Chapter Text
༄ ༄ ༄
The thread kissed the cotton with the soft grace of a muted hello. As it passed through the cloth in a placid current, it murmured dulcet verses into the fibers. There, the lyrics remained until they were harpooned by the next puncture of the needle. Its subtle luster caught onto the lamplight, morphing the dull yellow into a vivid amber. It curled around itself and stretched its own form taut, twisting into a preordained impression by the guidance of your steadfast hand.
The room loomed over you in the weary, imposing silence that grand houses so often carry at nighttime.
The sound of footsteps on creaking floorboards muffled by a thick rug lured your focus away from the hoop clutched diligently in your lap and toward the arched entryway. Your posture, which you hadn’t noticed had been hunched over in attentiveness, went rigid.
A woman in a violet dressing gown with her hair pinned neatly atop her head appeared in the foyer. You could see her austere expression from over the luxuriant furniture, illuminated by the candlestick pinched between her elegant fingers. Both of you relaxed when you recognized the other, her more so than you.
She sighed out your name tepidly and set the candlestick down on a nearby counter. You fiddled with your thimble as she weaved her way through the drawing room toward you.
“Why are you all the way down here?” she asked in her courtly voice. “The light is far better in the nursery.”
You shifted to one end of the settee to make room for her. She perched beside you as you replied in your own silvery voice. “I prefer the paintings in this room.”
“Ah,” she said, blithely skimming the artwork on the walls. “Well, I suppose you don’t spend nearly as much time in this part of the house. Just don’t make a habit of it, alright? I wouldn’t want you to strain your eyes in this dim.”
You dipped your head subserviently. “Alright.”
“May I see what you are working on?”
You passed the hoop into those elegant fingers and they ghosted over your embroidery with an appraising touch. Her brows drew together and you searched her features in vain for anything that resembled your own.
“This bullion knot is too loose,” she muttered. “And this satin stitch is too wide, it makes this petal look flat.”
You glanced down at the areas that she had indicated. She was correct, she always was. “I’ll fix it.”
“What is this for?”
“Miss Strickland.”
She dropped the cloth into her lap and you shrunk away from her appalled frown. “You intend to give this to your governess?” she said sharply. You resisted the urge to lower your timid gaze lest she scold you for impertinence, but you were unable to produce a timely response. She closed her eyes in restrained impatience. “Perhaps Miss Strickland does not deserve such an extravagantly decorated gift if she cannot adequately educate her pupils on the fundamentals of floriography.”
“What have I forgotten?” you whispered uneasily.
She displayed the piece with exasperation. “What kind of flower is this?”
“Marigold.”
“And what do marigolds signify?” She waited for a few expectant seconds before tersely answering her own question. “Grief. Or idleness. Or worse: jealousy. Or even worse: vulgar thoughts.”
Your face fell. How horrifying, that you may have presented something so disgraceful to your mentor.
“It’s entirely inappropriate,” she continued, a bit needlessly considering your apparent chagrin. “Especially for a woman of her advanced age. You will need to restart, and you will need to refresh your studies.”
“I will,” you affirmed readily. “I’m sorry, that was so foolish of me.”
She looked back down to your handiwork and her expression mellowed. “It’s a shame, but it must be done.”
When she noticed you staring dejectedly down at the carpeted floor, she sighed and pressed the fabric back into your hands. Her palm cupped your cheek with a soothing touch. You looked into her beautiful, unimpeachable face as she gave you a rare smile, just as refined as everything else about her.
“It truly does look very nice. You have a talent for these sorts of things.”
You smiled back abashedly. “Thank you, Mama.”
Her palm fell away as she stood, smoothing down her skirts. “You may stay down for another hour, but I want you in bed by midnight. You must be awake and presentable at seven tomorrow to see us off.”
“Can I really not go with all of you?” you requested pitifully. “I’m left here alone nearly every weekend.”
“Nonsense, you have the servants.”
“Not for Easter. They'll be gone, too. What if I promise to stay quiet for the entire time?”
She seemed, for a moment, to wish to give in. But her resolve tightened and she shook her head firmly. “No. Our reputation in church is very important to your father, and we can’t have you there to…complicate things. Don’t fret, it will pass sooner than you know.”
You nodded, although you did not believe her. She glided back across the room and collected her candlestick. The large room yawned open around you with its grand furnishings and impressive decor. She already appeared very far away and you already felt very lonely.
“Oh, and before you go up,” she said. “Be a dear and pack my blue china set. I’ve left the box in the dining room. I would have one of the maids do it, but I don’t trust them to do it properly.”
