Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Valentine was already sweating beneath a hazy noon sky—the kind of day where dust clung to your lungs like old guilt. Arthur Morgan shifted in his saddle, hat low, eyes sharper than they ought to be after a sleepless night. The job was simple, far as Trelawny told it: bring in a thief named Holt Blevins, preferably breathing. Robbed a train near Flatneck and put a bullet in a brakeman’s gut for good measure. The posters didn’t lie. Blevins was mean, desperate, and holed up in a boarding house just west of town, like he was setting bait, waiting to see who’d be fool enough to take it.

Arthur didn’t like working this close to civilization. Too many eyes. Too many smells—soap and shit boiling together in the summer heat. He rode into Valentine like a shadow, hanging back, waiting for a clean shot at Blevins outside. The streets buzzed quiet, too quiet—just the lazy swat of a fly-bitten mule tied out front the saloon, piss steaming off the boards beside it. But it seemed someone had already beat him to it.

The street had gone still when Arthur saw the man.

Tall. Broad across the shoulders. Maybe his age, maybe older by a few winters. Wore a sun-faded cavalry duster, Henry rifle resting easy at his side like it belonged there. Skin dark as midnight. Hat tilted back just enough to show sharp eyes—gray, maybe. Or smoke. Or storm.

And he was walking Blevins out the front door, hands tied in rope.

Arthur’s horse slowed on its own, like it caught the scent of something mean.

The man didn’t look his way at first. Just shoved Blevins forward, calm as sunrise. Blevins stumbled, like even he knew better than to test the grip of a man that calm. Arthur knew a soldier when he saw one. And this one? Moved like he’d fought two wars and lost more than bullets could name.

Arthur dismounted slow.

“You Cross?” he asked.

The man looked over. One second. Two. Then nodded once.

“Depends who’s askin’.”

“Holt Blevins got a price on his head. I came to collect.”

“He’s collected,” Cross said simply. “Dead or alive, right? He’s breathin’. That’s the job.”

Arthur rested a hand on his holster. “Don’t take kindly to folks steppin’ on my bounties.”

Cross arched a brow. “Then you ought to ride faster.”

Silence cut between them like a knife—sharp and waiting.

Blevins, caught between the two, looked from one man to the other with twitchy eyes, like a rat cornered in daylight. “Hey, now,” he croaked. “You fellers can sort this out, but maybe not while I’m standin’ in the—”

“Shut it,” they said, in perfect unison.

Arthur almost smiled. Almost.

But something in the way Cross looked at him stopped it short. Not arrogance. Not threat. Just... weary. Like a man who’d buried too many people to give a damn about one more. And Arthur—Arthur knew that kind of tired. It made for dangerous men.

“Where you takin’ him?” Arthur asked.

“Rhodes,” Cross said. “Small station. Judge knows me there. Pays fair. Easy turn-in.”

Arthur chewed on that a moment. He could draw. Try his luck. He was fast—but not fast enough to gamble unless he had to. And Cross? He didn’t look like he’d blink before firing.

But he hadn’t drawn yet.

Arthur’s fingers twitched.

Cross just stared.

The silence stretched again. Arthur’s breath slowed. The sun beat down on the back of his neck.

Then finally, Cross said, voice low, even: “I ain’t lookin’ for a fight, Mr. Morgan.”

Arthur blinked—just once—but it landed. His name. Known. Of course it was. His face was worth a fortune in five states.

Cross’s jaw ticked—not much, just enough. Like the name wasn’t unfamiliar, just unwanted. Like it carried a memory best left buried.

“Man like you don’t need to bleed over scraps. Blevins ain’t worth it. Let me take him in. You’ve got other work waitin’, I’m sure.”

Arthur looked at Blevins. Looked back at Cross.

And, for reasons he couldn’t name, he took a step back.

“Maybe,” Arthur muttered. “Maybe you’re right.”

Cross gave a nod of something like respect. Not warmth—Arthur doubted the man knew the word. But a flicker of acknowledgment. Like two wolves circling the same meat, both too worn out to bite.

He turned with Blevins in tow, walking him toward the stable, likely to prep for the ride out.

Arthur watched him go.

Cross.

He’d heard the name before. A bounty man, folks said. Some whispered it like a curse, others like a prayer. Former Buffalo Soldier, or so the rumors went. Rode alone. Never took more than he had to. Brought in a Confederate war criminal alive—then saw to it the bastard vanished before he could stand trial.

Arthur always figured that was myth. A tale to stir up drunks in the saloon.

Guess he was wrong. Now he’d seen the man himself. Flesh and bone. And shadow, like something half-remembered from a fever dream.

And for the first time in a long while, Arthur Morgan felt something shift in his chest. Not rage. Not wonder.

Just... something near to recognition.

Odd thing, that is.

Chapter Text

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ℕ𝕆ℝ𝕋ℍ𝔼ℝℕ 𝕋𝔼𝕏𝔸𝕊,
( 𝟏𝟖𝟕𝟐 )
═════════════════════════  

The wind was dry enough to peel skin from bone.

Isaiah Cross crouched behind a fallen cottonwood, rifle braced against his shoulder, breath shallow. Smoke curled over the ridge, thick and black, catching the moonlight like sin catching prayer. The fire hadn’t started on its own. These things never did. A scream cracked through the night—hoarse, near broken. Then came the silence. The kind Isaiah hated most.

He wiped his mouth with a shaky hand. Dust and sweat and ash painted every inch of him. His duster stank of horseblood. His boots were melted at the toes from walking too close to the edge last time. He never learned. Behind him, Private Dent shivered. White boy, maybe seventeen, barely knew how to load a goddamn Henry.

“You see ‘em?” Dent whispered.

Isaiah didn’t answer right away. His eyes were on the shapes moving near the firelight—three riders, slow-moving, laughing low. Cavalry deserters. Drunk on stolen whiskey and the ease of burning what couldn’t fight back.

“I see,” he said finally.

Dent shifted again. “You think…? I mean… just some Mexicans, right? Ain’t our job, is it?”

Isaiah turned. Just his eyes. "Wasn't my job to bury kids either. Did it anyway."

Dent shut up.

It wasn’t about the flag, not anymore. Though was it ever? He came back from chasing ghosts out West, from fighting a war no one wanted to name, wearing a uniform they still didn’t salute. They pinned a medal on him for holding the line in New Mexico—but never looked him in the eye when they did it.

He hadn’t fought for Texas. Sure as hell not for the white men who sent him riding into Mescalero country with a rifle and no answers. He fought because someone had to stand between worse men and the innocent—and sometimes even that line blurred.

He still did.

Later that night, after the smoke had died and the flames eaten themselves out, Isaiah walked through the ruin. They hadn’t spared the women. Or the children.

He found a boy, maybe five years old, curled in the roots of a tree. Still breathing. Eyes wide open. Cross knelt beside him.

He didn’t ask the boy his name. There wasn’t a point. He just wrapped the child in his coat, stood, and walked east.

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𝕋ℝ𝔸𝕀𝕃 𝕋𝕆 ℝℍ𝕆𝔻𝔼𝕊,
( 𝑷𝒓𝒆𝒔𝒆𝒏𝒕 )
═════════════════════════

The trail to Rhodes was long, hot, and full of ghosts.

Isaiah rode with Holt Blevins tied behind him, head lolling from a knock on the skull an hour back. The man had started mouthing off about Cross’s face—“like some preacher that got left behind in the war.” That earned him a crack on the head and an hour of silence

Now, they rode under the shade of scrub trees, buzzards circling high. Cross’s mind wasn’t on the job. It was on the man in Valentine.

Arthur Morgan.

He’d heard the name before—loud in some corners, hushed in others. Dime novels called him a bandit prince. Posters put a price on his head. Outlaw. Isaiah had expected worse. But that look in his eyes? That wasn’t a man drunk on blood. That was a man who knew how to bleed. And why to stop.

Isaiah respected that.

Didn’t mean he trusted it.

Didn’t mean it was done.

═════════════════════════
𝕍𝔸𝕃𝔼ℕ𝕋𝕀ℕ𝔼,
( 𝑻𝒘𝒐 𝑵𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕𝒔 𝑳𝒂𝒕𝒆𝒓 )
═════════════════════════

The saloon in Valentine never really slept—just shifted moods like a drunk man tossing in bed. That night, it stank of cheap tobacco, piss, and cards. Laughter came in short bursts, like pistol fire. Arthur sat near the back, nursing a glass of watered-down bourbon and watching hands move over a deck like knives through silk.

He hadn’t planned to stay long.

Was just gonna water the horse. Maybe check the boards again. But he’d heard it twice now—once from the stable boy, once from the general store clerk:

"That Black ghost come through here again—rode off toward Rhodes, calm as the devil."

“Who?” Arthur had asked.

The clerk had blinked. “They call him Sergeant, some do. Don’t know his real name. Fought in a war, they say. Now he fights for coin.”

Arthur didn’t like mysteries. Didn’t like men who walked out with his bounty and didn’t even brag about it. Confused him. He’d lost jobs before—Trelawny spun wild tales that always ended in someone else getting paid—but this felt different. It felt deliberate.

So he sat.

Watched.

Waited.

Eventually, the chair across from him scraped. A new player joined the table. Long coat. Familiar stillness. Arthur didn’t flinch. Just flicked his eyes up, slow.

Cross.

That same storm-colored gaze met his.

“Mr. Morgan,” the man said evenly.

Arthur leaned back. “Didn’t figure you for a gambler.”

“I ain’t.” Cross threw in a coin anyway. “But I hear folks talk clearer over cards.”

A few hands passed. Blevins didn’t come up. Neither did the price on Arthur’s head.

