***Flash forward to 2018***

"Van Der Linde, get over here!" Mr. Jackson called out to the eighteen year old boy who was leaning against the side of the school smoking a cig when he should have been in his study hall class, "I have warned you time and time again if you don't straighten uo your behavior there are going to be consequences as serious as suspension." The teacher's face turned red as he struggled to keep from losing control of his temper at the boy who seemed to flat out refuse any rule laid down.

"Yeah, yeah," Aiden flicked the cigarette onto the pavement and stomped it out before walking past Mr. Jackson, expelling the smoke into his face as he went.

Mr. Jackson stood stiff for a moment, if only someone had shown that boy some discipline in his younger years... "Van Der Linde, principals office, now."

Aiden rolled his blue eyes and ran his ringed fingers through his slicked back black hair before heading in the direction of the principals office with attitude. The teen- or technically young adult, muttered under his breath as he made it down the hall towards his destination. Everything was stupid, it was so stupid, "Fuck them and their rules." He twisted the ring on his finger which had been passed down to him through generations of his family going back well into the 1800's as far as he knew. It was an old ring, but he liked it.

Aiden knocked lightly on the door of the principals office to let the older man know he was there. He liked Mr. O'Reily, sincerely. He was a good man, he thought he was, reasonable for the most part, gave chances. God knew that he had given him many chances over his high school career. Still, that didn't mean that the Great-Great grandson of Dutch Van Der Linde appreciated being referred to his office any more.

The older man's voice sounded from the other side of the door, "Come on in, Aiden. What's happened now?"

Aiden opened the door slowly and offered Mr. O'Reily a small smile, "Hi sir."

The old man chuckled despite himself, "Hey there boy, how are you?"

"Alright, sir." Aiden sat down in the chair in front of the principals desk, "Mr. Jackson is just getting on me again. You know, I ain't trying to disturb anyone, I just... I just don't see the point. I really think I might just drop out, I might do it."

The principal clasped his hands together and shook his head, "Your senior year is nearly over, your grades, they aren't bad. I say you see yourself graduate... it's not much longer if it weren't for your behavior. What's been going on with you?"

Aiden shrugged, "Just don't want to do school, sir."

"

Look," The old man laid his hand flat on his desk slowly as he tried to pick his words carefully, "I know that things have been hard lately with your dad... being, being in prison and all..."

"With all due respect, Mr. O'Reily, you don't know the half of it." Aiden took a deep breath and tried to keep his voice calm, "My pops is not a bad man, sir. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time, that's it. He isn't a good man, but he's definately not a bad man."

The old man took a deep breath himself and nodded. He couldn't bring himself to believe that a man who was proven to be affiliated with the mob wasn't a bad man. For the sake of the boy sitting in front of him though, he would act as if he gave him the benefit of the doubt, "No, I never said he was a bad man. I'm sure you miss him very much. If you.. if you ever need anyone to talk to, I'm here, you can count on that, son."

Aiden licked his lips and twisted the ring on his finger again, he was always figetting with the jewelry, always wearing it no matter the occasion, "Thank you, I appreciate that."

The bell rang signaling that it was time for all students in the building to move onto their next class and the principal sighed, looking up at the clock and seeing it 12:00, "You're very welcome, boy. What class are you off to now?"

"American History."

Mr. O'Reily smiled rather knowingly, "Oh is that so? What's the current subject?"

Aiden rolled his eyes, "The wild west."

...

Mrs. Clouse clapped her hands together dramatically after the bell rang signaling the beginning of the forty minute class with a smile and switched on her projector before dimming the lights in the room, "Today we are going to discuss my favorite period of time in history, or rather the end of it."

The middle aged woman clicked through the pages of her presentation until she was where she needed to be, in big bold letters 'The Wild West' was sprawled across the board, "The wild west!"

Aiden rolled his eyes and looked over at Scotty, his best friend who sat at the desk beside him, "She thinks she's going to educate me about the wild west?" Aiden laughed and held up his hand to his friend, referring to the ring that sat on his right ring finger, "I wear Dutch Van Der Linde's ring. We'll see how this goes."