You were blending away into the upholstery. “Yes, Mama.”
“Choose something more dignified when you restart,” she added loftily. “Like primrose, or sage.”
Her mauve dress was lost to the dark foyer before you could repeat yourself. You bit your lip, swallowed the pesky lump in your throat, and returned to your work. The thread resisted as you painstakingly picked it out, clinging to the cotton with the forlorn reluctance of a muted farewell.
༄ ༄ ༄
On the exact same day, many hundreds of miles away, a small band of outlaws was leaving out the back door of a small town bank. The first was wearing a waistcoat a bit too ornate for desert weather and holding a gold-plated revolver at his hip. The second was his silver–haired partner, carrying a sack of money a bit too large for his lanky frame over his shoulder. The third was a tall, muscled gunman striding past the line of kneeling bank employees toward the door. The fourth, a teenager dressed in torn trousers and a dusty overshirt, still had his arm shoved into a safe, attempting to get his hands on the last few bills.
The gunman grabbed another sack from the ground with one hand and the teenager by the back of his collar with his other.
“C’mon kid,” he drawled, dragging him toward the open door. “It’s time to go.”
The teenager scowled and squirmed in the grasp. The gunman, unfazed, gave the horrified faces of the bank employees a smirk and a nod. “Y’all have a nice day.”
The door was kicked shut with a thud.
The teenager finally managed to scramble free and shoved the gunman off of him. “Get off me, would ya?” he spat in his gravelly voice.
The rest of the outlaws chuckled at his tantrum as they mounted up.
“Now,” the gunman said when they were halfway out of town, “I reckon that weren’t half bad for your first bank!”
“Really?” the teenager asked, brightening slightly.
“No,” came the gunman’s deadpan reply. “It was horrible. You nearly got me an’ Hosea shot, tryin’ take that guard on by yourself.”
The silver-haired man was in reluctant agreement. “He was twice your size, John.”
“I’m growin’!”
The gunman sneered. “Yeah, but you ain’t grown. Keep your head down next time and then maybe no one’ll have to get shot. And hopefully, it won’t be you!”
“Shut up, Arthur. You ain’t Dutch. Stop pretendin’ like you’re in charge.”
“Only one here pretendin’s the one with the six-shooter he takes a decade to draw.”
“You wanna put that to the test?”
“Enough of this,” their leader cut in. “Let’s wait until after we lose the law for any more murder, yes?” The rest of them fell silent and they continued down the road.
"Hey, kid!" the gunman shouted over the hoofbeats. "I'll race you to the state line. If you win I'll let you have a go with my rifle."
The teenager's eyes went from resentful to keen. "You'd better start polishin' it now, then." He was already urging his horse forward.
The two young outlaws traded competitive grins. There wasn’t much to argue about, after all. They were a few thousand dollars richer than they were yesterday and they’d all gotten out of there unscathed. Life could be far worse.
༄ ༄ ༄
Since then, ten summers had come and gone.
Since then, your life had collapsed in on itself in a brilliant blaze and you had been left to pull yourself from the ashes on unsteady legs.
It had been a painful rebirth. You were cast out from that grand house and into the even grander unknown of the wild American West in a desperate flight from the unforgiving elements, both natural and manmade. The weather had been cruel, and the people crueler.
It was not enterprise or courage that brought you all the way to New Austin. You were driven solely by fear and bereavement, surviving only as a consequence of some vague obligation to your own wayward existence. To be afraid was to will for life, to be bereaved was to want for more.
That was how Arthur Morgan had found you that winter day in 1896: afraid and bereaved and with nowhere else to run. He had found you willing and wanting.
Arthur saved you that day, in many senses of the word. In the most immediate sense, he had gunned down the men who were chasing you out of town for a crime that you did not commit. In another sense, he had brought you into a makeshift family that had fed, clothed, and sheltered you without asking for much more than chores in return. And, in perhaps the most profound sense, he had saved you from despair. For the first time, your choices were no longer determined by circumstance. They were entirely your own to make.
As a novice to the skill of governing your own life, many of the choices you made at first were poor ones. You fell in with a gang. You did not question its egotistic leader. You quickly ingratiated yourself and befriended its members. You taught a particularly dangerous one, John Marston, how to swim. Then, you had fallen, naive head over clumsy heels, in love with him despite the inescapable presence of his son and estranged partner.