Finally, after a quiet win, Cross said, “You askin’ around about me?”

Arthur lit a cigarette, and silently offered to the man. “Town does most the talkin’ on its own.”

Cross shook his head and gave a small, humorless sound. “Let it. Ain’t nothin’ here I’m tryin’ to hide.”

Arthur exhaled smoke. “You come through often?”

Cross looked at his cards. “Used to ride patrols not far from here. Back then we called it ‘protectin’ settlers.’ Now I just try not to step in what I helped build.”

Arthur eyed him. “That a warning?”

Cross didn’t smile, didn’t blink. “A suggestion. We both get paid by the same blood, more or less. But I don’t like crossin’ paths more than once.”

Arthur raised a brow. “You pickin’ jobs on purpose?”

“I pick the ones that matter,” Cross said. “And I don’t kill unless I have to.”

Arthur drummed his fingers. “You think I do?”

“I think you bleed too easy, Mr. Morgan. And you ain't sure who you're bleedin’ for anymore.”

That hit close.

Arthur didn’t answer.

Didn’t need to.

Cross stood after the next hand, left his coins, and tipped his hat just enough to be mannerly without being soft.

“Stay outta Rhodes,” he said. “That’s all.”

Arthur watched him go, cigarette burning low between his fingers.

A man like that didn’t talk unless he meant it.

And Arthur, for better or worse, listened.

Chapter Text

The Heartlands stretched wide and golden, but the wind had teeth.

Arthur spotted the glint of glass first—scope, most likely—up on the ridge near Caliban’s Seat. He ducked behind a rotting wagon and swore under his breath. No sooner had he lifted his head than the crack of a rifle echoed across the hills. Wood splintered above him. Too close.

Someone else was already out here.

He didn’t see the rider at first. Just heard the slow crunch of hooves. When the figure dismounted—coat dusted with trail dirt, rifle slung low—Arthur recognized the shape of him. Broad-shouldered, methodical. The other man didn’t speak, just crouched beside him and surveyed the ridge.

“…Thought you worked alone,” Arthur said, after a beat.

Isaiah Cross didn’t look his way. “Ain’t here to be friends, Mr. Morgan. Man up there’s my mark.”

Arthur adjusted his hat. “Well, hell. Looks like we got the same one.”

They shared a look then, each gauging whether the other might be more trouble than Finch himself. Isaiah’s hand hovered near the grip of his revolver. Arthur gave a short nod.

“Guess we split the bastard,” he muttered.

⏭

The firefight was brutal. Finch had holed up in a sandstone crevice near the ridge—wind-carved, sun-scorched, perfect for a bastard with a rifle and nowhere else to go. From there, he used the high ground and glare to force his would-be captors into the open. Isaiah flanked left. Arthur drew fire right. It took two bullets and a knife to bring Finch down—one in the shoulder, one in the gut, and Isaiah atop him before the bastard could bleed out and cheat the rope.

Afterward, they didn’t speak. Just tied Finch’s body over a horse and rode south until the hills turned to burnt grass.

The sun was down by the time they made camp near a dry creek bed.

Isaiah built a fire, silent. Arthur passed him the can of beans. They ate with knives, the metal clinking soft against the can. No laughter. No warmth but the fire and the distant sound of coyotes.

“Used to hate this land,” Isaiah said, not looking up. “Too open. You can bleed for miles and no one’d find you.”

Arthur glanced at him, chewing slow. “And now?”

Isaiah shrugged. “Still hate it.”

More silence.

The firelight played shadows over Isaiah’s face—hard lines worn in like river cuts through canyon stone. The kind of age that didn’t always come from years. Arthur didn’t ask, but something about the way he listened must’ve stirred it.

Because Isaiah kept going.

“Rode with the 10th Cavalry. Buffalo Soldiers. Back when they thought Negro regiments were a good PR stunt for Washington.”

Arthur blinked. That wasn’t something folks said out loud, least of all to him.

Isaiah wiped his knife clean on his pant leg. Didn’t look up.

“They gave us old horses. Thin boots. Told us to chase Comanche ghosts through country we didn’t know. Fought for a country that didn’t want us. Hell, most the time we wasn’t fighting the enemy. We was fighting the land. Cold. Starvation. Our own.”

Arthur didn’t interrupt.

“One winter,” Isaiah continued, voice low nearly swallowed by the wind. “we were stationed outside Fort Stanton. Snow piled to your chest, wolves sniffing the perimeter. Command said hold the line. But they didn’t send food. Just letters saying we was making history.”

He poked at the fire with a stick.

“History,” he spat. “Ain’t nothing but a noose wrapped in ribbon.”

Arthur finally said, quiet, “Ain’t right. What they did.”

Isaiah gave a short, humorless breath. “What they do, Morgan. Not just did.”

Their eyes met across the flame. And for the first time, Isaiah didn’t look at him like just another white man with a gun and a badge.

“You... You ain’t got that smell on you. Not all the way.”

Arthur raised a brow. “What smell’s that?”

“The kind that thinks bullets solve anything darker than a shadow. The kind that don’t know how to listen when someone talks ‘bout hurt.”

Arthur looked away, jaw tight. “Ain’t no saint. Never claimed to be.”

“Ain’t say you was. Just sayin' you ain’t blind neither.”

Isaiah reached into his coat and drew something small from the inside pocket. A brass locket, dulled by time. He didn’t open it—just held it a second in his palm, thumb brushing over the curve like he was waiting for warmth to rise from it.

“Took this off a wagon near the Brazos. Years back. Slavers come through. Left nothin’ but blood, smoke, and chains. This was in the mud.”

Arthur watched him, but didn’t speak.

“Ain’t never found her. Not yet.” Isaiah’s voice had gone quieter than the wind. “But she’s real. I know it.”

He tucked the locket away like it was sacred.

“You asked what smell I meant?” He glanced over. “It’s the kind that forgets names before they’re even spoken.”

A long pause passed between them. Wind stirred dry grass. A horse snorted behind them, restless.

Then Isaiah stood. “Next time I see you, might be across the barrel. But tonight... thanks for not talkin’ over me.”

Arthur nodded once. “Anytime.”

They broke camp at dawn.

Didn’t speak on the ride back. Didn’t need to.

Some men ride with ghosts on their backs. Others are ghosts already—quiet, watching, waiting.

Arthur Morgan knew better than most: sometimes, a ghost don’t want peace. Just wants to be seen.

Chapter Text

The ground crumbled like ash beneath their boots. Camp was a dry creek bed, brittle grass hissing in the wind, firelight stuttering low between them. Arthur on one side, Cross on the other, both nursing aches they hadn’t spoken aloud. The bounty had been small, and the man barely worth the bullet it took to put him down. But a job was a job.

The bounty hunter thumbed through the roll of bills, lit by the flicker of flame. His face looked cut from shadow and light, all sharp edges, eyes unreadable.

“Seventeen,” he muttered. “That’s what we got.”

Arthur didn’t say anything. Just stared into the flames like there was something worth seeing there. Cross peeled the roll apart, counted slow, deliberate. His voice was dry as the scrub grass around them.

“I take nine, since I tracked him. You take eight. Fair?”

Arthur looked up.

“Fair’s even.”

Cross raised a brow. “That how y’all do it? With Van Der Linde?”

Arthur didn’t answer right away. He rolled his cigarette slow, thumbed the edge before striking the match.

“Nah,” he said. “Dutch don’t believe in even. Says the mind’s worth more than the muscle.”

“Huh.”

Cross didn’t ask what Arthur thought about that. He just counted again, then held out half. Arthur took the bills without blinking. Folded them once and tucked them into his coat.

“Y’could’ve taken the bigger share,” Isaiah said. “Ain’t have fought you on it.”

Arthur exhaled smoke, slow.

“And you could’ve lied. Said the whole job paid fifty.”

Cross smiled, thin and sharp. “Guess we’re both disappointments.”

Arthur gave a quiet grunt that might’ve been a laugh. Then he stood, stretching slow.

“Don’t get used to me bein’ fair,” he said.

Cross settled back, arms crossed over his chest. “Hm, don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t.”

They didn’t say much else that night.

⏭

Arthur rode into camp with the sun in his eyes and grit in his teeth.

The wind hadn’t let up since morning. It kicked dust off the trails and stung the skin beneath his collar. He’d barely spoken a word on the ride back from Caliban’s Seat—too much in his head, too much lodged behind his ribs. Cross’s voice stuck there, like a splinter.

He unsaddled his horse in silence. Pat the gelding once along the neck. His fingers lingered a moment longer than they should’ve, and when he looked up, Dutch was watching.

“Arthur,” Dutch called, voice easy but edged like a knife turned sideways. “Rough day?”

Arthur just grunted. “Bounty job. Nothin’ special.”

Dutch tipped his head. “Mmm. You’ve got that look in your eye, Arthur—the kind a man gets when he’s seen somethin’ that don’t sit right.”

Arthur didn’t answer. Dutch didn’t push. Just gave him a look like he was measuring something behind Arthur’s eyes—and didn’t like the number he landed on.

He passed by Hosea on the way to his tent. Didn’t stop to chat. Didn’t smoke. Just sat, hat tipped low, and tried not to think about a fire in the dark, or the way Cross had looked when he said history ain’t nothin’ but a noose wrapped in ribbon.

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𝔼𝔸𝕊𝕋 𝕆𝔽 𝔽𝕃𝔸𝕋ℕ𝔼ℂ𝕂 𝕊𝕋𝔸𝕋𝕀𝕆ℕ,
( 𝑻𝒘𝒐 𝑾𝒆𝒆𝒌𝒔 𝑳𝒂𝒕𝒆𝒓 )
═════════════════════════

It was about two weeks later before Arthur saw him again.

