Some things about this story:
1. I have an essay due tomorrow that's supposed to be 10 pages long. I have not started it.
2. I blasted "Innocence" by Madeon while listening to this song
3. This was inspired by a small ficlet of sorts that arthurs-lumbago posted about on Tumblr that I added on to
4. I nearly shed some manly-ass tears while writing this.
The forest was quiet. What should've been a night of stars and sounds had become cold and silent, a world submerged. Clouds had long since rolled in and eagerly covered the moon, a promise of rain held in their depths. Shadows shifted around, stalking anything that moved and retreating back into the safety of the trees when they found nothing to hunt.
Charles wasn't lost. Always been too good with directions to find himself in a place he simply couldn't find his way through. He was walking now. His legs were so sore from riding Taima all the way from up north and needed a break from just galloping, hunting, and sleeping for five straight days. Silence pressed over him like a vice, heavy and weightless at the same time. He tugged Taima's reins gently and pulled her closer to his side. In part for her safety, and in part for his. Charles could still recall every single wolf attack this side of Annesburg with mind-numbing clarity. They were night hunters, and without the protection of someone else besides him, Charles felt almost as naked as the day he was born.
"C'mon, girl," he spoke softly, soothingly. Again, half for her and half for him. Taima whinnied—the only sound for miles, seemingly—and made to keep pace with him. Charles smiled to himself at his horse. His faithful, trusty horse. Been as much of a friend to him as any of the gang. Hard to believe he hadn't worked her hooves to dust just heading back south.
He shrugged his coat back on over his shoulders to cover up his exposed collarbone, fighting down a shiver. It was so cold that apparently even the Murfrees decided that anything was better than wandering the woods in the dead of November looking for fools to toy with. Charles certainly couldn't find it in him to care but also found no reason to test his luck. He tugged on Taima's reins again, this time harder. "Let's pick it up," he said. Taima followed, the cart he had hitched her to cutting deep tracks in the late autumn mud.
The path turned upwards. Charles had to tempt his horse with one of his last peaches in order to get her up the ridge without protest. They were close now: had to be. Beaver Hollow wasn't the most secure hideout that they'd ever had the privilege to lay low in. Too close to the road. Too close to Annesburg for Charles to really feel comfortable. People wandered in and out of the woods far more often than they ever did at other camps even with the Murfrees breathing down their necks. More than once, Charles had to shoo some dumb teenagers away from the river because Dutch was too paranoid they would go blabbing back in Butcher's Creek. Charles had protested, John and Arthur too. "They're dumb kids," they had said. "They just want to fish," they had said. Dutch had none of it. And when Micah shoved the barrel of his revolver down some poor kid's throat when they were on guard duty, Charles would've gladly given his position in the gang and more if it meant that he got to grab that greasy snake by the collar and beat him into next week or further.
But he didn't.
Charles didn't know who he hated more: Micah for threatening that kid, or himself for doing nothing to stop it.
Unconsciously, Charles' eyes drifted towards one of the bigger trees on the ridge above them. It was there that he'd often play guard of the camp. A big, scary man with wild hair and dark skin armed to the teeth? It'd be enough to scare even the most bullheaded of men out of the woods. But now, the tree had been riddled with bullets, the trunk's bark ripped away like a peeling burn to reveal soft wood underneath. Charles forced himself to move forward again when Taima nosed him. She was looking for more food, or perhaps some comfort. He ran a hand down her forehead for the brief relief it would give her. They moved forward, as steady as time itself.
On his entire way back down to New Hanover, Charles tried to imagine what he'd find back here. All the papers he'd read along the way said nothing of the conflict, only the results. For all he knew, the place could still be swarming with Pinkertons. Or Murfrees. Or hell, even some other gang. Charles was a good shot but he wasn't a one-man army. If he was outnumbered, he'd have to find a way to sneak around.
He was hyping himself up for a fight so much when he finally did pull into the clearing, he was almost disappointed how little remained of it. The earth smelt of blood and smoke and faintly of death. Tattered tents, some still half taken down, were scattered about here and there. What remained of the campfire had burned to ashes a long time ago. If there were authorities who'd died on these grounds, then they'd been long since cleared away. The mouth of the cave they camped in front of opened wide before him, a dark mouth ready and willing to swallow him whole. It all seemed so sinister now, Charles thought privately to himself, staring at the remains of the gang's biggest failure. The place itself seemed evil, malicious; that cave could whisper sweet nothings into the ears of anyone who'd listen. How did they ever think that staying here was a good idea?
