The Lucky Ones - Arthur Morgan x Reader

Chapter 1

I got so scared I thought no one could save me
You came along, scoped me up like a baby
Every now and then the stars align
Boy and girl meet by the great design
Could it be that you and me are the lucky ones?

"Get up you drunk old fool." I snapped at my father who was laying in bed in the middle of the day, the floor of our small cabin littered with bottles. My day had been spent hunting for food and I held a few rabbits in my hand.

He grumbled and sat up. "Don't talk to your father like that."

"I'm simply saying what I see." I said bluntly. "Call yourself a man while relying on your daughter to keep you from starvation." I shook my head in disgust. Our house was far from grand. It was a small cabin North of Annesburg, deep in the forest where Elk roamed. I had a small bed in one corner, my fathers bed in the other corner. We had some chairs and a fireplace but not much else. Despite my efforts to keep it tidy and pick fresh flowers to put on our small table, it was often hard to walk around without tripping on an empty bottle.

My family migrated over from England, escaping the consequences of the Industrial Revolution when I was around thirteen years old. My parents had been enchanted by the idea of the land of the free. Everything was perfect for the first few years until my mother was snatched from me by cholera. A quick and undignified death.
After that, my father shut down. They had loved each other so much it was as if when she died, the man I had grown up with died with her. He spent most of his nights drinking and wallowing in deep despair.

That left me to keep us afloat. I would hunt food using his guns and sing in saloons to buy other things with the pittance I earned from tips. Most of that went towards my fathers drinking habit, often without my permission. Resentment for my father grew in my chest like a weed. It was like living with a ghost, the light had left his sunken eyes and all he cared for was drink.
The man that had comforted me during thunder storms as a child and played in the woods with me was gone and my inner child wept for him daily.

He came home one day after I screamed at him to get up and do something to help clutching a stack of money. "Y/n! I got us some money. I'm doing better now look." He said showing me with a proud smile. I snatched it from him and shoved it in my satchel. That was more money than we had seen in years, I would not have it wasted on whiskey.

I raised an eyebrow. "How did you get that?" I asked not knowing what to think.

"A man named Colm O'Driscoll."

That name was unfamiliar to me. He explained how he would pay it back next month and he would find work as a ranch hand or something of the sort, that money would keep us fed until then.

I knew it was a stupid idea to get in debt to a stranger but I wasn't aware just how stupid until I awoke to the sound of a fist pounding on the front door of our small cabin in the middle of the night a few weeks later.

"Mr y/l/n! Where's my money?" A voice with a thick Irish accent demanded.

My father was passed out drunk and he did not have this man's money. "Get up!" I snapped, reluctant to open the door in my night gown and the door burst open. In our doorway stood a man with a bandana over his face but I could see from his eyes he was middle aged and slimy. What really made my blood run cold was the rifle he held in his hands. He had a group of men behind him and I assumed that he was Colm O'Driscoll.

They dragged him out the house as I pleaded with them to have mercy on him as he struggled against them but I was silenced by a gunshot. My father fell in the grass dead.

From that moment on was a blur, they tore my house apart as I sobbed watching my father's blood paint the grass outside crimson red.

"There's nothing here boss, just liquor." One man called to Colm. I sat on my bed in shock looking at the men frozen in pure terror. The man turned to me and studied me before snatching the necklace off my neck, it was the most valuable thing in the house. It was the last thing I had of my mother.