He’d taken a ride to check traps east of Flatneck Station, close to where the pines thinned out and the grass broke wide and yellow. He wasn’t looking for Cross. Wasn’t expecting anything but wind and rabbits.

But then he saw the buzzards.

They circled tight over the ridge, wings cutting the sky like knives. Arthur spurred his horse without thinking. He found the trail easy enough—blood in the dirt, dark and tacky, a spooked horse limping slow beside a shallow creek. There was a man slumped over its neck.

Arthur cursed under his breath and jumped down.

“Cross?”

The figure barely moved. His coat was soaked down one side, and his left leg hung stiff in the stirrup. Arthur reached him just as he started to fall. Blood smeared warm against Arthur’s coat as he caught the dead weight of him—too limp, too light, like something already halfway gone

“Jesus,” he muttered, “You dumb bastard.”

Cross’s eyes fluttered open, unfocused. “Ain’t expect...you.”

“Well, I didn’t expect to be patchin’ your sorry ass up again, but here we are.”

He loaded him across the saddle, careful with the leg. The wound looked bad. Sloppy bullet, maybe a gut shot. Wasn’t fresh, either.

“Hold on,” Arthur said, mounting behind. “There’s a place near Horseshoe. Quiet. You’ll make it.”

“Don’t lie,” Isaiah muttered, voice low and raw.

“I ain’t,” Arthur said. “Not when I’m tryin’ to save someone’s life.”

⏭

The Hideout wasn’t much—an old trapper’s hut tucked between two boulders, the kind of place the gang used when heat got too high or injuries needed to stay quiet.

Arthur hauled Cross inside, set him on the cot, and kicked the door shut with his boot. The place smelled like pine pitch and old tobacco. He grabbed the whiskey first.

Cross tensed when Arthur brought the bottle over.

“I’ve had worse,” he said.

“Good. Then this won’t be new,” Arthur responded dryly.

He poured whiskey over the wound. Cross didn’t scream, but his jaw locked hard enough to break teeth. Arthur set to work with a needle and thread. It wasn’t clean, but it was steady. The skin puckered under his hand, warm and slick with blood. He’d stitched worse in worse places.

“Damn fool,” he muttered. “Pullin’ a stunt like that in broad daylight?”

Cross coughed, the sound wet. “Didn’t figure on them havin’ dogs. Or two spotters in the barn.”

Arthur tied off the thread and wiped his hands.

“You got a death wish?”

“No more than you.”

They sat in silence a while, the wind scratching at the walls. Arthur set a kettle to boil and leaned against the table, arms crossed.

“You got a name?”

Cross looked up, brow furrowed.

“Ain’t Cross. That’s a bounty hunter name. I mean the one your mama gave you.”

He hesitated. Then:

“Isaiah.”

Arthur nodded. “Arthur.”

A snort followed by a groan came out of Isaiah. Then a flicker of something—maybe humor—passed between them.

“I know.”

Arthur poured a tin of water and handed it over. Isaiah drank slow, the tin rattling once against his teeth before he steadied it with both hands.

“You always go around pullin’ half-dead men out the mud?” he asked.

“Only the ones who don’t deserve to die. Yet.”

“Generous.”

Arthur shrugged. “Hell of a thing, runnin’ alone. Makes a man mean.”

Isaiah didn’t answer right away. Then:

“Used to run with a crew. Outta Laredo. Didn’t last.”

“Why not?”

“One got shot. Two turned on each other. The last one sold us all out to the Pinkertons. I got a bullet and a lesson.”

Arthur nodded, slow.

“Damn. Sounds familiar.”

He reached for the kettle, but paused halfway. A flicker of something passed behind his eyes—a pair of small shoes by the hearth, too clean to belong to him. A woman’s voice, long gone, singing low in the dark. Then nothing.

He blinked it away.

The silence stretched, brittle as frost.

Isaiah shifted, voice horse, breath catching like he wasn’t sure the words ought to come out at all.

“There was a girl, once. Sister’s kid. My niece. I raised her when nobody else would.”

He paused, jaw working.

“She’d hum while she braided my hair. Said I looked like the men in them old storybooks—knights or kings, maybe. Got mad if I ever undid it.” A beat. Then, softer:

“Ain’t no one hummin’ now.”

Arthur shifted like he might say something—jaw flexed, thumb brushing the rim of the tin. But the words never came. Just another silence folded into the air between them.

Eventually, Isaiah asked, “Why’d you bring me here?”

Arthur took his time answering.

“Because I know what it’s like to carry ghosts. And sometimes, they get heavy.”

Isaiah stared at him, eyes dark and unreadable.

“You ain’t like most men I’ve met, Morgan.”

“Well,” Arthur said. “I ain’t too sure about that.”

⏭

They stayed through the night. Isaiah drifted in and out. Once, Arthur thought he heard him speak a name in his sleep. Soft—like the sound scraped raw on the way out. Arthur sat quiet, watching him breathe. That same look—Dutch’s words came back to him then. The kind a man gets when he’s seen somethin’ that don’t sit right.

He saw it now. Not in a mirror, but in another man’s face. By dawn, the bleeding had stopped.

Arthur packed what supplies he could find, left a rifle by the cot, food and water close, and scrawled a short note:

Didn’t do this for thanks.
Don’t die anyway.
—A

He didn’t look back when the door shut, but he heard Isaiah breathe once like it hurt. Maybe it did.

He mounted his horse and rode slow through the morning fog. His coat still smelled faintly of blood. Didn’t speak. Didn’t whistle. Just watched the sky open wide in front of him like a wound that never got stitched right.

Some men live long enough to bleed twice for the same sin. Others only ever get one chance. Arthur Morgan wasn’t sure which kind of man he was. But he knew one thing for damn sure.

He’d see Isaiah Cross again.

And when he did, it’d be as brothers in shadow—or ghosts in the same grave.

Chapter Text

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𝕊𝕆𝕌𝕋ℍ 𝕆𝔽 𝔻𝔼𝕎𝔹𝔼ℝℝ𝕐 ℂℝ𝔼𝔼𝕂,
( 𝑷𝒓𝒆𝒔𝒆𝒏𝒕 )
═════════════════════════

The wind carried the smell of cypress and rot.

Arthur crouched behind a fallen tree, one hand on his rifle, the other steadying a scope he didn’t need. Just a habit. A ritual, almost. Isaiah knelt beside him, quiet as breath. Their mark—Captain Elias Granger, ex-Confederate turned slaver—moved among the ruins of the plantation like a ghost that didn’t know it was dead.

Granger was taller than Arthur remembered. Same silver beard, same limp. Carried himself like the war never ended. Men like that always did.

“Three men in the yard,” Isaiah said, low. “One on the porch. Two out back.”

Arthur nodded. “You take the right. I’ll come in from the creek side.”

Isaiah didn’t move. “You sure you wanna do this?”

“Sure,” Arthur said. “I’ve done worse for less.”

Isaiah checked the chamber of his revolver, then adjusted the strap on his shoulder.

Arthur glanced over. “Y’ever think you’d end up fightin’ with a outlaw?”

Isaiah gave a dry look. “I thought I was done takin’ in strays.”

Arthur smirked. “You’re terrible at that.”

Isaiah didn’t return the smile, but something in his face shifted. “You always like this before a fight?”

Arthur shrugged. “Like what?”

“Chatty.”

Arthur let out a low laugh. “Maybe.”

For a second, Isaiah’s mouth twitched like he might say something else. Then he just muttered, “Don’t get shot.”

“You too.”

The plan wasn’t clean. Plans never were. But this one would bleed.

⏭

The house had burned once. Maybe twice. Black streaks ran up the siding like claw marks. The windows were busted, boarded over in places, and the porch sagged under the weight of time. Arthur moved like smoke through the trees, keeping low, boots silent in the muck. His fingers itched.

He’d been here before. Not this place, not exactly. But ones like it. Old plantation bones picked clean and repurposed for something meaner. He remembered being younger. Greener. Dutch’s words ringing in his ears like scripture: We’re takin’ from the takers, son. Don’t you ever forget that.

Arthur had tried not to. But he’d seen what they took.

Gunfire cracked on the far side of the house. Isaiah’s signal.

Arthur moved fast, shooting the man by the shed clean through the neck before he could holler. He caught another near the barn. The last one ran—young, maybe sixteen—but Arthur’s shot hit him in the back. He didn’t feel proud of it.

When he stepped into the main room, Isaiah was already there. Blood on his coat. Granger was on his knees. One eye swollen shut. Nose broken.

Isaiah had his revolver drawn, barrel resting just beneath the man’s chin.

“Tell me her name,” Isaiah said.

Granger spat blood. “Ain’t gotta tell you a goddamn thing n—”

Isaiah hit him hard enough to rattle the floorboards.

Isaiah pulled something from his coat pocket. A small, dented locket—brass, no chain. He held it up just long enough for Arthur to see the worn photo inside. A girl, maybe twelve. Big eyes. Half a smile.

“Her name,” he said, voice like gravel. “You branded her. Sold her. I want her goddamn name.”

Arthur didn’t know the girl’s name either, only that she’d vanished from one of those makeshift camps. Isaiah had been looking ever since.

Granger just laughed. “You think I remember every darkie I sold? Every brat I cut loose from some shithole camp?”

Arthur’s stomach turned.

Isaiah raised the gun again, and for the first time, Arthur saw it: not rage. Not vengeance. Something colder. Emptier. Like the violence was just a shape he stepped into.

Arthur remembered being that shape once.