It's all in the past. He'd repeated that mantra to himself like a madman all the way back down from where he'd left the Wapiti. It's all in the past. Just keep moving forward. Do what can be done here and focus on making things right. And damnit, Charles was going to make it right if it was the last thing he ever did.
But it was all scorched earth now. Where there should've been dead bodies was just nothing but barren soil and not much else. Taima neighed somewhere behind him (until then, Charles hadn't even noticed how far he'd strayed into camp), reminding him that she was still pulling that wagon he'd stolen from Annesburg a few hours ago. He'd brought it because, in truth, he didn't really know what he'd find. Dutch? Sadie? Arthur? John? God forbid, Abigail or Tilly? God forbid even more, Jack? But there was nothing here. Nothing but the ghosts of the not-so-distant past that desperately clung to the clearing like claws sunken into a rabbit.
Charles began sifting through the wreckage, wondering if he'd find anything salvageable. One or two things stuck out to him, though admittedly it wasn't much. There was a hat that was unmistakably Javier's, because who else would wear bowlers as often as he did? He'd found a book or two that Mary-Beth must've forgotten to take with her before she left. Under the burned remains of one of the tables he found a flask that surely belonged to Micah. He'd even stumbled across one of Arthur's old belongings in the remains of his tent: a pink flower incased in a small glass globe. Charles never understood why that stubborn beast of a man lugged it around everywhere he went but it hardly mattered anymore. With everything he found, Charles brought it back to the cart and loaded them in. Except the flask. Charles took a moment for himself to see how far he could chuck the thing off of the ravine.
He didn't actually expect to find a body anymore, but it seemed fate had more in store for him than just a few bits of memorabilia.
Dutch's tent had half-collapsed on the corpse of Susan Grimshaw, so Charles stumbled upon it without any warning. When he saw her, he recoiled backwards, gasping so hard he swore he must've cracked a rib or two. She looked as haughty in death as she did in life. Her blush and lip rouge did well to hide the truth of her demise from the rest of her face, but her hands told the rest of that story without needing to look further. She'd been shot in the chest—Charles had no idea if it was by a Pinkerton or by someone from the gang—and died choking on her own blood, clutching at her ruptured airway. His eyes drifted to the pump shotgun at her side, and his heart was set somewhat at ease knowing that she'd at least gone down with her teeth bared, ready for a fight.
Charles had barely interacted with Grimshaw, and those exchanges were never particularly fond memories for him. When he'd first fell in with the gang, she'd tugged him over to the cleaning basin by the ear, thrust a bar of soap in his hands, and declared that he wouldn't get a lick of food until she could see herself in his bare skin. But it was that tenacity that Charles admired about her. Susan Grimshaw, as fierce as a mother cat and about ten times more dangerous. She'd rather throw herself into the jaws of danger than see any of this happen to her family.
She didn't deserve this, the thought tasted like vinegar on his tongue. None of them did.
His heart heavy, Charles hacked away what remained of Dutch's tent and used it to cover Grimshaw. He lifted her up as gently as possible and carried her over to the cart, fending Taima's curious nose away from Grimshaw's corpse, and placed her in the back. He went back and fetched the shotgun, intending to bury it with her. A fighter in life, a fighter in death; she earned that much.
All around Beaver Hollow, a myriad of untouched footprints decorated the ground. Several pairs of them led inside the cave, to the point where Charles was wondering just what on earth went down inside of there. Was that where everyone had disappeared to? How many of those footprints where his friends, and how many of them were not? Once he was certain that everything had been picked through and that Grimshaw's corpse wasn't going anywhere, Charles grabbed his bow, a lantern, and his hatchet, and headed into the cave to solve this mystery for himself.
Deeper and deeper he ventured, lost in the silence of it all. Bullets that'd nicked the stone had fallen, useless, to the floor of the tunnels. Set by set, the footprints broke off to check nooks and crannies he hadn't even seen, until Charles was just following two lone pairs deeper and deeper into the caves. They climbed small ledges and skirted around thin crevices, keeping pace with each other.
