Arthur Morgan Oneshots

If Things were Different (Arthur Morgan)

I finished Chapter Six of RDR2 and it broke me, really sad about yet another fictional character so sue me haha! I decided to write a fix it, it's terrible and I'm an idiot but I'm going to post it anyway!

Shallow breaths, strained against scarred lungs. Vision swimming through the dull haze of early morning rays...it echoes...rises and falls. The pain slowly drifting away with the quiet ascend of the sun. The heart slows...the mind clears. Peace settles in the body...cooling the blood that trickles down against bruised skin. And in that moment the world slows as he rests; he waits. He waits for the end to come...but it doesn't.

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Arthur awakens with a jolt; his heart racing with short rapid breaths that almost seem to suffocate. As he calms he feels the pressure in his chest ease, the weight lifting as he focuses on reality. Trembling hands wipe the cold sweat from his brow and he quickly moves from the comfort of his bed.

He casts aside the blanket and bare feet meet the cold wooden floor. Striding towards the washroom to wash away the cobwebs of tangled nightmares that litter his tired mind. Instead he pauses when blue eyes greet him. He stops and looks.

Looks at the man staring back in the mirror on the wall. At the grey twisting through his hair and untrimmed beard. A face illuminated against the rays of the full moon through the washroom window.

He ages gracefully and he's grateful for every wrinkle. Each one reminding him of his second chance. Of a man he never thought he'd ever live to be. A man about to turn fifty. Arthur smiles when he remembers. Fifty. An age he never thought he'd see. He is a father now and a husband to a family he still sometimes doubts he deserves.

He still doesn't remember what happened on that mountain, how he lived, how he survived. Who decided his soul was worth saving. It is a mystery that has and will always allude him.

But he accepted the unknown years ago. It is more of a comfort to pretend it's a dream. An untold ending to a story only they know. Arthur, John and the others who lived it.

The world believed him dead and he lets it. The Pinkertons concluding that Arthur Morgan and John Marston died during the shootout that night on the mountain side. He remembers that surreal feeling of standing beside his own grave stone. Marston joking that the brothers look pretty damn good on account of being dead several years. And again Arthur smiles.

The memories painted on the pages of his tattered journal. As he reads; the past playing before his eyes. Like the kaleidoscope he bought his children, it flashes back and forth. The happy moments lighting up his head and heart, the darker moments clutching it tightly until it aches.

He breathes and it is content, peaceful. The tension once again leaving his ageing bones when he glances at the woman he loves sound asleep in their bed. His wife, his saviour. The woman that learned of his past and loved him anyway. That gave him the family he never thought possible. No chances or mistakes made this second time around. He stays for every second of it and embraces the fear of being a father again.

Because it lasts and it's hopeful. He closes the journal; returns it to its place in the chest beneath his bed. And he settles. The doubts and fears that once crippled him drift away, laid to rest. They are gone and forgotten.

He climbs back into bed, cuddling up to the woman he loves. As she stirs slightly, blindly grasping a hold of his hand and squeezing weakly as she lets sleep claim her again. Arthur grins; that even in her dreams she can love him so effortlessly.

He drifts when the gentle touch of sleep whisks him away. To dream of the majestic beasts that gallop through the thick grass of early morning spring. A whisper on the soft winds in the swaying trees, the voices of old friends come to visit once again.