"It should have been you!"
The thing about living with someone for twenty years is that they know exactly what buttons to push.
They know what to say to comfort you, how to talk you down when you're upset. Your dreams, your darkest secrets. They know, too, what to pull out in an argument, exactly what they can and can't say. What will hurt the most, but can ultimately be recovered from.
Unfortunately, they know what to say that will do the most damage, that will tear down your walls and leave you raw and vulnerable, able to be wounded by words that wouldn't have hurt half so much before. Generally, someone you've lived with for twenty years, fifteen, ten, five or even less really, will know the line, and respect it. Will never say those things no matter how angry or hurt they are.
But when they do cross that line, it hurts, hurts more than if anyone else had done it. Can push someone off their precarious perch on a ledge even they didn't know they stood on. And more often than not, they don't even mean to do it.
Rage is a horrible thing.
"You should have died instead of him!"
Arthur thought he had picked a nice spot. It was overlooking a gleaming river, and even from where he reclined he could see fish leaping into the air, their scales gleaming. The sun was beginning to rise, casting the world in various hues of gold, orange, and red. A large herd of deer drank from the river, watched over by a striking stag that, any other day, he would have pulled out his journal to draw.
As though sensing his gaze on it, the stag turned to look at him. Their eyes met—tired blue to bottomless brown—and he found himself unable to look away. He took in the stag; its branching, seemingly endless antlers. Its thick pelt, surely nicked and scarred from years of harsh living. His fingers twitched, reaching for his pencil, but finding that his satchel was not at his side.
Oh, right. He had left everything on his bed back at camp. His mare, having ridden her to the overlook bareback, had been sent away, was likely almost back at camp. Everything he held dear was safe, under the care of people who would find some use of them, treat them and treasure them as he had. He had supported his family in life, fed them and clothed them and cared for them, and he intended on continuing to do so in death, for as long as he possibly could.
His guns, left to John and Charles. Charles would use them to feed the gang, he knew, use them along with his bow to bring down animals that could fill the gang's stomachs even for a night. And John… he wanted John to get his family out. Get them safe, get them a life where they didn't have to constantly be looking over their shoulders, wondering where their next meal would come from, when they would have to pick up and move again. He wanted John to use those guns to protect them, to keep them fed as he got them somewhere safe, got a roof over their heads.
Dutch wasn't right.
He hadn't been right in a long time.
But he'd been declining sharply. In Colter he'd been the Dutch he knew: taking in Sadie without a second thought, going out into a snowstorm to make sure they all had food in their stomachs. Even insisted that he was the one to go to the door while Micah and Arthur stayed in shelter, safe while he risked being shot. That was the Dutch Arthur had known since he was a kid.
"We'd all be better off if it had been you!"
But he had changed. Was becoming wild and cruel, wasn't making much since. It had started slow—before Colter, sure, but he started getting worse in Clemens' Point, quick to anger and no longer putting up with Miss O'Shea as he used to. It was after he bashed his head, though, that he started getting bad, declining so rapidly that it was hard to recognize him.
"We should have left you on those streets!"
And Arthur cursed himself for it. He had passed it off as little more than a bump to the head. Even though Dutch, who always held himself strong, never let on that he was in pain no matter how badly he was hurting, had complained, had admitted that he couldn't see right and that his head was killing him. Yet Arthur had waved him off like Uncle, coming up to him with one of his grand ideas. "You just got a bash on the head" indeed.
"Hosea would still be alive if it wasn't for you!"
It was only after that that Dutch became nearly unrecognizable. His plans made no sense, and people took to tip-toeing around him. He started lashing out, started snarling and snapping like a cornered wolf. Rankled, and accused them of being disloyal. But he was still Dutch, and Arthur had stood by him.
"You were the one who told them, weren't you? You a Pinkerton, now?
Their raid on the bank in Saint Denis had been a bad idea from the start, even Dutch, with his mind as clouded and muggy as Bayou Nwa, could see it. But Hosea, for some reason that Arthur could never see, maybe desperation, or some sort of misguided hope, had latched onto it like a hound dog with a hide, and insisted that they do it.
"You wanted him to die, didn't you?"
And for that he'd died like a dog. Shot down in front of them, writhing on the ground in pain, not even granted a second shot to put him out of his misery. Even a cruel master would grant a hound an easy death, and yet Hosea had been left to suffer his death. Dutch may have been bending under the thousands of pounds of pressure put on his shoulders, of trying to support a gang twenty strong in a shrinking world, may have been beginning to crack, to give way, after the blow to his head,
"You told them to shoot him, didn't you? Wanted him out of the way!"
but it was the loss of his partner, his companion of well over twenty years, that made him shatter. Made his weakened mind snap, left him wild-eyed and nonsensical, desperate and lashing out at anyone and everyone. Struggling to run the gang when he no longer had someone to keep him in check, to keep him in line. Paranoid and fearful, seeing betrayal where there wasn't any, loyalty in all the wrong places.
"It should have been you!"
And Arthur would never know what had started the fight. Dutch had been so volatile lately, it could have been anything. A word taken the wrong way, even just a look. But it had quickly grown out of hand; where Arthur and, once they saw how quickly things were going south, John, Susan and Charles, had tried to defuse it, Dutch had done the opposite, trying to anger Arthur. Tried to goad him into a fight, to make him lose his temper.
"Why couldn't it have been you?!"
In the end, though, it was Dutch that had lost it. It had been years since Arthur had seen him cry, and in fact he hadn't. But there was no denying the way his face had twisted up, his brown eyes, hidden by his perpetually dilated pupils, gleamed, and the way his voice had cracked.
And he had sounded so tired, even as he turned to walk to his tent. But the sincerity in his voice had stabbed Arthur like a knife to the heart,
"Why? Why did it have to be him? Why couldn't it have been you?"
and he had felt what remained of his world crumple out from beneath his feet, feeling Dutch leave him, being as far away as Hosea despite being within arm's reach.
"It should have been you!"
"You should have died instead of him!"
"We'd all be better off if it had been you!"
"We should have left you on those streets!"
"Hosea would still be alive if it wasn't for you!"
"You wanted him to die, didn't you?"
"You told them to shoot him, didn't you? Wanted him out of the way!"
"It should have been you!"
"Why couldn't it have been you?!"
"Why? Why did it have to be him? Why couldn't it have been you?"
Arthur brought his gun up, the grip cool against his palm. As he raised it, a beam of sunlight caught the intricate engraving of a stag overlooking a mountain range, standing out in stark relief against the grain of the gun; the etching seemed to glow gold.
The barrel of the gun clicked uncomfortably against his teeth as he dropped his jaw, barely managing to fit it inside-he should have had the scope removed. But he managed, and carefully adjusted the gun, knowing just where to aim.
He was a fuck-up, a mistake that shouldn't have ever been born. But Arthur was determined to see this through right. He never could do any good, but he sure as Hell could destroy things, and he relied on that now.
Flicking off the safety, he rested his finger on the trigger.
"You have to hold steady. Breathe slowly... and always pull the trigger on empty lungs."
Hosea had told him that, and he always listened to Hosea. So he inhaled deep, appreciated the crisp air in his lungs. Appreciated the smell of the Daffodil field he had found himself drawn to. He exhaled, long and slow, trying to breathe out the trembling that rattled the gun against his teeth. Appreciated the fading yips of coyotes as they retreated to their dens for the day.
His lungs empty, he tightened his finger on the trigger, and knew no more.