His breath caught—mind slipping, unbidden, down old tracks laid in blood. Dutch had said to leave no witnesses after a train robbery down near Rhodes. The man had begged—hands raised, half-sobbing—and Arthur shot him anyway. Just a farmer. Wrong place, wrong time. He’d been seventeen.

“Isaiah,” Arthur said. Voice low, steady.

Granger turned toward him. Smiling with cracked teeth.

“You gotta be worse than them,” he said. “You’re a traitor to y—”
Arthur eye twitched. Isaiah’s jaw clenched. The gun pressed harder under Granger’s chin. He stared at Granger like he was already a corpse. His hand was shaking.

Then he asked again: “Her name.”

Granger gave it.

Not the name of Isaiah’s niece—Arthur could tell. Just some name he thought would buy him another minute of breath.

Isaiah’s hand closed around the locket like it might break.

And that’s when Isaiah pulled the trigger.

The gunshot punched the room open. Birds burst from the trees outside. Dust shook from the rafters like ash. Blood sprayed against the faded wallpaper. The sound echoed like a drumbeat, then silence. Complete. Crushing.

Arthur didn’t speak. He didn’t stop him. He just stood there, breath caught in his throat like smoke that wouldn’t clear.

Then Isaiah knees slowly, one hand pressed to the floor to keep himself upright. His voice was dry when he said:

“He didn’t know her. Not even enough to lie right.”

Arthur looked down at the body. At the way the man’s mouth hung open, like he’d been caught mid-word. He didn’t feel sorry. But he didn’t feel clean either.

“There’s more like him,” Isaiah said after a long time. “Men with no faces, no names, just rot walkin’ around like it belongs here.”

Arthur nodded. “Yeah. There’s always more.”

They walked in silence for a stretch, boots squelching in the mud. Then Arthur cleared his throat.

“You believe in hell?” he asked.

Isaiah scoffed. “I’ve been there. It had a flag and a payroll.”

Arthur huffed out a dry laugh. “Guess that makes sense.”

“Why?” Isaiah asked, glancing over.

Arthur flicked ash off his cigarette. “’Cause the man upstairs never seemed interested in men like us.”

⏭

They dumped the bodies behind the house. No words passed between them. None needed. Somewhere, a crow screamed. Then quiet again. Just boots in the muck and blood cooling in the weeds.

Afterward, they sat on the porch, boots caked in mud and blood. The sun sank low behind the trees, casting the house in long, crooked shadows.

Arthur lit a cigarette with shaking hands. He didn’t offer one.

“You ever wonder,” Isaiah asked, voice low, “what kind of man you’d be if you’d had a different start?”

Arthur let the smoke curl out slow. “Yeah. Used to. Don’t anymore.”

“Why not?”

He looked at the sky, pinking at the edges like a healing bruise.

“’Cause it don’t matter. Ain’t nobody ever asks where a man started. Only where he ends.”

Isaiah looked at him then. Really looked. And Arthur saw it again—the weight they carried, pressed down in different shapes, but made of the same bones.

“I didn’t think you’d come,” Isaiah said after a while.

“I didn’t think I would either,” Arthur admitted.

They sat quiet a long time. The swamp buzzed around them.

Eventually, Arthur stood. “There’s a place not far. We can hole up for a night.”

Isaiah rose stiffly. His face was a mess of half-healed bruises and dried blood, but his voice was steady.

“You gonna patch me up again?”

Arthur smirked, just faintly. “Only if you don’t start another war on the way there.”

Isaiah managed half a smile. “No promises.”

⏭

They left the house behind in silence.

The trail wound east through a patch of woods gone gold in the fading light. Arthur’s hands still smelled of gunpowder. His mind, of fire and train smoke and a boy too eager to prove himself to a man who preached freedom and forgot what it cost.

Granger had been scum. That wasn’t in question. But what they had become—that was a different wound.

Arthur didn’t ask Isaiah if it had felt good.

He didn’t have to.

Because the worst part was—it had. For both of them.

And that’s what they carried.
Not guilt. Not justice.

But the awful, hollow truth that sometimes, a man doesn’t want peace.

Sometimes, he just wants to watch the devil get what’s coming—
and forget, for one sweet second, that he might be next.

Chapter Text

═════════════════════════
𝕋𝕆𝕎𝔸ℝ𝔻 𝕋ℍ𝔼 𝔼𝔸𝕊𝕋 𝔹𝔸ℕ𝕂
𝕆𝔽 𝕋ℍ𝔼 𝕂𝔼ℕ𝕋𝕀𝔾𝔸ℕ,
( 𝑷𝒓𝒆𝒔𝒆𝒏𝒕 )
═════════════════════════

Time passed soft in the way only the wild could allow.

They camped by a quiet stretch of river where the Kenitgan forked off and widened—slow-moving, heavy with reeds and frog-song. Trees leaned over the bank like eavesdroppers. The fire was small. The whiskey, stolen. And the quiet? Earned.

Arthur sat cross-legged near the flames, sharpening a pencil against the sole of his boot. Across from him, Isaiah leaned back on his elbows, legs stretched toward the river, harmonica half-lifted but forgotten for now. His eyes were fixed on the sky, where a dusting of stars scattered out like powder burns.

“Never thought I’d get this far east without someone huntin’ me,” Isaiah murmured. “And yet here I am. Free as I’ve ever been.”

Arthur didn’t look up. “Reckon that ain’t sayin’ much.”

Isaiah huffed something close to a laugh. “No, it ain’t.”

The harmonica rose to his lips then—low, wandering notes. Not a song, not really. Just pieces of one. Something mournful and worn, like it had been played a thousand times by a man who’d never finished it. Arthur didn’t speak. He let the tune carry him, fingers moving across the page in soft strokes.

He was sketching Isaiah without meaning to.

Didn’t even think of it until the outline of the man’s shoulders came into shape. Broad. Lean. Relaxed in the way only someone dead tired could be, like bones finally giving in after days of being held too tight. Arthur’s pencil slowed at the angle of Isaiah’s jaw—sharp, stubborn. There was something in his expression that didn’t quite belong to the moment. A far-off ache.

“You always draw folks?” Isaiah asked, eyes still on the sky.

Arthur blinked, then looked down at the page like it had betrayed him. “Sometimes.”

“You sketch me?”

“Didn’t mean to.”

Isaiah turned his head slowly. That same half-smile playing at his mouth. “Don’t mind.”

Arthur shifted, suddenly unsure what to do with his hands. “Ain’t very good.”

Isaiah said, “Nah it's good.”

Arthur shifted again—never been good at taking compliments. They let the silence settle again. Crickets sawed in the grass. Bullfrogs called. The fire popped.

Isaiah passed the whiskey. Arthur took it, drank deep, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“You ever think about it?” Isaiah asked, voice low. “What it’d be like. Another life. One with no gang. No guns. Just… time. A house. A porch swing. Maybe someone waitin’ for you.”

Arthur stared at the flames. “Used to.”

“And now?”

“Now I think I wouldn’t know what to do with it.”

Isaiah nodded. “That’s the curse, ain’t it? Even if peace found us, we’d just kill it outta habit.”

They both laughed at that. Tired, grim little things.

“I used to think,” Isaiah went on, voice low, “if I’d been born free, somewhere north… maybe I’d be somebody else. Somebody who could’ve gone to school. Wrote books. Played music for people who listened.”

“You play just fine,” Arthur said.

Isaiah’s mouth twitched, like the beginning of a smile that didn’t quite land. “That ain’t the point.”

The whiskey made Arthur warm. Loosened the edges around his thoughts. He glanced at Isaiah again, at the firelight on his skin. The scars along his jaw. The way in which he sat, not proud, not guarded—just there. Present.

Their eyes met.

For a long second, neither looked away.

Arthur’s hand tightened on the flask. He didn’t reach for Isaiah. But he didn’t lean back, either.

Isaiah didn’t speak. His eyes flicked down, then back up again. Then—

He shifted. Just slightly. Close enough to change the air between them.

Arthur felt it. In his chest. In his gut.

He didn’t know who moved first. Maybe neither of them did. Maybe the world just tilted, gently, and they leaned with it.

But just before anything could happen—before breath could bridge breath—Isaiah laughed. Soft.

“Shit,” he whispered. “We’re drunk.”

Arthur swallowed hard. “Little bit.”

They didn’t kiss. But something passed between them anyway.

Isaiah leaned back. “Ain’t nothin’ in this world makes sense.”

Arthur stared at the fire. “Wouldn’t know what to do with it if it did.”

⏭

Later, when the whiskey was gone and Arthur was asleep—pencil still in hand, sketchbook closed—Isaiah sat up alone.

He glanced down once at the sketchbook, still half-open. Just a few pencil lines—but he recognized himself. Or maybe just the shape of someone Arthur had seen.

The river whispered its secrets. He thought about the nearly. The maybe. The shouldn’t.

Then he thought of the truth: how some men died having never touched anything soft without breaking it. How the world only gave back what it stole if you bled for it first.

He’d known white men his whole life. Known what they took. Known what they looked at and believed was theirs by birthright. Isaiah had killed men for less than what almost passed between them tonight.

But Arthur was not like them.

And yet.

That yet sat heavy in his mouth. In the back of his throat. In the pit of his stomach.

“What kinda world’d,” Isaiah muttered, barely audible, “a man have to build... to deserve another man?”

He thought about the locket again.

Then he thought about Arthur’s eyes. That look—lost, open, waiting.

Isaiah shook his head and lay down beside the fire.

Sleep didn’t come easy.

But it came.

And with it, dreams he wouldn’t admit to. Not even to himself.

Chapter Text

═════════════════════════
𝕊𝕆𝕌𝕋ℍ 𝕆𝔽 𝕎𝔸𝕃ℕ𝕌𝕋 𝔾ℝ𝕆𝕍𝔼
( 𝑷𝒓𝒆𝒔𝒆𝒏𝒕 )
═════════════════════════

They were bleeding before the sun rose.

