Chapter 1: now the pale morning sings of forgotten things, she plays a tune for those who wish to overlook
Summary:
the fact that they’ve been blindly deceived, by those who preach and pray and teach, but she falls short and the night explodes in laughter
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
It’s been an hour since Dutch and Micah returned.
An hour since that stupid parley Dutch was so keen on despite Hosea’s many insistences it was a trap. Three hours since three riders left, their horses kicking up the Lemoyne dirt until Hosea’s favorite blue waistcoat almost looks purple as he watches them go. An hour since Arthur had twisted around while sitting on Hestia’s broad back and touched his hat with his fingers. He’d given Hosea a look the old man assumes he must have meant to be reassuring but all Hosea could see was how tired his boy looks. How he’d coughed a little in the dust the horses stirred up and it sounded a bit like Hosea’s.
Arthur Morgan is only thirty-six years old, but he sure as hell doesn’t look it some days. And that’s what worries Hosea the most, truth be told.
He gets up from the crate he’s been sitting on and folds the newspaper he hasn’t been reading since they left this morning. Tucks it under his arm. Walks to Dutch’s tent at a fast-paced clip and a tightness to his mouth he can’t remember wearing since Bessie got so sick or when Arthur went missing for a week after he found out what happened to Eliza and Isaac. Anyone who gets in his way is quick to get out of it the minute they see his face.
Dutch is smoking one of his cigars and watching the plumes float high into the air, threading between the branches of the old oak Uncle likes to nap under. Micah is, as he has been since he got back, nearby. Sitting on a chair and cleaning his revolver. If Hosea didn’t know better, he’d half think Dutch had decided to take up with Micah instead of Miss O’Shea, but that’s never been how the arrangement has worked before and besides that, Micah doesn’t seem like the type. Still, he never sees the leech go far from Dutch. And bizarrely enough, Dutch allows it.
“Dutch,” Hosea says, once he’s close enough not to need to shout.
Dutch’s eyes flick down to him. There’s still some warmth in them that normally would make Hosea feel like the years that weigh so heavy on his chest aren’t there. That they’re still younger men, ambitious and eager to make the tiny bit of difference they could in the world. To make it better, like Dutch had sworn to do all those years ago.
“Hosea,” the younger man says warmly. He flicks some ash off of the cigar. “What can I do for you?”
“He ain’t back yet.”
Dutch blinks. “Arthur’s not back yet?”
“No sign of Hestia either. I’ve been waiting for them, near where the herd grazes.”
“Probably just takin’ the long way back,” Micah supplies and it takes everything Hosea has not to snap his newspaper against the greasy man’s face for the way he sneers.
Knowing Micah, it’d probably just stain the paper.
“He’ll be back soon enough,” he continues. “He likes to wander, y’know.”
Of course I know that, you pigeon-livered piss-stain, Hosea does not say aloud. I’m the one who suggested to Dutch we let him roam around to his heart’s content in the first place when he was sixteen!
Dutch on the other hand, seems to relax at Micah’s words. He nods once and turns back to Hosea. “It’ll be fine, old girl. You know how Arthur is.”
“I do,” Hosea says.
He shifts his weight to one leg. His paper is still firmly tucked under his left arm.
“And you and I both know,” he says slowly. “That Arthur would never take off like this after a mission. Not without checking in with someone first, to make sure they were fine and to tell them he was going in the first place.”
“He’s not a child anymore, Hosea,” Dutch says. “Hasn’t been for quite some time.”
“That doesn’t matter!” Hosea snaps. “And you know it. If this was anyone else—”
“But it’s not,” Dutch says flatly.
His dark eyes have grown cold and hard and he takes a step forward, almost threateningly. His free hand is clenched at his side and perhaps if Hosea was anyone else, he might feel afraid but he’s not. Hosea knows every single gang member’s tells, and Dutch has always been the easiest for him to read since that night they met on the road outside Chicago. Dutch is unsure, but trying to pretend to be the confident, suave leader he’s always been.
“Arthur will come back,” he says firmly. Like he’s trying to convince himself. “He always does.”
“Then you won’t mind me going out to look for him,” Hosea says. “Just to make sure.”
“You don’t need to do that.” Dutch waves his hand in the air, trying to be dismissive. “You know if you go to track him down, he’ll get all moody about it and go off sulking for at least a week. He doesn’t need a nursemaid, Hosea. He’s fine.”
Hosea scowls slight. “Fine then,” he says. “I’ll give him another hour. And if he’s not back by then Dutch, I’m taking Silver Dollar and riding out to look myself. With or without your blessing.”
He turns on his heel and stalks away, back to his crate. Once again, the gang stays out of his way but he notices they look worried too. More worried than Dutch does, certainly. He finds John smoking a cigarette close to his post, watching the trees with some distant look on his face. He’s donned his hat and jacket, repeater slung over his shoulder.
“Hosea,” he says, eyes flicking down to look at him.
“How’re your scars feeling?” Hosea says, forcing his voice to be more cordial to his other boy.
John doesn’t deserve his ire, after all.
“They’re fine,” John says, shrugging. “Put some of that poultice on ‘em last night, since they were feelin’ a bit tight. But they’re fine now.”
Hosea hums. “Glad to hear it.”
He sits down with care on the crate, lays the folded paper across his knees as he looks back to the trees. Strains his ears for any hint of the thunderous hoofbeats of Arthur’s Aredennes, any hint of a blue shirt or bay roan coat. Hosea hasn’t smoked since Bessie told him she didn’t like the smell but he almost wants to ask John if he could have one, if only to give his hands something to do other than trace over the same worn wood grain over and over again for another hour.
“Arthur’s not back yet,” John says.
“No, he’s not.”
John hums. Shifts his weight. “Did Dutch say anything about looking for him?”
Hosea barks out a quick, bitter laugh. “Dutch says we shouldn’t be worried. Claims he’ll just waltz back in, like he always does.”
John is quick to scowl at this, scars tugging on the skin of his face. He looks down at Hosea, face lit up by his cigarette and the fading sun. “He said that?”
“Yes, he did.” After a moment, Hosea adds, “If Arthur doesn’t come back in an hour, I’m going to find him. Something’s not right about this.”
“No,” John agrees. “It’s not.”
He kicks at a rock on the ground, sighs and sits down next to Hosea, shoulder leaning against the crate.
“I’ll come with you,” he says, long after Hosea thinks he might’ve fallen asleep. “When you go, I mean.”
Hosea glances down at him. John’s older now, but Hosea can’t help but see the same scrawny twelve-year old Arthur shot down from an impromptu gallows. He can remember every fight and argument and moment he felt proud as he grew up, turning into the young man he is today. Maybe he isn’t perfect and maybe there’s a lot Hosea wished he’d take more responsibility for.
(A young boy with his father’s nose and sharp chin and his mother’s kind eyes comes to mind. He’d held that baby mere moments after Abigail had given birth and something in his heart had grown then, some odd feeling of love and remorse and something indescribable when he realized that this was John’s boy. He half wonders if this is what all grandfathers feel when they meet their grandsons.)
But this is still his boy. His the same way that Arthur is his, in the same way that he and Dutch raised these boys and goddamnit, shouldn’t it be Dutch saying he’d ride out with him to track down their boy? Hosea knows he would have, once upon a time.
Still, he cannot afford to reject help right now. Not when he doesn’t know what might’ve happened to Arthur. Not when Colm O’Driscoll is involved. A man far more vicious than a rattlesnake, more hungry for money and power than a spring grizzly. A man who hates Dutch more than anyone else in the world, more than even the government.
(”We don’t deal in the business of revenge,” Dutch had once told Annabelle, and it had been true back then. Only Hosea knows how far he’d stretched that statement once she’d been killed. Or how he could hardly begrudge him his petty ways of getting back at Colm, what with how they’d found her.)
He lays his hand on John’s shoulder and squeezes it gently. Notes in the back of his head, in that worried way he’s had since Dutch brought home not one, not two but three children at separate times for them to raise, that he should try to get John to eat a bit more, with how skinny he still is.
“Thank you, John,” he says, his voice low. “I’d appreciate that.”
John nods his head once and turns to look back at the trees. There they sit, waiting and hoping that perhaps for once, Hosea will be wrong about one of his gut feelings. That Arthur Morgan, son and brother, will return atop his horse with a deer strapped to the back, that old black gambler hat shielding his face from the setting sun.
Hosea doesn’t even have to get Silver Dollar ready by the time he’s left his paper next to Lenny’s bedroll and made sure he has enough bullets on hand for whatever he needs to face. Kieran’s saddled up the silver Turkoman and is just leading Old Boy around by his bridle when John joins him. He watches as Charles approaches on Taima’s back, his bow strapped to his back and his sawed-off in it’s holster.
“You ridin’ out to find Arthur?” he says.
“Yes,” Hosea replies. “We’d be glad to have another pair of hands if you’d be happy to spare them.”
“Can I come?”
Hosea bites back a groan as Sean pops up out of nowhere, similar to how weasels often do in the winter. He doesn’t hate Sean in the slightest, but jobs did tend to derail with him around. He’d be the first to admit to being surprised at how well the train heist had gone, given that John hadn’t really factored Sean’s presence in to the equation. Still…Hosea’s not sure he wants the kind of chaos Sean can sow if they’re going out to find Arthur.
“We ain’t goin’ out on a job,” John snaps. “We’re goin’ out to find Arthur.”
“I know that! Christ, d’you think I’m some kind of eejit?” Sean scowls. “I wanna help.”
“We don’t have time to keep arguing about this,” Charles says, his voice low but firm. “Either get on Ennis or go back to the fire.”
Ennis, who’s been tied to a post on the other side of camp but fortunately, is still saddled, seems almost as ready to go as his rider. He keeps mouthing at the bit as he prances from hoof to hoof, barely restrained by Sean pulling his head back.
“That everyone?” Hosea says.
“Sadie asked to come earlier,” Charles said. “I told her she should stay here, in case he comes back.”
“Good thinking. Much as I’d appreciate her skills, I don’t think any of the camp Morgans would take her.”
Hosea pulls himself into his saddle, coughing into his arm for a moment as his stupid lungs clench up, like they’ve been doing for nigh on a year now.
“This isn’t going to be like when we do jobs,” he warns the three other men, once his coughing has subsided. “We’re trying to track down a man, when night has fallen and doubtlessly will make it more difficult to find him. Charles, I think you ought to take the lead when it comes to the tracking. I’m no slouch myself, but you’re our best man for the job.”
Charles nods his head once, straightening up where he sits on Taima’s back.
“You two, keep your eyes peeled for anything. And try not to make too much noise.”
He directs this last bit to Sean, who salutes him half-mockingly. It makes a stark contrast between his uncharacteristic expression and his tendency to prefer jokes to seriousness.
“Let’s ride. Hyah!”
He presses his heels into Silver Dollars sides quick before the Turkoman stallion is leaping forward into a gallop, with Ennis and Old Boy hot on his heels. Taima and Charles bring up the back of the group as they ride out into the night.
Notes:
i think i spent a week not working on this when i originally started because i needed to find a suitable list of common insults in the 1800s that Hosea might know. im not even sure if pigeon-livered is actually historically accurate or not, but i saw it on one of the lists and thought it too absurd not to include it. this is a large chunk of why fics take so long for me to write lmao to quote hbomberguy, imagine something happens like that but its every week (and then lasts for months)
anyhow, i hope you enjoyed the first chapter! second one should be coming out sometime tomorrow or tuesday. this fic likely wont be posted entirely in 2025 but That Is Fine
hello there, i hope you've all enjoyed reading! i appreciate any kudos, comments or bookmarks that come my way :)
also a note: i don't always answer questions in the comment section (due to anxiety) though i do read every single comment that comes in so if you have a question you'd like answered or just want to talk, find me on tumblr, where you can also see other stuff i’ve made. i'll actually respond there, i swear!
please remember to stretch and go drink some water or eat something if you haven't already today! :]
(also, i need to remember how tags work again, its been a long time. please excuse the mess in the meantime lmao)
Chapter 2: but don’t you come here and say I didn’t warn you, about the way your world can alter
Summary:
and oh how you try to command it all still, every single time it all shifts one way or another
Notes:
a mild tw for arthur's injury. i did not go as indepth as i often do with gore and whatnot, but i feel it important to mention the frankly irresponsible wound care and suggestions of torture and animal abuse
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Once upon a time, Hosea had possessed eyes like a hawk.
