"Finally a thaw in this god awful weather. We got off the mountain and rode east into some pretty enough country called the Heartlands.
Ain't been this far east in many a year. Hosea seems to know the country a little.
Ain't been much of a spring. Now holed up at a place called Horseshoe Overlook, outside of some dumpy little cattle town, name of –VALENTINE–"
.
Early morning. Before ever opening his eyes, Arthur could always tell by the feel of the air—like water hovering unseen close by, looking for a perch to nestle upon and become dew. It lent itself to a crisp, clean smell, one that revived—cleared out the lungs and heralded a renewing.
And there was almost always the pleasant tinkling warble of birds, having long wiggled from their nests and stretched their wings before the rest of the living world had had a chance to.
"Sometimes at night," he could so clearly hear her warm whisper, almost feel her breath near his cheek as they lied bare together, pressed tight to each other in his blanket and bed roll upon the cool grass beside the moonlit pond—a rare moment completely alone on a night-fishing trip for her birthday that hadn't featured much fishing, "when I listen and I hear no birdsong like I do in the bright of day, I think about them snuggled up tight together in their nests, and it makes me laugh. Even the birds have to sleep."
A bright smirk had spread across his mouth as he'd looked at her and whispered low and warm in return with a small shake of his head, "The kinda things you think about..." With the wry words, his throat had been filled with a sweet admiration that he could still taste now on the back of his tongue. The sound of them along with his kisses to her cheek and jaw and neck had caused the apple of her cheek to rise and produced a quiet laugh.
They'd been blanketed by a thin sheet of night—nothing but soft, hazy starlight reflecting in her eyes. How very soft she'd been, her skin against his. How dear and sweet to let him hold her, pressed so close, with nothing between them. To hold her heart in his hands.
The crackle of campfire nearby, the smell of smoke. And just like that, he was no longer a young man draped in darkness, with her by his side. His eyelids were pierced with the red light of a new day. He was instead a filthy, lonely man, aging early due to his outlaw life. Due to the dirty, filthy work he was constantly doing.
Swallowing, he cleared his throat as he finally opened his eyes and lifted his head up off his bed roll, lifted his hands off his chest.
Today would be different. Today he was nothing more than a son hunting with his father.
"Mornin', Arthur!" Hosea enthusiastically welcomed him to the land of the living at their two-man camp somewhere near O'Creagh's Run.
Arthur slowly began to sit up with a grunt. It was then that he realized Hosea'd let him sleep until he awoke naturally, of his own accord.
"You ready?" He was already pouring from a percolator, with a rifle strapped to his back.
"Oh, gimme a minute," Arthur groggily drawled his entreaty as he shifted onto his right knee and faced him.
"Coffee?" Hosea handed him a tin mug. His voice was effervescent as bubbly champagne.
"Sure," he nodded, gratefully took it, and stood.
"There you go."
Arthur made a show of looking around and gesturing to him with his mug. "So. What's your plan?" He took a seat in the canvas folding chair across the fire from him.
"Well, we'll see if we can track him, but…we might need to lay bait to draw him out." The hushed excitement and wonder lacing the last few words was almost tangible.
Arthur took a sip from his tin mug of coffee, licking his lips to savor every last drop. Hosea always did make a mean cup of midnight black, strong enough to light a fire under a grown man's ass and get him moving. After a few sips, of course.
Though Hosea was already standing and folding his own chair, clearly raring to go, Arthur was content to hunch where he sat for a few minutes more, warming both cupped hands around his mug. But he watched as Hosea got a move on.
"Bears like fish, obviously, but they also have a sweet tooth," Hosea remarked hurriedly.
Arthur had to gulp down his amusement at that, the corner of his mouth tipping itself into a smirk all the same. Sounds just like another crotchety ol' bear I know, he thought, following the old man's back with his gaze.
"A lot of fellers bait then shoot from the trees, but I prefer to hunt on the ground," he said suavely, the puff to his chest only audible as he turned to look at him with a gesture and walked backwards towards Silver Dollar. "More dangerous, but…we'll have a much better chance a' getting a good shot in." With both hands, he drew a couple items from his saddle bag. "And, if he bolts, we can start right off after him."
That final sentiment was almost a little too nonchalant for Arthur's taste, both the way it'd been spoken and the thought itself. Maybe it wouldn't have been about anything else but a bear.
He couldn't quite tell if Hosea was thinking this through rationally. He himself knew with certainty that if there were to be any bolting going on, it wouldn't be on the part of the bear. And if it were the bear, well, it wouldn't be in the direction away from the two of them. The thought almost caused him to huff a chuckle and shake his head.
