That's what you wanted?" he asks, just to be sure. And maybe he means to force an acknowledgment that they are both apt to avoid - but after unclear intentions and the confusing clash of reunions, he needs to hear it.  "That's why you got so mean about what I needed to be doing for Abigail?  Because it weren't you I was doin' it for?"

There's too much selfishness in that to truly be Arthur, but just enough truth in it to turn his gaze back to John. His eyes linger on his lips, then close to center himself, or to escape the distraction of it. When he reopens his eyes, it is to meet his gaze full on.  "What was I supposed to do?" he asks, too calm and even as it comes his turn to push doubtful questions forward. The bitter cold between them is not thawed for all the heat of the moment, but he's talking and that's the progress John clings to. "Ain't like I stood a chance. You get all the things I ain't never deserved to keep. Weren't going to damn you with me."

Resignation weighs down that statement, a dark acceptance of his perceived failings and John wants to strike him. Settles with pulling hard on the man's wrist and it brings Arthur back down to a knee, hobbles him from fleeing so quick. When John grabs his shoulder, it's to double down on keeping him present, to make the older man face him. "Why not say something before all that?" he asks, wants and needs to find out if they'd been the pursuit of pleasure or had Arthur wanted something more permanent?

Arthur's gaze darkens and though he kneels here, the vulnerability of his thoughts drift away, out of reach.  "Because," he says, like it's all there is to say, but John won't have it. He glares and waits without letting go, waits a full minute and then another before Arthur lets out a sigh. "Ain't right, John," he adds after too long a silence, one that stretches back months and years of words unsaid. "You need better. Abigail's that. I ain't."

Sparks alight his temper and the restraint slips free, the want to strike down that foolish sentiment darts past his control. John punches Arthur, hits the left side of his face and uses the force needed to bruise. The presumption of it, of all the pressures set on him by the expectations of others lights the wildfire in his head and heart. "I don't give a damn what you or Dutch or whoever the hell thinks I need!" he snarls out, done with being seen as something to puppet towards a happy ending he don't want nor deserve.

Surprise sides with John, leads him to pull forward and then throw Arthur to the ground. They end up half outside the tent as he moves fast to make good on the few seconds he has before shock fades and Arthur's greater strength comes out. John scrambles onto the older man, settles the core of his weight over his thighs, hands pressing flat down against his chest. Savage and brief both are his victory grin, a mask to temper the burning hot anger and indignation, but still it is a triumph in the face of Arthur's shocked expression.

"Jesus, Arthur, don't you get it?" The leverage is his and he keeps on the pressure, keeps cutting down the reasons that try to deny this and them.  "Maybe I ain't thought before I told her what to do," he says, deals words out with an unforgiving precision, throwing them with all the force a volley of bullets in the wake of a bank robbery. "But you?  You made it clear what I needed, same thing everyone else started saying after. Going on about that boy needing a father and how I needed to clean up, keep in line. Made it damn clear you was washing your hands of little Johnny Marston."

Hell, but he hates that nickname about the same as he does 'golden boy' and John spits it out to make his point, his perception clear that he ain't been seen as nothing more than what people called him, not who he was and what he wants. Somewhere amidst this is when Arthur sheds the shock, grabs his arms high with an angry snarl of words tangling his tongue, but John shakes his head and holds firm. It's been months, over a year, and he can't stop here. Can't throw down his cards and lose the last vestiges of chance to make anything of his busted up, broken heart and the hopes that keep trying to breathe life into it.

"What do you want from me, John?!"

"You, Arthur! I left 'cause you wanted me with Abigail and not you!"  John can hardly hear himself over the rush of blood in his ears, the thumping of a heart that seems ready to break his ribs in escape. "Only I couldn't do it, a'right?"  He digs his fingers into the hard muscles that struggle and shift beneath him, warning and anchor both.  "Couldn't damn well live with you, couldn't live without you!"

The more he talks, the harder the words are to form, the more he stumbles over and through them. John feels his throat knot up, painful and thick. Ain't matter how much he swallows to clear it, it roots itself deep. His head hangs forward, body bowed over Arthur; his hair drops into a messy curtain over his eyes, puts an end to their nigh unbroken stare. "Tried for a year," he says, thinks to all the times he kept away, rode alone, and how it never salved the hurt. Thought to the troubles he faced, the folk he shot at and the folk that shot at him, how he robbed them all just to get by. Just to share a shred of the hurt harbored deep in his heart. The hollow ache in his chest that kept drawing his eyes to bounty boards, to newspapers in desperation for a hint, a clue that Arthur might be near, that the gang might've found him.  Days and weeks with barely any sleep, haunted by the broken look Arthur bore at Abigail's claim that Jack were John's child.  Months where no amount of searching could find his appetite, stomach empty to match his heart and how it stripped the strength from him.

Beneath him, the angry heaving breaths slow, the fight to unseat him lessens, and John becomes aware of how heavy and fast, disjointed his breathing has become. Though he is here, part of him slips and tangles in the ordeal of his year and it makes it hard to catch his breath. His mouth hangs open, gasping in air that struggles to flood his lungs; needs to calm it down, find himself, but the fear of missing this chance with Arthur keeps him stumbling down this path. He squeezes his eyes shut, forces words out that'll take 'em to the crux of the matter.

"Thought," he says between shallow, scraping breaths, "that if I couldn't live without seeing or wanting you everywhere, then maybe dying by your gun'd be about the closest to peace I could manage."

