After waving to Captain Monroe and nodding after Charles as he left, Arthur's chest was suddenly seized by a near-uncontrollable, wheezing cough. His face immediately puckered up, and he prepared himself for the miserable racking of his ribs, the clawing at his already scratchy throat. The scramble for such a simple thing as breath.

"Mr. Morgan!" he heard a familiar voice call.

He looked up to find, of all people, the ever-sweet Sister Calderon with a single brown leather suitcase in her hand, waving him down and smiling so brightly when she saw him, as if he were the sun's rays on a rainy day himself and they were close as long-lost family.

But her expression quickly turned to one of genuine concern when she heard his terrible heaving, rumbling coughing from deep in his lungs. "Are you okay?" she asked with drawn brows.

"Yah—" he immediately grunted, throwing up a hand as a quick gesture of assurance, adding through a thick rasp, "Never better. What're you doin' here?"

"Well, I'm on my way down to Mexico," she promptly responded with a gleam in her smile and an excited lilt to her airy tone. "They're finally sending me on a mission!"

"Eh," Arthur smiled lightly, shifting his weight to his left leg.

"Brother Dorkins is very jealous."

And with that, the angel of an old woman had caught his funny bone like a fish on a hook—he was laughing outright, faster than he could even catch himself. But just as soon, he was reminded he wasn't allowed such sudden outbursts of mirth any longer; for the crackling embers in his chest blew to a blazing fire, and the flames caught the coattails of his hearty laugh soon enough.

He made sure to cover his cough with his fist and aim away; the very last thing he wanted to do was infect her with his death-sentence rot. And before he could realize what was happening, the good sister was gently patting him on the shoulder and arm, leading him to sit down and rest beside her on the station bench.

"What's wrong?" she asked, only sincerity lacing her voice.

"I'm uh…" he rasped and attempted to clear his throat when he finally plopped down, "I'm dyin', Sister."

"Okay?" she cooed quietly with the familiarity of a grandmother, inviting and waiting for him to unload more of his burden.

He tried to wipe the sweat accumulating in the scruff at his jaw and flicked it away from the two of them. "Yeah, I got TB," he drawled with a nod, his dry mouth clicking. "I got it…" he began as he took a moment to try to catch his breath and reposition himself more comfortably on the bench seat beside her. And he noticed then that her eyes were glued to him, hanging on his every word. "beatin' a man."

The sound of the words in his ears almost triggered the flashes behind his eyes like the rowdy kick-back explosion from the barrel of a pistol. And just like that he felt the bruising flesh beneath his knuckles, heard the prompt smack and crack, saw the popping gush from Downes' nose and lip like a bursting sack of blood had been just ready and waiting there for his fist. The sunlight catching in the wets of his flicking gaze up at him, teetering between sheer terror and utter sorrow, already filled with loss.

"To death." His voice almost shattered with those words, and his brows drew involuntarily, painfully.

Only afterwards, when the man was crumpled like a wad of newspaper on the ground, when his wife drew direct attention to his illness, had he given notice to the sound of the heaving, rasping cough. The fire that now raged inside his own ribs.

"For a few bucks." He cleared his throat, and when he was finally pulled to the present, he released a sigh that undulated in the back of his raw sinuses and wearily wagged his head with a scoff as he looked away. He knew without doubt that she'd be able to see the ridiculous poetic justice in it, that he was reaping what was only his due reward. He wasn't trying to hide from or escape the justice he was due. And he wasn't about to deny it. He knew the truth well. "I've lived a bad life, Sister."

He lifted his eyes to watch a heron glide back to its nest in the top branches of a nearby tree, and looked back at her just in time to see her gazing in the same direction. Maybe she'd seen the heron's reunion with its family as well.

She tilted her head, her eyes full of pensive understanding. "We've all lived bad lives, Mr. Morgan," she gently shook her head. "We all sin."

Between her words, there was a serene beat. And what neither of them could see was the woman with honey-hued waves of hair seated on the other side of her. She simply reached out her right hand and rested it atop the sister's, letting her fingers curl into the space made by her relaxed palm, gently taking her hand into her own.

