anti

by lovinfries4

Ruth

Preface

The Sweetest Sorrow
Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at /works/17501282.

Rating: Mature Archive Warning: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Category: F/M Fandom: Red Dead Redemption, Red Dead Redemption 2 Relationship: Arthur Morgan/Charlotte Balfour, Abigail Roberts Marston/John Marston Character: Arthur Morgan (Red Dead Redemption), Charlotte Balfour, Tilly Jackson, Jack Marston, Original Male Character(s), Mary-Beth Gaskill, Susan Grimshaw, Dutch van der Linde, Karen Jones (Red Dead Redemption), Sadie Adler, John Marston, Abigail Roberts Marston, Charles Smith (Red Dead Redemption), Original Female Character(s) Additional Tags: Wilderness Survival, Sexual Tension, Reading, Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Slight Canon Divergence, Slow Burn, Blood and Injury, tending injuries, Romance, Falling In Love, Chivalry, Camping, Universe Alteration, Fishing, Bonding, Friends to Lovers, Eventual Smut, Touch-Starved, Sexual Content, Fix It, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Romanticism, Literary References & Allusions, Illnesses, Rehabilitation Language: English Stats: Published: 2019-01-21 Completed: 2020-10-18 Words: 82,616 Chapters: 34/34 The Sweetest Sorrow

by AParisianShakespearean

Summary

She burned for him, the man who had become her knight. Though Arthur wore no silver armor, Charlotte burned as he continued to inspire her, burned as took on his own loneliness and his troubles. Together they taste that sweet sorrow that doesn't quell the burn, even as they hope someday to be for good.A look into the kinship Charlotte Balfour develops with Arthur Morgan.

Notes

I intend for this to be a short chaptered fic with six chapters at the most, and I will see to update consistently...though I am a woman of many WIPs. However, like many a cowgirl I know, playing Red Dead Redemption 2 left me with some Arthur Morgan feels(tm) that needed to be explored.

Anyway, please enjoy :)

edit as of 2/27/19: it will be longer than 6 chapter friends :)

See the end of the work for more notes

Chapter 1

Charlotte Vale's hands were dainty and soft. A lady's hands, or "your father has money hands," as her brother Alexander said in jest once or twice. Yet the biggest sin of Charlotte Vale, and then later Balfour's hands were that they betrayed her dull and uneventful life. Needlework and embroidery gave her only pricked fingers, and once she may have fancied them battle scars and wounds. Once, she thought a lot of things. But even with the little pinpricks here and there, they were still soft, privileged hands that had not lived.

Cal liked her hands. In a crowd of people at the Palmer House, he first held them in his broad palms. They were soft yes, but harder than hers still, she recalled thinking. She was dressed in blue silks, a gift her father brought from a Paris salon, and Cal smiled at her and asked not with his words but with his coffee-colored eyes if she may take off her lacy glove off, so he may bestow a kiss to her bare skin, like she was a lady-fair and he was a knight. He noted and commented then how her eyes lit up at the mention. He bragged he took her for a reader of stories of old when he first laid eyes on her. An adventurer, different from other ladies.

Perhaps I'm not so different, she said. Perhaps everyone longed for some sort of adventure. She just sought hers in books, dreaming of knights and discovery away from the frivolity she was born into, because that was all she had. He said he was the same. The city bored him, and books thrilled him. The idea of adventure thrilled him. With that, she let him hold and kiss her hand. His first of many. Six months later, Cal, after asking her father for permission on a rainy Sunday in their town home, asked Charlotte if they could be their own sort of different together. On their wedding day in early spring, another few months later, she took his hand and said softly she was forever his.

He held her hand as it rained outside, in their little cabin north of Annesburg called Willard's Rest. Charlotte held his longer after, even after it went limp. The man held some semblance of Cal but it wasn't Cal. Her Cal had rosy cheeks and merry eyes. The man that she was left with was only a husk—a body, Cal gone somewhere else. She hoped heaven, prayed for heaven, ironic as it was, because when they left Chicago she thought they were going to a heavenly paradise, though truth to be told, it was more his dream than hers. Willard's Rest and the woodlands nearby, the river looked as she imagined a haven to look when they first arrived months before they finally moved. At last something real, they said when they declared they would have it to the previous owner, an elderly couple whose children were gone and off to the city. With their hands joined and clasped together, because they were always joined, they vowed that they had something that was theirs. They had something real.

Something real. Those were her bitter thoughts when she dug his grave south of their home and brought him there, felt the earth and soiled her once dainty and elegant hands. In a moment of irony, with the earth in her palms and between her fingers, she thought of how she always wanted to play in the dirt as a child, but her father always stopped her. It would ruin her dress, he always protested. What sort of woman runs around in a soiled dress? Even in Charlotte's young mind she detested the grand buildings, the fine antique imports from Europe her father collected. She preferred flowers and grass and trees, thinking those real when everything else wasn't.

It was real, to feel the earth in her hands, where life grew. She had no coffin for him, only the earth. She had no cross either, but she took two wooden planks and a hammer and she made a makeshift cross as best she could. She had no garland of flowers, only wildflowers. Even as the tears still pooled and stained her ruddy cheeks, and they didn't cease at all during those three days, some part of her that never let those books and novels go took that realest feeling of hurt and loneliness she had ever felt and kept it close to her heart.

On the cross she had it carved—Cal Balfour, husband, proving he was real. She hoped, even if it was a hundred years from then, that a kind stranger would find her and bury her next to him, and carved on her cross that she was real too. At least then, she wouldn't be lonely anymore.

She felt loneliness in Chicago, but it was a different kind of loneliness. It was being in a crowd of people and screaming on the inside with no one else coming to comfort her. She could scream and scream, she realized. No one would hear, but she didn't anyway. She was a lady after all, Charlotte Vale Balfour of Chicago. Miles removed from her father, she still kept his stern teachings reluctantly close. She didn't scream. She only wept silent tears that no one would hear.

No one heard. No one heard, save one.

He startled her at first. She could not see his face or his eyes, only his brown and blonde colored whiskers and that there was nothing in his hands. He wore a tan and worn jacket, a blue collared shirt underneath with the color washed away. Her sister in law warned her and Cal of outlaws and thieves after her original warnings of wild animals didn't deter either of them (Charlotte still had to send the letter, she realized, with the grim and ironic truth of the matter of the bear that ended him.) Either way, she heard stories, and when there he was, an outlaw or a wanted man, she all but threw her hands up in the air and admitted that if he killed her, she would have died anyway. Her food rations of canned peaches, strawberries and salted meats were dwindling, and her and Cal had not thought to buy a horse to travel to Annesburg. Not that it would do any good if they had one. When they toyed with the idea of getting one in the Van Horn stables, she got up on a Tennessee Walker and couldn't even begin to ride because she was too high off the ground. She couldn't hunt and her only talent was finding poison berries that burned her insides and would not go away until she drank a tonic. Perhaps it would have been a better way to die, gunned down near Cal's grave than to slowly deteriorate from starvation. Either way, she wasn't going back to Chicago, and when he offered to take her to a train station, she told him no.

He didn't laugh or mock, think her insane for remaining alone. Instead, he offered to teach her how to hunt.

"No funny business," she ordered. "I know how I look, but I can defend myself."

"I don't doubt it ma'am."

He kept a respectful distance as he led her away from Cal's grave. She watched him as he watched the land he took her too, a good spot for hunting, he said. Though he wore a hat she could get a better look at his well-worn face, slightly pink from the sun. Like her he hadn't seen a tub of water in months. But he killed a rabbit for her, and showed her how to skin it for the pelt and for the meat. He didn't laugh when her first and second tug did nothing, nor did he laugh when she shut her eyes tight and pulled with all her might, all but jump for joy when she finally removed the pelt. He escorted her home and listened to her talk of privileges and the money her and Cal's family had, and how they wanted to abandon it all for something real. He didn't laugh when she insisted she didn't want him to take her to the station again, the idea of getting on a horse again not the only reason, and when she spotted two grey wolves on the top of the hill, he defended her.

"It's alright," he called, Charlotte hiding from behind a tree when they wolves descended the hill. "They're dead now."

It was useless to say she would have died had he not been there, but she did anyway, and she thanked him again before he led her back to the cabin. He suggested he start using her husband's rifle. She agreed.

"This is a good spot," he said on the way back, the two climbing the hill. "Remote, and a good water source. You could survive here all right."

"I have no doubt one could," Charlotte replied. "Whether or not Charlotte Balfour can is another matter entirely."

He didn't dispute it, but his manner indicated that he held some semblance of faith, something too many didn't have in her, even Cal sometimes. Are you sure you want to do this Charlotte? He asked the day before they left. You've never left the city. Unfortunately his childhood summers spent in remote Maine left him as prepared as Charlotte in the end.

Her kind stranger however had not once argued with her, insist that she leave or suggest she couldn't do it. She suspected he may have had more faith than she did. He held something few men in the city ever held, a respect that made her think he had lived in the outdoors all his life. In the indolent city where one didn't have to think about what the next meal would be, or even if one would have a next meal, there was time to assign and play roles. Here, were there were no roles to play, he saw her as only another being that needed help.

Even then, he didn't need to help her. He did.

"So, you came from Chicago?" he asked, making polite conversation. He had a gravely voice that should have been unpleasant, but she enjoyed listening to it all the same.

"Yes," she replied. "Have you been there?"

"Just passed through."

"Oh. Business or pleasure?"

"Business you could say. Banking mostly."

Cal was in banking. She wondered if they had ever crossed paths. "I doubt it," he replied, and she couldn't see his eyes underneath his wide brimmed hat. "I was more on the withdrawal side."

She froze before coming back, understanding. "Oh. You're teasing me."

"Something like that."

He was sheepish. She may have been privileged but she wasn't naïve. Vaguely too, she recalled an incident at Cal's bank a few years prior. When her stranger finally looked at her, the two engaging in a stand-off of sort, his eyes asked when he didn't if he was going to judge her. Maybe once she would have. But there, in a place that looked like heaven but could be certain hell, there was no time for judgement. He was only a person who helped her.

"I'd invite you in," she said as she opened her door and he stood by the steps. "But I'm a little dead on my feet, if you'll forgive the pun. With some food and washing, I'll be a new woman. But do call again sometime, please."

"I'll try ma'am."

She didn't go in, not yet. He didn't leave, not yet. He cleared his throat. He told her he was sorry for her loss.

"He would have wanted me to stay," Charlotte said.

"Is that what you want?"

"Yes," she said, without a moment's pause.

He might have questioned if she was too prideful or if she had no common sense. Yet he only smiled and asked if the city was really that bad.

"Yes, it is that bad," she said, chuckling, and the sound was so foreign to her after not hearing it for so long.

He chuckled too. "I don't doubt it."

He tried to hide his small cough before he turned to leave. Yet before he left the premise she recalled one thing. She didn't know his name.

"Arthur," he replied when she asked, and when the name conjured images of knights and round tables, she proclaimed he was like King Arthur then.

"I don't know about that," he replied, and for the first time since they made acquaintances, he took off his hat. It struck her then how young he was, but how this place that looked like heaven could but be as brutal as hell had worn and whittled him, yet he still stood tall and proud. Handsome in a certain sense, not classically so like she would have called Cal, but one an artist would choose as a subject to paint, because something lay ingrained underneath his eyes. And his hands, Charlotte noted, gaze darting there, they showed a life that lived.

"I do," she said.

When she closed the door behind her, and went to bed with a full belly, she looked at her dirty hands in the candlelight. Even though there were marks and calluses, dirt underneath her fingernails, she had never been prouder of them and what they had accomplished.

Both she and Arthur had hands that had lived.

Chapter 2

Chapter Notes

IMPORTANT, FORGOT TO MENTION LAST UPDATE, I'm moving things around to flesh out Charlotte and Arthur's relationship and give it some more screen time than what we get in game. In game Arthur can meet Charlotte starting in chapter five and into six, but for this story, I'm moving their initial encounter (my chapter one) into Arthur's middle chapter 3. This chapter takes place later in, sometime before the shootout at Shady Belle when the gang looks for Jack. With the rest it should be easy to figure out the general time and with what's going on.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

The rifle was a heavy thing, something Cal only had for show before they decided to start anew and leave Chicago. It took Charlotte nearly an hour for her to open the rifle and place the cartridges inside, and she screamed so loud the nearby deer likely darted away when she shot a bullet straight into the wooden planks underneath her. Heart beating like mad, she took a deep breath to calm herself, grateful she didn't lose a foot. She was even more grateful the bullet didn't ricochet backward into her head. The wilderness already made her lose half a mind, there was no need for a bullet to take away the other half.

Then again, many would have said she lost that when she and Cal decided to leave their old lives. The rest would have said it after learning she decided to stay in the wilderness without him. In fact, Charlotte was certain there was only one who would have had the decency not to remind her of her insanity, though she was also certain the gallant Arthur drew the line somewhere. She suspected it would have been her poor aim with the rifle.

It didn't take long for Arthur to shoot those wolves that caught wind of their scent after he killed the rabbit for her, but two hours and boxes upon boxes of used rifle cartridges later, Charlotte wasn't any closer to hitting one of the bottles she set up for target practice. And they were stationary—deer and rabbits in the wild, (or the unthinkable, wolves and bears) moved. Rather fast as well. She was being careful with the rabbit, salting it and making stew of some, but sooner rather than later it would run out, and she would be under imminent doom. She needed to hunt. She needed to be able to hit something with Cal's rifle, or she may as well already make her grave.

She tried not to think about that too hard. Only aimed, or at least made an attempt at it, pulled the trigger, missed, and tried again, and again, and again. Once she became so angry she shot a full cartridge one right after the other, that if there were people nearby they would have ran suspecting a shoot-out or robbery was occurring. She may still not have hit a single one, but she did learn shooting was a remarkable way to release her frustrations. Helpless, she was going to call it a day, until Arthur saw to it that she didn't.

On his salt and pepper colored horse, he trotted up to her gate before dismounting, asking if she was doing alright. She kept to herself how glad she was that they managed to make acquaintances again, and how she hoped the gentlemanly and knightly ways she witnessed the last time he arrived continued and compelled him enough to shoot another rabbit for her. Arthur however, not content to feed her for only one day again, gave her something better. He taught her how to shoot, to feed her for life.

He didn't know much about Aristotle he said, when Charlotte recalled a quote drilled into her head long ago. But he knew how to shoot. He put his large hands on her shoulders. She felt where she had lost weight since arriving and the soft press of his digits against her, simultaneously easing her and pulling her body upward. She had been slumped over she realized, perhaps in a small act of rebellion from her younger years when she couldn't sit at a table without her tutors demanding she sit up straight. Standing taller she felt the control, and even if she hadn't gotten a single shot all day, his hands on her shoulders renewed her, giving her more vigor to take on those devious bottles and cans.

"Always pull the trigger on empty lungs," Arthur said. "Here, let me show you."

With his revolver, he effortless aimed and hit on his first try. He paused after, and there was a moment where he touched his shoulder and grimaced, shuffling some. She asked if he was alright.

"Fine," he said. "Here, watch."

She had a worry the whole thing would turn into a show of male dominance, Arthur hitting bottle after bottle, but he surprised her by missing one. It was odd, he seemed to have it perfectly aligned before he moved suddenly and the bullet missed, but she informed him anyway that knowing even he could miss every once in a while, made her feel better.

"It happens," he said with a small shrug.

They took turns. He killed the rat that she and Cal could never get as it scurried from under the porch to the outhouse. She thanked him profusely, not informing him she could finally get a decent sleep, as before she was too afraid of the thing crawling on her in the middle of the night. Mind cleared, she did as he said and positioned Cal's rifle again. She took a deep breath. aimed, and though the rifle kicked back and jerked into her shoulder, though the thing was heavy, and though she was an insane woman who was over her head for thinking she could live alone in the wilderness, she emptied her lungs and shot. The glass shattered.

"I did it!" she exclaimed, nearly bouncing on the balls of her feet. "I did it!"

"You did."

She couldn't have done it without him. Not once but twice he took the time to help her when others didn't. "Thank you, thank you!" she said, and he merely took off his hat and scratched the back of his head, as if words of thanks wasn't something he was accustomed to. Closer to him than she had been previous, she was reminded of what was before, and saw what she hadn't seen before. In the city there were so many faces, one could never possibly remember all, or even most. There were only a few that Charlotte knew she could paint to canvas if she had the tools or the skill, with every detail exactly as how they would have appeared in life. Her mother and father (both with their grim and stern faces, though her mother less so.) her brother (a jovial smile) and Cal, eyes to the distance, dreaming of something bigger than himself, too optimistic for the cynical world.

Charlotte studied Arthur. He couldn't have been that much older than her, and though her mother, who wanted grandchildren, liked to inform her the obvious fact she wasn't getting any younger, Charlotte had only lived for thirty years. Arthur may have had more physical years than she, but he had hundreds of years of so much living she didn't know but wanted to know when she had so few. Cal's passing aged her some, yes. She aged a lifetime when she brought him home after the bear attack and told him he would be alright, and he only shook his head and asked for her to hold him. She aged another lifetime when she buried him. Yet still not so much as others, not yet.

There was an old Mr. Jenkins, the man who oversaw the library in Chicago. He had always been one of her dearest friends, and he came to the city from the frontier, spending most of his life there. "You don't live there without loss Charlotte," he said. "Not as long as I have." Arthur, she knew, from the way he held his gun and from the way he stood in the open field, not timid and meek but ready, she knew he had to have lived most of his life that way. He must have had loses. It was impossible not to. That, coupled with hard living, gave him so many more lifetimes than anyone else she had ever known.

It would have been difficult to depict his likeness in art because of his extra years, and she had not the tools nor the skill. Still, she was certain she would have been able to make his likeness with stunning clarity, even another lifetime from were they stood. Pinpointing an expression would have been difficult, for she didn't know him the way she knew others, the way she wanted to. Yet she could still paint him,and she'd use every shade she had.

She invited him for leftover rabbit stew. He obliged, following her inside and taking a seat when she offered. Her new home of Willard's Rest was far smaller than her parent's home, and smaller than her and Cal's townhome as well—only furnished with what was needed to live and nothing more. Her father would have walked in and called the place a garish cave. That was why she treasured it all the more.

"Bon Appetit," Charlotte said, serving him her rabbit stew with carrots and canned peas, garnished with oregano and thyme she found growing near her home.

His brows furrowed. "Huh?"

"Please enjoy," she clarified, not knowing why she thought to impress him with her French. It wasn't as if she thought the language pleasing, or that she was truly that good at it.

She thanked him again as she tidied up and served herself, reiterating he didn't have to help her, but he did.

"I really am grateful," she said. And at the end she added, because she thought he should know, "you're a good man."

"Oh, you don't really know me."

It stung that he would say that, oddly so, though no malice dripped from his phrasing. "I know enough," she insisted, because others wouldn't have stopped to meet a crying woman the first time, and even more wouldn't have come back. It must have been the knight in him that compelled him to go back.

"There's always more to find in ourselves," she said. "You helped me see that."

If he agreed or not he didn't reply, he only ate silently as she ate silently. Weeks of being alone with only her thoughts and her books to occupy her, the presence of another was foreign, though certainly not unwelcome. That was her and Cal, they could talk without words, be content to read silently by each other's side. Arthur must have been used to silence too, with the sounds of the outside his only comfort he wasn't completely alone.

He studied her, glancing at her between bites of stew. He said she looked better when they first crossed paths again, likely because she had taken some time to rub the grime from her face, even though her hair was still lacking a coiffure, though one had more important things to worry about than hair away from the city. She looked some semblance of the woman she was but still ate sitting straight and with her other hand on her lap. He however ate with his elbows on the table, hunched over, and she had an inkling he was used to sipping directly from the bowl, gathered through the way he struggled getting the last dregs of stew from the bowl with the spoon.

Well. She had always wanted to do that as a child, pick up the bowl and sip, though her father's hand slapped her whenever she attempted it. She felt the sting as she lifted the bowl and finished her stew off that way. From the corner of her eye, she saw Arthur did the same. She was glad the bowl hid her smile.

He quickly wiped at his mouth. "Stew was good," he complimented.

"Thank you," Charlotte said, wiping at her mouth as well, topping it with wiping at her dress and staining it. "I was worried at first. I hadn't made anything like this before. But when I was a girl I used to sneak into the kitchen and watch the cook. I must have picked up a few things."

Cal was such an optimist, she told Arthur. It carried over to her, though she admitted there was a fine line between optimism and naivety. She and Cal, both born with a silver spoon in their mouths, imagined that they could take a wagon from Annesburg to their new home, and the canned goods would last until they could begin growing vegetables and fruit from their garden. What fools they were, to believe they could go from banquets, butlers and valets to their own self-reliance.

"Is that what it's like in the big city?" Arthur asked. "Sounds terrible."

"There's so many people, so many things," Charlotte replied. "I was crushed by it."

The bitter truth was she was crushed by everything that happened after she left. She imagined an easy transition, something pastoral where she and Cal could garden and make homemade wine, write the next great American novel.

"I became far more pathetic than any anti-heroine I could ever pen," she mused.

"I reckon you're gonna be just fine."

She smiled at his sincerity. She reckoned he was right.

She had a wonder how she would see him off as he finished. She even wondered if he would stay. Politeness would compel her to tell him he was more than welcome to the guest room. He would probably decline, though maybe she would have wished he would stay.

"Ma'am, I appreciate this, really, bu—"

She saved him the trouble. "I understand. But be welcomed to stay, if…wait…"

About ready to stand, he doubled over and pressed his hand to his shoulder, the same place he did outside when she noticed his slight sway. "Are you alright?" she asked.

Standing fully, he leaned against the wooden chair. He groaned.

"Sir, are you alright?" she asked again.

"Just a scratch," he replied, rising. "Listen, ma'am. I appreciate this, thank you for the meal, but—"

At his heavy groan she rushed to his side, steadying him as he steadied her earlier. "You're hurt," she said. "Let me see."

"It's really no—"

"Let me see. Please."

At last obliging, he opened his tan colored jacket for her. Stains of dried blood caked his right shoulder, and he winced when her fingers lightly ghosted over the wound.

"Wolves," he muttered. "About an hour and a half from here."

"More wolves?"

He had a friend named Hamish who fancied hunting a legendary she-wolf, he said, before she could begin to worry they were around her home. They were tracking the beast, but ended up the hunted.

"You rode here with this?" she asked, concern mounting.

"I had no choice ma'am."

"Charlotte," she corrected, "please don't call me ma'am, my mother was ma'am."

Something in her simple mind deemed that was the most important thing to tell him then, but there was a small victory when he amended it and called her "Charlotte" as she asked.

"Charlotte," he said again. "Please. It's no trouble. Been through worse."

It didn't mean she could ignore it. "Did you take care of it?"

"The wound isn't deep. I reckon it'll heal just fine."

"Please. Let me take care of it."

"I can—"

"I want to."

His eyes softened. He relented, nodding, and she brought him to his full height— a good forehead taller than her—and she ushered him into the guest bedroom, the room with a tiny bed that she and Cal hoped would be their child's room one day. Arthur dwarfed the bed, but he made no fuss as she shuffled out and searched for a bottle of alcohol, a clean cloth, and something to bind the wound. Cal insisted on a few cases of the potent, and in her opinion, sickening concoction of moonshine with them on their new adventure, and though she protested it at the time, she was glad to have it now. From what she knew from pulp magazines, the alcohol from the moonshine could disinfect the wound. She also recalled it was also something Mr. Jenkins informed her before she left. You must be prepared Charlotte, he said. If something happens to you or Cal, the doctor won't be right down the street…

As a doctor she failed Cal. She wouldn't fail Arthur.

She used up all the bindings she had after she brought Cal home that evening of the attack, but she needed something for Arthur. Haste rather than spite brought her to her room to one of her skirts from her old life, a red satin frilly thing she never liked wearing, something she insisted on leaving behind before her father told her to bring it in case there was a gathering, but Charlotte had to admit satisfaction when she ripped the hem to make a suitable binding.

Returning to Arthur, the man sitting on what would have been her and Cal's child's bed, she realized there was another dilemma. She would have to ask him to take off his jacket and his shirt.

"Sir…I—"

"Arthur."

She blinked, and he faintly grinned. "Now Charlotte, it's only fair. Sir was my father anyway."

"Oh. Right. Arthur." It was the first time she said the name aloud, though he had been a familiar thread in her thoughts lately. She could say it more often, she thought, it was a name that lent itself to be repeated.

She came over to the bedside table, and set the moonshine, cloth, and torn satin down. Upon his inquiry she informed him it was the products of a dress she wore to a cousin's wedding she particularly despised.

"The cousin or the dress?"

"Both," Charlotte clarified. "I wouldn't even have brought it, but my father insisted."

"Did your father think there'd be a party up here to attend?"

"My father has a limited view on things, and believes what he wants to. That is one thing I hope to never have."

"Not at all."

He peered at her. He brought such a presence to her home, a distinctly male one, but different from Cal's, who bore some of the distinguished gentleman his family wanted to be. He was neither pure frontiersman nor a distinguished gentleman like Cal, but something in between that forged a masculinity of humbleness and rawness, elicited through the way he sat and respected her.

It was still daring of him to assume. "You don't know me," she said.

"I know enough."

Conceding, she nodded. In his life—in their lives—knowing enough was sometimes enough. It had to be.

She was unaware of the rising heat to her cheeks at first, but she became all the more aware when she informed him he was going to have to take his jacket and shirt off.

"Now, I was married," she said. "These sorts of things aren't new to me, so if you would kindly take off your jacket and shirt to make this easier…"

She didn't stare, though she saw from the corner of her eye that he began by taking off his jacket. She took it from him and set it on the table nearby as he began to unbutton his shirt as well. She suspected these sorts of things weren't knew to him as well, as she also suspected he wasn't the one who did the removing. Had her mother and father known her vulgar thoughts they would have slapped her. But in the city there's time to worry about vulgarity, she and Arthur had no time for frivolous societal norms and expectations. They had to make their own society.

He handed her his blue collared shirt, torn were the wolf bit, and she set it aside along with the jacket. In her life she had only seen one other man's nakedness, though Cal was thinner and taller where Arthur was stockier. His skin was pale where the sun did not reach, coarse hair the same color of his hair on his chest and lower, disappearing into his breeches. He was a man that ate when he could and learned how to carry that weight the most effectively. He was lean, but well-toned and littered with a few scars. Charlotte told herself she only gave a cursory glance there at his chest or where the line of hair disappeared below his breeches, or at his strong arms and shoulders where she saw an old wound long since healed, perhaps by another woman. She also saw he wore no ring. She still wore hers.

She cleaned off the dried blood with the dampened clean cloth. He apologized for the sight, but she had seen far worse. "This may sting a bit," she said before dabbing at the bite-marked wound against his shoulder. He merely grimaced but otherwise showed no sign he was bothered.

"The dog jumped me," he said. "Would have been worse had Hamish not been there."

She continued to clean the wound. "Hamish is your friend?"

"I guess you could say that. He's an army veteran. Found his horse for him once, took me fishing once, then took me hunting this last time."

"You fish?" she asked. "There's a river nearby, though Cal didn't have a rod. I told him it would be a good idea for us to get one and learn."

"It is a good idea," Arthur agreed. "I'm no fisherman, but I do know a few things."

He seemed like he would be good at anything. "I don't believe it," she stated with a smirk.

"Oh, it's true," he drawled. "I was at the lake for hours once before finally giving up. But we needed food for the night, so I went to the market and bought three large-mouth basses. Dutch and Hosea—couple of people I run with," he clarified, "they were so impressed, they thought I caught all the fish myself. So I lied to them."

They caught him, he said. The next day, the three passing through town, the butcher saw Arthur asked if he enjoyed the fish. Charlotte laughed, and Arthur laughed. It was the first time she had laughed since Cal died—since they arrived, and Charlotte remembered how wonderful it was, to share a laugh with someone, how much you could bond with someone, through laughing with them.

"So," she began as she bound the wound as tightly as she could, laughing with him thinking she should ask more about him. "You run with people."

"Sure," he replied.

"Do you have a home?"

"Wherever I am is home I suppose."

She found it a lovely attitude, she said as much. She didn't prod about the people he ran with, the things he did with them. He figured her for a smart woman anyway, he didn't need to say anything about it. She would have listened though, if he decided to tell her. Besides, she already decided, already knew that he was a good man.

The shirt was dirty and stained with blood. Charlotte brought him one of Cal's.

"I can't take this from you," he said.

"I insist," she replied. "And I also want to give you this."

It was one hundred dollars. She offered it to him as he stood, and though he studied it, he did not take it.

"I can't take your money Charlotte," he said simply.

"But I want you too. I have all I would ever need in the city, and I came here because I didn't want this or any of it. And I know what you must be thinking…poor little rich girl, but—"

"I wasn't thinking that at all. I was thinking you are very brave."

She took his hand. She placed the money in his large and broad palm, rough and calloused yet not unpleasant.

"Please take it," she said.

For the second time he refused, and she relented, sticking the bills in the little box near the bed. Though he did take Cal's shirt—his olive green collared every day shirt that he only wore around the house in Chicago, and one she wore in jest a few times, laying on their marriage bed and waiting for him to return from the bank. As Arthur put it on she remembered those times, the warm welcome of Cal's kiss, and delicate hands on her skin. She imagined a different sort of touch from Arthur as she escorted him out, and he grabbed his hat from the table, promised him she was going to go hunting the next day.

"There are more than animals out there," he said. "Charlotte. If someone comes here…"

Gravely, she nodded. She knew.

"Don't hesitate."

"I won't hesitate," she promised.

"Good."

She walked him over to his horse, who he had hitched outside the wall. "Thank you," she said. "So much. Truly. I feel like a new woman now."

"It was no problem," he said, climbing on top of his horse, Charlotte idly petting the animal's salt and pepper coat. "Thank you, for everything."

They looked at each other longer than what was proper, before his horse finally carried him away. Before he was away from the ground, she asked him to wait.

"Charlotte?" he asked.

She liked the way he said her name. Cal said it with a soft lilt, Arthur was harder on the syllables, making her feel like a real frontier and plainswoman.

She put her hands on her hips. "You missed earlier on purpose."

He tipped his hat. "Caught me."

"Be careful Arthur," she said. "Be well."

"Always."

He didn't look back as he left for good, but he didn't have to for her to remember his blue-green eyes, remember the way they crinkled when he laughed, or had light in them when he looked at her. She wished she would have embraced him. It wouldn't have been proper for a woman of the city, but as she said, there was no time for formalities, not anymore. And, she wasn't a city woman anymore. Yet to meet again, just to say goodbye was a great and sweet sorrow. It deserved more. Arthur, the only one who had ever called her brave before, deserved more.

She went to bed that night with the wish for more.

Chapter End Notes

hope you enjoyed! I always welcome comments :) Truly they give every writer vigor.

Chapter 3

To no one in particular, except the morning sky, the river, and perhaps Cal, who perhaps heard in the heavens, Charlotte uttered her first words in a week and a half, even to herself, since Arthur last left.

"Look at me," she said. "I am alive."

She sighed, giddy and new as she stretched her arms out wide and closed her eyes, breathing in the pine mingled with the smell of the water's light spray. The fresh morning air elicited her to pull down her hair and pull up her skirts, go to the water's edge and stand barefoot in the river. How long had it been since she saw herself in the water, falling in and floating down, hair strewn about and skirts and petticoats around like a great white lily, like Ophelia in Hamlet? How much had happened since Ophelia became neither a Hamlet or a Macbeth, or someone else who had caused their own downfall, but someone entirely new, who learned and survived, and lived?

"Look at me Cal," Charlotte said, knowing he did hear, somewhere far. "I'm going to survive."

She all but danced back to the house, the joy of bare feet against the blades of grass as divine as she remembered it as a girl. Her family had a town home in Chicago. The backyard was small, but it had flowerbeds, with some roses and wildflowers growing. The cook, Lavinia, (though Charlotte called her "Livvy,") always said fairies lived among the roses and the wildflowers. She showed her pictures in books of tiny, barefoot fairies with butterfly wings on their back. Charlotte, in seeing those pictures, and wanting to be like them, took off her shoes and danced in the grass before her father saw and scolded her. It was a beautiful moment while it lasted. Even then, she had a thought that that was how life was supposed to be, carefree and not in shoes that pinched her toes, and dresses that prevented one from really dancing.

But alone in the wilds, no one could stop her from dancing barefoot in the grass anymore.

"Charlotte Balfour?"

She had been alone, though not necessarily lonely, yet in hearing that gravely yet mellifluous voice she hadn't heard in months, she remembered how much she liked his company and presence. Of course, her noble and dashing knight Arthur with his voice like leather and honey would appear again when she had gotten used to being alone, and being the version of her truest self in the process. But as she waved and welcomed him, she had the thought that being her truest self didn't have to stop when he was near.

"Mrs. Balfour," Arthur greeted, tipping his hat. "You look…"

"Ridiculous, I know," she said with a laugh. She wore a red calico dress, pattern washed out and away with no petticoat and no shoes, an utterly scandalous choice of clothes. She wore her hair in a long braid over her shoulder, and though she was tempted to take the pair of scissors and cut the braid into something shorter and simpler, she decided to keep her hair the way it was. It would have been too painful to rid herself of a sweet reminder of before, a reminder of how Cal used to run his fingers through her cascading raven colored hair as she sat at her vanity and brushed after the day's end. Though something was there that wasn't before, a single thread of silver at the top, all the more striking against her dark hair. A line of her gained wisdom, her survival.

"Not ridiculous at all Mrs. Balfour," Arthur replied, grinning, though he was too polite for his own good. She didn't feel like Ophelia anymore, but she realized she certainly looked the part, with her shoes in her hand and not on, unpinned hair, and dancing to a made-up song. Next she would have sung, "tomorrow is St. Valentine's day," like the actress sung on stage when she saw that production of Hamlet against her mother and father's wishes.

"Why, but Arthur," Charlotte said, running her hands through her plait, before realizing she didn't know his surname. "Arthur…?"

"Morgan. Arthur Morgan."

"Arthur Morgan," Charlotte announced, finding it a fine name for a fine man. "You don't have to lie."

"I wouldn't lie to you Charlotte," he said. How she believed him.

"It's good to see you again," she said after some comfortable silence, Charlotte basking in her truest self. "Though I'm afraid I probably do seem a little ridiculous."

"You're happy."

"I am," she said, the announcement cementing it and making it truer. "I wasn't made for this sort of life, but I've made it my sort of life." She gestured to her home. Her kingdom, her domain. Hers. "I am happy," she said, and it gave it it's finality.

"You deserve to be happy Charlotte. After what happened, what you've been through, it's the least you deserve."

"Would you come in?"

"Ah, I can't take advantage of your hospitality again," he said, scratching the back of his neck. "You've done more than enough. I only wanted to return the shirt you lent me."

"It wasn't necessary Arthur," she assured. Giving him that was the least she could do, especially after he turned down the money.

"Oh, but I wanted to. Washed it too, afraid I may have gotten mud on it at one point, but the stain is gone, and it smells nice again. Here."

She took the folded shirt from him, noting he did indeed wash it as he said—it smelled of lye, yet faintly, she detected a new scent, distinctly not Cal's, but masculine none the less. It must have been his smell that clung to it, she got the feeling that his smell of sunshine, grass, sweat, earth, and that note that was distinctly Arthur Morgan clung to most places he had a prominent presence.

"It was a little tight anyway," he said. "Might have gained some weight."

"I can't tell," Charlotte replied, glancing at his midsection, and likely longer than she needed to before she changed the subject, insisting that since he rode all the way to her home, she had to invite him in.

"It's not necessary ma'am, you've—"

"Ah, my mother was ma'am, remember,"

"Charlotte," he amended, nodding. "You've done so much already."

"As have you," she said, perplexed at his self-deprecation. "Now, I may fancy myself a frontierswoman now, but I didn't forget what my mother taught me. You helped me, and what's mine is yours. Please, do come in."

"Charlotte—"

She put her hand on her hip. "You're also someone who has been kind to me. More people can learn from you. I can't let you leave here without at least a cup of coffee."

At last he relented, the victory sweet. For breakfast that morning she made coffee for herself, planning on cooking a new stew with venison meat during the afternoon to eat for dinner. She had taken to eating only supper, a meal that usually consisted of stew, or cooked game meat with a side of fresh vegetables. The seedlings she and Cal brought were finally growing, right along with the fresh flowers that adorned the bed outside her cabin. Finally, the fairies had a place to be. Arthur made note of them before he entered the cabin, once again taking off his hat as he entered, and setting it on the table as he did the last time. Charlotte didn't even bother putting back on her shoes, tossing them to the side of the house before taking out two cups and pouring a cup for herself and for him. They chatted about the weather and about his journeys, no wolves this time or anything of that sort, but he had heard of a certain "Murfree brood" that frequented near Annesburg.

"You haven't seen anyone 'round here have you?" Arthur asked. "No one's come over, asked for any money or anything like that have they?"

"No," Charlotte replied. "It's been quiet and peaceful. Haven't seen anyone except you."

He nodded, and she asked if she should be worried about that sort of thing. Certainly she knew anything could happen out in the wilderness at any given time, but that was true for the city as well, or anywhere. Nature was dangerous, perhaps people more so.

"Don't be worried," he advised, "but be ready."

"Always."

He pointed to the buck pelt that adorned the floor near the fire. "That wasn't there before," he said. "Nice one too."

"I've been hunting," she bragged, recalling how yesterday Cal's rifle didn't feel so heavy anymore. "I couldn't have done it without you."

He wasn't used to so much praise, so many words of thanks, she could tell by his unease. It was a shame. He should have been appreciated often, and by someone who truly did appreciate him. Maybe she was the proper person.

"Well," she said, sipping her coffee as he gulped his, "that's new, I see."

She gestured to the gold star on his paisley blue colored vest. "Oh no," he said, touching it and admiring it. "I've had it for a while now. Guess you could say I've been deputized by the Grays in Rhodes."

"Rhodes?" She heard of the smaller town near the bigger and more developed Saint Denis, the place littered with old confederates and backwards attitudes. Or at least, that was what Cal said on their way up to Annesburg. They didn't go near the place during their travels, but the reputation through power of word traveled.

"Have you heard of it? It's near St. Denis."

"It's in Lemoyne," she replied. "You traveled all the way from Lemoyne to here?"

"Oh, it's not that far. A day's journey alone, at most. Pepper—my horse—she's fast."

"But you came all the way out here alone?"

He shrugged. "I don't mind being alone, sometimes."

"Neither do I apparently," Charlotte said, though she knew that to be true for a long time. Her brother was five years younger, she learned to entertain herself as a child when her mother entertained at garden parties and her father was away at work. Books were her friends, the fairies who lived in the flower beds her friends too, though they didn't speak to her as much as she would have liked. Sometimes they didn't speak to her at all. Livvy did, though Livvy of course was busy most of the time. She passed away before Charlotte married. She missed her.

She had been roughly counting the days since she and Cal had begun their new life. A month and a week in when she brought him home and laid him on their bed, trying to bring him back to life. A week after, her knight Arthur appeared, and then he came back another week after that. A week and a half passed alone after. She liked to be alone, being the woman she couldn't always be, even with Cal, who believed in fairies and danced under the moon to a song only she heard.

Glimpsing at Arthur, who leaned back in the chair, she saw him run a hand through his hair that was styled with no pomade, making it stick up a little and making her have to hold back a chuckle. With him, she remembered she didn't always like to be alone. She remembered and simultaneously, she discovered more of him. She had been discovering since she met him, the second meeting allowing her the knowledge that he was so unique and nuanced from anyone else she had ever known, that would allow her ability to paint him to a canvas. More time with him in his presence, a presence that like his looks, were different from anyone else she had ever known, allowed her an awareness of his inherent masculinity underlined with something softer. He studied her, aware she was a woman, but not focused on her femininity and how it contrasted with his masculinity. He studied her as a person who he shared the earth with, as a person who helped him.

She didn't mind being alone. She liked being alone. Yet even without words, his presence locked a piece of her that she didn't even know that was unlocked.

"I'm sorry."

The apology, though sincere, perplexed her. "For what?"

"You came here, expecting something you didn't get. I know what that's like."

"We were naïve," Charlotte replied. "We had very idyllic images of our new life, one that didn't involve skinning any animals, or nearly starving because we didn't know how to hunt, or anything of that sort. But I did get my ideal, in a way." She wouldn't have been able to dance under the moon like perhaps a fairy or moon goddess would have if she hadn't.

"This is what you dreamed about?"

She nodded. "I'm free. I'm alone most of the time," all the time rather, when he wasn't there, "but I'm free. And there's no one to tie me down, or tell me I'm odd, or—"

"Charlotte. Was your husband—?"

She understood how it could have come across. She shook her head quickly, alleviating his worry. "No," she assured, ashamed her words would even suggest that. "Cal would never have hurt me. He never wanted to tie me down. This whole thing, Willard's Rest, was more his idea, but he told me if I ever changed my mind, we would come back. No, no, of course not. No. What I meant was, Cal may have been an optimist, but he did have a firm grip on reality when I never really did. I believed in fairies and knights of the round table. He did too for a time, before he changed. That's why he wanted to come here, he wanted something real."

"I'd never been one for the city," Arthur admitted, a touch bashful. "But what do you mean? That bad huh?"

"Yes," she replied. "That bad. I don't think the things that people want in the city, like money, power… that sort of thing, are real," she explained. "Status. It doesn't exist. Someone far too bored and self-important made it up. I'd rather be devoured by wolves than have to be concerned with status again."

It was a dramatic statement, but he didn't reply, only listened, leaning in. "Cal was the same," Charlotte continued. "He was such an odd man. He loved stories like I did, hated his job at the bank, thought moving here would make him remember what he used to love. He thought it a fine place to raise a child. I did too." She paused, sipping her coffee. "I never got pregnant, you see," she continued, Arthur's eyes wavering, just a bit. She understood. No one typically knew what to say to a woman who wanted to be a mother, but was left without the opportunity.

"We always hoped for a family, and in moving here, maybe it would finally happen." She stared at her eyes, looking back at her from her coffee cup. "I suppose my body wasn't meant to carry."

One of the things that kept her going after Cal's passing was the hope of a life growing inside her. She bled not long after she buried Cal, before Arthur first came. She had such hopes.

"I'm sorry."

His apology that didn't need to be uttered reminded her she built new hopes for a new life, ones that were dormant until he arrived by Cal's grave. "Arthur," she said. King Arthur, she called him in her mind, though he would blush if she dared call him that to his face.

"Charlotte."

She grinned. The name wasn't as romantic as Guinevere, but she liked the way he said it. She noted the way he said it before, yes, and how it made her feel like a real frontierswoman, but since becoming a real frontierswoman, who shot her own food, learned to skin an animal and made the wilderness her palace, she realized she liked the way he said it because she loved his voice and how it wasn't soft like silk and syrupy like honey, but rough like leather.

"Arthur," she said, toying with her plait, "you couldn't have just returned to bring back my husband's shirt."

The bold and rash statement that perhaps she should never have said, followed with his wavering, straightening, almost pulling and drifting himself from her.

He came with no expectations, he stated as such. She stated she meant nothing herself, though that was partially not the truth.

She sighed, cheeks no doubt flaming. "I see," she muttered. "You wanted to see I was alright."

"I did."

"I am alright," she said. "I'm alive."

"And you're going to be just fine."

"But…" And perhaps her next phrase was far bolder than her previous, "it's good to have a friend."

"It is," he said, and he smiled at her, and it was one of the sweetest moments she had with another soul.

She offered a toast for friends. Their cups clinked together. "To living," he toasted.

She toasted back to living before she set the cup down, proclaiming they should celebrate by doing and not merely saying. How? He asked. He didn't really know what living was, and he wasn't insincere. Odd, for she thought she was the one that hadn't lived at first, while he had. Then again, maybe everyone always thought one thing was true and something else wasn't.

Charlotte though, she had a few ideas about what living was. "It's being happy," she announced.

"Ah. Reckon you're right."

She leaned her hand upon her cheek. "Well then, what makes you happy?"

When he didn't answer, she searched for the obvious—what made many men happy. "Women?" she suggested, though she was certain the type of women that made the men of the city happy, women that painted their faces, wore hoops, petticoats, and shoes that weren't sensible at all, weren't women he had in mind.

"Sure…" he admitted, turning the word into a long drawn out phrase, (his accent turning it into 'shouh' as well.) rather than a simple answer. He was sheepish, embarrassed even. He cleared his throat. "But we…uh…parted ways."

"Oh," Charlotte drawled, not wanting to subject him to going on, discussing a wound that still ached. "I see."

He sighed. "Her name is Mary," he added, almost flippant. "but—she's gone now, left me, not really part of things."

Charlotte didn't know anything about Mary, other than that she had a great loss if she let go of Arthur, and that she and he must have once burned for one another, and loved hard the way Charlotte once loved Cal and he her. Charlotte didn't know Mary, but she knew Arthur, and that might have made her skewed to look at Arthur more favorably than she would have looked at Mary. Yet she pieced the woman together, as well as she could with the little clues given in Arthur's demeanor. She was no matchmaker, no great sage of love, but she had an inkling that Mary viewed Arthur not as a man, but as someone she could change and settle down with. Be proud she had changed. And Arthur was not the settling down type. He was a wanderer. He also wasn't one for change, for no woman or no man. She was a wanderer too, though she had learned not to wander from place to place, but through novels and through her mind. She never changed for anyone. She was lucky enough to find a man who breathed the same as she.

She found one again.

"Please come back," she found herself saying during the evening, and she led him to his horse. "I like being alone, truly, but—"

"I know. I need a friend too."

Two weeks, he promised. He would try to come back in two weeks. Still laughing about the story he told her, about Mary's brother Jamie joining the Chelonians and Arthur's daring rescue, Charlotte warned him about accidentally getting caught in their ways.

He laughed. "I like turtles as much as anyone, but the Chelonians ain't for me."

