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
Tori grunted and gripped the truck door until her knuckles turned white. Out of the corner of his eye, Arthur watched her, extremely worried. He hadn't been counting the time between contractions, but they seemed to come fairly frequently.
"I... I went into labor before they came for me, you know," Tori panted as her body relaxed. "It wasn't long, but I was so scared. I couldn't call you or Jackson because there's no cell reception on that side of the valley. So really..." She looked out the window and gritted her teeth. "Oh... really, it was sort of a blessing they came."
He looked over at her. "You okay? Other than the obvious, I mean."
She nodded. "I will be as soon as I have Sadie safely out of me." Her eyes met his, and he could see the fear in them. "Are you okay, Arthur?" Her thin, white fingers grasped a bottle of wipes in the floor of the truck and handed him one. "Wipe your face. It has blood all over it."
Was he okay? He took the wipe from Tori and ran it over his face with his free hand. He'd taken off the jacket he'd been wearing so there was no blood on his clothes, but he'd forgotten his face. It would not have been good to show up at the hospital like that. There would inevitably be questions.
"I'm..." he said softly as his voice trailed off. "I killed those men, Tori. I killed 'em, and I didn't have to."
"I gathered that from the smoking wreckage we passed on the way out," she said sarcastically. "And from the bodies laying in the grass that you told my brother to feed to the animals. I'm not mad, Arthur. You did what you had to do. But my god!"
"I've killed lots of folk in my lifetime," he admitted. "Too many to count, and in lots of different ways."
"I know you have," she reminded him. "That isn't who you are anymore, though. I wouldn't love you if it was."
But Arthur wasn't done. "I shot plenty of folks, sure, but there were others I stabbed, others I blew up with dynamite, and even one I hacked to pieces with a tomahawk while he was still alive. I been hearin' his screams in my mind a lot lately. But oddly enough, that's the one murder I don't regret."
Tori's mouth was slightly agape with awe. "Who was he?" Her eyes looked intrigued, but slightly fearful.
Arthur couldn't have looked at her even if he hadn't been forced to look at the road. "He was the bastard who got my family killed. I didn't have to kill him, but I did. I'd kill him a thousand times for what he did to them, and I'd do it early if it meant they got to live."
She licked her lips and nodded. "That's a sentiment I can get behind. Fuck bastards like that, and like the men who tried to take me just now. I'm glad you killed them." She grunted and gripped the door again, breathlessly, as another contraction rippled through her body.
"You okay?" Arthur asked her. "I hate that it's such a long drive to the hospital. You coulda just given birth at home with a midwife or somethin'."
Tori laughed out loud, although painfully. "Absolutely not. That's a good way to...ugh... to die. There's a good reason the vast majority of women don't do that anymore. I want all the epidurals and pain meds and modern medicine I can get, thank you very much."