As a young man growing up in the Grizzlies before his mother had died and he had very little to tie him to the mountains he’d been born in, he’d hunted game to provide for their meager existence. Elk bucks, big horn sheep, the odd grizzly or two. For the fur traders, he’d trade the skins of squirrels, mink and fox for a hefty stack of cash. Always, they grunted a comment or two about the quality of the kill, for it was rare that Hosea ever missed the eyes of his prey. It hadn’t been what he wanted to do with his time—for this had been before his ambitions of becoming a renown actor had died in a gutter outside some city farther east than Chicago—but it was a living, and Hosea would be lying if he claimed to have not enjoyed the praise.
After all, one of his favorite things in the world is a job well-done, whether it be a good, clean kill or a well-worked heist.
Admittedly, this fine vision came with a drawback, namely that for all Hosea could see on a distant hill, reading the words on the page of a book often caused headaches. Dutch had often joked to Hosea that God must have given him that flaw to ensure he wasn’t a perfect man. Back when Dutch joked about such things, anyways.
Nowadays, Hosea considers himself lucky that he can still make out Charles on Taima’s back from atop a hill.
He stands next to Silver Dollar, idly petting the stallion’s shoulder while he scans the horizon for Sean and John. He feels a bit twitchy being back in the Heartlands like this, after the mess they made and after Arthur had told him about the Pinkertons. But this is the place the blasted parley took place. He’d sent John and Sean off along the road, to see if they could pick up any traces of gossip from other riders, with strict instructions to avoid Valentine for the time being.
No sense in going back to a place reputedly crawling with Pinkertons, after all.
He comes back to the present at the sound of hoofbeats, eyes flicking up to see Charles trotting up on Taima.
“See anything?” he says.
Charles nods. “A faint trail. It’s heading west, as far as I could tell. There was dried blood on the ground where the dirt was all tossed up.”
Hosea’s brow creases, worry plain on his face. “Arthur?”
Charles shakes his head. “I don’t think so. Reminds me more of when Ennis gets a bit rowdy and takes a chunk out of Sean.”
“Hm.”
Hosea chews his lower lip thoughtfully, eyes falling to the blood they know for certain must be Arthur’s. He can still make out the impression of his body in the grass, the way it’d obviously been dragged away to whatever horse they’d slung him over. Not enough to suggest death but. Hosea knows how a bad knock to the head can kill a man quicker than a bullet to the heart.
“I think Hestia might’ve bitten one of the O’Driscoll’s,” Charles says carefully, like he isn’t sure if Hosea’s going to yell at him.
All Hosea does is hum. “If she were Boadicea, I’d be more inclined to agree with you. But Hestia’s usually sweet, if a bit clingy.”
“She kicked a man’s head in once because he was going to shoot Arthur,” the younger man says dryly. “She’s not afraid to fight back if she thinks Arthur’s life is in danger. Besides, I’ve never seen any of them ride a horse as big as her, and I saw hoofprints in the dirt the size of dinner plates. There’s no way it can’t be Hestia.”
“And Hestia would never leave Arthur. Not willingly,” Hosea murmurs, brain flicking through the knowledge he has.
He looks up at Charles and nods.
“Thank you, Charles. I’d have taken a look myself, but I haven’t done any tracking properly for many years now.”
“I thought you and Arthur went after that bear in the Grizzlies a few months ago.”
“Ah, yes, where I was promptly reminded I am mortal and an old man at that,” Hosea says, wry smile forcing its way onto his face despite all of the worry lining it. “I moreso was focused on teaching Arthur, truth be told.”
Charles doesn’t say any more beyond that. He watches as Hosea pulls himself back into his saddle, Silver Dollar grunting as his rider gently tugs on his reins. He chews slowly on the bit of clover he’s managed to yank from the ground, shifting from hoof to hoof as Hosea turns him around to the gentler side of the hill.
“We’d better get Sean and John. If you’ve got a decent trail, I don’t want to waste any more time.”
He holds two fingers to his mouth and whistles so loud, it echoes across the Heartlands. Taima whinnies slightly, flinching back from the shrill noise whereas Silver Dollar merely snorts. Within a few minutes, he can see two dust clouds as John and Sean race back to the hill, John in the lead despite Old Boy’s slower gait. Hosea can’t help but snort a little. Seems at long last, his youngest boy’s finally learned not to dawdle when Hosea whistles for him.
“You got something?” John says when he’s close enough to be heard.
Hosea gives him a tight jerk of a nod, gesturing to Charles. “Charles thinks he knows which way they were going. We’ll keep the horses at a canter for awhile before we let them rest, going as quick as we can. Keep your guns loose in their holsters but don’t do anything until I give a signal.”
John and Sean nod, and their party turns their horses to follow Charles. The Heartlands turns into a blur of muted greens and browns under the horses hooves, underbrush snapping underneath. The trail avoids most of the main roads, which means slow going sometimes for the horses as they trot through small patches of forest.
They cross the Dakota sometime close to when the sun kisses the horizon and it’s then that Charles calls for them to stop.
“As much as I want to keep going, the horses will be no good to us if we run them into the ground,” he says, patting Taima’s sweaty neck.
Hosea wants to protest, but even if he’d be willing to run himself to death, he’s not willing to do that to Silver Dollar or any of the others.
“Good thinking, Charles,” he says. “We’ll make camp here and get an early start at dawn.”
John and Sean murmur their assent and dismount with ease, unstrapping bedrolls tied to their saddles to lay them out. Hosea looks up the road that curls past Diablo Ridge with an unhappiness that’s hard to push down. He hopes, above all else, that Arthur isn’t too badly shot. Though given the bloody splotches they keep finding and the size of the stain on the ground where he was during the parley…he isn’t so sure what condition they’ll find him in.
He curls his right hand around the saddlehorn and swings his leg over to dismount, but something unsettles his balance and he nearly falls off Silver Dollar’s back.
“Woah there!”
A pair of thick arms grabs him before he can tumble too far and he blinks for a moment as his breath comes back to him. Charles keeps hold until he’s sure he’s found his footing again, taking a step back.
“Are you okay?” he says.
“I’m fine,” Hosea says, waving his hand dismissively. “Just lost my balance is all.”
Charles doesn’t look very convinced but he doesn’t challenge him on it, which Hosea is grateful for. He fiddles with the string of his bow for a moment, looking at the dark shapes of distant trees with a thoughtful look.
“I’m going to see if I can get us a few rabbits for dinner,” he says. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Hosea hums. “Be careful. There are wolves around here, last I checked.”
“Wolves?” John jerks upright, eyes darting to and fro as if he expects a pack to jump out and attack them right now.
“Yes, but we should be fine.” Hosea slips the bit from Silver Dollar’s mouth and pulls out a rag to wet with his waterskin, wiping some of the dirt from the stallion’s coat. “It isn’t winter anymore and there’s plenty more to eat than scrawny young men.”
“Ha ha,” John says sourly.
“Aw, don’t yeh worry about it, John,” Sean says, already grinning wide enough so that the gaps of missing teeth are on full display. “Surely they’d take one whiff of you and decide to go for someone who smells better than a feller who smells like he bathes in cabbage soup regularly.”
“Maybe you’re right,” John says, turning back to the other man. “Maybe they’d like the taste of a mouthy Irishman.”
“I remember my da said it didn’t matter so much about who tasted best, so much as it was about who ran faster.” Sean elbows John, still grinning. “How’s yer legs these days, Johnny-lad?”
“Better than yours, leprechaun.”
“Children,” Hosea says calmly, slipping the rag back in his saddlebag while he digs out provisions. “If you’re going to debate who is the tastier of the two of you, could you be productive about it and go look for some firewood?”
John scowls but the grunt that comes from his throat sounds like a yes. He shoves Sean a little as they walk a ways away, leaving Hosea with the horses and his thoughts. Thoughts he is decidedly doing his best to ignore, if only for how unproductive they are.
Worries about Arthur, the condition he’ll be in when the find him. What they’ll do if he isn’t alive. He’s not sure if he could take seeing him dead. Part of him died a long time ago with Bessie, and he isn’t so sure if the rest of him won’t just follow Arthur into whatever’s after this life if they can’t bring him back in mostly one piece. He wonders what Dutch will have to say when they come back, if he’ll still be angry at Hosea leaving or not.
Let him be angry, he thinks. Our boy is missing and he has the gall to tell me not to worry? I’ll skin him with his own knife if he tries to yell at me for this.
John and Sean return without a word, arms laden with branches and sticks that they begin to set up into a reasonable campfire. Before long, Hosea has a camp stove set up and some cans of beans warming atop it. Charles returns, contributing three rabbits that he and John butcher and cut up into chunks to add to the cans.
“You lot are a regular bunch of wives,” Sean remarks from where he reclines on an empty patch of ground, half empty can of beans dangling from his lax hand.
“Because we know how to feed ourselves?” Charles says without looking up.
“And yeh cook!”
“I’m not sure what John does could constitute as ‘cooking’,” Hosea says dryly.
He uses his spoon to scoop some of the beans and a bit of rabbit meat up, chewing slowly.
“I’m not that bad!” John protests.
“You’re not that good either, son.”
“At least you don’t undercook your rabbit,” Charles points out.
He sits, legs criss-crossed while he eats a can of apricots he dug out of his own saddlebags.
“Yes, you’d get rabbit fever that way.”
“I know that,” John says, scowling at his empty can. “You’re the one who taught me that.”
“I’m surprised you listened, is all.” Hosea smiles slightly. “If my memory serves me right, you tended to not listen to any of us out of spite for a few years before you nearly got attacked by that rutting bull moose when you were fifteen or so.”
“Weren’t like I was doing it on purpose.” He rolls his eyes. “Arthur used to yell at me whenever he decided I did something stupid, and then act like I should’ve known it before anyone told me.”
“We did tell him,” Hosea says to Charles as if it’s a secret, though his voice is loud enough for John to hear, as is his smile. “But he didn’t listen.”
Charles snorts. “Seems to be a family trait. No offense, Hosea.”
“Oh, none taken,” Hosea says lightly. “If you’d have known me in my youth, you wouldn’t be so surprised. I know Dutch is often seen as the hard-headed bastard between the two of us, but I used to be just as stubborn as he was back in the day.”
“Now that, I’d have liked t’see,” Sean says.
“No you wouldn’t,” Hosea snorts. “You already think I’m frightening when I yell at you now, imagine how much worse my temper was back then. I had more energy, you know.”
“That, you did,” John says.
For a moment, they finish their food and stare at the flames, none of them willing to turn in for the night. Hosea feels like he can sense their own worry as keenly as he feels his own, the tension that keeps his body stiff and makes his joints ache even more fiercely than before. But there’s nothing for it.
He clears his throat as he sets his empty can down, trying to pull some of that confidence back around his shoulders and wrap it tight around his body. He wonders if the performance he gives to these three young men feels as hollow to them as it does to him.
“We’ll find him tomorrow,” he says. “And we’ll bring him back. I know we will.”
There are grunts and hums that sound almost as fake as his confidence.
“I’ll take first watch,” Charles says, touching his sawed-off where it stays tucked into its holster.
“You sure?” John says. “I could do it, if you wanted to do second.”
“I’m sure. I won’t be able to sleep much anyways.”
John frowns but doesn’t say anything more. Neither does Sean, though he looks worried enough. He leans back on the grass and puts his hat over his head. Hosea sighs and digs out an extra, thinner blanket he’d stored along with his bedroll and throws it at the young Irishman. Sean squawks for a minute, flailing in a manner that reminds Hosea all too much of a carp that’s just been thrown on the shoreline.
“It gets cold out here,” he says when Sean manages to look back at him. “We don’t need you getting sick before we find him.”
Sean blinks but nods, unfolding the rest of the blanket so he can wrap it half around his torso.
“Thank you, Hosea,” he says, voice muted.
“Mhm.”
Hosea gets into his own bedroll, setting his hat to the side as he’s done every night for more than two decades now. He misses the old cougar pelt he’d owned before Blackwater. It had kept him warm for many years before the fire that burned most of everyones belongings. For now, he makes do with what he has and tries to not think about what the O’Driscoll’s might be doing to Arthur.
You saw what happened to Annabelle, part of him whispers in the night. And that was someone Colm allegedly cared about.
In the end, Hosea doesn’t think he gets much more sleep than Charles.
“There’s quite a few of them,” Charles says, his low voice a mere rumble in Hosea’s ear. “Spotted a few who were more liquor than sense but the rest seemed alert enough.”
Hosea hums. “Any openings?”
“There’s plenty. But we don’t know which building he’s being held in.”
“If I were Colm, I would put him someplace easily defendable and even harder to escape from.”
“What about the basement?” Sean says.
John jabs him in the ribs with his elbow. “Quiet! D’you wanna bring them all in on us?”
“The basement is as good of a guess as any,” Hosea says contemplatively.
He taps his hand against Charles’ shoulder and the younger man obliges him by passing the binoculars.
“Yes. That would be a good place to keep someone. The shed’s too flimsy-looking.”