Scotty laughed, "See what she's got to tell you about your great-great grandparents."

Mrs. Clouse noticed the two boys talking in the back of the class and cleared her throat in attempt to get their attention, "I am well aware that some of us are more familiar with the wild west than others, Mr. Van Der Linde. However, I would like to go on and ensure that the rest of the class is knowledgeable about this time in history as well if you don't mind."

Aiden groaned dramatically and turned back around in his seat, "It depends on how you're going to make my family look, I suppose."

Mrs. Clouse's eyes widened, "I will most certainly keep everything accurate as to the recorded history, Aiden. If you have a problem with this you may go down to-"

Aiden leaned back in his chair in annoyance, "I've been to Mr. O'Reily already today. Just go on, not like it was your family who's passed down stories about Celina and Dutch for decades."

The history teacher seemed to be attempting to ignore her most difficult student to the best of her ability as she turned back to the board, "As you all may have guessed, the first thing we are going to discuss about the wild west is the Van Der Linde gang, starting with how they started and the events which led to their eventual downfall." She cleared her throat and flipped on an image of Hosea Matthews, "Hosea Matthews, born in November of 1830..." and Dutch Van Der Linde, "Born in September of 1857 were the men who founded the Van Der Linde gang in May of 1878."

went on to explain how the gang formed with Dutch and Hosea first adopting Arthur into their strange family and how good things had started out. She went over with the class how Dutch had started off as a man with a good heart, a man who was almost a robin hood figure, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, keeping only enough for himself, Hosea and Arthur to get by. She explained that these three men, they had morals, and had a code which they lived by- helping those who needed help, stealing from people as they needed to get by and killing people only who they thought needed to be killed. Mrs. Clouse made it clear as she educated the class that she was teaching them what the gang believed in and that that didn't mean she believed in or agreed with it personally. That made Aiden roll his eyes for what he felt were another time too many. He was real sick and tired of people acting as if he came from a family of bad people. Sure, they weren't that great, but they weren't what he would have described as truly bad... no, not truly, they believed in something.

Of course just by going by articles from the newspaper which was preserved for the history books as well as the journals of the gang members, mostly Arthur's, there wasn't a whole lot of detail in how exactly the Van Der Linde gang came together entirely and formed into the notorious gang of the wild west. Unfortunately pages in the journals of the gang were missing or ruined, making it hard to get a full picture of all of their lives. though, in the class period with most students undivided attention on her mostly in interest managed to give them quite a bit of detail for it only being the first day on the topic. She took a drink of water before sitting the bottle back down on her podium, "Now, it wasn't until February of 1899 that miss Celina Knoll came along and from there it is credited by many sources that she was a major reason the Van Der Linde gang didn't get worse than they were."

Aiden laughed and decided to do what he did best, interrupt, "That's my great-great grandma, everyone." He pointed to himself, "I'm her and Dutch's great-great grandson. I mean that's how everyone looks at me right? That's the first thing that comes to mind when someone thinks of me." He flashed his award-wining smile, showing his perfect, straight white teeth, "I come from a long family of anarchists, watch out!"

fixed Aiden with a tired look, "Are you going to let me continue, or are we going to have problems again?"

Aiden gestured to her dramatically, "Please do continue."

The teacher cleared her throat, she knew that the young man had been going through quite a lot recently but there was no way that she would just ignore his bad behavior and accept his almost constant disrespect, "Not only was Celina Knoll supposedly the glue that kept the gang grounded to their morals at times, but the biggest love intrest of Dutch Van Der Linde ever known." She fixed the class with a firm buy excited look, it was no joke that this was her favorite period of time in history with pictures of the gang members on the classroom wall. "I think perhaps if it weren't for her, based on old records, the gang would have certainly had a much different fate. While history focuses largely on her relationship with Dutch Van Der Linde, don't let it be forgotten that this woman also had ties to the horribly infamous Williamson Gang."

The bell rang marking the class period as over.