She was a bold, rash woman, and perhaps living alone had given her some new ideas and ways of looking at the world. Then again, that was precisely why she and Cal abandoned the city. They wanted new ideas, new experiences. It was still a bold of her to have that idea, that Charlotte Clementina Vale Balfour may have been a woman who was exactly for Arthur Morgan. Not as a lover necessarily, though she thought perhaps in a different life they could have been quite the pair.

She would not do that to Cal. She still burned for her first love, her only love. Though she burned for Arthur, who had become her knight, though he wore not silver armor, but a blue vest, jeans, boots, and a gambler's hat. She burned for his loneliness, and his troubles that he had begun to share with her, and she burned for more time with him that would allow her to learn more.

Chapter 4

Chapter Notes

this is going to be longer than what I originally said, lol.

I promised Charlotte Balfour I would visit her in two weeks. It's been four. Three since Colm O'Driscoll's boys got ahold of me. Two since Miss Grimshaw let me get up out of bed and at least walk around. I hope she's not lonely. I hope she doesn't think something happened to me. I can't imagine everything she's been through. I don't want her worrying over me. Then again, maybe I'm too proud to think I'm someone she would worry over.

He drew a picture of her while Miss Grimshaw kept him pinned to his cot. He went back to it that morning sitting by the lake, watching the sun rise. He went back to that drawing nearly every morning and evening. He couldn't depict the silver in her hair with just his pencil, and he also couldn't depict her dancing eyes either, but with what skills he had, he drew Charlotte Balfour with her cheek resting on her hand, looking at him like he was neither a fool or a brute. The truth was he was both a fool and a brute, and the bigger truth was he didn't deserve kindness from a good woman who thought more than a damn about him and looked at him like he was more than what he was. She took up one page of his journal, yet his thoughts of her ran deeper than the one drawing and the one page.

Imagine if I didn't see her at the grave, he wrote. Iwould have taken everything she owned instead of her handing me one hundred dollars in thanks. It wouldn't have been enough, but now I have retribution for ever thinking about robbing her blind. She's alone and I can't tell her that I'm sorry. Probably turn me away if I told her the truth, that I came to Willard's Rest on a tip. Probably what I deserve.

I don't want her alone. Not because she wouldn't be able to survive, but because I don't want her alone.

"You better now Uncle Arthur?"

Arthur set his journal aside. Jack was barefoot by the water's edge. Reminded him of Charlotte standing barefoot in the grass by Willard's Rest last time he saw her. She looked so much older when he first met her, old with grief. Time alone made her younger. Maybe it was the same for him. Alone and with only himself there was no one to disappoint.

"Sure, a lot better now. Thank you," Arthur replied. "Finally okay to leave camp too. And also, thank you for the book you lent me while I was sick."

"Micah said some mean things," Jack said, splashing some water at his feet. "Said you were okay, but Tilly, Mary Beth, and Miss Grimshaw were keeping you from working."

Arthur overhead when he was in bed, everyone thinking that because he was bedridden he had gone dumb. But Micah Bell said mean things about everyone. At least he could take it.

"I'm alright now Jack," he said. "Going to leave today too."

"Where?"

"Well," Arthur began, thinking maybe Jack's childhood innocence could make the situation clearer, "there's someone I need to see."

"Who?"

"A friend. Need to check on her, make sure she's doing okay."

"Why wouldn't she be?"

"She lives by herself," Arthur replied, rising. "She can take care of herself, but I'd like to be sure. See you later Jack."

"See you later Uncle Arthur."

He trimmed his beard and found a hair pomade Tilly or Mary Beth must have left by his bed, thinking he would use it, next to the picture book Jack lent him while he was still laying in bed cursing Colm O'Driscoll and the day he was born. It could have been Hosea or Dutch too who left the pomade, as both talked about keeping up appearances in more civilized areas. Either way, he hardly wore it, his hair looked fine enough covered by his hat. In fact, he almost didn't like the way he looked with the pomade. It reminded him too much of Mary's father and those type of people he'd rather not deal with again.

But he was going to see Charlotte. She was used to those sorts of people. She didn't like them, sure, but he always wondered if she didn't like the way he smelled, or the way he dressed, or if he was too backward for her taste. On impulse and with those thoughts, he warmed the grease in his hands and slicked back his hair.

"You're not going to see Mary Linton are you?"

Arthur caught Tilly's yellow skirts from the corner of his eye. "No," he replied. "Why would you think that?"

"You use pomade last time you saw her. Remember? You were sad for days."

He remembered. "No," he said. "Not today."

"Oh, 'not today?' Well Mary Beth and I are in agreement. You're too good for her."

Most people would have claimed it was the other way around, Arthur pointed out. A lady of high society with an outlaw was a good concept for one of those novels Tilly and Mary Beth liked to read, and Arthur and Mary would have been the loving couple who vowed to never part. In real life it was nothing but two fools doing foolish things and having foolish ideas about the way of the world.

"Am I?" Arthur asked. "I don't think so."

"She only wrote to you because she wanted something from you," Tilly pointed out, a hand on her hip, before retracting suddenly, shifting. She apologized for saying anything or stepping into something she shouldn't have.

He thought the truth was most people always wanted something off of other people, but he told Tilly it was alright, she didn't cross any lines, and after sitting with him for so long, reading to him to pass the time, she had every right to say what she pleased to him. He also told her the truth of the matter, that he was going up near Annesburg to see a friend he promised to see a while ago before everything went to hell.

"That woman in your journal? The one with the braid?"

He nodded, laughing at himself and how he wasn't as mysterious as he thought. "Charlotte," he said. "Charlotte Balfour, from Chicago. Recently widowed."

Tilly looked downward, shaking her head. "I can't imagine that."

"She's a survivor," Arthur said. "Didn't know how to hunt or nothing at first, but she learned. I taught her."

"You taught her?" She stood tall, looking proudly at him. "Ah. Looks like you're a better man than you think you are. Can't fool us."

"Not so much," he said with a sigh. "You know why I was up there? I got a tip from some woman the law was going to lock up."

It was up near Valentine, and he was riding when a carriage drove by. "I'm innocent, save me!" the woman demanded from behind the bars, and Arthur got her out, because of course he got her out, but at the moment he didn't think about what she had done or what she could possibly do. She was only someone that asked for his help.

Well, he got her out, and she gave him a tip about a rich couple from Chicago or New York or some such place that had just moved up to a cabin near Annesburg. He didn't know them to be Charlotte and Cal Balfour. They were any two people who had money when he didn't. Then Cal Balfour became a man who had tragically died and Charlotte the woman who buried him. Charlotte had become his friend.

"Don't mean to sound like one of those books you let us read to you," Tilly said, far wiser than he, "but I think you got something better than money."

He grinned. "Suppose you're right."

"Go on and go Arthur. See you later."

He thanked her for everything, and she promised it was no trouble.

He went on ahead and brushed Peppermint, giving her an apple before going to Buell and doing the same. That horse didn't like the others, the stubborn thing was at the farthest corner away from everyone else. It never ceased to interest him how some horses were exactly like humans.

"Boy," Arthur said, patting his mane, attempting to bond. "I'm sorry. I know you miss him. I do too."

His ears twitched and his eyes were solemn. Still in mourning his human. Arthur realized he liked Buell's human more than he thought too. Tragedy, for a man to survive all that he survived and lose his leg in the process for his end to be a wild boar.

Before he passed, he asked Arthur to take his horse. Buell didn't like him as much, it wasn't as easy as it was with Peppermint to brush or feed. Dutch asked why he couldn't just sell him, but he couldn't do that.

He did however, have an idea.

"Hey boy," Arthur said, "want to meet someone really nice?"

---

He rode Buell to Charlotte's house, Peppermint at his side. It took a little longer than he hoped, but he had to make camp near Van Horn and sleep overnight. At that point, the pomade he put in his hair to impress Charlotte was no longer doing what it was supposed to be doing. Served him right for trying to impress.

It was early morning when he made it there, but the door was locked and she was nowhere in sight. He waited, sitting at her front steps. He waited for nearly an hour, and when he thought maybe he should look for her, there she was.

She had shoes on this time, but her hair was in that same side plait she wore last time, with that same dress. Strapped to her back was her rifle. She carried three rabbit carcasses. She must not have seen the horses, though he did put them off to the side, and she didn't glide as she did last he saw her, but she walked solemnly, the way a woman who survived did, and not one that lived.

He rose. "Charlotte, I—"

"Arthur?"

She came near him, looked deep into his eyes. She blinked and looked but he wasn't sure if she believed he was there.

"It's been a long time," he said. "I know. I'm sorry, I—"

"Come in."

She set the carcasses down, put her rifle aside as Arthur came in. She washed her hands and her face, didn't look at him as she did so. Since he had been in her presence he saw mostly her back.

"Charlotte," he said, knowing he had to explain himself. "I would have come sooner, but—"

"I thought something happened," she stated, still not looking.

"Something did happen, but—"

But her arms wrapped around him and he didn't get to explain.

Charlotte Balfour embraced with her whole being, so much so that she swayed them a little back and forth, and he felt her being collide with his. He wrapped his arms around her frame and she made a fist in his shirt. He felt her anger, frustration, her relief.

"This isn't proper," Charlotte muttered, her voice muffled. "I'm sorry."

"I missed you too."

It wasn't proper, but she wasn't letting go. She wasn't letting go and neither was he. He liked where he was.

Chapter 5

Chapter Summary

Chapter whooped me a little, but here it is :)

Chapter Notes

See the end of the chapter for notes

Charlotte knew why Arthur brought the horse he called Buell to her. He felt guilty for not arriving when he promised, and a gift horse was an offering of repentance. Yet there was something that ran deeper than that, the unwavering truth that she was bold enough to assume, even bolder to know. He simply didn't want her to be alone.

She wasn't lonely before. Perhaps after Cal died yes, but he was in the sky maybe, and she had the moon and stars. So perhaps, she wasn't truly alone. But if it wasn't true, she had herself, and she would always have herself.

She promised Arthur as much, that she wasn't really lonely, with her hands gripping his shoulders even thought the behavior was improper. The matter was, she explained, that the last time he was there to bring back Cal's shirt, he promised a return. She was fine when he wasn't there, certainly not lonely. She was only disappointed that the promise wasn't fulfilled in the time he said it would be.

He promised it wouldn't happen again. A thousand times he promised. She believed it from the first.

"Something happened, Charlotte," he said. As he spoke he pressed his palms into her back, playing a game of what was proper and what wasn't. She was the first that entered the match, throwing herself to him as she did, the thing she wanted to do since she first saw him finally simmering and she could take it no longer. Arthur however held her chastely enough to not cross any borders, firm enough to remind her he wasn't an apparition or trick her mind played. It was a possibility she was more than aware of— the lonely woman finally going insane and conjuring the apparition of a knight coming to rescue her. But Arthur was too real and earthy to be a trick of the mind. His shirt was rough in her hands and his smell of sweat and leather and sun, his voice of honey and leather too idiosyncratic for her to hear as a disembodied remembrance.

"What something?" she asked, peering at him.

His gaze wavered, his touch and feel against her back not as strong or as present. She didn't like that, she wanted him to hold tighter. So she told him no matter, he was there now, the now was what mattered.

"I'll make coffee," she said. "And you must stay for dinner."

"I would like that. But Charlotte?"

She turned from the kitchen. "Arthur?"

"There's someone I want you to meet first."

The "someone" was Buell the horse, a stubborn Dutch Warmblood palomino who gave Charlotte a strange, far off and vacant look.

"I can teach you how to ride," Arthur said, patting Buell's mane. "But…oh."

She could already see. She could already smell, and appropriately, Arthur muttered "shit," under his breath as Charlotte resisted the urge to cover her nose.

"It happens sometimes," Arthur said, the two of them trying not to look as Buell continued to relieve himself. If she didn't know any better, she would have sworn he wanted to smack Buell for his indolence.

"I would imagine," Charlotte replied.

"Just sometimes. Usually just gotta move them away."

That wasn't the real matter however, Arthur said as he took the horses away to the other side of the entryway, though he blushed before continuing. Though Buell had a saddle on already, it wasn't suited for a lady.

"Not suited for a lady?" Charlotte demanded, crossing her arms. "Why Arthur Morgan…"

His eyes widened in fear. "Oh Charlotte. What I meant is…"

"I know what you meant," she said with a smile. "I can tease too you know."

He didn't reply, only smiled back as she inspected the saddle, fit for a real cowboy. She and Cal's brief detour at the Van Horn's stable was a brief one for a multitude of reasons. The smell was awful for one. It was sweat mingled with the far too sweet hay that somehow couldn't mask the stench of manure. Second, when Charlotte decided to get on the horse, the stable boy pulling out the only side-saddle, she got on and could not believe how high it was off the ground. Much higher than it looked. Too high. She preferred her feet planted right on the ground.

"I don't know if you'll be able to get on." Arthur said, as politely as he could, and without eyeing her calico dress. "Ride along yes, not take the reins. It calls for a lot of…uh--"

"You can say it you know," she said when he didn't. "Legs."

She could hear it all the way from Chicago, her mother screaming. One should not say "legs" in public, nor refer to the thighs, or calves, or ankles either. Once when Charlotte picked up her skirt even as a teenager, her father slapped her hand for daring to show such skin. Charlotte never understood why, legs were not particularly the most sensual of parts. Not until she realized that they could be, laying with Cal after being together, legs entangled.

Arthur compromised. "You need to use your lower limbs," he said. "not the easiest to do in a skirt though."

She lifted her skirt up slightly, daring to show her ankle. Another scream from her father in Chicago. "It's not so much the skirt," she said. "It's the hoop and the petticoats."

He never understood those, he said as a brief aside. Charlotte explained what her mother once explained to her, that the hoop and petticoats that covered the wire symbolized a woman's space.

"One does not tread into her domain," Charlotte continued, "and the space of hoop represents that. It is her bubble and her own, fit only for her husband. Of course here…well…"

"Charlotte." He was about to reach out but he stopped himself. She wished to tell him he didn't have to stop himself.

"I would have asked you to stop if I really thought it was improper," she said softly. "Or I would have stopped it myself. Or better yet I wouldn't even have begun this talk."

But perhaps she really was going insane. Her father told her once that that could happen to unmarried women. They naturally went insane. There was no worse fate than to be a spinster, he warned when Charlotte was young. The one thing he never warned about was being a widow, though if her father held any prophecies she would most certainly had warned of her impending madness akin to Ophelia.

Maybe that would have stopped her. Likely not.

"Arthur," Charlotte began, because she needed to know, "you didn't think I went to far, did I? Did I assume that—"

"No."

She broke the distance between them. "Are you sure?"

He nodded, glancing at her from underneath his hat. "Women don't usually—do that sort of thing with me," he revealed, a clue to his bashfulness. "Embracing. Flinging arms around me like a romance. Not anymore. Or ever really."

"Mary never flung herself into your arms?"

"Maybe once or twice," he replied, the slight wavering of his form giving her the indication he was surprised she remembered such a detail about his life and his past. "But she never acted like one of those heroines in those novels."

She mentioned he said that as if he read one himself. "I did," he replied with no shame or embarrassment, before amending that Tilly and Mary Beth were the ones that read to him while he was sick.

"Tilly and Mary Beth," Charlotte muttered, finding it in her to stroke Buell's mane. He didn't flinch, and she took that as a good sign. "Who are they?" she asked. "Are they part of your gang? I didn't realize women were allowed in gangs."

He turned very pale. "Charlotte…"

"It's no matter. I understood after you left that last time."

"How?"

She told him about the stage coach and letter that arrived from her brother Alexander, about an outlaw gang that made themselves known in Valentine as he passed through the town, and it was near enough to Annesburg where he worried. "My brother is in banking too," Charlotte said. "He followed my father, and even though he's five years younger than me, he thinks he has the right to tell me what to do. But no matter. He does try to look out for me. That's why I haven't told him about Cal yet."

She wrote the necessary letters to Cal's mother already. His father had passed on years before, but his mother moved back to New York after, where she originated. It was the hardest letter she ever had to write, and the driver waited patiently as Charlotte penned it, wiping away tears as they fell, making sure they did not blot the words. Yet she couldn't tell Alexander, and he was still under the impression Cal was alive and well. That didn't stop him from wanting her to come home. She suspected her mother in law would insist the same thing, try to get her to go to New York.

Charlotte would refuse both. She liked where she was. And if she moved, the chances of seeing Arthur again…

Well. She was there. And he was there, and even though his lack of true home, his sidestepping during their first meeting of what he did, and Alexander's letter all indicated he was an outlaw and part of a gang. Perhaps it should have bothered her, but people tended to judge others for how they imparted themselves to the individual. In Charlotte's mind, Arthur was a chivalrous knight. He was her friend.

"I don't care Arthur," she said. "I know you're a good man."

He did things that contradicted that, he said so with his eyes and with his wavering gaze. "You're here," she stated. "You are. In my eyes you're a knight."

"Knight," he muttered ironically. "No one has called me that in my life."

"Then alone with no one save the grass, the sun and the moon, I am insane," Charlotte said. "Don't ever tell my father. He'll make me marry again when I have it in me only for one marriage."

He chuckled. "Well. Appears I have none."

She felt a strange sort of inward fall after he said that, so much so she hoped he didn't see her mind working. So, she tried to soften everything that she had said previous, by telling him about her mother's youth in Charleston South Carolina, and how if he thought the current fashion for women was impractical, in her mother's youth, hoop skirts were once so vast and cumbersome, her mother once stepped on hers while doing the Virginia Reel and broke the wiring.

"I've done the Virginia Reel," Arthur said fondly. "I can't imagine doing it in one of those things."

"You've done the Virginia Reel?"

He shrugged bashfully, and she vowed it would be another time before she asked. Patting Buell again, who seemed to be taken to her presence, Charlotte lifted her skirts and admitted she could not ride in her calico dress. But she had an idea.

"What sort of an idea?"

"Well. Wait here and see."

He did as she asked and waited for her outside, and when she emerged in Cal's work pants, Arthur smiled, and she laughed, admitting she didn't think they would fit. Cal has slim hips and a backside that was quite slim as well. She didn't. But she managed to get them on fine, and though she had done away with the hoops and the petticoats since leaving the city, and her bubble had shrunk considerably, she relished the feeling of having no bubble at all.

"This is wonderful," she exclaimed, Arthur laughing once more. "If they saw me now at the Palmer House, they would die from shame. They would think…well." She tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear. "I don't know what they would think. Nothing good."

"You like them?"

"I do," she said, twirling for him, twirling like she did under the evening sun when she was alone, or, and it was a much more bittersweet memory, when she wore her wedding dress. But her wedding dress signified a new life for her, and in much the same way, putting on Cal's pants, feeling the freedom and realizing how easier it was when she didn't have to pull up any skirts for extra mobility was solidifying the same thing. It solidified her new life.

"More women should try out breeches," Charlotte said. "It's wonderful."

"I know a woman who wears pants," Arthur said. "Sadie. Sadie Adler. I think she'd agree."

"Sadie Adler," Charlotte repeated. "How did you come to meet her?"

"Her husband. He was killed, and we found her. We took her in."

"Another widow you care for," Charlotte muttered. "See? You are a good man."

"Ah, you both know how to care for yourselves."

"Only thanks to you."

He didn't believe it, but she would not quarrel with him for the moment. Attention turned back to Buell. With Buell, Arthur's hope was that Charlotte could go into town if she wanted, travel longer distances as well.

"A horse makes carrying game a hell of a lot easier," he said. "Though judging by that deer pelt you managed to do something."

"Oh carrying that deer was easy," Charlotte lied. The truth was that carrying the first one was excruciating. Halfway there she ended up dragging the carcass. But it was getting easier. At least Buell would make it better. She hoped.

"He was my friend, Hamish's," Arthur said. "He asked me to take him in."

"Hamish died?"

Arthur nodded solemnly. "I liked him," he said of his fallen friend. "Damn boar that did it. He told me to take Buell. But I think he likes you more than he likes me."

"I can't tell."

"Well, it's something you just know. Pepp—my horse, when I'm riding her I—"

"Wait. Is your horse named Pepper?"

"Uh..."

He kicked at the ground and she wondered if he was going to answer her. "Now Pepper is a fine name," Charlotte insisted at his persisting silence.

"Not Pepper," he replied, clearing his throat. "Peppermint."

She stared, mouth agape. "Peppermint? You named a horse Peppermint?"

"My…well…I suppose you can say he's my nephew—Jack named him. I said she liked Peppermints and he said that should be her name. It stuck."

"I like it."

"Really?"

"My mother had a terrier named Chouchou," Charlotte said, noting how in French, the name meant "Cabbage Cabbage," though her mother certainly didn't know or care. "Believe me, Peppermint is a fine name."

He patted her. "I don't know. Chouchou isn't too bad," he said, Charlotte stifling her laughter at Arthur's particular cadence of "Chouchou." He did however, agree that Charlotte was right. Peppermint was a fine name. A fine name for a good girl.

"She's a good girl," Charlotte agreed, patting Peppermint's mane. She recalled a far-off quote she read not too long ago. Happy is the horse, to bear the weight of Antony, spoken by Cleopatra in Shakespeare's dramatization of the tragic couple. Happy was Arthur's horse, she thought, to have Arthur Morgan.

One didn't typically think of the bond riders had with their horses. Charlotte never did before she met Buell. She wondered if Arthur truly did see a kinship between herself and the animal. Both had lost someone dear to them, and both had the pleasure of meeting Arthur and gaining the vigor, and perhaps, to some extent, the will to move on. "Would you like to try to ride?" Arthur asked, and when Charlotte nodded, he told her she was going to have to put one foot in the stirrup.

"This is different from the other way," Arthur said, referring to the side saddle method ladies from high society were supposed to utilize. "Your going to have to use the strength in your legs and, oh—"

He grabbed a hold of her waist before she could hoist herself up, quickly apologizing for his brashness.

"Arthur," she said, "you don't have to blush."

"Alright then," he replied, though that splash of pink would not leave, likely because he still did not let go of her waist. With one foot still in the stirrup, he told Charlotte to hold onto the saddle's horn, make sure Buell was centered and straight, and then when she was ready, and he was ready for her, she could get on.

"Are you ready?" Arthur asked, a gravelly near whisper close to her ear.

"I think so," Charlotte said. "The last time I was up, it was so high."

"It is high I suppose. But you can do it."

"What if I fall?"

"I'll be here."

She closed her eyes and with all the strength in her lower body she hoisted herself up, Arthur guiding her. "Get your leg over," Arthur said, and when at last Charlotte was on the saddle, atop Buell the horse, she felt very, very tall.

"Not so bad right?"

Charlotte looked down at him. He was a little lower than she was comfortable with. "No," she replied. "So far, so good. I can see though why they prefer women to side saddle however…"

But for the brief time she was on the horse in the Van Horn stables compared to then, she realized how little in control she was riding in the side saddle fashion. The horse only carried her along. Riding like real cowboy, she was the who controlled and guided.

"How can I tell if he likes me?" Charlotte asked, Arthur handing her the reins.

He patted Buell, as if asking him to be on his best behavior. "Oh, you'll know if he didn't."

"Well, what was it like with you and Peppermint?"

He got her not too long ago, he said. He had accrued some money, (how, she could take a few guesses, though she would not ask.) and when he stood near her he sensed she had taken to him. It was like that with Boadicea as well—his other horse that passed away.

"She was a good horse," Arthur said of his fallen friend. "Peppermint. She's good too. So is this fella."

He pat his mane again, stared into his eyes as if entreating him to be good to her. According to Arthur, one could tell if a horse was fond of you, just by sitting atop him.

"Horses are like humans," he said. "They take some time. But then you have a friend for life."

"Like you, Arthur Morgan?"

He grinned. "Sure. Like me."

Two hours they spent together, Arthur not straying far from her side as he taught her how to canter and turn. It wasn't so high up, Charlotte thought after a while. Or if it was, she learned how to not frighten at the height. Eventually Arthur mounted Peppermint, and by her side, he rode along with Charlotte and Buell as she learned how to ride and Buell learned how to get used to her. They trotted together past Cal's grave, a little near the clearing where the river was for the horses to drink and graze. Eventually they dismounted, that a while other experience, as Charlotte worried she would fall. Once again, Arthur reminded her was near, he would not let her fall.

"Come here," he said, outstretching his arms. "You'll be alright."

"I…oh…"

Their bodies touched in many places as she planted her feet on the ground again. She squeezed his shoulder in thanks, caught a glimpse of his blue-green eyes from underneath his hat.

"It gets easier," he promised. "But I think you're a born rider."

"I hope so," she admitted. "I'd like to be good at some things."

"Ah come on. You make a good stew and a good cup of coffee."

She felt herself blush. "Speaking of which…would you to go back and have some?"

"Sure."

They let the horses rest for a bit. Before Charlotte could attempt to get back on Buell, this time all by herself, she felt Arthur hover behind her, wanting to say something that maybe he shouldn't.
He was glad he chose to say it, even though it was another apology.

"You've apologized so much already," Charlotte said.

"I didn't mean to worry you."

She suspected she would always worry about him, at least partially. "Always come back when you say you will. That's all I ever want or wanted. A promise broken is—"

"I understand."

She didn't mean to be accusatory. She only needed to know. "Do you?"

"I'll protect you Charlotte. I—"

"No, don't promise that. You taught me how to protect me already. You're right by the way. I can." His eyes were very blue, she noticed as she stood with him. "Only promise you'll come back, and you will come back when you say you will be back. Or try," she amended. "Just try."

"Are you lonely Charlotte?"

She stroked Buell's mane. "I think I made a friend," she said. "It won't be so bad anymore. Besides. I could go into town now, and—"

"What the hell is going on here?"

Part of her was always base and primal. Part of everyone was always base and primal. She admired those like Arthur who molded it into a dignified form of rugged masculinity in moments of quiet and tactful survivability when there was danger. He warned her before of the "Murfrees" near Annesburg, she knew within moments the man with a rifle that accosted them then by the river were part of that brood. The man had similar parts that seemed to belong to faces not of his own, long and stringy hair, and ratted clothes paired with bare feet. Both pointed a rifle at Arthur. They glanced at her, studied her—the curious woman with a silver thread in her hair, wearing clothes meant for a man. She sensed it—they were going to mock, but Arthur moved…he moved when he should not have, when he could have ended him then and there with a shot that would have rang through the plains.

He moved to her side without a second thought, though Charlotte thought that perhaps he shouldn't. And then, all was perfectly still.

"This place is ours," the man spat.

"It's a free country."

He snorted, uninterested in Arthur and uninterested in Charlotte as well for that matter. He patted Peppermint, and if before Charlotte did not believe Arthur when he claimed horses to be a lot like people, she did then. His horse recoiled at the foreign touch, ears and tail twitching.

"Nice horse,"

"You can't have her."

When his filthy gaze was on her Charlotte straightened, but her eyes did not waver. "Sure I can," he said, grabbing a hold of the reins. When Peppermint did not move—she only moved for Arthur—he dropped the reins and pointed his rifle back at Arthur.

"Hands up," he ordered. "No sudden movements."

"Arthur…"

"it's okay Charlotte," Arthur said, moving away. "It's going to be okay. It's—"

"Arthur!"

The brood hit Arthur's middle with the back of the rifle. Off balance Arthur fell, sinking to the grass. "No sudden movements!" he ordered, gun pointing at him. "Or I'll blow your head off."
He cackled and it was an awful sound, an evil sound with none of Arthur's warmness when he laughed.

"There's not going to be enough of you left to put on bread…" he sneered. "and your lady friend is gonna see it all…"

He thought he had the upper hand with Arthur on the ground. He thought he could shoot him before Arthur even dreamed of reaching for his gun at his holster. But what never entered the realm of possibilities was that his "lady friend," his Charlotte Balfour, knew how to use a rifle, and that Charlotte Balfour would take Arthur's rifle from his saddlebag, point it at the back of his head, and pull the trigger with no other thought than her friend was in trouble, and she could do something about it.

The gun shot was so loud. It was always loud. Charlotte noticed it the first time she shot Cal's rifle and the bullet pierced the wood floors. It was loud as well when she left the cabin and shot the first buck. They didn't tell you they made noises sometimes after you shot them, how distressing the whimpers of the animal could be. The man that would have hurt Arthur and then would have hurt her made no noises, as the bullet pierced through his head and he crumpled to the ground. She could not see his face, knew not what expression he had before she shot him, but blood soaked the grass, and that silent sound was more sickening than anything else she had ever heard. It was like the silence after Cal passed…those ragged and labored breaths he took before the rest was silence…

Arthur rose. She didn't look at him as he took the gun from her hands, putting it back in his saddle bag. Her hands shook.

"Charlotte? Are you okay?"

His hands were warm when he took a hold of hers. "Charlotte?"

"Arthur?"

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I should have realized that—"

"It doesn't matter." She squeezed his hand. "See? I can protect you too."

He caught her before she could fall.

Chapter End Notes

It's true that in the 1800s, one couldn't say "leg" in public, and it was referred to as "limbs"
Also, author has never rode a horse before, please forgive me.

Chapter 6

Charlotte didn't faint. Her legs only gave out. Or at least, that was what she said of the whole falling and catching matter Arthur did as she stumbled backward with the rifle's kickback, and then forward as her legs wouldn't work with her. It was a fact she was proud of when Arthur steadied her.

"See? I'm awake," she declared, one hand spread on his chest, the other holding the rifle still.

"You're awake," he agreed.

"I didn't hesitate."

He agreed with that too. "No. You didn't."

She pat him to reassure, almost too hard. "Now, Mother always said it's in a lady's right to faint once or twice in her life, but no, not for me. No. I just shot a man, but…oh."

Her face went pale, her eyes wide when she caught the Murfree brood she shot in the head from the corner of her eye. Her horror and shock were two things he had seen before, many times. It was different with Charlotte. It was all because of him.

Again, maybe nothing new. But Charlotte...

Charlotte. Poor, poor Charlotte, who…

Shit. She didn't deserve it.

He squeezed her arm, but this time he was almost too hard. "You've done good Charlotte."

"…the body…" she managed, still pale. "what are we going to—oh."

"Charlotte…Charlotte!"

He steadied her again, taking the rifle and strapping it behind his back. She shouldn't have tried to get a better look, but she did and he was going to have to re-forge her into quiet and calm, dignified Charlotte. She wasn't going to faint, she said so again, but the ground wasn't working well with her feet. That was what he told her anyway when she muttered about how she was falling. Yes, he had seen this, whatever it was you wanted to call it. It had all happened before and it looked differently in different people. Some said nothing at all. Some pretended it didn't bother them, and maybe it didn't at first, but that was only for the bother, the regret, and the more to come later and sting harder. Others though turned into different versions of themselves for a temporary matter, for that all to change them in subtle ways Arthur knew. He was the third. Charlotte was the third. Funny, how a man and woman who had such different experiences prior—society lady and outlaw gunslinger—to end up together living and carrying in similar ways.

Though, of course, he knew she was far better than him, and always would be for so many reasons.

Charlotte. She did that for him. She changed for him. So much. The one he had known was a proud, dignified, forthcoming woman that was growing grittier at the edges. Yet matters beyond her control turned her not into a young scared girl, but a shell-shocked woman of a thousand years, who knew and realized that man made it so easy to take a life away.

He was no good at this sort. Not when they were too much alike.

But he had an idea.

He led her away, near to the side of the river. "Charlotte," he said, cradling his arm around her, "there's something I need you to do for me."

She looked straight ahead, to the other side of the bank. "What Arthur?"

"Can you catch a fish for me? Then we can take it back. I'll cook it over a fire."

"I've never caught a fish in my life," she muttered.

"And you ain't never shot a deer before a few months ago neither, but you did that. They're ain't nothing to catching a fish. It's easy work. Relaxing too."

She blinked, peering at him. "But you said you weren't good at it."

Perceptive woman as she was, he sure should have known she would remember and see through the lie. He decided it then, damn it, to tell her the truth.

"Charlotte. I'm going to take care of the body."

She took a deep breath, nodding but going back to avoiding his eyes again. "I see. You wanted to distract me."

He nodded. "Yeah."

"You can't go."

"I do have to do something," he reasoned, "or—"

"But what if another comes back?" she asked. "What if—"

"They won't come back," he stated, his voice calm so she would calm. "That one must have been a deserter. I reckon he wouldn't have needed the horse if he wasn't."

"He didn't want Buell," Charlotte said, casting a glance toward him. "Shame. He's a fine horse, a good boy."

"He is. And he'll be here with you."

"I'll be here with me too."

He stung, and the sting burned so much right down to his core he hated himself for ever coming back with the god damn horse.

"I'm going to be fine Arthur," she said, patting him again—gentler this time. "I'd do it again."

It stung the hardest to hear that, that silent acceptance. It was one thing to have to hunt to survive, another thing to accept kill or be killed. He should have acted sooner, should have done something. Charlotte should not have had to do that.

"I'll keep you safe next time," he promised.

"No. We keep each other safe."

He wasn't much of a praying man, but he hoped to whoever was in the sky that the gentle, wondering, dreamy outlines in her brown eyes never left. That no matter how hard life had hardened her, she would still want to dance under the sun to a song only she heard.

"We will."

It was a promise. Another one. but he didn't regret any as he handed her the rifle again and she strapped it around her back. From his saddle bag he also took his rod and a bit of bread for some bait. He cast the line far out and handed it to her, instructing her on how to fish, even if his own skills were lacking.

"Only reel when you've worn it out," he said.

Nodding, she held the rod and studied the water with so much intensity, he laughed and said she would feel the fish tug and pull. "How long does it take?" she asked, and he replied it depended on matters and the type of bait used. Sometimes the things were stubborn and wanted nothing to do with the bait. They were already at a disadvantage—he had no worms or crickets, and as his friend Javier said, it was all in the bait. But the truth of the matter he wasn't so much interested in the fish as he was calming and easing her.

He didn't expect one fish to go so quickly to the bait, in fact, he didn't expect any fish at all, but that was what happened. She gasped, exclaiming "it's tugging!" and Arthur put his hands on her shoulders, told her to breath, and wear that fish out.

"But gently," he said, gently in turn. "Don't tire yourself out."

"Oh, I probably already have already, but I won't with this fi—oh. Wait. Arthur…" Her concentration hardened. "I think that I might have gotten it to—"

"Reel it in."

His hands still on her shoulders, she started to reel. She was a tall woman. She backed up into him and her hair was under his nose. It smelled like grass and earth as she smelled like grass and earth, and she gasped as the fish's luck ran out with the wire and flew out of the water. Charlotte took it off the hook, grimacing at it's scaly and slippery feel, but as she said, she had skinned a deer and could deal with that. She shot a man, and could deal with that. A fish was, comically, just a fish.

"Yeah," he agreed. "Just a fish."

She moved away from him. His hands were still on her shoulders and when she drifted away it felt foreign. But she had a wonder, as she referred to it as, a wonder why man had no trouble shooting an animal or catching a fish, but killing another man was where the line was drawn and where the law had to intervene.

"I've killed a lot of animals," he admitted. "Haven't caught as many fish, but I have caught enough."

"It was still moving around," she said, sad and wondering as she was. "It still wanted to live."

"That's in all of us."

"Not always."

She sighed, putting the fish down on the ground to begin her collection. Surely as he gave her more bread and she put it on the hook and casting it out, another fish took the bait. Seemed every fish in the river knew Charlotte Balfour was out and they wanted a glance of her.

"You're right," Arthur said. "Not always."

Before he could think any longer, she confessed a moment in her own life, giving him peace not to think of his. But she looked at him after and it made him too sad anyway. He didn't look away though—he didn't want to look away.

"Not anymore," she said. "I have a legacy to make. Even without Cal, I need to see it through."

"Charlotte…"

"I also want to live."

Silver threads at the top of her hair, too young for them and yet too old at the same time. "Good," he said, "because you're stronger than anything."

"I know you're right."

He coughed and lowly he said he needed to be rid of the body and take care of it. "Charlotte," he said, "I know. You will you be okay. Don't hesitate again."

She nodded and he did something he wouldn't have done if it were any other time. But brave and strong woman, a thought that ran through his mind, that didn't leave when things got too hard, when it would have been easier to leave and go back to an old life instead of try again to make a new one alone. He put his too rough, too big hand on her gentle and soft cheek. The male did that in the book Tilly and Mary Beth read to him to the female character. He was still locked to the bed and all he could do was be glad he was at least somewhat entertained. He wasn't going to complain about their choices when the two were kind to him, but damn romances, they could make things that really meant nothing mean something. Lingering glances and touches that were only supposed to reassure, those books turned them into damn events.

"Please come back."

She said that, and he had the thought—she did make him think a lot, it was a thing about her.) maybe their glances or touch wasn't an event like the theatre or a picture show, but a moment between the two that she wasn't going to ever forget, and neither was he.

"I'll come back," he promised. "I ain't gonna lie ever again. I'll come back when I say I am."

"You're a good man Arthur Morgan. And don't you dare say I don't know you really, because I damn well do."

Hearing her say "damn" was like hearing foul and unsavory words from a doe. But Charlotte wasn't a doe, he told himself as she continued to fish, laughing when another got a hold of the bread bait and she moved the rod back and forth to tire it out. She was a woman who learned and survived like he was a man who learned and survived, and it was funny, because though she talked about being the indolent heroine in a novel, she was neither indolent nor a heroine, just a survivor.

But that was a lie. She saved him. She was his heroine.

He came up slowly after he took care of matters, leaving the body in a secluded place where it would fall back to the earth. It would fall back, and no one would know how Charlotte Balfour saved Arthur Morgan from getting shot and robbed of his horse save Arthur Morgan and Charlotte Balfour themselves unless they told it to others. Since his unpleasant but necessary errand, she had accumulated five perches of various sizes as a pile on the side with only the small loaf he had left for her.

"Quite the fisherwoman," he commented and praised. "I see you're a natural. Next time I come back, I'll bring some better bait."

She smirked, casting the line out again with one graceful swoop. He must have been visibly impressed, she told him she had to be a natural with at least one thing in the wilderness. Her record would be far too embarrassing otherwise.

"Ah, maybe that's not true," she amended as she caught the sixth perch. "I didn't hesitate."

She said it so bitterly. How often would she go back to that moment in her mind? He hoped not often. He hoped not at all, that bastard deserved none of it.

"You did the right thing," he had to assure her.

"It was so easy."

"It can be."

She said he must have killed many before. There was no use lying or evading—yes, he replied. He did. Some that deserved it, others who maybe didn't.

"Who deserved it Arthur?"

"Those hooded bastards. That man too Charlotte. He would have—"

"I know."

And there he was again, guilty for bringing his sullied and hollow self to a woman that danced under the sun and shot and killed a man for him, even if he was no good and harmed others.

Yet if he didn't ever bring himself to her that first time…

It depressed him so much, that if he never got that tip about a rich couple up near Annesburg, he may have never known Charlotte or disappointed her by not coming back. Maybe years would have passed and she would have been found dead, maybe by him, only to become a nameless and tragic maid instead of the brave heroine she deserved to be. Sad, he would have thought, but he would not have been moved. He wouldn't have never known what she deserved. How she moved him then, how he hated to see her soft resigning to the fact that she had killed and was standing near a killer. She didn't deserve to be burdened with his friendship or with his troubles. If she had a lick of sense maybe she would have let that ingrate shoot him dead.

He hoped she wouldn't have buried him next to his husband in this thing his mind cooked up. It was another thing he didn't deserve.

"You're an outlaw," Charlotte stated, putting the rod up, leaning against Buell. He had drifted near her and let her lean on him. Stubborn fool never let him.

"I am," he said. "I'm a wanted man. I ain't so good."

"You found me because you wanted to rob me, didn't you?"

Oh come now, she said to his fallen eyes, looking down at her pant-covered legs. She wasn't so dumb or stupid. Maybe with some things, like eating found berries before making sure they weren't poisonous, but not with putting together pieces of a puzzle.

"It was the thing to do," she said. "Sitting in a room in our big hoops that impeded movements, my husband and I put together all the clues and figured out what was really going on with Chicago high society." She smiled, reminiscing. "Mr. Kempler had a hobby he wouldn't want his wife to know. Do you know how we found out? He couldn't get that stain of red off his collar."

"That would do it."

She wasn't looking away from him, not anymore. "You didn't rob me," she said. "You saved me. And then you felt so bad you didn't take my money."

"You saved yourself."

"I told you. There was a moment where I thought it would be alright to die—welcome even. I didn't have that spark anymore after Cal died, but it hasn't left since I met you Arthur. Not that you being here makes me want to live more. I understand that implication. But—"

"I understand," he said.

"I'm not a simpering, indolent woman who has to be rescued. Though I do appreciate chivalry," she made sure to note for him to think of at a later date when things were not as they were. "So few men are knights. But you, you're a knight, King Arthur."

"King Arthur?" He ran a hand through his unkempt hair. "Why no one has ever called me that."

"Well, I get to be the first," she said proudly.

"Charlotte. Thank you."

"Someone should tell you you're a knight."

His cheeks grew hot. "That's appreciated," he said, kicking at the ground, "but that's not why I was thanking you."

He hadn't told her yet, thank you for saving my ass. Or if he did, he had to tell her like he meant it. He damn well did.

"I'm going to protect those I care about," she said. "I thought it would be a child, but I suppose, well…"

"Oh?" he straightened, sticking his hands on his belt. "Am I a child Charlotte Balfour?"

"All men are boys, I'm convinced," she said with a laugh. "Some women are girls underneath too, but many aren't. My mother wasn't. I certainly am. I only meant—"

He nodded. He knew. "I'm sorry."

"Me too," she admitted. "A little Cal would have been quite the joy. A little me, maybe less so, but I would have loved her anyway. But Arthur…Arthur…I don't want to think of that right now. I want…"

"What?"

She grabbed his arm and led him. "Let's be a boy and girl."

He didn't feel so much like a boy though, when he was with her. He felt an awful lot like that knight she said he was.

Chapter 7

Chapter Notes

See the end of the chapter for notes

Even after everything she had been through, everything she had done the past month or so, Charlotte couldn't fathom how one slept on a lumpy bedroll in the middle of the woods as her Arthur Morgan so often did.

"It seems so frightening, to camp out by yourself," she said, keeping to herself how uncomfortable it must have been on one's back.

"Not so frightening," Arthur replied, finishing the last of the fish. By the river he made a campfire, grilling her catch over the flames. They ate the lunch of grilled perch, beans, and peaches, the two gulping directly from the can, afterwards spliting a chocolate bar for desert. Arthur's nephew, Jack, he said, gave him the candy a while ago as thanks for a book he brought him, and it was high time he ate it.

"Is Jack really your nephew?"

He told her the truth. He wasn't, but to him he was "Uncle Arthur," so what else could Jack be to him? Charlotte nodded and agreed, because even she could understand that family had more to do with bonds than blood.

"See?" Arthur asked of the fire, and the small picnic area of sorts he made for the two of them, "not so bad, is it?"

"No, I like it out here," she clarified, sniffing that pine and dirt and water, savoring the small paradise. It was what she wanted when she first moved, what she thought it would always be like. Though it didn't turn out to be that way, the least she could do was indulge while she had it. She also had Arthur with her, there to indulge with it with.

"What I meant was," she continued, "not sleeping under a roof, but in a tent and on the ground. Anyone could find you."

"I'm a light sleeper."

"It still must be frightening."

He shook his head. "Hm. Maybe not so much."

"Not so much?" Charlotte asked. "Alone, in nothing but a tent…alone…"

"I have her with me," he replied, gesturing to his horse. "It's not so bad."

Maybe it wasn't, she contemplated as she savored the last bit of chocolate. He offered her a swig of Kentucky bourbon he had in his satchel, but upon declining it, he set it away. He settled on the candy like she did, nose scrunching up. She took it he wasn't used to very sweet things. A certain cook in her home often spoiled Charlotte with sweet treats, something she hadn't had in ages since uprooting herself. Livvy used to give her those very bars so long as she promised she wouldn't spoil her dinner. Eating it with Arthur reminded her of those times.

The chocolate was good, the company was better, and she was slowly coming back to herself, slowly getting better, slowly forgetting the sound of the rifle and the blood pooling against that spot on the grass. It was so easy. A trigger, and then it was done. And she knew, she would do it again. That was the scariest part of all.

"Ah," she muttered, imagining herself sleeping under the stars like Arthur so often did. "You also have the stars." Maybe with the stars, he felt less lonely and less like he was the only one in the world. That was how the stars always made her feel, and the moon. Sometimes she was gone though. But she always came back, like him.

"Stars don't talk to you though," Arthur said.

"Neither can Peppermint," she pointed out.

"No," he said, positively boyish. "She talks to me."

"Well, what does she say?"

"This and that," he said, straightening in pretend indignance. "She tells me when she needs to be cleaned and when she wants an apple. She's ain't so loud though, unlike others I know."

"I don't think I'm loud," Charlotte said with that same mock indignance as he used.

"It's loud at camp," he clarified. "Lot of activity. One night Sean and Karen, they were just going at it, and— oh."

"Oh, it happens," Charlotte said when common decency and decorum halted him from continuing. "People are people. Living away from rules of civility, I can imagine how things would be." She searched for the right word. "More open, maybe."

"In a way, maybe. Sure."

"Soah."

His eyes narrowed. He smirked. "Are you making fun of me?"

"No," she put her hands on her hips, mirrored what he did as well. "I like the way you talk. It's like leather and honey and it's different from me. It's nice."

"Leather and honey?" he repeated, quizzical and amused. "Huh. Leather and honey. Okay."

"I know, I'm strange," she muttered. "You can say it."

"Not so much."

It surprised her how quickly he said that. "Maybe a little," he said after a pause, "but I've met some stranger people. Probably anyway." He chuckled, reminiscing. "There was a man named Margaret who—"

"Wait. There was a man named Margaret?"

He nodded. "Margaret had an act. Used all sorts of animals from around the world to get people to give him money. Or that's what he said anyway, man was a dolt and a liar. His first trick was wearing a dress, because according to him, people don't want to see a man tame a bunch of wild animals. Much better if a woman does it. I mean, sure, I guess. He also had a mustache, so I'm not sure how many people believed him. Maybe he just liked the dress,"

"There are advantages to dresses," Charlotte admitted, though she was enjoying how easy it was to sit on the grass in trousers versus a large and bustling skirt. "Maybe we should all just try each other's clothes."