“Looks like it’d fall over if you sneezed on it wrong,” Charles mutters.
“Exactly. Now the question is: how do we get him out?”
“Ain’t like we got the numbers for a full assault,” John says, raspy voice quiet.
“No. We’ll have to be clever about this.” Hosea pulls the binoculars from his eyes, biting a lip thoughtfully. “Any of you got throwing knives? Or weapons that are quiet?”
“I’ve got my bow,” Charles says.
“Javier gave me some tipped in poison about a week ago,” John says, shrugging.
“I’ve got things to make an explosion, but nothin’ so fancy as a knife to throw,” Sean says.
“Fine. You’ll be in charge of getting Arthur’s things. Make sure you don’t get shot.”
Sean sardonically salutes him.
“John, Charles, I want you to go with me to get him out of there. We’ll wait until it’s darker out and Colm steps out of the house. I don’t think he’ll want to stay in there for very long.”
The men nod, though John holds a hint of doubt in his eyes.
“I don’t know how much the four of us can do against all that,” he says.
“More than you’d think.” Hosea reaches out with his free hand and clasps John’s shoulder, trying to imbued it with the confidence he still doesn’t feel. “We’ll manage, John. We always do, don’t we?”
“I suppose.”
“Then don’t start doubting yourself just yet.”
He passes the binoculars back to Charles, who tucks them into his bag. He checks over his arrows from their position in the forest. Fortunately, the underbrush is too thick for the light of their lanterns to reach them. Hosea pulls out the handful of throwing knives he has and looks at them with shaky fingers.
It’s been a long time since he’s had to use these. Most of the time, he’s been able to do jobs that required an act of some sort. Failing diplomacy, there’s always been a gunfight or two. He’s thankful to have practiced some while they were up in Colter over the winter, else he might not know how to best accommodate the newfound tenderness to his finger joints.
“There he goes,” Charles says quietly.
Hosea looks up in time to see one of Colm’s men open the door to the basement. Colm climbs down soon after, cradling a plate of God knows what. He stays down there for not more than twenty minutes before returning, sans plate, laughing about something. That laugh still makes Hosea’s hackles raise in the worst kind of way, the same way they did all those years ago when Dutch decided to enter a business agreement with the other man.
“He’s slimy and full of more rot than what’s already eating his teeth, Dutch,” he’d said back then, scowling at his partner. “I don’t care if the money is good. It’s not worth it if the bastard’s just going to slit our throats next Tuesday.”
“Relax, old girl,” Dutch had said, wearing his signature smirk. “I don’t plan to trust him any further than Boadicea could kick him.”
It hadn’t been long after that he’d killed Colm’s brother and Colm had killed Annabelle.
“We should wait a little longer,” Charles says. “The guards will be more alert since he’s been around.”
Hosea nods. “Good thinking.”
They wait about half an hour longer before Hosea nods and they begin to creep closer to the camp.
“Remember,” he whispers to Sean. “No gunfire. And don’t get caught, or I’ll kill you myself.”
“Aye-aye, captain,” Sean says, before peeling away from them in a manner rather reminiscent of a three-legged dog Hosea had once seen in a town further east.
He doesn’t have time to pay much more attention to him though. They have work to do.
They creep closer and closer to the basement door, carefully keeping an ear open for the other O’Driscolls on patrol. Only once does John have to use one of his knives and it’s on the guard closest to the basement door. Charles grabs the man before his body can thud to the ground, quickly hauling it off to a bush nearby before he comes back to help John with the door.
“Arthur?” Hosea says, raising his voice as much as he dares to. “Arthur!”
A pained groan meets his ears. His heart leaps almost as much as it sinks.
He hangs from the ceiling like a slab of meat might in a butcher’s shop. Stripped down to his union suit, head covered in a half-torn burlap sack. The red-orange of the union suit has been stained red at the left shoulder from what looks like a shotgun wound at close range. Arthur’s eyes are open, but they’re unfocused. Hosea’s not sure if he’s even really awake.
“Arthur!” he hisses again, hurrying closer.
“S’that you, ‘Sea?” Arthur slurs, his eyes fluttering.
“Yes, dear boy, of course it’s me.”
Hosea’s hands itch to hold his boy’s face in his hands, to wrap him up as he once did during nightmares when they found him all those years ago, but he knows his knees won’t let him kneel and besides that, it’d be better to get him upright.
“Charles, John!”
They come down the stairs quickly, eyes wide as they take in the scene.
“Get him down from there.”
Charles is the first to move, quickly grabbing a file that had been left on the table nearby—on top of Colm’s plate, Hosea would be willing to bet. He steps closer to Arthur and gently cups his leg to steady his body from swaying, jamming the file in to try and pick the lock.
“John, you’ll need to help make sure he doesn’t fall too hard,” Charles says.
John nods, silent and pale as he comes closer and holds his hands out. The lock clicks and the shackle opens. John half-crumples to the floor with Arthur in his arms before Charles manages to get an arm wrapped around the other mans torso. Arthur’s groan is loud, and he’s quickly shushed by the three men.
“Sorry, Arthur,” Charles says.
Somehow, between the two of them, they manage to flip him the right side up and get him to a nearby chair. The shoulder wound has begun bleeding sluggishly again and Hosea doesn’t like the look of it at all. Already, red lines race from the angry, half-blackened mess.
“We’ll need to cauterize it some,” Hosea says. “And dig the bullet out. Charles, you got any alcohol on you?”
Charles passes him a flask of moonshine without a word and unsheathes his knife from his belt. Hosea uncorks it and dumps it over the wound, then dumps some on the knife. Charles clamps his hand over Arthur’s mouth before he can scream.
“I know, I know,” he murmurs. “I’m sorry. Just hold on for me, will you?”
“Y’tryin’ t’kill me,” Arthur mumbles.
“I’d have done it better than this if I wanted to kill you, Arthur. You know I would.”
“I do.” Arthur’s head lolls against Charles’ shoulder. “Y’always take good care o’ me, Charles.”
“I’m going to dig that bullet out of you, son,” Hosea says, holding up the knife so Arthur can see. “And I need you not to scream. Do you think you can do that for me?”
“Anythin’ f’r you, ‘Sea.”
“It’s going to be okay, son.”
Gritting his teeth, Hosea presses the knife into the wound slowly. True to his word, the loudest sound Arthur makes is a particularly loud groan that has Charles quickly pressing his hand back over his mouth. Hosea tries to be quick with the knife, digging through muscle and tissue until the tip finally latches onto the bullet and he jerks his hand a little bit to push it out enough that he can grab the slippery thing with his free hand and toss it on the floor. He quickly wipes off the blade and heats it on a nearby candle, trying to ignore how pale his son’s face is.
“Now,” he says, trying to land for that tone he’d worn so many times when he’d taught Arthur something over the years. “I’m going to cauterize the wound a little. We’ll fix it up proper once we get back to camp, but you’ll lose too much blood if we don’t. Just this little bit and then we’ll go, okay Arthur?”
“Nothin’s okay ‘nymore,” Arthur mutters.
“We’ll get you out of this,” John says, his voice low. “Just hold on a bit longer.”
Hosea presses the heated blade against the wound, doing his best to ignore the sizzling sound and the smell of burning flesh. Arthur groans again, slumping hard against Charles, who simply readjusts the way he’s standing to better support the other man.
“All done,” Hosea says, giving Charles’ knife another swipe with the rag before passing it back to him. “Let’s get going. Judging by the lack of gunfire at present, I’d say young Sean’s been mostly successful in his efforts not to get caught.”
“Y’brought Sean wi’chu?” Arthur sounds incredulous.
“He volunteered,” John says.
Arthur blinks. “An’ you let him?”
“I wasn’t about to be picky about who was going to come,” Hosea says. “Now shut up so we can start moving. We’ll have plenty of details to discuss the finer points of my rescue mission plans when we’re not in the middle of a goddamn O’Driscoll camp!”
They manage to sneak out of the basement with little trouble. The impromptu bullet surgery seems to have woken Arthur up some, though he still leans heavily on Charles and John as they flit through the camp.
“There you are!” Sean hisses.
It startles Hosea badly enough that he almost starts cursing loudly.
“What the hell?” he manages at a much more discreet volume instead.
“I’ve been waiting fer you bastards forever! Thought yeh got lost in the bloody basement.”
“We needed to tend to some wounds. Did you find his things?”
“’Course I did. They put them in a fuckin’ box outside the shed. Stabbed a couple of fellers in the neck.”
“Where’s Hestia?” Arthur says, voice as quiet as it can go.
At once, Sean’s face grows pale. “I saw her, tied up and hobbled between a couple of trees a ways away. Looked like she was gonna tear the damn things out o’ the ground if she had her way.”
“Why’d they tie her to a tree?” John says.
“From the talk of some of these arseholes, Hestia threw a fuckin’ fit about her lad bein’ treated the way he was. Bit a good chunk out o’ one of ‘em and managed to kick another hard enough that he started coughin’ up blood. Found him dead the next morning. So they tied her farther out with more rope than you’d expect to find on a Siska prisoner.”
“Goddamn.”
“I’ll get her free,” Charles says. “In the meantime, lets get you on Taima’s back. She’ll carry you back to camp and I’ll catch up.”
“But what if you get caught?” Arthur says, looking terrified for a minute.
“I’ll be fine. It’s you I’m more worried about.” Quick as anything, Charles presses a kiss to Arthur’s forehead before transferring his arm to Sean. “Be careful with him, that’s the bad one.”
“Will do, Charlie,” Sean tries for a smirk, but it looks a little wobbly from where Hosea stands. “Try not to die, would yeh?”
“Make sure he makes it back alright.”
The other man disappears into the darkness, heading towards where Sean had gestured. Hosea sighs. “Let’s get to the horses and get the hell out of here then.”
They hurry through the woods to where they’d hitched the horses, evading various O’Driscoll guards before being greeted with the sight of Old Boy, Ennis, Taima and Silver Dollar. Sean and John prop Arthur up against Taima, who bears his weight without complaint as they rush to untie their own mounts and Charles’ from the tree branches. Before either of them can help, Arthur pulls himself into the saddle with a pained, overly loud groan.
“Don’t do something like that again,” Hosea says, scowling. “John, you best grab Taima’s reigns. He’s in no condition to ride proper like this and Old Boy is less apt to try and bite Taima if she’s close to his flank than Ennis is.”
John nods, wheeling Old Boy around to grab Taima’s reigns. They trot through the forest for a few minutes before the road comes before them. Then they let the horses open up into a gallop, ears pricked for any sound of pursuing hoofbeats, friendly or not.
Notes:
i would like it to be known that it took me at least one real life month to figure out where the fuck arthur is held during this mission. im sure someone else has also figured it out but i was unable to find any mention of it online, no matter how many times i looked (and frequently, people who mentioned it listed an entirely different abandoned shack which made it extremely difficult). as far as i can tell (and as much as the rdr2 wikia is also willing to confirm now), the exact cabin is Lone Mule Stead. i have no idea why this isn't mentioned more frequently in other BATPM fics or the guides but Here We Are. i also somewhat haphazardly plotted the route hosea and the boys could have taken myself through riding around and extensively looking through clips of what happens after arthur is yoinked. i will not say this fic is entirely accurate as to how tracking works, nor do i think i successfully managed to find the exact route the o'driscolls took BUT im satisfied and my head doesn't hurt too badly so ive succeeded doing what i set out to do and thats all i care about
anyways, im hoping you all enjoyed the chapter :) i'll likely be posting the next one tomorrow and i think i can say im about as excited as a lot of you are to have more up. thank you as always for the kudos and nice comments <3 y'all made me feel very welcomed despite my near year-long hiatus lmao
hello there, i hope you've all enjoyed reading! i appreciate any kudos, comments or bookmarks that come my way :)
also a note: i don't always answer questions in the comment section (due to anxiety) though i do read every single comment that comes in so if you have a question you'd like answered or just want to talk, find me on tumblr, where you can also see other stuff i’ve made. i'll actually respond there, i swear!
please remember to stretch and go drink some water or eat something if you haven't already today! :]
Chapter 3: and i’m a goddamn coward, but then again so are you, and the lion’s roar, the lion’s roar
Summary:
has me evading and hollering for you, and I never really knew what to do
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
By the time they make it back to camp, Arthur’s half hanging onto the horse’s neck and Hosea’s certain he would’ve fallen off a few times if not for the fact that John had periodically coaxed Taima closer so he could nudge the other man awake. Each time, he’d cried out and jerked fiercely before straightening as best as he could in the saddle. It never lasted long and the periods of lucidity had grown shorter and shorter the longer they rode. Adrenaline likely leaving his body.
Lenny is the first to spot them when they ride into camp at the crack of dawn, his young voice sharp with fear as he cries out, “They’re back! And they’ve got Arthur!”