Charles suddenly stopped for a moment, raising his lantern towards a small dip in the rock that formed a natural alcove. There, sitting disused and likely never to be used again, was one of the gang's wagons. If Charles were being honest with himself, he was sure it was the same one he, Arthur, and Hosea rode in out of Colter, peacefully making conversation as they wandered through the Heartlands on their way to Horseshoe Overlook. Peace seemed like a foreign concept these days: a false promise. But it was one of the last times that Charles could look back on where he had actually felt…well, safe. The way it should be.
But that wasn't what had drawn his attention. What had done that was the wooden chest below the wagon that had been half-pulled out and then abandoned. Charles approached it, set the lantern down, and tested the lock still on it. It didn't budge, of course, but his hatchet fixed that up proper. In one swift motion, Charles broke the lock off the chest and kicked it open. He knew what was in it before he even tore open the sack it was all contained in.
Inside was everything the gang had ever collected over the past ten months. Days of working and thieving and killing. Four camps' worth of blood and bodies and here it all was, staring back at Charlies, mocking him. Strands of pearls and opals that the girls nicked off of unsuspecting necks. Belt buckles and wedding rings that Arthur or Bill or Sean had taken from the bodies of those who no longer had any use for them. Full bars of gold and massive hunks of emeralds and rubies and what even looked like a diamond. Several gold teeth: Uncle's specialty, or so he claimed. And bills. Bills upon bills upon bills upon bills, enough bills to settle a man's debts, his children's debts, his grandchild's debts. All the gang's efforts—what they had lived and some had even died for—was all here, abandoned. And it was more than Charles could take.
Rage made the edges of his vision go red. He spun around and his gaze fell upon a stash of alcohol tucked away in the corner. Dutch's personal stash, surely, even though Charles didn't take the man for a heavy drinker. Charles moved with the same purpose that he'd felt for the past five days and seized the first two handles he could get his hands on. They covered the bills and the jewelry and the teeth, one by one by one, until Charles had run out of alcohol to pour. He fished a box of matches out of his pockets, lit several at once, and tossed them in.
The flames appeared with a blast of heat and light, quickly consuming the chest and its contents. And Charles watched, empty bottles littering the ground next to him, lost in the chaos he'd caused.
"You've gotta love yourself a fire;" Swanson had said that once at Clemen's Point one night. Hah. At the moment, fire was the one thing that Charles hated more than anything else in the world. More than Micah. More than Agent Milton. Maybe even more than the men who'd drove him and his father off his mother's land when he was still small.
But eventually, the smoke became too thick and the alcove became too hot and Charles forced himself to move again. He followed the footsteps further and further, higher and higher, up cliffs, down ledges. Ghosts of people perhaps long lost to the badlands by now. Charles followed the phantoms of those he knew until he came across a ladder leading back to the surface.
Up he ascended until he came out the back entrance of Beaver Hollow. Curls of smoke followed him out, the stench having already sunken into his clothes. The air felt damper, meaning that those thunderstorms weren't too far off. As if on cue, a flash of blinding light split the heavens above him open and nearly sent Charles scrambling to the ground in surprise. A moment later, thunder rattled the skyline, and the trees appeared to shake under the weight of its ferocious roar.
The footsteps continued downward, leaving soft imprints in the moss. Charles brushed himself off, took a deep breath to steady himself, and moved to follow.
Boot prints turned into horse prints—many, many horse prints—once they hit the path. For a moment, Charles considered backtracking so he could retrieve Taima, but he thought better for it as he turned his gaze skywards. The clouds were now rushing through the atmosphere at breakneck speeds, rushing and spilling over each other like the rapids of a wild river. They moved lower still, and thunder cracked ominously overhead once again. If he headed back now, then the traces of footprints would fade into mud and get lost to Roanoke Ridge forever. So Charles gathered up the rest of his wits and made to follow onward, his lantern the only light seemingly for miles, the smell of burning riches keeping pace with him like his very own omen of death.
The hoofprints must've been going at a non-stop gallop, judging by the spacing between each movement. The ground was still soft and mailable, and it showed each step, each struggle, each imprint of the bodies that'd been shot clean off their mounts as they hit the mud. Charles broke into a light jog, not fast enough to be a sprint but just quick enough to be sustainable. Maybe he wanted to solve this mystery as fast as he could. Or maybe he just wanted to get it over with. Whichever way he felt didn't matter.
