Dutch jerked his head after Rane, pulling Arthur to one side. Hercule and his men were slowly sitting back down, their eyes following her, holstering their guns. She could be seen faintly in the setting sunlight, walking quickly, arms swinging and hair flying in the breeze, sand flung up at her heels.

"Arthur, what in the hell is going on with that girl? Tell me. I can't have her actin' that way around these boys, otherwise we ain't never gonna get back home."

Arthur looked at Dutch in the low light and considered just telling him everything right then, consequences be damned. There was a time when he was a younger man that Dutch would have already intuited it, truth be told, and helped him where he could. But that was a lot of years behind them and Dutch was . . . what was the word Rane had used? Compromised. Though how or why, Arthur didn't know. He felt it in the heart of him, hateful as it was. If he told Dutch he was dying, there was liable to be worse trouble. He'd find no concession or consort in this man, not anymore. Not now, maybe not ever again. It was painful to consider. He'd never had a closer friend, and whatever fundamental thing that had changed felt permanent and unyielding.

"What makes ya think I know?"

Dutch linked his fingers in his belt and laughed, shaking his head. "Arthur, for somebody so smart, you sure are fuckin' stupid."

Arthur gave Dutch a wounded look. "Well, hell, that ain't very nice. You tryin' to hurt my feelings or somethin'?"

"When have I ever been nice?"

"Fair enough."

"What the hell is goin' on with her? Your girl? She's pissin' off our friends and I can't have that."

Arthur laughed. "She ain't my girl, Dutch, I don't think she's anybody's girl. Hell, I don't even think she's her own girl sometimes. She'd kick her own ass if she could half the damn time."

Dutch laughed. "Oh, she's yours alright, and I think you know it. That girl's yours to the gills. I believe she'd kill armies on your behalf, my friend, as the saying goes."

Arthur shifted, uncomfortable. "That ain't true."

"Yeah it is." Dutch shook his head, grinning. "You know it, same as everybody else. She's about as in love as I ever seen a woman -"

Arthur scoffed. "Thought you didn't want us doin' none of that?"

"I didn't, but I may as well ask the sun to set in the East, way you boys carry on. Bunch of lovesick fools, the lot of you. Show you bunch a pretty girl and I'll show you a crowd of dipshits, I guess."

"Big talk comin' from the man who stole off Molly O'Shea."

"Yeah, well she ain't quite the same thing, I think you know," said Dutch.

"The hell you mean?"

Dutch shrugged, shifting his weight. "Molly don't love me, Arthur. That's the difference."

"Sure she does." Arthur gestured roughly. "Hell, that woman would kill for you."

"Nah, she loves what I stand for, maybe. A bed and a hot meal every now and then. Freedom, I guess. And she's jealous. Jealousy ain't love. It ain't the same thing. You ain't quite as dumb as you let on and I know you understand."

"Well, forgive me for not takin' your romantic advice -"

"Say what ya will, but Susan stuck around after. That's a good sign."

Arthur shrugged, conceding this.

Dutch gestured toward the forest. "That girl loves you, Arthur. She sees you full where ya stand and loves ya anyways, even as fucked up as we all are around ya. That's a rare thing, my friend. 'Specially for a girl that beautiful and a son of a bitch ugly as you."

"There you go tryin' to hurt my feelings again."

"Well." Dutch grasped Arthur's shoulder. "I can't say I approve but I'm happy for ya."

"I just think you got the lay of it sideways, is all. She just turned up a week ago. You gotta let them things cook."

Dutch threw his head back and laughed heartily. Micah was eyeing them from beside the fire, chewing a piece of bread and smirking.

"She looks at ya the way a drowning man looks at a glass of water. And you can't hardly tear your eyes away from her, same as when she first showed up. I never thought I'd live to see the day somebody laid you low worse than Mary did, but here we are."

"I don't know what you're talkin' about."

"Arthur Morgan, you're good with them irons on your hip but when it comes to lyin', you're bombed out worse than any man I ever saw."

Arthur laughed in spite of himself, shaking his head. Dutch took him by the shoulders.

"I ain't hollerin' at ya over it, Arthur. I'm happy for it. Truly I am."

Arthur looked at him warily. "She don't think of me that way. You got it wrong. That's all I'm sayin'."

"Oh, quit it." Dutch shook him gently, long-suffering. "Forget about it. Pretend I'm a goddamned idiot if you wanna, and I'll pretend I don't see that you're thinkin' about her every second you ain't asleep, and round and round it'll go. What I wanna know right now is why she's actin' this way."