"Maybe," he mused, grinning to himself slightly. She had a wonder if a time passed for Arthur, where his woman thought it would be pleasant and sweet to don his shirt, or perhaps his hat. Charlotte loved wearing Cal's shirts, though she could only do it at night. and at very specific times. It smelled like cologne and the rose oil he always used after he shaved his whiskers. It was such a sweet thing, to wear his shirt and see him alight in something that was his. It was a sweet thing to think of Arthur that way, at the gentle mercy to the one he loved. He wasn't one who typically experienced gentle mercy, a sweet moment alone with a sweet little remembrance. She hoped his time with her was at least a small and welcome reprieve from everything else, if not a gentle mercy with someone he was fond of.

"Margaret had a…zebra, I think it was," Arthur continued, going back to the story at hand. Though the "zebra" was really a mule painted in black and white stripes.

"Paint got all over my pants," he said. "I thought the whole thing was a damn trick. Next thing I knew, people were saying there was a lion at the Emerald Ranch. I thought they were seeing things, but the next thing I know, there's a big cat that's lunging at me."

"A lion?" Charlotte asked. "They don't even have one of those at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago. I've only seen them in books."

"Big thing," Arthur said. "Mean thing. Had to shot it. Almost felt bad for it, even if it did try to eat me."

"He was uprooted from his home," Charlotte muttered, wondering how on earth Margaret with a mustache and dress procured a lion from Africa.

"So were you."

Her thoughts drifted from lions prowling in Africa to herself. The statement surprised her, compelled her. Was she an exotic curiosity to him? A woman who he taught to survive, though she was far from a home she first knew, a woman who had killed for him? She wanted to be Charlotte, his friend who protected him. Nothing more.

"I uprooted myself," she corrected. "I chose this. I don't think he did."

The blades of grass were soft against her palm, and she asked him, softly, because he began it, "did you?"

It was presumptuous to ask, or even assume that he was uprooted. But one didn't start as an outlaw, or she hoped at least. One was drawn to it, through one reason or other.

"I always drifted," he replied. "This ain't nothing new."

Everything new to him was nothing new. Poetic.

"Who was your father?" Charlotte asked, for of course he had to be born. "And your mother? What was she like?"

"Sad."

She was sorry to hear it, sorrier for how it was the first thing that sprung from his thoughts when he was asked directly. His father though, he said, he was no good. Dutch took him in after he died.

"Who's Dutch?"

Dutch, she learned, was the patriarch of the Van Der Linde gang. She suspected he told her secrets he shouldn't have, but by her lady's honor, she swore she would keep his secrets to her gave. Dutch found Arthur and took him in along with another man named Hosea, Charlotte gathering he was the co-patriarch of sorts. They taught him to read when he couldn't before, and they gave him a home. Not a home to put down roots, but a home that drifted from place to place. People had come, some had died, he said with a great sorrow, but they were a unit that worked together. They had a bout of bad luck after bout of bad luck recently, but Dutch was hoping that it would turn around. He had a plan.

"Tahiti is his plan," Arthur said. "All he can think about lately is Tahiti. Shit. I don't know what's in Tahiti except damn palm trees."

"And sand, I hear," Charlotte added. "Beautiful water though, so the stories say."

She looked to the river, which wasn't so hard to look at itself. Chicago had the lake, though she never got to enjoy its marvels. Arthur, looking at her looking at the water. asked how she felt about water.

"I can't say," she replied. "Seems frightening, but my grandfather on my mother's side was a seaman. That's how he earned his fortune before settling in Charleston and putting some money in a plantation. New money you know—but better than no money at all. Caused quite the fuss when my mother and father married."

"Seaman?" His brows raised, amused. "Seems adventures are in your blood."

"Maybe."

"Maybe?"

He didn't need to relay all she had done. They shared a knowing smile, and though Charlotte didn't know her grandfather well before he passed, she felt a little like him as she sat by the water. "He told my brother and I stories of the sea," she said. "the sea, and a great whale. I think he stole most of it from this book—I can't remember the author, but it was about a captain and some man named Ishmael who—"

"Moby Dick."

"Yes," she said, remembering and more than a little impressed. "That was the book. Grandpa always liked it, though no one else did."

"Hosea had a copy once. It was too much for me."

She asked him if there was a novel he did like. He thought for a moment before offering Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself." Charlotte had never heard of it before.

"I'll bring it here, next time," Arthur promised, Charlotte thinking of that, next time. "It's a poem in a longer book, Leaves of Grass. Long. But good. It's not like those tales of knights you read probably, but it's still good."

She had to point out she read more than that. "I read all sorts Shakespeare, The Brontes, Mary Shelley," she listed. She told him he would like Frankenstein, or she held high hopes he would read it and like it. Many didn't, and she craved a soul to talk about it with.

"It's a good novel about man's folly, going where they shouldn't, what it means to be human," she said, trying to sell it for Mary, who deserved to sell many copies for years and years to come. She spoke as if she knew her, though maybe she did know her, in a way. She read her thoughts, read those extensions of her and her being. It was romantic to think she knew her.

"What it means to be human?" Arthur asked. "Ah, I don't rightly know."

"Me neither," she said with a sigh. "I don't think Mary knows either, but she explores. But being here," she regarded the small Eden around, "having nothing but my thoughts, most of the time anyway, well…"

It made her know more than ever how dangerous yet beautiful a thought could be. She shared it with Arthur, who didn't think her words the ramblings of an isolated, lonely woman, but something real that he himself felt.

"I go off a lot, be by myself," Arthur said as he considered her words. "The gang—Dutch, Hosea, Lenny, Charles, Tilly and them, they're my family, but—"

"Family can drive us mad, I know."

"It's not so bad to be alone," he said. "I like it."

"Only sometimes."

He shifted. "Only sometimes," he agreed.

He had another candy bar. He shared it with her, letting the pieces melt in his mouth like Charlotte did. As much money as they had, the Vales didn't buy much chocolate. Livvy always brought some for her when she was a child, her treat to her. She shared with Arthur how she would try to make each piece last, something she carried over when she was old enough to begin drinking wine. One small sip, savor that sip and the acidity and the tart to make it last. It wasn't Arthur's style particularly—the Guarma rum and bourbon he sometimes indulged in went down fast. Charlotte laughed, because there was no other way to drink those drinks. All down or none at all.

"I've never been drunk."

The man with the misshapen face. The sound, the silence. It was the most horrible thing.

She had never been drunk. Maybe it would help her forget.

"I don't want to get you to try."

His eyes didn't stray from her. "You weren't," she said, wonder of what it would be like not enough to want to get her to try. "When Cal died, I still didn't want to," she admitted. "After today, I still don't want to. My father, he—"

But he understood, because, he said, his real father was like that as well. He never wanted to be like him. Charlotte didn't know his father, or what he was like, but once again, she reminded him that he was a kind and good man, that sat with her and talked with her, gave her a new friend, when he didn't have to. Someone else could have washed their hands of her. Another, crueler person wouldn't have stopped at all. Why she reminded him so often and all the time he mentioned it seemed to be innate and carved onto her being. If fate were to bring her a kind man that doubted, she would be the gentle, but not too gentle woman that reminded him he shouldn't doubt about some things.

When they packed up, a book fell from Arthur's saddlebags as he rummaged around and rearranged. Charlotte, in thinking she would help him, picked up the book that turned out to be not a book at all, but a leather-bound journal, the page she was on filled with different pictures. One of a raspberry brush, labeled as such, the other of a ferocious looking bear.

"You're an artist?" she asked. "I didn't know."

"Oh, you found that thing? Charlotte, I—"

It was his journal, she realized as she flipped and saw the writing. She wouldn't dare read his private thoughts, but the drawings sparked her interest. She was on one of a raccoon, curious and upright. But no, she would not read his thoughts. She knew how it was—she kept a journal herself sometimes. Not even Cal read it.

"I always wished I could draw like this," she said. "That's all. But—oh…"

It was her, on the very next page In shaded pencils, her hair in a side braid like she was wearing then, the thread of silver carefully invoked through not as dark strokes at the certain spot at the top of her head. He depicted her with her hand resting upon her cheek, dreamy and far off, thinking of knights or thinking of an adventure, thinking of when Arthur would be back.

"This is how you see me?" she asked.

"I see different parts of you," he offered after a beat. "That's one. I'm sorry if I—Well, draw things sometimes, helps me think. I'm sorry if—shit."

He blushed, embarrassment evident by the red on his cheeks and the way he shifted. She didn't mean to embarrass, didn't even mean to creep into something that was private and his.

"Maybe you should do more," she said, handing him his journal back. "I'm curious about the different parts, though I did like that one. I look happy. And I think you made me look rather nice. Should let me draw you sometime. I'm not that good, but—" She shrugged. "I think I would like to try."

"It would be an honor to be drawn by you."

Come back to my home, she said before he rode back with her. She knew he didn't mind sleeping under the stars, but she had an extra bed he could use. He nodded, told her would be honored. She wasn't worthy of so many honors.

"Sometimes the ground hurts my back anyway," he said. "Could use a break from it."

With ease, she mounted Buell. He was impressed with no small measures. "I wondered if it hurt," she said idly, and he chuckled. Making it back to her home, theydismounted, leaving the horses out to graze, he came over and he squeezed her shoulder. It burned where he touched.

"You shouldn't be alone today anyway," he said.

He knew she liked to be alone.

But she didn't want to be alone that night.

"I know," she said. "I know."

His eyes weren't just blue. They were blue and green and a little sad, but a nice color. They sat on her porch before they retired, a boy and a girl, and Charlotte thought how living in his gaze was like living a thousand lifetimes.

Chapter End Notes

thanks so much for the kudos/comments. they both have cleared my complexion! :) hope you guys continue to enjoy! :)

Chapter 8

Chapter Notes

I'm back with an update! I said originally this was going to be short chaptered fic, but...uh...I lied, I love them too much and it's def going to be longer. Maybe not like fifty chapters, but long :)

thank you for reading!

He was far too big for the bed. His feet dangled over the edge and the blue blanket barely covered him. It wasn't meant for him though, it was meant for someone much smaller.

A wave of sorrow for what she lost seized his chest. But something lost, something gained. He hoped. He hoped a lot of things for Charlotte Balfour, the latest one being that he hadn't ruined her with what he did. He just wanted to help her, bring her a friend when he couldn't be there. Instead he asked her to murder for him.

He couldn't fall asleep. As he tried, he cursed himself for ever thinking of robbing her blind. He didn't get any money but something far worse than the inevitable guilt of stealing from someone he didn't know. He got to know her and like her—respect her even. He got a want to keep seeing her and talking with her, because talking with her was good and easy in a life that was neither good or easy. Tilly understood a lot of things, so did Mary-Beth and Karen. He liked talking with Lenny and Hosea too. Dutch not so much anymore, too blinded. But Charlotte—

Charlotte. Free Charlotte, away Charlotte, tumbling rose Charlotte that danced barefoot Charlotte…

He cursed himself and he cursed his sweet repose for someone who should have stayed nameless and faceless.

But would she have ended up in the ground if he hadn't? Was it better for him to suffer in his sweet repose than have Charlotte Balfour gone? She killed for him. He wasn't going to forget it. Stupid, dumb him, she killed for him. He couldn't ask for that from a sweet repose.

He stirred when he heard the noises. He worried first that it was robbers like him or other bad men far worse than he was, but as he got up from Charlotte's too small bed for her unborn child, he realized it was crying. She was crying. He was no good with crying. When Tilly was captured by that gang she used to run with and he chased after them with Miss Grimshaw yelling in his ear, he found her crying in that place they took her. He was no good at comforting, but he put his arm around her all the same. She thanked him later, though he apologized for his inadequate ways of handling it. It wasn't what he did, just that he cared. Or so she said anyway. He was a good person that cared. The thing was, he knew he cared. That was his undoing. Mary Linton knew that above all.

He threw his shirt back on before he knocked tentatively at her door. No answer. He called her name. Again, no answer.

He tapped his bare foot against the wooden floor. Would he ignore her? It seemed wrong to ignore her cries, but then again, he was no good at comforting. Was it because of him that she cried, and what she did for him? He deserved none of her tears.

No. He was too all-mighty and too self important, he thought. She couldn't be weeping for him. Her tears were more suited for her fallen mate and partner, and the life they could have had. She was so brave to want to live it alone. It didn't make it easy.

He took a lantern from the kitchen table, took a deep breath, and opened the door. A curtain of dark hair covered her face, pale hands covering her eyes. The women in camp typically wore their day clothes to bed, more so out of necessity than anything, while Arthur did the same at camp. Sometimes he rented a room in a saloon wherever he was close to where he could bathe and enjoy clean sheets against bare skin. He should have figured she wouldn't sleep in her day clothes, but the last time he saw a woman in a white nightdress, it had been some time ago. Her father wouldn't approve of a brute bombarding in her room, but he got the feeling her father didn't approve of most things Charlotte Balfour did. Her shoulders shook as she sat at the edge of her bed, her bare feet against the cold wooden floor. He was dangerously close to seeing ankles, the scandal.

He called out her name again. She didn't answer.

He came over. She wiped tears from her eyes but she didn't look at him. Setting the lantern down on the bedside table, he felt too looming over her, too imposing. He kneeled. He almost touched her thigh, thinking of how her palm subtly touched his that afternoon as they ate, the brief but intimate contact making him nearly choke on the canned peaches. She meant to reassure but she did so much more. Charlotte Balfour did so much for him.

He didn't touch her thigh, but he did touch her shoulder, squeezed. "Hey there," he said, feeling a victory as she uncovered her face. "what's the matter? What's wrong?"

"Dream," she muttered, wiping away tears, voice cracked.

"Nightmare?"

She shook her head. "Cal and I. We were happy. Wildflowers. Then one of those awful men came. I shot him. I—"

Her hands trembled and he couldn't see her dark eyes again. He got up from the floor and sat next to her on her bed, the bed she and her husband shared once. No one ever told him after Mary left, the hardest part would be sleeping alone. Funny how when she was gone, he even missed how she would steal most of the covers.

"Charlotte…"

"I can't do this Arthur." She slapped her hands against her thigh in defeat. "I can't be alone."

"No. No. Shhh…"

He sat. He wrapped an arm around her, and he cradled her as she wept. Her hair was long when it wasn't pulled up or in a braid. Long and thick and luxurious like Mary admired in Abigail. It spilled onto his lap and his free hand. Soft.

"I envy you, you know," she muttered. "You have a family. You don't have to be alone. I like to be alone, sometimes, yes, but—"

But she was used to having him.

Do you know what it's like, to be stifled and thrust with expectation after expectation? She asked him. He said truthfully, he did in a way. In a different way yes, but he understood. His father was an ingrate, so therefore he should be too. He proved his father's image all right when Dutch and Hosea picked up off the streets. Those were the expectations of his life. She shared her own, how she was always supposed to get married to someone of high society, how at least she managed to marry someone she loved. She never felt freer or more able to bloom until she met Cal. But then he was gone and she was alone, and she was still blooming or at least trying to. Yet she felt guilty for not being so lonely sometimes, and helpless when she was succumbed to those feelings as she was then.

"He would want you to be happy," Arthur said.

"I wasn't supposed to kill anyone. I never wanted that, but…I'd…I'd…"

Her hand was on his thigh. She squeezed, hard and desperate. She rasped "I'd do it again," and he knew that was what scared her the most. It was what used to scar him the most about his father, and then himself.

He looked at Charlotte's hand. In her grief and confusion, it wasn't likely she thought about where her hand was. Not that she thought about it much when it was there earlier. He didn't have much time to think of how he liked it right there, but he somehow did. He didn't though so much like holding her as she wept. Not because he didn't want to or he didn't think she deserved it—she deserved a lot of things. But he wished their time together, what little of it they had—he didn't want it to be filled with crying. He liked it better when they were outside in the sun, and he could see that thread of silver in her hair. Eating, talking, laughing. That was what he liked. Happy Charlotte. Happy Arthur, with happy Charlotte.

"Hey," he said, rubbing her back, trying to stop her shivers. "Did I ever tell you about Copper?"

"Copper?" she asked, lifting her tear-stained face up. "Is that another horse?"

"No, my dog," he replied, thinking he was going to get her somewhere happier. "He was always a puppy, even before he died. Used to jump into the bath with me. Ah, wish I'd brought the picture I have of him. I'd show you."

"Can you draw him?"

"In the morning Charlotte. Go back to sleep."

"What if I see it all again?"

Her wide brown eyes were wide like they were after she shot that man for him. He already damned himself for damning her. He was doing it all over again.

But she was going to be alright. She was brave. She was more than fear, more than whatever she was made to believe she was once, by that awful sounding mother of hers. A good woman who was too good to him.

He was going to be good to her.

He promised her, he'd stay. He would sit right on the chair beside her bed.

"It's too small…"

"It's fine," Arthur lied, feeling tight in that rocking chair. Yet she wasn't budging.

"Go on," he said. He was going to stay. He wanted to stay.

"I'm not in the habit of having people watch me fall asleep," she muttered, playing with a long strand of hair.

"What if I tell you a story instead?"

Her dark hair fanned out on the pillow. She propped her head up on her hand, staring him down. Her nose was red but her eyes were dry for the time being.

"I can't sleep now, that won't work," she replied.

"Neither can I," he admitted.

"Let me draw you now then."

Before he could protest, she was getting up and reaching for her journal and pencils from the bedside table. He tried to reason that the light was too dark, they should do it in daylight, but all too often, he himself drew in less than ideal lighting. She was afraid at first, she said, doodling the first few tentative strokes against the parchment, sitting at the edge of her bed. She could see him in her mind, but she worried she would never be able to commit him to the page. She saw him a certain way. She wanted to make sure she could capture that certain way.

"Ever heard of someone named Albert Mason?"

"No," Charlotte said as she drew. "A friend of yours?"

"You could say that. I save his life, I help him with his photography sometimes. He says the same things about capturing the west before civilization takes over."

She hoped civilization wouldn't take over, she said. Chicago was worse than the wolves. Having that all over was less than ideal.

"It may become a reality."

"Shame."

"Well, our time is dying out."

She peered from the paper, meeting his eyes. "But we're not quite dead yet."

He said earlier it would have been an honor to be drawn by her, and he meant it. He didn't think of himself as fine art, but the way Charlotte studied him, carefully taking every piece of him to commit to paper, he felt maybe not real nice or handsome, but real. He lived and he mattered to her. Maybe that was all anyone ever needed.

An hour passed of her careful glances, her practiced strokes. He thought it would be hard to not move so much, but he managed. She made it easy, even if his legs were too long for the chair, and his behind a bit too wide for the back. Then she was done, but she didn't want to show him at first, as she held the book close to her chest. He wouldn't pry, but she did show him eventually. He took the book in his too big hands, looked at how the candlelight illuminated him. She did good to him. She did real good.

"Do you think it looks like you?" she asked. "I wish I had more skill to get it right."

He thought he must have blushed. "You did good Charlotte."

It didn't matter how he thought he looked, everyone looked different in their head than they really appeared. But he liked the way Charlotte saw him. And when she fell asleep soon after, dreamless and peaceful, he liked the way she looked too. Different from earlier when they laughed in the sun, more childlike, and not as older as she was when filled with grief. He felt imbued to a private, tender moment, so much so that maybe he should have left.

But he was a great, great fool. He stayed. And for her, he drew a picture of Copper.

Chapter 9

Charlotte Clementina Vale Balfour was a dreamer, though not typically in her sleeping life. She dreamed when awake of different lives and things to paint, things all above her own skill. For her, dreaming at night was not typical, but when it occurred the images were blurred symbolized. She never searched for hidden meanings.

She didn't have to that night. That night with Arthur in her home, she saw Cal and she saw him wheezing for breath and her pale hands covered in his blood, and Cal and that awful, evil man. She saw Arthur help her off the ground. He cleaned her stained and bloody hands. Her tears when she awoke were in remembrance of what happened and how she would do it again. How no one would help her through this when he was gone. It was all her.

He came. She saw him not in a dream, but in her waking life. She had been seeing him. She saw him so well she showed him how she saw him through her drawing. Not too bad, if she could allow herself a little bit of pride. Then again, that was what she thought last night before falling asleep. Morning with its clarity, sun bringing out the disillusionment of the moon could change things.

She woke with that remembrance, that remembrance turning to sweet present when she saw him asleep and slumped in that too small chair. She grinned. No man besides her husband had ever slept with her, and while perhaps they did not share the same bed, there was quiet intimacy in slumbering together in the same space.

Intimacy. Such a word. Such a word that held so many different meanings beyond the typical. Before her wedding night her mother informed her of her wifely duties, as if Charlotte hadn't found a way to read the salacious novels she shouldn't have been reading before meeting Cal. Intimacy was a duty in her mother's eye, necessary but base and passionless. Yes, her father was certainly the type to make it that way. But it was never, never that way for her and Cal. The first time, both of their first times, he was gentle. He made her more aware of her body and herself and her soul when he helped her out of her corset and onto their marriage bed. A touch of the hand was never just a touch of the hand. It was a weighted moment done a thousand times to a thousand other lovers that were both so different yet at the same time just like the two of them, but it was with Cal and that made it everything. She thought it ironic how she had been conditioned through her mother and their upbringing that the morning consisted of putting on pantaloons, chemises, corsets and then hoops, petticoats and then finally the dress that confined and constricted. So many layers to hide the body and make a new presence for oneself. Cal took away every single one of those layers and she was only Charlotte. She was never afraid to be just Charlotte with him. Nothing on her body was shameful. It was all Charlotte and Cal, who loved. Charlotte's hands that touched Cal's face, Charlotte's hips that pressed against his, Charlotte's legs that wrapped around Cal's waist, pressing them deeper…

Then, there was a new type of intimacy to be learned. It was the intimacy of the soft morning kisses, breakfast together. Reading at night and sharing what they had read. Aristotle, Plato, Shakespeare, all teachers and philosophers and their own to ponder. Buying her a chocolate bar, because he remembered the story of how Livy the cook used to give her chocolate bars before dinner. Holding her and saying nothing, only swaying her along and stroking her hair as she wept about her father. The intimacy of the bedroom and love (never, never a "duty," and she could never imagine how it could be with Cal. How wrong her mother was wrong.) may not have taken as long to learn, but Charlotte found joy in unexpected intimacy, new threads of love to the bigger tapestry of their togetherness.

In Charlotte and Arthur's togetherness, they created something and discovered something each time. How could a man still hold sorrow in his sleep? Charlotte studied him in the golden early morning and realized Arthur Morgan did. He carried sorrow everywhere and all the time with only brief moments of reprieve. When he smiled with her, laughed, yes there was hardly any during those times, but it struck her that in that small reprieve that was supposed to be sleep, Arthur hardly had none. Less so than normal, but still some. Cruel.

Life was cruel to him in some respects. She wouldn't be cruel to him then, she decided. She let him sleep, letting pass a silent prayer that his sleep would be as happy as hers was when he came to her room and comforted her. She could still feel his hands. He still smelled like sweat and sun and leather. His hand lingered against her hair. She squeezed his thigh. She had never done something like that before.

She brushed her hair in early morning light, casting a few quick glances at Arthur, still sound asleep. He held his face in one big hand, the other on his lap. One long leg was bent while the other was straight, feet bare like she had taken to of late. For her, it was an ode of sorts to being a little girl, wanting to kick up her skirts and run barefoot in the backyard and through the dirt. Men couldn't often get away with bare feet as women could though. She had known one or two Chicago ladies take off their shoes during garden parties when the lift of the heel was too much. Scandalized many, including her father, but a man to walk around barefoot? Unheard of. Cal's bare foot against her bare leg…how that was a thread of unexpected intimacy. And Arthur, barefoot and sleeping on her chair was another thread, part of their unexpected intimacy.

She moved to the other room to change, in case he awoke to her bare back and legs. Her nightgown was hardly a thing a man should see a woman in unless he was married to her, and though that was already done for and the mystery of what Charlotte Balfour wore to sleep in was solved, she had enough decorum left to not want his eyes on her bareness. It was more so for him—he was a partly a chivalrous knight after all, and would blush if he saw a lady unexpectedly that way, while she was a goddess of the moon. She forwent another pair of Cal's trousers, at least for that day, and merely wore her old and practiced calico dress. No shoes. She made the bed, knowing he likely wouldn't stay another night, but hoping he would anyway.

She checked on him once more when she was done. He was still asleep. His journal was on the floor, fallen from his lap sometime during the night. He drew her Copper. She stroked the penciled drawing as if it was really him, looking at it for a long moment before closing the journal and placing it on the bedside table. Copper. He looked a fine companion for a fine man, happy. That must have been how Arthur remembered him. It was a good remembrance.

She made them coffee. Her back was turned to him, pouring a cup for him as she heard the door open. When he emerged from the bedroom, she instinctively turned, offered a "good morning." He was still stretching and nursing a creak in his neck from her uncomfortable chair, but grinned and nodded, offered a "good morning" back. She handed him a cup, and he thanked her again. She regarded their bare feet.

"Bare feet are nice, aren't they?" she asked.

He regarded his, shrugging and admitting there was certain charm to it. She laughed. He laughed too. She told him she adored the picture.

"Oh, you saw that?" He sat down at the kitchen table, sipping the coffee Charlotte made him. "I could have probably done something better in broad daylight, but I worked with what I had."

"He seemed a fine companion."

"He was," Arthur agreed, taking one last drink.

"You didn't have to do that."

It was no good, pointing out the things he didn't have to do but did anyway. However, he remained bashful and ruffled his messy hair, before telling her he had to feed Peppermint. Charlotte realized Buell needed a feeding too.

The two went outside, though Arthur put his shoes on first. The two horses grazed nearby as Arthur pulled an apple from his knapsack, sticking his hand underneath and feeding Peppermint.

"Three times daily," he instructed. "Sometimes more."

"Sometimes?"

"Usually more," he amended. "When she's a good girl." Which was often, he added with a laugh. "Apples, sugar cubes, oatcakes. Herbs too, and mushrooms and berries.

"Some grow nearby," Charlotte said. "Ones that are not poisonous, thankfully."

"Next time I come, maybe we can go into town," he said. "Get him some oatcakes. It would be a good idea to go to town anyway. You can pick up a few things."

Something piqued in her. "Oh? Next time?"

Arthur didn't say anything, but he gave Charlotte an apple. She stuck it under Buell's nose, and though he slobbered all over her hand and she had to wipe the muck onto her dress, she patted him anyway. He was going to be a fine companion for her. Arthur suggested she ride him some more, or even just walk with him. He needed to bond with her.

"How does one bond with an animal?" Charlotte wondered aloud. It wasn't though Buell could hold a conversation with her. That might have made him more ample and preferable company in some situations, but recalling Cal, she and he could talk for hours. She and Arthur could talk for hours. That didn't mean their silences weren't meaningful, but what of Buell? What of Copper too, or Peppermint? How else did one bond with an animal?

"Like anyone else, I suppose," Arthur said.

"You have to forgive me," she asked of him. "I never had a pet before. Mrs. Danvers—one of my mother's friends—had a Siamese cat named Jemma, but she scratched me when I was alone with her once and tried to pet her." By God Mrs. Danvers was awful and scratched Charlotte with her words, how she had a "Roman nose," and a face that was all "jaw and sharp angled cheeks." It was probably why the cat was so unbearable as well. Jemia picked up her owner's delightful temperament.

"Never had much luck with cats," Arthur admitted. "Maybe I've never met one that liked me. Hell, some horses ain't never liked me. Dutch's horse, the Count, he bucks anyone off who isn't Dutch."

You learn a language with your companion animal, Arthur however explained. In lieu of words it was looks and reassuring pats, the way you rear them and work with them. There also had to be a respect there with you and the animal. Horses especially. They carried you when they didn't have to.

"You think about that," Charlotte noted, oddly touched that he would think himself only as good as his horse.

"Yeah," he muttered, gently circling and stroking Peppermint's back. "I guess I think about that."

"Happy is the horse, that bears the way of Arthur."

His brows furrowed, and she explained the quote, from Antony and Cleopatra.

Happy is the horse that bears the weight of Antony, Cleopatra said while Antony was away, and she was musing and dreaming of him. Arthur didn't do much reading of Shakespeare, but he was still impressed Charlotte could remember such quotes. He hardly remembered any quotes, even the ones he liked.

"We remember in different ways," she said. "I can recall quotes I like. You can draw from memory."

"Not very good."

"It's not true," she insisted. His self-deprecation was nothing new, but she had seen his talents, seen him. He shouldn't have felt that way.

"You're wonderful," she continued. "You drew Copper and I saw a bit about what he was like. You saw me, and I saw myself when you showed me. Arthur. No one has ever done that before."

She would not take his hand, though she began to, hesitated for a moment after. She was glad he didn't see, looking wistfully somewhere far off in the distance instead. How she wanted to take his hand, create a new thread of intimacy with him. It wouldn't be one as bold as their intimacy of the previous night, but just as instrumental to the tapestry as a whole. She wanted him to see the man that she saw and that she depicted.

"Ride Buell often, take him out," Arthur advised, and how Charlotte fell. "He'll be good to you."

"You've been good to me."

Damn, damn, damn it all. She took his hand. His eyes were sky and sea and sorrow and one moment above all others.

"Arthur," she muttered, damning it further and squeezing his hand. "Thank you. For yesterday, for the times before, and for last night. I don't think anyone else would have done that. You've been good to me. Real good. And—"

She was overwhelmed by his eyes that held one moment above all others. She looked at his boots and her bare feet, reluctantly removed her hands from his and suggested they sit down. It was a long while of the two of them, just sitting down on her front steps. Her skirt fanned out and Arthur's knee touched hers, but she wouldn't move away. It wasn't right for a woman to be alone, her mother always said. It wasn't so bad to be alone, no, and live in that world all her own. But to awaken with him in early dawn, to have him by her side…

She said it first because it would hurt more for him to say that he had to go. She asked him, will you go today, and he nodded solemnly. He promised he would try to come back. If he did not, she would not die.

But would she live? In a way, yes. But that part of her that found a small heaven in a place that could be both heaven and hell would.

"I'm not worried about anyone else coming, trying to attack," Charlotte said.

"I'm—"

She shook her head, touched his knee. At first such a touch would have been so scandalous and unheard of. She never even touched Cal's leg that deliberately. It was only in the bedroom that she touched him there, when hers were wrapped around his. She would have never thought such a thing would become such simple yet easy intimacy.

"No," she said, begging him. "Please don't apologize for that again. I told you. I would do it all again."

"I—"

"Don't you dare say I shouldn't have. It made me stronger. And I saved you. I saved you."

She would have saved him a thousand times if she had to, and a thousand more. He didn't believe it. He sat with his hands clasped and she put her hand on his broad, strong back.

"You matter to me," she whispered.

She wasn't afraid of another bad man. She had the means to protect herself. Come nightmares if they came. She could conjure his image when he was gone, to wake with her in the early dawn. She would envision him drawing Copper. She wasn't afraid he wouldn't come back. He would come back.

She was afraid of what would happen when he would leave—where he would go, what he would see without her. She almost asked him to take her with him. She didn't of course, not as he packed up, thanked her again and again. He didn't stay for lunch. He didn't want to intrude anymore. He was never intruder.

She waited to see him off. He readied Peppermint. He didn't mount immediacy. Instead, he waited for her.

"Be well," she bade.

"I'll be back."

She inched closer, and that was when he was going to admit it—that he mattered to her too. It made her heart race when he did admit it in his honey and leather voice, yet it also made her sad, because he was a sad man. And what was she, but his sweetest sorrow?

Parting was such sweet sorrow. Parting was her sweetest sorrow.

She kissed his cheek. A kiss, a hand falling to the spot, treasuring it. A kiss, and he was gone.

She wasn't gone. She remained. She hunted that day with Buell, not needing the gun for anything other than hunting. She came back home, ate alone. And when she opened her journal, she found, that right next that drawing of him, he left another drawing of Cooper.

Chapter 10

Chapter Notes

hey friends, hope you're still enjoying! :)

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Even when he was away during that gap of time, Arthur inspired Charlotte.

The first stir of inspiration occurred when he taught her how to hunt and survive, and he continued to inspire by coming back and assuring her she could build a life of her own in her own private heaven once meant for an Adam and Eve of another name. He gave her a new friend and companion that could carry her if she wielded him right, and a drawing of a fallen friend in her journal. He inspired her to venture out with Buell, wearing Cal's pants and suspenders and taking a pencil and journal with her. He inspired her to draw more, depict him again so she may show him again, and gain better skill so she could accurately portray the subtle changes of his appearance. She wanted to leave drawings in his journal when he came back to her.

Buell however, was not cooperating as her artistic muse was cooperating. Not at first.

It was partly her fault. No horse wanted a rider who wasn't confident, and her insecurity without Arthur by her side showed. At first she only trotted with Buell, took him by the reins and walked, but eventually she found it in her to rise and mount him. With no Arthur to guide her, she was skittish and nervous. She was convinced she was going to sway too far to the right and fall, then she was convinced she was going to sway too far to the left and fall. Either that or she wouldn't be able to get herself down, and she would be doomed to ride atop Buell until he tired of her weight and inability to properly ride him and bucked her off unceremoniously on the ground where she would sink back into the earth.

Arthur was right when he said animals could sense things. Buell did not cooperate when Charlotte tried to ride him, because something in his being sensed she was nervous and not attuned to him. She couldn't guide him to her usual hunting spot if she tried to ride him, he would only follow if she led by the reins. He missed his true owner and he only tolerated Charlotte, she knew that. This went on for two days, until Charlotte emerged from her hut and offered him a sugar cube Arthur gave her. After Buell gobbled up the thing she wiped the slobber off on Cal's pants, and began to stroke his long face.

"I know you miss him," she said. "Ah…what was his name? Hamish maybe? Either way, he must have been a fine man. Perhaps I'm not so fine a lady, but I think we could be great friends. Right? Won't you be friends with me?"

She closed her eyes as she continued to stroke his mane, trying to imbue in herself that yes she could. She was a survivor, and so was he. They were meant to be friends.

With one swift motion, she was on him. She took a moment to adjust, patted him like she saw Arthur pat his horse Peppermint. It was a laden with a silent thanks for him, because after all, he didn't have to carry her. But he did, and they learned to ride together. They rode and perhaps she was no jockey, but with time and practice, she could be somewhat of a horsewoman. She could be Buell's friend.

As the days wore on, she managed to ride Buell to herhunting spot. She went even when she didn't need to hunt, went to observe and feel not so isolated in her little cabin. Buell grazed as she drew and hunted, and sometimes she talked to him. While she did enjoy venison, she said, she found the sounds they made if the kill wasn't clean nearly unbearable, and lived mainly off of rabbits and blackberries because of it. She also supposed, she regaled to her horse, it was also because she didn't feel so sorry for rabbits, as there were many of them, but upon observing a quiet doe and her fauns, she couldn't bring herself to let the little ones fend for herself. In that gap of time since Arthur left she killed no deer—drew the family of the small fauns and doe instead, wondering where the father was. She drew a squirrel, drew the trees, drew Buell, and when she tried to draw Cal a tear stained the page and she wouldn't any longer. At home, she even tried to draw herself. She faired better with that than Cal, but she was drawing the younger version of herself, not even the older version that met Cal, but little girl Charlotte. She was going to one day draw Charlotte the plainswoman, the survivor.

The hobby managed to occupy her and keep her mind off of Arthur's adventures and possible wrongdoings. It crept in her mind one night as she tried to sleep…her man was likely not what one called an upstanding citizen in the traditional sense, but he was to her. He was her friend. And though he didn't come to her promptly, and it wasn't that she expected him to, nor did she weep when she counted that thirtieth day and he had not arrived by nightfall, but she had grown accustomed to him and learned to derive happiness from talking with him. He made it so easy. They hadn't spent that much time together, she knew, but she didn't think it was so much about how much time had passed together, but how that time was spent. She hoped that somewhere far off, wherever he was, he was hoping to make the time longer. But of course, he had people to take care of, his own life separate from her. He couldn't always be at her private paradise, the Adam but not Adam to her Eve, if she could even dare call what they had that.

She was lost for metaphors however. It would have to do.

It wasn't so bad to live alone, to try to thrive in a world that was all your own. It was Charlotte's chant and prayer as she sunk into her mind and found how vibrant it could be. She even thought she managed to transfer some of that to paper. And in truth, she wasn't all alone. She found Buell quite enjoyed her talk of Chicago high society and the different drawings she would attempt each day. He didn't speak, of course he didn't, but hidden in his sad eyes that missed Hamish still, she found her friend. She wasn't really alone. And the world, it couldn't possibly be only hers. It was the animals, the earth's. Somewhere too, it was also Arthur's.

But on the thirty second day without him, she came home to find that she and Buell weren't really alone, not even in the spiritual sense.

Her brother had found her.

---

Charlotte's younger brother of five years, Alexander Josiah Vale, resembled the old photographs of their father before he met their mother. Like their father Josiah, Alexander was ebony-haired, parted in the middle, with that sharp, pointed jaw and prominent nose that none of the Vales escaped from, but Alexander pulled off better. At least according to their father anyway. Photographs in sepia however did not do right to depict Alexander's brown eyes that were either russet or coffee-like depending on the lighting. Unlike their father, Alexander had kinder eyes.

When he ran to Charlotte, he held her face in his hands for several long moments before wrapping his arms around her and swaying her back and forth, chanting, "you're alright, you're alright." So bewildered was she—Alexander was not fond of touch, he never reciprocated her embraces when they were children—that she swayed awkwardly with him for a few moments before finally dropping Buell's reins and returning the embrace tightly.

"Alexander," she said, swayed by his unexpected tenderness. "You found me. You're here"

"I found you, yes, yes, I found you." He scooped her face upward once more, as if to check to make sure she was no changeling. He used to believe in those sorts of stories when he was a small boy, before their father uprooted him from any childhood games and sent him off to boarding school to one day join Chicago's elite. When he came back and started banking like their father, Charlotte wouldn't have blamed a single person if they started to believe Alex was the older one, the way he offered unsolicited advice about the proper gentleman that she should accept offers to dance from. Cal certainly wasn't one of those people at first. Alex knew him from school. He may have been a few years ahead, but he had a reputation. He was too quiet, too mysterious. Always had his head buried in a book.

"I wouldn't if I were you Charlotte Clementina," Alexander advised at the Palmer House that day she met Cal, his tall form draped against the bar, sipping his cognac and using both her first and middle name in another attempt to establish his feigned superiority. "They say quiet men that read cause trouble."

"If that's the way it is," Charlotte replied, taking off her glove, "Quiet women that read cause disasters."

And then she approached her future husband, and both she and Alexander learned Cal was only quiet with those who were not within his circle. He wasn't so quiet anymore to Alexander after Cal began courting, as gradually her brother turned into one of his friends. They didn't go into the banking business together as Alex suggested once, but they were friends enough for Alexander to hold Charlotte tightly and offer a thousand condolences. He saw the grave, he said. The flowers had withered, and he had had picked some fresher wildflowers nearby and placed them there. He had heard of Cal's passing of course—the letter that Charlotte wrote to Cal's mother got passed to their mother. This was naturally passed to Alexander, who was in Saint Dennis, doing some business for the bank and a man named Angelo Bronte.

"I've come to take you home Charlotte," he said. "I'll help you pack your things in the carriage."

She saw the carriage when she arrived. It was a gaudy, unnecessary display of wealth in her opinion. (Who needed something so extravagant for travel?) She wasn't going to pack a single one of her belongings in that awful thing.

"Alexander."

"Hush, you're tired," he said, wrapping an arm around her and trying to bring her back into the house. "My poor girl. You have a silver premature streak in your hair from all this. I'll make you some coffee, and then we can be off as soon as tomorrow. I need to be back in Saint Denis soon, but Angelo will understand. He cares so much about the family you know, and Mother is worried sick. All she wants is—"

"Alexander Vale, you are not taking me back to Chicago."

Her tone was one he did not expect, so much he removed his arm from around her shoulder and wore the look of a man who deemed himself so self-important that he couldn't dare believe the woman he had fixated on didn't want his affection. Alexander was far better than that.

She straightened. "Alexander Vale," she said, looking directly in his eyes. "I am not going back to Chicago. I am going to fulfill the promise Cal and I made and stay here where I belong."

He was silent. He turned pale.

"Alexander? Do you hear me?"

His eyes widened. "Great balls of fire," he muttered, looking at her up and down, seeing not little girl Charlotte, but survivor Charlotte.

"You're wearing pants," he stated. "You're in his pants. You're wearing suspenders…You—"

"Oh I still wear dresses and skirts too," she said, waving her hand dismissively. "Try the calico dress on later. You'd look smashing in it."

"Charlotte…you have a horse."

"Indeed," she said, walking closer to Buell, stroking him fondly. "I'm surprised you just noticed him. Please, meet Buell."

"How long have you been here on your own?"

"A while," she replied.

"You've survived."

"No," she replied. "I'm better off. Now come inside, I'll make you some coffee."

Once she shuffled him inside, Charlotte made him coffee and brought him some stew. "Eat it, would you," she told him when instead he opted not to eat or drink, but rather stare blankly around Charlotte's home and little paradise.

"The stew is good and well-seasoned with thyme," Charlotte said. "You would like it."

"I…how?" he finally asked, obeying her and tasting the stew. His eyes widened, pleasantly surprised at Charlotte's skill. Though he needn't have been too surprised. Lavinia the cook was always her closest confident. Naturally she would pick up a few things.

Alexander ate as she told her story, step by step. She told him of a man who helped her, had become her friend. She omitted the part with the Murfree brood, and omitted the part where Arthur stayed overnight, and didn't dare mention Arthur's status, but otherwise she told a truthful tale.

"It sounds like this Arthur means a great deal to you," Alexander mentioned, more casually than conspiratorially, though Charlotte knew the layer beneath his mercurial eyes.

"He's a friend who helped me. He taught me how to shoot."

"A woman shooting. What is the world coming to?

She rolled her eyes. "I had no choice Alexander. I had to eat and I had to survive. One cannot live off of berries. And I'll have you mention I am both a woman and your older sister, and you do well to respect me."

"Dear, sweet sister. I do respect you," Alexander said, insulted so she would dare insist he didn't. "When Cal's family told us what happened and they worried about you, I volunteered to come and pick you up myself."

"That will not be necessary."

"Charlotte—"

"I'm happy. I'm staying." And she folded her arms and crossed her legs.

"You don't seem happy," he pointed out.

"Because you're making me angry. Usually I am quite happy."

"Is it because of this Arthur person? Charlotte. I will not be telling mother that you let a man in your house."

"Men, women, we're all survivors here. And get father's old and outdated ideas out of your head as well," she demanded. "I swear. You'll marry a woman of the twentieth century and try to bring her back to the previous. It's a dawn of a new era for everyone. I'm proof that we can survive, we can provide for ourselves."

"Oh God, next you'll be one of those silly suffragettes."

"I was always a silly suffragette. I have a sash and everything back in Chicago. Stick that up your pipe and smoke it."

He didn't reply, but sipped his coffee and ate the stew she made him. She had always appreciated the steadfastness of Arthur Morgan, but the faults of her brother turned that appreciation into ardent adoration. Arthur may have known she was a woman and viewed her as such, but never did he scoff at teaching her to shoot, or laugh at her first feeble attempts and deem her over her head when she said she would stay and do what she and Cal promised they would do. He believed in her. Alexander may have seen it, seen her alive and thriving and stomping her foot down, but he was not connecting the lines that were once little girl Charlotte to the Charlotte before him who was a survivor. Who knows if he ever would. She told Cal once she hoped he would not inherit their father's latent feelings of superiority to the opposite sex, just as Charlotte never inherited her mother's silent yielding. Sure, there was a time she used to fight, but time wore on her. Charlotte hoped time would never tear her down.

Wars however, were not won immediately, or in the matter of days. At the very least, she could see as he nodded and leaned back in his chair contemplatively and thoughtfully, that he was conceding. For now. He did however, inform her that she was going to have to personally tell their father the very important detail that she had every intention of staying in her home.

"I'm not going back to Chicago," she stated flatly. "I'll let him and Mother know through a letter, but I will not go to Chicago."

"You don't have to," Alexander replied. "Meet him in Saint Denis."

He was also going to meet Angelo Bronte, Alexander said. Charlotte cared not who this person was—some self-important businessman she had no intention of meeting. "I'm not going to that foul and vulgar city," she informed her brother.

It wasn't foul or vulgar, Alexander said. Besides, how would Charlotte even know? She had yet to be there. Perhaps she would like it. She wasn't so convinced about the suggestions—from what she heard the city seemed too rooted in the past. If she walked around the city in Cal's work trousers, high society would likely faint at the sight of her. Chicago High Society certainly would. But southern High Society was what her mother was from, and Charlotte knew it to be far worse.

There was another matter as well. She didn't want Arthur to come back and see she wasn't there.

He promised he would be back. He was a man of his promises.

"Charlotte—"

"I can't go to the city Alexander."

Alexander wasn't budging. "Father will come here if I don't bring you back."

"He wouldn't."

"He does care," Alex insisted. "He would."

She shook her head. "It's not that he cares. He thinks he can control me. But not he or anyone else will inform me where I should go and where I should not go, where I should stay and where I should move back to."

No, not little girl Charlotte. Would be controlled. Certainly not woman Charlotte, survivor Charlotte, who had more scars on her hands from more than needlework. She held a gun. She hunted her own food, fished. She killed for a man she cared for.

She could do so much more than face her father.

"I'll go to Saint Denis and face him," Charlotte said. "I'll go with you."

"Excellent. I'm sure you would be welcome at the mayor's house—that's where we're going to meet. Must get you a dress though—can't walk into Saint Denis with those trousers on. But oh...the stories of it all, your experiences here. A widow, surviving all on her own…

"Alexander?"

He blinked. "Why do you look so serious?"