Immediately, the camp comes alive like a freshly-kicked hornet’s nest as people come forward to grab Arthur from Taima’s back and half-carry him to his cot. Ms. Grimshaw barks out orders faster than the finest U.S. colonel could ever hope to, demanding water to be boiled, a bottle of whiskey brought over and whatever medicine they have on hand. The girls are quick to follow her commands, skirts twirling as they rush to gather what she needs.
Kieren takes Taima’s reins to lead her out to where the other horses like to graze, the worried furrow back between his eyebrows.
Hosea once again, half falls off of Silver Dollars back as the world gives an alarming lurch. Only this time, John catches him instead of Charles.
“Jesus,” John says. “You alright, Hosea?”
“I’m fine,” the old man says irritably. “You ought to be eating more than you have been. I feel like I just fell into a pile of sharp rocks.”
“I could say the same about you, old man.”
John straightens him out, hands quick to withdraw as soon as he’s certain Hosea is steady. His face is still pale and he looks to where Ms. Grimshaw has lowered the flaps of Arthur’s tent.
“Do you really think he’ll be alright?” he says. “I saw that gunshot wound. ‘N you always said once it goes septic—”
“We might just have to pray for a miracle, John,” Hosea says, voice exhausted. “I’m afraid I’m all out of answers for the foreseeable future.”
If anything, that seems to frighten John more. Almost at once, he can remember how he looked at twelve, with the rope burn still around his neck from the noose Arthur shot him down from and the habit of jumping higher than a jackrabbit anytime someone came out of no where near him.
He reaches over and takes John’s hand and squeezes it tightly. “Come with me,” he says, and leads him over to where Abigail is sitting with Jack, holding him tightly to her chest.
It says something about how panicked John is that he allows Hosea to sit him on a crate next to her, and even initiates contact between her and the boy himself without much coaxing. His hands shake somewhat against them, but Hosea can see their presence is doing him a whole lot more good than his is at the moment.
One problem solved, he thinks, turning away to leave the little family alone to comfort each other. He looks to Dutch’s tent where the man himself has stepped out and started towards Arthur’s at a slow pace, seemingly unconcerned. And now, for another.
Hosea’s pace is fast, his shoulders tensed with rage that he’s only just realized has been lurking underneath all of that fear he’s been holding onto for two days now. Rage at the people who hurt his boy. Rage at the man before him, who had the gall to tell him not to worry. Who started this whole mess in the first place. Who didn’t listen to him and his advice, and hasn’t been, for months now. Dutch van der Linde’s pride has almost cost them their son’s life, and he needs to answer for that. Now.
“Dutch!” he shouts, hands curling into fists. “A word.”
Dutch turns to face him, an odd expression on his face.
“I see you found him,” he says. “What happened?”
“This is not the kind of chat you have in the middle of camp,” Hosea says. “Not unless you want the rest of them to hear the things I have to say to you.”
“Ah.” Realization dawns on Dutch’s face. “That kind of word then, old girl?”
“Don’t start. Come.”
It does settle him somewhat to see Dutch follow him up past Arthur’s tent and past the scout fire. Further along into the woods, where the sound of his shouting might not carry so far, if they’re lucky. Although if memory serves him right, Dutch had once said people in New York could hear him shout, when he had a mind to. Still, the rage simmers beneath his skin, hot and all too easy to dip into as he whirls around on the other man; his partner in crime and in life for the better half of a lifetime.
“I want you to understand,” he says, through gritted teeth. “Just how we found him. What he looked like, when we did find him. What your boy went through, because you were too stupid, too proud, to see sense for once in your miserable life and listen to me.”
“Hosea—” Dutch starts but Hosea raises a hand sharply.
“You’ve spoken enough these past few months to fill a goddamn library, Dutch. It’s my turn now.
“Did you know,” he says, his voice shifting something almost light. “That they hit him over the head with a gun, most likely? That they put him down in the dirt and when he tried to escape, they beat him and shot him at close-range with a shotgun? A nice, big shot, with all the buckshot caught in his skin.”
“I didn’t—”
“I’m not done yet, Dutch. Did you know that they kept beating him repeatedly, every time he woke up? Did you know they hung him by his ankles in a basement like he was a god-damned piece of meat? Did you know that wound of his is infected, Dutch? That he’ll be lucky if he lives? Did you know that they tied up his horse, Dutch, the one he decided would replace Boadicea for good, because she bit one of them and killed another? All because of what they did to him.
“Did you know,” Hosea says, his voice like ice now. “That I had to dig the bullet out of him and cauterize the wound myself in that damn basement. That we nearly got caught enough times on the way back. That he almost fell off of Taima, because he was in so much pain, it was hard to stay awake?”
Dutch is silent, his expression inscrutable.
“All of this,” Hosea says. “All of this, for your stupid FUCKING PRIDE!”
Dutch jerks back as Hosea begins shouting in earnest.
“Of all the stupid, idiotic things you could’ve done, Dutch! Everything you’ve ever done in your entire life? This takes the cake. This takes the whole goddamn bakery!”
“You’re talkin’ as if I had any idea they’d do any of this, Hosea,” Dutch growls. “I went to that parley in good faith.”
“And I told you, it was a trap!” Hosea scowls and takes a step forward so his face is in Dutch’s. “I told you it wasn’t worth it. I’ve told you, so many goddamn times these past few months Dutch, that it wasn’t worth it! That we ought to lay low, stop for a little bit, think smarter than we’ve been doing. And what do you do? Every single time?”
Hosea shakes his head.
“Reassure me that it’s all fine! That we’ll figure it out, all will be way. You pat me on my damn head like I’m some sort of errant child and you the nursemaid responsible for me.”
“Well, maybe if you didn’t insist on worrying so goddamn much, Hosea, I wouldn’t need to brush you off!” Dutch snaps. “You’ve turned into an anxious mouse in your old age, you know. Constantly whining about this and that and the other. When have I ever let you down?”
“Right now!”
Dutch blanches but Hosea keeps going.
“I asked you for one damn thing, Dutch. One goddamn thing! And you couldn’t even do that. I asked you to go after our boy. Our boy, who we took in when he was but fourteen years old and scrawnier than any child had any right to be, who we raised together and dragged into the muck of the outlaw life. Who you promised me we’d take care of and protect until he didn’t need us anymore or decided he wanted to live a different life from ours.”
“He’s not a child anymore, Hosea!”
“But he is still our boy!”
Both man stand as tense as fighting alley cats, hands clenched into fists by their sides, bristling with fury. Hosea doesn’t care at this point if Dutch takes a swing. He’d almost welcome a proper fistfight at this point.
Maybe it’d knock some sense into him, he thinks with no small amount of vindictiveness.
“Our boy,” he says more quietly. “Who you abandoned to those wolves with a wave of the hand. Listening to a grease-stain of a man who’s been with us for barely a year over me. You tossed him into the mud when you told me he was just out ‘wandering’, Dutch. You don’t get to claim concern now, or act like you knew my plan would work out just fine. Not this time.”
“You’re actin’ like I knew any of this was going to happen,” Dutch snarls. “I didn’t plan for that damn fire last year, I didn’t plan for the Blackwater robbery to go so badly and I didn’t plan for this!”
“No, Dutch. And that’s the damn problem.” Hosea stalks forward and jabs his finger at his chest. “You didn’t plan for a damn thing.”
Dutch half sighs, half groans, enraged.
“Why don’t you take a turn at being the leader for once,” he says. “You take on all the responsibilities of makin’ sure people don’t die and I’ll sit and pass judgment on folk and their ideas while I read the newspaper.”
“I’ve already been doin’ that for the entire time that we’ve been together, you stupid bastard.”
“Then why the hell am I the one who always gets shouted at when things go wrong?”
“Because you never take responsibility for them!” Hosea spreads his hands out wide. “It’s always someone else's fault, someone else's problem. You knew that better, before. But then something changed, and I don’t know what it was.”
Dutch scoffs. “Maybe you were the one who changed, Hosea.”
“I don’t get to change. I’m too busy cleaning up your messes to have the time,” Hosea snaps.
“Overbearing rabbit.”
“Pompous, overblown and overexagerating fool!” Hosea steps away and flings his hands into the air. “You know what? I can’t tell which is worse: you listening to that Micah Bell because you think what comes out of his mouth is worth the time in the day, or the thought of you taking up with him without discussing it with me first.”
“I wouldn’t do that Hosea. You know I wouldn’t do that, Hosea!”
“I don’t know a damn thing about you anymore, Dutch van der Linde!”
Hosea hates how his words echo through the air, how he can hear his own half-desperate wobble as his voice slips dangerously close to tears. He’s sure the other man can see them almost as plainly as he can see a quiet desperation on his face. They’ve never fought like this before, not in all the years of running together. Not even in the beginning, before they understood each others quirks and ways like they were their own.
But he cannot forgive this. Cannot forgive the almost callous disregard Dutch had possessed for Arthur’s delayed return. How he’s been treating the rest of the gang as ultimately disposable for months now.
How he’s stopped listening to Hosea almost entirely.
Hosea is not too proud to admit it stings more than it should perhaps, no longer having Dutch’s ear in it’s entirely. He’s enjoyed the special privilege of being his right hand man. The ability to calm the other with a word, or rile him up to a cause. To pick over the next grand con together in Dutch’s tent, whatever new story they plan to spin up to get what they need to make that dream of his a reality.
He thinks it’s unfair in a way, that he cannot help but still love the man even with how angry he is. Dutch is still as handsome as he’d been that night outside Chicago. Sure, there’s some salt in that dark mane of his now, and both of them have more lines to their hands and faces than they did back then, but there is no one left on this earth he’d admire so ardently save for him. These observations do little to soothe the rage he feels and only make his grief come out stronger. He does his best to swallow the lump in his throat before speaking again.
“I don’t know what happened to us,” he says slowly. “Nor what’s happened to you. But I’ll tell you this, Dutch. If you ever do something like this again, or try to stop me from looking for one of our own, I’m done.”
Dutch blinks, some of the rage fading from his face. “Done? What do you mean, Hosea?”
“You know exactly what I mean,” he says in a tight voice. “I will not abide by it. I will not tolerate it. I still love you, Dutch, for some stupid reason that I imagine Bessie would slap me for if she were still with us, God rest her soul, but if you do this again, that will not matter. I will leave.”
“You don’t really mean that, old girl. Do you?”
His voice is a soft, fragile thing. Almost like the one he’d used the first time they’d laid together, in some inn in some town a million miles from here and a million years ago.
“I want to keep doing this,” he’d said. “Until I die. I’ve never known anyone like you.”
“There may be a bit of a complication with that, seeing as I’m a bit older than you,” Hosea had laughed, feeling lighter than he’d been in years. “But I’m sure it could be arranged to some extent.”
The man in front of him now is the same one from back then, but still so different that Hosea can hardly recognize him as such.
“I do,” he says as he steps back to the present.
With that, he turns on his heel and stalks away. Back to the camp and people who will pretend they didn’t hear the bulk of their argument. Towards the son he regrets, more than anything, not coming for sooner.
He takes to sitting with Arthur in the tent. Rereads an old book as he sits on a nearby stool, changing Arthur’s bandages when it’s time to and replacing the cloths wrapped around his neck and on his forehead when the water has either evaporated or grown too warm to be of any good for treating a fever. He coughs loudly into his elbow as he reads, mumbling curses about the hot, sticky air of Lemoyne that would make Arthur either burst into laughter or commiserate with, were he awake.
As it is right now, it’s depressingly quiet in camp and Hosea feels ready to start banging some pots and pans if only to get people acting a bit more normal. Though he can’t blame them. Everyone is on edge, waiting to see if the next breath Arthur takes will be his last.
“How is he?”
Hosea looks up as Charles steps into the tent, letting the flaps shut quickly. They’ve got the back flap open to let in some of the air—little good it’s doing—but Ms. Grimshaw had decided it was better for now if most of them remained shut. Hosea only halfway agrees. He’s getting ready to suggest a change, if only to air it out a bit from the stench of rot and infection.
“About the same,” he says.
Charles nods, sighing heavily.
“You look tired, Charles. Come sit with me for awhile.”
“I don’t want to kick you out of your chair.”
“You’re not, I was going to make you sit on the ground.”
“Oh.”
Hosea tries for a smile but isn’t quite sure he remembers how those work right now.
“Hope you don’t mind. I’d offer another chair, but—”
“—No, it’s fine.” Smoothly, Charles settles down on the ground without complaint.
They sit in silence for awhile, the only sounds in the tent the faint wheezing from Arthur and the occasional turn of the page from Hosea. Charles watches Arthur from where he sits, fiddling with a few strands of grass. He wears his worry more openly around Hosea, from what the older man’s noticed. Possibly because Hosea already knows about the two of them, but he’d like to hope the younger man is warming up to him a little, even if he doesn’t often like to talk.