Sister Calderon looked back at him with a small grin and reached out to grasp his hand. "But I know you."

She'd tickled him beneath his rib cage then, and he let his head lazily loll away with a shake and a wheezy laugh. "You don' know me," he muttered, tacked by a light gesture of his hand and an affectionate huff.

"Forgive me, but…that's the problem!" she almost sang. "You don't know you!"

He peered at her curiously and nodded. "What you mean?" Propping and stabling one shoulder by the heel of his hand against the bench seat, he watched her as she spoke. He couldn't help but tilt his head with an open, burgeoning smile and enjoy with sincere affection the endearing accent that showed itself in her dipping tone and at the edges of her words.

"I don't know, but…whenever we happen to meet, you're always helping people and smiling."

"Huh," he sighed quietly, turning to look away with the same smile. It was a pretty thought.

She didn't know all the parts of his life mashed together, an almost dizzying mosaic when he thought back, and the important people who'd touched him and made him the way he was.

Before he even realized it, he was pouring it all out to her, in little parsed out pieces; because maybe it didn't make much sense, but maybe she was one of the only people left on earth who could understand the pieces, lived by someone else though they were. Or cared to try.

"I had a son," he said with a soft sorrowful grin at the thought of him. And though it had been said warmly and sweetly, it hung there, stunted, as if there should've been more. "He passed away," he finally drawled, so quietly, with the last syllable pulled downward slightly in tone.

The two women watched on, one seen and one unseen, listening intently as he uncovered the spindly trail behind him, like pulling back soft cheesecloth from dough that had sat too long alone.

"I had a girl who loved me, I-I threw that away," he said, gesturing and lifting his hand to his chin in thought. It had come forth from him, not bitter in tone, but almost resigned to the inevitability of his own proclivity to ruin things.

"My mama died when I was a kid," he continued in his meandering drawl. Briefly adjusting his back against the bench, he added, "And my daddy…" He hung his head and wheezed a near-silent, resentful scoff of a chuckle. "Well, I watched him die." He looked further away and breathed steely, "And it weren't soon enough."

His brows involuntarily gathered in scorn, and his jaw hung limp and full of contempt. But it wasn't without pain. The truth was he'd yearned for his father's love, or a healthy expression of it. He'd only ever gotten abuse, been taught violence instead.

After having Isaac for the flicker in time that he'd had him, he understood even more that parents were meant to be a foundational source of love for a person—an imperative, integral source—and he couldn't be dissuaded from that belief now, no matter how the world at large seemed to regard it. And after Eliza, he understood how inextricably sweet and precious it was to create new life out of love, and to make certain that life knew the truth well—love was the beginnings they were borne out of.

That about summed it up. Something he'd never had from his own home, from his own father. A landing he hadn't been privileged to know at the start. Maybe it would've helped him to know his life's worth and feel his place. But it was something he'd always dearly longed to experience for himself. A love to create, a love to give. To hold onto and make last. It didn't matter how silly it might sound, how absurd it might be to the world to discover such thoughts inside the mind of a brutish outlaw, once they flayed him open. Here at the end, certainly, he found he couldn't be bothered to care at all about that.

But what was done was done. There was no changing all the life he'd lived. All the loss. Somehow it felt like oil running quick as streams from the crevices in his open palms, down through the gulfs between his fingers. Leaving him. With only a trace. Leaving him changed. But leaving him, just the same.

"My husband died a long time ago."

He looked back at her, connecting eyes, and simply nodded. So few words, but they said so much. For a reason he couldn't decipher, he wasn't surprised. Not surprised at the different life she'd lived at one time, neither at the loss she'd been touched by, nor at the fact that she could understand all that he was trying to put words to.

"Life is full of pain," she continued, the creases between her brows full of empathy. "But there is also love and beauty."

Knowing she was right, he almost grumbled hoarsely at himself. "What am I gonna do now?"

She spoke slowly, each syllable carefully thought out. "Be grateful that for the first time, you see your life clearly."