"Because my experiences are not some story you can tell at a party. They are real. They are mine and they matter. I am proof you can survive. And also, Alexander…"

She leaned in. "Never tell me what I should wear again."

It was another won battle in the small evening of the day.

---

She left a note for Arthur before she took Buell and left with Alexander and his gaudy carriage. Dear Arthur, it said. Don't be alarmed. I'm in Saint Denis. What is mine is yours, please stay if you will. Wait for me

She crossed out wait for me.

Chapter End Notes

thanks for reading! If you feel so inclined, leave a comment! comments give me water in the sahara desert :)

Chapter 11

It was the early afternoon by Shady Belle, and Arthur stood both by the water's edge and at a precipice. It was the same precipice as Dutch, and Hosea—all of them robbers and thieves, gunslingers and outlaws. He didn't wish to be there, to watch a world of expanding civilization that would neither want nor welcome him shut him away until they were all more myth than men. Yet at the same time, there was a part of him that wondered if perhaps it was for the best, perhaps it was better to be more myth than man.

What were they anyway, but a group of poor unfortunate souls who had gotten wrapped into that life, one way or another, whether it chose them itself or they just fell into it?They clung to the past like a drowning man tried to find air, not wanting to believe that soon cities like Saint Denis would sprawl across America. They would drown. And who would remember them? No one, save that one other poor unfortunate soul who found his journal years and years later. Bad men, they would think. I am bad, but they were far worse. And yet though they were bad, they still cared. They still lost. They still loved.

He loved that wretch of a boy.

It took Arthur losing him to understand his comradery and banter with Sean was more than idle talk to pass the time. "Stop frownin' English," Sean would say as they rode the stagecoach back to the Emerald Ranch, Arthur suggesting Sean donating some money in the camp funds would make the frowning stop. Sean possessed a good nature, better than most of them. He knew how to laugh, wasn't afraid to try and make others smile, but knew he could do better. Once, he asked Arthur once what he should do about Karen. Arthur didn't even remember what advice he gave, or if it was even good. All he knew was he lost, and she lost, and she had fallen harder to the bottle. All of them were lost. They couldn't help her.

They couldn't even mourn all that well either, not really. After escaping the heist in Rhodes, and oh, how that day would forever burn in his mind, every god damn step he took. It was a week after coming back from up north. He was thinking of that small bed Charlotte had, and how it was more comfortable than he gave it credit for, Buell slobbering on her hand, and the way the white thread in her hair looked more silver in the sun. He could even still feel that kiss like a burned ember against his cheek. Dutch came up to him as he sat by the fire. Bill, Micah and Sean were waiting for him in Rhodes. Arthur knew immediately something wasn't right. Why didn't they know it to? Why did it take Sean laying in the street, blood pooling against the gravel for the rest to wake up?

Why did it have to be Sean?

He heard the soft heeled footsteps approach before Mary Beth announced Pearson finished the stew if he wanted someone. Arthur closed his journal, more habit than anything—he didn't usually like people to see what he wrote or sketched, but he'd rather it be Mary Beth than anyone. She was one of the most thoughtful. He stretched and he thanked her for letting him know, but he wasn't sure if he was hungry.

"I didn't see you eat breakfast," she mentioned. "Come on Arthur. You should eat."

"Really. Ain't much hungry."

Her eyes narrowed. "You've taken this hard is what it is."

She was right, no point in lying. He nodded, conceding. He may have went off for a while after the incident in Rhodes, almost made Peppermint work too hard, that he was still surprised she didn't try to buck him off in that time after Sean's death. He was gone for two days and he didn't realize he was taking the path back to Charlotte until Charles found him, told him about Jack, and asked where he planned on going.

"A friend," he replied. "I was going to see a friend."

He hadn't seen his friend since. But the matter was, he did himself the disservice of thinking Sean was less than what he really was. Now that he was dead, his guilt worsened. He needed more time, but Jack was captured, and he had none. He was always very good at not thinking of things and processing things as more things happened.

They had Jack back. The celebrated the night previous, but all Arthur could remember was how Dutch claimed, "I can't even think about Sean now" as the horses thundered them out of Clemens Point to the Braithwaite Manor. Arthur wondered if he thought about Sean since, if any of them did, except for a few of them, and Karen.

Karen. Poor, poor Karen.

"Yeah," Arthur said to Mary Beth. "I've taken this hard."

"Want to talk about it?"

It wasn't no spot to do that he insisted, pointing to the green and murky water. Mary Beth only laughed.

"I don't know," she said. "I think the swamps are lovely this time of year."

"Well, to each their own." At least though, it wasn't Saint Denis. Cities were the people, Dutch said. They gave it their character. He may have run into interesting individuals in single, solitary moments, but Saint Denis took on the persona of a collective soul, one that was thoroughly money hungry, pompous, and vile. If the future was nothing but an even vaster Saint Denis, he wanted no part of it, hoped he would never meet that one collective person that took on the entire persona of Saint Denis.

"Been here, journaling all day," Mary Beth said. "Been out here early too. Saw you this morning."

"It's cooler when it's early," he said, before apologizing for turning down her offer to dance when she asked last night.

"Ah, no trouble," she replied, eyeing the journal at his hip. "So what are you writing about anyway?"

"Just everything," he admitted. "And what about you?"

Oh, he saw her that morning, scribbling away underneath her flapped tent. She blushed, replying "nothing."

"That's a lot of writing for nothing."

"Oh Arthur, you…"

He chuckled. "Hey, dominoes later?" he asked. "Whoever wins can read the other's journal."

"Oh you're on. Maybe. We'll see."

He chuckled some more, broken up by a cough. She asked if he was alright and he replied it must have been because he hadn't laughed in a while, and it was a bit foreign after so long. But it was good to laugh again, have a banter again, even if it was only a little, as the kindness only extended because Miss Grimshaw likely asked her to bring him back to the main camp for lunch. He served his messenger as well as Miss Grimshaw and Tilly, as both hadn't eaten yet, serving himself last, and finding he did have more appetite than he thought. The three called him "gentleman," and a dashing prince in disguise, chivalrous for offering to serve them, and he recalled how the stew tasted of thyme today, like Charlotte's. She called him chivalrous too.

"Arthur Morgan, I have a problem."

He didn't like Miss Grimshaw's tone. He knew that tone. "What problem is that ma'am?"

She reached over, touched the wisps of hair that had begun to fall a little past his chin. He flinched, and she slapped his cheek enough to sting slightly. She informed him he needed a haircut, and a clean shave.

"Ah, what's wrong with my hair or beard?" he asked, hand defensively flying to his whiskers.

"You look like you've been living in the woods!"

"We all have," Mary Beth pointed out. "Besides, I kind of like your hair Arthur. It suits you. You and Charles and John can pull it off well."

"You sir have a party to attend soon," Miss Grimshaw reminded him before he could thank her. "If you so much as entertain the notion of walking into the mayor's house with your hair as long as it is—"

"Well, Miss Grimshaw, I like it too," Tilly said. "Arthur at least knows what a comb is. Unlike some."

Tilly's eyes drifted toward Micah's tent. Miss Grimshaw was the only one of the four at the table that didn't laugh. He thanked his defenders, Tilly and Mary Beth, but upon toying with the strands at the back of his hair, he became more aware of how long it had gotten. Since Sean's death and since they had scoured the streets looking for Angelo Bronte and Jack, what little he cared about his appearance went to the wayside. Mary used to comment if his hair or beard got to long—or used to, anyway. She said she always knew hair or whiskers that were slightly longer than normal signified a contemplative Arthur, a far-off Arthur. Come back, she used to say. He liked it best when she said it underneath him, arms coiled around him. Come back to me. She didn't say that any longer.

He also had been neglecting bathing, something Miss Grimshaw pointed out. The dirt underneath his fingernails was "barbaric" and he was going to smell as bad as Micah if he went it go on longer. Mary Beth pointed out Miss Grimshaw's hypocrisy as Tilly leaned in. Her scrunched nose let him know all he needed to know.

"Now Arthur, if you could be so kind to get that lye soap, and wash," Miss Grimshaw ordered. "Or I promise you I will—"

"No need ma'am," Arthur promised her, rising from the table, surrendering. He had been subjected to her merciless hands and nails enough times in his youth, he was surprised his scalp didn't have any permanent marks from all the times she escorted him to a river or barrel of water to get the grime and dirt off. He promised he would head straight to Saint Denis, wash at the hotel, and have a haircut.

"Very good," Miss Grimshaw said. "Oh, and Arthur—"

"I promise," he said, "I'll try to bring Karen back."

Susan, Mary Beth, Tilly were the ones that kept watch over Karen, though none of them could sway her away from the drink. When they first made camp at Shady Belle, Arthur saw Mary Beth ask Karen if she wanted to go by Sean's grave. It was by their old camp, a lovely spot near the water, exactly where Sean would want to be. Charles even made a cross for him, and maybe they could go there say a few words. Arthur, watching, came by and said he'd be willing to join them. Karen refused, but took another whiskey. Dutch should have made them all go now that Jack was back. He brushed it aside instead. It had been weeks, Dutch said, dismissive when Miss Grimshaw suggested it that early morning. They had work to do. There was no time for mourning. So the gang had to do it privately, or not at all. And Karen, who perhaps needed the time more than any of them…

Well. Only Susan, Mary Beth, Tilly and he were aware of that at all. Susan called him good, proper when he promised he would get her home. Tilly patted his back. Mary Beth smiled sadly, going back to her journal. He wasn't good nor proper. He was just worried.

He made good time to Saint Denis. Karen wasn't there at the hotel, but he knew it was where she would stay. She typically wore airs when she could get away with it, liked to indulge in luxury when she could. He bathed, declining any help, not wishing for the looks that would pass his way when the water turned from clear blue to a dull blackish grey. He put back on his typical blues, accented with ascot, but reframed from his hat, carrying at his side instead and planning on sticking it back in his saddle bag. He really did need a trim. Maybe Miss Grimshaw was right and he did look like some sort of man from the mountains.

As he walked down from the washroom, the pianist played one of those songs by some fellow named Joplin or other. He wouldn't have known had the pianist not made the announcement beforehand, though Arthur found he liked the melody. But that may have been because he was unfamiliar with most things, and all art was a novelty of sorts to him. What it was like to be like Charlotte Vale Balfour, always surrounded by art in Chicago, making her own to entertain hours of boredom, to save herself, he didn't know. What few books he had read, few art he did know, they all mattered to him.

Curiously he was swept away for a few more moments by the music, standing by the bar. He took a beer. He tapped his foot for a few beats, sipped the drink before a dark haired, young looking fellow at the poker table caught his eye. He wore an expensive looking suit with cravat, bowler hat, and slapped his hand down on the table when another gentleman won the round.

"You cheated," he accused, though they all assured it was just skill—skills his sister could teach him if he listened.

"Oh I quit!" he exclaimed, swinging from his seat to the bar near Arthur, demanding a whiskey. "Alexander," the others at the table called, "come back, you'll win it back!"

"I wouldn't my friend," Arthur suggested. "That never works."

The fellow, Alexander, shook his head. "Beaten by my own sister, now this."

In his experience, women didn't typically play poker. His curiosity, piquing originally when they first mentioned it, grew further.

"Sister?" Arthur asked.

"Oh yes," the fellow—Alexander replied. "Charlotte apparently thinks she's a real 'plainswoman,' now, what with living by herself, hunting…teaching me the proper way to care for a horse. She's probably at the stables now, making sure they take good care of her 'Buell.' I swear, that woman and her…"

Arthur stared. He couldn't believe it. "Wait. Did you say Charlotte? Buell?"

"Yes. Charlotte and her horse Buell. She—wait, where are you going?"

He didn't have to look far to find her. Outside the hotel, standing near Peppermint, there she was.

There she was.

"Charlotte Balfour?"

She looked different. She was different. In Saint Denis she couldn't be that "plainswoman," he knew her to be, but distinguished Charlotte Balfour, a lady, Charlotte Balfour, though she was always a lady, and merely one of a different sort when they were alone. He was accustomed to her hair in a long braid, not pulled up in an elegant coiffure, and he liked her in her pants compared to a skirt, though she wore both well. She was wrapped in red silks with big sleeves and fabrics that confined, but he supposed she was used to such outfits. Seeing her here, he would have never suspected.

Look at the two of them, he thought. They were both uprooted from home.

"Arthur," Charlotte muttered, eyes wide, ungloved hands removing themselves from Peppermint's mane. "I knew it was her, I knew you were here when I saw her. I'm—"

"Surprised? Me too." He regarded his horse. "She likes you," he said.

"I think she does."

They smiled at each other. She told him his hair was different, and he replied she looked different herself, in her light blue skirt that bustled out, and her shirt of the same color with a high collar and long sleeves.

"I am different here," she agreed. "But…"

She inched closer. They were a breath away, and he was very, very grateful he had taken that bath, not so grateful he didn't cut his hair first.

"I suppose now I feel more like myself," said Charlotte.

He couldn't embrace her. Not as people passed by, and the language in the city was interpreted differently than the language of the plains and rural hills, were she had built her home and had survived, and where she welcomed him into her world. Instead, he took her small hand in his much larger, much more calloused one. Though, he noted, her hand wasn't so soft itself. A sign of hunting and riding, surviving.

He liked her hand right there.

He kissed her hand, like he had heard the knights in the tales of old did. He felt more like himself too.

"It's good to see you Arthur," Charlotte muttered. "I would have never thought to see you here."

"Never thought to be here so much either."

"It was a good surprise. Not the only one."

"Ah, well," he let go of her hand, touched his too long hair. "Haven't time lately."

"I like it."

She liked it, she said.

Well. He wasn't too sure about cutting it off anymore.

Chapter 12

Chapter Notes

sorry for the wait, things got rough in my other fic, but here we are! 3

The fact of the matter was that the hair had to go. Arthur said if he walked back to camp with his hair still at the same length, Miss Grimshaw would get a pair of scissors and chop if off herself. Charlotte offered to keep him company to the barber, an offer he graciously took.

"Are you going to tell your brother you're coming with me?" he asked as she walked with him to the shop.

"No," Charlotte replied, pointing out they had already begun to walk there anyway.

She was right, he noted. "Charming fellow," he called him after Charlotte retold the story and explained why she was in Saint Denis.

"Oh yes, he and my father both." That meeting had been heavy on her mind, and her father wasn't even there yet. It was why she went to go see Buell. He calmed her down. Arthur eased her further.

"Think your father will respect your wishes?"

She caught his gaze. "I'll make him," she said, winking and sticking a hand on her hip.

He chuckled. "That's my girl."

"And what about you?" she wondered, nearly there to the barber, heart doing an odd sort of leap at the phrase, that's my girl, along with his amused laughter. "What brings my cowboy to the jewel of the South?"

It was no jewel, he thought, Charlotte having to agree. He also half grinned at her calling him "my" cowboy. What passed between them, Charlotte thought, wasn't a sort of possession. My girl, my cowboy, they weren't used as a way to declare ownership, but express kinship. A fondness. He was more suited for the wild, the woods, and open fields. She was more suited in her own oasis. They found each other in the muck disguised as a jewel. Together, they could be themselves in land swarming with social climbers and pretenders. She would have drowned if she didn't find him.

"Nothing good," he replied.

He was remembering something he didn't want to remember. "What do you mean?" she asked, though he refrained from answering, as they were almost to the barber. She came in with him to the garishly decorated place, stood by his side as he asked for a trim.

The barber asked Arthur to sit before wrapping a cloth around his neck. "Beard as well sir?"

"Sure."

"And how would you like that done? Mustaches are very in."

When Arthur didn't say anything, trying to decide, Charlotte did. "No."

The barber stared. "Well, please no," she amended, not liking the way the barber's stare suggested she had no right to have an opinion on the way a man should maintain hid appearance, even though she knew several men who had opinions on the way women dressed. "Full beard or no beard. No in between," she said. "Please. With all due respect sir. That's my opinion on the matter."

The barber, who sported a very thick black mustache, raised his eyes at Charlotte, but otherwise checked with Arthur, making sure if that was what he wanted.

Their gazes met through the mirror. "I think you'd look good no matter what," she said.

"Well." His grin was crooked. "Glad you would think so. But as the lady wishes. Full beard, trimmed."

"Oh yes yes," the barber fussed, pulling out the scissors and shears, "I understand, anything the wife wants."

Though Charlotte still wore her wedding band, Arthur had no ring. The fact could have been checked, but an assumption was made and neither Charlotte nor Arthur were going to correct the assumption. She hoped it didn't bother him as she stood waiting, and once his hair was cut to the appropriate length and beard trimmed shorter though not too short, Arthur paid and the two escorted themselves out. She had an errand she wanted to run without Alexander, she said, and perhaps he could accompany her.

"As the lady wishes," Arthur repeated, though he wondered what exactly the errand was.

"I want some new pants," she replied, riding the high of a thrill for being called 'lady' again in his honey and leather voice.

"Ah."

"For riding, and other matters. I could use Cal's, but I want some of my own. By the way," she stopped them, her skirt swishing around her legs. "Did it bother you that the barber thought you and I were…?" She linked them in an invisible bond with the swish of her hands.

He shook his head. "People don't think men and women can be friends," Arthur said, seeking an answer to the man's assumptions.

Charlotte had a wonder. "Do you?"

He blinked, not expecting such a question. He answered though, replying that Mary Beth, Tilly, and the other women at camp were easier to talk to. He looked at her even. "You're easy to talk to," he said.

She stood just a little bit taller. "My father once told me if I didn't get my head out of the clouds and back to the earth, no one would ever find me palatable."

"You proved him wrong."

"If anything," she began, biting back laughter. "Cal had his head in the clouds too. Why else would two mad individuals ever think to escape the city and make wine in the country even though they didn't know the first thing about the wilderness and how to survive?"

"Maybe I have my head in the clouds too then."

"If that's the way things are, I am glad to have you with me. It is quite a place to be."

The two dolts with their heads in the clouds must have made quite the sight in the jewel of the south's streets, walking side by side to the tailor's. It took escaping the city and not having to don layers upon layers of overcoats and petticoats for Charlotte to understand how much of a costume every layer really was. It took much longer to dress that morning in her hotel room than it had been taking her at home, and that was even without a corset. She didn't mean not to wear it, in fact it helped her posture more than it confined, but she was so used to not wearing it, it slipped her mind. The fact of the matter was she wanted more trousers, and ones that better fit her frame at that. She decided she was going to play the part of the dutiful, distinguished, and well-dressed woman in the city, but the moment she was home and where she belonged, it would be back to how things were before. She'd proudly hunt in her new trousers made especially for her.

She didn't know how the tailor would react to her suggestion, but she assumed the reaction would be the same as Alexander's, which was decidedly not well. She was right.

"Are they for the gentleman?" the tailor, a certain Mr. Landers with silvery hair lined face with bright blue eyes asked when the bells overhead signaled her and Arthur's entrance into the shop, Charlotte expressing her desire.

"They're for the lady," Arthur said, hands on his belt.

Mr. Landers raised his eyebrows. "The lady?" He pushed his glasses down his nose. "But sir, ma'am…it's not right for a woman to wear pants. Didn't you read the papers? It's said that if a woman wears pants, it could interfere with—"

"That's no problem with me," Charlotte assured, reading that very paper and laughing at such an outlandish suggestion that a woman wearing pants prevented pregnancy. "My husband and I tried for many years. I was told because it hasn't happened yet, it likely never will. Oh, don't give me that look. It's alright. Please don't pity me."

He twiddled his thumbs in that way so many did when she admitted her childlessness. It used to not be so bad, but she was at the point where lines on her face told tales. That silver in her fringe wasn't helping. She detested the pity that came in regards to certain things, knew enough from her own family that a man and wife's happiness could not be derived— or saved— with children. She and Alexander were proof enough of that fact with her parents—she more so than Alexander. Alexander made them marginally better. It was always the girl that exacerbated things between an uneasy man and wife. Her life was never her own. The two had opposing views on where it should go.

Having a child was not always the necessary step for a man and a wife. It could not save, nor revive. She and Cal were happy without. They gave up trying. Hope always brought more disappointment.

"Well," Mr. Landers said, straightening his jacket, "I did see a woman the other day ride through here with pants. Perhaps the matter isn't too radical."

Charlotte was about to agree, but Arthur spoke first. A name of "Sadie."

Mr. Landers blinked at him, asking who on earth that was.

"Sadie. Sadie Adler," Arthur clarified. "That's who you saw with the trousers, I'd imagine. Few women in the world wear pants, save for my wife here, and Sadie Adler. Good woman. One of the best, along with my wife here. Oh, and did I mention she was my wife?"

He said "wife" far too many times for a sharp individual to believe, but Mr. Landers had his wit in clothing and not social graces. As for Charlotte, the ruse and game Arthur played along with made it difficult for her to keep a straight face. She was glad to be called his, even in a realm of pretend and make believe.

Mr. Landers fit Charlotte for her own pair of work trousers, fit for riding and other matters. She spun a yarn that was half true about buying a plot of land and beginning a life of country living, informing him as she turned and he took measurements of her legs and hips. It was difficult, she admitted when he asked, and it could be lonely, though she had her friend Buell and "husband." Along with seclusion came a few perks though, she reiterated. Never had she had more time to think in her entire life, and it was both frightening and thrilling to realize where one's own mind could go.

"You sound like a writer," Mr. Landers mentioned, wrapping the tape around her hips, and being mindful, as Charlotte's "husband" was behind the curtain, perusing the shop.

"Perhaps one day," Charlotte said. "A drawer first though. Like my husband."

"Oh, an artist. I must admit he didn't strike me as such."

"I don't think artists are never who we think they are." She did one last twirl as Mr. Landers took the last measurement of her limbs and jotted them down in a notebook. "He thinks of it as only a hobby, but if Saint Denis was covered in his drawings, no one would be able to look away."

"Maybe one day," Mr. Landers said, wistful. "At any rate. I'll have these ready within five days."

Arthur didn't hear her continue the ruse, hear him claiming him as her man, nor did he hear her compliment. She was half glad, half not (She thought a bit of a lopsided, self-deprecating grin he would give) as she emerged from the back. He focused on a paisley, royal blue vest he pulled from one of the racks, gentle in his touches, and self-conscious that he was too rough for such a thing.

She asked him if he had taken a liking to it. "Never one for clothes really," he admitted. "Color is nice though."

"You like blue?"

"Nice as color as any."

"You look dashing in blue," she complimented, gesturing for the vest. She took it, held it up to his form. "Good fit," she said. "Very rare does that happen. I'll buy it for you if you like."

"Charlotte, that's not necessary," he insisted, holding up his hands. "It's too…well. I wouldn't want to get it ruined."

"It's a good fabric. It'll last. So long as you don't run into a bayou."

"Oh I don't plan on it," he assured, "but I can't accept it. Really."

"Oh yes you can," she insisted. "I told you before, what's mine is yours." He was a gracious, humble guest as well. He didn't take, only gave. She was going to have to take matters into her own hands, as if she hadn't been doing that since Cal passed. Wordlessly and avoiding Arthur's protests that she couldn't possibly buy the vest for him, she took it to the counter and made the purchase for the vest and her pants. As she asked for the vest to be boxed, Arthur scratched the back of his neck, a humble backing down from the battle he lost. She laughed at his bashfulness, his incessant protests. She had more money than she would ever need she said, and this was the least she could do. She even carried the box back to the hotel for him.

"Where on earth where you?" Alexander asked as they made it back to the hotel, Charlotte handing Arthur the box. "And you—" he pointed to Arthur. "What are you doing with her?"

"I had an errand to run," she replied on Arthur's behalf. "By the way. This is him."

Alexander's eyes grew wide. "You're him? The one that…? Oh…shit."

A gentleman doesn't curse, Charlotte reminded her brother. Alexander and Arthur reacquainted with each other, Alexander thanking Arthur for "saving" Charlotte and Arthur answering the lady knew how to save herself. He only had a few tricks of the trade to pass. After the awkward reintroduction, Alexander turned his attention back to Charlotte, telling her she should go back to her room, because apparently all proper Southern ladies napped during the afternoon.

She brushed him off, reminding him she was a Yankee. Besides, the day was young, and they were young enough. Alexander protested. "Charlotte—"

"Hush Alexander. You have more of father's money to lose."

Before he could quip, one of his mustached friends called Alexander away. Another game of poker, he announced, and that enticed Alexander away from her side. Far too easily, yet she wouldn't complain. However, when Charlotte turned back to Arthur, she found that in the ensuing conversation he had turned his attention elsewhere.

"Karen," he muttered. "Shit."

He was far too preoccupied for her to remind him that a gentleman didn't curse. Gentleman he was though he would deny it, though cowboy and man of the earth first. "Karen," he said of a woman sitting at the bar, drinking a glass of whiskey the bartender keeping on with the pouring. Charlotte recalled the name, he mentioned it a few times when talking of his people and their matters during their picnic and fishing trip. He was worried about her, Arthur said then. He was told to bring her back to camp. He had to go talk to her.

Charlotte tentatively followed, Arthur asking Karen if she was alright. She was a pretty woman, what some circles would refer to as "curvy at the top," Charlotte only knowing because some had called her as such. She wore her blonde hair in little ringlets and wore the same style outfit as Charlotte, though Karen wore pink where Charlotte preferred blue.

"There she is," Arthur said, Karen barely acknowledging him, more preoccupied with drink.

"Arthur," she said, voice only slightly slurred. "I see—smell I mean—that you took a bath. You'd forgotten for a while."

Arthur turned the faintest red. "It happens."

Charlotte faintly chuckled. He talked lowly, not because he didn't want Charlotte to hear, but because the matters they discussed, missing "him," and being sad, was all alright and normal, but Karen had people that wanted her back home. Karen ignored it, instead finally flitting her gaze to Charlotte and asking who the tall dark haired woman was.

"My name is Charlotte," she introduced, and she was grateful Karen shook her outstretched hand. "I'm a friend of Arthur's."

"And here you were, saying you had no friends," Karen waxed, taking another swig of her drink. "You are such a liar Arthur Morgan."

"That's certainly not true," Charlotte maintained, swatting Arthur's with the back of her hand for even having such a thought. Karen asked how they met and before Arthur could awkwardly explain, Charlotte bluntly informed her that he received a robbery tip. Instead of finding a household of money and jewelry, he found a crying widow by her husband's grave.

"A widow? You?" Karen looked her up and down. "Huh."

That was all some people would ever see, Charlotte was afraid. Charlotte Balfour, widow, would always be a letter upon her, a black W for widow instead of a scarlet A for Adulterer worn always on her back.

"You don't care about…well…him being…uh…you know?" Karen asked.

She shook her head. "He met me, and he decided to help me. Now the least I can do is help him."

"You're naïve."

"Some have said. But I'm happy, with my new friend." And apparently, pretend husband too, when needed be.

"Karen, I really think—"

"I'm going back to camp," she said with the waving of her hands, forgetting to pay the bartender, Arthur pulling out a five-dollar bill before he could protest and cause a scene. "Don't you worry. I'm going. I know they told you to find me. I'm fine. Really. Just needed to think."

"We can still go you know," Arthur said, low. "It's a really nice spot."

"Maybe another time."

Charlotte and Arthur, pretend husband and wife, stood awkwardly side by side in the silence Karen left behind. Charlotte tapped her foot against the wood floor. Arthur ran his hands through his newly trimmed hair.

He broke the silence before Charlotte could consider ordering a drink.

"Sorry about that," he said. "She's been through a lot."

She wondered who the "he" was Arthur and Karen alluded to. "You've been through a lot," she said.

He sighed. "Yeah."

"Want to talk about it?"

He didn't reply, not at first. Yet Charlotte reminded him the day was young, and so were they. Besides, she liked talking.

They talked. On a clear day, they sat by the water, and Arthur talked of Sean, sorrow, parting, and how he lived in a world that didn't want him. That wasn't the full truth though, because Charlotte did.

Chapter 13

Chapter Notes

sorry this took a while, to be honest the next one will probably take a bit too, but thank you for sticking with it! (probably not as long though, :) )

Charlotte saw Arthur outside the theatre with a woman three days after their paths crossed again in Saint Denis. It was the day before her father would arrive in town according to the correspondences. To pass the time before what was sure to be quite a show, Alexander suggested a trip to another show, one headed by a certain Aldridge T. Abbington. Charlotte may have adored trips to the Chicago theatres, but her reluctance to sit through a Vaudevillian display of girls in large skirts dancing the cancan while men hollered was quite high. She went never the less after picking up her new trousers from the tailor and dropping them back off at the hotel in order chaperone her brother, finding Aldridge T. Abbington's odd assortment of outcasts and theatrical acts much more charming than she had anticipated.

Would she have taken Arthur for one who appreciated Vaudeville or the theatre? She wasn't sure she had an opinion on it, which was why she initially pushed back the notion that the man who whooped yee-haw! from the crowd when the Fire Lady danced was in fact, her Arthur Morgan. Alexander jabbed her side after the fire woman finished, wondering why she was hiding her face, but she couldn't tell him it appeared that her quiet, usually subdued and practical cowboy could act like such a delighted little boy. It was fortunate so many people were cheering and applauding during the cancan routine—she would have sunk into her seat and into the earth if she thought that Arthur Morgan wanted to see those white petticoat skirts as Alexander did.

After the show however, Charlotte wondered to herself if Arthur was truly there, or if she had only imagined he was there, and her phantom-like imaginings of his honey and leather voice became so real that she had found his voice amongst the chorus of others. After they had met outside the hotel days ago and they accompanied each other with their small errands, Charlotte found she had so easily settled into a routine with him. It was natural to walk with him, talk with him, do something as innocuous as stand in a barbershop with him. He made the mundane an extraordinary adventure, and when she talked with him outside after they met Karen, with Arthur confessing what happened in Rhodes and rubbing his forehead with his broad hand when he spoke of Sean's passing, Charlotte placed a delicate hand on his back. Perhaps she would have moved it in little circles as she used to do to Cal at night, back when he was overwhelmed with the occurrences at the bank, but she refrained. The small gesture, the small "I'm here," was enough. She felt that was all Arthur needed to know. Even if they did not speak with each other, there was always the present feeling that they were there and present. They were two mountains who did not need to touch to know they stood side by side in the line of the sky. The simple intimacy of I'm here—it was the best and most wonderful. It was the quietest.

There was nothing quiet in the way her heart leapt when she saw Arthur, her Arthur, arm in arm with another woman.

Growing hot, wanting to be alone, she sent Alexander back to the hotel, feigning a few errands she had to run around town, and she would see him later. "Don't stay out too late," he forewarned, and she slapped his arm. She remained by the theatre after, the shame at herself somehow attaching her feet to the ground and making her unable to move. Ridiculous woman, she told herself. Silly, ridiculous. She shouldn't have felt that way. It was unnatural. People could spend time with whoever they wanted. He had helped her, they were friends, but one could have more than one friend if they so chose. She didn't, she only had Arthur—but that was her problem. She didn't need to be embarrassed or ashamed.

She saved his life, she remembered, stupidly so. He saved hers too. And maybe that was there friendship. And whatever was indebted or owed came to pass when she shot that man. Anything else he or she did after was a fortunate extension and prolonging.

"Charlotte?"

Any other time it would have been welcomed, Arthur finding his way back to her and standing by her side, but when she was so lost in her thoughts, standing through a plain of ridiculous notions, she wished he wouldn't have found her.

"Ignore me," she said, not looking at him yet, running her hand through her green skirt and swishing it around her feet. "I'm being silly, aren't I? I know I am, in thinking that you just want to be my friend because you—oh."

Arthur was wearing his blue vest. She could see that now that she had properly turned to face him, swishing her skirt around. It was the blue vest she bought him, coupled with a white buttoned-down shirt. He took his hat off as she regarded him, held it near his satchel.

"Charlotte, were you in the theatre?" he asked.

"With Alexander, yes," she replied. Now that that was settled, that they were in the same place at the same time, she thought she would settle her wonder.

"Did you cheer?" she asked him.

His cheeks reddened. "Uh..."

"You did, didn't you?"

The red color deepened. "No. Well—" he scratched the back of his neck. "Maybe."

Proud, she placed a hand on her hip. "I thought so. Oh, don't put your hat back on and hide from me, it was endearing."

"Did you see who I was with?"

She didn't respond, and that was her undoing. "You did, didn't you?" he asked, and she once again responded in silence when she should have just admitted it. He held out his hand, as if he would reach for her, but thought better of it and it fell back to his side. Charlotte remained unmoved. She remained a bit, and stupidly so, ashamed.

"The vest really does suit you," she said after uncomfortable, awkward, ridiculous moments tinged with regret, where to islands couldn't move, couldn't do anything.

"Thank you."

"You're welcome.

Centuries past. Arthur eventually did shift and move, closer to her side at that. And before he could think better of it, he said, "Mary and I live in the past."

She understood. Sometimes she did too. He continued to confess, because she was, after all, his priest it seemed, that whenever he saw her again, he thought for the briefest moment that they would be the same again.

"But people don't go back," he said. "They only go forward. I have to live now. I guess anyway."

"You guess?"

He shook his head. "I know."

She approached slowly, then stopped. The hand that rose to meet his face was slower still, still slow as she pressed her palm to his bearded face. His eyes fluttered closed.

"Come with me," she said. "In the present."

"Where?"

"Anywhere. Everywhere."

There was only one place that could be everywhere. Side by side they walked, Charlotte leading him to places unknown. He let her lead, and when she took him to the spot she had in mind, she pointed with such grand theatricality that Aldridge T. Abbington would approve.

Arthur smiled, boyishly flecking at the wisps of hair that fell on his forehead. "The bookstore," he said. "Clever."

"The only place you can be anywhere, everywhere," she replied, opening the door for him.

He inched closer. "Well…"

"Well what?"

She waited for him to speak. When he didn't, she continued to be patient. "I like…" he managed, "I like it when we—"

"Excuse me."

Their gazes broke as they shifted out of the way and let the red silken-clad, dark-haired woman in red who approached the shop inside, who let them know she was very irritated at Charlotte and Arthur's chatter in front of the shop. She also, far more regrettably, ended whatever it was Arthur was going to say. It was a day of things unsaid it seemed. But she couldn't live in the past anymore. Shrugging, she decided to move forward.

"Come now," she said. "Let's be anywhere."

Inside they went, greeting the spectacle-wearing, white-haired bookseller. "People are going to think we're married again," Charlotte whispered.

"Well. Fine then. Fine by me. If it's fine by you."

"It is," she said, wrapping an arm around him.

The theatre and the theatre's spectacle rubbed off on him as well it seemed, he shrugged with an embellish that made her laugh. "Mr. Morgan," she said, "Mrs. Morgan," he said, the two reveling. Masqueraders, pretenders, actors, if that was what he wanted to be, then so be it. It was what she wanted to be. So they continued the show, almost danced from shelf to shelf, picking up volumes that looked interesting. Arthur didn't scowl when Charlotte found a blue bound copy of Romeo and Juliet, like Cal once did when they went about the town shopping. Arthur let her thumb through the book and only glanced at her with soft eyes as her fingers caressed the pages that contained favorite lines. Good night, good night. Parting is such sweet sorrow, that I shall say good night till it be morrow she read, smiling to herself. It was as if the words could come to life if she imagined it properly. Arthur didn't laugh or find her silly, ridiculous for believing in the power of beautiful words.

She did point out however that she knew the love couldn't be real…Romeo and Juliet were both young, she said. Too young probably, and of course one couldn't fall in love so quickly.

"Maybe you can. Maybe it is real."

Arthur's reply surprised her. She admitted as such. He was a gunslinger, outlaw, outside the cogs of society.

"Mrs. Morgan, you very well know I am a banker."

"Oh yes," she said, playing along, "quite a talented banker."

He glanced around. They were alone between the shelves. It was only them, and with only them, his voice lowered. "Love has no reason," he said. "It just is. Now hate…hate is easy."

She was taken aback. "I don't believe you mean that, Arthur Morgan."

"I do," he said, "but I have more to say, Charlotte Bal—Morgan." He smirked. "Hate is easy, but once you love, love is easier, easier than hate." He regarded the book. "Almost like Romeo and Juliet, I'd imagine."

"Hate and love, yes," Charlotte muttered. "Two sides of a coin. While Verona fights, Romeo and Juliet love."

It could be so easy for him to hate Mary , but he couldn't. It could be so easy for Charlotte to hate Cal for leaving her. She could even hate herself, for aiding and abetting his fate. That was a lie though, even if part of her did. Such regret she had, such a part that would always exist as some piece of her psyche. Yet despite everything, because of what happened and what she chose, she found herself. She found she was stronger than she ever imagined. She found Arthur.

She leaned against the shelves, taking in all of Arthur Morgan. Was he taking all of her in too? She got the feeling, but perhaps it was wishful threads of hope. She wanted to be taken in, and taken in by him. She would have preferred it if they were in her own paradise, not Saint Denis.

But they weren't in Saint Denis. They were in the bookstore, which was anywhere, everywhere. He was taking her in everywhere.

"I have something to show you," he said. "If you would follow me…"

Setting Romeo and Juliet back she followed him, still playing the part of Mrs. Morgan. She played it well. He turned a corner, scanned the shelves. His finger brushed across every volume on the top shelf and then the second, before he found what he was searching for.

"Leaves of Grass," he said, "Walt Whitman. Hosea read this a while ago, told me to pick it up. Partly how I learned to read and write too."

"Well, we should thank Mr. Whitman then."

He chuckled. "We should. I don't know who I'd be without my journal. It's calmed me."

"How so?" she asked.

"I don't know my own thoughts sometimes, until I write them down."

She realized it was the same for her, more or less. "I don't know my own thoughts until I'm alone. Or…"

But she did not continue and his brows furrowed, perplexed. He waited for her to finish.

"Here," she said, finally. "Right here. That's where it all makes sense."

"The bookstore?"

She took all of Arthur Morgan in. "Yes," she lied.

He swallowed, before flipping through Leaves of Grass and pulling up a page to show her. "This is the poem, I used to read a lot" he said when he found what he was looking for. "Song of Myself."

She took the book as he handed it to her. "I celebrate myself, and sing myself, and what I assume you shall assume, for every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you."

"Long, as poems go," Arthur said. "But it's good."

She decided she would buy it and read it. She stood in line behind the woman clad in red silks, and by the time the woman was finished, Arthur was standing by her side. He was carrying a copy of Romeo and Juliet.

"Thought I'd read it again," he said.

"Again? You've read it before?"

They were called next before Arthur could reply. Charlotte searched for her money, stashed down in layers of taffeta, but before the clerk could grow impatient, Arthur pulled out his wallet and paid for both books with a five-dollar bill. "Keep the change," he said, the clerk thanking him. Charlotte stared, but he paid it no mind until they exited together, walking back somewhere or other. She insisted he didn't have to do such a thing.

"How much was the vest?" he asked.

"More than five dollars," she admitted.

"Well, it's the least I can do."

"You could read to me."

She meant to jest, but he took it seriously. After pretending to be Mr. and Mrs. Morgan, it followed he would tale it seriously. They sat by the water again, like they did days ago when he confessed his feelings about Sean, Karen, and the rest of the gang. She had no advice, other than she knew pain, but she got the feeling as she spoke to him that an ear to listen was all he needed. There they sat again, by the green blue water in Saint Denis in late afternoon. Arthur pulled to the balcony scene, began to read with "but soft, what light through yonder window breaks?" Charlotte laughed at his dramatic interpretation. He imitated an English accent well. Hers wasn't as good—too nasally—but he laughed none the less as well. People that passed by dressed in stiff suits, tall hats and silk skirts, and Charlotte wondered if they new they were masquerading and play acting in a different way. Their way, however, certainly wasn't as fun.

They finished the scene. He asked if she wanted him to read "Song of Myself." She preferred to save it, for when she needed it most.

"You're worried about your father, ain't you?"

She nodded, holding Leaves of Grass close to her chest. "All my life I've been a doll in a doll's house…a plaything to move about how he sees fit. He told me it would the same when I got married, but it wasn't. Cal was good. He respected. I chose him. And this…I chose this…I chose to move away. Now that Cal's gone, I don't know what he'll do. Everything but drag me, I suppose.."

Arthur's eyes were sorrowful. "It's not right, to have your life not be yours. I'm sorry, I wish…"

She sighed. "Just…be here, listen," she said. "You do already, so much. You truly do listen, when people talk to you."

"You listen to me too."

His leg was pressed against hers. They had been close all day in ways other than physical, and yet when they were sitting on a park bench, with Charlotte realizing how easy it would be for Arthur to wrap his arm around her, her heart danced and leapt.

But they didn't have to touch to be close. She didn't have to be touching him to feel like their souls touched.

"Alexander still found me," she said, deprecating herself.

"You can do it."

She met his gaze.

"With your father," he clarified. "I know you can."

"He was one of the reasons I ran away. I don't—I don't know if I can."

Why was she still stubbornly holding onto her old self? Arthur wondered the same thing, though he didn't say so. His eyes were as blue as the vest she bought him, and as blue as the sky and cornflowers as he studied her. He saw a Charlotte she wasn't seeing.

"You can," he promised, still seeing. "You know…here in the present…you…"

He stuck his hat back on. He hadn't worn it since he had taken it off when they ran into each other. Still, Charlotte was the only one who could see his blue eyes.

"You're tough," he said. "In pants…in a dress. Agh, please don't take it the wrong way."

"I didn't," she assured with a chuckle.

"Good. Ah. Well. What I mean is—you're brave. Here and now. That's who you are."

"You're here in the present too."

He didn't say anything, but he did nod in agreement. The two of them, Arthur and Charlotte. They were in the present, and they were anywhere and everywhere. And when Charlotte met her father the next day, she told him she wasn't going back to Chicago with him. She was too busy living in the present.

Chapter 14

Just as tough in a dress as you are in pants. That's right Charlotte. You tell him. Stay where you are. I like you right here.

I like you right here.

He couldn't think of the implications behind that, not at first. He was too busy watching Charlotte calmly hold out her hand—an iron fist wrapped in a white silk glove—stopping the man's words right in the middle of a sentence she clearly had no desire to hear. His mouth hanging open in a dumb and dull shock, Charlotte grinned to herself. Arthur grinned too, watching from the fountain as Charlotte and her father stood on the veranda overlooking the backyard of the mayor's lavish home. It had to be her father. There was no other soul other than a rich man who thought his money dictated where his children should run off to that would have such hardness and entitlement toward their kin in their eyes. It reminded him in a way of how Mary and her own father acted, as if he had a grip on her and her life. It made his blood boil with Mary and it made his blood boil with Charlotte. Beyond that, the man's looks pinned him as unmistakably her father. Arthur would have known anyway had he not run into Charlotte, Alexander, and Vale as he milled about Henri Lemieux's yard for intel, before sweeping upstairs for the documents Dutch was looking for. Vale's hair was as black as Charlotte's with a beard just as dark— albeit peppered with grey. Both Charlotte and Alexander inherited that prominent nose. He remembered Charlotte confessed to him that she disliked her nose that was too much like her father's, but he liked it. Told her so too. When he did, she blushed and said he was too kind to her.

He wasn't kind. He only thought so and thought he would tell her. He didn't know if it was kindness or something else anymore. He only knew one thing, he wanted to dance with Charlotte, so much so he thought he would burst at the seams if he didn't stow her away near the fireworks and swell of violins to take her away. Oh, he was a horrible dancer, he knew it. At least Mary Beth had the kindness not to tell him whenever Dutch played the gramophone at camp and she asked him if he would kindly indulge her, but it was true. However, he wanted to dance with Charlotte and he wanted to do what the two of them had been doing since they met at Saint Denus—have a masquerade. He had that first inkling after he ran into her at that damned ball Angelo Bronte invited them to, the damned ball he elected to stay at while all the others went back to camp, Lenny taking his gear for him, saying he'd find him in the hotel the next day. He wanted to be alone since he arrived at that party, there was something about being near so many people he didn't know, people that weren't his kin that made him prefer solitude. Yet as he stood then, smoking, the want to be alone with someone he knew and was dear to him ended up a more imminent want.

He came to her side. Her father had gone off, no doubt to get into Bronte or Lemieux's good graces, insert himself into the narrative that he was a powerful man with money who deserved something for it. Charlotte smiled, drifting to his side and sliding against him, a show of small affection that she couldn't get away with earlier when she noticed him noticing her and smiled like the sun. With Charlotte alone, clad in a party dress of green taffeta and hair pulled elegantly up in what Mary referred to as a "French twist," he offered his hand. He mourned the fact she wore lacy black gloves. He liked the feel of her bare hands, calloused from riding and hunting. They betrayed her in this gilded world for a woman who had to take matters into her own hands to survive, not one who only attended party after party. Let them betray you, he wanted to tell her. Be proud of who you let yourself become, because so many people have cause to feel shame at what they let themselves become. Not you.

"Be quick," she muttered, continuing to mold herself to his side. "Take me away before my father can find me."

His lips met her ear. He could have kissed her cheek if he wanted, and he did want, but still he didn't. "What on earth were you two on about?" he asked instead, curiosity getting the better of him.

"What do you think? He wants me back in Chicago. In Chicago there are far more parties to attend, far more men to meet. Of course, he doesn't know I already have one…and I dare not let him go. Now, quick." She wrapped her arm around his. "Let's go by the fountain."

He led her down where she asked, the crinoline of her dress preventing their bodies from that closeness he craved with Charlotte. I already have one, she told him. She held some sort of possession over him and he could go drunk off of it, as he could get drunk to all things that were her. How she listened, how she rubbed his back, how they could pretend with one another and masquerade that was childlike and endearing, something he didn't have when he was a boy. And when he took her in his arms for a dance and she let herself be pulled into his frame, he found a new addiction.

They danced. He was no good, he preferred the dance in her eyes, the dance of her gloved hand on the back of his neck, and the dance of his own hand splayed against her lower back, but they danced to the swell of violins and it was a dance he enjoyed. They danced too slow for the tempo, and yet Charlotte's green skirts accidentally whacked the skirts of several other women, and she laughed and apologized as Arthur accidentally bumped into some stuffy, bearded man. They danced and more fireworks went off. They alighted her face and already glowing eyes, illuminating that streak of silver. She was silver and gold in the fireworks. How could he look at the sky when he had her in his arms?