But, looking into Hosea's eyes, so full of sparkly, boy-like giddiness, he decided to swat the worry aside. Truthfully, he should be grateful the old man was bringing him along and not tromping off into the woods on his own to try to take down a huge bear. And as long as he was around, he wouldn't let anything harm him—including a nasty grizzly.
He nodded, playing along with Hosea's hair-brained scheme.
"Can you mix up this bait while I finish packin' us up?" he said, handing him a couple things. "Fish, berries. And tie it up in that rag when you're done," he added with all the inherent, easy authority of a father to his boy.
"I hope you know what you're talkin' 'bout," Arthur quipped in a drawling tone as he knelt to mix the bait while Hosea walked back to Silver Dollar.
"I grew up in the mountains, Arthur," he called out to remind him. "I was virtually weaned on bear meat."
But eating bear was a step away from cooking it, which was yet another ten steps away from hunting it.
"Okay," Arthur sighed, looking down at the bait, "I think I got this done."
"Good. Pack up, and we'll get going."
After tearing down their camp, Arthur gripped the horn of his saddle and mounted his new horse as Hosea said with a subtle lilt to his voice,
"Okay, let's go!" And as they rode out, he instructed, "We'll try our luck down by the water; that's where I saw him last."
"Okay," Arthur responded in a high tone, a bit wary, but glad to be along to protect him. And very glad just for the time with him.
"How's that horse treatin' ya?" Hosea called back to him.
"So far, so good," he said cheerily, following at a trot.
"You know…" Hosea paused, almost sounding as if his throat had closed for a moment, "I was in this area with Bessie, years ago."
"Really? Ah, I didn't know that." But it made sense, since Hosea knew mountain life well.
Bessie. What Arthur remembered of her was kind, warm, and caring. She'd always worked hard for those she loved, had always looked out for him. And she'd had an infectious cackle.
But he hadn't known her like Hosea had. He always spoke of her fondly, tenderly. It was clear they'd been fastened together at the heart. And to hear him talk about her, the types of thoughts he still spent on her, the love he still carried for her…it was as if death hadn't done a thing to break the cords or sever the tie.
Arthur looked down at the reins in his hands. Though he kept it tucked tightly away, reality was Arthur knew the feeling well.
He slowly lifted his eyes back up to Hosea. "I imagine you still miss her," he said, his voice shifting to a low, even tone.
"Every day," Hosea tried to say lightly as he briefly cocked his head and lifted his brows, drawing his lips inward and almost tisking.
"Did you two ever think about…gettin' outta the life?" The question had left Arthur's mouth before he'd even had time to weigh and measure it.
"We did briefly. You don't remember?" Hosea said as he took them to the left through the trees and down towards the lake. "Guess you were still young. Didn't last long. I drifted back into it," he said, his tone short and cutting, dripping with disappointment in his own self. He took a single sniffed, doleful breath, though he worked to pass it off as nothing more than hay-fever and a momentarily runny nose. "She understood; she knew what I was."
"I…I remember you not bein' around for a while," Arthur squinted one eye, his tone squirrelly as his memory reached backwards, "but…well, things were looser back then."
"Truth is…there's never really any gettin' out," Hosea said plainly.
Arthur's teeth fitted flush and tight together in his jaw. Maybe it was a truth. A truth almost every sane outlaw wrestled with, but knew deep down. One that, every now and then, they tried to wink at, pretend it wasn't there.
"And stayin' in? It's hard… You know that," Hosea said.
The steady thumbing in Arthur's chest suddenly skipped a tick as his eyes popped up to Hosea's form where he sat bouncing in the saddle before him. He willed himself to doubt that Hosea was in fact bringing up what he thought he might be.
"But Bessie and I made it work," he continued.
It was the blessing and curse of having a lover who was willing to tag along and even join in with the outlaw life. The same blessing and curse that Marston had. Arthur couldn't bring himself to imagine it.
On the one hand, having both at one time; not having to choose between the two worlds—the hellish pain he'd blindly stepped into years ago and was still living the effects from. On the other, the sheer danger of bringing his loves into that life, and the shame of sullying them with it.
No. He shook his head strongly and forcefully to himself. No, he could never have chosen that. That's why his question to Hosea had been about getting out, rather than dragging anyone in.
"Why—you thinkin' about gettin' out?"
Hosea's query almost startled him from his harried tumble of memories and regrets. "Me?" he chortled, quickly adding a coarse and gruff, "No. 'Course not," as he slumped just a bit in his saddle and slid his gaze low and away.
