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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2022
They licked their wounds for a few days.
Thankfully, according to the only doctor in Wallace Station, the cocktail of drugs both Naomi and Tori had accidentally managed to drink had not harmed them or their babies. Once the Nyquil and melatonin wore off, in fact, Tori managed to function better than Arthur.
Arthur hated Rohypnol with a burning passion. Recovering from having taken it was a long, slow process, as was recovering from the concussion he'd sustained when he hit his head on the bar in Strawberry. The combination of the drugs and his injury made him sick to both his stomach and his head, and he and Tori spent the first few days of their marriage with her taking care of him as he tried not to throw up. It was like a bad hangover that never went away.
Jackson and Francis weren't much better. Unlike Arthur, however, they had no concussions to recover from, and as such Francis helped Jackson take care of the farm while Arthur recovered.
Charles and Naomi were gone. After they felt well enough, Naomi had driven Charles straight back to their ranch in Ambarino. She seemed physically well, but somehow more shaken up than the rest of them. Charles thought some alone time was best for both of them, and Arthur couldn't blame him. Sticking around the Double L right now put his family in danger, and if Arthur was in his place, he reasoned he'd do the same thing.
There was no point alerting law enforcement; they did not know if Levi had bought them out, but Arthur knew for a fact the man had friends as high up as the West Elizabeth state legislature, if such a man was even capable of having friends. Francis was convinced now that Levi was a psychopath, who did the things he did just because he enjoyed hurting other people, like a serial killer who chose not to actually kill anyone.
Tori also had switched doctors for her prenatal checkups. The doctor in Wallace Station did a decent enough job, although more expensive and with more antiquated views about medicine. He was an older, gray-haired gentleman with small, smooth hands and a contagious smile, and Arthur knew after talking with him for only five minutes that they could trust him. He reminded Arthur of the doctor in Saint Denis who had diagnosed him with tuberculosis, in a way.
The doctor hadn't delivered a baby in some years, though, because most women chose to give birth at the hospitals in Strawberry or Fort Wallace. Tori began to worry about complications because of his lack of practice and because her IUD made her pregnancy high-risk, and there was nothing Arthur could do about it.
All the stress of this knowledge led Arthur to think of Eliza and Isaac lately, and the pain in his heart grew as he relived each memory. He'd already led one woman and her child into turmoil, and the conflict with Levi worried him that he was doing the exact same thing to Tori and Sadie. How long until he buried them beneath rough, wooden crosses of their own?
The thought tormented him as he recovered. He began to dream of Eliza at night, just as young and beautiful as he remembered her, holding the hand of a fully-grown boy with eyes just like Arthur's. They said nothing, only stared at Arthur with flat, blank expressions on their faces. Their clothing was torn and their bodies covered in thick, fresh blood. Arthur desired greatly to look away from his own eyes staring back at him from Isaac's face, but he couldn't. Not until he awoke in the dead of night covered in sweat and gasping in terror, that was.