"I do think you dance divinely, Arthur Morgan," she said, Arthur spinning her around in a flourish.

"Ah, you flatter me."

"I never flatter," she assured, pointing a finger at him. "I speak the truth."

Mary would try to take him to parties and dance. Sometimes they'd be out and about in the town, and she would see a fine silk dress in a shop and look at it with longing. She would wish it could be hers, so Arthur may take her away to a party somewhere and sweep her away in it. Yet they had no need for such a thing. That wasn't him, and maybe she tried to make him into something that wasn't him with her constant want of dances and parties. It was her way of saying he was more than an outlaw, and he could move away from the life that was chosen for him. But he couldn't dance.

It didn't stop him then with Charlotte. He was bad, clumsy, and stiff, devoid of all the elegance of the women he held in his arms, yet it wasn't hard to keep moving as he held her, no matter how badly his feet moved to the melody. And he wanted to keep moving.

"Arthur? Are you alright?" she asked.

He loved she knew he had gone far off into his thoughts, journaling without writing it down. "Just thinking," he replied, thoughtful. "Thinking of the past."

"Always in the past, my ghost," she muttered.

"What are you thinking about Charlotte?" he wondered.

"That past too."

"Nice place, huh?"

"Sometimes."

He understood. "Charlotte. I'm sorry." He knew she still hurt. How could she not?

Her fingers tickled the back of his neck. "Arthur. I don't want to speak of the past, not anymore," she said.

"Not even Cal?"

She grasped his shoulder. "We're here," she said. "Here. Now. That's what matters."

We're here. The woman who shouldn't have ever crept into his life crept into his mind, staying there and embedding herself in a place that he had thought became hollow. Who was Charlotte anyway, he wondered as she broke their dancing frame and snatched his hand, whisking him behind a gazebo. Who was she that she could do that and allow it, for no other reason that it was her, and she could take him anywhere she wanted?

"My father," she muttered, holding onto his forearms, apologizing for such brusqueness, though there was no need. "He must be wondering where I ran off to. Shit, I don't want him to see."

"It's…"

His words broke with a cough, right when he was going to comment on her cursing and how he liked the way she cursed. But she had taken him away and in the aftermath he found himself winded by that and the dancing. The spell was a little longer than what should be normal, but maybe they were dancing longer than he thought. Concerned, Charlotte held onto him as the fit lessened.

He cursed himself, muttering that he must have given them away.

"Just to Alexander."

Just in time, Alexander emerged from behind the gazebo, standing next to them. Arthur couldn't hide his annoyance. At least it was Alexander and not their father, but dammit, he wanted Charlotte alone and the time he had with her wasn't enough. Beginning their relationship by trekking to her isolated home had spoiled him. He had her to himself there. In the city other people tried to claw at her.

"You should do something about that cough," Alexander said severely to Arthur, arms crossed. His brown suit looked too big for him, matching bow tie too big under his chin.

"Ain't nothing to be done," he answered. "I smoke. Lots of people who smoke cough."

On cue, Alexander took out a pack and stroked a match, lighting one right there. "I don't." Behind the smoke, he turned his attention to Charlotte. "Father is looking for you," he said, puffing and clouding them. "He wanted to introduce you to someone."

"I told him I'm not getting married again."

Alexander shrugged. "That's your choice," he said with just enough conviction that Arthur believed he believed it.

Alexander sighed. "I can't tell him that though," he said sadly. "Only you can."

"I told him a thousand times. He won't believe me. What am I going to have to do to make him believe me Alexander?" She asked, exasperated. "Perhaps he'll listen to you."

"Because I'm a man?"

She pursed her lips. Not at Alexander, but at the whole damn world. She held out her hand, snapped at her brother. "Light me a cigarette," she demanded.

When he was too slow for her, she snatched the pack right out of her brother's hands. Alexander was baffled but otherwise obeyed the rest of her command without any reluctance, Charlotte leaning in so he could light her cigarette with a new match he lit. He offered Arthur one as well. He accepted. Charlotte lit his cigarette with her own.

"Didn't know you smoked," Arthur said.

"Me neither."

"Our good old father," Alexander said with clear disdain. "His doing."

They all smoked in silence, until Charlotte said, "perhaps I'll make him listen."

"You certainly can," Alexander said with no ill will or irony. Yet Charlotte wasn't the same Charlotte from earlier, the Charlotte that danced. And Arthur itched to dance again. That was most surprising of all, even more surprising than his want to take her away somewhere where they could just be without anyone else. To take her away, somewhere far off, anywhere and everywhere…

"Alexander, we're leaving."

It was Charlotte who spoke, not Arthur. "Oh, are you?" Alexander asked, dully looking at Arthur, as if he half-expected him to say something contrary, yet Arthur didn't reply. On his part, he was amazed at how of one soul they were, one soul and one mind.

"Well, do you want to leave Charlotte? Really?" Alexander asked.

She peered at Arthur, mischief in her eyes. He nodded, his silent, take me away. Yes, that was Charlotte, his Charlotte.

"Yes," she said to Alexander, grinning and not looking away from Arthur. "Tell father I'm alright. I'm alive, and I have no plans on ruining his plans for me."

"We all know that is a bold-faced lie."

She chuckled, lightly hitting Alexander on the shoulder. "You're right," she assured, "it is."

"Well, go off now. He's over there, talking to Angelo Bronte. I can stall, but only for a little. So…"

She kissed Alexander on the cheek before Arthur took Charlotte's hand. Now they really had to go—the last thing he wanted was questions from Angelo Bronte. She seemed to understand—he loved that she knew thing, and he could talk to her in their own language. It continued as thy left the mansion and he began to call for a carriage, but she surprised him by pushing his hand down.

"Walk me home," she asked of him.

He couldn't walk her all the way from Saint Denis to past Annesburg to Willard's Rest, but he could walk her to her hotel. He didn't want to though. If he brought her back home, he would have to leave her, and he was filled with memories of how it stung when last they parted. He didn't want to leave her.

He found himself taking her hand and squeezing. In turn, she placed her gloved hand on his cheek. He wrapped his hand around her delicate wrist. He searched in her eyes for affirmation before he peeled the glove off. She gave at his want, his want to feel her and not the masquerade.

"My hand is so rough," she said, almost mournfully.

"Not to me."

He kissed her hand, as calloused as his own. He could have kissed her then, he understood later. She held softness in her eyes, and her lips were slightly parted with a longing he knew and didn't know, because it was Charlotte's longing, and Charlotte was both new and familiar to him. Both were so equally comforting.

He didn't kiss her. Not then. Yet he did understand that there was one thing that was abundantly clear.

Their night together wouldn't end after he walked her home. He liked her where she was too much.

Chapter 15

Chapter Notes

Wow guys, really sorry for the long wait. To be very honest I had lost a tiny bit of inspiration for this story, but I'm gradually getting back. (I also am having a walk through Game of Thrones land and been writing fic for that, lol. )We're also about halfway done with this story, maybe a bit more, so there's also that 3 As always, thank you for reading!

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Arthur hesitated. About to turn the doorknob to her room, he stood for a moment before subtly shaking his head. It worked well enough to voice his own disapproval at the situation without using the words. There he was and there she was, ready to turn in for the night, and he was going to play the gentleman, find somewhere else to stayt. She saw a plan cycle through his mind—perhaps he had thoughts to ride back to wherever it was his people were. Selfishly she wanted to tell him, you don't belong to them, not the way you do to me, but it was preposterous. People shouldn't belong to people. It wasn't right that her father should control her, it wasn't right to tell Arthur to stay if he wanted to go. Even if she did want him right where he was, with her.

"As far as they know, we're married," she pointed out, wondering if he was worried about what other people would say or think. "Don't worry about besmirching my honor—"

"It ain't that. Well, it—" He stopped, clearing the jumbled thoughts of his head, trying to make them into something coherent. It was as Charlotte was, her mind was a flurry of Cal, of her home, of the wildflowers that grew near Annesburg, of her father and brother and her party, of the two of them. Yet one thought soared above all else. She didn't want to be alone. She was tired of it, needed to grow in his sun.

"I don't want the night to stop," she said, begged even, tugging on his arm. "I asked you to stay with me, here, in my room."

"What do you want with this?" he asked, not accusing, only needing to know. He would never accuse. And, if she were honest, the two of them…

Her want was simple. "To continue on."

"How?"

He spoke lowly. She wasn't sure herself, if she wanted to be Arthur Morgan's lover or friend, or both. She missed Cal at night still, longed not for a partner she did when she was younger, but for him to be alive again. Intermingled with that, was her want for Arthur. Sometimes she wasn't sure if it was lover or friend, or both.

"However we choose," she said.

She opened the door. "Come into my room," she beckoned, "before anyone realizes we're not who we say we are."

Wordlessly, Arthur obeyed. They said nothing but said everything as Charlotte took the right side of the bed, and Arthur took the left. He kept his back toward her as she did hers as they readied themselves. Though she took up her usual routine, she was overly meticulous in undressing, slowly allowing each strand of her corset (which she did wear with her party dress) to unlace before it fell to the floor. Petticoats fell, the green silk fell, and her hair came undone, falling behind her back. She put on her nightdress, feeling him freeze as she did, the movement only continuing when she sat back down on the bed, laying against her side. Soon after, he followed, and she caught a glimpse of his red long johns. Not the most handsome or becoming thing to wear—Cal usually wore pajamas that would often fall to the floor after he put them on, but he was modest. She appreciated it. He took up space in her bed, but he was aware of it, moving to the edge and giving her more room.

"Arthur—"

"I can leave. I—"

"I wasn't going to tell you to leave," she said evenly, bemused by his bashfulness. "It's only, there's no need to stay all the way at the edge. You'll fall, right in the middle of the night. Come closer."

He came closer, if only just. She glanced at him, his blue eyes trailed straight to the ceiling, looking like he wanted to say something, but refraining. If he wouldn't speak, she would. He always let her speak, make her own choices. He was good. She wouldn't ever allow anyone who wasn't good to her bed.

"I wouldn't have asked you to stay with me, only to turn you out," she said. "I want you here."

To do what? He would have asked, had he not been a gentleman and held a touch of decorum. That must have been why he didn't correct the clerk downstairs when he assumed the two of them were husband and wife. A fine touch of irony—they had been masquerading as such on and off and there they were, mistaken as such. The charade became their mask, and since hardly anyone had to care to peel off the façade, they remained as such to the eyes of those who looked. So up the stairs they went, into her bed they went as husband, as wife.

"Charlotte…"

"I'm frightened."

Their eyes met. Quiet centuries past, then quiet days and quiet nights. She thought the confession would clear the air, but perhaps she was mistaken. Even she didn't know, until she had spoken the words. Yet it was true, she was frightened. Frightened and thrilled, believing she was ready for whatever was to come, worried she wouldn't get what she couldn't form words to. What do I want? What do I want? To be married again?

"No," he said at last, quiet and proud, reminding her of who he was. "You're not afraid. You would have never left your old life, never have come here, to Saint Denis. You wouldn't have asked me to stay."

"I'm afraid for you," she muttered, clarifying.

Their foreheads touched. There was a sharp intake of breath as his calloused hand lightly caressed hers. "Nothing's going to happen to me," he promised.

They were gazing, contemplating. Sleeping alone for so long in her piece of earth and Eden made her realize she wasn't fit for sleeping alone. She liked the anchor of another next to her, the soft breathing, the warmth of brown eyes. Is that what I want, Cal again? She didn't think so. And Arthur's eyes were blue, but still warm. His hair was in disarray, his hand still on hers, and there wasn't the slightest inclination to let go.

But he would let go, eventually. He always did. He was a wanderer, not meant to settle down, not meant to develop roots. She was a wallflower, an Irish rose in the garden. Dainty, delicate, afraid.

Once. No longer.

She turned herself into a wildflower. Wildflowers didn't care where they grew. Wildflowers could plant themselves near wanderers.

He squeezed her hand. She bit her lip, bit back her moan. He touched her everywhere but he only touched her at the hand. His eyes swept down her frame, and she told him what she was afraid of, arriving at a clarity finally, that this would only be temporary, that they were only temporary. But maybe love was only supposed to be temporary. The passion of lovers was meant only to burn for a few singular moments, but for those moments it was meant to be radiant and shining, ethereal. That's how it was with Cal. It frightened her, like so many things. If she were to have Arthur, she would never want it to be temporary.

He sighed, drinking her in. Her dark hair painted the white pillow, and he took in every strand of black. Her heart pounded in her chest and she could almost hear his own, pounding just as hard. With touches Cal made her aware she was a woman, aware she wanted to be touched, but Arthur did it with only his eyes. She cursed herself for comparing—she should never. She loved before, and was bent though not broken from what happened. Now, she was ready to love again.

Her hand was through his hair. Arthur. Fingers swept down her shoulder, Arthur. She closed her eyes. And yet—

"Don't kiss me now," she whispered. "Wait."

He kissed not her lips with his, but his fingertips kissed the planes of her face, along with the curve of her jaw, the soft widow's peak on her forehead, her lips. She wanted to wait until she saw only him, not what was lost. She wanted to wait for the kiss to be from Arthur, not the ghost. She wanted to feel only him.

"We can," Arthur muttered. "If everything is temporary."

"I don't want to believe that," she admitted.

"Me neither."

"Then make every last moment last."

She outstretched her arms, and he took a moment before he accepted. He was pressed against her body, from torso to the barest glide of her leg, and she was brazen in her want to wrap her legs around his, but she only sighed at the feel of his stubble against her collar and shoulder, content herself with that. He tried to move away, ashamed of the roughness, but she could be just as rough. She kept him where he was. Their foreheads touched, their noses bumped against each other, and Charlotte, blissful, rolled her head against the pillow. Their lips brushed together in a kiss but not a kiss.

She embraced him harder. Scratched his back with her barely there nails, pulled his hair. He grunted and yes, she felt him against her, aroused and in want of her. How easily could she do it, how she would have said yes if he asked, but she made herself content and he made himself content, and even when he realized what was happening, that he knew and he moved away in shame, she kept her side pressed against his. They remained like that, and he spoke of things he had to tell her, fears that he had that he wanted to tell her, but didn't want to—at least not now. He was good at ruining things, he explained. Ruining this would ruin him.

"You've ruined nothing Arthur, you've inspired. Look at me."

He grasped her hand. But still, morning suited the truth, where she would see Arthur, and only him. That night was for lovers, for softness and being. Charlotte took his hand, kissed the top. His arms opened and she listened to his beating heart. When she fell asleep, it was an eternity and an instant, his heartbeat and gentle breathing like waves on the water, and she was the ship the waves carried home. She woke first, when the first rays of dawn made the room glow. He followed soon after, smiling when he saw her peering over his sleeping form.

"Wait a minute," he beckoned before Charlotte could mention it was the morning and time for secrets and fears revealed. Though, the more she languished in morning, the more she was beginning to believe that the morning was also for lovers. She waited for Arthur, and he stooped over and grabbed his discarded coat from last night. He rummaged around until he found his journal and pencil, smiling and proud of himself for having the foresight to leave it with him and not in his knapsack, to be left behind at camp. He couldn't have known he'd see Charlotte in early morning, with her hair in disarray on the pillow, lacking a corset with her night gown unbuttoned, hair down, and radiant smile on her face. Yet he had it with him, and because he was a wanderer, he recorded moments that mattered to him, made them less temporary. He sketched her in the morning, careful in his flicks of pencil and light strokes. He showed it to her after he was done, smiling and languishing and happy, because she was near him. She had never looked so much like Charlotte.

He closed the journal, and she stroked his cheek, kissing without kissing. He confessed he was afraid as she admitted last night, but of what he didn't know. He could see the threads but not form words to the images he saw. Yet there was one he did know, because he always feared it, even when he was happy.

"Loss," he muttered. Even if all things were temporary and he knew that, it was loss he feared. It was the same for her.

"Then let me stay with you."

He peeked at her from behind golden lashes. He asked to hear it again, he must have misheard. He didn't. She wanted to stay with him. She wanted to go with him to camp, be there for him when he was tired, kiss him to remind him he was a good man.

"No," he said. "When this is over, I'll come to you. For good."

She fell a little, but nodded. Her home was his home, his moment's rest. She'd always be his home.

"I can kiss you, you know," she said, propped on her side, stroking his cheek "If you want."

"Kiss?"

"Yes," she whispered, breaking the distance between them. "Kiss." She saw only him, wanted only him. That was how she knew.

He was Arthur that she saw, not anything or anyone she had lost, but what she wanted to gain. He was needy as he returned her affection, gripped her shoulders and brought her closer. Then they were tumbling on the bed, and her arms were welcoming and inviting. She needed him, needed the two of them. He pulled off straps of her nightgown, she pushed down the long johns, laughing as he cursed and had to stand up to get them off. He was Arthur, she kept telling him, and she was Charlotte, as he said. They were exactly what they wanted and what they needed. Not two lost souls, but a wildflower and a wanderer. He wandered her body, she clung and she held, and when it was over, she told him she was serious, it wasn't just a mad want, though he was handsome and yes she had thought about him at night. But it was the truth, she had always told the truth to him. She wasn't going to leave, so long as he had a place. He was a wanderer but she could plant herself near him.

"Don't," he asked of her in turn. "Stay."

"So long as you don't."

The wanderer promised, he would wander with her, the wildflower. The wildflower kissed him, once more, and more. They wandered again.

Chapter End Notes

I don't think the next chapter will take as long as this, but please be patient with me, I do still care about Arthur and Charlotte and intend to finish 3

Chapter 16

Chapter Notes

Hey red dead fandom! I am sorry for this epic delay. I have finally, finally, worked my way out of the hole i thought I dug myself into! Quarantine does that to people I think, lol. But i hope this story gives you some sunshine :D

Charlotte drew often in her sketchbook. She picked it up from him, she said. He was her favorite subject, and she always drew him when he came to her. It was her practice and their ritual. She often apologized if she thought she took so long, but he would have remained still for hours if he had too, eyes often and ardently glancing at her hands. Her hands were as careful and thorough drawing him as they were when she made love to him.

He came to often and he came too little to Willard's Rest. While Hosea was kind about it—both glad he had moved on from Mary and nostalgic for his time with Bessie, Dutch made snide comments about it—said that they'd get done what they needed to get done quicker if it wasn't for "that woman up near Annesburg." Even asked once why he didn't just bring her to the camp. Charlotte even asked. Once in their hotel room as they acted as husband and wife did, and once after when he rode with her back to her home from Saint Denis. Arthur told them both the same thing: he couldn't bring her into this life. So, the two remained separate, and she relished in being his sweet repose.

Sadie of all people fought back on his behalf. Let the man go, dammit, she said to Dutch when things quieted down. And who can blame him for wanting to go? You saw what happened to Kieran.

Arthur remembered how quickly he left after once everything was settled, back to Charlotte and her home. If anyone understood his insistence to frequently visit her, it was Hosea. It won't happen again, Hosea promised. She's got a gun and knows how to use it from what you've told me.

Still, Arthur worried, and worried even when they were reunited. She held him tight, unknowing how her embrace reassured his unvoiced fears. She protected him.

During that last time he would be able to see her before that last mark in Saint Denis, she cooked for him and talked with him. He couldn't stay long, he knew it, but how tempting it was to just let them all sort it out for themselves, let them all go find their Tahitian paradise. He already had his own paradise.

Willard's Rest was firmly her home. But their home was what he knew she wanted to call it. But in their home, and whenever he passed by Cal's grave on the way to Charlotte—the last time before included— he paid his silent respects, and silent apologies. Yet there was nothing to do but surrender. He had fallen in love.

When he came before the last heist, she heard him approach before he dismounted his horse, running to him and falling into his arms when he was on the ground. They kissed and he burned and he thought about how he could sink into the grass and decay into the earth with her then and there, but she squeezed his hand, telling him she made jerky, and they could sit by the water and maybe fish a little. She had grown to like fishing, she said as she saddled Buell, kissing him on the cheek after.

Her kiss, chaste as it was, spoke of a sweet later, a precious time. The truth was they didn't make love often. They couldn't. He was a wanderer who asked to come into her home, and she allowed. When they did make love, it was a slow and careful act, not due to lethargy or tiredness, but the need for slow and safe, though still unrestrained. So unrestrained that sometimes she would ask once again, if he would take her back to the camp at Shady Belle, his home. He told her it wasn't his home, it was where he lived. She was home.

She had an answer for that, one he thought of to. "We could make a home, here," she said often, and it wasn't a surprise that she would say it again as the two of them migrated to the water, their favorite spot. At any rate, it shouldn't have surprised him that she said it again as she waited for any fish to take her bait, Arthur making a small camp. Her hair was in a loose plait, her bare feet in the water. Sunset suited her, water suited her. The outside, surviving was all Charlotte. He remembered her at that ridiculous party in Saint Denis, the socialites that tried to talk to her as if they knew her. Her father wanted her in that life, but he never looked at her deeply enough to understand that life wasn't her.

The thought of her father made him grimace, even now that he seemed to understand what Charlotte wanted, as did her brother. Not too long ago, Alexander came to Charlotte's home, informing her that Angelo Bronte was dead, and their father was going back to Chicago, his assets lost. He stayed for a day, deciding he didn't like fishing, and then promptly left before Arthur arrived. When he did, she asked if he was involved. He told her the truth. She held him in her arms still, and she let him come back this time before the one last time, the one last heist.

"Yeah," he muttered, half in a dream. "Home here. That would be nice."

He was going to have to tell her about the one last time.

But then I'll be back.

Arthur sighed, wanting this carefree, happy Charlotte first. By the water, she was an ethereal apparition in his fogged mind. He wasn't a valiant knight that befit her, his lady of the lake, but it was a nice thought.

"Dutch is planning something," Arthur said as Charlotte returned to the shore with her small catch of perch and bluegill and sitting by his side. "And soon.."

"Soon what?"

He told her, he had too. "One last time. One last mark, and then…"

He was afraid he ruined it for a moment as she rose, not bothering to pick up her skirt as she waded into the water past her ankles. Kicking off his boots and hiking up his breeches, he followed, wrapping a hand around her waist. She leaned into him, listening to the soft breeze and gentle leaves.

"And then you'll be back," she muttered.

"Soon."

She squeezed his arm, "It's not a promise though."

She sensed so much. "I can't make any promises," he admitted. "But I have a hope. And…it seems right, this time."

"Don't make promises," she said. "Except one."

"I do love you."

He titled her chin up, eyes like stars. "Promise me something else," she said, holding onto his wrist. "You'll always come to me."

They kissed as the sunset turned to twilight, holding each other in between. One more heist, one more plan, and maybe…

Her lips pressed against his neck. Clothes fell to the side of the bank. They got all wet and it would be hell putting them back on after, but they didn't care. The moonlight turned them into creatures of the night until it was water, the smooth glide of submerged skin against submerged skin, and her. It wasn't as easy as perhaps they'd thought it would be, but she chuckled when they re-adjusted and adjusted again, her legs wrapping around his waist. He shared in her laughter as he held her, her hair spilling against the water, falling from it's braid. He tugged on it lightly, and she giggled He loved her hair, loved her eyes, loved to feel encased and enclosed by her…

She even laughed as she hit her highest bliss, Arthur following soon after. They stayed in the water a long time after, and he was reminded again why they never spoke of what was important when they were together, because being together was the most important of all.

"I love you," she said, holding his face in her hands.

---

They tended their fire by the river, Charlotte wearing one of his extra shirts in his knapsack, as the clothes they waded in the water in were utterly drenched. It must have been around midnight.

It was their standard whenever Arthur would arrive. They would take their horses out before setting up camp near her home, eat, talk, and make love. Not since the hotel in Saint Denis did their lovemaking occur on a bed, but Arthur didn't have to say anything for Charlotte to know the truth. He didn't want to sleep in her bed, because it was their bed.

She still mourned. She would always mourn. Not just for Cal, but for the woman—girl, that died when Cal died. Someone else was born from the ashes, someone she found infinitely stronger, but in that time before, when she was young and innocent, read romances and didn't know yet what a man looked like when he died, wasn't there also another, simpler beauty?

Arthur scooted over to her, kissed her on the cheek, as if silently answering her question. Maybe it was too complicated before, Charlotte thought. Maybe now was what was simpler, just a woman and a man, and the glow of a campfire under the moon.

They laid near the fire, innocent in their caresses, even as he moved on top of her, blanketing her body. Lips pressed against her temple, her cheek, her lips. Hands wandered. She moved underneath, compelling him to continue. Yet his hand, against her belly, stopped.

Cal had done that so many times, place his hand over her stomach, willing for a spark. It never happened. She told Arthur before, many times, and she often still had to reassure him when he expressed concern. She told him again, it never happened, and at her age the possibility was almost insurmountable.

"It only takes one time," Arthur muttered.

She wrapped her arms around his neck. "It sounds like you're speaking from experience."

His lips pursed. He rose from her, his expression furrowed, far off. She rose after, wrapping her arms around his middle, resting her cheek against his. He molded against her, his quiet reassurance.

That was when he told her of Eliza.

She listened, understanding he was young when it happened, when she had their son, Isaac, but proud of him that he made sure they would be a family despite everything. Then, he spoke of what happened. He cried when it did, she knew, but his voice cracked, and she knew he didn't cry as much as he wanted and needed.

She held him, her silent it's alright, cry for me. Light tears stained his shirt that she wore, Arthur muttering, "I didn't protect her, I didn't protect them. It can't happen again. If—"

He looked at her. She understood.

She gripped his shirt, toying with the buttons. "You taught me," she promised him. "You taught me how. Arthur, I spend almost every day now…thinking I could have saved Cal. I do. I know how much it hurts." She held tighter. He had been grieving for far longer than she, and he grieved for more than just a lover. His child. His child…

She never had a child to mourn. They were all nameless and faceless sparks of life that never were. But Arthur…her Arthur…

She stroked his hair. There was nothing to say. There couldn't be anything to say. Instead, she hummed an old tune she remembered from her grandfather.

"What's that?" Arthur asked, Charlotte still holding.

"A sea shanty, I think," she replied. "My grandfather loved them."

"I know some."

She smiled. "Sing it for me then, would you?"

He looked bashful. "You probably don't want to hear it…"

"Of course I do."

"I asked that gal to get me some…"

She laughed. "Alright, not that one."

He knew another, he said, but she sang instead, crooning, "leave her johnny, leave her, oh leave her johnny leave her." Arthur listened, and the night listened.

They continued to mourn, and he continued to do so when he left the next morning, Charlotte still humming it, leave her johnny leave her.

Don't leave me, she wanted to sing to him. Stay, so we can mourn together. But he promised he would be back, and she believed him. He kept his promises.

She watched him ride off, after he kissed her and called her 'wildflower,' and she thought of how she wished she was the one that wandered. She wished, at the very least, she would have sketched him one last time before he had gone.

Chapter 17

Chapter Notes

hey all! I hope to finish this soon-ish. I'm sorry for the long wait!

Charlotte always thought of Arthur, but very few times did she allow herself to grasp the depth of him. Yet in those times, she sternly reminded herself, it was not his depths, but merely what he did, and, what he was trying to remove himself from. She knew who he was on the inside, and that was enough. More than enough.

Time passed. Too much. He didn't return to her, and though she suspected it would be quite some time and adequately prepared herself, she couldn't prevent the stirring within that shouted something out, something is wrong. She couldn't explain it as anything but a small tremor in the way she lived and took Buell out, in how she scoured her pots and pans when she felt too idle, and how she could barely concentrate on reading or drawing. But she was alone on her small paradise, and though she could venture to town for supplies, wherein the shopkeeper would always eye her trousers and hat, (one of Arthur's that he left her) there was no word of a robbery, or Arthur Morgan. She settled into her home, thinking of it more as their home, and waited. It may have been two days or two months, but one day, Alexander showed up.

Before he even so much as dismounted his black horse, he told her that Arthur Morgan was wanted, and missing.

"Of course he's missing," Charlotte stated, Alexander sauntering to their home. "He wouldn't be good at what he does if he was easily found."

"This man is wanted by the Pinkertons! He's an outlaw, and you've…tied yourself to him?"

She didn't let herself hear the rest, even as he tossed her the newspaper that he carried all the way from Saint Denis. With the briefest glimpse she saw the headline of the heist, the name Dutch Van der Linde, Hosea Matthews, Lenny Summers, John Marston, and Arthur Morgan.

It was as he said, Arthur was missing.

It couldn't be.

She threw the paper at her brother's feet—such a gesture from the Lady Charlotte Vale Balfour, but that woman was long gone, replaced by Charlotte of the small paradise, Charlotte under the moon and stars. Lies. Alexander was warped in some grand plan of her father's, one where he would get her out of her home and her new life. She knew it.

Or maybe the Pinkertons couldn't find him. Arthur was with the others, and he was presumed missing. Either way, she would not stand idly by.

She ignored her brother's protests as she flung herself into her house, back into her room where she locked the door. She changed from her worn skirt to her riding pants and boots as Alexander continued to knock at the door and call her name as if she was some mad woman on a hopeless quest. Quickly she plaited her hair, briefly regarding her frenzied appearance and wild eyes, leading credence to Alexander's theory that she had gone mad. Unbidden, she cast a look at her wedding photo with Cal.

An involuntary pang of melancholy hit her. She was so young that day. They were so young, so naïve. The photo, the only photo they had together, acted as the symbol and memento of the entire room. Save the night she had her nightmare and Arthur came to her room, the bedroom remained distinctly her and Cal's. She and Arthur didn't have a room that immortalized the two of them. They belonged together only outside, under the moon and evening sun. The sun and moon were theirs, the water was theirs. She saw him everywhere she looked.

He couldn't be truly gone.

She ignored Alexander as she packed her knapsack—dried rabbit and deer meats as well as canned peaches she picked up from Annesburg the previous week. She took out the rifle she stowed away, and the two boxes of bullets she kept with them, ignoring her brother's gaping.

He followed her outside as she mounted Buell, demanding she dismount that instant.

"No," she said.

"Where the hell are you going Charlotte?"

She grabbed a hold of Buell's reins. "I'm going to Shady Belle," she said, and he continued to call her name as she rode off.

---

The journey took four days, and she minded the map Arthur gave her with the location of the gang's hideout marked, a token he gave her after he took her back home for the first time, in case she ever needed to find him. There were no inns along the way, she slept under the stars, if only barely. A too quick heartbeat and seizing ball in her chest prevented sleep, and when she laid her head down, a small cough would sometimes rack her. She would even wake up coughing sometimes. Though sleeping with Arthur in tents near her home was one thing, she realized she wasn't as talented as pitching a tent as he was. The flimsy thing drooped instead of remaining upright, making the space tighter. She remembered how carefully he taught her to make a tent in the wilderness in case she ever needed to, how he taught her to mind wild animals and men that would harm her. She needed practice she thought as she remained closed in one night.

She never felt closed in with Arthur, only free. Why was it, when she was alone, that she felt so confined? While it was true, often she imagined traveling with Arthur, sleeping in tents they pitched up along the way, moving from one city to another and becoming an illusory couple, one that people talked about as wanderers. More ghosts than people, more memories than people, she realized maybe she'd prefer to live as a memory in her home—their home now, free in another way.

Her imaginings all carried the same thread: Arthur was with her. He gave her the tools to live alone, and yet living alone was the worst type of confinement.

On she went, because she wouldn't be confined any longer. She got stopped once by a passing man, delivering mail in his carriage. A woman traveling alone? He asked, treating Charlotte as novelty. "I know," she told the man, "what a sight I am," before urging Buell faster and loosing him in the forest, ignoring his cries of protest an offers for rides to anywhere she wanted. She'd rather be confined alone than confined with someone who wasn't the man of her daydreams. It was her braid that denoted her as female, she realized as she smoothed out her errant hairs, and she thought if she'd tuck it into her hat, she wouldn't be so easily spotted.

And yet, as she and Buell continued along, she thought perhaps she wanted to be spotted by others, become a blurry vision to other travelers, and live her life as a ghost. Wasn't that a type of freedom?

At last, she arrived at Shady Belle as that blurred ghost she thought herself as, dismounting Buell and walking along the path Arthur must have taken so many times. She had never been before, though she had heard of Tilly, Abigail, and Mary Beth's chats around the fire as they discussed romances while Jack made crowns out of flowers. She heard of Charles tending the horses, Sadie smoking on the front porch, Javier with his guitar, and Dutch in his room upstairs, scheming, dreaming. Arthur painted such a picture for her that he may as well have drawn the whole scene out in his journal. She asked him too once, but he only made it so far until she found she'd rather him kiss her instead.

There as none of his visions as she walked amongst the grounds. Instead of the drawing Arthur offered a lifetime ago, Tilly and Mary Beth were loading things into a wagon, so absorbed in organizing, and s frustrated that they didn't see Charlotte. She didn't see Karen, the only one she personally met. Maybe instead she was truly the blurred ghost she thought. Still, she searched even as she fell.

She knew it was true, knew Arthur wasn't there, even as she was spotted and called "that woman up from Annesburg," by an older woman at the porch of the mansion. Susan Grimshaw. Arthur spoke of her often as well and her mothering ways to all of them, so much so that she practically demand he cut his "too long hair." Truly, Arthur spoke fondly of each member of his family, that Charlotte thought herself a member of the family as well, but Susan was putting a hand on her shoulder, telling her she shouldn't—couldn't get wrapped up in all this if that was her plan.

"I—I only wanted to know he was here," Charlotte said. "I read the papers…I just—I didn't believe it. I just wanted to see him. I didn't want to believe that…"

Susan Grimshaw's expression fell, Charlotte biting her lip. She looked around. They were all mourning around her, and she came and cruelly paraded her hope.

She caught herself from crying. She wouldn't cry, not here.

A hand fell on her shoulder. "It's alright, we miss him too. We—"

She looked at the faces around her, faces she both knew and didn't know. They were all ghosts.

"Go home," Susan Grimshaw urged, Abigail, Tilly, Mary Beth looking on. "You don't belong here. You don't want this life. You want a man. And he's…"

To each member of Arthur's family, she embraced. She thanked each one, wished them well. She embraced each, reaching the final one.

Sadie.

She heard of Sadie, the woman that wore trousers as Charlotte had started to, who went hunting with her husband before becoming wrapped in the Van der Linde gang, who was a widow, like Charlotte. Charlotte stretched her hand, and said she had heard to much, and was glad to meet her.

"He ain't dead," Sadie said. "Just you wait. He'll come back."

Charlotte smiled, sad, and said she hoped she was right. So long as one person believed, perhaps she could too. She wanted to say so much to the woman. I lost my husband too, and look at me now, look at us now. I have also loved and lost.

She said none of that. Ghosts couldn't speak, and that was how she left, back to her home where her brother waited for her, and held her as she finally cried.

Even if he came back, he'd come back as a ghost.

---

Arthur laid to rest that night, bruised, sunburned, alone on the beach, where it was quiet. He felt the steady rhythm of heart underneath his palm, thinking of how Charlotte always held her hand there, reminding him for a few moments that he could be younger than he was, alive.

He was living in hell. It wasn't only the thought of paradise that kept him alive--he was a stubborn fool who couldn't die-- but he reckoned it had an awful lot to do with his survival.

If he was to die, he would die on a bed, with one last kiss from Charlotte on his lips,

Funny. He never thought he'd die of old age before.

Yet perhaps he could change.

Chapter 18

Chapter Notes

We are now, finally, entering the last stretch of story. Please enjoy!

It wasn't easy to be Penelope. It wasn't easy to be the one that stayed, waiting for a resolution that may one day never come.

Charlotte kept Cal's worn copy of The Odyssey, the pages yellowed from his consistent reading. She favored tales of knights, though sometimes she closed her eyes and imagined a civilization far removed from even the far-removed knights of their time, and saw Odysseus come back home to his wife Penelope after years spent apart. Men often thought of Odysseus, the one that went away and became a great hero, yet hardly any said anything about Penelope. She was just as brave as he, to wait for only a possibility. Her lot was to wait, day by day, remain by a loom to unwind it all by night. Charlotte thought she could be a touch like Odysseus once, but she saw how like Penelope, she spent her days unwinding.

She rode Buell when she could, more for his benefit than hers. Arthur was everywhere outside, because they made their home together outside. They made love unashamedly, under the stars and evening sun, each time she stepped onto the grass, it reminded her of what she had to endure alone. Despite feeling alone, Alexander came often. Angelo Bronte died, and with the failure of Saint Denis came the promise of a new venture in Annesburg, closer to Charlotte now. As if to apologize or make amends, he often found himself sitting by Charlotte in the kitchen or outside, watching her fish or hunt. She preferred to be alone, even if it was a greater uphill battle to endure life alone, because unwinding was easier with a clear head. Unwinding was for the lonely. However, she humored him, listened to his apologies and even talked to him about this and that with a smile ill-suited for the gaping hole Arthur left in his absence. Chicago, books, their father, she prattled on and pretended some interest. All the years he ignored her, never knowing or caring she was sad and ill-suited for the world of masks she was raised in, and finally, though he had only the vaguest sense of understanding, because he could never grasp the full depth of what she felt for Arthur, Alexander was finally trying. A different her would have been overjoyed. The real her assumed a position similar to how Penelope may have felt, if instead of unwanted suitors she had a brother.

Yet despite Alexander's presence in and out of her home, she spoke only to humor. Her thoughts were her own, and she kept them as hers. She thought at first she could settle as Penelope, especially as she learned how to more easily unwind, but she would settle into her routine and realize how great of a hell the routine was, to be bound by the needs of the land and her human needs, and she wanted to be Odysseus. It was another hell, to be sailing through Circe, then the sea, and the Cyclops, but at least then she would be free.
Her home, once her paradise, became another cage.

She thought of Susan Grimshaw and her insistence that Arthur's life could not be her own. She was trying to help her, Charlotte knew. She was trying to save her even, but the only one who could save Charlotte was Charlotte. Not even Arthur. If he came back at all, she reminded herself, he would be a ghost. He always had been. Yet if Charlotte could not save herself—and she had to think maybe it was a possibility—maybe time could save her. Yet not even time could take away the memory of all that he was to her. A thousand years could pass, and she would still burn the same intensity for Arthur Morgan than she did the first time she met him. He doomed her that day he came. He doomed her to live, and doomed her to burn. He turned her from abandoned Circe, to Penelope.

Alexander asked once as he sat at her table, eating her food, if she felt guilty. He thought she had grown pale and was coming more often then, and that small cough was something she needed to take care of. He asked if she was guilty because he admitted he always liked Cal, even if their father thought that Charlotte could have married another. She laughed bitterly when Alexander asked, as he asked as if he thought grief hadn't yet consumed her before. And yet he had the gall to ask how deep was her guilt. He thought he would have been guilty, he said, and that was why he bothered to ask it. Her answer was simple. She thought she should have felt guilty, and somewhere deep she asked Cal to forgive her every time she kissed and made love to Arthur. (Though she dared not tell Alexander that) But part of her died that day along with Cal, and another came and resurrected the broken, beaten woman who was ready to accept her fate and lay defeated, until she decayed and nature reclaimed. A woman replaced that woman and told her she would not lay dying. She saw her life before as a paper doll, constantly controlled by others. And then she was alone, a widow, and she knew she wanted her life alone than to be a paper doll again.

Arthur aided in that creation of a new woman, and she was grieving again as she waited for an answer, waited for hope.

"I will not feel guilty, for living and loving anew," she said to her brother.

He left the next day, saying it would be a while before he came back, but he wanted her to rest. There was no rest, not when Arthur was somewhere. The funny thing was she thought she could sense them both somewhere, both Cal and Arthur. Cal was above, telling her it was alright if she wanted to leave what they started. Arthur was somewhere far off, an echo. She believed Sadie and what she said. It was never a question, like it must have been for counterpart, Penelope. Maybe sometimes in the dark recess of her mind she'd turn old and gray and Arthur still would never come back, yet when she was outside and in the air, he was alive. Truth was, she thought of leaving sometimes, not as a real possibility, but as old Charlotte would have done. She imagined him coming back home and finding an empty house, like he had once before, and how he'd search and search before realizing he'd have to bury her. A different way perhaps, than he buried the first woman he loved, but she would not do that to him. If she had to, she'd be his ghost and run to join him as another apparition. She wasn't quite convinced she wasn't a ghost.

She dreamt of Arthur one night. She fell asleep thinking on what Arthur had said before he left for that last time, that someday the land they stood on would be brick and mortar, civilization coming to take what it could. It would be another sprawling Saint Denis maybe, or buildings taller than the eye could see. It would be a century perhaps from where they stood, but he was sure it would happen, and he was glad he lived now, with her. A simple thing to say, but it became the singular moment she thought of that night. She thought of more of what happened in that time that she cherished, remembered imagining a woman like herself that would stand where she stood, the woman who lived in one hundred years, that would come to the same place and start anew as she had, maybe. Would the woman tire of the city like Charlotte had? Want something real behind the smoke and mirrors? It was more likely that has civilization crept, that those born in the new centuries would find their home in brick and mortar and despise the quiet as Charlotte and Arthur longed for it. Arthur suggested that there would always be people like the two of them, and the land would be there to welcome them with warm quiet. She remembered his vow, and that was how she dreamt of Arthur.

Arthur in her dream with his hat off his head, stood in a sprawling city like Saint Denis. She begged him in her dream to come back with her to their small paradise. They didn't live in that one hundred years later where it was all brick and mortar, they lived now, and someday people would speak of them with longing to go back, without a single iota of how hard it was, how she in particular had to learn to live again, and how nature reclaimed and resurrected a broken woman. She spoke as if they were already ghosts, and she finally, finally accepted that they were…they were, and if only he'd come back…

A fit awoke her—that small cough that Alexander fret over, and as much as she tried to fall back asleep to that same dream and convince Arthur they were apparitions in the woods, she could not. The night was cruel. It was just as cruel as how the day had been. Perhaps worse.

As it became worse. she stopped caring about days. She measured time by the growls of her stomach and visits from Alexander, though true to his word, he refrained from coming. It became a little cooler out she thought, and a little easier to think he would not come back, and her lot in life was to unwind between visits from her brother. She didn't accept it, only understood. And then, when she surrendered, Arthur became cruel. He came back.

It was in her dreams, yet it was still cruel. It was him forever damning her as Penelope, only her Odysseus would keep leaving and leaving. Yet it was a beautiful damnation, one she'd want again and again. It was all a dream of course, and yet she swore it was the realest dream she had. In her dream, she hadn't returned home for the evening, she was out by the river with Buell and decided to stay by the water, thinking of that woman of the new century who was both like Charlotte and a thousand miles separated from Charlotte. He called her name, and outstretched his arms. She fell into them, felt their strength around her, and remembered what was lost—his smell of grain and dust mingled with sweetness. She swore, she tasted her tears as they fell from her cheeks, she swore she didn't live in dreamlike kaleidoscope.

And then his hands cupped her face…and how stunningly blue his eyes were…and it was no dream.

"I came back," he rasped, gentle and soft. How weary he looked, how pale, yet ravaged by constant sun, as she saw the redness of his skin even with only feeble evening light.

"I thought you were a dream," she whispered, caressing his cheek. "You must be a dream," she repeated, protecting herself more than anything. Though truly, if she ever wanted to really protect herself, she would have never fallen in the first place. She would remain alone or dead, yet free and unburdened from any disappointment. But Arthur was worth every ounce of pain. He was better than Odysseus, left her satisfied even as he always left her wanting more. He made being Penelope less than a burden. He made it her freedom.

The kiss they shared, a kiss after so long apart, was real. They were real, and Charlotte thought that if there was a god in heaven, the land would engrave their lover's reunion into the water and into the grass, and centuries from where they stood, even as civilization took everything that they held dear, they would be remembered.

Chapter 19

He wanted the two of them to go on and on. Guarma and everything that happened after reminded.

He despised calling it or referring to the two of them as an "affair," though that was perhaps what it was. But she was more than an affair, more than a pleasant diversion when the weight of the world became too overbearing anywhere else. Without her, the outside that he always loved was too foreign. Without her, the sky above was too vast, and the weight of it would crush him. Without her, the encroaching sound of the city and too tall buildings reminded loomed. Without her, he became all too aware of how temporary they were. Charlotte was the reminder that even though their time would end, it hadn't ended yet. They were still there. They could still cherish.

Damn fool you are, selfish. He berated himself even as her eyes lit up. He called himself a fool for wrapping his arms around her, but he had been playing that fool's game all the way to her home, with Susan's words in his head. He still went. She wasn't there as she always was. He panicked, even as the more rational part of him knew she wouldn't be far. He knew her, she liked the water. That's where she was, and he cursed himself for ever thinking the worst, cursed himself for running to her. But he saw her alive and not needing him anymore, but wanting him. What could he say to that? Nothing that he planned or considered. He just wanted to be with her. He was selfish.

The kiss sealed his fate, Charlotte's along with his. He couldn't take that moment away, or ruin it. He was selfish and he wanted to be wanted, wanted to come back again to his sweet repose. He wanted this memory of a lover's reunion, without thinking that this was the moment it ended.

She set up a small camp by the water, as he used to do a lifetime ago for the two of them. She deftly made a fire with a match, asking him to tell her about what happened, tell her everything. For what he should have mourned for earlier, though circumstance didn't allow, he mourned then. Hosea, Lenny, and what little vain hope he had for Dutch and his grand plans. She listened with a quiet understanding. She of all people understood mourning.

He asked of her, and she told him of her brother's new venture in Annesburg, and how he kept fussing over her slight cough. She spoke of riding Buell to Shady Belle, meeting Sadie for all of five minutes but deciding she was one of the best, a wildfire as Charlotte herself was a wildflower. She spoke of Susan discouraging her, and what remained unsaid was how she tried to be part of that world. He remembered what Susan said to him when they settled at Beaver Hollow about Charlotte. How dare you string her along, she scolded. By what you've done you've wrapped her in all of this and trapped her. She didn't ask for this life, she asked for you, but she can't have you without also having everything that's attached. Karen howled at her after. You don't know her! she said, before berating Susan for what happened to Molly.