Although, in hindsight, you weren’t sure how much of your love for John was a choice at all. It felt every bit as natural as a fruit dropping from a laden tree or wind gusting through a mountain pass.
Indeed, Arthur Morgan had led you to freedom and John Marston had shown you its power.
John chose you for a short, wonderful while.
And then, he left.
Perhaps because he wanted to keep every dollar he earned to himself, or perhaps because he could no longer bear the friction between his own ambitions and the responsibilities of fatherhood, or perhaps because he knew that you could never and would never give him the simple answer that he so fiercely wanted from you.
In the aftermath, you were left to fade into the grays and whites of the following winter. Your resolve, your wit, your humor, your dreams, every part of you had been splintered and strewn in disarray. Your memories of John and the person he had helped you become haunted you in small, ordinary moments.
Curiously, it was Arthur who brought you back into yourself. Even more curiously, he had done so through a true introduction to the outlaw way of life, despite him being the one out of the entire gang who was most acutely aware of its immorality. He taught you to pull valuables from pockets, to unlatch doors, to take without inhibition. You had taught him to surrender to his appetites, to speak more freely, to take without inhibition in a different fashion.
He had been achingly reluctant, but through touches both deft and fumbling, through months upon months of the two of you dancing around the inevitable, he had given in. And while you had not yet completely shed your yearning for John, Arthur had taken over your mind and soul in an act of inadvertent thievery.
Arthur chose you for a short, wonderful while.
And then, after just over a year, John returned. As if fate wished to laugh at you and your floundering, nonsensical affections.
Your love for John was impulsive and unwise and inexorable. Your love for Arthur was tentative and indulgent and consuming. Neither was timely, neither was straightforward, and neither had been professed. You had wordlessly sewn yourself to both of them with the strings of your heart, with stitches that you had once thought were indestructible.
Now, it seemed that all of your discordant wills and wants would tear you away from them. They would split at the weakened seams and collapse into remains that even you, with your sharpest needle and finest thread, could never repair.
The Unraveling was to be violent, certainly. But it would not happen all at once.
The first ruptures happened on the day that John returned to you, when he had given you a singular, fleeting moment of unbridled joy.
The rest came after.
༄ ༄ ༄
Your first impulse, your only impulse, was to seek out Arthur.
He had been the one to walk away after seeing you and John. You and John, for the first time in a year. You and John, happy together, but for a moment. You still couldn't quite believe it.
He had looked betrayed, there simply wasn't any other way to put it. The pain on his face had carved out a bruising notch in your chest that you needed to tend to before you began to experience some sort of emotional blood loss. You knew that it would not be a cheerful conversation, but you had latched on to some preposterous notion that if you could just speak to him and explain yourself, it would be alright.
You paced along the perimeter of the gang’s camp as the celebration of John’s unforeseen return crescendoed in merry voices and lively song, headed toward the gap in the trees where you had seen Arthur stride away. You pushed past branches, traipsing over ferns, and pieced together innumerable half-formed apologies and speeches in your mind. It would be alright.
By the time you found him, biting on the end of a cigarette with his head lowered broodingly, none of the apologies and speeches were complete. Your steps and thoughts faltered simultaneously. He looked over to you with surprise that swiftly waned into discontent.
Where to begin, with this menacing, beautiful conundrum of a man?
He was the kind of pretty you hadn’t known existed until you met him, a mixture of rough and soft, inside and out. Freckled, tan skin. Touseled, golden hair. Thick, cracked hands. Full, chapped lips. He was so strong and steady. It was a wonder you had managed to hurt him in such a small gesture. Would it be alright?
His eyes flicked down your form apprehensively. His brow furrowed when they reached your feet.
“Your shoes are wet,” he remarked bemusedly, momentarily forgetting his troubles.
You looked down at the sodden leather forming damp blotches in the soil. The hem of your skirt was still dripping. “I was…I was in the lake.”
The two of you glanced back at each other. He blinked. “…What?”
It dawned on you just how asinine your explanation sounded. More at a loss for words than before, your shoulders slouched. What were you supposed to say, that your initial reaction to him storming off after witnessing your enduring fondness for John had been to wander into the shallows of the lake and stare despondently out into the distance?
“It was stupid,” you said instead.
His frown deepened as he took the time to study your face. “You’ve been cryin’.”
It was a statement, not a question. It was so discerning, yet so gentle that you felt tears begin to nip at your already puffy eyes. You had always worn your heart on your sleeve and Arthur had always been able to see straight through any facade of yours.
“I have,” you affirmed feebly.
