Chapter Text
‘I come in from the wilderness, a creature void of form
“Come in,” she said, “I’ll give ya shelter from the storm.”’
Bob Dylan- Shelter from the Storm
Arthur didn’t know what he had expected when he took that drink. When asked later why he did it, he didn’t have an answer. The mumbled “I dunno”s and shrugs were met with irate confusion. How could he be so stupid?! Did he not think about how dangerous it was? What would they have done if he’d been poisoned and had been left stranded in the Rockies with no one knowing where the hell he was? He didn’t have any answers. He knew that it had been a stupid thing to do and that was coming from a man who spent most of his free time doing stupid things. It had been no less reckless or dangerous than trying to ride with bison herds or traversing narrow precipices in the moonlight in search of dinosaur bones. He liked doing foolish things, so long as no one who could tell him off was around to witness them. It was fun, exploring the world on his own to see what strangeness he could find. However, this particular strangeness was more than he could handle.
Arthur had come across the strange place on one of his many wanderings, rambling away from the main road, for no good reason other than things tended to be more interesting that way. It was a clumsy, overgrown structure, hidden halfway up a hill in a thicket of trees. He hadn’t even thought twice about approaching it, one of the joys that came from knowing how to handle himself and a weapon. The spot gave him a strange feeling, not the feeling he’d got upon discovering Pleasance, hair raising and stomach stirring; but still, the place had had a strange energy. Arthur would have liked to blame this magnetic energy on why he did what he did next, but he wasn’t entirely convinced. Perhaps it was part of it, but mainly, Arthur just enjoyed throwing caution to the wind.
He approached the large cauldron, situated at the back, boiling over a shallow hearth made from stones and earth. He dipped his tin mug into the roiling broth, scooping out some clear, steaming liquid. The thought of throwing it back in did cross his mind, but curiosity called to him, a stronger siren call than common sense could ever hope of having. With a shrug, he knocked it back. It was the strangest, most bizarre thing he had ever tasted. It tasted like… cigar smoke, American ginseng, raisin bread, and old, damp leather. It sure as hell didn’t taste good; the ginseng and the raisin bread might have been nice if it weren’t for the cigars and leather fouling everything up. He downed it with a grimace, coughing and spluttering at the taste. The raven watched him from its perch, croaking and cawing while Arthur staggered away from the cauldron. There was no time to feel concern. He felt himself pitching backwards and then, the world turned black.
-
Artur was sprawled out on the ground when he came to with only sweet smelling grass to pillow his head. Something warm and velvety was nuzzling his cheek. It moved over him, snorting softly, puffing warm, oaty air into his face. Arthur opened his eyes and saw his horse’s pink muzzle right above him, gently poking and prodding. It was a wonder how such a big animal could be so gentle. The Shire could easily trample him into the dirt with one wrong move, yet he was nosing at him with careful delicacy. A big brute was what Hosea had called him. Arthur had called him Harebell. He’d been told that it was ridiculous to name a nasty thing like that after a delicate flower, but Arthur hadn’t been dissuaded in the slightest. He had a way with horses. No special technique, he just loved them until they either tolerated it or loved him back. He’d got the infamous steed all sweetened up not long after their first ride. He raised his arm and placed a hand on Harebell’s cheek, feeling his soft, warm fur there.
“Hiyah, boy.”
Arthur frowned. Something wasn’t sounding right. He cleared his throat and tried again.
“Hey, boy.”
Oh god, it was even worse than before. It was high pitched, grating on his nerves, wildly different to his usual low timbre. He slid his hand down Harebell's cheek, past his muzzle and had intended to let it rest at his own throat, just to see if there was anything actually there. Instead, his hand stayed outstretched in front of his face. He stared up at it for what felt like an age, eyes unblinking and wide. Harebell snorted above him and he could faintly hear the sound of his own breathing, distant and shallow. Slowly, he brought the hand down until it hovered over his face, as though the illusion would dissipate if it were closer to him.