Molly. He didn't dare try to ever understand her, and that was what made him the most guilty.

Sadie asked him to meet her in Saint Denis so they could save John. He told himself the lie that Charlotte's home was on the way to the city, and he convinced himself that act wasn't selfish. He was gone for too long. What would she have done? But not ending it then was cruel. But he wanted to be that part of himself that long died, that now only existed when he was with his sweet repose.

In the midst of it, he wondered, as he wondered before, what kind of life was that for the giver?

She was a willing giver, and he felt with every touch that for as much as she gave to him, he gave back. An hour or ten minutes passed—he didn't know. Time blurred with her. Nothing was temporary with her. They sat by the bank in the grass, the blanket underneath them soft. They laid down together, the two quiet mourners, cloud-gazing under the evening sun. She rested against him, her ear pressed against his chest, his beating heart. He threaded his fingers through her hair, undoing the plait and letting it fall. She murmured phrases about missing him, needing him even, and he told her she was there and had survived without him. Besides, he didn't want to be needed. He wanted to be loved.

She peeked at him, caressed his jawline with gentle fingers with a warmth and wornness that reminded him how far she had come.

"I have loved," she promised. "I still do."

They helped each other with their clothes, acting more brazenly than they had before. Usually, they huddled away in their tent, or they were in the water. Let the sky see us, he thought. Other than that, there was no one else. Their hands drifted intently, yet still it almost felt phantom-like, like they were barely there. He felt like he was living in a memory as they helped each other with their clothes, and he laughed that perhaps he liked Charlotte better in skirts, as they were easier to remove. She smiled between kisses and not quite kisses, skimming her hands over his chest, wrapping her arms around him when eventually he rose himself to embrace her. They made love in such a way he felt selfish for. He felt as though he was taking and taking, but she was an eager giver, a willing giver. She reminded him she wanted. Each time she touched, each time she moved above him, it became less phantom-like and realer. They touched and they kissed and it was all so simple. They were just a man and a woman. Not ghosts, but real.

He knew where to touch her. She sighed in bliss as he did, and he watched her with a rapture. How long did he spend thinking he'd never be this close to anyone again? He felt himself broken, used, unable to be a lover. She helped him repair, helped him put the pieces back, that by the time they made love for the first time, and every time after, it was their progression, their love story.

Love. Holed away in every moment of reprieve since parting from her, that every thread of longing became of her. I must get back home, I have to take care of my people. I have to see her again, even as the better part of him knew he was playing an impossible game. Yet how sweet was the game.

He was a fool. He ran straight to her when he could, when John was safe. All he wanted was to stay for good. And she was asking him to make it for good.

"When it's over," she whispered, basking in an afterglow of lovemaking, "come to me. Stay for good."

For good.

It never existed to him, for good. He was a wanderer and drifter and his world was temporary and fleeting. "Not yet," was all he could tell her, whatever the better man planned on saying before finding her suddenly lost.

"I know."

She didn't sound resigned, but she was unwavering and accepting. "You'll wait," he said, a statement, not a question.

"I'm Penelope," she told him.

Even as he loved her imagination, her fashioning him into a knight, to King Arthur, and now stories far older than that, something fell.

She was so resigned, too willing. He damned her.

"No." he said, holding onto her. "You're Charlotte."

"You don't think it can go on like this?"

She wasn't defeated, it was something she understood a long time ago. What struck him, was how willing she was to wait. She'd wait an eternity for one day, spend an eternity waiting if she had to.

"I understand," she said, perhaps a little broken. "You're loyal to your people. And I'm—"

"The one I love."

He pressed his forehead to hers, and every moment they spent breathing the same air became a sweet repose within a sweet repose.

"I'm loyal to you." he assured, and he didn't care. He'd wait too for another moment like this. He'd wait a hundred years.

"I'll come back to you," he promised. "I always will."

"Will someday it be for good?"

He didn't answer and she cupped his face in her hands. All this time they remained bare, still out under the sky, and she remained perched on top of him, and his arms still locked around her. She took every part of him in, even those things that he didn't say. Still, she promised she'd wait.

He pondered the life that they'd live if one day he could come back for good and stay. She mentioned before she and her husband tried and tried, but they couldn't have a child. It would be just the two of them, the land, and quiet, always a sweet repose. Or they could move somewhere else where Arthur Morgan wasn't a name on any poster in the city. They'd live in temporary happiness, one day return to the earth, became ingrained in whatever story they'd tell of their time one day. It was a world where he didn't doom her, where they were nothing but lovers.

How?

"You came to break it off, didn't you?"

She was unmoving, a pillar. She knew the whole time, didn't she? She must have seen the change in his eyes when he found her by the banks of the water, the moment he realized how much he was wanted and how he would selfishly run into it.

"I can't," he told her. "That's why…it has to be you."

He wanted it, the heartbreak. Please Charlotte, he begged with his eyes. Break my heart, end this, because I am too broken, too much in love to end it.

But she shook her head, and he saw that to end it for her, would do the exact same as it would for him. And he was a selfish man, but he could not put her through that. He had been cruel enough in his time.

So they kissed, dooming themselves and turning into apparitions. He killed her softly but surely every time he came back after. Yet if they did not turn themselves to ghosts, halfway between strangers and husband and wife, then surely they'd live somewhere far worse, a broken hell.

"I'm bound to you," she said. "I'll wait till it's for good, even if I'm always waiting." She chuckled to herself, bitter. "I'm very good at waiting."

The sorrow of her kiss tasted the sweetest.

Chapter 20

Chapter Notes

Hey all. hope you're enjoying! I know I have been off and on with this fic, but if you like it I'd love to know!

See the end of the chapter for more notes

How she wanted to ride with him, make him less of a ghost and more of the man she knew on the last stage of his journey. How he hurt her when he asked her to end it.

She felt a child again, coddled by her father because she was such a naïve, innocent thing, a china doll on top of the tallest cabinet. He wanted her to end it as if she had not learned how to hunt, fish, and live off the land. He acted as though she didn't survive to make her own decisions on who to love, as if she couldn't handle that he had stolen and killed and lived outside of the cogs of society. She wanted all of him and accepted all of him long ago, even if part of it was accepting that the intricacies of Arthur Morgan would constantly leave her amazed.

Coming to know him as more than a friend, she found how deeply his sense of honor ingrained almost everything he did. It's why it didn't surprise her when last time he came, he confided to her that years ago, he offered Jack's mother, Abigail, marriage when his "brother," John disappeared for a year. She declined, thank God she declined, because she didn't want him to think he had to, and Abigail was the sort who could take care of herself. So chivalrous was Arthur that he even carried the guilt that he and Charlotte could not marry, at least not anytime soon. She assured they knew what they were to each other. That was what mattered. Besides, he spoke as if she had honor, Charlotte Balfour. As if she was truly a woman of substance and society, as if she didn't forsake her old life. Being Penelope wasn't thrust upon her unwillingly. She gleefully ran toward it. Yet, there was honor in that.

It was unspoken, but she knew he worried what happened to Eliza and Isaac would happen to her.

He mourned the loss every day for the woman that carried a small part of him, as he mourned deeply for that small part of him that was robbed of a life. Privately, never to anyone, even her journal, she wished for what she knew was impossible, a child that carried both he and her. Not to replace what was lost for him, but to create anew. She knew better than to wish those dreams in voice or in writing. It would have made them realer. Furthermore, she knew not to speak of wishes of things that were lost unless he brought it up first, and Arthur's thoughts, though vast, were like a small ocean. Like waves came to the shore, he brought her all of them with time. And from the way he kissed her that morning after their rather bold night together by the water, she knew he was grateful she chose to stay with him. She kissed him harder as she always did, because he was tentative with kisses, but she laced a reminder that his guilt for stringing her was unwarranted. If she had to remind him a hundred times she ran gleefully toward their life, she would. She could also be an ocean that brought wave after wave.

Even so, she wanted to be by his side until they both could come home for good, a sweet repose that never left. Like her other dream, she didn't voice it to him, though she saw a possibility where she'd become warped in his life, and everything he did when he wasn't her Arthur, knightly Arthur. No, she had to remain away, be kept separate from his other life, so when he finally broke away, it would be for good.

The one dream she had voiced, the dream of a him coming back to her one day for good, she spoke because she saw his longing and felt it ingrained with his every touch, even as he stirred the next morning and told her he had to go. She compelled him to stay with coffee in her home and a good breakfast, as she found in her time that men typically could be swayed with a meal. Breakfast back in the cabin after their horses were fed consisted of oatmeal with a little sugar, and as a treat, she packed him a bag of salted meats she had made, along with a few raspberries she picked. She commented on the grey skies they woke to, and how likely a dangerous storm was on the way, and he asked if she mentioned it because she wanted him to stay longer.

"Perhaps," she admitted.

She swayed him, perhaps against her better judgement. The quicker he left, the quicker he could come back. But it was still early morning, he said, he could ride by early afternoon, and what difference was waiting for a little while longer anyway? He was closer to her now, he said. Perhaps he could sneak away more easily. More time with him, and less wait between the times was a luxury. She had done so much waiting already.

"Have they missed you?" she asked, and he didn't reply. At his tension, she understood everything he didn't say. She understood his family was falling apart, and there was one man at the center.

Of the two men that raised him, Hosea and Dutch, Charlotte understood Hosea had been his father. And while Dutch solidified himself in Arthur's life like a father would have, with the way Arthur spoke about him, he seemed farther away than Hosea, more an unattainable standard in a similar way her father was to Alexander. Hosea was gone now, shot during the failed heist in Saint Denis. It wasn't the only loss.

"Lenny was a good kid," Arthur said. "I wish I could have done more. I should have done more."

"What could you have done?"

He didn't know, he admitted, but it still didn't make it easier. He was about to berate himself further, she could tell, though a small cough interrupted it. She sighed, not wanting to send him off when he was unwell. He came to her with blemished skin from constant sun exposure and with clothes much looser, though he did say last night after they were spent that he did trim his beard for her, and bathed at Annesburg's hotel.

"I would have taken you anyway," she said with a smile.

After breakfast, they migrated outside to the porch with their coffee, waiting for the storm. He talked more of the gap of time he spent away from her, the time he spent on the ship and the time in Guarma. They talked as old married couples did, offering a glimpse of what their for good may look like. The last time she parted she had a vain hope that it was finally their for good, but that was to be a Penelope, wasn't it? It was to never truly know.

"I read the paper about your little robbery," Charlotte admitted with an ironic laugh. "Alexander brought it to me."

Another life, Cal could have been at the bank in Saint Denis. Before he realized he was done with the frivolity and noise of the city, he offered stakes in banks outside of Chicago. She offhandedly mentioned it and Arthur blushed self-deprecatingly, admitting that his previous actions used to carry a certain thrill. But after everything, he couldn't look back at anything he had ever done without a twist of shame.

"I don't care that you robbed from banks or stagecoaches," she said. "Whatever money you took will find a way to come back." Cal knew the ins and outs of how things worked in the banks, as did her family, she reminded with a stern eye. "Whatever money you took wouldn't have been given away to someone who needed it."

"I've stolen from those that needed it."

More self-deprecation, more admittance like she was the one that offered of all his absolution. "Are you again trying to convince me you aren't someone I should be with?" she asked. "It won't work. I can make my own decisions."

"I know."

"When I was young, my father always said I would inevitably disappoint him, fall in love with a stable boy or farmer, someone without a money or a name. I was almost disappointed in myself I fell in love with Cal. My mother though, she only told me to fall in love with a good man, a kind man. In you, I found both. But Arthur—we talk so much about morality in love and marriage, or what the other person can offer. The simple fact of the matter is I like who you are now. I like who I am when I'm with you. I think you like being with me too. Love doesn't come with a list of conditions. It just is."

He stroked her cheek, the back of his hand gentle. She could live forever in his cornflower gaze, that looked so unashamedly at her. Inwardly, she praised him for how far he had come, how far the two of them had come, really. When they first made love in Saint Denis under the guise of husband and wife, he was gentle, almost afraid if he touched too hard, she'd break. He touched with every awareness that she was indeed, a widow, all too aware she had been with someone else, and accustomed to another. She learned not to be rough necessarily when they were intimate, but present, and he responded in kind, learned she relished the weight of him, sinking her deeper into the earth. He was a starved man, someone who yearned for touch, yet he was able to restrain himself with the patience of a praying man in church when he was with her. Except of course, for the last night. It was beautiful agony, and he had an art with his hands that knew how to satisfy her while making her crave for the taste of more. Truly, they had evolved.

The clouds were dark and thunder rumbled, though no rain came yet, even as the smell of rain remained in the air. Her mother loved to sit outside before a storm. With a smile, Charlotte recalled the other women in the street who would comment on her vulgarity, letting her petticoats and skirts wet in the rain. Charlotte smiled, fancying herself as part of a lineage of scandalous and adventurous women, who went right alongside her grandfather, a man of the sea.

"My mom used to say God isn't always present, but he's always present before a storm."

It was the first time she mentioned God or a higher power in his presence.She didn't disbelieve, she made a makeshift cross for Cal well enough, but there was also far too much suffering in the world that she couldn't fathom a higher power wanting. Those that sat at the front row at church were always the first to turn a blind eye to those begging for money in the streets. She wavered in belief, but there was power before a storm. Her mother believed it, so she did too.

"My mother kept a flower by her bed until the day she died," Arthur recalled. "She called it good luck."

"Do you think it is?"

He smirked. "Don't plan on removing it and finding out for sure that it did give me luck."

She didn't think him lucky. Another life he could have been an artist or a poet, anyone else. Another life, he could have married her and been her for good. Another life, maybe they wouldn't have met.
But this quiet was what she wanted but could never pinpoint. The storm had always been her dream.

He knew her forlorn expression, her doubt. "I came back didn't I?" he asked, proving his luck. "I came back thinking I could quit this, I thought you would end this. But you stayed."

"Arthur. Don't leave in the rain."

Indeed, thunder broke again, and the slightest bit of rain began to fall at last. He promised he wouldn't leave in the rain. They stayed watching it for some time, far past early afternoon. She took in every temporary moment, drawing his form in her mind over and over, wishing today would be the day that she could at last, draw him in her sketchbook with all the different colors she saw him in. She'd drawn him before, many times, and though Arthur loved every depiction, she hadn't honed her talents yet, hadn't the skill yet to capture what all he meant to her. She was infinitely more talented in using her hands in other ways, perhaps ways he preferred, and she chuckled at herself and her saucy thoughts, but the two of them in pleasure made quite the pair. Yet afterwards was always still her favorite part. He didn't let go. He held. She held him right back.

He had to meet Sadie in Saint Denis, he said. She had a plan to save John from prison. He used to dread the place, but he couldn't pass the saloon without thinking of her now, so that made it infinitely better. She asked when they were married if he wouldn't be averse to trips to the theatre. "Course not," he replied. Then he paused.

When they were married, he repeated.

"One day, I'm sure it would be possible," she said. "Arthur and Charlotte Morgan. No pretend. It'll be real."

She made it sound so nice, he said. Would she feel guilty for taking another name? You and I both have loved before, she said to him. We are each other's quieter love, our for good. Everything that happened before led to us. We have changed, we've grown, then we'll grow together.

Rain continued to fall, keeping him their longer. Eventually it dulled to a small shower, and she followed him outside her home, where they had their horses hitched. Poor Buell's ears drooped when Arthur readied his saddle and bag, as did Peppermint's. She smiled at the kinship between the two animals, promising them both with a light pat that their would be a for good for the two of them too.

Before mounting, he took her in his arms, Charlotte nestling underneath his chin. "Make sure you eat," she said, her arms around his weight reminded her how underweight he was. "Make sure you rest as well. I know John and everyone needs you, but I don't want to see you ill." The cough worried her, though she supposed he was used to Susan fretting over him.

"Sure," he promised. "Sure, my brave, beautiful girl."

Was it the kiss that did it, before he parted? Either way, she would never come to regret it.

Chapter End Notes

...I'm sorry.

Chapter 21

Chapter Notes

Hey all, I revampld previous chapters for better flow and to clean up a few things. Thanks to all for reading!

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Mrs. Downes was all he could see.

He ran into her not too long ago, picking up the cross for Sister Calderón and Brother Dorkins. She ran from him and called the law. And then he ran into again in Annesburg, after bringing the girl Meredith back to her home from Beaver Hollow. Couldn't say he blamed her, for all he knew it was what he did to Thomas Downes that killed him. Whether he knew it or not, Downes saw his revenge. The tuberculosis that killed Downes was going to take him. The doctor told him and he was left to the streets of Saint Denis with the ghost of Edith and Thomas Downes following him.

Men like him didn't have quiet deaths. It was why he only half believed Dutch's fantasy about Tahiti. His father was proof that the sort of life he led didn't lead to quiet ends. He was sure that when it came, it would come when luck had run out. He wouldn't be quick enough to draw his pistol and shoot, or he would be careless mounting his horse and a lawman would gun him down. That was how it always happened. It would be so quick he would hardly have time to think about.

This was far worse. He had time.

I have time with her.

He sighed, almost burying his face into Peppermint's mane. She shifted. She must have known something was wrong with him all this time. Charlotte quoted him something once before they were lovers, something of Shakespeare. Happy is the horse that bears him…something like that, he couldn't quite recall and he cursed himself for not committing every encounter with her to his memory. What would he tell her, that this for good that she so dreamed about wouldn't be as long as they wanted? She had been widowed once, and now again he'd widow her again…that beautiful woman who he saved, and in return she gave him salvation, a quiet place, and love. She gave him everything he didn't deserve. Taken away again.

He closed his eyes, thinking of all those staring at him on the street. Let them stare and wonder as he began to think about that eternity Mrs. Downes told him to start thinking of. His hell wasn't fiery anymore. It was a loud void, where Eliza and his son mocked him for not being able to save them, where John, Abigail and Jack remained trapped, and where Charlotte was eternally alone, eternally waiting, and whenever he would try to call to her, she'd never hear.

Take care of yourself please Arthur, she bade him the last time he left her home. I don't want any harm to come to you…

She said more. He quickly shuffled through thoughts and through actions. Charlotte making coffee, kissing him, Charlotte with a small cough…

Alexander is fretting over me. She said that. She said--

I've had a small cough of late.

He clenched his fist, held back his shout to the heavens. Oh, why did he ever go to her? Why did he ever enter her world?

In saving her, he still managed to find a way to slowly kill her. He loved her and that would kill her.

He was a fool. He should have known. He should never have loved.

Charlotte, Charlotte, Charlotte…

Chapter End Notes

...I'm sorry. Also, please don't fret. I have taken liberties with canon and am going to continue to :)

Chapter 22

Chapter Notes

See the end of the chapter for notes

Sometime during her rough sketch of Willard's Rest, she began writing.

At first it began like David Copperfield began, with the day she was born. I was born on an unseasonably hot day in August, Chicago Illinois. I am a child of the border, between the old and the new century, and like some Romantic poet of old, I had always been in awe of everything real in this world, and not the constructs designed by foolish men who think themselves better than whatever or whoever lives above us.

She crossed it out, moved on to another page. She wrote in all truths, but those were truths trust upon her. She chose for her next go, she would begin with a different beginning. On the next page, she wrote of the fairies.

When I was a young girl, I believed the little pink and red blossoms were the homes of tiny sprites and fairies. There was a time when I didn't believe, when age and cynicism grabbed ahold of a dreaming mind. My husband, and then later I as well—though I must admit the dream was at first his—dreamed of going back and shedding away whatever it was that turned us away from out truest selves. I was content at first to be Mrs. Charlotte Balfour of Chicago, not knowing why I carried melancholy. So in 1899 at the dawn of a new century, we moved from Chicago to New Hanover, to a place called Willard's Rest. What I thought would be our journey soon turned into only mine, until someone else came to meet me and save me, show how nature provides just as she can take away. So here I write, eternally inspired by Arthur Morgan, who influences every stroke of this pen against this well-worn journal…

She closed her book with her new writing, her fountain pen holding the spot. She ran her fingers along the soft leather binding, her head swimming with a grand and intangible everything that had to be filtered into her story, their story. The journal and pen were the conduits, but it the story all depended on her visions. Ironic. The journal and pen were Cal's to start with, a gift from his family when he took on his father's business. William Balfour imagined his son writing important dates and notes from his day to day work in the journal, Charlotte was sure, but Cal was never one to contemplate. His strength came from others. Perhaps if he was one to sit and ponder, he would have understood that purchasing Willard's Rest and moving from Chicago as was not a pastoral dream, but a hard reality of hunting for food, protecting yourself, and understanding nature both gave and took away. It was only Charlotte that insisted he take his gifts with him when they left. Items she thought of only vaguely before became both mementos of the past and a place for them to write down a story for their children, if at last they would be blessed. She imbued them with purpose. Was it wrong to use the journal then, a part of her life that was distinctly the part that belonged to Cal, as a vessel to understand what all her time with Arthur meant to her?

When Alexander asked, she told him she had no guilt. She reasoned it was because she had changed so much since Cal passed, and the woman that loved Arthur and took Arthur into her bed was a million years removed from the Charlotte that said I am forever yours to Cal Balfour. But though the hands that put a ring on his finger had turned rougher, they were still her hands that had touched both men, her eyes that looked upon both with a similar but different love. They were hands that still wore the ring, albeit on her right hand. Would Cal have been so selfish to have her never change, never find something anew?

What guilt she bore, she bore it quietly for loving again, and carried a small, quiet guilt for starting a new chapter without him. It was what he would have wanted. He told her so years ago when they were newlyweds, he would want her protected again. Protected. She never used to scoff at his carefully chosen word, but as she pondered carved memories of her own hand's survival, she wasn't so sure anymore.

It happened anyway, without trying. She loved again and was going to continue to love again.

Writing down everything, perhaps it could make sense of it all, so when Arthur came back and they'd settle into a for good, they could love intentionally and guiltlessly—acknowledge past chapters while writing new ones. She was thoroughly convinced a person could do both.

She started, and once she did she saw wanted to have words, words, and more words fill the pages, because writing made things real. She meant to continue, but she needed him there. It was their story after all. They were both lost, and they had inspired each other to fill their blank pages. She waited, though he didn't have her waiting long. He came to her the next day, dismounting his horse next to hers. Charlotte was outside in the morning sun, observing a blank page when she saw him. He spoiled her with his visit so soon after the last, but he had said they made camp close to her home, and visits might be more frequent. He met her by the front porch, taking her outstretched hands. He wore the blue vest she bought him both yesterday and a lifetime ago at Saint Denis, pairing it with a white shirt. He left his hat in his saddlebag. His hair had grown out a little. She deigned to run her fingers through it shamelessly, an action that made him chuckle with her feather light touches. Not a word from his honey and leather voice yet, but this was another language they spoke entirely. It was their welcome home.

He pulled her into his arms, kept her snug under his chin. She felt the steadiness of his breath and every beat of his heard. He kissed the top of her hair once or twice, but beyond that, they were two joined pillars sinking on the grass, the grass not paying any mind.

"Remember when we danced?"

"At the mayor's party?" she asked. "Of course. You were dashing that night, but you're always so dashing."

She asked why he thought of that. "I had a crazy idea of dancing again," he replied. He meant to go on, but he lost whatever words he had, pulling her closer to his chest instead.

"It's alright," she muttered. "I'd rather you hold me now anyway. We have time for all that soon."

"Charlotte."

There was such a grand finality to his "Charlotte." She paused on it, facing him. He responded in kind by cupping her cheek in his large hand, eyes that were never hard on her, not even when they first met, softening still.

Had she noticed how much sorrow had been in his eyes the last time, or how pale he had gotten, even with his constant time in the sun? She was too busy basking in the happiness of having him. She never knew happiness could be so blinding. "I'm sick Charlotte," he said, but even with all the pieces together, she didn't understand it yet.

She squeezed his wrist. "Did you see the doctor? I'm sure you are sick a little dear. Darling, you were in a shipwreck and fought in a rebellion, then you came right back home to the same nonsense you've always been in. It would be bound to make a man sick. Come. I'll make it better. I'll make you better. Stay here a while if you can, and—"

"It won't get better."

He pressed his forehead to hers, his lips brushing against her before he decided against it. She gripped his shoulders, begging him to take it back so they may lose each other in a kiss. For a moment he lost himself before the part of him etched in honor pried away.

He held her face in his hands once more, and with every sorrow, every regret he ever carried, he said, "I got TB." He got diagnosed at the doctor. And with that…

"You fear you gave it me."

He fell to his knees. He carried the weight of far too many things he never should have been asked to carry. But this, what happened when he broke his built fences and loved was what shattered him. He sobbed into her skirts, prompting Charlotte's silent tears. She leaned down, holding him as he wept, keeping herself from shaking. He didn't deserve her sorrow, not now.

She didn't cry for what she may have had. She cried for Arthur, who told her then he finally knew he had a heart, because he had broken it. She held him with her own broken heart.

"We can still have a for good," she promised. "Arthur. I—"

"It ain't going to last."

"Nothing does. Not you, or I, or this. You tell me all the time how temporary our lives are, how temporary this is. Arthur. Just be with me now, however long." She held him tighter. "Arthur…Arthur…nothing lasts. Stay with me. Stay."

Her chant etched into the wind until he had it ingrained, Charlotte thinking of all those pages that would remain forever blank.

Chapter End Notes

Writing that hurted.

Chapter 23

Chapter Notes

See the end of the chapter for notes

When the doctor Alexander brought to Willard's Rest inspected Charlotte, she cursed ever letting him know the truth about Arthur and what very well may have been her truth as well. He introduced himself as Doctor O'Connor, from Annesburg, and he treated several of the miners that lived in the town. He was ginger-haired with a beard, married to a lovely woman he said, and he prattled on about his children and in-laws as he rummaged through his bag. He inspected her pallor and inspected her throat, and after ten minutes of inspecting and trying to set her at ease with his dull talk, he wasn't sure if she contracted it or not.

"So, she's safe?" Alexander asked on Charlotte's behalf.

There was nothing in her demeanor that suggested it, Doctor O'Connor replied. Alexander asked on Charlotte's behalf if the coughing was an omen.

"It could be just from her way of living," he replied. "You live alone ma'am? You have no one to take care of you?"

Once again, Alexander spoke for her. Other than "that man" that came now and then, the one who had the tuberculosis, Charlotte was alone save for her dear brother, who came to check on her.

"If it turns out I do have it," Charlotte said, speaking for herself for the first time since Doctor O'Connor's carriage arrived at Willard's Rest, "how will I know?"

The doctor described immense fatigue, a fatigue so draining that even rising from bed would prove difficult. There were more obvious signs, such as far more erratic coughing fits than the ones she had been experiencing. She would have a hard time keeping weight on, and her complexion would pale. Overall, she would know. It wasn't a pleasant thing, though Charlotte didn't need to be told what she already knew.

She expected the doctor to leave, but instead he remained, continuing to prattle. "Ma'am, I urge you," he began, Alexander hovering next to the table, "to go to a sanatorium. It takes time sometimes for it to be know and show up in the lungs. If you go now…and I recommend the Shannon Sanatorium near Boston, they can take care of you. The air there is clean, fresh."

He took the ride to Willard's Rest, he should have known. "Is that not what I have here?"

"You have been in contact with an infected person," Doctor O'Connor stated, flummoxing slightly. "Or, that is what your brother tells me. It is for the best that—"

"I wonder what else my brother has told you?" Charlotte wondered, done with pleasantries, done with carrying on this game, though she inwardly praised the doctor for forgoing any judgement on the widowed woman who took a man into her home.

"Madam—"

"Poor woman, lonely after her husband died, so she takes in the man that showed her a kindness into her home. She gets sick, all to become just another woman who died tragically in our wonderful, wonderful country." She laughed a bitter, ironic laugh. "You wouldn't have cared or remembered me if I had I not loved, had I not contracted this. No one would have. Of course, that's how the story goes. Until it's tragedy for a woman, no one cares."

"You may not have it," the doctor said, flustered and red from a monologue he did not completely deserve, given from a meek, lonesome and depressed woman. "It is why I urge you to the Shannon Sanatorium for rest and—"

"I'm not leaving without him."

It was Alexander who spoke next. Alexander, who knew who the monologue was truly for. "Because he cares about you so much?" he demanded. "Charlotte, he left you. He's been leaving you again and again, and yet you sit and you wait patiently. And once he found out what he may have done to you, he left again. Please. Listen to me now, for once. Leave this place and go to the sanatorium."

"Have you ever listened to me?"

Alexander stared. "Charlotte—"

"Both of you go to hell."

She ignored Alexander's continued pleas with her to listen and forgive him and see reason, but the only reason she saw was her brother trying to make amends to her for the years he spent not seeing and not caring. She was dying and he wanted no guilt. Well she found clarity without him, found her family and her home, and he didn't understand why Arthur always had to leave, didn't understand that he was the Odysseus who had people he cared about and people to save. She was not some lonely, discarded woman left by her lover. She was Penelope in wait. Her man was good and kind. It didn't matter that he had been gone for some time, that he didn't dare kiss her goodbye even. He would come back to her. He craved her taste and was addicted to it as he was helping others, all the while claiming he was a very bad man despite it all. She was his quiet rest, he craved her, and he would come back.

She picked up her skirts and left the cabin, though she didn't go far, knowing Buell was expecting her. She fed him and brushed him and cleaned up his stall, taking her time and talking to him, mostly of Arthur. Buell was his friend before he was hers after all, and she always noticed a slight difference in him when Arthur was around. It was a heightened sense maybe, or a deeper awareness. She swore the horse also had a concept of time, as he grew more agitated since Arthur left, somehow knowing that he both didn't stay long the last time he was here, and it was taking him some time to get back. Buell must have also known he promised more frequent returns, and he didn't fulfill that promise. He was as hurt as she was.

The last time she saw Arthur burned in her memories. There for an hour, on the ground on his knees as if weeping into her skirts absolved him of his sins. And yet he couldn't even look at her. After she helped him up from the ground, accepting whatever meager absolution she gave, their foreheads pressed together for one moment. She tried to meet his lips, tried to kiss him, and he spoke a thousand apologies for ever daring to love her before departing. It had been two weeks and a half, two lonely weeks and a half, and he hadn't returned. He was guilty for loving her and she hated that part of him that both insisted he wasn't good enough for her and beat himself for daring to have something that made him happy.

From the corner of her eye she saw Alexander see the doctor off in his carriage, apologizing and promising he'd let the woman at least see a little reason. The carriage off, Alexander did what he promised the doctor, coming to Charlotte's small stable and begging like the doctor begged. It was a good show, she had to admit. She wasn't sure if she would fall for it.

"If you're worried about the place, I can take care of it while you're gone," Alexander said. "Please Charlotte. Go to the Shannon place in Boston. If it is true and you do have it, you still have time."

"So does Arthur," she said, ready to saddle Buell, ready to find Arthur before she remembered he had no inkling where he was, unlike before where he mapped out a journey for her to find him if need be. The gang left Shady Belle, onward to a new place. It was close to her, he said, but she had no idea how close, or if she would waste time searching all for him to be gone from the camp. For all she knew, he'd come back while she was gone.

It was better to stay, though she was tired of waiting, tired of being Penelope. Yet what choice did she have?

Agitated, Alexander ran a hand through his growing black beard. "You know what kind of life he leads," he said. "His picture is plastered all over the papers. The Pinkertons would kill him faster than the TB, and you know it. Leave him behind Charlotte. I beg you. He is a wanted man, and now he's wrapped you up into this life, wrapped you up in this."

"You don't know him Alexander," she stated, unmoving as a pillar. "He didn't wrap me in this life. I ran eagerly to it. I ran to him. Don't you dare say it was never my choice."

His eyes were hard, stern. He was so much like their father. "Where is he now?"

"He'll come back," Charlotte said, unwavering. "As you will. You can't dare let yourself feel guilty for my death."

He didn't grow aghast or scandalized. He accepted her words, something she always wanted from him. He didn't quite follow her back immediately, but waited until she was settled on her porch's loveseat. Half expecting her to turn him away, he approached slowly. When he realized she either didn't want to turn him away or didn't have the energy for it, he took a seat next to her, his hands on his lap and eyes to the distance. They were quite the pastoral scene, brother and sister on the verge of collapse.

She could handle her own collapse. She wasn't sure if Alexander could. For all his boasts, she had always been the stronger one.

"Don't feel guilty," she said, gentle now, done with anger now. "I'd rather have my finite time with him than a thousand years with anyone else."

"Where is he though Charlotte?"

"Close to here he said," she said, sighing. "But he didn't tell me exactly like before."

"You really made it all the way to Lemoyne on horseback?"

She nodded.

"I'm sorry I didn't go with you."

"You would have slowed me down."

He chuckled, and she inwardly praised his small fall, his growing humbleness. "Don't regret it," she asked him. "When I arrived, I was turned away almost immediately. It hurt at first, but then when he did come back, I thought it was better this way, to be his lover from far away, be his promise of someday, his for good. Well. It seems to be…cut short now."

She bit back tears. "If this is what I am given…then I suppose I must accept."

It was a lie and she knew it. He knew it. It was an echo of before, when her father told her she must never be emotional, never wear her anger, shame, or hurt on her sleeve. Alexander always took it to heart more than she. For as much as she tried, she never could believe emotions were her weakness. Her emotions allowed her to love. Her love always made her strong.

She expected Alexander to tell her to hold it back, but he wrapped an arm around her in that brotherly affection she always wanted from him but never received. "Be angry," he bade, further surprising her. "Cry. There's no one to hear."

She cried in front of Arthur, but not as she did then to Alexander. She wailed in the most unbecoming of ways and allowed fat wet tears to roll down her cheek. She had some vain idea that if she wailed in front of Arthur, the two of them would crumble to the ground in their defeat. She couldn't allow that. She had to be his strength. Alexander, somehow sensing what he needed to be in the moment, did just that. She forgot every cruel word he ever said, every time he abandoned her and goaded her to see things his dull and colorless way. In that moment he was her family and he saw every shade of blue and green.

She cherished the tenderness. Because, if this was truly how she would fill the rest of her blank pages, she would not be angry at the things their cruel father taught his son. When she asked, Alexander even gave her her wishes, what she was too weak and cowardly to do herself. For her, he put a string of wildflowers on Cal's grave, the dirt at last finally making way for a wash of new green grass.

---

Three days after the doctor's visit, after Alexander reluctantly left at Charlotte's behest (if it was true, she said, if she did have it, she couldn't risk giving it to him as well, and Alexander obeyed, though promising he would be back.) she had the most unexpected of guests in Sadie Adler.

"Forgive me if things aren't in order," Charlotte said after Sadie dismounted her dark horse and approached Charlotte's porch. She held back her appreciation in Sadie's outfit, though she assumed that Sadie could see Charlotte's own trousers and glean Charlotte's appreciation.

"I didn't expect visitors," Charlotte continued. "Well, other than you know who. Not that he minds an unkempt home."

Sadie smiled, accepting Charlotte's offer to come in. She had precious few ground coffees left, but Charlotte made a pot for the two of them. There were a thousand things to say to the woman who she knew the legend of, but not the reality, the woman she met only briefly before being turned away. Charlotte suspected Sadie knew a few things about herself as well, the woman up near Annesburg at Willard's Rest who took in a certain Arthur Morgan and fell in love. Instead the two of them found themselves in a routine they had never done before, yet one that ended up feeling natural anyway. After so much uncertainty, from the constant wondering if today would be the day that Arthur came back, to wondering if the day would bring a telltale cough, Charlotte appreciated a small, unexpectedly expected routine.

"Saw the grave up here," Sadie said after Charlotte handed her a cup of coffee, sitting adjacent from her at the kitchen table. "I'm sorry for your loss."

Her accent was harder than Arthur's, a crackle where Arthur's was smoother. Still, it amused and delighted Charlotte, who was still used to the overly flowery enunciation common of Chicago's elite. Charlotte thanked her, and offered her own condolences.

"Jakey was a good man," Sadie muttered, not the least bit surprised Arthur would mention this fact that he knew another widow to his sweet repose, his Penelope. "Didn't deserve any of it."

A long pause followed, though it wasn't uncomfortable. There were hardly any comforts in being a widow, other than the knowledge that there were others who also understood the gravity of loss, the mourning of fallen expectations. Charlotte recognized the far off, wandering look in Sadie's eyes. She saw it often in her own reflection.

"He asked me to help out you know," Sadie muttered after a while. "You and John, Abigail and their kid Jack too. He helped me out with…things, so I agreed."

"What things?"

"Nothing good."

"I know few things lately."

She set her coffee down. "I killed the men that killed my husband, with Arthur helping me. I killed the man that thought I'd never fight back."

Good, Charlotte told her. One less evil man that had done harm. Good.

"It's falling apart at camp," Sadie said, taking another sip of coffee. "You got Dutch thinking he's the king of the world and Tahiti is going to work out, while everyone else picks up his mess. Then there's Arthur, trying his best. Ask me, it weren't right he left you here, but he asked me to come help out, come take you away."

"I suspected when I saw you," Charlotte admitted.

"He's a good man." Sadie said. "Out of all these damn fools, he's the only man I trust. Ain't right that it had to be him. Should have been Micah, not him. Course the world ain't kind to good men."

"How is he?" Charlotte asked, heart pounding.

"Don't rightly know," she admitted. "He's good at keeping suffering to himself. Do you…?"

"I don't know," Charlotte replied. "The doctor came by but didn't see anything unusual. If I do have it, if Arthur gave it to me…"

She hated the admission, it was like she was damning him and proving his unwarranted guilt, but she forged onward.

"It's not appeared yet," she said. "I have had a cough, but the doctor said it could be from anything."

"Listen. Arthur found out there's a sanatorium near Boston that—"

"I know all about the sanatorium," Charlotte interjected. "It's been pushed on me by my brother and the doctor already. I'm not leaving without Arthur. But I suspect, if you're here, either it's not time yet or he doesn't want to see me, and he's sent you to convince me to seek treatment."

"Reckon it's all of it."

She had done so much crying already, but there it was betraying her, that one mournful tear that she didn't even bother to wipe away. Of course, of course this would happen. He suffered too much in his life, that there was bound to be one thing that would set him over the edge and have him shout to the heavens, no more. He gave her his own death softly and through love. He found her and he scrapped the rest of his honeyed words of love and the rest of his romantic tenderness from a discarded jar of what little he had left to give. They were growing and learning together and leading to a for good, when nature did what it always did, and took away the best of men again. This was too much. After thirty-six years, it was finally too much.

"I want whatever time he has left," Charlotte said. "I'm done mourning blank pages, I'm done waking up every morning wondering if I will have a deathly pallor, or if I'll collapse on the ground. I've made my decisions. If he makes his and he decides it's too much to see me, to be near…I won't die." Of that, she vowed. "I'll stay here. He'll be in my pages, in everything I do. I'd rather have him here, but…if he decides…if he won't come back…"

"He'll come back," Sadie said. "I said it before. I was right. He'll come back here. He doesn't hate himself enough to stay away."

"Then there must be a God."

Sadie hoped so too. Charlotte set her off gently and with a small knapsack of food for the journey, as well as a few packs of cigarettes Alexander told her not to smoke anymore, not that she wanted to anyway. They laughed about the cards that accompanied the cigarettes before Sadie mounted her horse, agreeing that the bushy mustache on one the notable Americans card was dreadful and too much. Sadie told Charlotte she'd tell Arthur that she tried to convince her to seek treatment, but the woman was stubborn and refused to leave without him. Charlotte regretted forcing Sadie to be the interloper, but she supposed Arthur was the one who began it. Sadie didn't mind her status, promised she'd tell Arthur to give his lover a few more blank pages to fill.

That night, for the first time since Arthur came and told her what happened to him, Charlotte wrote in her journal. It wasn't much, but it was honest. That was all that mattered.

When Sadie Adler came, Charlotte wrote, we both hoped there was a God. However, I think I have seen God, for every time the man I love comes home to me, I'm taken to church and taken to the saints. Come back Arthur. Please, come back. Come back.

It wasn't a prayer, but it was answered anyway.

Chapter End Notes

side note, the Shannon Sanatorium was a real place near Boston!
We are getting close-ish to the end of the story. I never thought it would take this long to be honest, but I am greatly enjoying the journey despite breaking my heart, (LOL) and I hope you too, dear reader, enjoys the rest as well :)

Chapter 24

Chapter Notes

THIS CHAPTER HAS SMUT. It is too *terribly* graphic but a little spicier than what's happened so far.

She met him halfway between their home and the rest of the world. He removed his hat and left it on his horse, coming to her and taking her hands in his. He left reverent kisses on her open palms and the top of her worn hands, and she remembered a day, centuries ago, when Arthur's hands were far more worn and callused than her own. He kissed desperately and reverently, afraid to kiss her anywhere else. She let him offer penance for his sins, still telling herself she should be angry at him. He stormed off before. Out of guilt, but he left.

She wasn't angry. Anger was exhausting, she learned that after Cal died and she cursed him for leaving her for a moment or two. She couldn't allow herself to be bitter or cross at Arthur, not when he already carried the weight of too much before. She saw in his weariness that he barely carried that extra weight. She couldn't be angry, then it would really be too much.

"You look good," she thought to say, a smile cracking. She'd grown accustomed to his visits in that way that lovers became accustomed to each other with that playful familiarity, and yet even with his weariness he had a vigor that still took her breath away, even though a small cough betrayed him. Though he pulled less from the sun, he was still radiant.

"No need to lie. I look like shit."

He smirked in self-deprecation, and even Charlotte had to laugh a little. But he came to her, he came back as the man she first met by her husband's grave, though things changed and he became her lover and her friend and for good. She let her gentle and callused hands rest against his stubbly cheeks, and he shifted to leave a light kiss against her palm again. His face was hollow, with dark shadows under his eyes from lack of sleep. Wasn't that another thing Doctor O'Connor said, that if she had it, she'd wake in the middle of the night in a fit of coughing and be unable to go back asleep? This thing had taken away his usually sleepy nights and turned them into restless ones. His family was falling apart, he was falling apart. She had to remain constant, even if he wasn't going to stay for long. If she could give him one night, she would somehow find a way to pour a thousand calm and gentle nights into it.

She fell into his arms, her palms pressing against his heart. He wrapped himself around her, tucked her into his chest. He said he was sorry for leaving the way he did the last time he left, but he had already too much guilt, just as she knew, and it was too much to look at her and think his love was what would kill her. He couldn't bare it. But in leaving her, he lost what quiet he had. Sadie told him he was acted stupid and if he wanted his woman, he should go to her. He was sorry, he would always be sorry. There was another thing, he mentioned. He didn't want her to have to watch him wither. She would have withered anyway, she said. Perhaps faster had he not come again. All wildflowers and wanderers wither someday.

"Kiss me," she asked of him, but she felt him shake his head. Sadie told him about the doctor her brother brought. If there was a chance she didn't have it, he couldn't risk it. It only took one time for him, and he never got as close to Thomas Downes as he did to her.

"Downes," he muttered bitterly. "Didn't deserve what I did."

He was about to kiss her in a moment of forgetfulness, but he stopped himself, pressing his lips against her forehead. Moments passed like that, Arthur desperately grasping her. He strained, trying to pour something more into the chaste kiss.

"I can still be your lover the way we both want to," she whispered. "Arthur. Please kiss me."

She wanted to be a writer and yet it was all she could think to say. It was so simple too, a kiss, and yet she thought if she didn't have any of that inherent possession of each other that was common in their kisses, she'd wither faster.

When there was only silence, she closed her eyes in defeat, convincing herself to accept. It wasn't working, her lips still burned for his usual welcome home. So she tore herself away from him, thinking the least she could do was make him a hot meal, give him a bed to sleep in if their relationship reverted back to their friendship. She treasured that too, she reminded herself. She treasured their talks, and even when they were still friends, she killed for him. She never regretted it. She could try to be only his friend, though she knew she could only try so hard. She was too ingrained in the way they were each other's for good.

He grabbed her hand. He pulled her back into his embrace, Charlotte gasping in surprise. His gaze flit from her eyes to her lips. She bit them, not trying to tempt, but thinking it would satiate her. It didn't of course, but it was an honest effort.

"You want me?" he rasped, biting his lip in turn, enflaming her in turn.

"Yes," she promised.

"Even…even if…"

"I have it Arthur, and it's only latent. I know I do. There…well. I don't see a possibility where I don't. It hardly matters. With or without you I'm gone already."

It wasn't what she expected. He didn't possess as was common in their kisses, but acted with gentle comfort. Part of him was still afraid. It baffled her. Nothing about him frightened her. Not his past, nor what he had to do before, nor what he had then. Her lips answered in earnest, deepening their chaste kiss. He hummed at her tongue's light entrance, threading his gloved fingers through her hair, undoing the bun at the nape of her neck. He always freed her hair with some knowing that her tied up coiffures were a relic of her past, and he wanted her firmly in the now, with him. Her fingers splayed at the back of his neck she curved her body further into him. He smelled of grass and plains, and he carried the waft of honeysuckle and wildflowers that grew near her home. He was home.

"Don't regret it," she soothed, Arthur's eyes shut with a shame that she sought to chase out of him. "You have healing in your lips."

"You heal."

He outlined her swollen bottom lip with his thumb, wishing it was true. She took his wrist in her hands as he spoke of coming back once John and his family were safe. "I know," she said. "You'll come back for good after."

"Dutch wrapped up another poor fool. He'll get him and the rest of us killed…"

He told her of the Waipiti Tribe and the chief's son, how Dutch was using his anger for that last scheme. Dutch didn't care about his 'family,' anymore, only money and whatever the next great idea Micah Bell had. But John and his family had a chance of a for good, something that Arthur and Charlotte could only have briefly and in their times in-between. He would get them out. He would get them out and he would send her off to the Shannon Sanatorium whether she had his tuberculosis or not, because he would not do wrong to those he loved. He wanted the ones he loved safe.

"I'm not leaving without you," she said. "Sadie wasn't wrong in what she told you."

He chuckled. "I knew she wouldn't have done what I asked when I asked her to come."