He couldn't quite tell what the onrush of latent, wriggling disappointment was resultant from. Had it been aimed at himself, that his heels were dug so deep, that he was such a waste that he couldn't even consider getting out and living straight? Or was it disappointment that Hosea would question his loyalty at this point in his life, after everything they'd come through?
He felt sure Hosea hadn't meant it that way. He knew well that out of everyone, his loyalty was to be counted on most. And anyways, years ago, Hosea had been the one secretly urging him to leave, to make a life with…
He quickly shifted his back and sat bolt up in his saddle. It was real rich coming from a man who'd just now admitted there was no such thing as getting out of the life. Especially after their blustered discussion last night about John.
When Arthur had had them, leaving every few months to be with them for only a few short days at a time had done nothing short of tormented him—tormented all three of them; if he'd ever thought he could've left for a goddamn year with no consequences whatsoever, he would've. In a heartbeat. Without a doubt.
"Listen," Hosea said. "If Dutch's grand plans work, and we can make enough money to go someplace new—really new…maybe we can all have a new start." The last few words were lilting, as if soothing and cheering up a child who'd just scraped his knee.
Feeling a heated, abashed flush creep up his neck and prickle onto his face, Arthur slowly looked up at him from underneath his black brim.
There it was. They'd been dancing around it throughout the entire conversation, not looking at it, not ever touching it. Never had Hosea come this close to bringing this up of his own accord, not since Arthur had lost them. His hand had always been gentle when it came to this topic—allowing Arthur to deal with it in his own way, trying to foster healing by simply letting him know he was always there for him, if he wanted to talk about it, or in any way that he needed him.
Now he was changing his tactic—not addressing it head-on, but circumventing it and vocalizing it in other ways. Arthur should've seen it from the moment he asked him if he and Bessie had ever thought about getting out—or maybe Hosea'd first noticed it when Arthur remarked that he imagined he still misses her.
Reading his thoughts like a book, ten moves ahead before Arthur ever knew the chess match had begun.
Hosea was a father shrewdly aware of the goings on in his son's heart. Keenly aware of the things his son had always secretly, deeply longed for out of life. Certainly aware of the presence of his grief. He recognized it, like looking in a mirror. It was why he was so compassionate towards it, despite the way Arthur tried to cloak it so thickly. Why, even now, he only wanted to encourage hope to grow like tender seedlings in his life. Why he was so subtly, artfully planting ideas of regeneration and new life—lasting love, marriage, children, family, harmony, peace—into his head. It was nonsense.
Even with his heavy, lingering sorrow and niggling embarrassment at having been seen through so easily and thoroughly, Arthur felt the bulwark of safety of Hosea simply caring for him. And he had to release a deep breath and almost—almost—smile.
He glanced up at Hosea as they slowed their horses a bit. An artist of nonsense, and a born huckster, all right.
"Anyway, for now, let's try and chase ourselves a bear, shall we?" The same nasally voice, the same hair-brained scams.
.
Hi there, sweet, kind Readers,
I've been looking forward to this chapter for quite a long time because this scene and mission is one of many I enjoyed so much in the game. And especially because after playing the game the first time and learning about Eliza and Isaac, then playing through the second time and each time after that, this conversation was one that stood out to me as being loaded with incredibly subtle subcontext between the two men.
We know Hosea knows Arthur extremely well and is one of the few people Arthur is so very comfortable with. And at the very least, I'm convinced this conversation communicates his knowledge of Arthur's deep longing for love, marriage, and children. I know Hosea knew about Mary, but I personally feel this conversation at least makes it entirely possible that he knew about Eliza & Isaac too.
The concept of thoughts and feelings going on within characters during scenes and conversations we see in the game/canon story excites me and is something I've been wanting to try my hand at and tackle for a while now. Anyways, this is just my take on one possibility.
I wanted to extend a personal thank-you to Ariana, Caroline, Will, LJ, Raven, David, Olive, Allison, each anonymous guest reviewer on the last few chapters, and each and every single person still reading. (If you read and shared your thoughts on Treasure to Me, please know I see and read each of them and am so deeply, sincerely thankful!) You are each so special. I'm so grateful and blessed that there are still a few of you here. ("Favorite fan fiction ever" and the fact that you're re-reading it?! I'm floored!) Reading your thoughts absolutely melts my heart and is so mind-blowing and deeply encouraging to me.
I sincerely hope you're all staying healthy and safe and are doing well.
Love to all,
Rosie 💛