Arthur shrugged, conceding. "She got some bad news last night. I think she's takin' it kinda hard."

"What kind?"

Arthur looked at Dutch a long time, his blue eyes flicking between Dutch's brown ones, mouth pursed.

"I dunno," he said at last. "I don't pretend to understand those people, they're strange. Maybe somethin' one of 'em said."

Dutch nodded, clutching his belt. He accepted it from the first, unquestioning, and Arthur had a moment to reflect on it with a sinking heart. Dutch wasn't as sharp as he was once, not sharp enough to see Arthur's lie for what it was, even so badly delivered. Hell, the man was dull as rusted iron. Whatever had happened to him, it was bone deep.

"Alright, well go make it right with her. And I'll go make it right with them." Dutch gestured vaguely, looking put out. "Make up some excuse, I guess."

"Who are those boys anyways, Dutch?"

"They're rebels workin' against some man or other, and we need 'em to get off this piece of shit island," said Dutch shortly, shaking his head. He dropped his voice. "I won't pretend I favor their cause, because between us I could give a shit less, same as your girl, but until we get away from here I'm gonna have to play nice. You understand?"

Arthur nodded. "'Course."

"And that means she's gonna have to play nice, too. Drunk or sober, she can't be sayin' shit like that. We'll be run off. Then we'll be stuck, and I can't have that. 'Specially with Javier and John locked up. Without these boys they'll rot there."

"I know it."

"Go and fix it. She'll listen to you more than she'll listen to any of us, son. Much as you hate to admit it."

Arthur cast Dutch a grim smirk. "So you say." He hitched his belt up. "I'll talk her down. Go make it right with your friends."

Dutch spread his arms, stepping backward and smiling, looking handsome and amused in the low light. "What else do I do better?"

RANE strode through the forest and to the beach, her thighs brushing past the seagrass, and reached the surf. Her gait was unsteady but she made it to the shore, yanking her boots off and tossing them to the sand behind her, rolling her trousers up her ankles roughly, stumbling, sand flying up at her heels. She walked to the water, looking out over it, drunk and wavering, tears falling from her face, her mouth pursed. The world seemed strange before her eyes, and now that she was a day away from it the grief in the center of her chest was making itself well known, given body and strength with the fullness of time. She'd shouted at a stranger for it, tried to fight him, but he meant nothing to her, truly. The knowledge of what Arthur had said to her last night had overtaken the world, and nothing else seemed terribly important. Not Hercule and his little island revolution, not Dutch and his bunch of piss-poor outlaws, not Javier sitting in prison someplace, not even being stuck on this shitty island. It all paled in comparison. Arthur Morgan, though . . . he mattered very much. The memory of Sirius, and mourning him, had become more real than it had in years, grown sharp teeth to remind her how she'd bled.

He's dying. The words rang in her mind as relentless as a church bell. He's dying. He'll die the same way Sirius did. You picked a losing side, just like always. You picked the horse at the back of the race. How come you always seem to do that, huh? You've got the opposite of the Midas touch, girl. Everything you want turns to shit instead of gold, especially the men you fall in love with.

Rane scoffed quietly, shaking her head. "I didn't pick this. If I'd picked I'd be alone."

The voice of her father made its way into her mind, as it always seemed to. Gods, but he was nothing if not noisy and bothersome, especially while she was drinking.

You don't get to choose who you love. You just love 'em. If we could choose, I'd never have loved your mom and been exiled. You wouldn't even be here.

Rane, her voice low and lilting and very drunk: "Shut up, dad."

Wade didn't, true to form. He's mortal and he'll die, same as any of them. That's what mortals do. They die. That's kind of part of the mortal bit. If not now, sooner rather than later. Same as Sirius. He's been sick a while. You saw it in his eyes, even if he denied it. Maybe weeks, maybe months. Think back to your school days and remember what they told about it, about that disease he says he has.

"No." Rane's voice was low, the surf moving around her feet and her hazel eyes on the horizon over the sea. "I won't think about that."

Sure you will. You can't quit thinking about it any more than the tides can quit coming in. I know nothing if I don't know you, girl, surely not. You're my own very kin, blood of my blood.

Rane's hand passed over her face, feeling the tears dampening her cheeks and hating them, the evening sun setting casting its fiery light over her face, making her beautiful in an almost surreal way, her eyes flitting over the horizon beneath her dark brows.