It wasn’t his hand. It couldn’t be, his hands were large, rough and calloused, these were small and soft, they were tiny , they were more like Jack’s hands than his own. The other hand was the same, small and useless and most definitely not belonging to Arthur Morgan. He planted both on the ground and pushed himself up into a sitting position; and it all came undone. He let out a yell when he saw his empty boots and pants, the latter flat and crumpled as though his legs had just outright disappeared. He kept on shouting as he scooted backwards, his clothes falling off of his shoulders, the heels of his feet getting caught in his union suit. Arthur ended up slumped against Harebell’s front legs, wild eyed and panting, a small cry in his throat with every breath he took.
“No…”
He heard himself speak in a voice that wasn’t his own. It was a trembling whimper and it scared him shitless to hear it coming from his own mouth. Words continued to spill out and the more Arthur spoke, the more he listened to that high pitched babbling, the harder he panicked.
“No, no, no, no, this ain’t real, this- this can’t be real, this ain’t happenin’, it ain’t, it can’t, it ain’t real!” His hands reached up to anxiously run through his hair and found it was shorter and softer than when he last felt it. He looked down at himself, taking in his scrawny little legs, his milk white stomach, his thin, hairless chest. He felt his too large clothes slipping off of his small shoulders. He felt and watched his little belly rise and fall with each breath. Over two decades worth of hard work and growth and muscle and scars had disappeared, as though they had been the illusion all along and in reality, he had always been this weak and weedy thing. He shook his head and spoke again in that god awful whimper, “Oh, Jesus…”
Harebell snorted softly and lowered his head, trying to get a look at what was curled up against his legs. Arthur was too wrapped up in his crisis to notice.
"It's a dream," he whispered to himself. He cleared his throat and tried to bring his voice back down to its gravelly tone. "It's a dream," he said firmly, but Arthur's words were resolutely shrill to his ears. More like the yapping of a kicked puppy than a man’s voice and it incensed Arthur to hear it.
"Wake up!" He gave himself a hard slap up the side of his head that made the world spin. "Wake up, god damnit! This ain't real!"
Harebell whinnied from high above him and startled Arthur out of his panic. He looked up at the beast looming over him, his breathing still shallow, but no longer the frantic panting of before. He wondered in a distant, removed sort of way, if his horse even recognised his owner or if he was just curious about the strange creature yelping around his hooves. It was while he was looking up at his towering steed that he spotted it, caught in his periphery. The hut. The strange little shack, where mostly melted candles glowed in a dark created by shadowy pines and twisted climbing ivy; and where a black cauldron sat, bubbling eternal.
The cauldron. The realisation took longer to dawn upon Arthur than it should have. When it did, an awful, sinking feeling made itself known in the pit of his stomach and he sank forwards, pressing his hands against his face.
"Oh shit," he groaned. "Arthur Morgan, you fool ."
There was no way he could have known. How could he have known that shaving the years of his life away was even possible? If he had to guess as to how it could even happen, he would have put it to modern day science, not some abandoned kettle in the middle of Rockies. Still, in spite of the ignorance that couldn’t be helped, this was his fault. All his acts of recklessness and irresponsible bravery had finally caught up to him. If only his luck had run out while hunting a cougar or trying to find some cave drawings; those were more reasonable activities than taking mysterious drinks for no good reason. There was an inherent danger that couldn't be helped when being out in the wilderness. You could prepare for it, but that was about it; this hadn't been that sort of danger. This had been stupidity, plain and simple.
He raised his head, staring at the ramshackle building. If the source of his predicament was in there, then perhaps the solution was also. He couldn't see what other options he had. He pushed himself up to his feet, his legs wobbling like a newborn foal's. He managed to take one shaky step forward, only to immediately trip over the too large clothes that quickly pooled around his legs. Arthur fell forward with a yelp, long sleeves flapping like the ribbons on a kite and landed face first onto the ground. Tears sprang to his eyes as pain blossomed in his nose and he felt what could only be blood leaking from his nostrils, hot and fresh. Groaning, he pushed himself onto his hands and knees. He could tell just from the pain that his nose wasn’t broken (he’d broken a few of his fingers in his time and he well remembered that white hot pain that only broken bones could induce), but it still smarted when he prodded it gingerly. He sighed when his fingertips came away coated in blood. Wonderful. Like he hadn’t made enough of a fool of himself already.