Back to 1899

"If you would stop making fun of me for two seconds, Arthur, that would be great. If not, I'm going to take this cane and shove it right up your-"

"Ok, I relent," Arthur laughed at Celina as she hobbled through the house. It was day four after her getting shot and the gang was more than happy to see her moving about. Arthur, of course, being himself, just couldn't pass up the opportunity to make jokes at her a she largely relied on a cane at that point in time to help her to walk.

Celina rolled her eyes at the mischievous outlaw and knowing he wasn't paying attention, she wacked him in the back of the knees with it, nearly sending him to the ground. She laughed as he just barely caught his balance and looked at her if he had been personally offended, "You deserved that, cowboy."

Arthur shook his head and chuckled, raising his hands in surrender, "I suppose I did."

"Sure did," Celina laughed lightly, trying not to injure herself and leaned back on her cane, "Making fun of the handicapped, what's wring with you?"

Sadie Adler came into the room, a bemused smile on her face as she looked from Arthur to Celina and back to Arthur, "What is going on in here?"

Arthur pointed to Celina accusingly, "She hit me."

Celina rolled her eyes and did her best to hold in a laugh that wanted to come out knowing that it would unfortunately only bring pain with it. Because of this, she forced herself to look away from the two of them and try to get herself to calm down, "What your boyfriend.." She waved at them dismissively, "Or whatever is trying to say is that I hit him with my cane only after he followed me around the house antagonizing me about said cane."

Sadie laughed and looked at Arthur in a way that suggested she knew what she heard from Celina had to be the truth. Of course it was the truth, he was Arthur Morgan, it wasn't like he didn't constantly go around camp picking at everyone when he could, "Is that so?"
Sadie did her best to keep the smirk off her face but failed when Arthur hung his head playfully pretending to act guilty and nodded. The woman who had taken a fancy to that particular outlaw shook her head at him and placed a gentle kiss on his lips.

Celina couldn't help but smile at the two of them, she was happy, truly happy that Arthur had manages to find himself someone as amazing as Sadie Adler and had finally gotten rid of that dreaded Mary Linton. Celina had hated that woman- Mary for what she knew about her. She couldn't stand that it was made out to seem that se was always perfectly fine with insulting Arthur's code of life at every chance she got and making it clear that she thought he wasn't much of a man at times and that he wasn't good enough for her. Not only that, but she had the nerve after saying those things to turn around and ask him for help because her life was so often so conveniently such a mess. Did she really think that she could treat him like that and then be surprised and hurt when he didn't help her? The nerve.

Still, Celina had to give Arthur and Sadie crap about what she had jus witnessed between the two of them, "Why don't the two of you get a room? Good lord, public indecency."

Sadie laughed and backed away from Arthur who looked truly happy for once, it was good to see. So good to see, "You mean... you and Dutch's room?"

Celina's eyes widened and she sat her jaw with a humored twinkle in her eyes, "Not me and Dutch's room! Use John and Abbigail's. Arthur, if you don't stop trying to make me laugh, I swear.."

"Ok, miss Knoll, if you're ready to move out I suggest it's time we do so... especially with the Pinkerton's right outside our windows."

Celina looked at Dutch with wide eyes as he pulled out his revolvers and took cover to the side of the window, the door swinging open and loudly slamming against the door as almost the whole gang file inside in attempt to take cover. She heard Mary-Beth shout when she entered the house, "Kieran's been shot in the head! He's dead!"

Arthur shook his head, "Poor kid."

Dutch looked over at the gang who all quickly found cover of some sort to the best of their ability, Arthur and Charles quickly barricading the front door, others moving about to cover any other possible place of entry into the house, "All women and Jack upstairs and into the bedrooms now!"

Of course everyone except Celina and Sadie listened, Sadie crouching down beside Arthur and Celina standing at the side of the window opposite to Dutch with her revolver in hand as she leaned on her cane with the other, ready to shoot their attackers. Dutch went to say something to her but she cut him off both verbally and a look that told him to shut up, "I'm fighting. There's nothing you can say to change my mind, I'm recovering, I can stand, I'm fighting."