He looked into the tree line. You could see the battle behind his tight expression, him tamping down the immediate reflex to step toward you, to offer a comforting arm. His hand twitched into an agitated fist and the other closed over his cigarette.
“So…” he began and then heaved a sigh through his nose. Smoke streamed from his nostrils. “John’s back.”
“You’re not happy.”
“No.” His voice was sunken.
The question was glued to the back of your throat; you strained when you spoke. “Why?”
His pretty lips bent into a quarter-smile that suggested anything but amusement. “Do ya really not know?”
It was not an unfair accusation. The reason was rather obvious, on the surface. But leaving the answer undeclared was torturous, like a poisoned wine sipped slowly. You felt your face twist. “I have an idea. But I…I would like to hear it from you.”
He took another drag and thought for another minute or so. You allowed him the time, quietly withering away. The words came to him in measured beats, pouring out in that baritone drawl.
“This gang is all that matters to me. Protecting these people, protecting this life, that’s all there is. An’ that means loyalty matters, above all else. Loyalty.”
You recoiled from the word on instinct. It reminded you of the conflicted attachments that you had no right to hold. Arthur noticed. He huffed.
“Look, I–I knew about you an’ Marston. I ain’t exactly a genius, but I knew.”
You recoiled further.
“And… fuck.” He cursed and glowered at the earth at his feet as he steeled himself for the next admission. “Fuck, it made me jealous as all hell. Every time I saw you with ‘im, I thought about how goddamn lucky that boy was, and how he was plannin’ on throwin’ it all away, and it made me so fuckin’ angry I couldn’t think straight. But it weren’t my place. I kept my goddamn mouth shut because it weren’t my place.”
Your lips parted but your throat was sealed tight. All that time…you had been so enamored with John and so intimidated by Arthur that you had been blind to his affections. You could feel your sorrow begin to seep from the notch in your chest.
“But when he actually left?” Arthur was briefly overcome and had to draw composure from his cigarette. “He was like family, but he left, jus’ cause–shit, I don’t even rightly know–cause he weren’t ready to be a father? There ain’t any excuse. He turned his back on everything that matters.”
You had to say something. You had to make it alright, somehow. “Arthur–”
He ignored your frail interjection. “–And then, after a whole fucking year, the boy strolls back into camp, and everyone’s all open arms and smiles. Not one question, not one challenge. Not even from Hosea or Dutch. Not even from…” His eyes met yours. Your hands had gone numb, but you were distantly aware that they had begun to tremble.
“I saw what it did to you when he left. How can…how can you just forgive him like that? Did it really mean nothin’, all the hell he put you through? That he put Abigail through?”
He was painting you to be some sort of moonstruck damsel. The picture wasn’t necessarily untruthful, but it certainly wasn’t without fault. You found your voice with a gleam of indignation. “It didn’t mean nothing.”
“You sure? Cause to me, it looked like you were up an’ ready to take off with him right then if he decided to turn tail.”
“I’m sure,” you contended bitterly. “I remember exactly how it felt when he left. I remember how everyone looked at me all winter like I was a pathetic thing someone had abandoned on the side of the road. I had to sit in camp and live with it. I couldn’t just get on a horse and disappear for weeks at a time.”
He went stiff at your pointed comment. That may have been a step too far, a tug too sharp. You feared this was already beyond saving. How on Earth would everything be alright?
You soldiered on wretchedly. “Him coming back does not erase the past year. It doesn’t erase us.” His jaw twitched and you could have sworn he blinked back a tear. “And I will not discard whatever’s between us for John’s sake, heaven knows he doesn’t deserve that charity. But if you expect me to resent him, or punish him…”
“And when he keeps ignorin’ the boy? And Abigail?”
“He–he might try and do better.” It was a despicably weak objection.
“And if he doesn’t?”
“I–I don’t know!” Your voice shook. You were losing what little tenacity you had left. “I don’t know.”
He laughed humorlessly and it made you feel cold and desolate. The shiver had spread from your hands into your shoulders.
“I’m not sure why I thought you would understand,” he muttered. "You ain't like us. You weren't raised like us."
You wanted to cry and sob and punch your fist into the nearest tree trunk. “Does…does loyalty really mean that much to you? More than anything else?”
The cigarette had burned down to his fingertips. “Does it really mean that little to you, Angel?”
The pet name cut deep. You clutched at your skirts to keep the tremor from your hands. “I can’t hate him. I’m sorry, Arthur. I simply cannot.”
“I’m not askin’ you to hate him,” he rebuked.
