Chapter Text
“Uncle Arthur! Uncle Arthur!”
Arthur stirs, but doesn’t move. For a moment, he simply focuses on breathing, his lungs clear - pain free- for the first time in months. He doesn’t know what he was expecting - blackness, maybe, nothingness, an end - but not this. Gone too is the fatigue that made everything so hard. He feels like he did before, when there was hope; when they’d got off that damn mountain and found themselves in the Heartlands, finally able to relax again. Right before everything went to shit.
Almost, he’s afraid to open his eyes. He remembers dying, remembers turning to watch the sunrise and finally, finally letting go, knowing that John was safe, at least. And Abigail, Jack. He hadn’t been able to help Sean, Kieran, Lenny, or Hosea, but at least he’d got John and his family out. That’s all he’d wanted. He hadn’t thought about what would happen next.
“Uncle Arthur!” the voice is more insistent now, and Arthur feels someone tug on his sleeve. “Uncle Arthur! Micah says I should-”
Micah.
Micah who’s still alive. Who survived. Dutch didn’t go with him, but… Dutch left. He left. I gave you all I had, Dutch.
And Jack. Jack. He recognises that voice. Jack should be far away. Safe. Away from Micah. He doesn’t think Micah would have been able to find them so quickly. Abigail, Sadie, Tilly. He thinks he gave John enough time, but...
Arthur bolts up right, then, scrabbling for his gun-belt, and finally opens his eyes, ready to land a bullet in Micah’s face like he should have done the moment he saw him. What he sees makes him pause, stop, however, forgetting about the guns, about shooting Micah in the face.
Everything stops when he sees Hosea approaching him.
Maybe, he thinks, he’s in heaven; that there really is something, but then he feels another tug on his sleeve and turns to see Jack. The sight makes him feel sick. Can’t be heaven, because Jack was fine. Alive. Pale, afraid, but alive, unless the Pinkertons got them and… and… Arthur can’t bring himself to finish the thought. Even they wouldn’t, not with a kid, but Dutch… Dutch seems to have turned half the country upside down, set everyone against each other, made them do things they normally wouldn’t. If Dutch had just gone with the original plan; got them that ranch and settled down, then everything would have been okay. But that had never seemed enough for him. Always one more plan, one last score. Never enough.
But Jack... Jack and Hosea can’t be together. They can’t. Because Hosea is dead, Arthur is, too, now, he realises, but not Jack.
He draws in a breath, his lungs still clear. It’s shocking how easy it is. Hard to believe that his lungs were ever this clear, but here they are. Now he just needs to find his voice.
He opens his mouth, but Hosea cuts across him.
“Now, now, Jack, leave Uncle Arthur alone. Uncle Arthur had a late night and is still very tired. Maybe you can come back later and ask your question then. I’ll give you two dollars if you do. How about that?”
Jack immediately lets go of Arthur’s sleeve. “Really?”
Hosea nods, and Arthur then watches as Jack skips away, humming under his breath. He hasn’t seen Jack this happy since Shady Belle at least. Been too scared. They all have, but it’s been worse for the boy, especially after John… especially after Dutch left him, telling everyone he hadn’t made it.
Hosea leans back against the barrel holding Arthur’s shaving gear and mirror. Of all the ways Heaven could look, Horseshoe Overlook is not what Arthur expected, but it’s an exact replica. He turns to see his pictures pinned against the wagon just as he remembers, hears music in the background, sees Mary-Beth walk across in front of them. Maybe Horseshoe Overlook is when they were all happiest, he thinks, down from the mountain and far, far away from the whole mess that was Blackwater. It was certainly before they started losing even more people.
Either way, he only notices that Hosea is holding a cup of coffee when it’s offered to him. Arthur takes it, hesitantly, almost afraid his hand will pass through it because if this ain’t Heaven, then Hosea has to be a ghost. Or he’s dreaming.
But his hand connects with the metal cup. Real, then. Or at least feels real. The coffee definitely feels real as Arthur takes a drink. In the last few months, he’s barely eaten or drunk anything. Hasn’t felt like it. Especially coffee. It had tasted like ash in his mouth, but this is how he remembers it from before, when he wasn’t able to start the day without at least one cup. The strength of this coffee alone could wake him from the dead.
He doesn’t know what is going on. He doesn’t know what to think. He just remembers the sunrise, the deer turning towards him, the golden light, and now this. Arthur can’t stop staring, can’t stop looking at Hosea, trying to find the bullet hole, the chest wound that ended the man’s life.
“Micah is trying to wind you up through the boy,” Hosea continues, seemingly oblivious to the way Arthur is looking at him. He crosses his arms. “I think you best tell Jack not to listen to him.” He pauses, then, raising an eyebrow and leaning forward. “Are you all right, Arthur? I only guessed about the late night. We’re all still tired. It was a long trip down the mountain. Hard on us all-”
“How long-?” Arthur cuts in.
“What?”
“Since the mountain,” Arthur continues, glancing about. There are still crates unpacked, but everything seems mostly settled.
“A couple of weeks. Are you sure you’re all right, my boy?”
No, Arthur wants to say, he ain’t all right. A sudden coldness is sweeping through him, just like when he found out he had tuberculosis; the realisation that suddenly he has no control over what’s happening, and that he’s now helpless. Everything has suddenly shifted. He won. He was so sure he’d won, but right now he doesn’t know what’s going on, or why. Maybe this is some kind of joke or game. Can’t expect to be forgiven so easily. One right ain’t going to cure so many wrongs. Oh, he’d tried in the end, he had, with Mrs. Downes and her son, Rains Fall, Charlotte, and so many, many more, but he’d just run out of time.
“Think I knocked my head.” He tries, now, to smile as he taps the side of his head. “Tried to get to bed without waking anyone up, ended up not bein’ able to see. Stumbled…” He lets the words fall, unable to continue.
Hosea just sighs, pushing away from the barrel and stretching. “Arthur, Arthur, sometimes I don’t know how you’ve lasted as long as you have.There’s a bunch of the boys already in Valentine. Bill, Charles and Javier. Maybe you should join them, go see if there’s a doctors. Check yourself out. And Swanson found something. Down at the train station by the lake apparently. And Strauss…”
And that’s when Arthur’s ears start ringing. He remembers this conversation. Strauss. Loans. It’s Downes he got the TB from, beating him half to death. Not half. He killed him. Paid the price, too. Everyone paid the price for that. If he’d been a little stronger, maybe he’d have been able to stand up to Dutch, stop him from being so reckless and stupid. Got them away, perhaps. If he hadn’t got sick, if he hadn’t just gone along with what Strauss had asked. It’s always revolted him, collecting the debts, so why did he do it? Why’s he suddenly having to replay it all? Didn’t he do enough? For John? For Abigail and Jack? He doesn’t want to go through this again, doesn’t want to deal with the guilt, the pain, of what he put the Downes’ through,
His hands start to shake, like they did with the tuberculosis, and he feels the cup slip from his fingers. His legs hit the back of his bed as he tries to make sense of everything he’s hearing. He needs to sit down, needs to think, needs to breathe, just breathe.
The edges of his vision goes gold. He sees the deer again, the stag, looking hard at him.
And then everything goes black.