Dutch fired off shots, dismissing her and she shrugged not knowing if that would cause a mild disagreement later in the day or not. Frankly though, she couldn't bring herself to care too much. She was just happy that she was finally back on her feet after days of bed rest and back in the action. She fired at a man and hit him in the lower torso before cringing, she was really tired of missing her targets so often with the rare occurrence that she was able to take someone out with a clean headshot.

"There's a lot of them." Arthur voiced his concern from across the room where ha and Sadie covered a window of their own, "There's got to be what? Thirty?"

"I'm afraid there are only more coming in," Dutch observed with a heave heart.

Celina took a deep breath and fired some more, it didn't look good, really didn't look good as more and more started coming in, "Go figure we have the money only now no one is going to be alive to spend it."

Dutch shot her a disapproving stare which made her shut up. She feared what she said was true though, this hadn't happened before to her knowledge, at least not in the location they were in. Dutch then made a call, "Arthur, meet me up on the balcony, John, Charles, you boys too. We are going to have to take them out from above, get a better view. There's no way we're ever going to take them al out from down here."

Celina watched as the men rushed upstairs quickly with Dutch in the lead and spoke to Sadie without looking at her, "Well, this day did start out good."

The other woman hummed in agreement, "This is usually how it goes."

"Yep," Celina took a deep breath and reloaded her revolver, "Should have known."

"These buggers just keep coming, what the hell man, they're spawning out of the devils crack." As if there were any question about who would have said something like that, it was of course Sean, his Irish accent making the phrase at least five times better.

Celina shook her head but managed to smile at him, "Dang it Sean."

"Well, they are, aren't they? Just keep coming, sure does seem like it."

Celina nodded despite herself, "I suppose so. There's a lot of them for sure."

"Dutch!"

Celina's heart felt like it had stopped upon hearing Dutch's name yelled upstairs in a way that sounded distressed. Immediately, it felt like her whole world was crumbling down around her once again, it couldn't be, could it? Had he gotten shot? Tears priced at her eyes and she fired off come more shots, not able to leave her position by the window as the house was simply too big to do so and there wouldn't be enough people covering downstairs in her absence. She bit down on her bottom lip before shouting as loudly as she could, hoping that they would be able to hear her up on the balcony through the open window, "Is he ok?"

Much to her relief, it was Dutch who responded, "Close one is all, I'm alright. We are going to make it out of this."

As much as she was received to hear that the man she loved was ok, she groaned slightly at the idea that he was going to go into one of his speeches in the middle of quite possibly the biggest gun fight of their lives. Not another speech she thought to herself, not now, and hopefully not for a while. She had gotten tired of hearing about him 'having a plan' and his speeches when she was in 2018, now to be subject to listen to them in real life? She smiled slightly at the leaders ridiculousness, that man. Luckily for her, he said nothing else.

"They're trying to close in on the house." It was Javier who announce that as if it needed to be said, "If they get in here the we're all dead."

"Well, we won't let it come to that," Hosea truthfully didn't sound so certain himself but it was clear that he was trying.

Celina stopped firing for a moment and leaned back against the wall, it seemed that no matter how many the killed, there was always more people to file in out of the woods. With the amount of law it seemed as if there wouldn't be enough to cover the rest of the country. It could be that they had all banned together and were in their yard. She resumed firing with a new ferocity, if they had never robbed the Saint Denis bank then she was sure that so many law wouldn't have turned up. There it was, yet another reason as to why she shouldn't have made the call she did. Not only had she nearly gotten herself killed with it but now the rest of the gang was at risk. She took a deep breath trying to remind herself that had she not been there, they would have robbed the bank anyway and ended up in Guarma as well. At that point, she found it that a trip to Guarma didn't sound all too terrible, perhaps even better than their current situation.

"Well, guys," She sighed, "What are we going to do? They just won't stop."

"Surely they've got to stop at some point," Javier responded, sweat trickling down his face.

"One would think." Hosea cracked his neck before resuming his focus on the enemy.

"I knew that we had stayed here too long after Saint Denis. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. It was all my fault that we didn't leave sooner, when we needed to." Celina meant what she said, if they had left jus a day earlier all of this could have been avoided, at least for the time being that was. They could have been well on their way to Tahiti if he wouldn't have gone and got herself shot.