Arthur wriggled out of his union suit and gathered up the shirt that was tumbling off of his slim frame. He glared down at his fingers, quivering as they buttoned up his shirt, clumsy and awkward. He stood up, slow and careful this time, his bare toes curling into the grass. Even with the collar button fastened, the threadbare shirt hung loosely off of his slim frame. The hem came down to his knees and his hands were still lost in the long sleeves, so he had to roll them up to the elbow, grunting in frustration when his hard work unspooled and casting unnerved frowns down at his muscleless forearms.
Arthur looked down at himself once his hands were free of those sleeves. Everything he saw disconcerted him, but at the same time, he couldn’t look away. It was disorientating how much closer the ground was to him now. He pulled himself up as much as he could, straightening up until he could feel the strain in his back and legs; yet he couldn’t even come close to his normal height. The feet beneath him were alarmingly small, close to being dainty which was both embarrassing and terrifying. His legs didn’t even look strong enough to hold him up, even as they were doing exactly that.
He took a moment to steel himself. Nothing would ever change if he carried on just standing there in a quiet panic. He took a deep breath, forced a scowl of determination onto his face and moved forwards.
Arthur was much more successful with walking the second time round. He went as fast as he could, but he couldn’t cover that much distance with his short and wobbly legs. He fell over more times than he cared to admit and a long, loud stream of expletives would come out of his mouth every time he found himself hurtling towards the ground. It took him longer than he would have liked, but he got there in the end, scraped, bruised and breathless, with dried blood itching his skin and his legs quivering like a horse that had just run a race.
The place hadn’t been so intimidating before, when he was six foot tall, self assured and heavily armed. It had merely seemed odd, interesting, like something out of the gothic novels Mary-Beth liked to read. It had reminded him of Macbeth too, of Hosea and Dutch’s overenthusiastic performance of the play; he’d been too young to appreciate Mister Shakespeare’s archaic terms back then, but he had been secretly impressed by Hosea’s depiction of the witches. ‘Double bubble, toil and trouble’ or something like that, croaked out in a frighteningly accurate impersonation of an old crone. From what he could remember, they’d been on a heath in Scotland, out in the wild and open; but if they did have a home, Arthur imagined that it would be something like this place.
There was no floor to speak of, just dry compact earth. The walls consisted of vines, trees, moulding tapestries and old panels of wood or metal. It had all the accoutrements that could be expected of a sorceress' hovel; bones and skulls both human and animal, a large chest, bottles of varying sizes, mostly melted candles, books and chains and vials and herbs. The raven was still at its perch and Arthur was half expecting it to croak ‘nevermore’ at him; It wouldn’t have been the strangest thing that would have happened to him that day.
Arthur had had no qualms with going in the first time. Standing there now though, barefoot and unarmed on the threshold of a lair of unknown power, he could keenly feel just how vulnerable he was. He wished he’d brought his gunbelt. There wasn’t anyone around, or at least, he was sure there wasn’t anyone, but it made him feel safer to have a weapon. He peered over his shoulder, looking anxiously over at Harebell, who stood guard over his belongings, grazing near his boots. He took in the sight for a moment, his eyes lingering on his weapons and pricking his ears for any sound of possible approaching footsteps. Satisfied that he was alone, but still not entirely reassured, he turned his attention back to where the cauldron resided.
He stepped in underneath the wiccan canopy, the ground cold and dry beneath his feet. With his breath held tight in his chest, he walked in further, dipping down to pick up his mug that he’d left on the ground. Arthur came to a stop before the cauldron. He’d been standing over it easily less than fifteen minutes ago; now, he had to stand up on his tiptoes just to peer over the blackened lip of the kettle. Cautiously, he reached in and collected some of the potion in his mug. He stared down at it, blowing away the steam to better see the liquid. It had looked murky and brown in the cauldron, but in his mug it looked just like water.
Arthur made a motion to bring it to his lips, then paused. There was no guarantee that this would change him back. It could even make things worse, it could make him even younger, which was too horrifying to even contemplate. He chewed his bottom lip, looking around him in the search for some obvious solution to his predicament. His head snapped around as the raven cawed from its perch and it gave him an idea. He had to find out what would happen if he drank it one way or another. He went over to the bird and held the mug out under its beak. They stared at one another in silence and the longer the moment stretched on, the more ridiculous Arthur felt.
“C’mon,” he muttered, thrusting the mug up closer. “Jus’ fuckin’ drink it. Please .”
