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
The drive back to the Double L was as silent as the grave. Arthur kept replaying the events in the Blackwater Saloon and in the grocery store over and over in his head, wondering if there was something, anything, he could have done differently to avoid the mess they were in now. Damn, what he wouldn't give for a cigarette.
The further north they drove, the snowier it became. Eventually, the truck and empty horse trailer had to slow down to less than forty miles an hour to avoid sliding on the road, and because the road was hard to see through the inch or so of powdery snow that had fallen since they'd left. It felt like a lifetime ago.
His worry and grief compounded in his head, and he breathed so laboriously it made his chest hurt. Whether that was a result of his lung damage or anxiety or a combination of the two, he didn't know. All he knew was that at his next therapy session, Francis would be able to fill a book with all the shit currently flying around Arthur's thoughts.
At times, he nearly lost track of where he was. The flying snow outside nearly put him back in Colter, another time when he'd been filled with this much fear and this much grief all at the same time. In Colter, he knew he'd lost Davey who'd been his drinking buddy for over a decade. He'd helped bury Jenny, who he'd come to think of as a little sister although she'd been quite close to Mac and Hosea as well, and they'd been forced to leave Mac and Sean behind in the gunfight in Blackwater.
The snow flurries outside seemed to take on the shapes of horses, men, and bullets. There was even one shaped like Dutch. Arthur could hear him say, "If I could throw myself in the ground in their stead, I'd do it." It was a speech he'd been completely behind at the time, forced to rally behind Dutch for the sake of everyone else in the gang. With disgust, Arthur remembered thinking what a great man Dutch had been when he'd said that. It was an act. All an act. An act that had killed or scattered the only family Arthur knew. An act that led to John being led like a lamb to the slaughter. It began and ended with Dutch. All of it.
His hands were still in tight fists and his stare was a thousand miles away when he realized the truck was stopping outside Tori's ranch house. "Come on," she said softly, glancing at Arthur with a sad look in her eyes. "We have to go tell Jackson what happened. Button up your coat because it's very cold out there."
Arthur did as she ordered. He let her lead him by the hand, stiff and robotic, towards Jackson's cabin at the edge of the woods.
Jackson's cabin.
Somehow, Arthur realized he still thought of the place as Jackson's, and only Jackson's. Both Lintons were constantly telling Arthur how the ranch was just as much his as it was theirs now, but he still thought of each house as belonging to one of them, and somehow not to him. After all this time, he considered that although he considered the ranch his home, he had no place that was entirely his own.
It was this fact he was still pondering as he stomped the snow from his boots and allowed Tori to lead him into the cabin. Hank met them at the door, stub tail wagging gleefully, and Arthur reached down to pet him, smiling happily. No matter his mood, it seemed Hank could always cheer him up.