Not bad. Not fatal. But enough to sting, enough to remind. The bounty had gone sideways—young fool no more than twenty, Bible in his boot, shaking like a leaf with a dead man’s rifle in his hand. They’d cornered him in a churchyard gone to weeds, the old headstones crooked like bad teeth. He screamed about deliverance, fire, and the end times, his voice cracking as he fired. He missed the first shot. Not the second. Shot Arthur through the shoulder. Winged Isaiah across the ribs.

They left the body under a broken cross.

By midday, the sky had turned the color of iron, and Isaiah’s shirt stuck to his side in a line of dried blood. Arthur’s arm was bound up tight. He moved like he wasn’t hurt, but his jaw told the truth—locked and grinding, a man refusing to flinch.

“Coulda been worse,” Isaiah muttered, half to himself.

Arthur snorted. “It usually is.”

They rode south. Not back to camp. Not to town. Isaiah hadn’t said where, just that he needed to go and he could come along if he wanted. Arthur didn’t ask why. He could tell by the set of Isaiah’s jaw that the bleeding wasn’t the kind a bandage could fix.

⏭

They reached it by nightfall. The woods opened like a wound around a clearing gone half-wild. The house sat slumped in its bones—two stories of gray wood, porch sagging, roof caved in at one corner. Smoke curled thin from a chimney still holding on. Lantern light flickered behind a warped window.

A screen door creaked open like a breath sucked through teeth. A woman stepped out onto the porch, tall and deliberate. Her face had aged in the way grief does—it didn’t just weather, it hardened. Gray threaded her hair at the temples, but the rest of her was unbent. Still proud. Still standing.

Isaiah dismounted first. Didn’t tie his horse.

Arthur followed, slower, his boots soft in the dirt.

Her eyes took everything in, sharp as a hawk’s.

“Didn’t think you’d ever come back,” she said.

Isaiah stopped at the steps. “Didn’t think I would either.”

Arthur kept his distance, the stranger in her brother’s shadow.

“You bring the law?” she asked, looking toward Arthur. Curious and weary.

“No,” Isaiah said. “Just a man.”

She looked at Arthur again. This time longer. “He look like trouble.” She responded voice lower.

Isaiah didn’t argue. “He can be. But he ain’t ours to fear.”

She sighed and turned toward the door. “Well. Don’t bleed in the kitchen.”

She didn’t wait for a reply, just turned and disappeared into the warmth behind the screen door. Isaiah followed, Arthur right behind.

═════════════════════════
𝔽𝕃𝔸𝕊ℍ𝔹𝔸ℂ𝕂
( 𝟏𝟖𝟕1 )
═════════════════════════

The last time Isaiah Bennett had stood on that porch, he’d been young and righteous with something he thought was purpose. His father had spit in the dirt. Called him a traitor. Said no son of his would go off wearing a white man’s uniform, killing folks just a shade or two lighter than their own kin.

Naomi had been thirteen, maybe. Crying into the crook of her elbow, like Mama had told her not to show it. Alma behind her, still small enough to have her hair in crooked braids and ask why. Their father’s voice had rung out like thunder—“You gone wear that blue coat, boy, don’t come back in this house.” Mama had tried to calm him, hands shaking on Isaiah’s arm, eyes bright with fear that couldn’t find words.

He hadn’t said goodbye. Couldn’t. Wouldn’t. The sky had just started to pink when he left. Dew heavy on the grass, and his boots soaked through before the sun even rose. The world didn’t stop.

═════════════════════════
𝕋ℍ𝔼 𝔽𝔸𝕄𝕀𝕃𝕐 ℍ𝕆𝕌𝕊𝔼
( 𝑷𝒓𝒆𝒔𝒆𝒏𝒕 )
═════════════════════════

Inside, the house still held warmth. Smelled of smoked meat and lemon polish. The walls were marked with years and handprints. A life lived in it. Naomi—now Naomi Walker—served cornbread and thick broth. No pleasantries. Her husband, Reuben, stood in the doorway, arms crossed. Big man. Watchful eyes.

Two children peeked out from the hall: Isaac, age eleven, cautious; and Ruthie, eight, staring at their Uncle and the other unfamiliar face with poorly concealed excitement and curiosity.

There was a third plate at the table, turned upside down. Arthur noticed it, and so did Isaiah. Naomi didn’t explain. She didn’t have to. Alma’s girl had been gone nearly four months now. Eliza. Still no word.

Arthur ate in silence. Felt the weight in the room settle over his shoulders like a second coat. The way the father watched his children—guarded but tender—gnawed at something in Arthur. A shape he didn’t have words for. Arthur wasn’t sure what hurt more—watching a man protect his own, or realizing he’d forgotten what that felt like. Dutch had protected him once, like that. Or maybe Arthur only told himself that when he needed to believe it.

Afterward, he stepped outside to smoke. The porch creaked under his boots. The stars were out, pale and sharp.

Isaiah joined him not long after. Blood cleaned off. Face unreadable.

“Your sister?” Arthur asked.

Isaiah nodded. “Naomi.”

Arthur hesitated. “She hate you?”

Isaiah exhaled through his nose. “She got reasons.”

Arthur didn’t press. He lit another cigarette and offered it, but Isaiah shook his head.

“You ever think about goin’ back?” Isaiah asked. “Where you came from.”

Arthur took a long drag. “Ain’t much to go back to.”

Isaiah leaned against the porch rail. “Feels like everything I was born into either died or tried to kill me.”

Arthur understood that too well.

⏭

They bedded down in the barn. Horses close. Hay dry. The lantern dim between them.

Arthur sat with his shirt off, changing the dressing on his arm. Isaiah leaned nearby, silent, watching the flex of muscle, the slow wince.

“You always so goddamn stubborn?” Isaiah asked.

Arthur looked up. “Takes one to know one.”

A pause. Then: “You remember the river?”

Arthur’s breath caught. He nodded once. “’Course I do.”

Neither of them said what happened there. The night they spent under stars and smoke, skin slick with blood and riverwater, pretending that nothing had changed.

Isaiah took a step closer. Another.

Their mouths met like a collision. It wasn’t sweet. It wasn’t slow. Arthur’s hand found Isaiah’s jaw, rough with stubble, holding him there like something he didn’t want to need. When Isaiah pulled back, he waited. For Arthur to curse him. For a fist. But Arthur leaned in instead. Hands on Isaiah’s hips. Teeth against throat. The ache of distance erased in one reckless motion. No words.

Just breath.

Just heat.

After, they lay side by side in the straw, breathing hard. Sweat cooling on skin. Neither man touched the other again, but neither moved away either.

Outside, the rain started slow.

Inside, Arthur turned his head toward Isaiah. He opened his mouth, then shut it. There wasn’t a word in him that didn’t feel too big or too small.

So he just asked, voice hoarse: “You regret it?”

Isaiah didn’t answer at first. Then, after a long moment: “I regret a lot of things.”

Arthur nodded. He didn’t ask which ones.

But neither of them left.

⏭

In the dark, Isaiah thought of Naomi’s kids.

How they looked at him like a stranger wearing a familiar face.

He thought of Alma, the sister he’d left behind, barely old enough to braid her own hair at the time. How her girl—Eliza—was out there somewhere now, missing. Gone months and no word. Thought to be died by everyone else. One of the reasons he came home.

He thought about the churchyard. The shot that could've killed him.

He thought of Arthur beside him, breathing steady.

Of Arthur’s sketches, folded and creased like prayer slips in a worn Bible. Scenes from camp, animals, the drawings of Isaiah’s he pretended not to notice. That trembling gentleness—so at odds with the man of this lifestyle. How was it Arthur could see softness in a world like this and still survive it?

He thought: What if this is the only good thing I ever touch without ruining it. And what if that good thing starts to want more than you’re able to give back?

He closed his eyes.

And listened to the sound of Arthur breathing beside him.

Chapter Text

═════════════════════════
𝕊𝕆𝕌𝕋ℍ
( 𝑻𝒘𝒐 𝑾𝒆𝒆𝒌𝒔 𝑳𝒂𝒕𝒆𝒓 )
═════════════════════════

The last person to see Eliza Walker alive—assuming she was still alive—was a trapper down in Sisika swamp country. Claimed she came through with a rifle, a mule, and eyes like a storm about to break. Said she asked for directions to Saint Denis and didn’t flinch when he warned her about bounty hunters thick as flies. Said she looked like she meant to be followed, like she wanted the trail behind her burning.

Isaiah paid him in silence and left without asking the rest.

Arthur kept pace but didn’t push. Not until they stopped under a low canopy of moss-choked cypress, water licking at the hooves of their horses.

“You think she’s runnin’ from someone?” Arthur finally asked.

Isaiah didn’t look over. “Yeah.”

“You think she’s runnin’ to someone?”

A beat.

Isaiah’s jaw twitched. “Think she’s tired of waitin’ for folks to find her.”

Arthur didn’t say anything to that. Just looked at the water, green and slick, full of shadows and things that didn’t want to be named. The air stank of rot and wet wood, thick as cough syrup. Got into his clothes. Into his teeth. Even the frogs seemed to know something was coming.

⏭

They tracked her for five more days, finding scraps of her passage in the muck—a torn strap, a spent cartridge, boot prints shallow from weight too light to carry full certainty. It was like chasing a ghost who didn’t want to be caught. Each clue just enough to pull them forward, not enough to anchor them.

Dutch sent a rider on the fourth night.

Micah.