He’s glad for his company, at least. He’s one of the few Hosea will trust to take care of Arthur on the rare time he allows himself a break.
“I keep telling myself ‘no news’ is good news,” Charles says suddenly, without taking his eyes away from Arthur. “But I’m beginning to think that’s not true.”
“It’s truer than calling it ‘bad news’,” Hosea says. “I hope you’ll take my word for it.”
Charles hums. “He doesn’t look right like that.”
Hosea knows he doesn’t mean injured per se. More that he doesn’t look right still. Even asleep, Hosea can remember how Arthur had often tossed and turned with dreams when he was younger, getting tangled up in his blankets before his body learned to stay still. Constantly shifting his weight from foot to foot, blue eyes taking in every little thing that intrigued him. Mostly plants or animals, but occasionally he’d notice something neither him nor Dutch had seen and Hosea’s chest had nearly burst with pride for it, in some way.
Arthur is meant to be moving. Chewing the end of a pencil or hauling sacks of maize around the camp. Asking after the girls to see if they need anything. Picking on John—perhaps a bit too much. Patiently showing Jack some new bug or flower. Not laying in this cot with little air flowing through the tent, pale as bone and sweatier than a sinner in church.
The only times he moves is when the pain grows too great and the fever’s made him delirious. It breaks Hosea’s already battered old heart even more than it has been since Bessie’s passing.
“No,” he says, his voice raspy.
Charles blinks rapidly, shaking his head as if to clear something. He roughly swipes his hand against his face, sniffing loudly. Hosea pretends he doesn’t notice.
“Tell me a story about him,” he says. “Something that makes you laugh.”
Hosea snorts. “There’s quite a few of those, you know.”
“I know.” The corner of Charles’ mouth curls up slightly. “I could tell you a few of my own, if you’d like to hear it.”
Hosea closes his book and leans forward slightly. “You know, I think I would like that, Charles.”
Charles chuckles. “Alright then. There was a time about a month ago, when Arthur half-fell off Freya’s back up in Strawberry, because he was trying to pet a dog…”
Hosea lets the younger mans words wash over him and he laughs a little as he regales him with the tale of how wanting to pet a stray in Strawberry had somehow resulted in Arthur falling into Hawks Eye Creek and the subsequently chase that followed when the dog stole his hat. Ms. Grimshaw pokes her head in after awhile to help change the bandages and to relieve Hosea of his post, but gets drawn into the storytelling too, sharing one Hosea can remember well of the time Copper had found a skunk and provoked it enough that both he and Arthur stunk for nearly two weeks straight.
John slips in at some point as well, but doesn’t contribute much. By then, the tent is starting to get quite crowded and Ms. Grimshaw’s coaxed him out of the stool.
“You comin’, Charles?” Hosea says to the younger man, who hasn’t gotten up from where he sat hours ago.
Charles shakes his head. “Not yet.”
“Alright.”
He reaches down and clasps his shoulder, giving it a gently squeeze, before slipping out of the flaps.
The fever gets worse.
Hosea is digging through his crate of books—the ones that survived the fire that is—trying to find something in the medicinal texts he’s collected over the years that might be of help. Nothing’s looking good so far though.
“Twenty different ways to set a bone,” he mutters to himself. “But not one goddamn suggestion for fever?”
“Hosea?”
He whirls around, half a scowl already fixed on his face before he can register Lenny’s face.
“What is it, Lenny?” he says, far more curt than he’d like to be given that Lenny’s never done a thing to deserve it.
“I wanted to know if there was anything me ‘n Sean could do to help.”
Hosea forces himself to stop for a moment, to take a deep breath that he lets out mere moments later as a harsh sigh.
“I’d send you out to get herbs if I knew what I was looking for,” he says. “But I’ve already tried yarrow and elderflowers, and that didn’t work.”
“What about catnip and white willow bark?” Lenny suggests. “My mama used to use that sometimes, when I wasn’t feelin’ well.”
“Could always put some raw onions on his feet if that fails,” Sean adds.
At Lenny’s glare, he raises his hands. “What? Yer tellin’ me yer mam didn’t do that fer yeh when you were a kid?”
“I don’t think we have catnip or willow bark on hand,” Hosea says, shaking his head.
“Could ride out and get some. I don’t know much about plants, but I do know of some sort of traveling apothecary that’s been traveling around Lemoyne.”
“I suppose it can’t hurt. Better than doing nothing, at any rate.”
“So we’ll take a ride out and bring something back for King Arthur,” Sean says, half grinning. “Be back in a flash, old man.”
“See to it you don’t cause any trouble either.” Hosea narrows his eyes. “Or you’ll have me to answer to.”
Sean just salutes him lazily before hurrying off to get Ennis.
“I’ll keep an eye on him, Hosea,” Lenny says before hurrying after him.
Hosea watches as the two disappear into the trees, hoofbeats fading. He turns his attention back to his books. Sighs. Tells Ms. Grimshaw they’re going to need more water.
Notes:
im really hoping the pacing in this chapter is alright. i felt like it was important to have hosea actually yell at dutch, since that was something that somewhat bothered me in canon. i assume part of the reason why hosea doesn't really yell at dutch is that he doesn't have the energy but i digress. sometimes, you just need to see the old man lose his temper at his partner and thats all.
hello there, i hope you've all enjoyed reading! i appreciate any kudos, comments or bookmarks that come my way :)
also a note: i don't always answer questions in the comment section (due to anxiety) though i do read every single comment that comes in so if you have a question you'd like answered or just want to talk, find me on tumblr, where you can also see other stuff i’ve made. i'll actually respond there, i swear!
please remember to stretch and go drink some water or eat something if you haven't already today! :]
Chapter 4: now i guess sometimes i wish you were a little more predictable, that i could read you just like a book
Summary:
for now I can only guess what’s coming next by examining your timid smile, and the ways of the old, old winds blowing you back ‘round
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Hosea hears the creak of the wagon long before he sees where the hell it’s coming from. At first, he thinks maybe Ms. Grimshaw has asked some of the men to run into town for something, but a quick glance out of the back flap of Arthur’s tent shows all of the camp Morgans are accounted for and grazing peacefully by the scout fire. Then, he wonders perhaps if Sheriff Grey has cottoned onto the fact that an infamous outlaw gang is living just outside his town and has decided to root them out.
Fortunately, it isn’t that either. But the sight is so confounding to him when he steps out of Arthur’s tent that he needs to take a few minutes to stare, dumbfounded, at the absurdly tall wagon making it’s way carefully through the leaves. It’s painted red with worn lettering in a fine golden-yellow, with a large mortar and pestle on top. A dark-skinned man dressed in a blue striped shirt and orange silk neckerchief expertly maneuvers it through the underbrush, his Belgian Drafts trotting confidently.
Many of the horses on the other side of camp raise their heads to watch the strange proceedings much like their human counterparts. He hears more than a few people cocking the nearest gun to them, and spots Abigail (and John, he notes with a small bit of satisfaction), nudging Jack to stand behind them, hidden in Abigail’s tent while John rests his hand on his revolver.
Ahead of this man and his strange wagon are Sean and Lenny, possibly explaining why the hell no one has shot the interloper yet. Hosea sees Dutch’s tent twitch open as the man steps out. He doesn’t bother to spare him a passing glance before he’s striding towards the boys and this new stranger, missing whatever words might’ve come out of Dutch’s mouth.
“Sean, Lenny,” Hosea says.
The younger men slow their horses as he approaches.
“What are you doing?”
“Well, uh,” Lenny starts, not meeting Hosea’s eyes. His hands fiddle with a small clump of Maggie’s mane. “Remember how I said there was that traveling apothecary?”
“’Apothecary’,” Hosea says. “The side of this wagon reads: ‘Dr. Renaud’s Medicine Company’.”
“Right!” Sean says, tone a bit too chipper for Hosea’s liking. “Even better than an apothecary.”
“We did just go to him for medicine, Hosea. Honest.” Lenny says, looking up. “Then he heard our friend was in a bad way, and he said he wanted to help. He doesn’t seem all that dangerous.”
“And a doctor’s gotta be better than brewin’ some nasty tea for English to drink,” Sean adds.
Hosea can’t help but pinch the bridge of his nose between his fingers.
Deep breaths, Hosea, he thinks to himself. Your lungs won’t let you yell like you want to, damnable things.
“And this is why you brought him back here?”
“It weren’t like we were goin’ t’make him abandon his wagon in this shitehole!” Sean says, looking a bit outraged.
“Doctor Renaud says he’s already lost it once,” Lenny adds. “The Raiders.”
Though he doesn’t like it, not one bit—that wagon is far too flashy for his tastes, and the likelihood of them avoiding detection with a normal wagon tended to be slim as it is—but the man doesn’t look as though he’d be particularly dangerous. The good doctor does have the sense to be a little nervous, if the subtle shake of his hands on the reigns is any indication, but his face is free of judgment as he takes stock of the situation.
“Doctor Renaud?” Hosea says, looking now to the man in question.
He jumps slightly, but looks down with a polite expression on his face.
“Good afternoon, sir,” he says. “Your friends did not tell me much as to the condition of the injured man, save that he was in a bad way.”
“It’s a fair summary of it,” Hosea says. “Lenny and Sean can tend to your horses if you’d be willing to follow me?”
“Let me get my smaller medical box and I’d be more than happy to.”
Hosea waits with what remains of his patience for the younger men to sort themselves out—Sean takes Maggie’s reins from Lenny and Lenny waits for Dr. Renaud to set the break and slip down from the wagon bench—before Dr. Renaud emerges triumphant from the opened back of the strange wagon, brandishing a leather doctor’s bag.
“Show me to the patient,” he says.
Though the rest of the gang stares at them, no one makes a move to intercept their path. Bill scowls as Dr. Renaud comes a little too close and Micah wrinkles his nose, but the girls have gone back to their chores and little Jack is peeking out from the space between his parents, holding onto Abigail’s skirts as she pets his head absentmindedly.
Dutch watches silently from his tent, smoke from his cigar curling into the air, face inscrutable.
Susan looks up from her mending and jerks back slightly in her chair when Hosea pushes open the flaps of Arthur’s tent to allow the doctor to enter. Her hand twitches for the repeater that is not there, eyes fixed firmly on the newcomer with wariness.
“Who’s this, Hosea?” she says.
“Miss Grimshaw, I’d like you to meet Doctor Renaud,” he replies.
“Alphonse Renaud,” the doctor adds, touching his brow and dipping his head as if he wears a hat. “At your service, ma’am.”
“Lenny and Sean found him when they went out to get those herbs I told them about. He agreed to take a look at Arthur.”
“I see. Allow me to move out of your way then.”
She stabs the needle into the fabric so she doesn’t lose track of it and gives Hosea a look that says, ‘We’ll talk later’ before slipping outside, skirts swishing. Dr. Renaud is quiet as he sets his bag down on her empty chair, opening it with quick and precise movements and gently peeling back the thin sheet they’d tucked around Arthur’s body when he’d begun to shake, burning with fever as he might’ve been.
“Do you mind if I unwrap the wound?” he asks, his voice quiet like they’ve stepped into a church.
Hosea nods his assent.
With careful and quick fingers, the good doctor untucks the ends of the soiled bandages and peels them back. He bites his lower lip slightly at the wound, but his expression doesn’t change much. Using the bandages, he picks up the clump of herbs Hosea had pressed to the wound a few hours ago and turns to him.
“What’s this?”
“Ginseng, mostly. A little bit of yarrow.”
Dr. Renaud hums. “Good, good. Has he eaten anything?”
Hosea shakes his head. “We’ve been dripping water and broth into his mouth when we get the chance. He hasn’t woken up since we brought him back.”
“I will not ask the particulars of how he sustained such a wound,” Dr. Renaud says. “I suspect you wouldn’t be inclined to share even if I did. But there’s an infection in this bullet hole and it’s dangerously close to entering the bloodstream. If that happens, there’s not much else I can do.”
“Can you do anything for him now?” Hosea says.
“Yes, I think I can.”
He sets the soiled bandages and crumpled herbs down on a clear spot on the cot, then turns to his bag. He pulls out a small case, a small bottle of something labeled with unintelligible script and more clean bandages. He opens the case to reveal a surgeons tools, selects a small scalpel and sets that aside. Then he goes back into the case to retrieve a slightly bigger bottle and uncorks it. The sharp scent of alcohol fills the tent.
“Medical-grade,” Dr. Renaud explains when Hosea asks. “You’d go blind if you drank it.”
“I’m not sure that’d stop some people.”