“Then what are you asking?”
“To not look at him like that, after all that he’s done.”
“I can’t help the way I look, Arthur,” you beseeched, and you saw him fall away from you. “You know that. I won’t go back to him. But I cannot help how I look.”
He stared at you for a second that lasted a year. His gaze hardened into cerulean stone. “So that’s that, then.”
Somewhere along the way, a thread had snapped. You could sense it slipping through the gaps, unfurling into ruin, and it was all happening too quickly for you to do anything to stop it.
Arthur gave his cigarette a spiteful look and dropped it to the ground. He stomped it out before stalking forward and toward the camp. He paused as he passed by your tremulous figure. You gazed up at him helplessly.
For an instant, you wondered if he would walk something back so you could find the space to apologize, and then everything would be alright.
“Marston ain’t got the faintest clue just how lucky he is,” he told you hoarsely and then pushed into the trees.
It was the sweetest, most horrible thing to say.
You stood there in the shade of the leaves for a very long while, but you were too numb to cry.
You considered wandering into the woods, burying yourself in the soil, or sinking into the lake. Each possibility seemed more self-pitying and vain than the last. There was nothing else to do but go back and somehow pretend to be alright. You resigned yourself to the fray and compelled your damp shoes to pivot. As you trudged back to camp, you left behind a pool of sorrow that had leaked from the notch in your chest.
༄ ༄ ༄
The juxtaposition between your misery and the camp’s merriment was jarring, to say the least.
All tasks for the day had been entirely forgotten, even the laundry basket that you had dropped at the sight of John was still deserted on the ground. The gang was teeming around the campfire and the provisions wagon, buzzing with chatter. You had never seen so many liquor bottles in broad daylight. It was almost a blessing that it was so hectic; no one noticed as you reentered with what must have been palpable cloud of angst over your head.
You could not see John, but you did not look too thoroughly for him. You couldn’t speak to him, not now, not without falling apart.
A glance over to the hitching posts revealed that Boadicea was missing. Arthur had wasted no time.
Woefully, there was a small crowd gathered just outside of your lean-to. There was no chance of slipping away to drown your misfortune in the peace of your own bedding. You wandered around a table, blearily searching for an empty corner where you could lick your wounds.
Karen caught you in her trap, as she so regularly did.
“Stop tryin’ to sneak off and come get drunk, girlie!”
You wondered if you had succeeded in clearing the fog from your eyes by the time you looked over toward her beckoning call. Karen was in a cluster of what appeared to be composed of nearly all of the women in camp. Your spirits fell even further when you recognized Abigail. She looked just about as thrilled to be present as you were, brow pinched as she looked down at her drink. You dragged your feet while you approached.
“What’ll ya take?” Tilly welcomed. “We got gin and beer. Or a flask of Pearson’s moonshine, but I figure that don’t interest you.”
“Gin, please,” you managed listlessly. You accepted the cup with no intention of sipping from it. Any sort of inebriation was sure to send you spiraling.
Mary Beth said your name and you winced at her tenderhearted inflection. “You alright, there? You look a little like you’ve just seen a ghost.”
Karen leaned forward and pressed an evaluative fingertip into your cheek where you had meticulously wiped away the stains of your tears.
“You’re right, Miss Gaskill,” she concluded. “Her coloring’s all off.”
“I’m fine,” you protested. “Just an upset stomach, that’s all.”
The group hesitated and you winced again, lamenting your dreadful incapacity for lying. Molly, to her credit, was the one to save you from any further interrogation. “How long did you say he was gone for, again?”
“A year, about,” Tilly surmised, accepting the shift in subject. You sent her a grateful glance. “Since we left New Austin.”
“New Austin? That’s down south, right?”
“Very down south,” Karen confirmed between swigs. “It’s practically Mexico by that point. I’m just glad I don’t gotta shake the sand outta my socks every night before bed anymore.”
“Or shake the scorpions outta our shoes every mornin’,” Tilly mentioned.
“But we’re hundreds of miles away from there,” Molly said puzzledly. “How did he find us?”
“That’s not a bad question, as a matter of fact,” Mary Beth answered. “We’ve put an awful lot of country between us and that desert since then.”
You were quiet, staring down at the gin sloshing against the walls of your cup in tiny waves. Your fingers had not stopped shaking. You were beset with memories of securing a red ribbon around a tree trunk on the day you left North Elizabeth with an absurd sense of hope, never having truly believed the trail blaze would work.
How had John reacted, when he discovered it? When did he decide to tie it around his neck?
