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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1884
"Mary, what are you doing?" Arthur asked, opening the flap to their tent, only to discover her moving about in a flurry of motion, a look of stone on her face. On their cot was a small duffel bag containing what looked to be the few possessions and pieces of clothing she owned.
Her jaw set firmly in her chin, and she refused to look at Arthur, choosing instead to stuff another dress into her bag. "What does it look like?" she hissed quietly. "I can't do this anymore, Arthur."
The bruises on her body were now a faint, sickly, bluish-yellow, but her broken nose was still tender and red. The O'Driscolls had rattled her up pretty good, and today was, in fact, the first day since Annabelle's death that she'd had the energy to do much of anything.
Arthur remembered that night like it was the end of the world. After seeing that Mary was taken care of, he, Mac, and John had helped Dutch bury Annabelle beneath a large oak tree near the shore of the river. It was a place she would have liked, with soft, emerald-green grass and plenty of peaceful shade. Dutch had refused to leave her grave for the past two days, and the rest of the camp milled around on high alert, waiting for some sort of sign that it was time to move on. Mac and Davey had piled the bodies of the O'Driscolls into the cabin and set it on fire to try and hide the bloodshed from the law, but it was only a matter of time until someone discovered where they were.
He could still remember Annabelle's last warning to him, about Dutch being like a stick of dynamite with a long fuse. This revelation was impossible to reconcile with what he knew about the man himself, as to him Dutch was a kind, charismatic man who loved him like a son.
Arthur's emotions had been running sky high the night Annabelle had died, and he was now ashamed to have doubted Dutch then, and to have even entertained the idea that Dutch didn't feel raw pain and anger now that Annabelle was dead. His actions the past few days seemed to prove to Arthur beyond a shadow of a doubt that he'd loved Annabelle dearly.
John, it seemed, was less convinced. Arthur had ended up telling him what happened in the cellar before Colm killed Annabelle, and what she'd said about Dutch. At the time, Arthur had been in shock and not thinking clearly, so he'd unloaded the entire story on John, who had furrowed his brow, pursed his lips, and sat back in his saddle to consider everything. By the end of it all, John was convinced there was a grain of truth to Annabelle's last words.
When the sun came up the next morning, however, and Arthur had been able to sleep a bit, the less her warning to him made sense. She'd been a troubled girl for a while, he reasoned. She'd lost her family and her home, and had been running with a gang of outlaws who'd saved her from human traffickers. He doubted she'd had a moment of stability since leaving Ireland.
The only one who didn't seem convinced was Mary. She hadn't spoken three words to Arthur since he'd chosen to spare her and let Colm kill Annabelle. Arthur had been forced to sleep on the floor of their tent in his spare bedroll to let her have the cot to herself. She barely ate, only drank a little, and slept a lot. She'd complained of blurry vision and feeling drunk, though she hadn't touched a drop of alcohol. Arthur had been very worried about her; it seemed she wasn't right in the head.