You remember it. You do. Remember it now, so that you might know the size of it. Maybe you oughta.

"Pulmonary. Transmissive." Rane gulped. "Fatal."

That's the very one. Wade Roth's voice was as cool and unforgiving as ever in her head, without sympathy, bearing only facts. I suppose he knows it as well as you do, too, and that's why he hid it away from you, for fear of running you off. These people are about as dumb as when they were thrust into this world from between their mothers' legs. Arthur got stuck with a tough hand, and he's gonna play it silent, because that's the kinda man he is. You got vaccinated, because in your time people know better. But not now, in whatever time this is. You get to suffer in other ways, though, don't ya?

Rane coughed out a sob, grasping her throat with both hands, her brows knitted over her eyes and her mouth turned down, the surf moving around her ankles, the red sun on her face. The horror of this truth was almost too much, not least of all beneath the weight of wine.

Your fate won't be as quick. Not as merciful. Matter of fact let's be honest, sometimes you think you weren't brought back here as an act of grace, do ya? You think it was an act of retribution. You think you're being punished, the way the sinners in hell are punished, slow and steady. You think this is your hell. That this is what immortality really means for the likes of you. No rest, and no being with the ones you love. No happy hollow for you and Sirius Black, and likely none for you and Arthur Morgan, either.

Rane shook her head, a sob racking from her chest. She had never been a crying woman, but it seemed that drink and grief had drawn it from her more these past few days than in the last twenty years of her life.

"There is no hell," she murmured.

Say it if you wanna, but you're in it. My girl, my only girl. I wish you didn't have to suffer. That's the truth. Don't I love ya.

In that moment, echo in her mind or not, he was so close that Rane felt she could have reached out and touched him, and even drunk she would have killed to feel his arms around her. She missed him, suddenly and fiercely, and she shut her eyes, the sea breeze cool on her forehead, her brow knitted, tears still spilling from her eyes into the ocean at her ankles, washing away with the careless tides. The gulls were loud overhead, the cicadas louder still in the forest behind.

"I can't let this happen to me again," she whispered.

It's happening with or without your permission.

"FUCK!" Rane screamed, and kicked at the sand, stumbling. "FUCK! FUCK!"

We don't get to pick. It just is.

Rane stood on the shore, breathing hard. After a moment she drew her sword, tossed it onto the damp sand, and strode into the water, wading, her long hair tossed back by the breeze. When she was waist-deep she dove, heedless of her clothes, letting the saltwater wash over her face. It was good, cool, moving over her sinuously. She wished she could be naked without risking Dutch's rebels seeing her so. The sound of the tide was lovely, the red light of the fading dusk more so.

"HEY!"

Rane emerged from the sea, gasping, her eyes moving over the shore. Arthur was running down the sand, shedding his gun belt, his eyes wide.

"YOU OKAY? YOU DROWNIN'?"

Rane laughed a little bitterly, and began to wade back to shore. The drowning man, asking her if she was drowning. "I'm fine."

"Goddamned fool, scared the hell outta me," Arthur muttered, glaring at her, his breath coming quick in his chest. Rane was wading out of the sea, watching him, her clothes stuck to her lean torso and her hair plastered to her face. She was beautiful in a way he almost couldn't have put into words, her clothes damp and her eyes bright. He raised his voice. "What the hell you doin'?"

"I wanted to swim."

"You're too goddammned drunk to be swimming in the fuckin' ocean, Rane." Arthur took her by the shoulders, shaking her gently. "You'll drown if you ain't careful. We gotta sit down and -"

Rane leaned forward and kissed him hard, her tongue flitting into his mouth, taking his hand and placing it over her breast, quite unabashed. Arthur melted a little at it despite himself. Her skin was firm and warm beneath her damp tunic, her nipple hard beneath his palm. He could feel her heart beating hard and fast beneath her breast, likely from her escapades in the sea, her chest swelling and falling with her quick breath, and the sensation of it undid him a little. The saltwater on her mouth was strangely fetching. She yanked at his belt roughly, drawing him to her, her lips rough and demanding on his, looking impossibly beautiful beneath the setting sun. He put his fingers into her damp hair as he kissed her back, feeling the water squeezing out between his fingers, pattering onto the sand, and struggled not to take her then and there, breathing hard. He could feel himself swelling in his jeans, helpless. She took his spare hand and guided it down her jeans, pressing against her, wet and warm, and he gasped, drawing back. He caught himself, but it was difficult.