"What exactly did you ask?"

"I asked her to take you to the train station no matter what you said. When she came back, she told me you were a stubborn woman like she was and refused to go."

"Sadie didn't need to tell you I was stubborn."

"No," he admitted, still holding her. "I knew that already."

"I'm not leaving without you Arthur," she reaffirmed. "However long it takes, I'm not leaving without you."

"It's not long," he said in mourning.

"You don't know that I've already waited an eternity. What's an eternity more?"

"Charlotte."

She held him tighter. "Don't leave me like that again. Stay here and love me now, and come back when it's done. Don't ever leave me again without loving me properly first."

"I'm not going to leave you again when it's done."

She bewitched him with another kiss. She bewitched him with her words and her touch, compelled a joyfully in love boy from the stern, duty bound man. Proud of it and further convincing with kisses, she led him to her home where the door closed behind them. She led him to the door to her bedroom, though he shook his head and told her he couldn't enter there. He shouldn't dare.

"Dare," she whispered to him, for as much as she loved being with him in the open sky, he deserved a proper rest.

"Not going to rest long," he assured, and she asked if he vowed it. He wasn't a praying man, nor a religious one, but he'd make vows to her every altar, enshrine her at every chance.

The enshrining began as they tore off their shoes and most of their clothes, an act done quickly and something they helped each other with. In the times of her past before Arthur, she realized her time spent with her husband was usually a planned affair, taking away some of the splendor. Even with Arthur it was all mostly planned, save the first time when they acted with wonderful spontaneity in their Saint Denis hotel room. There was a sensuality to their embedded promises of what would happen in the night whenever he came, but in this act of spontaneity, in her mad idea to take him to her bedroom, she reveled in her girlishness and his boyishness, their laughter as his pants got caught and his too strong grip broke a button on her skirt. She remembered what he said about skirts being easier to remove, though he apologized at tearing it, as he didn't think that would happen. She kissed him, letting him forget the silliness of fretting over it. She was alone with him. The last thing on her mind was a single button.

Their comfort in each other's bodies usually extended through warm caresses and a sweet sinking into the earth. His weight always pressed her into the grass that befit the earthiness of their bond and act itself. Yet it struck her as they continued the preamble of petting and kissing that he never casted more than a cursory glance at her naked form, or she him. He had no trouble touching, though it took practice for him to understand she would not break and she wanted him to touch harder, and she certainly had no trouble touching him. Yet with sun spilling from her window, she wanted them to bask.

"See me," she bade him, her hands reaching for him. He saw, Charlotte splaying herself on her open bed. She felt like a goddess must of felt, under the eye of a worshipping pilgrim, and she skimmed a hand down her body, touching her own breasts. She used to be plumper, a sheltered life allowing an indulgence in decadence, but when she moved to Willard's Rest she grew frail before Arthur showed her how to hunt. Now, riding made her legs and arms strong, her stomach taut. She was taught to never be this bold in her nakedness, taught her body was to be hidden, shameful even. But it was hers, and it allowed her to live, and it changed. There was nothing to be ashamed about.

Arthur understood it too. His hand ghosted over her belly and then lower to her coarse hair. She shivered at the touch that was both so much and too little. It was a reverent touch, as she sensed the sight of her intoxicated him. He had a hunger in his gaze that didn't quite mask his desperation. She looked on his form hovering above her, greedily drinking him in return. She drunk in that taut stomach that tapered into thin hips, and the sparse hair on his chest her fingers threaded through. He was much paler where the sun didn't hit, his cheeks hued pink from both the sun and his want. The loss of weight was apparent, even with only her brief glances from before, but she gripped his bare shoulders and forearms, hands skimming down his bare back. Still strong.

Even so, he was above her and she sensed his tiredness, a tiredness born from what it cost to move from the outside to their bedroom, and ride to her even before that. He breathed heavily and only managed to satiate himself somewhat by a gentle glide against the bare skin of her thighs. He was warm, straining, and she saw his battle inside, how he wanted to make love with an intensity they hadn't before, an intensity needed if pages of their love story were to remain blank. Fatigue prevented it, but if he couldn't be rough, she could.

In a strike of boldness, she held him in her hand. The immediate effect was lulling, as his breath caught, his body pressing against hers. He called her wildcat, and her feral boldness continued, her hand moving up and down. He let her go on for a shorter time than perhaps she would have wanted—as the soft groans she drew from him ignited her. Yet he grabbed her hands, pulling them over her head, and the glimpse of his intensity ignited her further. She sighed at the feel of his beard against her neck, sighed at the firm and affirming kisses against her collar and cheek. Reverent kisses, lulling kisses. It was only her familiar wood ceiling above her, but it was aligned with stars.

His hand drifted down her body, squeezing lines and curves, and when his rough, leather-like fingers grazed her breast, he told her not to hold back. He unlocked heady moans, broke whatever modicum of passivity yet remained. His mouth traveled the entire length of her body and she did not quietly appreciate his worshipping like a Grecian goddess attended worshippers at her shrine. As his goddess, she could be loud. In their temple, they could be too much.

His reverence grew to a thin line between tender and familiar to needy and too much, but she feared if she did not have that too much, she would not have enough memories for her blank pages without him. If he was not hard, and he was barely there, time would take away more and more specific recollections that made their time distinctly theirs. The intensity of his blue eyes. The way she moved below him to meet his touch, or the way he stopped for a moment to lay against her body, his weight pinning her to the sweetest heaven. Of course, it would also take away her small tear when he kissed her slowly and passionately, and sound of his labored breathing, and yet she could not bare it, could not bare the thought that this would be one of the lasts…

Maybe. Life was only maybes, she reminded herself as he kissed her again. She opened her legs and her body, feeling him strain against the juncture of hips and legs, wanting the feel of him inside, and yet he surprised her by dipping his head down. This, he said, had always tempted him, and her body drifted closer to him when he demonstrated what he had been referring too—his mouth and tongue, against her inner thighs, his mouth and tongue, swirling around the small part of her flesh he only touched with his hands before, that part of her that made her feel exquisite and euphoric. His goddess and lady of the moon water deserved to be worshipped, he said with a mischievous glance cast at her. He demonstrated he knew how to worship, sliding a finger inside her.

His tongue peaked her euphoria, the stars above her turning to constellations, yet he still left delicate kisses against her inner thigh, with her tugging at his hair the only thing that brought him forward to meet him. She drifted in his kiss, and the taste of herself on his mouth was a strangely foreign, yet not unwelcome taste. He nearly collapsed against her, and she let their limbs entangle. His tired eyes looked into hers, awake and alive, and he brushed strands of hair away from her face and away from her eyes.

"My lady," he called her.

"My knight," she called him back.

"You gotta stop thinking about knights," he said with the faintest of smiles.

"I am a stubborn woman Arthur."

He laughed as he kissed her neck, knowing it all too well. "Doesn't matter," he muttered. "I'm yours."

Her breath caught and he filled her, never letting himself fully leave until he was fully inside again. They both concentrated and indulged on the sweet stretch, the creak in the bed, athe sound of both their breathing, and the slick of their arousals when he moved his hips. Occasionally he kissed her deeply, and occasionally. she peppered his damp face with tiny kisses until he stopped for a moment, resting against her. Not tired, he said, he just wanted to make it last.

She knew how to make it last. She nudged him to his back, and he obliged. She only had time to mourn briefly for the loss of him before she drunk in his form—his disarrayed hair, flushed cheeks from exertion and arousal, and his wide eyes, heavy with longing. She hovered above him, let her fingers outline his body's plains and scars. The wonder's of God's architecture, she thought with a smile. Let this image burn so I may draw it later…

When he grew impatient she relented, Arthur helping her adjust on top of him. He watched raptly when she rejoined their connection, gripped her hips as she rode him. He was deeper this way, firmer in and pillar-like. He rose to meet her, to pull her hair back and expose her neck and breasts to him, to kiss her there as she brought her own euphoria while he was inside her. It was warm like the sun as she called out his name, even if there were more stars in the sky afterward.

He called her name back. He buried his head against her collar. She coaxed him, begged for him even, and when he spilled inside, she felt as though she came again.

Drifting along, he stayed inside. She mourned when he pulled away an eternity later, though he pressed her body flush against his, wrapping an arm around her. "rest now," she whispered in his ear, throwing her leg over his as an extra precaution. She would not have him leave, not now. Yes, she told him never to leave without properly loving her first, and he showed her just how proper he could be, but would she deprive him of, if he didn't rest next to his lover?

To her delight, he closed his eyes when she kissed him goodnight, though it was late afternoon. He lulled into sleep and she used her own body to blanket him and keep him warm. He slept for her, and when she finally convinced herself a little sleep was alright and he would not leave without at least a kiss goodbye, she didn't dream. He was already her dream. She'd rather have a short book with him, than a long one without.

Chapter 25

They were sleeping like they were married, side by side until he woke before he. He would have slept for a hundred years by her side, but a cough woke him in the middle of a dream about wild horses. Boudicea was also there with the wild ones, Peppermint and Buell as well. Fitting. Arthur found it fitting. They would all be wild in the hereafter.

The coughing spell wasn't long, or as intense has times before, but he buried his face in the pillow to not wake and startle her. When he calmed he still panted, heart racing like he had been running for too long. She wasn't awake, but the feel of her body curled close to his grounded him back. She slept on her side facing him, hair spilling behind her. She looked younger, even with the strand of silver threading through the ebony black. He stroked her shoulder with tentative care, as he didn't want to wake her. He waited too, panicked that she would wake with a cough, though she never did. He couldn't be sure yet, but if she did have it, she could live a long life with rest. For her, he'd make sure. He'd get that brother to take care of her, take her to the sanatorium, or ship her back to her family in Chicago if he had to. His love wouldn't kill her. He'd save her.

But none of his ideas would be what she wanted. He was running through all those plans of a wile rescue when he remembered that. If he sent her back home or to a sanatorium without him, he'd drown her like she had been drowned before. She made it clear what she wanted. Him. She made it clear she wouldn't leave anywhere without him. She'd wait too, and she was a stubborn woman. She'd wait an eternity.

What am I going to do?

He made love to her with the pretense that he relented to her orders, that he would allow her to wait for him. At the time he agreed and knew it was true, he had relented, mostly because she wooed him with promises, and how sweet it tasted to have a mask of idyllic bliss. When she was asleep it was easier to play that knight she thought of him as, save her no matter what. When she was awake he was reminded she was her own sort of knight that would save him too, and had already before without him knowing it. He lived his life being played. Life finally gave him more than an equal who gave back. It gave him a savior. Maybe he could convince her to let him save her right back. He talked to her some softly about it, thinking sleeping Charlotte would be more willing to agree than wake Charlotte. In sleep, maybe she'd hear him and understand. He wished she knew how much she gave him already. He wished she knew this was enough.

The slept all afternoon and into the night. He tried not to think of morning. But he made promises, and the sooner they were fulfilled, the sooner he could come back for whatever time they had, time for him to try to do that saving. Whatever time he had, it couldn't have been long. For all he knew, he could have died right there. He could have died asleep next to her, or coughed up his lungs in his sleep until he didn't wake up in the morning. Dying in the arms of the woman he loved was the way of the romantics. It was how her husband died, he was reminded. Charlotte rarely spoke of it, but when she did, she couldn't without going somewhere far off, unwillingly seeing again how every detail of the attack happened. That was the thing about bad memories, they imprinted on the mind even when you didn't want them to. If he were to die in her arms…

He couldn't do that to her, not again. He wasn't sure if he had a choice in the matter, but if he did, he'd save her every time. It added another layer to his plan, him the knight and she the savior that remained firm that they should save each other. But he could be just as stubborn as she was.

Unwilling to wake her, his eyes drifted to the table next to the bed, and the books she had stacked there. Leaves of Grass was there, as was a book with no name. Her journal. He thumbed through the pages, smiled at the little sketch of Copper he gave her the last time he was in her room, when he slept in her rocking chair and woke up with an ache in back. She used the pages for sketching, but lately he saw where she had begun something else entirely. Words and words filled the pages, some crossed out. He regarded the words like he did his own on the page, extensions of the mind and therefore extensions of the self, though he wrote like a fool while Charlotte wrote like a poet. She spoke of her birth, her husband, and him. He had been worthy enough to be written about.

"Looking through my thoughts?"

She chuckled as he closed the book, and setting it back, promising she wouldn't have minded. "Before you came the last time, I had an idea to write it all down," she even said. "I needed you here to finish."

So she started before he told her what the doctor said. She touched his forlorn face before he could even begin to mourn for the loss of any blank pages.

"Whatever time," she promised, "whatever time the both of us have, we can write it down."

Naked, he scrambled from the bed to his discarded satchel, pulling out his own journal. She thumbed through it before, but he showed her his newest entries, some of the older ones as well that he kept hidden out of shame. She did raise an eyebrow at the heart between his initials and Mary's, assuring she didn't care about whatever fancy he had before her. (He ended it in Saint Denis for good anyway, he said.) What never failed to surprise her, she was sure to mention, was how boyishly romantic he was. And, she wanted him to write their names with a heart between. He flipped through a few entries and showed her just that.

She beamed. "Arthur. You romantic fool…"

He kissed her cheek. When she shivered pleasantly he grew bolder, wrapping an arm around her. Typical for Charlotte, she had a way of bringing out spontaneous plans. "You're rather good at this," she whispered to him as he continued to kiss her. "You're one of the masters."

He wasn't beyond flushing at the burst of masculine pride her comment caused. She surprised him herself, he said. He wasn't used to being to being touched so much.

"You should be very used to it," she muttered. "I'll make up for lost time."

She wasn't used to certain things either, she said, eyes conspiratorial at their little secret way to make her happy from the night before. He told her he could make a habit of doing it morning, noon and night if she wanted.

"Tempt me later," she muttered, drawing small circles on his chest with the tip of her finger. "You must be hungry."

"Rather stay here."

They stayed, both hungry in another way. He asked if she regretted it, wanting to be sure. "I don't," she promised when they settled against each other and their bodies responded kindly to each other's touch. She was right in what she said earlier about him being a boy underneath it all. She was the one who brought it out, dragging her nails down his back when he asked if his goodness and talent at making her feel good was enough for her to tempt fate. Instead of admonishing his pride she chuckled at the comment, responding that they had already tempted so much without knowing, the last part blurring as he buried himself inside her to the hilt, with lethargy begging for a kind of slowness. She was warm and snug, and she asked him to forget. This was their place, this was his time to just be that part of Arthur that wasn't usually there.

He heard the sounds before, but never focused on them. He focused on them now, her bed creaking in a betraying way. They breathed together too, though his he knew his breaths were more labored. He tried to unhear, and he fooled himself into thinking her sighs were the only thing in the room. Her sighs were content, the things she whispered in his ear nothing and everything. With her, he could full himself into thinking he had longer.

When they were spent they spent time as before when they first woke up, neither one wanting to leave their small island or even move a blanket over their naked bodies. Maybe they were the blankets she wrapped over the another in her life before him. Maybe they were just too tired, or maybe they both thought clothes were foolish, he couldn't say. They probably just liked being bare with each other in every sense, even the literal. He kept what she said on his mind as her fingers caressed damp strands of hair, that this was their life now. They came from ashes to come alive again.

He met Edith Downes, he told her. He admitted after he found out and the doctor told him, she was the only one on his mind. He played a part with her and Thomas Downes that wasn't usually him, but he came from him and was a him he didn't usually reckon with or think of because it made him too uncomfortable. She was the only one who had before, and he kept seeing her. He even saw her again in Annesburg after a job, and he got her son out of the mine and her off the streets with a hundred dollars he didn't need. She didn't want it at first, and her son was the one that took it. He wasn't sure if he genuinely felt remorse for what he did or if he just wanted to feel better and repent after driving Downes to the grave and driving his wife and son to another life.

"I think it's neither," Charlotte said after barely a pause. "I think you want to do right while you can."

"You think better of me than you should."

It was a standard line of his. He had enough self-awareness to know. But old habits took a long time to die.

She wasn't playing that game. "Because that's what I've seen," she explained. "You have shown me nothing but kindness and you love me like I'm the only woman in the world. "

"The part of me you don't see got me this," he reminded, a small cough punctuating it at just the right time.

"I remember something," she said with a sigh, the cough abating. "You told me you first met me because you got a tip of a young and dumb rich couple who lived near Willard's Rest. Then, you met me.

You saw me crying and you changed your mind about robbing me. Look at where we are, where we started. Arthur. It's time to just be who you really are. Whatever time you have…whatever time we both have, just be the man I know."

He had heard this all before. "You sound like Sister Calderón."

"She sounds like a very smart woman."

Well, he explained, the two of them both asked him to take a gamble that love exists. Since he met her he realized he had been gambling, been playing a game he thought he long lost. Here he was again, with her, continuing a streak in their winning match. It didn't matter how long the winning streak went on, the point was, he loved again, and she loved him back.

Take a gamble that love exists, and do something worthwhile, Sister Calderón asked of him. Love was a relatively selfish thing, he interpreted when he was younger. With Charlotte, she wrote him a new book on love, gave him a new interpretation. She taught him there was nothing selfish in loving, especially not in loving again.

He did what Sister Calderón asked of him at the train station without even knowing it. He did something worthwhile. For another, if he could do the same, it was a worthy way to finish a story. Then, he'd give Charlotte the means, somehow, to let her finish her story. She'd take gambles for him, win a continuing streak. He'd live on through her gambles and trials, come alive again.
It may have been their story, she said, but without her, it would have never have been written.

"I love you," she said, the two dreaming the night away. He repeated it all the same, I love you, and he hoped God or whoever above saw that he tried at love and wasn't so bad at it. He was made for it after all.

Chapter 26

Chapter Notes

bit of a different chapter, hope you enjoy! :D

"Arthur keeps saying it's gonna happen soon."

He was laying next to Abigail at Beaver Hollow, talking low enough so not to be overheard. It was late at night and he managed to stumble back into their tent, waking up Abigail and maddening her in the process. His dumb chatter maddened her further as he settled near. Everyone knew something was going to happen soon, soon the bucket the gang had been carrying would overfill and break. But John always have a talent for stating the obvious.

Vexed as Abigail was, she huddled near him after he managed to settle comfortably, though it was cold where they were and it was probably more out of comfort than any affection. She always called him hot tempered and hot natured, both of which weren't wrong. He thought she was going back to sleep, but from the darkness he heard her mention she had been preparing Jack as best she could.

"He knows we're not the same anymore." John muttered.

"I know," she replied, though he couldn't see her face. "He misses everyone. Hosea the most. They used to read together."

"We can't change Abigail. For him. We gotta stay together."

"Now all of a sudden you want to stay together."

Bitter, she didn't say anything else. He stung. Why shouldn't I? he wanted to ask. Why shouldn't you want to stay with me after this? Then he realized he gave her plenty of reasons why she wouldn't, and he kept his mouth shut. He had been trying since Arthur and Sadie broke him out of the penitentiary—playing with Jack with some sticks and pretending they were swords before Micah interrupted, and asking Abigail if she needed anything. Usually she only told him she wanted him to go take a nice swim in the lake, usually she was teasing. It wasn't enough, they were barely a family, and he was starting to wonder why Arthur wanted him, Abigail and Jack out of the gang so much. Arthur barely got a family life and even he was better at it than John ever was. Years ago even, when his loyalty to Dutch was stronger, he was good at the family life. He took care of the girl Eliza and their son, saw them every month and stayed a while. John remembered when Arthur came back one day, told him what happened. He never mentioned it again, but John still remembered. He never admitted how afraid he was the same thing would happen to him.

John saw his woman and son every day and still didn't know what more to do other than play with Jack when he asked, or ask Abigail what she needed. He tried to remember their early days before Jack, remember how he won her over, but all he could recall was talking to her late at night after not going to sleep, huddled away in their tent while everyone else was still drinking by the fire. What did they talk about, what won her over? He tried to talk to her sometimes now, but he couldn't help but think they were speaking different languages with neither one willing to learn the other.

"John. I didn't mean it."

He lied, saying he knew that. And Abigail was telling him she agreed. They had to do it. They had to get out and stay together.

"For Arthur," she said, voice cracking. "It's the least we can do."

She didn't want to admit what seemed to be obvious to everyone else, Micah most of all with his nickname of "Black Lung" for Arthur. John didn't want to admit it either, though it was becoming harder not to think about with the coughing and the way he seemed tired all the time, or the way he came back to camp one night and told John he may have just killed everyone he ever loved. When they went to bed later, Abigail told John she felt like it was TB. Her momma had it years ago. Abigail said she barely ate, barely slept because she coughed so much, and John got the feeling Arthur didn't sleep at camp much anymore because he didn't want to wake anyone up. John didn't know much, but he knew Arthur would have told John he was a fool if he told him what he thought, that he wasn't going to die.

"Still gonna do it for Arthur," John said, and he finally admitted to Abigail what he had always thought.

She paused, eyes sad. "John…"

"Hey. He's got a woman. You know, that one near Annesburg? You know how he is about them."

John remembered Dutch one night at Shady Belle, mocking Arthur as he drew in his journal about how lovelorn he looked, mocking him for spending the night in Saint Denis with that woman at the party instead of going back to camp. John knew then it was more than what Dutch thought it was, because when John asked about her, Arthur called her a good woman. He said she was the only one who saw all of him. No one saw all of Arthur Morgan, but this nameless and faceless woman did. He reckoned that had to be love.

Abigail wasn't convinced. "John—"

She was going to tell him he lived with his head in the clouds, and he should really consider taking a swim. "Maybe love keeps people alive," was all John said. "Maybe that's the reason I'm still here."

"Arthur does love you," Abigail said. "I told him just to leave you there in the prison."

This time, he chuckled at her teasing, for he knew it was, because when he came back home to Abigail and Jack, she cried a little in their tent when no one was around and told him she was worried about him.

They turned quiet then, happy even if they didn't make love, not with Jack near. They didn't go back to how it used to be when they could barely keep their hands off each other. Instead they went back to a sweeter time, when they were even younger, times when they were happy with just petting each other, just bumping their foreheads close without even kissing. Back in those times she always told him that he knew what she was, she was paid to be there, and he was being silly. He didn't care. She was a girl he liked, and nothing made him happier than just being with her.

She did kiss him though, and he thought of kissing her in a room in a house, a house that was theirs. He didn't think Arthur was right yet that he could do it. But, it seemed really nice.

---

He woke up early that morning, dressed quickly and kissed Abigail on the cheek before going to the creek and washing up, checking on Jack as well. Still sound asleep. Not even Pearson was up when John came back, but he kept the fire going and made himself some coffee. He heard Arthur approach before he saw him. Since Saint Denis it seemed like the only thing Arthur wore was that blue vest with some sort of shirt, with a jacket if it was cold out. They hadn't spoken much since blowing up the bridge for Dutch, since Arthur told John he was getting him out. Still, he made his intentions clear. He himself hadn't made it clear yet, to anyone, if he was sure of it, even if he thought about it last night and a house seemed like a sweet fantasy.

John greeted Arthur, watched how he groaned when he sat near him, saw how his shoulders slumped and he looked at his hands in his lap. He asked Arthur if he wanted a coffee. He shook his head.

"No coffee?" John asked. "You're crazy."

He didn't reply, but when John asked where he went, because Dutch was looking for him. He only replied with "places." John didn't buy it, replied that he was probably with that woman up near Annesburg, because that was where he spent most of his free time anyway. Since Clemens Point it had been I gotta go to Annesburg this, I gotta run up near Annesburg that. Hell, Jack was the one that told John that Arthur mentioned a "lady friend" up near Annesburg before the rest of them found out.

"What's her name anyway?" John asked.

"Charlotte," Arthur replied, and he said it with so much weight John realized he hadn't said her name to anyone else at the camp before. He asked why, why he kept something as simple as her name secret. After all, he heard from Susan she came to Shady Belle. It wasn't that big of a problem, if one at all, if they all her name.

"Because I'm selfish," Arthur said. "Even before Saint Denis—"

"What so special about Saint Denis? Thought you hated it."

Arthur, tired, worn out, still found a way to chuckle. "Well, I did. Except that's the place where I first kissed her. Actually, I think she kissed me first."

He hadn't seen Arthur like that in a long time, even as he couldn't pretend something wasn't wrong with him. He was paler, and his cheeks were hollower, but he spoke about the now named woman up near Annesburg with a far off, dreamy look. "What's she look like?" John couldn't help but ask, "is she real nice?" And Arthur showed her his journal, pulled open a page where he drew her. Arthur never showed John his journal before. He didn't flip through it like he may have done a long time ago when shown something so private, but traced the sketch of Arthur's Charlotte, trying to see if he could get to know her through the penciled drawing. She looked like a thinker and a dreamer, John thought with her long dark braid with a silver streak in it, and pointed face with brown eyes. Arthur said she had a way of making it seem like nothing else mattered when they were together. She liked reading, drawing, and writing, and whenever they were near water she had to at least wad her feet. She knew how to convince him to jump in with her, knew how to make him laugh. She saw the little boy inside the man, and together they were just a boy and a girl. He even said he immaturely thought of adding Morgan to her already long name, said it in his mind often. And for the first time, he said it to John. Charlotte Clementina Vale Balfour Morgan.

"Mouthful," John said, handing the journal back.

"From Chicago and old money. Also widowed. Of course her name is long."

John hoped Arthur would make it longer, though he didn't mention it, thinking it would make the whole conversation stranger than it needed to be. "You always did like them city girls with the big skirts and hats," he said instead. "Ladies in distress too."

"She doesn't wear hats and she is not in distress," Arthur said. "She's a survivor."

"Forget about us. Go after her and just stay there."

He surprised himself, by saying it, but then he thought it shouldn't have been a surprise. That was what he wanted Arthur to do.

"John—"

He stopped him from talking. Arthur was going to waste whatever time he had left. (But damn it, he had time. He had to have more time than they all thought.) But he wasted time getting him and his family out, all for what? John pointed it all out. They were no good at being normal when Arthur was. That's why he kept her, Charlotte, safe and away from all this. He would have more luck with the simple life than John would ever have.

A cough interrupted whatever Arthur was going to say after. Stupidly John asked if he had any more of the herbs he mentioned before—the one that Rains Fall said would help that he took sometimes.

Arthur shook his head, the cough breaking up. He gave them to Charlotte.

John stared. "Arthur. Did you give her…?"

"God I hope not," Arthur said. "Her brother brought a doctor. He didn't see anything. But I—"

He felt like a monster for being with her. But he wanted her and he loved her, and she dizzied him when they were together, and now that he was away he could see clearly what he had done.

"God, I hope not," he repeated, over and over. "I hope not."

I have killed everyone I ever loved.

No John wouldn't let him.

"Go back," John said. "I can save my family myself."

"She knows what has to be done. And it's not just about you. It's Rains Fall and Eagle Flies. We need to help them."

He could help them, John said. Arthur didn't reply. "And then what?" John asked. "We get out and what are we supposed to do?"

"Build a house, raise your son."

"You really think I'd be some sort of rancher?"

"I fell in love again. Crazier things have happened."

They were still the only ones up, though the sun began to rise. John looked around, made sure no one else could hear. "Maybe…maybe we were wrong all this time," Arthur said, and John knew he wouldn't have said it in front of anyone else, except Charlotte maybe. "Maybe we should have never resisted change."

Far off, he looked off to the sky and the trees. "You really think we can just disappear, be normal good folk?" John wondered, because his doubt was still there. "Why you want us to be a family so much? You wanted to marry Abigail when I was gone once upon a time. You've been more of a father to the boy than I have. You have a woman now you should just go to and protect. With whatever time. Arthur…"

Why did it feel like he would cry? Arthur was barely a brother to him. Arthur watched as John left for a time and held it against him. But it was also the Arthur that saved him more than once, who told him he could be better.

He couldn't die. Not now. There was too much he had to do, least of all save him.

He wanted John and his family to be happy, Arthur said. "Break this life," he told him, "Live free, really, because we ain't free now. We're holding on to an old world, and once that leaves, family stays. Love stays. When you leave here, don't you dare look back. Take your family and build a house or something, something that will last. Hell, be a rancher for all I care. Just do something and make something that will grow."

"It ain't fair that I can have it when you can't. I want you to have your family too Arthur."

He just wanted one more day with her, he said. If he was going to die, and he was going to die, sooner rather than later, he'd want to ride to her one last time, go to the water where they always sat and made camp and lay his head on her shoulder. Go out like the main character in that play she talked about sometimes, die with her kiss on his lips. But also, he didn't want to do that to her, not again. He shouldn't even ride back again. It was all ending, he could hear his mother sometimes at night, see his father mocking him for following in daddy's footsteps. He had one lasting memory of her, laying in her bed, holding her, and he gave her one last memory of the two of them. It wouldn't be enough, but it was something. Better to let it stay at something small but beautiful than have it turn into another bitter memory.

"Bullshit," John said. "You ain't dying. You're gonna go back"

"John…"

He put a hand on John's shoulder, and John asked, "what if I want to save you right back?"

"I've had my quiet life with her. I've had more than I should have dared."

"But don't you want it for good?"

He faintly smiled. Charlotte said before he found out about his situation with the doctor that they would be a for good for each other, Arthur said.

"Don't be so awful to her", John said. "Have it." They both could have it. He was certain.

"You think you're cut out for it now all of a sudden?"

His answer was simple. "Don't know if you don't try."

Later, when more people started waking up, and Dutch mocked Arthur for being gone, John had gone to grab some water from the stream nearby. He asked Abigail to help him if she would. She suspected there was more to it than he let on, and she was right. When they got to the stream, he told her he wanted the two of them to have a house someday. They could live off the land and raise Jack. He wasn't going to leave her, he promised her. He'd be a good father, even if he wasn't sure how.

"Start now," Abigail said. "Do what you've been doing, Take him fishing."

"There's something else," John said. "I want to give Arthur the same thing. With whatever time, he deserves it. With her. Charlotte. That's her name."

She nodded. She admitted she wanted to meet the woman, the inspirer, the survivor. She didn't get to when she came to Shady Belle, as Susan sent her off too soon. However, she would want to sit down with her, talk with her for hours. To John, Charlotte was a good woman he didn't need to met to know, but he admitted he also wanted to talk to her one day all the same. He imagined bits and pieces of another life they could have had if things were different, a life they could have had five years from now, ten years from now. He and Arthur and their women, two couples meeting for Christmas or Easter, watching their children make friends and play in the yard. He never liked the way that looked before, never even thought of it. He changed. He liked it.

Like Abigail asked, John took Jack fishing. Instead of fishing Jack made a flower necklace for Abigail, but he listened to John talk about fishing with Uncle Hosea when he was his age, and he listened to Jack talk about his story books. He came back carrying Jack on his shoulders, Arthur noticing from the fire. He nodded at him, approving. He was proud already that he was beginning before they could begin for good.

They'd done so much together already, Arthur and him. It was ending now, John knew it, or this part anyway. There would be a separate sort of beginning. Yet he didn't see why they couldn't do this one last heist together all the same, this living like the simple and good folk did, living like the ones they loved.

You ain't gonna die, John vowed silently to Arthur. You're gonna have that for good.

Chapter 27

By the concept of time, Willard's Rest was her newest home, but was that what she would call the place where she aged ten lifetimes, learned a thousand ways to live with the land, and loved a hundred great loves? Because yes, in loving Arthur she experienced a thousand different love stories, gave her pieces of every romance she ever read. He was a gallant knight, a gentle and steadfast teacher. He was passionate fire, he was calm like the water, but also a storm like water. He was the sweetest sorrow of a goodbye, too many times. Even when he was saying goodbye he spoiled her.

In a single year she lived a hundred years, yet every day she found something new to fall in love with at her home. The smell of the pines the wind carried, the chill of the water on her bare skin, the small kit that scampered next to her mother fox in her clearing and allowed her to watch for a moment or two before making way back to their den. In a year she transcended, and in a year she learned what it meant not to only be a wife, but to be an equal. She was an equal with everything in regards to Arthur, save one. She longed for the day they would match in every sense. She still had the hope since he last left, even as his words and actions spoke otherwise, that they wouldn't. Could God be so cruel, to take him away when they had yet to be equal? Could be so cruel, to not come back?

She had been keeping track of days, but she stopped again. When Cal died she began to count the passing of time through the pangs of her stomach, or the small tufts of grass that grew over the dirt. She met Arthur and then time passed by way of his visits, and then eventually days. She was back again to the Charlotte that hadn't lived yet, counting time through pages of her journal, where she wrote both her story and pleas to Arthur, God, anyone to bring him back. Since the last time Arthur came, she tried to hold onto every touch, every kiss. Her lover, who only loved when he could and still was the sweetest.

She had never felt guilty before, even as she continued to wear her wedding ring, albeit on her right hand. She was a new Charlotte, a different Charlotte that came to Willard's Rest, that was why, or so she thought. That morning though, as her thoughts made her pass into a younger Charlotte, a naiver Charlotte before Willard's Rest, she asked Cal for forgiveness. She couldn't stop loving Arthur, no matter how many times he left her, and Cal never left, save once. Even if Arthur was to leave her for good, even if he had broken his word and he would not come back to her that final time, she'd burn for him still. How her burn ached.

She remembered what he had said, that moment before he parted with her that last time. You gave me my dream. He, unlike her, was content with what they had so far. He accepted he wouldn't receive anything more than what they had already given themselves. Charlotte wasn't so forgiving. She was selfish. She wanted more. She wasn't too proud to beg for it, to him, somewhere, to the outside, to anything. She spent her days as a pilgrim at her own home, begging.

Come back, she said to him, sitting by their favorite spot in the clearing by the water. I know what you said, and I accepted it, but it is not easy to be the one that waits. It's not fair that I am always the one that waits. These men in old stories, men like Arthur who masqueraded as an outlaw but were also knights, thought they had the harder duties. Charlotte, though she would always sing for Arthur and the good man underneath that always won over the evil bad man he claimed to be, was tired of singing songs of those men. She sung praises for Penelope and other women like her, the waiters. She sung for herself and her strength, and waited for the day when she could show him again just how strong she was, as strong as him. If only he would come back, one more time. She made sure to pour longings and promises in their parting kiss after he said that she gave him his dream. She kissed him to woo him back.

"Come back," she said, and she hoped the wind carried her prayers. Come back to me Arthur, she wrote on her journal in her lap. She prayed that her longing, tangible in the words she wrote and spoke would make him stronger, beat that vile thing that had made it's way into her once proud man and withering him. If he came back and it turned that he had given her his ailment, they could be brave together. She was tired of being brave alone. She was good at being alone, but that didn't mean she had to endure it.

Come back.

Arthur was made to believe he was alone, and he had to be alone with his ailment. She couldn't rely on their last conversation, her last kiss to him. Once he was away from her she knew his duty and self-sacrifice would win. Why, why did she not go with him, why did she allow herself to think she had to be the one that stayed? If she was his equal, she would have showed him.

Come back.

He wasn't alone. He could find a way back to her once everything was fixed, but nothing could ever become truly fixed. Would he remain and remain, hopelessly fixing until he became too frail and withered? She knew him. He would. He was too much of a good man, especially now.

Come back.

It wasn't that she wanted him to be selfish. She wanted him to be true to himself. But that man was wrestling with a giant called doubt.

Come back.

The wind blew her journal to the last few dozen pages. She hadn't realized how worn it was before, how the binding was tearing and the pages weren't sticking to the spine as they used to. Come back, she wrote. Come back to me Arthur. Again and again, she wrote, more furious than the last, her hand flying through her remaining blank pages. The wind was strong, and before she could catch one of the pages that ripped out, she could only watch as the wind ripped it's away across the stream. More pages began to fly from her journal with all the same messages, come back, come back, Arthur come back, don't leave me in this dark, cruel place where I can't find you. Some fell in the river, some were carried to the clearing behind her.

She lost all her blank pages. She didn't mourn.

"Come back," she said once more, for the final time. "Come back."

Chapter 28

Chapter Notes

Since last update was short, here's another.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Toward the end at the bottom of the mountain before the sunrise, he ran to his fate. He ran with some bitterness he had not gone to her first once more, but he had the battle before, and part of him thought he'd be granted a last vision of her. He gave John his hat and his satchel. Somewhere inside underneath the herbs and tonics he buried his journal. Funny how the first thing he thought was about how John could travel from where he left off and write his own story now. He smiled then, for reasons that it would take too long to explain to John, too long to explain that was the trappings of falling for Charlotte—that her thinking and dreaming of stories had moved to him. He even wanted to make John promise he would write his own story, and build that house they talked about. Some other life, Arthur would have wanted to visit. Some other life he would have come so often it annoyed both John and Abigail.

"Protect Charlotte," he asked. "Make sure she doesn't have it. Please."

"Brother," John said, looking as both himself and another Arthur didn't recognize—a new version of his own self he didn't get a lot of time with. "You can go to her."

"Go now," Arthur urged.

"Come with me. Forget Micah. Come with me. I'll take you to her."

He admitted it. He wanted to go. Go back to her, beautiful her, at her home at Willard's Rest. She was waiting for him. It had been so unfair of him to make her wait all this time. Had he done enough the last time he was with her? Had he kissed her hard enough, made love to her in such a way that every time she touched her thigh or her shoulder, she'd remember his hands? He couldn't be sure. But could he do it, go back and find her and make sure? His body was betraying him. Could he be unfair to her, one last time? He lost Peppermint, he'd have to travel on foot, but his will was strong. He could find a way back.

"I'll go to her," Arthur said, fighting the pain in his chest, the ache everywhere. It was only when he said it did he know it couldn't be true.

He ached and yet the lie stung most of all. "It ain't fair," he said, breaking. "I've always been the one to come to her."

"Arthur—"

"You have to go to your family." He couldn't let Abigail or Jack feel the heartbreak of a blank page, or the death of a for good. It killed him more than what he had.

"Arthur—"

He urged John again, go, go to your woman and your son, grabbing his shoulders and looking into his eyes. Maybe, maybe he would have taken up John's offer if Abigail didn't know John was alive, but he watched her heart break when he told her what happened after saving her in Van Horn, and he couldn't bear to think about her mourning. There was no time for mourning now when she could be happy. He had to make sure Micah wouldn't go after them…damn him to hell. He had to make sure he kept his promise. John's life had to start now.

He wasn't part of it anymore.

He pulled himself away, John listening for once in his life and not following. All this talk he and Charlotte had of their for good. Maybe it began the moment he met her. It eased him somewhat as he ascended the mountain, that they already had time to build something and grow. Either that or that was the moment he and Charlotte were starting their for good, because he was almost finally free. It was looking like it would be shorter than either of them wanted, and he wept a few silent tears, thinking she'd never knew it begun if his thoughts weren't fantasies and he'd make his way back, but as he realized there was nowhere to go but up now, even with each labored breath that could barely come out, even each step became harder and harder, he climbed. Micah couldn't hurt him when he found him, he had been hurt in ways that mattered before, and what hurt the most was something Micah could never touch. Arthur was stronger than Micah ever was. He would have laughed too, had he had it in him, told him he got beat by a man that was halfway dead.

When Dutch came, he told him he tried. He tried and he paved the way for John to run and then fly while he was barely starting to crawl, but then again, he thought of every time he was with Charlotte. Being with her was like another kind of soaring, and it was enough. It wasn't a for good, but it was flying, and he saw her next to him as he drifted, alone, and then not alone. Alone but not alone, he was there with his ghosts. They wouldn't hurt him anymore, or John, or any one of them. Hosea was near him, Lenny, his mother, his son with Eliza. Take your time, he said to a vision of her, sweet her. I'll see you soon. I never believed in Heaven before you, but I'll see you there.

He waited like a baby waited for their first breath, but he kept waiting and waiting for some absolution that looked different to everyone. He wanted sleep. He wanted racing heart to let him rest, and he wanted to run to her. But it was so much easier to dream, the sun breaking through the sky. He waited without knowing what he was waiting for. Was this hell then, a wanting of rest but never being able to get it? He drifted, he dreamed. He dreamed mostly of her and standing in a field of wildflowers, and he tried to take her hand, lead her to their for good, but he did not rest.

Close your eyes, he told himself. Drift away. Dream.

Arthur. Stay.

It wasn't an intrusion, nor was it his voice compelling him to stay. It was no one's voice, and the voice of everyone he ever loved. They were telling him, don't drift, stay. Stay and go back.

"Tired," he said to no one. "So tired,"

Not time yet. There's something you need to know. Stay. Stay and see.

He stayed. For now, he stayed.

Chapter End Notes

Sorry for the cliffhanger!

Chapter 29

Chapter Notes

See the end of the chapter for notes

She woke that morning with a disquiet, roamed the whole day through her home and her clearing, and when at last she couldn't take it, when at last when she decided it was time to ride and find him, he came to her. She would have searched a thousand years if she had to, and that would have been her legend, to forever roam the mountain, calling her lover's name. But legends were to be made another day.

She didn't need to find him. John brought him to her.

He stole a horse, he said, Peppermint and his own horse were killed, and he tossed a stack of Arthur's bills at the man's feet to make up for the horse and then some for the trouble. He didn't know why he thought to tell Charlotte this as the two of them carried a bruised, broken, beaten Arthur inside, but it seemed important for her to know.

"John," Charlotte said, Arthur's arm slung around her shoulder as she opened the door to her home, "it's good to meet you too."

Charlotte and John led Arthur to her bed. His face swelled with a purple bruise under his eye, and as she scrambled for bandages in her kitchen, herbs and health tonics John prattled about what happened—the last heist in San Denis on the train, the money, getting shot and losing the gang before finding his way back to Beaver Hollow, only to find that the Pinkertons took Abigail. Arthur rescued her and sent Abigail and Jack to Copperhead Landing with Sadie he said, only for him to send John away back to his family along the side of the mountain as they fled together.

"Why didn't you go to your wife?" Charlotte asked, turning from rummaging through her supply of herbs and tonics in the cabinet to John.

"We got time after this."

She couldn't help it. Her arms flung around him—John Marston, whom Arthur called his rival and his friend before, and man he admitted he had been jealous of, because he had his family that Arthur always wanted. John patted her back as a father would comfort a crying daughter, as whatever tears that had been behind her eyes those past few days since her journal's pages scattered to the wind no longer wanted to be held back. He patted her back as she shook, telling her it was all going to turn out. Arthur had her now, this time for good.

"For good," she muttered, a prayer, still in his embrace. How long will that be?

John put his hands on her shoulders—hands not unlike Arthur's—and told her he needed their help. Drying her tears she nodded, carrying a bundle of herbs and tonics to the bedside table. Arthur's breathing was labored, and he hadn't spoke a single word since they carried him from the stolen horse to the cabin, but he was breathing and that was all that mattered. As John suggested and something he could attest to, a swig of health tonic against the scraps and bruises helped the healing. Charlotte did just that, gentle against the bruises on his face and wiping the sweat from his brow. She mashed together the English mace and yarrow he had selflessly given her not long ago—from Rains Fall, he said, the chief of the Waipiti Tribe. He said it would help, and she gave it back to him, urging him to eat it. Somewhere between sleep and consciousness—she would not call it death—he took the herbs.

"Arthur," Charlotte muttered, "you're safe now."

She saw it, the faintest of smiles on his lips as she knelt by the bed, John hovering over them. "Arthur," she called again, grabbing his hand. "I won't let anything happen to you, ever again."

"I saw the sunrise."

His voiced seemed an echo, far off, but they could hear him and he could hear them. He wasn't so far off, and he wasn't lost. He was there, and Charlotte squeezed his hand as they waited longer, waited for more. They got it, Arthur giving the faintest of laughs—the sweetest sound— and a boast. He got John out. He let him live.

"Arthur, I'm here," John answered behind Charlotte. "Know who I brought you to?"

"You're a damn fool John Marston. You should have gone."

"Yeah, I am a fool, but one that took you to your woman."

He sighed, eyes opening ever so slightly. He thanked John, a thousand other thank yous behind his eyes, thank yous that were mountains and meadows that were impossible to voice. She and John, they could only see.

They continued to see, Arthur's eyes drifting from John to Charlotte. It took precious energy, but he raised his hand to caress her cheek, wipe away that silent tear she didn't even know escaped. After everything, after his long night of hell, he was unshaken. He had done so much, helped so many that included her own self, loved so many including her own self, that perhaps it would have been gentler to let him rest, be with him until he fell asleep for good. She loved him and she would remember him, write his story. Maybe it was enough.

"I tried Charlotte," he muttered. "I did. I haven't lived the best life, haven't done so much good, but it was mine."

His hair had gotten a little long. She brushed it away from his face. "I know darling."

"Have you…have you coughed at all?"

"A little," she said. "But dear, it could be anything. Doctor says so long as I don't catch anything else, I should be fine. If I have it, it won't appear."

"Good," he breathed, taking her hand again. "I can rest."

She squeezed his hand tightly. "Arthur—"

"I love you."

A love confession at the beside. She'd heard about those, had one before in another life. She knew what they meant.

Not today.

"Arthur," she said, gentle, unyielding. "Forgive me. But this isn't your goodbye."

He surprised her. He knew, he admitted, only somewhat defeated. They told him to stay.

"They" John echoed. "Arthur, who told you to stay?"

About to speak, he closed his eyes again, drifting. He slept, and that was how he remained, one hour passing, and then another and another. Her room, their room, turned to a ward of healing in those hours, Charlotte passing the time by dressing his bruises again, smoothing away damp hair from his face and making him as comfortable as she could, taking off the blue satin vest she bought him ten years ago in Saint Denis. It ripped along the side, she numbly noticed, she would have to replace it. Eventually after unbuttoning his shirt and removing his boots, blanketing him, she moved her rocking chair to her bedside so she could sit by him, holding his hand, waking him every hour to make him drink a tonic. John helped as he could, pacing about her home, bringing her tonics and health cures, even some salted venison when she noted she hadn't eaten much in a while. She wanted to tell him, go, go back to your wife, for she knew the pain of thinking her mate was gone and the pain of thinking you were alone, as she had experienced it twice already. But Abigail didn't need to think she was alone, and Charlotte wanted her to be alright. Yet every time she thought to tell John to go home, she regarded his furrowed brows, his pacing and his fidgeting hands. He was as worried as she was, that Arthur would stop breathing, that one cough would rack his body and be too much for him to handle. She couldn't tell him to leave. Arthur was his brother.