The raven cocked its head, twitched a little and then darted its head into the mug. It’s beak struck the bottom with a metal clang a few times before it popped its head back out, the mysterious liquid dripping from its beak. Arthur pulled the cup to his chest as he watched with bated breath. The seconds dragged by and eventually, he realised that it had been a couple of minutes and nothing had happened.
“God damnit!”
Arthur tossed the rest of the brew at the bird, who squawked and flapped in protest. Even then, it remained very much unchanged, merely ruffled and cawing indignantly at his attacker. His little experiment hadn’t really changed anything. All it proved was that whatever it was, it clearly didn’t affect birds. Huffing, he set about tearing the place apart, his previous trepidation burnt away by frustration. There was nothing useful to him. All the books were in latin (at least he thought they were), bereft of any recognisable terms or useful illustrations. Anything that could be consumed he recognised as being commonplace and mundane; not that it stopped him from trying though. Arthur’s search ended with mouthfuls of snake oil and drops of moonshine sitting uncomfortably in the bottom of his stomach and his frustration spiralling into violent concern.
It left him with only one last option. The chances of it making things worse or simply doing nothing, were exponentially higher than the chances that it would actually solve it. It was a damn reckless thing to do, but he had to try. He dipped his mug into the cauldron for a third time, frowning down into the steam. He gripped the handle tight, until the bones of his knuckles shone through his skin and the metal dug into his soft palm. He took a deep breath, then another, and then he took a sip. The bizarre amalgamation of flavours that had been present before had disappeared. There wasn’t even a hint of any one of them. Even the strange and shuddering taste of old leather had evaporated. It was just warm water.
Arthur’s eyes grew round and unseeing. His breathing was becoming quicker, sharper. A quiver trembled his limbs and panic began to twist in his chest, frothing and writhing like an animal caught in a snare. He forced down what was left in his mug, the taste of false hope and disappointment more bitter than the foulest thing to have ever entered his mouth. He dunked the empty vessel back into the cauldron, nearly scalding his tongue in his haste to force more of it down. It was still just the same, hot and tasteless, no hint of magic or the unexplained.
After his fourth helping, Arthur flung the cup across the hovel with a loud cry.
“ God damnit !”
It crashed into some bones, causing the raven to croak loudly in protest; Arthur yearned for his gun so he could reduce it to nothing but blood and feathers. He stood panting, hands clenched into fists by his sides, and felt something close to terror wash over him in a cold, permeating wave. He was stuck like this. How long was he going to be like this? He couldn’t change back, and if he could, he didn’t know how or when. What the hell was he going to do?
What was he going to tell Dutch?
He took a step backwards, as though trying to escape the very thought itself, but it clung on, growing bigger and louder until his head was filled with the worst possible musings. Dutch needed him strong. Dutch needed him now more than ever, he needed Arthur looking after the gang so that he could come up with a plan to get him out of the mess they were in; and the gang needed money. They needed food and leads and help, everybody needed one thing or another, whether it was small or big, they depended on Arthur to get the job done for them. They all depended on him, to be their protector, their errand boy, someone who would listen to their woes no matter how much he’d complain about it, who would do the nastiest and most dangerous jobs so that others would be spared. He thought back just a couple of weeks ago when he and Susan had gone on the warpath to get Tilly back, what they had to go through to rescue Sean, the Pinkertons turning up while he was out fishing with Jack- who was going to protect Jack? Who was going to protect John, since Cornwall was more than eager to put a gun to his family’s head? He couldn’t protect anybody like this. He couldn’t help anyone.
Arthur had crouched down at some point, but he couldn’t remember when. His head was hanging low between his knees and his fingers were twisting themselves into his hair. He could hear the sharp gasps he was making and the blood rushing through his ears. What was he going to do? This was his fault. This was what he got for being such a selfish, stupid bastard. The people around him were going to get hurt because he wouldn’t be able to do his job right. He bitched about being a workhorse and about how John was the prize pony, the golden boy who could do no wrong; but what use did they have for a workhorse that couldn’t work? What would they say to him, what would Dutch say, to find out that one of their best guns had managed to write himself off out of sheer idiocy? Susan and Hosea would be disappointed, but Dutch... Dutch would be enraged. Every job they would do thereafter without him, if anybody were to get hurt, their blood would be on Arthur’s hands.