He didn’t dismount. Just leaned over his horse with that damn smile, eyes flicking between Arthur and Isaiah. Lingering on Isaiah a second too long.

“Dutch says you’re startin’ to reek of lawman,” Micah drawled. “Stirrin’ up Pinkerton nests, pokin’ places we ain’t got no business.”

Arthur stood with arms crossed, face like a fist. “Did he. That all?”

Micah’s grin widened. “Dutch’s words, ’course, not mine—says you gone all soft over some blood business that don’t even belong to you. Says a man loses sight of who he rides for, real easy when he's chasin’ ghosts.”

He leaned just a little closer in the saddle, voice slick as swamp mud. “Ain’t often two men go off alone in the marshes. Long nights. Strange company. Folks start wonderin’, y’know.”

Isaiah didn’t move, but something in his jaw ticked. His hand hovered near his belt, not touching the pistol, just present. Watching Micah like a snake you weren’t sure was coiled or just cold.

Arthur’s face didn’t change, but his stance did—feet planted wider, arms crossed tighter. “You got a message, or just feelin’ mouthy?”

Micah chuckled, like he’d already said plenty. “Just makin’ observations.”

“You wanna deliver somethin’ else,” Arthur said after a moment, “you tell Dutch he knows where to find me.”

Micah chuckled again. “That’s just it. You ain’t where he thought you’d stay.”

He spurred off without waiting for a reply.

They camped deeper in that night, and neither man slept much.

⏭

Arthur caught the sound of boots before he saw the men.

Three. Maybe four. Pinkertons or bounty hunters—it didn’t matter. He and Isaiah took cover in the ruins of an old sugar plantation house, the second floor collapsed, vines wound around broken beams like veins.

Gunfire came fast, loud. Isaiah clipped one through the neck. Arthur handled another from behind a half-fallen hearth, stone cool against his back, smoke biting his nose. He leaned out, fired again—missed.

That’s when the third came from above.

Through the splintered rafters, a kid dropped like dead weight—too young, too slow, maybe just scared—and crashed into Arthur, knocking his rifle wide.

Arthur hit the floor hard. Reached for his sidearm.

Too late.

Then Isaiah was there.

A blur of movement—coat snapping, boots skidding across rotted floorboards. His knife flashed, caught the boy under the ribs. One rough pull. The sound was wet. Close.

The boy’s mouth opened, but nothing came out. His eyes locked on Isaiah. Confused. Like he’d expected to be somewhere else. Just a kid in the wrong damn story.

He crumpled without a sound.

Blood ran down Isaiah’s wrist, hot and dark. His hand stayed clenched around the hilt a moment too long, like he wasn’t sure how to let go. His shoulders rose and fell with shallow, shaking breaths. When he looked down at the boy, his eyes didn’t go cold—they went distant.

Arthur sat up, breathing hard.

He looked around the ruin—beams splintered, vines curling in the dust, blood soaking into old wood like the house was thirsty.

“Place always was a grave,” he muttered. “Just got a few more bones now.”

Isaiah didn’t answer. His knife hung limp in his hand, dripping red. His jaw twitched. A vein in his temple stood out sharp as wire.

“That boy looked young,” he said finally, voice low and rough, like it scraped its way out.

A pause. Then, quieter: “Eliza used to climb the peach trees too early, every year. Ain’t one fruit on ‘em yet, she’d still be up there, sayin’ she was huntin’ sky rabbits.”

Arthur let the silence stretch a moment.

“Sounds like she knew how to dream,” he said quietly.

Isaiah didn’t reply. But something in his throat moved. He saw the way Isaiah’s knuckles were still white around the hilt, saw the blood drying on his coat, the grief pushing through his chest like something he couldn’t quite name. Like maybe the words had cut in too clean to bleed.

⏭

They rode in silence the rest of that day. By nightfall, they reached the edge of Saint Denis—a back trail few used, one that spilled out near the levees, the gas lamps distant like constellations in fog. The air smelled of fish guts and coal smoke, the faint clang of trolley bells drifting over the water. Somewhere deeper in the city, a piano played a ragtime tune just loud enough to feel like memory.

That’s where Isaiah stopped.

Tethered his horse. Looked out over the distant lights.

“I think I go on alone from here.”

Arthur frowned, slow. “What the hell’s that mean?”

“This ain’t your fight. Already got folks breathin’ down your neck.

“Eliza—”

“Is my blood. My family.”

Arthur took a breath. “You think I don’t know what it means to look for someone like that? Someone gone, someone you ain’t sure’ll ever come back? I do.”

Isaiah stepped closer. “Ain’t what I meant.”

“Then what do you mean, Isaiah? You think I’ll slow you down? If it's about my family—”

“No.” He interrupted. “its 'cause I think if somethin’ happens to you because of me—I won’t come back from it.”

That was when Arthur realized what this was.

“You think I need savin’?” Arthur asked with an incredulous laugh.

Isaiah blinked once, slow. “Yes.”

Arthur looked at him. Hard. Voice gone low: “Then you don’t know a damn thing about me.”

He looked at Isaiah a second longer than he meant to—like he might say more, might reach for something, then thought better of it. His jaw worked. A swallow.

“You don’t get to choose for me.”

Isaiah didn’t flinch. But something in his face crumpled, just a little. Like a house losing its last solid beam. He stepped forward. Just one step. Then stopped.

Arthur saw it. His fingers flexed like he might reach back. But he didn’t.

He turned, stiff-shouldered. Didn’t say goodbye. Isaiah didn’t call after him.

They rode different ways.

He didn’t look back. But his jaw stayed clenched long after Isaiah was gone. A breath escaped through his nose, sharp.

Then he rode.

═════════════════════════
𝕊𝔸𝕀ℕ𝕋 𝔻𝔼ℕ𝕀𝕊
( 𝑵𝒆𝒙𝒕 𝑫𝒂𝒚 )
═════════════════════════

The next day, Arthur sat on the edge of a dock in Saint Denis, watching gulls pick at a dead fish. He hadn’t spoken to Dutch. Hadn’t gone back to camp. His shoulder ached where the bullet wound hadn’t quite healed.

A gull screamed overhead as he flipped open his sketchbook.

There, across the worn pages: horses in motion. Trees. Guns. The house they’d stayed in.

And Isaiah.

Over and over.

Different lines, different light. None of them quite right. He stared at the last one—just the shape of Isaiah’s back walking away. He still couldn’t get the shoulders right. Couldn’t draw the part that stayed with him.

He turned the page.

Eliza, sketched from memory. Eyes shaded. Jaw tense. A girl walking forward, but half-turned like she expected a bullet. He hadn’t seen her himself, but Isaiah’s words had painted her well enough.

Another couple pages.

Copper, Mary, Eliza—

Isaac.

Sleeping. Smiling. His boy drawn from memory as if he could still be reached. Arthur traced the lines of the small face, then closed the book slowly.

Too many ghosts.

He didn’t draw anything else that day.

⏭

Elsewhere, Isaiah followed a lead from a woman near the docks—a maid who’d seen a girl matching Eliza’s description near the French Quarter. Thin. Dark. Carried herself like someone who didn’t want to be seen but couldn’t help being noticed.

He stood in the alley she’d been spotted in.

Closed his eyes.

Thought about Alma’s laugh. Naomi’s silence.

Thought about Arthur’s hands. Arthur voice.

A bell rang in the distance, half-swallowed by fog. Dock workers shouted somewhere across the quarter—voices blurred into noise. The street smelled of iron and salt and old smoke.

He opened his eyes.

And kept walking.

Alone.

Chapter Text

═════════════════════════
𝕊𝔸𝕀ℕ𝕋 𝔻𝔼ℕ𝕀𝕊
( 𝑵𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕 𝒐𝒇 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑬𝒙𝒐𝒅𝒖𝒔 )
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Arthur didn’t remember falling. Just the sense of the street tilting under him like a kicked basin, hot pavement rising to meet his shoulder. The world slid sideways, lights smeared in his vision, and someone’s bootsteps echoed too close. His revolver was somewhere—he thought maybe he’d dropped it in the alley, or maybe never drawn it at all.

He was so damn tired.

He tried to stand. Managed to get one foot under him before a dry cough seized his chest. When it passed, the world spun again. His vision narrowed to smoke and heat and the broken taste of copper in his mouth.

Then: hands.

Rough ones. Familiar ones. Grabbing him under the arms, hauling him back into the shadows like something already dead.

He blinked against the smoke—and for a second thought he was hallucinating.

But no.

“I got you,” Isaiah murmured. “Jesus, Arthur.”

Arthur blinked again, hard. Smoke. Heat. Still Isaiah. “You ain’t real.”

“Yeah,” Isaiah said grimly, hauling him down a narrow back alley, “tell that to my bad shoulder.”

⏭

The city behind them burned. Somewhere across Saint Denis, a railcar had exploded—flames curling up the night like tongues. Screams echoed through the streets in strange bursts, short and sharp, carried by wind and soot. The world had tilted hard. Arthur felt like he was sliding off the edge.

Isaiah dragged him past shuttered doors and broken carts, through a maze of alleyways that smelled of horse piss, fish rot, and the ghost of perfume. He kicked open the door of some forgotten warehouse or tannery and pulled Arthur inside, lowering him against the wall with more care than he’d show himself.

“Still with me?” he asked, crouched close.

Arthur nodded—barely. “Don’t know how you found me.”

“Didn’t,” Isaiah murmured.

A pause.

“Saw the smoke. Followed it. Saw a man who looked like he’d tried to take on a goddamn train.”

Arthur made a hoarse sound. “Close enough.”

Isaiah pressed a hand to his forehead—dry parchment, burning hot with sweat—and swore under his breath. “You burnin’ up.”