Karen did not appear to find it as mysterious. “He mighta been up this way on coincidence. Or he caught onto our scent, somehow. I’m sure we kicked up some dust, what with all the robbin’ and law breakin’ we tend to do. We weren’t necessarily discreet about that bank down in North Elizabeth, Sean made sure of that.”
“An’ all those bounties put up for Dutch near Nebraska,” Tilly added. “If John was lookin’ hard enough, I figure it wouldn’t have been too difficult.”
“Doesn’t really explain the important part, though, does it?” Mary Beth sighed.
Molly wrapped her shawl more snugly around her shoulders. “What’s that?”
“Well, why he came back. Or why he left in the first place. It’s all so very interestin’, isn’t it?”
Your lips twitched into a morose smile. Mary Beth didn’t know just how right she was. That really was the important part. The group mulled over the question for a moment before they began offering their theories.
“He kept gettin’ in those fights with Dutch, I remember. Maybe he had just had it one day.”
“He knew we were goin’ north, maybe he just wanted more of the warm weather.”
“Oh, or maybe he found a score that he didn’t want to share.”
“Maybe he ran into trouble while he was gone and needed the gang’s help.”
“Don’t you think he would have mentioned that by now if that was the case? No, I’m sure he just missed all of us. The man got tired of washin’ his own clothes an’ fixin’ his own meals, that’s for certain.”
“I’ll tell you what he didn’t come back for.”
The debate fizzled out so quickly that you could’ve sworn someone set off a gun. The group’s faces swiveled over at Abigail’s interruption. Even you reluctantly lifted your eyes from your cup to behold her tormented expression, full of veiled fury. There was a frightfully tense beat as you all realized just how insensitive the conversation had been.
You were scouring her ireful blue gaze, and panic set in. The implication was painfully obvious. What had John said to her? Had he said anything at all? The rest of you had carried on, assuming that it had all been neatly resolved, but Abigail looked as though she was an inch away from tearing the camp to the ground.
Mary Beth let out an apologetic sigh. “Oh, Abigail–”
Abigail was already forcefully shaking her head and stepping away from the group. “No. No, I’m sorry. Don’t let me distract y’all from your celebrations.”
“We didn’t think–” Tilly did not get to finish her statement.
“–I’m sure you didn’t.” Abigail’s voice was brittle. “I’m sure none of you thought about any of this.”
No one had any sort of response to that. A collective sense of shame pooled, its deepest point gathering around you. Suddenly, all of your troubles seemed more like trivialities.
“I guess I was wrong. How stupid of me. Here I was thinkin’ that there were some things that we had to do, whether it suits us or not. Motherhood's definitely one of 'em. Apparently fatherhood ain’t.”
Her face contorted into despair and you felt your heart contort in tandem.
She shoved her cup into Karen’s hands. “If you’ll excuse me,” she said defeatedly. “I’ve got to see to my boy.”
She paced urgently back toward her tent and you could see her shoulders start to rise with a sob.
You should have followed after her then. You should have fallen at her feet and said the correct thing and made it alright. But you could not offer her comfort, not when you needed it so badly yourself. She did not need another thing to take care of. She did not need any more weight to bear.
So instead, you handed your gin to Molly. “Sorry,” you mumbled, gesturing vaguely to the furthest corner of the camp. “My stomach.”
That was the only pretense you could offer. You and your muddled thoughts drew away from the crowd as you aimlessly circled around a wagon. Thankfully, none of the girls insisted on trailing behind you.
You ended up near the entrance, pressing your back into the prickly bark of a pine tree as you stared up into its limbs and held a hand against your battered heart. Another thread had split, but maybe this one had been split for a long time and you had only just now realized.
༄ ༄ ༄
After what could have been a few minutes or an hour, you were drawn from your trance by the sound of nearby chuckles and stumbling feet.
You blinked and peered around the pine. Davey and Sean had their arms draped over John’s shoulders and were steering him onward. Sean garbled out something in what could have just as easily been Gaelic as it was English and there was another round of chuckles. It appeared that the Irishman only needed half of an afternoon to make a new friend.
John’s laugh, rusty and bright, had you reeling with heartache. It had been so terribly long since you had heard that laugh.
The small band lumbered further into your field of vision. John was taller than both of them. You wondered if you had met anyone quite as tall as him since he left.
Davey’s boot caught on a stone and they teetered to the side, turning toward you. John noticed you, and you realized you had been staring. His smile went from crooked and frivolous to warm and fond. A stray lock of his dark hair rested on his cheek.