Well, it did. Charles just wouldn't find out until the road turned upwards back into the hills and was met with a gruesome sight.
Just before the ground turned back to stone and got steeper, the trees broke away into a large clearing that sloped upwards back into the hills. The rocks were dripping with dried blood, cutting red trails down the slope like the mountain itself was bleeding. And lying in the middle of it all were two horses, their corpses being pecked at by turkey vultures.
Charles unsheathed his hatchet and quickly advanced on the birds. "Go, get out!" he shouted, swinging the blade around in an effort to chase them away. It worked; their beaks shining crimson, the vultures unfurled their wings and took to the air. They soared in lazy circles above their meals, and Charles watched as they climbed higher and higher and higher until they hung suspended in midair. There was no doubt they'd swoop back in the moment he'd left and try to reclaim their meal the moment he continued on the trail. Charles put the hatchet away with a muted sigh, then returned his attention to the dead horses.
Old Boy lay the furthest away. He'd been shot a lot but the one through the eye had probably made it a relatively painless death. Charles could see the wound from here, the blood crusted around the empty socket. The poor thing was probably dead before it hit the ground. John's saddle and its' contents had been left abandoned, suggesting a hasty getaway from a rider who still had use of both of their legs.
Achilles hadn't fared so well. The poor thing was riddled with rifle shots. In the chest, in the neck: one had even scored across his nose, making the white blaze clot with a thin trail of red. Charles' stomach gave an almighty heave against his ribs as he bent down and stroked Achilles' mane. Arthur had loved this horse. Probably would've taken all those bullets and more if it meant that Achilles got out of this mess alive. To have to leave him there…Charles thought of Taima, all alone at Beaver Hollow with Grimshaw's cold body, and shuddered. His eyes flicked upwards to the ridge where the blood trailed from and he understood. They'd ridden here and been ambushed. Led into what could've been their deaths. You don't have much of a chance to mourn your steeds with Pinkertons raining hell down on you.
All this pain. All this death. All for nothing, too—Charles had made sure of that now, with all their earnings going up in flames. This wasn't a mystery he wanted to solve anymore. This was a nightmare that he desperately wanted to wake up from. Another clap of thunder, as if the heavens agreed with him.
"Rest well, boy," Charles murmured. Achilles' eyes had already been closed, but it was as much of a last rite as Charles could ever hope to give. He stood up, shaken to his bones, and gave the same blessings to Old Boy before making his way up the ridge and back into the hills.
Charles followed Arthur and John's footprints, because who else could they be at this point? They became erratic, unsure, probably frantic in the midst of all this chaos that had erupted around them, until they came to another stop. It was here that the two pairs of footprints, once moving so close together in those caves that they could've been brothers, broke off. One pair headed south, another further up the mountain. Charles had no doubt that it was John who had disappeared into the trees. John, who still had a family to take care of. John, who still had so much to live for. Arthur had probably forced him to go through bared teeth (Charles couldn't possibly imagine Arthur pulling a gun on John and forcing him to go for Abigail and Jack, but knowing how bullheaded they both were, it certainly wasn't out of the realm of possibility). And Charles found himself mourning all over again, but for what, he didn't know. He turned upwards and followed Arthur's lone pair of boot prints through the dust.
But suddenly the trail changed. Where there should've been footprints, there was now a large disturbance in the surrounding rocks coupled with a spray of blood, like someone had gotten their nose broken. The entire area was disturbed and thrown about in the aftermath of a scuffle, but there was no other sign of the fighting having continued anywhere around here. Charles searched up, down, and around the top of the rock face until he finally looked off the ledge in curiosity. There, about ten feet below him, was a small outcrop a little way down. Careful not to drop directly down unless he wanted a broken spine, Charles carefully climbed down onto the ledge and was met with the most horrifying sight yet.
Blood. Blood everywhere. It seemed like you couldn't see the ground for blood—that's how much covered the earth, sprayed against the rock wall, dotted the small poppy flowers that struggled against all odds to grow on this forgotten little cliffside. The smell of it all was overwhelming, as if the mountain itself had been cut open like a pig for slaughter. He could taste it, even: a familiar coppery taste in his mouth. All around him was a struggle that Charles understood to his very core, his very essence. A slight wind stirred the flowers as Charles stared at them, overcome with a sort of melancholy he couldn't place for the life of him. The fight that had occurred here had been both poignant and pointless at the same time—a struggle that would only end in tragedy, and end in tragedy it did.