Arthur flinched, barely—a twitch of the jaw, a jerk of the shoulder like the touch burned worse than the fever.

“S’nothin’.”

“Arthur.”

His name stopped him. He met Isaiah’s eyes.

“Tell me the truth. What is this?”

Arthur leaned his head back against the wall. He didn’t answer right away. Let the silence swell until it hurt.

Then:

“It’s in my blood.”

Isaiah’s eyes didn’t change. “Consumption?”

A small nod.

Isaiah sat back. Ran a hand over his mouth.

Arthur spoke again, voice thick, barely more than gravel. “I knew. Just—kept movin’. Figured it’d outrun me.”

Isaiah stared at the floor. “Ain’t how sickness works.”

“I know that now,” Arthur rasped, coughing hard enough to double over. He spat blood into the corner, wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist.

“You son of a bitch,” His voice was low, sharp. “You were dyin’ and didn’t say a goddamn word? What the hell did you think I’d do—turn my back?”

Arthur’s breath hitched.

“I didn’t want pity.”

“Wasn’t pity.”

“Didn’t want you lookin’ at me like I was already gone.”

Isaiah didn’t answer.

He didn’t have to.

⏭

Later—minutes? An hour? Time crawled—the fever broke into cold sweat. Arthur’s breathing went ragged. Damp cloth on his forehead and clothes off, leaned against Isaiah, half-lucid, his voice a ghost of itself.

“I ever tell you…” he began. Then stopped.

Isaiah looked at him, waiting.

Arthur tried again. “I ever tell you I watched a man die once… after beggin’ me to let him live? Not just beggin’. Cryin’. Real tears. Said he had kids. A wife. All that.”

Isaiah didn’t move.

Arthur’s eyes flickered. “I shot him anyway. Had to. Couldn’t leave no witnesses. Not the way Dutch was talkin’ back then. Said we were outlaws. Said we were free.”

Silence.

Arthur’s voice cracked. “That man had my eyes. Same color. I remember thinkin’—what if that was me? What if someone was watchin’ me beg, and they just…”

He doubled over coughing, shoulders shaking like the last leaves in a storm. Isaiah steadied him, feeling bones through his shirt like splinters under cloth.

“I killed a part of myself that day,” Arthur said softly. “And kept goin’ like it didn’t matter. Some nights I still see his face. Not angry. Just… surprised.”

“You were survivin’.”

“No,” Arthur said. “I was becomin’.”

Isaiah turned away. Looked at the flicker of flames out through the broken window. Somewhere, distant, the bells rang for midnight.

“You still think I’m worth savin’?” Arthur asked after a while.

Isaiah didn’t answer right away.

Then, quiet: “I don’t save people.”

Arthur laughed, and it broke into another cough. “That’s a damn lie.”

Isaiah looked over, steady. “I stay for people. That ain’t the same thing.”

Arthur looked at him through half-lidded eyes, fever swimming deep in his gaze. “Then why’d you come back?”

A pause.

Isaiah didn’t look away. “Because I knew you wouldn’t ask me to.”

And because I thought you were better off without me.

He didn’t say that part. Just clenched his jaw and continued to look at Arthur.

⏭

The fire spread that night.

By dawn, the sky was black with ash, and the gang was gone from Lakay, driven north into the trees and darkness and rot of Beaver Hollow. The world was closing in.

Isaiah watched Arthur for a long moment. He looked thinner since he'd last seen him. Frailer. Watched the way the sweat clung to his temples, the lines carved deeper in his face than before. The sickness was eating him alive, but it wasn’t the only thing that seemed to have hollowed him out.

So he asked.

Softly.

“Where's your folks, Arthur?”

Arthur didn’t answer right away.

He blinked slow. Then let out a low, humorless sound—almost a laugh, but not quite. More like a breath sawed through regret.

“Oh, you’ll love this,” he rasped, rubbing a shaking hand down his face. “After we went our own ways... everythin’ went to hell.”

Isaiah waited. Didn’t interrupt.

Arthur sniffed, coughed. Then started to talk.

“We went west. Hid out near Shady Belle for a while. Swamps, heat, bugs—damn place felt cursed from the start.” He paused, coughed again, wiped blood off his lip.

“Dutch started talkin’ bigger. Bolder. Robbed a Leviticus Cornwall train, made enemies we couldn’t shake. Thought we’d hit it rich. Instead we got Pinkertons on our asses. Got Hosea and Lenny killed.”

Isaiah’s jaw clenched.

“Went down in Saint Denis. Just like that.” Arthur snapped his fingers, weakly. “Was right beside me one second. Then he wasn’t.”

The silence stretched.

Arthur’s voice turned distant. “We tried to leave by boat. Dutch had this damn plan we’d vanish into Cuba. Boat sank in a storm. Woke up stranded on some godforsaken island called Guarma.”

Isaiah’s eyes narrowed in disbelief. “Guarma?”

Arthur gave a half-smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Yeah. Not makin’ that up. Place was run by slavers. Got in the middle of a rebellion. Dutch loved it. Said it made us righteous.” He exhaled. “We fought their war, stole a ship, came home like ghosts. But Dutch... Dutch didn’t come back the same.”

Arthur’s hand curled loosely into a fist. “Though sometimes I wonder—was he always like this? And I just didn’t see it until he started trustin’ Micah more than the rest of us? Started leavin’ the rest of us behind.”

Isaiah said nothing, but his expression darkened at the name. 

Arthur saw it. He swallowed hard. “Yeah. Micah.” The name came slow—like it caught on something jagged. “Same bastard as before. Rat bastard was whisperin’ in his ear the whole time. We didn’t know how deep it went. Not yet.”

He coughed again, harsh and raw. Spat into the bucket sitting just beneath the cot—already set at his side, just in case. The sound echoed too loud in the still.

“By the time we got to Lakay, everything was splinterin’. Charles was doin’ his best. John got arrested. Sadie—Sadie was out for blood.” His voice faltered. “And me—I was tryin’ to hold it together. Tryin’ to believe Dutch still had some kind of plan.”

Isaiah watched him, quiet. Steady.

Arthur finally looked at him. “But he didn’t. He was just runnin’. Killin’. Starin’ at some vision of freedom that didn’t exist no more.”

He exhaled long and slow, like letting out years.

“People started dyin’. Or leavin’. Or breakin’. Abigail begged me to get John out. So I did. Broke him outta Sisika.”

That startled a look out of Isaiah. “You got him out?”

“Yeah.” Arthur’s voice was so thin now it barely rose. “Ran with Sadie to get him. Then ran back with John to find what was left of Dutch.”

He stared at the ceiling.

“And found a man I didn’t know.”

Isaiah stood up, started pacing. The warehouse was dark now, only the occasional glow from a fire still burning somewhere in the city. Arthur’s voice followed him, threadbare and soft.

“I tried to make Dutch see. Told him Micah was the rat. Told him we couldn’t keep runnin’, not like this. But he was already gone. Couldn’t reach him.”

He turned his head just enough to find Isaiah’s silhouette in the dark.

“I told John to go. Get Abigail and Jack and ride. Leave the rest.”

“Did he?”

Arthur nodded slowly. “Yeah. He listened.”

Silence.

Then Isaiah asked, quiet but firm: “And you?”

Arthur closed his eyes. “Stayed behind.”

Another long pause. Then, low: “Wasn’t ready to die just yet.”

Isaiah crossed the room again and sat beside him, the air thick between them.

“You were still hopin’,” he said, not unkindly.

Arthur didn’t deny it.

“I think some part of me still believed we could fix it,” he admitted. “Like we could go back to what we were.”

“You knew better,” Isaiah said.

“I did.”

They sat in that quiet, broken space—just two men, ragged and worn, with the fire behind them and ash ahead.

Then Arthur, barely audible: “That’s what happened to my folks.”

Isaiah nodded once. “And now?”

Arthur let the silence stretch. Then, just above a whisper: “Now I’m makin’ peace with it.”

He exhaled slow, like settin’ down a rifle he’d been carryin’ too long, barrel rusted, stock splintered, but still held tight out of habit.

The quiet stretched between them, broken only by the distant pop of dying fire and the whistle of wind through cracked boards.

Arthur shifted, voice like gravel. “And you?” he asked finally. “You find Eliza?”

Isaiah let out a laugh, but there was no humor in it. Just something brittle. Worn thin.

“Yes,” he said. “She died.”

Arthur blinked, surprised by the plainness of it. The finality.

“I went lookin’ for her not long after we split,” Isaiah continued. “Found the man she was with. Said she’d gone north, tryin’ to make somethin’ for herself. Honest work. Letters she wrote… stopped gettin’ answered.”

Arthur didn’t speak. He didn’t have to.

Isaiah stared at his hands, the way they curled now like they didn’t belong to anything. “She got sick. Pneumonia, I think. Hard winter. No one to look after her.”

Another pause. “Buried her in a town that didn’t even know her name.”

Arthur’s breath caught. “Jesus, Isaiah…”

He waved it off, but the motion was stiff. “I got there too late. Ain’t no fixin’ that. Just stood there in the cold like a fool, starin’ at a grave with no stone.”

He was quiet for a long time. Then, he swallowed, eyes distant: “Last letter she wrote said the snow’d been fallin’ a week straight. Said she missed the way I laughed when she tried to cook beans and burned 'em twice over. Said maybe, someday, she’d forget how cold I got when I ran.

He rubbed his thumb against his palm like trying to scrape the memory away. “That letter smelled like woodsmoke. Like she’d kept it by the stove for a while.”

Arthur lowered his gaze. His breath caught in a soft wheeze between words, hands trembling faintly in his lap. His voice came quiet. “I’m sorry.”