First, he pours a little bit on his hands and rubs it in. Then, he presses a small piece of bandage to the mouth of the bottle and shakes it upside down three times before replacing the cork, setting it down on one of the crates containing Arthur’s memorabilia. Still gentle but with a new firmness, he wipes the area, focusing heavily on parts that have scabbed over some. Then, he picks up the scalpel and quickly slices open some of the scabbed over places. He dabs another clean bit of bandage with the alcohol, sets down the scalpel, then pinches and presses on the areas around the cuts. Almost immediately, a pungent smell fills the tent as pus pours out.
Hosea resists the urge to gag.
“Just as I suspected,” the doctor mumbles.
He doesn’t let up, only taking the time to gently wipe up the abundant pus. He doesn’t let up until there’s more blood coming out of the wound than pus, at which point he presses a clean bandage soaked in alcohol to the wound, wiping carefully. Then, he presses a dry one over that and repeats the process with the other cuts. Over and over again, until the pus has been drained and the bandages changed over twice.
“Do you have any more of that ginseng and yarrow concoction?” Dr. Renaud asks. “I’d like to put a little more on there, since it seemed to be helping a little bit.”
Hosea scooches by him and picks up the empty coffee tin, full of the poultice he’d made just this morning and hands it to the other man. Dr. Renaud slathers it over the wound, then wraps it carefully just as he and Susan have been doing every day at least four or five times since he brought Arthur home.
After this, Dr. Renaud pulls out a syringe and uncorks the smaller bottle, filling it with the liquid inside. He presses down on the plunger slightly until a bit of the mystery liquid squirts out, flicking a finger a couple of times until he’s satisfied. Then, he turns to Hosea.
“I need someone to carefully roll him over so I can stick this in his behind,” he says.
“What’s it for?” Hosea asks.
“I’ve a friend from France who was doing some studies as to how mold could be used to help cure people of some bacteria infections,” he says. “He sends me a bottle of this concoction made of P. glaucum mold every few months or so. It’s quite remarkable. And, if I’m to be quite blunt with you Mr. Matthews, I am willing to try anything to fight off the remaining bit of infection this poor man is suffering from.”
“Will it work?”
Dr. Renaud shrugs. “I cannot say for certain. But in other people, it’s proven to be highly effective. It must be administered into the buttocks though. Anywhere else might kill him faster.”
Later, Hosea will blame his choice on desperation. He wants more than anything for Arthur to wake up and tease him for his age, for him to smile again. He wants so desperately to turn the clock back to when Bessie was still alive and insist Arthur was coming with them, if only to spare him this fate.
For now though, he ducks out of the tent and calls for Charles. The man appears, almost like magic, and shoulders his way inside. His expression doesn’t change when he takes in Arthur and Dr. Renaud. He only raises an eyebrow when he is asked to do what Dr. Renaud wants.
“And this will help?” he says.
“I think so,” the doctor replies.
“Alright then.”
With a tenderness only a lover or a parent could exhibit, Charles manages to cradle Arthur’s limp body and turn it so his ass is exposed. He takes care not to touch the damaged shoulder and turns away slightly as Dr. Renaud stabs Arthur with the needle and pushes down on the plunger.
“There,” he says. “If you have no objection to it, Mr. Matthews, I would be happy to camp nearby. He’ll need more of these shots for it to work properly and this way, I can make sure the pus doesn’t collect in such large quantities.”
“You’re more than welcome to share our campfires,” Hosea says. “Thank you, doctor.”
Dr. Renaud takes his time collecting soiled bandages and cleaning up the place while Charles adjusts Arthur back into place, pushing a lock of his hair out of his eyes and studying the unconscious man’s face for a mere moment before he’s nodding to Hosea and disappearing again. Once he’s moved his bag, Hosea slips past him to sit on the chair. His book is where he left it.
“I will return at nightfall,” Dr. Renaud says. “To change bandages and give another shot.”
Hosea nods. “Thank you.”
“No thanks is needed,” he says, touching his brow as if to dip a non-existent hat to the older man, before slipping out of the tent.
Over the course of the next two weeks, Dr. Renaud becomes somewhat of an odd fixture in camp. Not quite like Trelawny, who’s presence may not be consistent but is always colorful, he keeps to the edges more often than not. He thanks Pearson when the subdued cook offers him a share of their food and sits quietly at the scout fire. Sometimes, Kieran will join him, though Hosea isn’t sure if they talk about anything. The men leave his odd wagon alone, the girls sometimes hand him washed bandages and Dutch simply watches him silently through a haze of cigar smoke.
“I still don’t trust him,” Susan says to Hosea.
“I don’t think you trust me half the time, Susan, that’s not much of a statement,” he replies, flicking another page of his book.
She scoffs. “You’re liable to be a voice of wisdom as well as a source of problems, Hosea. Don’t think I haven’t forgotten what happened in Missouri.”
“It was one time!” he says. “Besides, half of that was Dutch.”
“Mhm.” By the tone she’s giving, it’s clear she doesn’t believe him.
They’re sitting by the main campfire, with decent enough views to Arthur’s tent should he need them. Tilly had elected to take her mending inside to watch over him, a proposition Ms. Grimshaw could hardly find fault in, even if
Hosea knows she would’ve preferred to be in there herself.
“Has he been in there?” Susan says, her voice quiet.
There’s only one “he” she could be referring to.
Hosea’s shake is subtle, invisible to anyone who’s not looking and only Susan is looking. She sucks in a breath.
“I don’t know what to believe at this point,” he admits, just as quiet. “That this fool of a man doesn’t give a damn about his son. Or that I’m a fool for ever thinking he cared to begin with.”
“He cared,” Susan says. “Still cares, in his own way. Just give him time, Hosea.”
“If I let him have any more time to make up his damned mind, Arthur would be in the ground already,” Hosea says with a glare. “Being patient with Dutch van der Linde these days is like painting a great big sign and putting an ad out in the papers for where Pinkertons can find us. And I for one, refuse to be hung just because that idiot thinks it’s still twenty years ago.”
“You ain’t talkin’ about leaving, are you?” Susan’s voice isn’t hostile but it isn’t quite friendly either.
“Don’t you start up with that nonsense with me, Susan,” Hosea says sharply. “I know you think folk ought to be more loyal to our illustrious leader and I’ve often commemorated you in the past for that. When have you ever doubted my loyalty?”
“Never,” she says. “Even when you and Bessie left that time.”
“Exactly. So hush up.”
They’re quiet for a bit, with only the sound of thread being pulled through the cloth of a torn shirt and the flick of a page to disrupt that, the fire crackling between them. It’s too quiet in camp these days. Even Jack’s dog Cain doesn’t bark as much. He follows the young boy too and fro, sometimes coming into Arthur’s tent to lay down beside the cot. Watching out for him through the night like Copper would, were the old coondog still here.
“It ain’t about loyalty with me and Dutch,” Hosea says. “You know that.”
“I do,” she says. “Though I don’t quite understand it.”
He holds back a somewhat hysterical laugh, managing to wrangle it into something that feels more like a passing smile. “No one ever has. Not even us, truth be told.”
She hums noncommittally. He sighs.
“It feels like he broke a promise,” he admits. “Something that didn’t need to be spoken out loud. He insisted we take in that boy all those years ago and then doesn’t even bother sending out a search party when he doesn’t come back?”
“He had his reasons,” Susan tries.
“Bullshit.”
“So you’re just going to throw away decades of what you’ve got because of one mistake?”
Hosea growls and immediately regrets it, coughing harshly into his fist. Susan looks concerned but just hands him her handkerchief. He thanks her when the coughing fit eventually subsides, tears in his eyes.
“It’s not one mistake,” he says quietly. “You’re smarter than that, Susan. I know you are.”
They don’t talk for the rest of the night.
“Evening, Dr. Renaud.”
The man jerks slightly where he’s been sitting on a log at the scout fire, before relaxing as he realizes who’s speaking. He smiles, a little rueful.
“Good evening, Mr. Matthews.”
“Please, call me Hosea. I think we’re well enough acquainted by now.”
He sits down on a nearby crate, grunting with the effort of it. He’d wanted to see Dr. Renaud outside of Arthur’s tent for some time now, but one thing or another always interfered before he had the chance.
“He’s looking better now,” Dr. Renaud offers. “The infections almost gone. The fever’s cooled considerably.”
“Good, good.” Hosea shifts in his seat. “We’re very grateful for the attention and care you’ve given to him.”
“I wouldn’t do anything less for any of my patients, much as some of the people of Lemoyne might think that wrong,” he replies. “Besides, I suppose you could say I owed your man in a way.”
“How’s that?”
A rueful smile crosses Dr. Renaud’s face. “My wagon was stolen by a group of belligerent men infamous around these parts. I do not know if it was the color of my skin alone they took issue with or my profession, but I was left on the side of the road, uncertain if I should be grateful or not to have kept my life. I managed to find my way to Rhodes, which is where I met him.
“He was a blunt and gruff sort of man, and at first I thought he was no better than those that saw fit to rob me, but then he rode off on that massive mare of his and returned a few hours later with my wagon. I gave him a booklet on something to help keep his health. A paltry payment for something so tremendously generous, but it was all I could think of that might be valuable to him.”
Hosea smiles slightly. He doesn’t often get to hear of Arthur’s adventures anymore, but it pleases him to know he’s retained what he and Dutch drilled into him when he was young.
“That sounds like Arthur,” he says. “He plays the part of a brute well, but there is a good man underneath all of that.”
“You know him well?”
“Raised him, in a way. Alongside Miss Grimshaw and our leader; Dutch.”
Hosea picks up a stick with a charred end and uses it to nudge one of the logs into a better position, so it won’t fall out of the pit when the one below it breaks in two.
“He was a very angry child, for a time. Didn’t trust anyone. Not that I can blame him. He’s all grown up now, but I still see the same fourteen year old boy we found in some backwater saloon.”
“I think all fathers have a similar affliction,” Dr. Renaud says. “No matter how old a man gets.”
“I think you’re right, doctor.”
The two men are quiet for a moment, the silence unstrained for the first time. There’s an ease there that did not exist before. Hosea half wonders if Dr. Renaud has become accustomed to their gang of outlaws in a way few have since. He hopes very dearly the other man doesn’t harbor thoughts of asking to join. Dutch would likely say yes, and he cannot bear to bury another promising young man as they inevitably flee from a mess of their own creation.
“Mr. Matt-Hosea,” Dr. Renaud corrects himself. “I wanted to share with you a concern I had regarding your son’s recovery.”
He’s been waiting for something like this, truth be told. Waiting to hear he won’t make it, that he’s been dying all along. That Hosea is a sad, old, hopeful fool of a man and he shouldn’t have gone through all this effort to save what cannot be saved. He may have delayed the inevitable a few weeks back—hell, all those years ago—but Arthur Morgan’s grave had already been dug for him and it was time for the reaper to collect.
He’s proud of himself for how steady hands are when he gestures for Dr. Renaud to go on. How the tears don’t spring to his eyes. Sentimental he may be, but weak in this capacity he is not.
“His arm…” Dr. Renaud continues. “I’m not sure as to how much mobility he’ll retain once he’s awake. I understand you live a rather strenuous lifestyle, one where such a thing would be important. I just…don’t want you to get your hopes up that he’ll make a full recovery. It’s very likely, with a wound of that size and severity, that he’ll never have the full range of motion he had again. Nor will it be as strong.”
Hosea blinks. This is not what he expected.
“He’ll live though?”
“I believe so. His body is fighting off the infection, as expected. I should think he’d wake up any day now. But I wanted you to be aware to the reality of the situation.”
“It might be a bit of trouble,” Hosea says slowly. “But anything is better than him being dead. Anything.”
Dr. Renaud nods. “I thought you might say something like that. In any case, as long as you don’t mind having me around for a bit longer, I’d like to stay and see about some further treatment. I might know of a way to help that shoulder heal up better.”
He glances at Hosea, expression serious. “I’m not a miracle worker, sir. But I’ll do my best.”
“I know you will.”
Hosea’s reply is quiet but full of surety he wishes he could retain for the gangs future. If Arthur’s arm doesn’t fully recover, and they already rely on him so much…well, he’ll just take care to harass Bill and the others some more. It’s not as if they aren’t capable of pulling their own weight.
He leans back slightly on his crate seat, feeling the cautious tendrils of hope for what feels like the first time in forever.
Yes, Arthur will be okay. He can work with that.
