Who, Cerberus: An RDR Undead Nightmare Story [ John Marston x OC ]

xxix. Striving

"Drop the gun, Liam," John ordered, pulling the hammer back on the revolver with his thumb.

Liam laughed loudly and disparagingly at John's appearance in the doorway, swivelling his body around the seated Ruby to hold her around the neck with his arm, the gun pressing into her right temple.

"He's still skulking around?" Liam hooted, crouching slightly to meet Ruby's furious eyeline, looking between her and John, the revolver levelled at him. "Don't tell me the little whelp is Marston's? She a great lummox then, just like him?"

"No," Ruby seethed, through gritted teeth. "She's beautiful, just like him." Liam released her neck to pet her hair, glaring provokingly at John.

"She'll be a beautiful orphan, then, just like her mama," Liam lowered his lips to the crown of Ruby's head, which she winced away from. "But don't worry, dear sister," he whispered menacingly into her hair, "she'll always have a job at Uncle Liam's factory."

John expected Ruby's face to further crumple, but her features softened instead, the line disappearing between her eyebrows, her blue eyes clear and peaceful as she caught John's, equal parts worried and raging. Her left hand flew up like a shot, pushing the barrel of Liam's pistol away from her head. With her right, she drew her revolver out from under the skirt and into Liam's throat, firing without hesitation, the shot ringing in their ears.

Liam's body - finely dressed, muscular - wheeled backward, hitting the floor with a dull thud. Half of his face was missing. Ruby's body shuddered and she dropped to her knees, letting the revolver fall from her hand to the rug. John rushed to meet her, kneeling behind her and wrapping his arms around her shoulders. He felt her nestle into his forearm, her heavy breathing tickling at the wiry hairs that sprouted there.

"He was my family," she whispered, staring at the corpse. "He was terrible, but he was my family."

John stroked her hair, kissed her cheek. "I understand," he said, because he did.

Ruby turned in his embrace, gestured for them both to stand, holding his face with her left hand and seizing her revolver from the floor in her right. "We got to go, I got to get Anna." Her feet danced anxiously, nearly jogging on the spot. "Maybe off to Jasper's in Beaver Hollow? Or find Lyn in Mexico? How big is Mexico?"

John couldn't help but grin. "Pretty big." He led her out of the room via the side door, out through West Dickens' office, and down the stairs, then out of the factory. Maybe the first miracle the man had ever worked: Nigel West Dickens was waiting outside, as he'd promised, with the wagon, horses tethered and ready to go.

"This is my ride," he said, his voice suddenly strained. "Don't suppose you- you'd take a chance on coming home with me, instead?"

Ruby's face grew rueful, and John felt his heart wrench painfully in his chest. "John, you don't want this - me and a little girl."

"Our little girl," he asserted, albeit quietly, stepping forward to close the distance between them. "And I do." Ruby shook her head, looked to the dirt at their feet, but he seized her chin to look at him, emboldened himself. "You may not want me and if that's the case, I'll leave, I'll never bother you again. But I want you, Ruby. You're the only damn thing in my life I did decide on."

The words hung suspended in the air between them, a deep shame slowly crawling up John's back with every second Ruby remained in stunned silence, staring at him, her mouth agape. But it quirked into a smile, first small, then beaming, and she pulled his face to hers for a kiss.

"Yes, John, I do. I want you, so fuckin' bad." She laughed delightedly, kissed him again. "I'm going to get our things and pick up the girl - come and get us at her school!" These last words yelled behind her, she off at a run down the street, leaving John in an ecstatic daze, wiping at his mouth.

Nigel cleared his throat dramatically. "I'm assuming you were responsible for that gunshot upstairs, John, so best we get moving?" John shook himself and climbed into the driver's seat, piloting the horses out as far as the forests outside of the old plantation house, Shady Belle, where he unhitched one of the draft horses and raced it back towards the city.

Ruby and Anna were waiting for him alongside one small suitcase outside of the school, Anna looking bewildered at the change to her routine. Ruby lifted her to John, who sat her on the horse's massive back, and then lent a hand up to Ruby, sitting between them. He managed the reins in one hand, the suitcase in the other, and took the long way around out of the city, away from the factory.

"We should say goodbye, right, Anna?" Ruby shouted to the girl over the wind rushing in their ears. Anna, who'd been morose for the ride out, perked up a little. "Adieu, Saint Denis!" Ruby waved theatrically, blowing kisses to the receding skyline, and Anna parroted her, giggling.

*

And then it was just the three of them; surviving, happy. On returning to Beecher's Hope, Ruby settled Anna into Jack's old bedroom while John unloaded the wagon of its weapons into the loft of the barn, waved Nigel off.

While Anna spent her first few days at the Blackwater schoolhouse, John dug and then brick-lined a cellar, deep into the ground. Ruby slept away most of these days, exhausted by something she couldn't quite define, but made sure to drag herself from the bed to bring John a daily beer from the ice chest, to press the cool glass bottle laughingly against his bare torso, to brush his hair from his eyes as she did for their daughter.

When the cellar was completed, John called Ruby for a last inspection. She peered at the small vials of weaponized syrup that surrounded the little room, set into boxes filled with sawdust, nodding.

"So we'll seal it up, then?" John asked, a forearm to his head against the bright day. She held up her index finger in a "just-a-minute" motion, ran up the few stairs to ground level and off to the house. In moments she was back, her two holstered revolvers in her hands. She placed them on the ground, in the middle of the vials, at their feet.

"You sure, honey?" He asked, looking between the guns, "Li'l Red" carved into their grips, and her.

"Yes," she breathed, a serene smile playing on her lips. "I'm done."

"But what about the old ways? Our kind of life?" John couldn't imagine moving through the world without a gun at his hip, and thought she was of the same opinion.

"Was it the kind of life you wanted, John? The more I'm away from it, the more I don't miss it. The violence. Even the grandstanding." She took his hand and led him from the cellar, laboured to close the large, steel-enforced doors, chaining and then padlocking them. "Maybe this is who we really are," she continued once done, gesturing out towards the ranch, a few cattle grazing in the fields to the east of them, the gardens she'd weeded while he worked, the sheep in their pen, bleating. "Certainly what I always wanted. To be- just folks striving."

So, they strove. John took Anna to school every day, as the leaves in the trees turned golden and fell from their branches, as the first snow rocked the ranch and forced the cattle and horses into the barn. One schoolday, early in the new year, bundled in her new woolen coat, Anna kissed his cheek before sliding off of the back of Thoreau, yelling, "Bye, pa!" on her way through the gate. She never called him anything different after that.

Taking his two girls - as he revelled in saying - through town, John was often teased for his younger wife and daughter, but soon grew younger, too; carried himself taller, took care in his grooming, had a new bounce in his step, an easy smile on his face.

John had always been proud of the families he'd found himself in. Guidance from his mentors and brothers in the gang; a love wrought of hardship with Abigail and Jack. With this family, Ruby on his arm, Anna skipping ahead, he finally felt it. A swell of pride in himself.

End.