"Rane, quit it." He pressed her back with an effort. "Quit it, you're drunk and we gotta talk."

"You want me, though." Rane slipped a hand beneath his shirt, looking up at him, swaying, smiling and drunk and gorgeous, her eyes bright beneath her brows and her breath quick in her throat. Arthur could not remember ever wanting a woman more than he did right now, she was right. "I know you do, your heart's pounding faster than a fucking freight train, Arthur, I can feel it."

"Yeah, of course my heart's pounding, you're a beautiful girl and you're soakin' wet and tryin' to put my hands all over ya," Arthur conceded, shaking his head. "And yeah, I want ya, I can't remember a time I didn't. But we gotta talk."

Rane leaned up, trying to kiss him again, but Arthur pushed her back. She stumbled in the sand, her gaze becoming cold, then bent and retrieved her sword, sheathing it with a clang.

"You come down here to jump my ass about yelling at your friends back there?" she asked roughly, dusting her boots off and pulling them on, stumbling. "Because if that's it, get it over with, I'm not too big on company just this second."

"You can't be talkin' to them that way, Rane, we need 'em if we wanna get Javier and John and get outta here," said Arthur, and shifted his weight to his other foot, putting both hands on his hips and looking at her. It was slowly starting to sink in for him, what she'd just done. "Why'd you do that, huh? Come outta the water and jump all over me that way? I know you been drinkin' but you ain't like that."

Rane pulled the second boot on, staggering, then turning faced him. "I dunno why I did it. Maybe I wanted to feel something besides existential dread for a few minutes."

Arthur laughed, shaking his head, staring off toward the sea. "You ain't even the one sick and I been tryin' to make you feel better about it damn near more than myself, Rane."

"Yeah, because I'm the one stuck here after you're gone."

"Yeah, well." Arthur looked at her, suddenly angry, the sunset reflecting in his eyes. He aimed a finger at her. "You know, what I shoulda done is cut you loose, and it ain't too late for that."

Rane snorted, her hair flying around her face. "Your solution is to run away from me?"

Arthur gestured angrily. "That what you want? You wanna be free of it? I guess I don't get the choice no more, but you do. Hell, I'll send ya away if you want me to, I'll go forward and put you outta my head. I done it before with other women and I'm sure I ain't lost the touch."

Rane looked at him from beneath her brows, swaying slightly.

"You're just gonna set me free like one of your little ex-girlfriends, huh. That's your pay dirt. That's your master fucking plan."

"Maybe so."

"And what will I do then, Arthur? Go flitting through the fucking daisies happy as a fucking clam? Just forget all about you and your stupid fucking diseases and maladies and live happily ever after? Is that how you think it'd go?" She gesticulated, her motions sloppy and furious, her damp hair shining. "Sirius has been dead for I don't even know how long and there are still nights when I cry for him."

Arthur scoffed at this, shaking his head. "Well I'm very fuckin' sorry for your loss, Rane."

"Oh, shut up. You know what I'm trying to say." Rane watched him, wilting a little. He was handsome in the setting sunlight, strong, even angry. "Arthur, Elves don't take this kind of thing very well. You can't expect me to just brush it off. It's . . . harrowing. This is a zero-sum game for me."

"I don't know that."

"Means I'm gonna lose either way," said Rane, and sighed. "Look at me."

He did. She stepped closer to him, looking up into his face.

"Don't let me go. I'd rather ride to hell with you if we have to go. And I'll try to shut the fuck up about it. And not yell at strange dudes with guns," she added sheepishly.

Arthur's shoulders sank a little. He bent and kissed her forehead gently, placing both hands on her face, then met her mouth with his.

"You're all wet, you goddamned drunk idiot," he muttered, and kissed her again. "Let's go get you into some dry clothes. God, I love ya. I wish I knew how it happened so quick."

"Well, wish in one hand and shit in the other, see which one fills up first." Rane kissed the corner of his mouth. "You were really gonna break up with me, huh?"

Arthur shrugged as they started back up the beach, Rane staggering slightly. "Hell, I can't hardly go five minutes without thinkin' of ya now, let alone then, but if it'd spare you some pain, I would, sure." He laughed, low. "I'd never get past it, though, I don't believe."

"That's two of us," Rane murmured.

As they strode toward camp, Rane linked her fingers through Arthur's, and he returned her grip, tight.