"John-"

He shakes his head, grits his teeth, and sets his jaw firm. "Another thing I ain't thought through and look what it done!"  John pushes off, away from Arthur, and fumbles the movement, falls back under the shadowed confines of canvas. His thoughts, all sharp and tangled, are an impassible bramble and he scratches his nails, his fingers up into his hair until hurt rakes through it.  Clutches and pulls at the roots because everything comes undone, everything is bared and the strength he had in hoarding it all is spent.  There ain't no collecting it all, setting it back deep where no one'll see it; hope lays in the scattered words because he has no more to fuel any more attempts, any more actions that'll suit.  Every damn thing he tries, from leaving to coming back, from calling bluffs to this violent confession. None of it works, none of his spur-of-the-moment things work and he's starkly the fool Arthur unfailingly accuses him of being.  Head empty of thought and gut filled with liquor; that's about all he can be, surviving that way until the next job, the next score. Vitriolic is the surge of hate for it, for himself, because all the promise that others see in him, all the good lauded of him by Dutch, is nothing more than smoke and mirrors what ain't even that convincing.  There's no form, feels like there's no substance to him when Arthur's not there. No compass, to sense because he needs and wants Arthur, but has nothing worth being wanted in return.

The roar of blood in his ears refuses to fade and John no longer fights it.  Maybe if his heart works too hard, pumps too much blood, then it'll stop and save them both the pain of continued living. Red tinges subtly stretch into his vision, precursor to blurry, hazy spots as lungs fight to keep hold of the air rushing through them.

"John."

Hands move along his neck, lift his chin up; it interrupts his self-loathing landslide and it takes John a blinking, blank moment to realize that it's Arthur calling his name.  That Arthur's the one trying to angle his head up; them fingers clenched against his jaw ain't none too gentle about it, just as the face what comes into focus ain't full of compassion.  Stern, but it's grounding in the way Arthur always is, the way he's needed and missed, and squandered.

"-steady with me, Marston," Arthur says, a command he catches the tail end of within the turmoil of thoughts crashed into physical sensation. Instinctively, he nods and tries to do what Arthur wants, knows what he's asking for even without hearing it, because this is the everything he tried to escape and then came back to face. Even with the confusion and the hurt, it's what he wants to live for and what he'd been ready to die at the hands of.

John slows his breathing to match the way Arthur lifts and then lets lower his head. Stares at him, uncomprehending of the complexities but comforted in the moment. He sees understanding staring back at him, waiting just beneath the grit of frustration, the anger that lingers near the surface where it flows over and hides the concern for how quick John's breathing locked up.

By the time the thunderous rush of blood and the hammering of his heart fades to a background murmur, John can feel the headache it spawns. Feels how it drained his strength, but he lets Arthur hold him there, anchoring him, a shaky nod given to say when he's got himself back.

"Christ, Marston," Arthur says, harsh edges slapped onto the complaint even as his hands shift, fingers gentler as he stretches his touch down his neck. Feels for his pulse and seems satisfied by the result no longer being the stampede of some startled herd.  "Nothing ever is easy with you, is it."

John frowns and opens his mouth to serve up a retort, but Arthur clamps his grip back tight on his jaw to stop him. It's his turn to shake his head, to shut John up with a sharp look.  "No, you need to listen, Marston. No more of this shoutin' bullshit."

Ain't relief and ain't kindness; there are shards of glass in what he says, tiny ones that leave scratches and thin rivulets of blood as they pelt down against him.  Arthur tells him firm that they ain't right, not this way, but when that heavy blanket falls down and threatens to smother him, it's another shake that drags John back to the surface to swallow a mouthful of air.

"We ain't right," Arthur says, a repetition he hates to hear, "but you ain't alone in the wanting."

These words fall the heaviest for both of them, Arthur branding himself sinister and John cursing himself, cursing him for not seeing it.

"Wanting things ain't done the ones I want no good," is the low, reluctant admission that it all winds down into. This distorted belief that Arthur holds as his truth.  "But knowing that... it ain't stopped me with wanting you.  S'why we, well.  S'why were weren't always real saints about where we put our hands, s'why I ain't stopped us neither."

The older man pauses, his next words seeming harder to get out. "When Abigail called you Jack's pa, I guess... figured it'd be easier, thinking you found yourself someone and something what'd make your life whole. Then you left her and the boy, the gang-"

John pushes away the hands that have been holding his face, their grip easing to something delicate as Arthur spoke. "I left you, Arthur," he cuts in, admission and accusation both – accusation that Arthur will not allow himself that hurt when he deserves to acknowledge it.

That hangs a moment in the air, then Arthur heaves a sigh.  They're in the tent, Arthur come to follow when he threw himself back from hope and crashed down into despair.  John hears the first sleepy birdcalls of the morning beyond the canvas, but what he hears within its confines is something much more important.

"Guess that makes us both fools," Arthur allows, a roundabout admission that'll be the closest he'll make to saying it. "You for leaving, me for being left."

"Mean it when I said I came back for you."  John feels the need to say it again, to reach out, his hands curving along the side of Arthur's neck. He pulls himself closer and kisses him, hopeful that this time it'll stick.

In the moment, John Marston never thinks, but maybe that's part of his charm.

Maybe that's the part that has Arthur kissing him back, deepening it with tongue and teeth in a possessive surge of lust, a want that rises to match the desire John keeps kindled close and hot within him. Their fight ain't forgotten, far from it, but this time the kiss ain't some force to make a play or point. It's less the struggle and more the sort that gets Arthur's hands at his waist to guide him forward, to settle him on his lap. Something to permit 'em, to explore something - to allow them both to explore it.

To figure out how this'll be made to work.

But, as he feels those hands shift down over the rear of his union suit, pulling him close, he realizes it's something they'll figure out the details of later. Seem that right now is about finding out how far they aim to go, not how they'll get there  - and after years of chasing and a year of being all but celibate in his self-inflicted exile, John Marston ain't about to complain.

After all, it's in the moment he lives and damn him if he means to enjoy it.