' ~𝑅𝑎𝑖𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝐶𝑎𝑖𝑛'✓ [RDR2 OC]

Epilogue

A/N: This is pretty long to insinuate Cains' backstory. It's okay to skip to the middle of it because this will be touched on later.

"Beth, get down here, right now!"
Elioh called, with a fake kind of anger that was authentic enough to get her off her bed.
Beth -as she'd named herself - was a beautiful young girl, with hazel eyes and long brown hair that curled at her ears and stopped at her shoulders. She half ran, half jumped down the stairs and huffed to herself as she almost missed the last step and stumbled.
"Yeah, I'm here, pa. Where's Dad?" She hopped over to Elioh, one knee raised as she clumsily tried to put on her good shoes.
Elioh, on the other hand, had a kind face - which was now strained with annoyance - and a messy head of fairer hair.
It complemented his eyes. They were brown, like silky chocolate or the bark of a wise tree.
"Oh, you know him. Off down by the sheep again. Maybe I'll get him to make you a new coat with last seasons fur -"

"But the sheep stink."
Elioh looked at her, a bit surprised by her butt in. He slowed his stirring of a bubbling pot.
"Mh, yes honey, they don't smell too good. Why?"
"I don't want a smelly coat."
"We'll wash it, hon."
Beth shrugged, having been proven wrong. She hopped up in a stool and watched eagerly as her Pa poured out the stew into a dinged clay bowl.

Cain washed his hand in the drainage barrel outside, hung up a sickle, and carefully creaked open the door into the living room. Thinking his was home free from an angry partner and cranky daughter, he approached the stairs.
Then a shoe hit him square in the face.
"Gah, what the!?"
"You missed dinner again,"
Beth's eyes were red and puffy. It tugged Cain's heart to see her like that. He straightened, rubbing the bridge of his nose.
"I'm sorry, mo stóirín, but the animals were being -"

She stood up, knocking her chair back.
She was tired, that's all, it was just an 11 year old girl, angry her Dad missed a warm meal, he prepared himself for the barrel of insults rolling his way, and tried to remind his consciousness that it was all out of anger, none truth.

"I don't care about the sheep!"
She yelled, knocking over the oil lamp that sat neatly on the coffee table and stomped up stairs. Cain tried to console her, but it just came out as a stutter, and he walked after her.
"Honey, please, you know I don't mean to, I love spending time with you and Pa. It's just getting colder, and the sheep are more unruly and..."
He trails off. He was at the head of the stairs, and Beth was already slamming the door to her bedroom. He could hear the springs off her bed shift as she jumped into it, and he sat on a step as he listened to his daughter weep, and curse him out in the few vulgar words she knew.
He figured Elioh wouldn't want him sleeping beside him tonight, so he leant against the post, and closed his eyes letting the swirling dark waters of sleep take his consciousness to rest, where he might be free of responsibility for a night.

Coughing.
He heard coughing. His eyes cracked open, light blazed, peircing them. He was coughing. He groggily took hold of the stairpost, trying to gain back his balance, and quickly recoiled from it. It was boiling.
He blinked rapidly, and his surroundings hit him like a bull.
The hallway was alight with flames, and the curtains were barely scraps holding onto the rings that connected them to the window. He yelled for Elioh, and he screamed for Beth, but his voice was raspy from the smoke, and the crackling and sawing of increasingly drying, waring wood choked out all other sound. He crashed into Beth's room and shook her. She didn't wake up, just the smoke.
Just the smoke.
He hauled her out of her bed. He tried to pry open his and Elioh's room, but the knob was boiling, and it sizzled his skin. He stepped back to see if there was any other way he could open it. Then a beam fell.
It had little carvings of moose and deer on it when they'd first arrived, he'd given Beth the skinning knife, and she'd shakily carved a sitckgirl with a triangular skirt, with her small 6 year old hands. When they'd first found Beth, cold, alone and afraid in the barn, freezing with only rotting straw to insulate her underweight body. They'd raised her as their own. They'd loved her, and she'd loved them. Elioh taught her how to sew, and Cain had just started teaching her how to hunt. A tear ran down his face, but it had evaporated before he even registered the emotions. The door was ablaze. The room was surely over taken by smoke and fire.
At least he'd die in his sleep.
Cain screamed Elioh's name, but there was nothing he could do.
The house creaked, and he ran with Beth, barely making it down the stairs.
The door was a few paces away,
5, he hopped over a table Elioh had made himself. Now that he'd mentioned it, the house looked barer. Where was that vase, and the silver tray ?
4 paces. He manuvoured around a fallen plank.
3, Timber fell all around him, carrying flares of heat and delivering daggers of smoke to his lungs.
He dropped to one knee, and Beth's head lolled backwards, limply.
He shook his head, she wasn't dead, she was in an induced sleep from the smoke, that was all.
She wasn't dead. She wouldn't die hating him.
He sucked in a breath, which he had to cough out, and hauled himself up again.
The door was so close.
Then everything came apart, stakes of wood that swirled with fire, nails red with heat, windows cracking under the pressure. More beams of wood from the ceiling fell into smaller, sharper struts.
And one, right into Beth's sternum.
Cain's eyes widened.
He gasped as a single stream of blood rolled down the corner of Bethany's mouth. He got up as the world around him crumbled.
He walked right out the door, wheezing, coughing. He'd taken his time. And something in him was sad he didn't get crushed by a flaming stave on his way out.
He laid Beth on the ground. Her face was emotionless and smooth, a streak of ash stained her face, and the ends of her hair were singed.
On his knees.
And cried.
Everyone was gone, and no one was left to comfort the soul survivor.