A piece of metal caught his eye. A revolver lay at the edge of the clearing, tarnished and useless. He stooped down and picked it up, feeling the cold metal in his fingers. It was one of Micah's revolvers, because after all, Micah was the only member of the gang who used double action revolvers. Days left out in the nasty New Hanover weather had ruined the thing beyond repair.
Images flashed through Charles eyes as he held the gun in his hands. Micah using this gun to threaten Milton all the way back before they cleared out of Clemens' Point. Micah casually loading and reloading this gun whenever he had nothing else he should've been doing, showing more care for it than he ever showed for any member of camp. Micah cutting down dozens of Strawberry residents in order to get this gun back (Charles could still clearly picture the revulsion on Arthur's face as he recalled the story, almost overwhelmed by his own fury towards those actions). Micah shoving the end of this gun down the throat of a fourteen-year-old boy. Micah sneering as the kid began sobbing, sure that he would lose his life over a simple mistake he wasn't aware he was making. Micah using this gun to beat and threaten and hurt and terrorize and kill: some sort of Devil incarnate.
Charles screamed. All his anger and frustration and disgust and shame escaped his body in a rush of air that scorched his lungs and throat on the way out. His fist tightened around the handle of the revolver and he flung it with all his strength off the mountain. He watched it sail through the air and inevitably drop into the forests of Roanoke Ridge below. The thunder boomed its approval overhead.
That was the second thing of Micah's that he had thrown off of a cliff tonight, Charles thought with some satisfaction. The next thing had better be Micah himself.
But where was Micah? Or Dutch? Or Arthur, for that matter?
There was really only one way to go from here. Upwards, to a small outcropping where the rock had eroded away into a small overlook sheltered from the elements. Thick trails of dust cut through the dirt, like someone had dragged themselves up this way. Charles moved with dreamlike slowness, because in his heart, he already knew what he would find here. He took a few steps and there he was.
"Arthur," the word fell from his mouth as gentle as the beginnings of a snowfall. Charles had to lean his weight against the rock, suddenly unable to find feeling in his legs.
The corpse of Arthur Morgan was not a pretty thing. Five days of cold air had preserved it well, but it didn't do anything to change the outcome. He was dead, dead and gone. Arthur had died with his back against the side of the mountain, overlooking the woods beneath them. He had changed clothes since Charles had last seen him. Back in his blue work shirt and leather jacket that was still stained pitch-black from their assault on the oil fields. His face was beaten to hell, so overlaid with purple and green bruises that it was hard to tell if it was truly him or not. That old frayed gambler hat that he loved so much was missing, possibly just another casualty of the commotion. His tussled brown hair stuck up in strange clumps that were bound together with mud and blood. His knuckles were split open as a memento to the hell of a fight that he had put up against Micah. One hand rested on his chest, the other dangled off the edge of the cliff. His head was lolled to one side, staring at nothing. Blue-green eyes, once mirroring the humor and good spirits of those he fought so hard to care for and protect, had dulled to a steely-gray in death, like cold water held within the depths of a stare.
Charles didn't cry. He didn't sink to his knees, nor pound his fist into the cliff wall. He didn't wail about how life wasn't fair and how Arthur was probably the last member of the van der Linde Gang that deserved this kind of fate. He just stood there and paid his distant respects with a sorrow he honestly didn't expect from himself. Arthur was a hard man to get through to and an even harder man to understand; even after a year of knowing him, Charles felt as though he had barely scratched the surface of what that stubborn outlaw was truly like. Arthur was a man who'd made bad choices, suffered from them, and then spent the last few days of his life truly trying to do better by himself, by all of them. All of Arthur's anger and pain were just something Charles had never found the courage to try and delve into, and now it was all wasted. Gone like dew in the morning sun.
…The morning sun…
Charles perked his head up at the realization, his braid swinging off his shoulder. Arthur's body was staring due east, out into the horizon. Even in death, those glassy lidded eyes were indeed focused on something, not nothing. Resolute to the end.
Arthur Morgan had died looking at the sunrise.
And despite himself, a broken laugh escaped Charles' lips.
