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...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
1883
Groaning, Arthur sat up. He felt weird, as though several long nails had been driven into his skull. Vaguely, he remembered smoking peyote the night before, being very cold, and something about his mother, but not much else.
He was also very naked. His head spun as he sat up, shivering in the early dawn. The first jolt of fear shot down his spine as he realized something. They were a long way from where they'd left the horses tied. This wasn't Rio Bravo. This was, judging by the abandoned oil derrick nearby, a place Arthur had heard about in a bar in Armadillo. It was called Plainview, and it was an extremely long way on foot from the eastern edge of Rio Bravo, where Arthur remembered leaving their horses.
If the horses were even still there, that was.
Panicking a bit, Arthur turned to his right, where an equally naked Mary slept huddled against him for warmth. Their clothes were nowhere to be found. "Shit," he mumbled, attempting to stagger to his feet.
At his words, Mary also began to stir. She blinked in the dim morning light and sat up, wincing in pain as she rubbed her forehead. "The...the hell are we?" she moaned.
"I think it's called Plainview," Arthur groaned. "Why're we naked? Where's our clothes?"
Mary looked down at herself and sighed. "I can't quite remember."
"What do you remember?"
"Smoking a little. Then lots of weird shapes and colors, and... and dancing. Naked," she groaned, snuggling up against Arthur in a vain attempt to warm herself up. "Then we...we...well, we..."
"Fucked," Arthur finished for her. He didn't remember it, but he'd guessed as much by their lack of clothes.
Mary nodded. "Yeah. The rest is all a blur. I remember Daddy for some reason." Tears welled up in her eyes. "He took me in his arms like he used to do when I was a little girl, before Mother died. He read me stories from the Bible and tucked me into bed for the night." A tear fell down her cheek.
Arthur put one arm around her shoulders and pulled her into him, cradling her against his chest. Mary's silent tears turned into sobs as he held her. Her entire body shook with her wails, but all he could do was hold her and stroke her hair and kiss the top of her head softly, muttering quietly to comfort her.
He'd heard peyote could sometimes cause a person to become extremely sad for no reason. Obviously that was Mary's problem. Her life as of late had been one sad thing after another, so Arthur couldn't really blame her for crying, and he felt awful about it. It was all his fault she was this upset.
She cried for the better part of an hour, until the sun was just above the horizon, and the desert was starting to warm up. With the warmth came a new fear for Arthur. Soon, it would be stiflingly hot, and they had no water or protection from the sun. If they didn't do something soon, they'd be dead.