Eventually, after another hour passed, Charlotte found herself laughing at the sound, that any other time would have been a nuisance—that light sound of Arthur snoring. The one drawback to sleeping with him was sometimes when he drank or was in deep sleep, he could keep her awake with his snores, and yet it became the sweetest and most cherished sound, sweeter than even his earlier laugh, that she fell by his bedside and sobbed. The worst was over, God, the spirits of the forest, or however it was that spoke to Arthur on the mountain, through something as benign as the sound of his deep sleep, that he would be alright and he would not die in her bed. Her hands before could not save Cal, but now, experienced, lived, they had saved Arthur.

"You're alright," she told his sleeping form, pressing a kiss to his hand. "Thank God…you're alright. You'll live. We have more time, darling. Love." She didn't know how long it was, but any time with him was precious. She'd labor a thousand years for one day with him.

Eased enough to leave his side for a moment, Charlotte tried to find the man that made it all possible, but John wasn't in the cabin. She found him outside, his back turned toward her, smoking a cigarette. She gathered her skirts and sat by his side as he offered her one. She took it, John lighting it for her. "One of Arthur's," he said.

"He probably shouldn't smoke anymore," Charlotte said as he inhaled, thinking she shouldn't either while she was at it.

"You think so?"

"We're inhaling all this," she replied, a cloud of smoke around them. "That can't be good."

John supposed she was right, finishing and stomping the light out, Charlotte following. They spent the morning together in turning her bedroom into a place of healing, neither sleeping in turn. She imagined John got less sleep than she did, and she barely slept at all. It was a new day, deep in the afternoon when it was the hottest out.

"Are you hurt?" she asked him. "You said you were shot."

"Bullet grazed me," he said. "Worst it did was separate me from everyone else in Saint Denis. I'll be alright."

"John. Thank you again."

He nodded, his brown eyes soft. "Without you, I don't think he would have wanted my family and I together half as much."

He was Jack's father, she recalled. Jack was the one that named Peppermint.

"He was the first one that knew about you," John said, referring to Jack. "I…I want to thank you. For everything."

"I only fell in love," she replied, deprecating her feat. To some it was unremarkable. Not to her.

It was autumn, she noticed faintly. Had she noticed it earlier it was along with a blur of other truisms, such as Arthur may not come back to her. Yet that proved not to be true, but one thing she could count on was that the seasons would always change, and she would change with them. Autumn at her Willard's Rest was a paint box of burnt oranges and reds along the trees, the air crisper. She had it in her before that nature would never change, it would always be providing and unforgiving, yet the proof was that it was always changing. That was most comforting of all.

"I watched my husband die," she muttered, unsure why she was telling him this, but thinking it had to do with the change. Didn't Cal pass when the leaves were turning? "He was hunting a little farther from here, past the clearing where I hunt now. One of his traps lured a bear. It...I had never seen so much blood before, and he barely managed to come home to me. I told him before I should go with him…but…he insisted I stay. I—I should have been there. I could have helped. Maybe."

She closed her eyes. Had she gone, they may have both been dead. "I tried, I tried to keep him alive," she said, "but he died two days later."

"Wait. That grave. You carried him out, all the way to that grave?"

She nodded.

"How?"

"I used more strength then I thought I ever had," she said.

"Ma'am. I'm so—"

"Charlotte," she said. "Call me Charlotte."

He obliged, and she told him that if he had brought Arthur home to her, and she could not have saved him…

"You did though," John promised, stopping her. "You saved him."

"We did."

She took his hand like a sister might have, and therein was why she could tell him everything. They both loved Arthur Morgan.

Arthur was still asleep and snoring slightly when they came back in. John didn't want to wake him back up, but he didn't want to leave without reminding him once more that yes, he was a damn fool and proud of it. Charlotte promised John she'd tell him. It was more important he go back to Abigail and Jack.

"They need me," he agreed. "Arthur's in good hands."

Like she did for Arthur, she packed him a small bag of food for his travels, just some venison and fruit, an extra ground coffee. Before he mounted his horse, she went back to her home for one more thing, bringing it back to John. She handed him what he left in her kitchen, Arthur's hat and satchel.

"I can't keep that," he said. "It should be yours."

"He gave it all to you," she replied, sticking the hat on his head, though she admitted she would miss it. She liked to take it from Arthur when she felt coquettish, don it and pretend to be him.

"That's a lot of money in there—"

"I have everything I would ever need," she assured. "Take the money and help your family. You didn't exactly get Dutch's money."

It wasn't worth it, he said, though he took the satchel with all Arthur's money, thanking Charlotte. It would help, he knew. She then asked what would they do, if they would stay in New Hanover or elsewhere.

"We're wanted," John said. "We're going have to disappear from here, for a while anyway. I reckon the Pinkertons will think Arthur died, but I wouldn't risk it. He'll have to lay low for a bit."

He couldn't exactly do much now, but Charlotte understood. "What do you think you'll do?" John asked her.

"I'd like to stay," she admitted, breathing in the autumn's crisp air. "But I worry. My brother knows of a sanatorium near Boston. Perhaps I should take him to one. And if it gets colder…" She had heard the warm air helped tuberculosis patients some.

"I don't know how long it'll be," John said. "But I hope it's a long for good for the both of you."

"John. I'll tell him you love him."

He didn't cry as they embraced before they parted, but she thought that he would to Abigail later when they were alone. As for Charlotte, she went back to her room, to Arthur's side, sitting on her rocking chair, waiting for him to wake. She'd waited a thousand years already. What was a little more?

With the evening sun through the window, she was finally able to rest.

Chapter End Notes

BAM! Yep, I was NOT going to let Arthur die!!!

At first I was heading in that direction, and once the story is finished (not too much longer now!) I'll tell ya'll the original ending. However, I just couldn't do that to Arthur for this particular story :)

Some side notes, I know *maybe* it's unrealistic for Arthur to survive the mountain, but the man had already lived through so much, that who's to say a little TLC wouldn't bring him back? Lol.

Also, I did some research about smoking, and it wasn't until the fifties that it became noted in the mainstream that it wasn't good for you.

Chapter 30

Chapter Notes

Happy thirtieth chapter!

See the end of the chapter for more notes

She was singing when he woke up.

Barefoot, he stumbled from the bed to the kitchen. She didn't hear him, concentrating on the words as she stooped to the hearth, stirring a pot of stew. Well the voyage is long, and the winds don't blow, she sang, the cabin not big enough for her voice, and it's time for us to leave her.

She could have been a sailor like her grandfather. He had never seen the ocean like the sailors did before Guarma, and the experience thoroughly removed any wish he may have had to sail the seven seas. Far as he saw, he could spend his whole life roaming the west and he'd never see everything. He lived that life everyday and knew it to be true. There was never any regret in what he didn't see, only appreciation for what he did see. He was made for that life, and only the one. Charlotte though was different. She could have been a sailor, a society lady, a writer, a frontierswoman, a pioneer, a goddess. She blended into her choices, and she chose to be with him. She saved him, along with a fool named John Marston. He brought him back home.

Home. For good. He watched her work, throw in a bit of thyme and sage into the large pot over the fire, and he basked over his ability to stand, his easy breathing. He would have thought it was Heaven if not for the swollen cheek. That was his heaven, waking up to her singing. Now it was his for good.

She turned. Her eyes widened, and she smiled at the sight of him, coming over and falling into his arms. They swayed back and forth ever so slightly, catching each other in a small dance. She sighed, breathing him in, making sure he was real. He was, he reminded with a kiss against the top of her head, and he caught the sweet and earthy smell of wildflowers in her hair. She broke the embrace to look at him, caressing his face with her worn and gentle hands. Her eyes looked more like chocolate in the morning compared to coffee. Brown eyes used to be just brown eyes before her. He never knew how many shades their could be. Hers were his favorite.

"You look good," she said, lifting herself on her tiptoes to kiss his forehead, her finger tips against the back of his neck and catching the strands of hair he had no idea had gotten so long. "Arthur."

"Don't lie. I look like hell."

She combed his disarrayed hair. "You look alive," she said. To her, that was all that mattered.

She tended the swelling on his face—reminders of what happened, and made him take more medicine and eat a small helping of stew. He wanted coffee but she gave him water, only relenting with giving him a small sip of her own cup after her drank the glass of water dry. He felt like he was walking through soup, he said. Still uneasy, but alive. He felt like he did as he rode to Saint Denis with John before it all started. It wasn't the greatest, but he was no longer on the mountain, both literally and less literally.

"Where is John?" Arthur asked. "I saw him."

"He went back to his family, like you wanted. He took your bag and your hat."

"The money?"

She nodded.

"Good."

He wanted to find him, though he wasn't sure if he would slap him or thank him. Both if he could. From across the table Charlotte took his hand. Her eyes were soft, and she took him into a pastel life, blurry and out-of-focus. It may prove to be too good for him, and yet he was in a sort of happiness that didn't make him want to jump for joy—not that he could if he wanted—but a happiness that eased and lulled him. Even if it wouldn't always be that way, for now, it was all perfect.

Charlotte spoke of how she and Cal planned on getting a washing basin eventually, but they never did. At any rate, bathing in the river wasn't too much of a nuisance. Then however, she apologized for not having a washing basin. But she thought he would feel better if he cleaned up. He agreed, and he rode Buell to the river, Charlotte walking and holding his reins. She carried some of his washed clothes he must have left at her home, and a bar of lye soap. When they made it to the river she waited by the bank until he, waist deep in the chilly water, stretched out his hand in a certain loneliness. Smirking and rising, she dropped her skirts, unbuttoned her collared shirt, and let loose her hair. She submerged her feet, shivering, but wadding deeper into the water and better adjusting to the slight chill.

"I hope a passerby doesn't come around," she said with a small laugh, joining his side.

"Didn't stop you before."

She chuckled as if they were an old man and woman remembering and recreating a carefree experience from their youth, and not two who were only so far removed from the moments where the water became their bed to make love. They weren't so adventurous then, as Charlotte had a mind to keep him well, but he thought about a later time as she helped him bathe, kneading the lye soap into his back and other such hard to reach places, kissing his back when she was through, wrapping her arms around his middle. Small intimate threads peppered throughout the mundane task struck him the most. The simple life wasn't so mundane with her. She made the water turn from chilly to refreshing. Eventually, Arthur dunked his head, Charlotte joining him. They were only underwater for so long, and they held each other still. With now shiny hair, he wanted to stay longer, but relented to her request to keep him warm and by the fire. With their wet heads and his clean clothes that's where they went, Charlotte feeding Buell before joining him inside. Inside, she allowed him a full cup of coffee to warm up.

When it was late afternoon, she worked in the garden and went hunting after a while, and to pass the time he sat on her front porch. He read some of her books he never had time to read before, as time with her was more precious. He turned the pages of Shakespeare and Aristotle, more so thumbing through the latter than actually reading it page by page. Charlotte would have to read it with him, teach him. He thought about journaling, but John had his journal somewhere in his satchel. When he gave it to him, he was sure he would die. Now his thoughts were like all those blank pages.
And he wondered, how exactly were they going to fill their blank pages?

Yet he was speaking as if it was all guaranteed. He was reminded it wasn't with a coughing fit that occurred when Charlotte was preparing dinner, but with hot broth and herbs it settled. She turned pale afterward, holding onto him as if her hands kept him from death. In a way they did, but he squeezed her hand, promised that though these things would happen, he could get through them. He wasn't leaving her anymore. He'd never be far from her healing hands.

"Don't leave me," she said. "I know you can't promise, but—"

"I promise."

She kissed him, her assurance of belief.

They ate a somewhat uneasy dinner, uneasy not because of the company or an uncertainty of what to say (they talked about hunting, game, and the weather.) but that they didn't know how to address the subject of time that his lungs so clearly reminded wasn't a guarantee. She saved him, and he felt as well as he could, though he still saw everything save Charlotte with a nightmarish tint of doom—the temporariness of his life. He was supposed to die on the mountain.

"I was ready to die," he even said. "I wasn't so afraid anymore."

From across the table, Charlotte's eyes were like the warmth of coffee, tenderly observing him and everything that happened. Living freely under her gaze, he found himself scratching his beard—the length had gotten irritating—and as if she read his thoughts, she offered trimming it for him. He agreed and she found Cal's old sheers, using an old tablecloth to wrap about his neck and catch any falling hair. She was slow and methodical, brows bent in concentration as she smoothed away fallen bits as she trimmed.

"Would you prefer me clean shaven?" he asked. "Is it rough when I kiss you?"

She shook her head, cheeks blooming with red and pink. "I like the feeling of it. Especially on my thighs."

So she kept a little beard on him. He didn't mind, whatever the lady wanted. Her opinion was the only that mattered.

She trimmed his hair too, bringing a mirror after for him to look at her work. He praised her skills, setting the mirror down on the table. He would help her with the dishes, he said, then they could maybe sit outside and talk a while. She shook her head. Before him she kneeled, taking his hand, spreading her palms against his thighs as if she was a pilgrim seeking prayer.

There was no need. "Charlotte," he said. "I…I'm glad I'm here."

She laid her head in his lap. "I know."

"I was ready, but something kept me."

She remembered him saying that. "It wasn't your time yet."

"We don't know how much time that bought me."

She kissed his open palms. "It's more than I could have ever dreamed."

They thought they'd turn in early after that. The bed hardly creaked, he was slow with his hands, slow to move, savoring each inch of blissful encasing. Part of it was lethargy, the other was a need for slow. When she laid naked in his arms after, he drifted to sleep, blissfully thinking how the morning wouldn't take him from her.

Still, when he woke the next morning, there was a stirring of dread until he remembered, and then there was only softness. The routine they began the previous day continued with remarkable monotony. In the afternoon he offered to help her in the garden, though she declined. She wanted him better and well rested, and picking vegetables was something she didn't mind doing on her own.

So he read, barefoot and with his shirt unbuttoned at the top while she pulled carrots from the small harvest. She wore a bonnet over her braided hair with her calico dress, looking like some sort of painting by some sort of master Charles Chatenay studied before his artistic subjects had less clothes. Arthur had those own sorts of paintings in his mind from the night before, and as she came to the porch with her basket of carrots for her stew, he was about to suggest an early evening before Alexander showed up on his expensive black Arabian.

He couldn't believe it, he said as he stared at the two of them, pretty as a pastoral painting. He read the papers of the Van der Linde's gang escaping, and how a certain Arthur Morgan was thought to be dead. He even brought one for Charlotte to read—of which she scanned and had a rather good laugh at.

"As you can see," she said, "he's very much not dead."

"What happened?" Alexander asked. "How are you still alive?"

"Your sister and a fool," Arthur replied, though he kept to himself how it was a fool he loved very much.

"What are you going to do now?" Alexander asked. "Live here resting on your laurels? Making wine and living in unmarried sin? You still have the TB," he reminded with a stern eye. "Charlotte…if you don't have it now you may soon. You must go a sanatorium."

Alexander continued to talk, mentioning some home down in Florida that had treatments for TB patients. Before he left Charlotte promised she would consider it, and Arthur would have asked inside if that was the truth had she not wrapped her arms around him inside the house. He kissed her after for no reason at all, but when he looked at where he started, he saw every reason why he should kiss her every chance he got.

During the night, after sweet words from her beckoned a sweet end, he was lulled to sleep through his thinking. He wouldn't have to go again in the morning. He wouldn't have to go anywhere without her again. He thought of asking if they should go to Copperhead Landing to find John, but judging by the paper Alexander brought, it wouldn't be safe. John would have to disappear, and he would have to remain hidden. Still, he wished he could tell him how much of a fool he was again, how much he could thank John for whatever time he bought him.

It was as Charlotte said as she laid in his arms after they made love that night. It would take time to learn to accept he hadn't died on the mountain. He wanted a heroic death maybe, he said, like the ones in the books, just something better than what his father had. Yet as Charlotte said, avoiding a heroic death could lead to a heroic living, working with the land, planting seeds for a garden someone fifty years from where they stood would see. Even if he was still guilty, that didn't mean there wouldn't be a someday when he could just live. And all their blank pages, however many they had left, could be written gently and methodically, with love.

Chapter End Notes

Five more chapters to go! Just tying some loose ends, carrying on the domestic bliss because I can 3

Chapter 31

Chapter Notes

See the end of the chapter for notes

When they woke, he tickled her cheek with the light scratch of his beard with a feather kiss and a "good morning." It was her favorite way to wake. Yet when she rose to kiss him and continue her favorite way of waking, she paused when a curious pang in her stomach made itself known. Her hand clutching her stomach, he asked what was wrong, remarking she looked unusually pale.

She barely had time to fly from the bed and toss on her discarded nightgown before she dashed from the house to the other side of the garden in her bare feet, Arthur coming to her side moments later. There it was. All her grand ideas where they would kiss each other good morning and maybe more on the second day of their for good all dissolved when the contents of her stomach decided they didn't want to remain there any longer. The spell wasn't long, but she cursed her stomach for ruining a pleasant morning, praying it wouldn't be a reoccurring ailment. Curse all the irony in the world that she would be ill after everything that happened. Arthur rubbed her back, and took a damp compress from the cabin to wipe her face.

"Don't worry about it," he said. "you look beautiful."

So did he. His cheeks were still thin, but color was returning. She sought to the rest of his healing to be, there at their home. Letting her head rest against she shoulder, she breathed gently the moment in, the world finally stopping it's spinning.

"What was that?" he asked. "Was it the stew?"

"I don't know," she admitted. "Last time this happened I ate those poisoned berries. I haven't had them since."

"Have you felt ill?"

She shook her head. "There's been nothing wrong. Nothing out of the ordinary."

"Nothing at all?"

A pause, and then a longer one when she considered her ordinary. And then, it all dawned on her.

Realization was slow, then swift. He called her name. and apologized for escaping, thinking it couldn't have been true. It never happened before. And yet, she stood on the ground of a home she maintained, stood on a land she learned to live off of. She was looking into his blue eyes. She loved him.

The impossible didn't have to be impossible. How could it, when their love created more than she ever hoped.

And now…

"Charlotte?"

She put her hands on his shoulders, said his name. Then, at last, she understood what so many had understood before her, that the world changed when you knew. Arthur, against all odds, had even become more beautiful, more defined in her eyes, with his blue eyes all the more vibrant.

She told him, so he could see too. "I think I'm pregnant."

His dawning was subtler until it was all it once. It was his hardship and everything from before that prevented the two of them to begin dancing to the family they would have. He even asked if it was possible. "The way we do things? Of course," she replied.

She had been smiling for their happiness, until the dawning turned to a darkness, toward a previous sorrow. It had never happened with Cal. She thought it to be a defect of her own self, that a seed couldn't grow where he planted. Perhaps it was the two of them, or perhaps there was no reason to deem her body at fault for their years together. Perhaps it wasn't in their pages as a couple. Fate was fickle and random. Now was their time, at last.

She hadn't bled, she told Arthur, and that was what made her pause earlier. That, and she knew an upset stomach in the morning was a sign. And when they were together they were unabashed, unashamed. All the signs pointed toward it, yet strangely, she put the most stock in her intuition. She simply knew, that was that.

"Arthur, this may not have been what you wanted, but darling. Dear. I..." She held him tighter. It was easier to speak that way. "Without knowing why other than it was customary for a husband and wife, I wanted a child. When it didn't happen, I learned to be happy without. But now…"

What to say to a dream you had learned to let go of? Nothing to say, other than to laugh, to cry, to celebrate. "I could dance," she said. "I could cry. I could write. Darling…love. Before it was harder. But I know what to write now. It'll all be for her."

"Her?" He inquired, raising his brows.

"A feeling." It was like all her others. She just knew.

Before he came for good, they shared hopes for a future with little direction in that future. It was only a possibility. Now there was her, a seed that would grow. There was the shade of her hair that would between black and dark blonde. There was the wonder of what she would feel like in her arms, what she would do after they raised her to live off the land and survive. There were her hazel eyes between brown and blue.

Arthur held her face in his lived hands, seeing what she saw. She never loved him so much before.

"No more crying," he asked of her. "Only dancing."

Wind was their music, the sounds of the outside. He spun her in his ungainly, well-worn way of the cowboys, thieves, and lovers, a dance they knew well. She did cry, a little, and he kissed them away before kissing her, outside and back inside in their own little world. He put his hand on her stomach and then cried too tears of the same strain but a different tune, in remembrance of Eliza and Isaac—the last and only time he put his hands against the spark of life created. Too, he cried in joy. "No more crying, only dancing," she told him, and they held each other after for a long while, until he asked her what they would do.

It perplexed her, at first. To her it seemed as if they would do what they had been doing—living and filling blank pages. But he reminded, if this was true—and he knew it was, because she knew—then he needed to be as well as he could.

"Then we know what must happen," Charlotte whispered, with that faint sorrow. "We have to leave here."

"To the sanatorium?"

She pressed her palms against his beating heart. "Alexander spoke highly of the one in Florida. Grimwood Cottage, he called it. I can take us there, and we'll be by the water."

"Grimwood Cottage? Sounds cheery."

She smirked, the irony of the name not beyond her. "We'll be by the sea. And you'll have me."

His rhyming girl, beautiful, brave woman, he called her. He didn't much care for the sea, but he asked perhaps she could help him find the beauty in the vast blue.

"But what of this place?" he asked.

"We'll come back," she vowed. "I want her to know it. Perhaps Alexander can take care of it, come every so often to see to things. But I want her to know. I want all of our children to know."

"Then I have to live."

She nodded, grasping onto him, remembering how precious the moment was, how easily she could have lost him.

"Charlotte. There is one thing."

He took a deep breath, and he sunk to one knee, holding her hand. He had no ring for her—had he would have known he would have asked John to take the rings out of his satchel. Even if they were from a different time in his life, they were better than nothing. But if she could perhaps look past that, it would do him no greater honor if she would join him in marriage, and become his wife.

She sunk to the ground with him, reminding him they stood on equal ground as husband and wife. She held his hands in hers, a promise that he didn't have nothing. They had everything when they were together.

"I'll marry you," she said. "I will marry you, love you, write it out, every day. All the rest of my blank pages…they're yours."

Together, they imprinted every part of their home together, committed it to memory. They wrote together outside in a journal they now shared. They wrote not of an ending, but of a new beginning.

They were gone before John could find them again.

Chapter End Notes

A couple more short chapters left! :D

Grimwood Cottage isn't a real place in Florida, but honestly I just envisioned the two of them near a beach! :)

Chapter 32

Chapter Notes

Long chapter with a lot. Hope you enjoy!

They signed papers denoting their marriage on the eve of the New Year, celebrating after with a drink at the saloon and a song played on the piano about lovers and dreamers. Other lovers kissed when the old year made way for the new, while some endured lover's quarrels or spoke of hopes for the new century. Arthur, his hand pressed to Charlotte's belly, stooped to kiss her parted lips. They had kissed through two centuries. No matter what happened after, at the sanatorium or later when they decided to leave to an uncertain for good, nothing would change that. Hidden away in their room after, her hands against his chest, she whispered, "we've transcended, you and I," and all there was the question of what now?

It began, the wat now, after they made it to Florida, south of New Hanover, at the time when Florida was it's own sort of uncharted frontier. The rain perplexed them the most—there could be bright sun and a clear day with rain still falling from the sky. The land was also a swampy marsh much like Lemoyne, but once at their destination of Tampa, there was no mistaking the city for what it was, a city with it's own sort of carelessness akin to cities by the sea. At their destination, Grimwood Cottage, a place of healing and rest for those with tuberculosis, Arthur registered as a patient. Curiously, his wife paid, rather than he.

From the moment the couple stepped foot on Grimwood, rumors abounded about Mr. and Mrs. Kilgore. Though they claimed they signed papers at Valentine that called them man and wife, many patients and doctors suspected their planned religious ceremony to be conducted by a certain Sister Calderon a few months into Mr. Kilgore's stay was secretly their first and only wedding. None of them asked to see the papers—they were too proud for that—though that surely would have solved the mystery. Much for fun for them to speculate. Surely Mrs. Kilgore had fallen for some wayward cowboy during a holiday stay in the mountains to become pregnant, scandalizing her family and forcing her to flee. Where the money came from was anyone's guess, and the consensus was he stole what they had. No one suspected any part of the truth, that Charlotte and Arthur paved their way to each other, fought for each other, and were finally able to indulge in that sweetness often called rest.
One of the couple's onlookers, Mrs. Cutler, found immense pleasure in gossiping about the curious couple to her husband, Mr. James Cutler, as he took his morning walks around the sanatorium's perimeter. "She's a queer sort of woman," Mrs. Cutler said, arm in arm with James. "The other day she hiked up her skirts and ran into the water by the beach."

"I saw that" Mr. Cutler said, as his room in the sanatorium gave a view of the beach. Truthfully however, the ordeal made him laugh. Good for her, he even thought.

Mrs. Cutler paid it no mind. "And did you see her hair? She wears a braid. I thought it ill fashion for married women to wear a braid. She says she's from Chicago. Surely she would know such a thing…"

"You caught me. I'm a witch."

Mr. and Mrs. Cutler turned, gaping, though the missus gaped far more than the husband, as he had grown to appreciate the woman's steadfast boldness. To him, it was no surprise that there stood Charlotte Kilgore, toying with her long braid and dressed in pale blue, arm in arm with Mr. Kilgore.

"I'm the witch Morgan le Fey, and he is King Arthur," Charlotte said, mischievous glints in her eyes.

"They were brother and sister," Mr. Kilgore reminded under his breath.

"Then I am the lady of the lake and lady of the seas then," Mrs. Kilgore amended without faltering. "Yet still, a witch. Shh though, please."

The witch of Grimwood became her epithet, though Mr. and Mrs. Kilgore kept their secrets inside their home on the other side of Grimwood Cottage, and their bed. Charlotte Kilgore purchased the home in part because of its nearness to the sanatorium, but the beachside access was part of the appeal. Every morning Arthur and Charlotte walked barefoot in the sand and let the water tickle their bare feet, and though they drew the ire from Mrs. Cutler and other onlookers, no one could deny they were blissfully happy, even if Charlotte sensed something deeper was beyond the surface, though after everything that happened, she knew he would tell her when he was ready. And at any rate, married or otherwise, Sister Elena Calderon deemed that their happiness was more important than a piece of paper joining them in marriage.

Sister Elena Calderon's own arrival to Grimwood was unexpected, but nevertheless, a welcome surprise to the inmates—Arthur Kilgore in particularly, who the sister called Arthur Morgan. After finishing her missionary work in Mexico, she heard of a sanatorium in Tampa Florida that treated tuberculosis patients. In honor of a friend she used to know, she sought to do more good works there. She cried out in delighted surprise when she entered one of the rooms to find Arthur sitting by the window, his wife at his side. He looked different in more ways than one. He was plains and mountain air, and he too assured he was more suited for places with far less sand, their hands clasping together in happiness of finding a former friend. And, Sister Calderon said, he looked better. Much better.
And then Arthur introduced the good woman before him, the goddess if he could be so blasphemous and bold to call her such, his lover, his savior, the mother of his child. He kept it to himself that it was another thing that worried him in the list of things that worried him, not being a good father.

Sister Calderon looked on at Charlotte, proud of a woman she should have hardly known, but didn't. A plainswoman and survivor, she said, that took a gamble and survived.

"I fell in love," Charlotte said with the happiest of defeats.

And yet, her lover appeared melancholy. When asked by the Sister, he said he had only been thinking.

"Of what?" Sister Calderon inquired.

At the inquiries of the two women who already knew so many of his secrets, he told them everything. He thought it would get better, this pit in his stomach. He called it guilt, but he couldn't be sure. He felt sick when he thought about Lenny, Hosea, Susan—all those who died along the way. He couldn't stand the thought of his last meeting with Dutch, is father but not father, and for some reason, thinking of John hurt too. He got him out, and John got him out and turn.

He just wanted to know if he was alright.

There was happiness too, Arthur said. He got his dream with Charlotte. No sorrow could live in him so long as there was that one joy, save one. He couldn't join that dream with John, or have the fantasy of the two of them laughing on the front porch together while their wives gossiped in the kitchen. He didn't know if he would ever see him again, thank him for what happened.

"I called him a fool," Arthur admitted. "I don't think he knew."

"How can you be so sure?" Sister Calderon asked. "Mr. Morgan, he saved you because he loved you. Of course he knows you love him too. And who can be so sure you won't ever see him again? You're here, alive. And looking very good, may I add. Who's to say there won't be another miracle?"

Charlotte put her hand on top of his. "Miracles happened, more than one, when we fell in love. It's my greatest story of all, aside from her."

She moved at that very moment, Charlotte crying out in happiness, and she continued to as Charlotte let Sister Calderon put her hand on her stomach. It was that moment that inspired what would become her name, Elena.

Elena was born on the first touching of Spring in March at Grimwood Cottage in front of an old magnolia tree, two months before her mother and father married under god, the ceremony conducted by Sister Calderon. Mrs. Cutler, egged on by her husband who called Charlotte a witch, allowed her to borrow her wedding dress, as they both were of "slender but strong" builds, and with Charlotte's condition, the dress would fit her better than if she wasn't so. Charlotte told Arthur the night before that she must have been afraid Charlotte would cast a spell on her. It was an ability she had, according to her husband, who wore jeans and a white button-down shirt to their wedding, along with a mended blue vest from Saint Denis. Charlotte's dress was a little old fashioned, with puffy sleeves and a tapered waist common of fashion centuries ago. In lieu of a veil, she wore wildflowers in her braid. Alexander stood by Charlotte's side, hiring someone to watch Willard's Rest and take care of Buell, and Charles stood by Arthur's, with Sadie watching. They found them.

A miracle, Arthur said, but Sister Calderon reminded him he needed to realize miracles were more common than he realized. Sadie and Charles found each other not long ago after Sadie left Copperhead Landing, and they found Arthur at Grimwood two weeks prior to the wedding, on a rumor of a couple named Kilgore staying there. ("It's because I'm a witch," Charlotte said with a laugh.

"That's how our legacy spreads.") It was a name that sounded quite familiar. Charles admitted after their reunion that he didn't hold out much hope when he returned back to camp and buried Susan Grimshaw, but in his wanderings, he managed to find Sadie. Traveling south, they caught word, and they found Arthur, resting with the woman he loved. Tampa wasn't Tahiti, but at least there were mangoes, Sadie said when she arrived. The beach may not have suited him as plains and mountains did—something both Sadie and Charles pointed out—but Charlotte suited him, and that was where she was.

On their wedding day before Charlotte walked down the aisle, walking herself, Charles told the groom he wished John, Abigail, and Jack where there.

"Me too," Arthur said.

They kissed, cementing a vow. Alexander gave the couple a bottle of expensive wine. Charles gave the couple a buffalo hide for warmth on their bed. Sadie, insisting they not give it right back, gave them her and Jake's wedding rings. They were the rings they passed down, generation through generation.

When Elena came, Alexander, Sister Calderon, Charles and Sadie were all still there. Her father had plenty of rest by then, and had breathed much warm air that was thought to calm the infection in his lungs. Later knowledge of science by Elena's children many years later would read Arthur's entire story and understand it wasn't the warm air, but some strange thing called love that allowed Arthur to live a long life with his condition. Odd perhaps, that the advantages of time would call it love, but that was what Arthur and Charlotte's story become, one of immense love and longing, and sweet sorrows turned to eternal summer. Elena, one of the first that heard the story, was held by her father first before he rest her in her mother's arms. "I've been waiting for you," he whispered to her, looking into her eyes that were somewhere between brown and blue. "I don't know how good I can be, but for you, I'll try." As Charlotte promised, that was all that mattered.

She was a child of the new century, one Arthur wasn't so afraid of anymore as the days passed. Neither was Charlotte, but how could she be, she said. She had Arthur, and she had Elena, and the sea outside their window with it's vast wonder reminded her that unknown blank pages weren't so frightening. With this, Elena grew. Her first months of life spent at their home in Tampa was the vision of the sea and imaginings of another home near the mountains, her uncle Alexander telling her about Willard's Rest, and a horse named Buell who lived there.

"You know," Alexander casually suggested as Charlotte handed Elena to Arthur one evening. "When you're done here, you could turn Willard's Rest into a ranch. Or you could begin the process now. Expand your garden, make a stable."

Charlotte looked at Arthur, and he laughed and laughed. "You mean to turn us into ranchers, Alexander Vale? I'll be damned…" He had spoken of it to John once, as he said. He was half joking at the time.

But now…

"We can do it," Charlotte said, reading Arthur's thoughts. "Darling. Let's. Let's make something that will grow."

"We'll pack up again, sell this house?"

"Keep it," Alexander suggested. "You're rich. Or I could buy it from you, I'd always wanted a summer home."

They kept it themselves, mostly to spite Alexander. Before Elena turned one year old, she was able to meet Buell as Charlotte carried her to the stables. Barely a year old and she indeed had that brunette hair between black and dark blonde, her tiny hand reaching to touch Buell's mane. She knew two homes, the one in Tampa near the beach and Willard's Rest, and she went to bed every night with a story her mother and father would write for her—with characters like the sister who married mama and papa, Uncle Charles who helped Papa long ago, and Uncle John who saved papa from a mountain. There was brave Sadie, Tilly, Mary-Beth, and Karen, so many other ghosts who Arthur couldn't let exist in only his memory. Each day Arthur and Charlotte filled a new blank page, and his guilt lessened, though some semblance of it was always there, something he carried with him as easily as he wore his wedding ring on his left hand.

He grew too along with Elena, becoming that rancher and "good sort of decent folk" he and John talked about once. Sometimes he woke in the morning thinking he was still on that mountain until Elena cried. It was always the sweetest sound that heralded morning, his favorite. He held her and sang songs Javier used to sing in the mornings, or sea shanties Charlotte would hum, songs he used to sing to Isaac and songs he learned along the way to her. She must have liked his off-tune voice, as she always reached out to touch him with her tiny hands, stretching her fingers against his beard. How did she know she was the heartbeat of their home, and she was never anything he imagined but everything he ever wanted? She was his hope, and Charlotte's hope, their love.

He grew, Elena Hope grew, and Willard's Rest grew. Alexander spun the narrative that he was the one that convinced Arthur and Charlotte to expand the property and turn the small cabin to a homestead, but there was something about the image of dancing in front of a fire in front of an expanded Willard's Rest, dancing badly with Charlotte while Sadie played the harmonica, Abigail and John dancing and little Jack trying to teach Elena how to dance while Charles toasted to life that stuck with Arthur most of all during the early days. Even if parts of his old life blended with the sweet present, it propelled a hope for a future. Their home expanded, one of the first new amenities becoming a washing room with tub, where Arthur could have spent hour after hour, no longer worried he'd get charged extra for holding up others. His new washing woman also helped matters, Charlotte willing to indulge scrubbing his back. They expanded the property to a stable, rescuing ownerless horses and bringing them in, spent six months raising a barn and purchasing animals from Valentine, and eventually, when they hired on a man named Seamus Flynn— who reminded Arthur of a certain Sean—they built quarters for their farm and ranch hands. Elena was five years old when Seamus married a woman who looked a little like Karen, though her name was Kate, and she told Elena the story of Rhiannon, a witch.

"Your mother is Rhiannon," Arthur whispered to Elena after as they picked vegetables in the garden, her eyes wide. "Before you were born, she used to take me to river at night. She said magic happened in the water at night. And they all in Tampa call her a witch too."

"Magic?" Elena asked.

He scooped her in his arms, Elena giggling, not knowing the part of her father that sometimes coughed at night. "With her? Always."

He remembered something Hosea said a long time ago, about what they did. It was back in the days when he was still convinced the gang did more harm than good, and back when he first got picked up off the street, some part of him still thought they did. They stole from the bad folk and spread it to the good. According to Hosea, they were some American Robin Hoods, taming the west. Even if their impact was small, it didn't mean it wasn't worth doing. They planted seeds they may never get to see grow to blooms. With Willard's Rest, with Charlotte, he didn't only see one bloom. He saw a garden. He planted more seeds for Elena Hope.

Amidst the garden was his plainswoman, frontierswoman, survivor, and lover. Charlotte, who still wore a single braid in her hair that Arthur always tugged loose at night. Sometimes he woke at night, either coughing or crying and remembering what happened, and she held him and reminded him she was there, and she would never leave him. "Don't you ever leave me Arthur Morgan," she said to him in turn. "Not till we see her grow."

She was a stubborn woman he dared not cross. That's what he told the doctors anyway whenever he went back to Grimwood Cottage, and they remained baffled he was still standing. "It must be love," Charlotte always told them in turn.

It wasn't easy. There was a brutal mundanity in knowing what to expect every day, but every day, right before he could be reminded of how mundane the every day was, Elena would talk to him about the fish she caught with her makeshift fishing pole, or the flower crown she made for mama, and Arthur would see the mundane with new eyes with his plainswoman, survivor, and lover. Her and Elena reminded him there was no where else he wanted to be.

One night in front of the fire, after they put Elena to bed, Charlotte hummed as she wove yarn through a hook, rocking as she worked, her back toward Arthur. Crochet she called it when Arthur asked, and it pricked far less fingers than the needlework and embroidery she used to do in another life.

"I used to think of my pricked fingers as battle scars," she said with small laugh. "If only that girl back then saw them now, she'd show her something or other."

"They're still good hands."

She turned to meet his eye, and they shared a smile.

She asked him to sit with her, maybe read something in his honey and leather voice while she worked, but he had something he wanted to do first. He didn't know why he got the idea, though he suspected he was thinking of John after Charles came to visit, and remembering how the fool took all his earthly possessions at the time, including his journal. It took Arthur a bit of time, and when he finally came back, she had done quite a bit of work on the blue baby blanket she was making for a pregnant Kate. Eventually however, he had the object he wanted to show her.

"Our journal," she said when he handed it to her, setting her work on her lap and thumbing through the pages. "Arthur…"

"Look at all our blank pages."

She shook her head, remembering promises she once made to herself to write.

"There's missing pages," he pointed out.

"I took it out to the river one day. It was windy, and the pages didn't stick."

"Did they say anything?"

"It was a prayer for you to come back."

He too her hand, and she kissed his fingertips. "We've done a disservice, not writing," she said.

"Not easy work we do," he said. "At night instead of writing, you know. Sometimes I'd rather…"

She smirked. "I know darling."

"Maybe…well. Someday maybe someone—Elena's children, or their children, they'll ask questions about us. Wonder what it was like for us before all the buildings and nonsense. We could tell them, couldn't we?"

Well. She set her work aside and they set to work filling those pages. They wrote, and they wrote, and somewhere not too far off, John Marston wrote too with a pen that had Jimmy Brooks engraved in it, right before finding a paper he stuck in Arthur's journal years ago after leaving Willard's Rest for Abigail and Jack. It was a blank page that said nothing but come back, come back.

So he did.

Chapter 33

Chapter Notes

See the end of the chapter for notes

After John, Abigail and Jack left for Beecher's Hope with a promise to return to Willard's Rest, Charlotte stood outside with John's page close to her heart. He gave it to her after he approached, said he found it all those years ago as he made his way back to his family. It was worn now, caked in dirt, but clearly etched in the paper were her chants and prayers from another life, come back to me. She hadn't shown Arthur yet, nor did she when he came out to join her, sitting on the porch, though she wondered what he would say. If she knew him, and she did, she imagined he really would believe her to be a witch.

Well. She did know certain spells of love.

"Elena's sound asleep," Arthur said. "I think Jack wore her out."

He had a quiet about him since John and his family came. He had been wandering the woods before they settled together, and when they came back to Willard's Rest with Elena he had finally found home. You love me, she loves me, I won, he said once of his life. But she looked at where they were and saw the home they built More than they could have dreamed. Now, after John had arrived with his family, holding onto Arthur's hat, the hat Charlotte used to don to tease him, it seemed as though their house had lights.

John came with Abigail and Jack in early summer of Elena's sixth year, meeting Charlotte first outside their home along with Elena. He nearly wept when he saw her, because she looked so much like Arthur. Then, with reluctance, he asked what happened to Arthur, what happened to his brother.

Charlotte didn't need to tell. Arthur came outside.

He could scarcely believe it at first, looking at the once comrade in arms in wonder. He was alive, healthy looking and walked with vigor. He lived well. everything he hoped.

"John Marston," Arthur then said. "You damn fool."

And John smiled from ear to ear. "I've been waiting to hear you call me that brother."

What passed after was laughter, drinking, talking. Abigail shared stories of Beecher's Hope, (Who was being taken care of by Uncle, of all people, making Arthur laugh and laugh) and John talked about how he built it thinking of what Arthur said long ago, about the two of them being ranchers and homesteaders. Seemed like they were made for it after all. Seemed like whatever thread held them together wouldn't easily break, and they lived together in tandem even as they were apart. Sadie and Charles even came, both near Annesburg at the same time and thinking they should visit their homesteader friends. "You inspired me!" Charles said to the two brothers. "Maybe I'll buy land of my own, build my own home." And as for Sadie, she shrugged at the thought, though admitted maybe she'd do the same, and be the woman of her own property. To Charlotte, it sounded so perfectly Sadie. Then, they all toasted to inspiration.

They drank, they laughed, they danced, knowing there would be a time when the moment was nowhere save written in the stars, or in one of the chapters in Charlotte and Arthur's tales that would be passed on through generations. They danced even when everyone left, Charlotte and Arthur with Elena, missing her family already. Precious moments, ones she couldn't forget, right alongside the moment Charlotte found herself in then, with her daughter she had with a wonderful man asleep, and that wonderful man she loved breathing and wonderfully alive. It would pass soon, only to be written in the stars.

But for the moment, it was theirs.

She showed him the paper John gave, and Arthur held it close to his heart, saying he learned to believe in miracles a long time ago, when he was kept alive longer than anyone could say. Love, they agreed it was. Then they talked more about Elena, and how she enjoyed Jack's company, and wasn't averse to playing knights with him. Charlotte called it, that they would have many more adventures together. (And time proved that she was right.) They talked of visiting Beecher's Hope one day, (Too, what would happen.) And they talked of the now, when they felt like quiet, stronger when they were holding each other before they moved to their bed. She kissed him and wrote pages on his body that seared to his mind. His lips were stories of their own, and some part of her wanted to hold on to the fleeting bliss of the ending he gave her, that base and primal yes and yes and yes and Arthur before they drifted off in a lazy deluge of kisses and caresses, still though unable to sleep. And then he looked at her, stroked her cheek with the hand she had always loved, and she saw his thoughts. She agreed.

She couldn't regret. She couldn't be afraid. Not with him, the man that taught her to survive, the man she instructed how to live on. No matter what. They made happiness and they made a home. They shared it with the ones they loved. That was all that mattered.

"It's worth it," Arthur said, outlining her lips with his thumb. "You know. I always hated that part of me that clung to some old life that was dying, even if I know that the way we live now won't last. Even if the land we live on is someday a city, it's worth it. A someday doesn't matter. We lived a for good."

Time, the eternal and for good, pleased some while it tried all. For Charlotte and Arthur, someday two figureheads in a family tree, their story passed for good. Yet for that moment, and the family they created, they cherished. And both Charlotte and Arthur would have been blissful to know, that they always were remembered that way by the seeds they planted.

Chapter End Notes

Obviously John was in contact with Charles and Sadie in the epilogue but let's just say they weren't here :)

And, we have one more (short) chapter. thank you all so much, I hope you've found some happiness through reading!

Chapter 34

Chapter Notes

:)

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Well, here we are. This is it. But though this might be the ending of the pages of this book, it's certainly not a definitive ending. In fact, I hope it's a new beginning. If you let yourself see, I think you will find new beginnings every day.

To conclude this manuscript of writing however, because many (including myself) like nice fancy bows wrapped around stories, I will let you know that Arthur, the once outlaw turned homesteader and lover got the life he always wanted. We lived together with our worn hands, more precious because they were hands that lived. My daughter married and our homes were passed on to their children, who will pass it on to her children—children she had with a certain Jack Marston. (It didn't shock Arthur or John, nor Abigail and I. And dear Charles and Sadie, if you are reading this, which I hope you are, from this I gather you also know how wonderful your namesakes are.) Arthur and I didn't get to fully see the garden we began, but when we planted the seeds we knew that wouldn't be possible. It is our sweetest sorrow to be the planter that will not to fully see. And yet, I'm content with that. I wouldn't have chosen another life, even if I could. I am proud of my upbringing, being raised as a porcelain doll that learned how to live off the land and survive. Because I survived, I loved more deeply than I ever had. I love, I love, and I live. See me in these pages, see us.

To my daughter, or anyone else who may find this buried in some antique trunk, though I dear hope Elena you will find this: perhaps find some way to publish it after I'm gone, so whoever dreams of this time of the outlaws and pioneers knows it wasn't always the idyllic paradise your ever growing modern world is, which, I'm sure if you're reading this one hundred years from now, is far more industrial and city-like than even my time now, years from where Arthur and I first stood as only a boy and a girl. But also know, that we thought about you as we lived, those of you in the future. We sensed the temporariness of our living. It didn't mean it wasn't worth it, or it wasn't beautiful. It was, and I hope at least, you see a modicum of that beauty in these pages. Go into the woods if you can, dear reader. Listen to the quiet, understand how small you are, but find comfort in it. For me too, fall in love. I hope everyone falls in love as I have.

And now, in this ending of my book, I don't write it to any reader or passerby, but to the one I love. Arthur, you're right here with me, so perhaps I could tell you myself, and I probably will later tonight, but know I love you. We did it together in our for good. My pages are no longer blank. You helped me fill them with a life beyond what I could have dreamed. And whatever pages I have left, I write them with words of love. I write them for you.

With all my love,

Charlotte Morgan.
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Chapter End Notes

Whether you found this story when I first started, or just happened to find it now and beyond, thank you so much for reading. I hope you've enjoyed the journey. Thanks again, from the bottom of my heart.

Afterword

End Notes

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