Notes:
while actually discovered to function as an antibiotical in 1928 by sir alexander flemming, there were earlier experiments to see if the mold used to make it could prove useful in medicine. the "friend" dr. renaud mentioned here would be ernest douchesne. in 1897, douchsne indepedently discovered the healing properties of a P. glaucum mold, which he apparently used to cure some guinea pigs of typhoid fever. i highly encourage anyone who's interested to do some independent reading about the history of penicillin. its fascinating stuff
hello there, i hope you've all enjoyed reading! i appreciate any kudos, comments or bookmarks that come my way :)
also a note: i don't always answer questions in the comment section (due to anxiety) though i do read every single comment that comes in so if you have a question you'd like answered or just want to talk, find me on tumblr, where you can also see other stuff i’ve made. i'll actually respond there, i swear!
please remember to stretch and go drink some water or eat something if you haven't already today! :]
Chapter 5: sometimes i wish i could find my Rosemary Hill, i’d sit there and look at the deserted lakes and i’d sing
Summary:
and every once in a while i’d sing a song for you, that would rise above the mountains and the stars and the sea, and if i wanted it to, it would lead you back to me
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
The first time Arthur wakes up and is lucid, Hosea is out with Sean, Lenny and the girls on a short supply run to Rhodes.
He’s careful to keep his face away from the saloon and is glad he took the time to dig out a shirt he hasn’t worn in awhile. With any luck, no one will recognize him from the day he and Arthur gave away the Braithwaite’s moonshine. He slips the boy on the corner a nickel for the newest paper and waits rather impatiently for the boys to carry the crates of goods back to the wagon. Tilly has the shopping list in her hand and sticks close to him.
The townsfolk’s glares stick on her faster than the mosquitoes hit them back at the lake and he’s just about ready to get the hell out of there for the sake of hers and Lenny’s safety as well as his general impatience to get back to Arthur’s bedside.
“The doctor said he was doin’ alright, didn’t he?” Tilly says quietly, checking off another thing as Sean sets it in the back of the wagon.
Karen drags it to the back so as to avoid things being stacked up haphazardly.
“Said he’d be waking up any day now,” Hosea replies. “Properly, I mean. Rather than the half-baked nightmares.”
She hums.
It had been a surprise the first time, when the fever had officially broken and they’d heard shouting. Hosea can remember Bill and Javier running towards the camp with their guns drawn, Ms. Grimshaw’s shotgun loaded and ready before Charles had quickly ducked inside Arthur’s tent and managed to get him to calm down. Dr. Renaud had followed soon after with something to help him sleep.
“Night terrors, I’d say,” he’d said when Hosea asked for a verdict. “Given what likely caused that wound, I’d say that’s fairly normal. He’ll be lucid eventually, give it time. His body’s been through hell and nearly cooked itself trying to get back.”
Now, usually, he and Charles take turns sitting with him at nights just in case he wakes up again. It’s a pitiful existence, truth be told. He never wakes up long enough for it to make a difference and he’s never alert enough to speak properly, constantly calling out for Dutch and warning everyone it’s a trap. Hosea wants so desperately to see the light come back to Arthur’s eyes, to be able to tell him it’s alright, they’ve seen to the monsters who did this, but he knows it wouldn’t matter. Not until Arthur wakes up properly anyway.
“Reckon we oughta just let Sean carry supplies around him,” she reflects as the scrawny Irishman nearly drops a crate of whiskey for the second time. “I think that’d wake him up quick.”
“Why don’t you carry the damn boxes and I’ll make sarcastic quips, Miss Jackson?” Sean says with a scowl. “That’s more my job than yours anyhow.”
“You’d have to be able to read first,” she says sweetly. “Why don’t you take up Lenny’s offer? You know he’s been dyin’ to teach you.”
“Bet I could ask Jack to lend me one of his picture books to make it easier for you,” Lenny says with a grin.
“Ah, shuddup you bastards.”
Tilly and Lenny laugh, much to the apparently horror of the Rhodes pedestrians. Hosea smiles pleasantly at a doughy-faced woman who wrinkles her nose at them.
“Afternoon, madam,” he says.
The woman huffs and walks away quickly.
“I’m lookin’ forward to when we get out of here,” Tilly mumbles to him. “We don’t belong down here.”
“On this, my dear, we agree entirely.” He looks over his shoulder at Karen, who’s wiping her brow as she sets the last box down. “Is that everything?”
“Should be. We’re just waitin’ on Mary-Beth to finish up getting those medicines we ordered awhile back.”
“All set!” Mary-Beth calls as she steps outside.
Hosea’s glad to see she elected to get Lenny to carry the precious glass bottles rather than Sean. He hops up onto the wagon and offers an arm to Tilly, who then pulls Mary-Beth up behind her. Karen sits in a little seat she’s built for herself among the supplies, while the boys untie their horses from the hitching post and nudge them into a walk alongside the wagon. Hosea flicks the reigns and they’re off.
“Sorry it took so long,” Mary-Beth says as they leave town. “I think that store manager was tryin’ to chat me up.”
“I could kill him for you, if you wanted,” Karen offers, an unlit cigarette already clenched between her teeth, produced from God knows where.
“I don’t think that’s necessary, but thank you, Karen.”
“Pleasure. Any of y’all got a light?”
“I do. Here.”
Lenny pulls a pack of matches out of his saddlebags and leans forward to hand them to Karen, who gives him a crooked grin.
“Thanks, kid.”
He hears the strike of a match and Karen’s pleased sigh. Then a mumble as she presumably passes the matches back to Lenny again. He keeps his eyes and ears pricked for any sight of Raiders, come to harass them. He can recall Arthur and Sadie’s own trip into Rhodes and the chaotic bloodbath that followed. He almost wishes he’d asked her to come along too, but given Arthur’s report, she likely would make things worse with trouble than better. Besides, Lenny’s not a bad shot and neither is Sean when he bothers to stop boasting. They’ll be fine.
His thoughts turn back to Arthur again, as they often do these days. Arthur and their situation. The mess that Dutch has gotten them into, more like. He can scent the end in the air the same as he can smell when a particularly bad storm is coming in, and he’d be willing to bet his last dollar most of the gang senses it too. Unfortunate then, that most of them are too dedicated to staying by a man who’ve filled them with hope. Hope for a dream that Hosea is realizing more and more, will never come true.
“I’m wondering,” he starts, and then stops because he’s not sure how to begin this. How do you begin this?
Give permission to a group of people, young though they may be, that they have permission to leave if it all goes to shit? That he doesn’t want to bury any more of them, if he can avoid it? He knows a lot of them would have a hell of a time trying to survive without the protection of the gang. Reverend comes to mind, for one. But he can’t help thinking of what he said to Dr. Renaud the week before.
Anything is better than him being dead.
The same goes for the rest of the gang too, he finds. Especially these young people.
“You were wonderin’?” Tilly prompts, snapping him out of his thoughts.
“Sorry,” he says, a little self conscious. “Got lost in my thoughts there. I was wondering, if any of you had given any thought to what you might do should something happen to the gang.”
“D’you know somethin’ we don’t old man?” Sean says, laughter in his voice even though his eyes are wide. Cautious.
“I know the lot of you are smarter than you think,” he says. “And if there were something that happened to all of this, I want to know that you’d be able to make it.”
“Reckon I could maybe go back home,” Lenny says quietly. “Though I don’t know if mama would be too pleased with that. And I don’t know if I’d be able to get a degree, like my daddy wanted.”
“I ain’t got nothing else for me, ‘sides robbing,” Karen says. “Doubt Sean does either.
Tilly and Mary-Beth are silent. He doesn’t know Mary-Beth as well, but he’d wager she’d be able to find her own way. She’s a damn good pickpocket if things got rough but there are more legal things she could do to make money. Her writing, for one. He’s never seen but a few glimpses here and there but what he has been able to see didn’t look half bad.
Tilly, he does know well. A daughter to him almost, she’d been the last to know his Bessie before she passed and it shows. Like Arthur and John, she can read his mind nearly as well as Dutch can. Unlike Arthur and John though, she’s a little less loyal to Dutch than the other man might like. A fact he’s always kept tucked away inside the recesses of his mind, a secret part of him pleased that while his sons may struggle to find their own footing, Tilly Jackson is not one to jump off a cliff without first asking why.
She gives him a look out of the side of her eye now, one that says she knows what he’s saying and isn’t sure if she wants to call him out on it yet or not. She’s waiting to see what his next hand will be. Like the phenomenal domino player Bessie taught her to be.
“It’s good to have the thought in mind, is all,” he says, aiming for casualness.
By the way the others relax, he’d bet he’s succeeded.
“A backup plan, if you will.”
“Reckon that’s not such a bad idea,” Tilly says. “To keep an open mind.”
“Yeah,” Lenny echoes. “Suppose it’s not.”
“Arthur woke up.”
Hosea stumbles slightly as he climbs down from the cart, resting a shaky hand on the side as he looks at his younger son with wide eyes.
“Come again?” he says.
“Arthur woke up while you were out,” he says. “He was aware ‘n everything. Miss Grimshaw managed to get him to eat some sort of thin broth thing she asked Pearson to make and a few of us saw him before he fell back asleep again.”
“Where is Charles?”
“With him now. The doctor’s there too.”
John kicks a rock and watches it skitter away for a moment. He has his lanky arms crossed in front of him, trying to look tough, but Hosea can see the relief in the way his facial scars look relaxed for the first time since they set out. Hosea reaches out and clasps John’s scrawny shoulder and gives it a squeeze, hoping he can see how relieved he is in turn. Judging by the faint smile John gives him, it comes through just fine.
Hosea heads for Arthur’s tent, waving to Susan as he passes by. He pauses just before the tent flaps, listening carefully just in case Arthur’s woken up again. When he doesn’t hear anything, he slips inside. Charles sits on the chair, fiddling with some strips of leather while Dr. Renaud is clearly finishing up changing the bandages.
“We should be able to let this get some air soon,” he says. “So it will heal properly. It does no good for wounds to be kept in the dark and damp for so long, you invite more infection that way.”
Charles hums, eyes flicking up to see Hosea. He offers him a nod.
“I heard he woke up while I was out,” Hosea says, his voice low.
“Only for a little bit,” Dr. Renaud says.
He gently pats the pinned end of the bandage before stepping away, movements as precise as always.
“He wanted to know where he was and how long it had been. Charles obliged him.”
“The doctor says he might be awake for a little longer, next time,” Charles says.
“Yes.” Dr. Renaud nods. “It’s a good sign. A very good sign.”
“I’m very glad to hear it.”
“Do you wanna sit with him, Hosea?” Charles asks, fingers still working the leather even if he’s not looking at his hands.
“Just for a little bit. I don’t want to take up your time.”
“It’s fine.” Charles wraps the ends around the piece he’s been braiding and tucks it into a pocket. “I should see to getting us something decent for supper, before Pearson decides to get creative.”
“No, we can’t have that,” Hosea says.
He reaches out and touches Charles shoulder as he passes, pausing his movement for just a moment.
“Thank you, son,” he says in a lower voice.
He hopes Charles knows that he’s thanking him for more than just giving up his seat. The younger man doesn’t quite meet his eye but he does nod slightly. There is the slightest sound of fabric moving as he pushes open the flaps and slips out silently. Hosea watches Dr. Renaud tidies up his impromptu work station, setting his bottles inside his bag and generally trying to fix up the momentos Arthur keeps on the crates near his cot.
“I’ll be leaving soon,” Dr. Renaud says without looking up. “Your son is almost to the point where I suspect my efforts would not be as needed. You seem fairly capable of keeping the wound clean for now, and the infection is gone.”
“Mm.” Hosea nods.
“For now, it’s a matter of rebuilding his strength,” Dr. Renaud says. “Getting him to eat proper food, some of that physical therapy I was telling Mister Smith about. He’ll never be as he was, but he’ll be better than he would be if he doesn’t do those exercise. Mister Smith informed me of Mister Morgans…particular brand of stubbornness and self-deprecation.” Dr. Renaud gives him a wry smile. “Fortunately, I have treated my share of fools and Mister Smith seems particularly determined. I think you’ll be successful in those endeavors.”
It does not escape Hosea that Dr. Renaud uses Arthur’s last name, despite having never been given it. His hands don’t twitch for his revolvers but he does lean slightly, sharp eyes never leaving the doctors face.
“I’m glad you think so highly of our care, Dr. Renaud,” he says, making his voice light. Innocent, almost.
The doctor is no fool though. It pleases Hosea somewhat. He doesn’t think he could con the man out of principle, but it gladdens him Dr. Renaud can tell a threat even when it’s wrapped up in the skin and bones of an old man who is far too tired of this shit.
“The way I see it, Mister Matthews,” Dr. Renaud says slowly. “There are many caravans of misfits in this country. And there are likely many Arthur Morgans out there. What business is it of mine which one I’ve happened to meet? Particularly if this one was decent enough to me in a place that finds my very complexion so insulting.”