Arthur had once proudly proclaimed during a round of poker that if he died, he wanted to face the setting sun. And now here he was, in the exact opposite situation he wanted to be in, with his final dawn hitting his face and his last breath flowing out of his lungs before it all sort of faded away. What a strange yet beautiful sort of irony.
You always were full of surprises, Arthur, Charles found himself thinking bittersweetly.
Charles gave himself another minute or two to gather his scattered feelings before moving again. He pushed himself upright and approached Arthur's body. For a heartbeat, he considered shaking it, as if Arthur was simply exhausted and taking a rest. Charles' hand was already halfway to Arthur's shoulder before he stopped himself. Instead, he moved for the eyes, finally shutting them for good. Charles shook his head in a pointless attempt to clear his thoughts, then took up Arthur's body and slung it as gently as he could over his shoulder.
And just like that, the skies opened up and the rain came down. Gently at first, a few drops to wet the stones, and then more, and more, and more, until it was pouring down overhead.
The way back down the mountain was difficult even without the hindrance of the rain. Charles took it slow, determined not to stumble or fall should he accidentally drop Arthur's mangled corpse on the way down. Time ticked by, bit by agonizing bit, but Charles eventually made it back to the clearing where Old Boy and Achilles lay. Then, it was time to go back to Beaver Hollow: to Taima and Miss. Grimshaw and everything else that had been left behind. Charles wandered into the deluge, Arthur over his shoulders, disappearing into the shadows of Roanoke Ridge.
Thinking that he probably wasn't going to be able to easily take Arthur's body through the caves behind the camp, Charles opted for the long way around, blazing his own trail through the undergrowth back down to the river and up again. The banks were already swelling due to the downpour, so Charles tried to find as even ground as he could and keep his pace as steady as possible. Brown water lapped hungrily only several feet below, the rain making it bolder, brasher, far more feral than it ever could've been otherwise. Like it had a mind of its own, wanting to make Arthur and Charles' final resting places to be watery ones.
But Charles' path eventually turned upwards again. He huffed and puffed the whole way back up the ravine, the strain of carrying literal dead weight starting to get to fatigue him. He almost threw Arthur's corpse to the ground when he made it back to camp but stopped himself at the last moment. Instead Charles just trudged, cold, waterlogged, and so, so tired, back to Taima.
She had remained where she was without moving a muscle, even with all the rain coming down. A good horse all the way the end. Charles ran his hand along her body as he passed as a way to show gratitiude, and she snorted but didn't make any other sound besides.
Charles laid Arthur's body next to Grimshaw's, then crossed camp for the rest of the ruins. He picked out the only other tent that had remained in one-ish piece—John's tent, ironically enough—and started chopping off another sizable piece to cover the second corpse in the back. Eventually, Charles freed a decent chunk of canvas, hurried back over to the cart, and draped it over Arthur's corpse. He then stepped back to regard the fruits of his labor, brushing the chunks of sopping hair that had fallen out of his braid out of his face.
He felt like some sort of new-age Grim Reaper, here to pick up the rest of the souls that he'd forgotten about. Arthur and Grimshaw lay side-by-side: brothers, partners, family. And suddenly, an old memory resurfaced in Charles' memory, faded and dusted but apropos all the same. He fished around in his jacket, his satchel, and his pants before finally pulling out four quarters. Charles peeled back the coverings and placed one quarter over each of their eyes, four in total.
He remembered Hosea doing the same when Davey Callander died after Blackwater. Colter felt like years ago, and just thinking about it made Charles' bones ache with all that had passed since then. But it felt…right, in some way. Bookended. A beginning and an end, as all things should have.
But now he needed to find a shovel, a place to hunker down while the storm passed, and proper burial spots for Arthur and Grimshaw.
And a place to sleep.
Because Charles was exhausted.
So, so exhausted.
He clambered into the driver's seat of the cart and took up Taima's reins, giving them a quick snap. She moved without protesting, probably as eager to get out of the rain as Charles was. And so they went, leaving Beaver Hollow for the last time. The cart tossed and turned like a fussy child in the poor weather conditions; Charles occasionally spared a glance back to make sure there wasn't too much damage being done. Thunder dogged their journey through the darkness, and Charles swore the smell of all that smoke still clung to him like spirits he would never be able to shake.