all I want for you, is to be satisfied
~Simple Man, Lynyrd Skynyrd
for just a moment, a yellow sky, if I see it comin', do I run or do I let it be?
~Hurricane, Lin-Manuel Miranda
~My Shot, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Anthony Ramos, Daveed Diggs, Okieriete Onaodowan, Leslie Odom, Jr.
The sun shines bright, but Arthur is cold.
He doesn't hurt anymore, so perhaps there are small mercies. His throat doesn't rage with its coughs, his throat doesn't burn with the rot of his lungs.
there are fingers gentle on his face, fluttering before settling light on his throat
Micah had stabbed him in the back.
Literally.
With a knife.
And he's laying on his back so that should, he supposes, hurt. But, just as his fingers do, the wound buzzes, tingles like his body does when he's far too drunk and, though he can see blood pooling sluggishly beneath him he can't find it in him to check the wound.
those fingers press firmly against his pulse point. hesitate. move to his wrist and press there
He can't look away from the sun.
It's beautiful as it rises, casting the world in golds and oranges and reds, broad strokes he'd give anything to have the chance to draw. But he's dying, and a dying man can't exactly draw.
Besides, he'd given John his journal, so even if he could have he wouldn't have anywhere to draw it.
John…
'John… John made it.' he told Dutch (don't think about Dutch that's not your Dutch anymore your Dutch died that's just some man in his body he's changed) and god but he hopes that was true, that John had made it safe down the mountain and found a way to Copperhead Landing, that the women had made it there safe.
a sigh above him - relieved - and his head is taken in her hands, gently shaken
He blinks, long and sluggish, trying to imprint on his eyelids the sight of the rising sun as they grow heavier and heavier, as he begins to lose the fight to stay awake. It's not the setting sun, but it's just as beautiful, and he thinks he could almost die at peace.
"Mister?" but he doesn't die. That voice is insistent, those hands shaking him just that bit harsher, "Mister, can you hear me?" and he sees something gold, not the sun, no, but that damnable stag that had been haunting him since Guarma, staring at him and, though it doesn't speak, stands only silhouetted against the sun, blinks long and slow with depthless brown eyes, he somehow understands it - 'fight.'
"Mister, I can't carry you, I need your help."
A hand under his back, propping him up painfully, and he can't help but to groan as agony burns bright hot through his knife-wound - the voice murmurs an apology - and harries him into sitting up, though still he's sluggish, pained. "C'mon mister, help me out here. I can't carry you, you're gonna need to walk."
Left.
Right.
Left.
Right.
"That's good, Mister. We're almost there."
Left.
One step at a time.
The stag bounds ahead of them.