"Don't start that, dear," Hosea addressed her, "We are in this together, now let's kill these bastards."

...

They had managed it, just barely, somehow they had actually managed to manage it. It had been a long fight and all of them were mentally and physically exhausted by the time they had a big enough opening to make a run for it, by the time they gunned down the last of the men in sight. Still, they had managed, all of them riding side by side up to Beaver Hollow where Arthur and Charles had cleared out a creepy cave with freaks of human beings living there only a couple days prior. One other thing mattered other than them getting away with their lives and that was the fact they managed to bring their money from the bank with them.

"Ok," Dutch spoke as they rode, Charles in the lead, "We stay at this site for a day or two tops and then we get out of here. There's a boat coming in and there's talk of it heading in the direction of Tahiti. Hosea scoped it out so it's a legitimate lead." Dutch took a deep breath, "I think we'll be safe up there by the caves from what I've heard, no one dares to go up there."

"You should have seen it, Dutch," Arthur spoke, "When Charles and I found it, it was.. " He stopped, changing his mind about what he wanted to say, "It was bad. We cleaned it up nice though for the most part just incase we needed to use it."

Charles pointed up ahead, "Turn right up there and we will follow that road for a ways."

Arthur moved up in the group from where he had previously been riding at Sadie's side, "You sure we ain't being followed, Dutch? There sure were a lot of men back there."

"I ain't sure." Dutch admitted, "Something like that... I ain't sure. We've just got to have hope, we've got to have faith that all of this... that all of this is getting us somewhere." Dutch continued, "If we just believe that we will make it, we will. You'll see, all of you will. Our freedom is just around the corner, I can feel it."

Arthur shook his head, "I ain't so sure, I'm nervous, Dutch, real nervous. That was a lot of men for us to be getting away from. Kind of makes me wonder if they ain't just wanting us to think that they lost us. Hw do you expect we get out of here, Dutch, really? We go anywhere near civilization and we'll be recognized. The law will be on our tail faster than we can blink."

Dutch was quiet for a moment before saying anything else, "I have a plan, son. You've just go to trust me."

"Oh, Dutch." Arthur almost whined, "What is it this time?"

"We make noise. A lot of it and then we disappear." It was all Celina could do not to tell Dutch to leave the natives out of it right the and there because of course he knew she couldn't have that conversation with him there ad then, not in front of the gang. Anyway, she had been doing better getting Dutch to listen to what she had to say. If she said something to him in front of all the others though? It was sure to become disastrous.

How it was though, Arthur was currently still trying to handle the situation, "What are you talking about? We did just make a lot of noise," Arthur scoffed, "Way too much in Saint Denis. If you remember that and al the noise in Blackwater is what got us into this mess."

"Exactly." Dutch nodded in agreement, "So we do it one more time and draw attention to another problem. Set it up so that it looks like something we wouldn't do. Then, after and only after the law turns their attention to it, we can get on that boat to Tahiti and we're free."

Arthur shook his head, "That just sounds unnecessary, Dutch. You know I- just don't think that's going to work. I say if we're going to get away we do it real quiet like. That is IF we get away."

"Have some faith, would ya?" Bill yelled up at Arthur, Javier aggreging with Bill immediately.

"Thank you, Bill, Javier. Arthur, maybe you should try having half the faith they do, son. We are going to be fine. We're going to be just fine."

...

A/N: Thanks for reading guys! Kind of tried something different with this chapter as al of you obviously know, a little sneak peek into the far future lol. It was fun and interesting to write, and yes, Aiden is a lot like Dutch XD but what do you think? There's all of your confirmation that she has successfully changed history without giving anything away. Although I did confirm the Williamson gang is still going to come to be. Oh, for those of you seriously offended over this story... and the ones who think Celina is a Mary-Sue... no one's forcing you to read to put it nicely. If you don't like it, don't read it, simple as that. No one is forcing you to read XD

Disclaimer: I do not own Red Dead Redemption 1 or 2 or anything associated with it.