He heard a strange, dripping noise, like rain arriving late to a dry summer. He blinked and realised that he was the source. Arthur was crying. He was so stunned by it that he fell back on his ass and took in the novel feeling of tears spilling down his cheeks. He hadn’t cried in years. Whenever the feeling would start to emerge and that tiny seed of sorrow sprouted in his chest, he’d kill it. It would take alcohol or violence or pain, sometimes a combination of two or all three. There had been times when he’d been in such a bad way that Arthur would start fights he knew he couldn’t win, just so he could lose, because getting beat down into oblivion had seemed to be the more reasonable option available to him at the time. Sometimes the sadness was too much to bear, too much to feel. He hadn’t allowed himself to reach this point in years.
“Shit,” Arthur muttered, using his generous sleeves to scrub clumsily at his cheeks. Blood had started running afresh from his nose and he ended up smearing it across his right cheek. “Shit!” He roughly scrubbed at his cheeks, his eyes squeezed shut against the aching throb of tears. His teeth were gritted in a grimace, his shoulder tense and quivering like a bow strung too tight. He sniffed, cringing at the copper taste in the back of his mouth, feeling grimy with his face covered in snot and tears and blood. He folded his legs up tight to his chest and pressed his forehead against his knees. He’d managed to stem the flow of tears, but his bottom lip still wobbled traitorously and he still trembled, as though his body was trying to shake the tears out of him.
“Shit,” he whimpered, twisting locks of hair into a tight grip again. “Oh shit…”
He stayed like that for perhaps a few minutes, holding onto himself tight. At some point, he poked the top of his head up and peered around him over the tops of his knees. His eyes were sore and suddenly tired, but they were dry at the very least. He looked at his surroundings in a kind of desperate hopelessness, still yearning to find a solution that he knew wasn’t there. His restless gaze came across something, something that he somehow hadn’t spotted before.
There was a little boy staring at him.
He jerked back with a yell, trying to scramble backwards. The frantic heels of his feet got caught on the hem of his shirt and by the time he fell back to the floor, he’d realised what it was that he was seeing. What an absolute, utter fool Arthur Morgan was. It was a mirror. The little boy staring at him was just his reflection; though, there was no ‘just’ about it. It was the first time in his life he hadn’t been able to recognise when he saw his own reflection. He sat and stared at the child in the mirror, taking in his round blue eyes, the unruly blonde locks on his head. It looked as though he’d stolen a shirt from his parent’s. He watched the rosy hue redden on his cheeks, underneath dried blood and tears. He looked small. Not as small as Jack (thank god), but definitely small.
He looked young too, frighteningly young. The scar on his chin was the freshest he’d ever seen it. Now, instead of there being a small clear patch in his stubble, his face was hairless and soft, and the skin of his scar was white, almost new. At least it helped Arthur in guessing his age. It could be hard telling a child’s age from looks alone. Dutch and Hosea had thought that he’d been far younger than he was when they’d first caught him; unsurprisingly, considering how dirty and scrawny he’d been. His father had been the one to give him that scar. Arthur had foolishly turned round to argue back in a rare moment of bravery and had caught the buckle of Lyle Morgan’s belt for his troubles. That had been towards the end of his father’s life, when he was steadily deteriorating, getting madder and meaner with every day, his frustrations and fears taken out on his son, while bounty hunters chased them down. Lyle Morgan had made out to his son that it was an army out after them, but to Arthur, who had been only eight, a couple of bounty hunters may as well had been an army.
The scar looked relatively new, only around a couple of years or so. Taking the rest of his features into account, he would guess that his age was around ten or eleven; twelve, if he really wanted to push it to try and make himself feel better.
The little boy was trying to cry again and Arthur gave him a hard smack on the side of his head, seeing as alcohol was in short supply and there was no one around to take out his emotions on. It wasn’t working though. The tears continued to fall, pulsing behind his eyes in rhythm to the throbbing in his skull. His lungs shuddered, threatening to spasm into sobs. He wrapped himself up in his arms again, legs held tight against his chest.
“Stop it!” Arthur cried out, voice muffled in his lap. He could hear his voice, his real voice, in his head, angry and rough; but in reality, his voice was sad and shrill. It was all a brutal, frustrating cycle. To hear his own voice made him more angry and upset, which made it harder for the tears to stop, which made him shout at himself and it all started again.