Davey noticed you as well. “What you doin’ way back here, missy?”
“There’s a party happenin’, if ya haven’t heard!” Sean called. Davey snickered.
John and you were still staring at one another. It was easier, not having to speak. You could just appreciate him from afar; that way, you wouldn’t have to worry about anything falling apart.
“Gimme a minute, boys,” John said distractedly.
Sean grumbled. “What, we’re not good enough for ya?”
John shrugged both of their arms off. “Jus’ get lost for a minute, will you?”
“Sure,” Davey said with a knowing wink. “Sure, we’ll get lost. C’mon kid, lemme show ya how to get Bill to lose his shit in less than twenty seconds. You’re in for a treat.” The two of them meandered off, already babbling about something else.
You and John stood for a moment in silence, taking one another in. Then, he moved forward. He was still wearing the ribbon around his neck. You could tell from his patient expression that he knew you were hurting. He did not needlessly ask if you were alright, and you loved him for it.
“Been missin’ you, Minnow,” he said. You couldn’t quite tell if he meant that he had been missing you just for the day or the whole year or some time in between. You weren’t sure if he knew what he meant either, considering the slight haze of liquor in his eyes.
“Have you, now?” you asked quietly.
You had to ask him about Abigail, about Jack, about Arthur. And you would, soon. But first, you needed a little while of just him, without anything pulling at the threads. A respite, just for a little while.
His smile grew crooked again. “I have. ‘Specially when we were singin’ earlier. Uncle’s voice damn near made me cry, and not in a nice way.”
A flicker of amusement graced your features. “John Marston, brought to tears? I never thought I’d see the day.” It felt so gratifying to say his name aloud again.
“Neither did I. But Uncle is always outdoing himself, and I think I forgot just how unpleasant he is.”
The amusement grew. “I’m sure he’s been insisting that you actually missed him dearly.”
“Incessantly,” he confirmed wearily.
“I suspect that there might be a grain of truth in what he’s saying,” you teased and you could hear a bit of life returning to your tone.
“Me, missin’ Uncle?” John snorted. “Never.” You both knew he was lying, at least a tiny bit. Within the small pause, he stepped closer. “Ya know, I’ve been hearin' quite a lot about you today, miss.”
You did not mistake the glint of flirtation in his eyes, and although you were far too drained to return it in kind, you could not help but humor him. Denying him, just as it was with Arthur, was a trial in and of itself. “And what’s that?”
He shifted to lean his shoulder up against the tree beside you, crossing his arms and grinning down at you with a tilted head. “It seems like you’ve been keepin’ mighty busy in my absence. People are sayin’ you’ve gotten real good at unburdenin’ pockets.”
“Undoubtedly they exaggerate,” you dismissed blithely.
“Oh, Minnow,” he said lowly and you suddenly yearned so deeply to kiss him that your lips ached. “Still so modest. But, I dunno, Mister Escuella just told me a story of you gettin’ an entire auction up in arms about you stealin’ something like three hundred dollars in just over an hour, and I’m inclined to believe the man.”
“Oh, that. It couldn’t have been that much…” you said dimly, taken aback by the feat as it sounded in someone else’s words.
“I’m impressed, to be completely honest. I didn’t reckon you had it in ya.”
You glanced down at your hands and saw that they had stilled their tremors. “I don’t, not really. I just had a good education.”
“Yeah? The girls puttin’ you to work?”
“Sometimes,” you replied. Then, without thinking, “Most of the time, though, it’s Ar–it’s someone else.”
Your voice snagged but John had already caught on. You felt abruptly yanked back down into your still-damp soles as the alluring fantasy of lighthearted reunion wilted.
He cleared his throat. “Yeah. I, uh, I heard that.” There was a charged silence in which you listened to the distant cheers of the party and the wind in the branches. Your mind raced but no words presented themselves.
He started, reluctant. “Heard some things ‘bout you and Arthur, too.”
Just like that, the shiver reintroduced itself. This, already? The respite had been so brief. “Did you?” you whispered.
He looked off across the camp, a withdrawn look on his face. He took another long moment to answer. “I ain’t mad. Well,” he huffed, “that ain’t exactly true. I just…I’m not gonna pick a fight over it just yet. Or, I’ll try not to.”
“Oh. Well. That’s a relief,” you stated rather vacantly, still at a loss. You should have been prepared for this conversation, but it was so obtrusively inscrutable that you had no idea where to even begin. You could feel the tension start to build on the threads.