Hosea relaxes slightly. It’s rare in this day and age, to be given an out. A way for him to avoid bloodshed. And he has no interest in asking the good doctor if he’d like to join their merry band, much as Dutch might find use in a skilled healer. He offers the other man a smile. Thin as it may be, it’s no less genuine.
“I’m glad Sean and Lenny managed to find you, Dr. Renaud,” he says. “And I do hope you find your talents better appreciated further north. Many of the people around here are not so enlightened.”
“On that, we can agree, sir.”
He closes his bag with a snap and picks it up. Hosea moves slightly so Dr. Renaud can pass him without a word, tent flaps swishing behind him. He looks down at Arthur’s prone body. For the first time since they brought him home—since the nightmares began, even—he looks almost peaceful. Someone (likely Charles) has managed to wash his face and combed his hair back with care. He can still see where fingers brushed through, the damp clinging to the strands in this oppressive heat.
He takes the chair and pulls his newspaper out from underneath his arm and resolves to wait for Arthur to wake up again. He wouldn’t miss it for the world.
“Goddamnit, Marston!” comes a shout.
It scares off the birds that were dozing up in the oak tree, their squawks feel like needles stabbing into Hosea’s head.
“Would you quit wriggling? You’re worse than a damn snake, I swear.” John’s reply is sharp and angry.
Hosea waits patiently for the thud noise that comes from Arthur chucking something at his brothers head. He doesn’t disappoint.
“You goddamn bastard!”
“Maybe if you’d quit pinching my side, I’d be able to get out of the damn cot by now!”
“Quiet. Both of you.”
Charles’ voice is quiet but sharp. Hosea can imagine the sharp glare he’s giving both of the men, hidden as it may be behind tent flaps that have yet to be pulled back for the day.
“He started it!” shouts both of them at the same time.
“I don’t care. John, grab this side. Arthur, move your damn arm.”
There’s the sound of shuffling, a mumbled “one, two, three, up!” and then suddenly, Arthur Morgan is blinking at the sunlight, dressed in pants with the top half of the union suit knotted around his waist. John’s got his good side while Charles has somehow managed to maneuver himself to prop up the bad side without irritating his shoulder. They move slowly towards the campfire. Hosea is quick to nudge Sean off of the other chair, who only protests a little bit before he realizes why he’s been kicked out.
He gives Arthur a two finger salute, baring his gap-tooth smile at him with an exuberant, “Good mornin’, your majesty!” before he trots off to annoy someone else. Probably Karen, God help her.
Arthur grunts, but some of the tension leaves his face. The bizarre trio manage to make their way to the newly vacated chair, wherein a new set of cursing and grunts pick up as John and Charles get to setting him down on the chair. In the end, they’re successful, though Arthur looks a little paler and is covered in sweat.
“I don’t know how the hell you weigh so much,” John mutters.
“S’the weight of my sins and yours,” Arthur says. “Since you can’t carry anythin’ on those scrawny shoulders of yours, Marston.”
John smacks his good shoulder and scowls. “I’d like to see you carry anything right now, Morgan.”
“Don’t you even think about it,” Charles says.
Arthur huffs crossing his good arm in front of him. “Treatin’ me like a damn princess,” he mutters. “When am I gonna be able to do some real work again?”
John opens his mouth—likely to say something nasty, knowing him—before a swift elbow to the stomach from Charles turns it into a grunt.
“You can work when your shoulder is better, Mister Morgan,” he says, hand lingering on his bad arm, touch lighter than a feather. “Do you want some coffee?”
Arthur’s scowl lets up some for Charles. Hosea has to bite his cheek to keep back the smile.
“Sure,” he says, voice softening.
“I’ll get you a cup.”
Charles slips away, nodding to the ladies—and Sean, who appears to have had one of the wash buckets dumped over his head. John lingers for a few minutes, looking uncertain as to if he’d be allowed to stay before Hosea pats the log next to him. There is a brief look of relief before Hosea returns to the paper in front of him. Rocks crunch beneath his boots as he walks over to take a seat.
“Morning, Arthur,” Hosea says without looking up.
He can just catch the way Arthur’s head snaps back around, wincing slightly as it pulls on his shoulder wound.
“Mornin’, Hosea,” he replies. “Anythin’ interesting today?”
Hosea grunts and shrugs. “More of the same. There seems to be a serial killer in Saint Denis.”
“Don’t tell me it’s another one of those artistic types,” Arthur mumbles.
Hosea snorts, recalling the apparent run-in Arthur had had a few months ago. “No, though I suspect this particular character has come out of retirement again. The bodies have bite marks on them. Lawmen are advising Saint Denis residents to avoid traveling alone in the evening.”
Arthur hums. “Does a horse count?”
“Somehow, I don’t think so.”
Charles returns with three cups of coffee, handing one to Arthur and another to John. Arthur thanks him with a low, “Thank you, darlin’” that Hosea pretends he cannot hear. John appears lost in thought, staring at the campfire though he remembers his manners enough to thank Charles for the cup.
“What’re you working on today?” Hosea says.
“Stretches,” Charles replies. “Trying to loosen up those tendons, like Dr. Renaud said.”
“Did you try using that lavender oil I gave you?”
“Yeah,” Arthur replies. “Worked real good. Thanks again.”
“Good.”
“Still can’t believe you managed to find him again.”
Hosea snorts. “Don’t thank me. All I did was send Sean and Lenny out to find what I was told was a traveling apothecary. Not one of the most bizarre sights I’ve ever seen in my life—and believe me, I’ve seen many an odd thing.”
“You ever seen a unicorn then, Hosea?” John says with a smirk.
“Maybe I have. Maybe I haven’t,” Hosea glances at his youngest son with a sly smile. “Maybe I’ll never tell you.”
“Arthur!”
Their little group stiffens slightly at Dutch’s loud call. Charles and Hosea moreso than the others. He walks over to the campfire with sureness Hosea doesn’t think he deserves, a kind of confidence that makes Hosea want to punch him in the face.
“Mornin’, Dutch,” Arthur says, the only relaxed one of the group.
“It’s good to see you up,” he says.
“I’m glad to be out of that bed, to tell you the truth,” Arthur says. “Was goin’ a little stir crazy.”
Dutch laughs and Hosea grinds his teeth to keep from doing something stupid.
“I’ll bet. Won’t be long before you’re out doing jobs again, right son?”
Some of that ease fades from Arthur’s body. Hosea’s fingers dig slightly into the paper he holds between his hands.
“’Course, Dutch,” Arthur says, somewhat muted.
Dutch doesn’t seem to notice. He claps Arthur’s back just a touch too hard and disappears before anyone can say anything. Hosea watches the whiteness disappear from where John was holding his cup a little too hard, the scars of his face loosening slightly as he unclenches his jaw. Charles steps a tiny bit closer to Arthur, as if to shield him. Hosea half wonders if the other man notices how he leans in just a bit more in reciprocation.
“You want the rest of this?” Hosea asks Arthur, if only to give him something else to focus on.
Bright blue eyes he never thought he’d see again flick over to him, pain still flickering there but Arthur still nods, opening his bad hand with a grunt. Hosea folds the paper and gets out of his seat, swallowing the last of his tea before setting the cup down on a crate. He sets the paper half in Arthur’s lap, half in his waiting hand. He’s glad to see him starting to use it, even if he’s not reaching out just yet. Progress.
He gives him a brief touch to the head, like he used to when Arthur was much much younger and moves to follow Dutch before he can disappear again, slipping into the tent just as the flaps close behind him. Dutch turns around, blinking dumbly as he realizes who it is who’s followed him.
“Hosea,” Dutch says, voice cautious.
They haven’t spoken since Hosea shouted at him. He doesn’t have it in him to shout again, but the anger that runs in his veins reminds him of younger years. Never before did he think it’d be directed at a man he loves so much that it hurts sometimes.
“That’s all you’re going to say to him?” he demands. “That’s your only concern? How soon he’ll be able to go back to work?”
Dutch pulls a cigar out of his pocket and a match, sitting down on his bed with an infuriating air of calm.
“Well, we do need the money, Hosea,” he says. “Seein’ as you saw fit to give that doctor a fair bit of what was in the box.”
“He more than earned it,” Hosea retorts. “After workin’ so hard to save that boy’s life. I’d’ve given him all of it, if I thought he’d accept.”
Dutch’s jaw twitches.
“You know why we need that money,” he says in a low voice. “What we’ve been workin’ for, all this time.”
“Oh, I remember it well, Dutch,” he says. “I’m just wonderin’ when you forgot it.”
They stare at each other for what feels like eons. Hosea feels a cough coming on. He tries to resist it, to push it down but once again, his body betrays him. What he thinks will be a short spell turns into something long and terrible. His eyes feel fuzzy around the edges and he barely notices an arm coming around him, guiding him to sit down, the handkerchief pressed into his hand and then the hand guiding his to press it against his mouth.
He coughs for an eternity, lungs straining and eyes leaking tears until finally, it subsides. He feels Dutch’s hand rubbing up and down his back, gentle as anything. The way his other hand still holds his and the handkerchief up to his face.
He clears his throat, feeling a lump of phlegm and other nasty business come up into his mouth and quickly spits it into the handkerchief before pulling it away. It’s the usual bit of brown and black, some fleshy bit he doesn’t care to look at for very long. He can tell Dutch can’t look away, for how his hand begins to shake a little. Hosea jerks his hand away and crumples up the handkerchief, hiding the discharge from view.
“Thanks,” he manages to rasp out.
“Of course,” Dutch says, voice soft for the first time in a long while.
He almost sounds like the young man he was, all those years ago on the road outside of Chicago. Suddenly, Hosea feels so damn tired. He allows himself a moment of weakness, leans into Dutch’s body the way he might have, once upon a time. It kills him that they still fit fairly well together, all these years later. When this past month has made him feel more alone than he ever has in his life, fighting to keep their boy alive.
“What are we doin’, Dutch?” he asks wearily.
Perhaps Dutch too is moved by this weakness. Maybe they’re both feeling the same sort of mortality that all men come to know, as they grow older and their strength leaves them. For whatever the reason, Dutch tucks his head over Hosea’s, as he did when they shared a bed more frequently. Presses a quick kiss to his hair and stares off at some distant point Hosea can’t quite make out.
“I don’t know,” he says, and Hosea feels the rumble of the syllables in the throat that is pressed to his ear than he understands the words.
Like so many other things today, Dutch sounds more honest than he has in years.
Hosea does not have the strength to yell at him more right now, does not have the strength to pull Dutch’s head back on the right path. He doesn’t have the strength to deal with the likes of Micah Bell, who is likely the source of the poison that seems to have twisted his long-time lover and oldest friend’s mind to the confusing, unfamiliar mess it is today.
But for now, they sit together like they used to. Hosea doesn’t mind feeling small. And outside the waxed canvas walls of the tent, he can hear the chatter of the girls as they get to the laundry, Susan’s bark as she tells Bill to go and make himself useful. He can hear Arthur and John arguing about something new, though their words are indistinct. The faint rumble of Charles trying to control them. The faint strum of a guitar, the giggle of a child and a bark of a dog along the lake shore. He never thought he’d hear some of those sounds again.
For now, this is enough.
Notes:
and thats the end of the fic, folks :)
thank you so much for reading, for your kudos and your lovely comments. it was a treat to return to this series and be so warmly received despite my long absence. i generally dont have the energy to write as much as i used to but i do have a few drafts (for this fandom and others) lying around that i add to here and there so hopefully, those will be coming out at some point. the next fic in this series will either be an obligatory arthur recovery fic or A Short Walk in a Pretty Town fic. i feel obliged to warn you that events past this will divert from canon quite a bit, as i am in the habit of writing "fix-its" though canon itself is its own form of good obviously, otherwise we wouldn't all be here.
if anyone's curious as to why dutch seems to be a bit different around hoseas versus the rest of the gang, ive always sort of imagined he's more of an actor than hosea is. hosea lets people see parts of him, arthur and john more than others, whereas dutch feels as if he must constantly be playing a part and he has decided that part is one of a confident, charismatic leader. the way he portrays himself to the gang has always felt like a desperate man trying so badly to be correct about something, a dreamer clinging to the dream he's had since he was a child and now years later, cannot reconcile with the fact that that dream is slipping from his fingers faster and faster. he has a need to be important, to feel needed. and i do think in canon, dutch did give a shit about the people he brought into the gang, once upon a time. in this series, i seek to portray that to the best of my ability, and frequently his softer side comes out around hosea because hosea already knows all of his flaws and unlike susan, will call him out on shit.
anyways, i'll see you all next time, whenever that may be. if you live in the northern hemisphere, i hope you are all warm and cozy during this time of year and if you're from the southern hemisphere, i wish you all a very "do not pass away from heatstroke" (that last bit is directed at a very specific person, you know who you are). a happy new year to all :)