Arthur Morgan did not intend to survive when he gave his hat to John Marston and stayed behind to gain his redemption. As he crawled towards his final resting place, he never intended to wake up again.
But he does wake up. Thanks to time travelers F...
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2021
Arthur stared at the laptop before him. "It ain't working, Jackson," he grunted, tapping the screen angrily. "All I see is a little circle."
"That means it's buffering," Jackson explained, poking his head into the tiny kitchen of the cabin he shared with Arthur. "Give it a second."
"I ain't never had this much trouble before," Arthur informed him, taking a sip from the mug of coffee on the table. "At least it don't require internet to send a goddamn letter."
Jackson chuckled. "No, but it's kind of hard to do remote therapy via the United States Postal Service."
Arthur sighed and continued to stare helplessly at the screen before him. He'd rather fight off a grizzly bear single handedly than sit here in front of this computer.
Today he had a therapy session with Francis Sinclair. Because the ranch was so isolated, Arthur's therapy sessions for his PTSD tended to occur in front of a computer screen. He had no idea how these strange machines worked, and Jackson or Tori usually had to help him get set up with one each time he had an appointment. Most of the time, there were no problems. Today, however, the computer seemed to be trying his patience.
"Goddamn it," he swore under his breath as the small circle on the computer screen continued to spin irritatingly. "Jackson, it still ain't workin'."
There was a sigh in the next room. "Let me see if resetting the router will help the connection," Jackson replied, and Arthur heard him shuffling out of the living room.
Pretending to know what that meant, Arthur leaned back in his chair and took another sip of coffee. He'd taken to spiking his morning coffee with whiskey lately. The drowsy effect from the alcohol tended to make his days a little more comfortable. Under the influence of alcohol, his thoughts turned less often to Micah; otherwise, he'd catch himself spacing out for a few moments, completely lost in his head as he remembered his last day in 1899.
The memories were rarely visual anymore. His medication seemed to be helping with that. Now, they were a mix of feelings and other senses. He'd catch the scent of gunpowder and remember the smell of Micah's hands as they clutched his throat and punched him across the face.
Arthur would also find himself paralyzed with fear sometimes as his brain recalled the raw, fight-or-flight feelings of the end, as he crawled forward on the top of that mountain, desperately trying to reach a gun on the ground a few feet in front of him. He could hear the echoes of Micah's laughter in his ears, and feel the pain of crushing defeat when his hand finally reached the gun, only to be crushed by Dutch's boot before he could pick it up.
In fact, as he sipped his whiskey-laced coffee, Arthur found himself staring off into space again, recalling the sharp pain in his side from broken ribs after falling from the cliff, and how it felt as his already-diseased lungs began to collapse from the trauma, until he could barely breathe at all.