He nodded with a near-sardonic chuckle, though he didn't mean it in a brusque way. "Sure."

"Perhaps you could help somebody. Helping makes you really happy."

Closing his eyes, he felt the hazy sunshine warming the back of his neck and ears and listened to the elongated hoots of the nearby birds. And he released a long, moaned sigh from deep within as he let his head sag loosely to the right. "But…" he opened his eyes, "I still don't believe in nothin'." He looked over at her and was surprised when he heard her quaint chuckle.

"Often, neither do I."

Caught off guard and taken aback, he shifted to get a better look at her with wide eyes and a wobbly smirk. "Huh?"

"But then I meet someone like you," she sang with a smile, waving her hands to gesture as if a big, framed painting were before her, "and everything makes sense."

Yet again she had him genuinely wheezing, with enough mirth to wag his head and tap his thigh as they chuckled together. "You're too smart for me, Sister!"

After a few moments, his laughter naturally petered off. And a short breath unfurled from him as he reclined against the bench seat, feeling the tension dissipate in the muscles of his back, which lead to many more muscles relaxing. And as his gaze shifted upwards, he felt so at ease and familiar with her—a woman he'd only met a few times, at most—that he felt he'd known her for years. "I guess I…" he looked over at her with painfully drawn brows and finally quaveringly voiced, "I'm afraid."

Spoken aloud, a glimpse of his raw soul bared.

He felt so like a child. But he couldn't quite put a name to what it was that he feared, and he hoped she wouldn't ask. Was it unfinished business, a path cut short? The lack of control over things, the protection of the few loved ones he had left? Could it be whatever awaited him, the lurking unknown? Or simply a life forgotten, tossed away? All of them, and none of them seemed to be quite right.

It was as if the moment itself were a weighted breath, sipped quietly and held.

At the sound of the words from his mouth, the unseen woman seated at the sister's side closed her eyes just a moment, her heart profoundly aching for him. With her hand still in the sister's, and with her soft outward breath, she began, "There is nothing…"

"There is nothing to be afraid of, Mr. Morgan," Sister Calderon said, her voice so steady, as if hoping to lend him her surety. "Take a gamble that love exists, and do a loving act."

Arthur could only sit, gaze upward and darting, deeply pondering and soaking up her words. No less than a fraction of a heartbeat ago, the fear, he'd been swirling with it. And yet, with her simple guidance, he felt somehow in the very next moment, that he could breathe better. More fully. More calmly. Teeming with some sort of peace. Prepared to live the life he had left.

"All aboard!" the conductor called from afar off.

And too suddenly, Arthur was so very saddened to part with her. For he knew it would be the last time.

Pressing his hands to his knees, he stood and helped her with her luggage, a stone lodged in his throat and a fatigued smile on his face. "I shall try."

"I know you will," she smiled confidently, radiantly, as they joined hands.

He carefully led her by the hand to the wooden platform curb and up into the train car, regretfully letting go to give her suitcase to her as the train stuttered to life and began to move.

There was a childlike trill to her laugh as she waved to him, still smiling. "Goodbye, goodbye, Mr. Morgan!"

Though at first he found it difficult to offer a full grin, one easily made its way onto his face as he watched her ride away, so full of hope and life, even with all the years behind her she'd lived. And he reached up to pay her a salute with two fingers. "Sister," he called gently, finally lifting his arm up high.

"Goodbye!"

As the sight of her grew smaller, he could still make out her bright, unfettered smile. And it occurred to him, there couldn't be a single weight she carried.

.

"She knows that this life

Is nothin' but a crack in the ground.

.

I've seen the way

Her kindness always calms the crowd.

She'd got a sturdy way of livin';

There's no strangers when she's around.

.

I wanna rest

My weary bones on your providence.

I wanna find somewhere that I can

Recover my innocence."

.

- Needtobreathe, "Innocence"

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i bawled buckets the moment i finished writing this chapter okay

About 2 chapters left.

You are too kind, and I'm thankful for you! - TJ, Ariana, Paige, Jen and the guest reviewer

- Rosie (Sara)