“Stop cryin’! Ya ain’t a lil kid! You’re thirty six, so jus’ quit it !”
He had to have been making a god awful racket because he heard, as well as felt, almighty hooves plodding his way. He heard Harebell snort softly, before he dipped his large head and gently bumped against Arthur’s side. Arthur just curled up tighter, even more determined to pull himself together. His horse was probably just wondering what kind of dumb animal was being so annoyingly loud.
“Fuck off.” Arthur snapped, putting as much malice as he could into that new, pathetic voice of his. This didn’t faze the shire in the slightest. It only seemed to make him more determined to get the boy to unfurl himself and he was proving to be as much of a stubborn bastard as his rider was. He knocked into him over and over, until he finally used enough force to send him sprawling onto the ground.
“Harebell!” Arthur cried out, indignant and more frustrated with himself than ever. He sat himself up, his breaths devolving into gasps and sobs. The tears were coming thick and fast, no matter how fast he wiped them away or how had he pressed his hands against his eyes. “Get outta here!” he yelled, waving his arm at the horse in a desperate attempt to spook it, the other still pressed hard against his eyes. Of all the damn times his horse decided not to be skittish. “Go on, get! You dumb bastard , get outta here!”
Harebell’s dark eyes blinked slowly, as though all he could hear were cicadas and birdsong and not the shouts of a miserable child. He stepped forwards and nuzzled his soft nose against Arthur’s cheek, huffing softly; and Arthur was suddenly silenced. The only sounds to be heard were his horse’s quiet snorts and his own breathy sobs. His arms dropped to his side and his form shivered from his efforts to stifle his crying. Well, shit. He couldn't get a hold of himself now. He gave one last attempt at stoicism, weakly pushing his horse’s face away from him, but he caved at last, when Harebell’s velvety muzzle rested once more against his cheek. His shoulders slumped in defeat and Arthur allowed his head to tip to the side, resting against his horse’s face, soft and warm.
The sounds of children crying was one of the worst sounds in all the world. Arthur thought the sound was decidedly worse when he was the one making it. When it came to kids, he knew how to handle them and thanks to years of practise, he could tell if they were kicking up a fuss or if they were in real need of comfort. His patience for children was bountiful. They were allowed to be unreasonable and emotional, for they were only children, after all. Arthur, though, had no such excuse. He was no child, no matter how much his cries sounded like one; and the patience he had for kids, well, he didn’t have one shred of it for himself. He deserved this. Children rarely deserved the tears that they shed, but Arthur had always earned his, now more than ever. He’d brought all of this fear and sorrow upon himself. Even if he deserved comfort, he wouldn’t know how to provide it for himself.
So Arthur sat and cried, his arms reaching up to wrap around his horse’s head, his small forehead pressing against his Shire’s. Harebell took it all with grace and patience, unaffected by the tears that dampened his fur or the loud cries so close to his sensitive ears. Arthur thought about all the damage he would cause from his actions, of all the folks relying on him, expecting so many things of him that now would be impossible to provide. He’d lost his purpose. He was useless, less than useless, a drain on their already dwindling resources. What good was he to anyone if he wasn’t a mean, ugly, violent bastard? How could he protect his family like this? How entirely useless he’d become. He’d have to go back to camp like this and contend with all their disappointment and their wrath. He’d have to tell them all how it was his fault. They were already on the run, being backed into a corner by O’Driscolls and Pinkertons and now, because of Arthur’s selfishness and severe lack of common sense, he had made it worse, for all of them.
Arthur wept until he ran out of tears. Until his eyes were bloodshot and his nose was bloody and his cheeks flushed. He pulled away from Harebell at last, who lifted his mighty head with whinny, probably pleased to stretch his neck at last. Arthur stretched as well, for he’d scarcely moved throughout the entire thing; his backside was growing numb and his feet were tingling with pins and needles. With a sigh, he flumped backwards onto the ground, staring dully up at the quasi ceiling. His tired gaze only moved when his persistent steed nosed at him again, snuffling his hair.
Arthur heaved another sigh, asking a question to a room in which nobody had an answer.
“What the hell am I gonna do?”