Isaiah just nodded once. “Me too.”

He leaned back against the wall beside Arthur, head tilted toward the rafters.

“We did all this runnin’,” he murmured, “and they still found ways to die without us.”

Arthur swallowed against the ache in his throat. “Yeah.”

They sat there a while longer. Two men hollowed out by the world, worn to the bone but still breathing.

The air smelled of ash and wet leather. Smoke clung to the rafters like the ghosts of old fires. Outside, somewhere in the city, a coyote howled—long and low, like it had lost something too. A cold draft crept in through a crack in the wall, wrapping around their ankles. The warehouse groaned, quiet and skeletal.

Isaiah stood up too fast, boots scraping across cracked stone and scattered wood slats. He turned away, shoulders tight, and started pacing the length of the room like a caged animal, each step crunching faint shards of broken glass underfoot. One hand dragged through his hair, the other clenched at his side. The silence cracked as he gave a sharp snuffle through his nose—too forceful, too pointed not to mean something.

Arthur didn’t look away. Just watched him, eyes half-lidded, fever-glazed, but still seeing too much.

Isaiah paused near the broken window, the firelight outside painting his jaw gold and red.

His voice, when it came, was thick. “So how long you got?”

Isaiah turned, blinking fast. Arthur didn’t answer right away. He’d sunk lower against the wall, head tipped back, hat lopsided on his brow like it was too heavy now. He looked at Isaiah—not flinching from the question, but like it took him a minute to find the truth buried under the wreckage of his chest.

“Don’t rightly know,” Arthur said at last. “Weeks, maybe. A month if I’m lucky.”

Isaiah turned his head. “That it?”

Arthur gave a tired nod. “Doc in Saint Denis said I was already walkin’ dead. Just too stubborn to lie down.” His chest rose shallow and slow, as if every breath was being drawn through broken glass.

The words sat there between them.

Isaiah stared at the ground—dust curling at the edges of old boot prints—then let out a breath like it hurt to hold in. He dragged a hand over his mouth again. The pacing stilled now, but the tension in his arms still hummed, looking like it needed somewhere to go.

“Hell,” he muttered.

Arthur managed a crooked smile. “Yeah. That about sums it up.”

“You got a plan?” Isaiah asked, eyes sharp now, though the shine hadn’t gone out of them entirely.

Arthur’s voice rasped out slower this time. “Ain’t got much left in me to plan with. Just tryin’ to do right with what I got left. Whatever that is.”

Then Isaiah exhaled hard, looked down at his hands like he didn’t recognize them. “You always were stubborn. Walked through hell with a hole in your chest and never said a word.”

He said. “What was I s’posed to say? ‘Hey, I’m dyin’, but don’t let that ruin your day’?”

Isaiah gave a short, sharp sound that could’ve been a laugh or a curse. He crossed back over warped floorboards, the dull thud of each step breaking the still, and crouched again, rough hand braced on Arthur’s knee. Wanting to say something but not being able to find the words.

Arthur exhaled, long and slow. Isaiah’s hand stayed there. Tightened, just once. Like holding on.

“I would’ve come back for you. Even if all I found was ash.”

Rough fingers moved to touch Arthur’s hair.

“You stubborn bastard,” he murmured.

Arthur gave a hoarse laugh that cracked into a cough. He leaned in—bone and breath—and reached up, fingers brushing Isaiah’s wrist like a question.

“’Preciate you comin’ back,” he murmured.

Isaiah didn’t answer.

He just stayed.

Chapter Text

The fire had long since gone out. Only embers remained—soft-red, pulsing like the last beats of a tired heart. Wind moaned low through the cracks in the old warehouse boards, carrying with it the scent of the river, of rot, of far-off smoke. Crates rotted in stacks by the wall, half-collapsed under their own weight. And morning.

They didn’t talk much in the end. It was getting harder for Arthur.

The warehouse emptied out day by day—heat fading to chill, firelight giving way to the long gray hush before dawn. Arthur spent more time asleep than awake. When he did stir, it was in fragments—scraps of dreams, half-finished thoughts, words trailing off like smoke.

Isaiah stayed close. Kept water near. Fed the fire low. Read from old newspapers when Arthur’s breath evened out. He cleaned the blood without flinching, changed the damp cloths, held Arthur’s weight when the coughing fits tore through him like splinters. Sometimes he rubbed at his own chest after long silences.

No one came looking. The world outside moved on.

Arthur stirred at the sound of boots. Not startled—just barely aware. The weight of his body seemed to have doubled overnight, and every breath came like it had to fight through gravel and glass.

Isaiah knelt beside him, wrapping another blanket tight over Arthur’s legs. It was too warm for it. But the chill didn’t come from outside anymore.

“You awake?” Isaiah’s voice was quiet, rough with sleep—or restraint. Probably both.

Arthur blinked up at him. Eyes bloodshot. Rimmed in yellow. “Barely,” he rasped.

Isaiah’s hand rested on his shoulder, solid and warm. “You want water, food?”

Arthur gave the tiniest shake of his head. “Don’t think it’d stay down.”

Silence stretched between them for a while. Then Arthur added, “’Preciate it, though.”

Isaiah nodded.

He didn’t say don’t mention it. He didn’t say of course I stayed. By now, none of that needed sayin’.

⏭

One night, when the wind turned sharp and the rafters moaned like bones in a bad storm, Arthur asked him: “You think it means somethin’, the way we end?”

Isaiah didn’t answer right away. Just looked down at the calluses on his palms. A dry breath escaped him.

“I think it means somethin’ how we carry it,” he said. “Not where it stops.”

Arthur nodded like that sat right. He coughed again—dry now, barely a sound—and reached for Isaiah’s wrist with a hand more bone than flesh.

“You carried me further than I earned,” he murmured.

Isaiah shook his head. “You carried me first.”

⏭

They spent three days in that ruin.

Arthur didn’t ask to go anywhere. He didn’t want to die out in the green or beside the river or under the sky. Not this time. He just wanted to rest. Stay warm. Let the ghosts catch up.

Isaiah stayed with him. Wrote no letters. Lit no fires after dark. Slept in snatches. Fed Arthur broth when he could swallow it and wiped the blood from his lips when he couldn’t. He never asked for more than Arthur could give.

And Arthur, when he could, gave what little he had left.

Pieces.

A half-laugh at some memory. A muttered apology. His hand against Isaiah’s when the nights got too long.

“I ever tell you about the time I fell off a cliff tryin’ to rob a stagecoach?”

“You’ve fallen off a lot of things.”

“This one was worse. There was a goat. Don’t ask.”

When he could still smile, it came slower. But it came.

One night, Isaiah woke to Arthur sitting up—just barely—staring at something across the room that wasn’t there.

“You seein’ ghosts?” Isaiah murmured.

Arthur didn’t blink. “Maybe.”

Isaiah sat beside him. “What they look like?”

Arthur licked his cracked lips. “Like me. Before.”

“You scared?”

Arthur turned his head. “Not anymore.”

The next morning, he didn’t speak. Just squeezed Isaiah’s hand once when it reached for his.

And later that day, when the light was soft through the broken slats and the river fog had started to rise…

He was gone.

Arthur passed with the sun.

Didn’t make a sound. Just exhaled—one long breath, like laying down a burden—and never took another. His fingers were curled around the edge of his journal, thumb tucked into the pages like he hadn’t quite finished writing.

Isaiah didn’t speak when it happened. 

He just sat there, still and quiet, until the light faded.

⏭

He buried him just before dusk at the edge of the woods, just north of Saint Denis—far from the rot of Beaver Hollow, far from where the Pinkertons or Dutch’s ghosts might find him.

He dug with bare hands and an old shovel. The grave was clean. Simple. No stone—just a wooden marker, carved with one name:

A. MORGAN

Isaiah left the hat behind, then changed his mind. Tied it to his saddle with careful hands, like it might keep Arthur close for one more ride.

He didn’t say a prayer. Didn’t know one that fit.

But he laid a hand to the dirt and whispered, “Ride easy, my— Arthur.”

When he stood again, he coughed into his sleeve. Wiped his mouth and didn’t look at what came away.

Then he mounted up.

⏭

He rode west.

Past the bayou. Past the burnt edges of Lakay. He didn’t stop to look back.

Arthur’s journal sat in his saddlebag. He hadn’t opened it yet. Couldn’t. Not just yet.

But he felt its weight, like a second heart beating slow and steady beside his own.

Isaiah pulled his coat tighter. He pressed a hand to his ribs and said nothing.

He rode on.

Not dead yet.

⏭

Weeks later, when the coughing worsened and his body grew too weak to ride, Isaiah finally opened the journal. He sat beneath a cracked tin roof, knees pulled close, fire guttering low nearby. Somewhere far off, a train howled past and kept going.

The pages inside were thick with ink. Words filled the margins, spiraled through the white space like thoughts spilled too fast to tame.

And Isaiah was on almost every page.

Not always named. Sometimes just a sketch of a jaw. The curve of a scar. A note about laughter, or the way someone had said a thing. 

There were entries about the gang, too—faces Isaiah never met. A son named Isaac. A boy called Jack. Places Arthur had been, places long gone. And slowly, the pages narrowed. Grew thinner. Like Arthur’s world had collapsed inward—to fewer names.

And one in particular.

On a torn scrap near the back, Isaiah found just one line:

I love him.

He closed the journal slowly. Pressed it to his chest like it might anchor him to something. The wind moved like a voice half-remembered.

Isaiah held the book. Thought of the ghosts Arthur said he saw.

Maybe it had just been grief.

Or maybe what he saw was himself, already waiting on the other side.

He held the journal there as the coughing returned, and the sky bled red along the horizon.