He did not seem inclined to push you any further. There was a mutual hesitancy in the air; neither of you wanted to speak about it, and neither of you wanted to pick at the stitches anymore. But it had to be done.
“John,” you said tiresomely. “Why did you come back?”
He shook his head pensively, searching the ground for his response. “I guess I realized that I was wastin’ my time, lookin’ for what I want in a world that’s never given me anything, short of scars and bad dreams.”
“What you want…” you echoed. That was not the answer you needed to hear, but it still made your head spin with the implication.
He looked back at you with startling clarity. “Yeah.”
John wanted you, and you wanted him, and oh how you wished that that was enough.
It was painful to tug at the frayed thread, but you thought of Abigail and the anguish in her eyes and then another spark, this one more akin to anger, impelled you. She had been hurting too, for far longer and for far more dire reasons than lost romance.
Your voice finally found an edge. “And besides that?”
John’s brow furrowed a nudge. “Besides what I want?”
“Yes. Besides.”
John only required a moment to think before he registered your grim expression and his posture went taut. “You’ve been talkin’ to Abigail.”
“I haven’t, not really. I didn’t need to,” you countered. “I spent less than five minutes with her and learned all I needed to know just from how upset she is.”
He straightened and opened his arms defensively. “What are you tryin’ to say, exactly?”
“Of all the reasons to come back,” you said, already fighting off the tears. “Of all the reasons, how is your own son not one of them? How is he not the first one?”
John thrust his hand in the general direction of the main camp. “That woman–”
His disparaging tone was enough to turn the spark into a flame. “–That woman is several years younger than us both and has more maturity in her left hand than the two of us have combined. I’m sure she’s convinced herself that she’s the sole reason you ran away–,” he opened his mouth to object but you barreled onward, “–and please don’t tell me running away wasn’t what you were doing, that was at the very least part of it. Abigail has been looking after that child all by herself while you were off trying to forget her existence, and Jack's.”
He was aghast, you had never spoken to him in such an abrasive way. Perhaps you had changed more in the past year than either of you had surmised. “All by herself? If I’m countin’ correctly, she’s got nearly twenty people right here.”
“He’s being raised by a gang, which means he's barely being raised at all. Bill Williamson and Davey Callander and all the rest have not made for outstanding caregivers. I–” you had to pause to compose yourself, “I haven’t made for a superb one, either.”
John let out a disbelieving scoff. “And you think I’ll do any better? Me?”
“If you tried? Yes, I think so,” you retorted with a heated conviction. It surprised you, how much you and how little John believed in what you were saying.
“I don’t know the first thing about bein’ a father.”
“Do you think that Abigail knew anything about being a mother when she had Jack? She wasn’t even twenty. But she figured it out.”
“I ain’t been back for one day, and you’re already askin’ the impossible of me. I’ve made mistakes, but why should I have to pay for ‘em for the rest of my life?”
“Maybe it only seems like a punishment because you’re afraid. Maybe you only ran away because you’re afraid.” You were cutting blindly now, heedless in your distress.
John looked a mixture of aggrieved and rattled. “Minnow, of all the people in this goddamn gang, you–I thought you’d understand. It’s complicated, alright?”
You had heard the same phrasing, just a while ago. The bruise on your heart had reannounced its presence. You couldn’t stop yourself from sympathizing with him, from wavering at his troubled eyes. But he was being selfish and unfair and you saw far too much of yourself within him.
You took a stride into the shelter of his towering shoulders. Your palm, still trembling, rested against his chest. “I think I might understand. A bit. But please, please just try, John.”
He was already shaking his head and the seam was already tearing apart. “Really? Is this really how it’s gonna be?”
The tear slipped down your cheek before you noticed it had welled up. Your hand curled against his shirt. You could feel the warmth of his skin underneath. “It’s the way it has to be.”
You wondered if just then you could truly see the chip in his armor, or if you had been imagining it. Either way, his visage dulled and he drew back. You pulled your hand into yourself and clutched it close.
“Then I guess that’s all there is to say,” he said bluntly, stepping away. “Nice seein’ you again, miss.”
You did not trust yourself to call after him. After all, what you had told Arthur remained true. You still could not resent him, you still could not hate him. Quite the opposite, in fact.
John left you under the pine as you watched the array of tents obscure his frame. The tides of frustration at his intransigence, relief at his homecoming, concern for Arthur, and heartbreak for Abigail churned within your skull, making your vision swim although you hadn’t had a drop of booze. It induced a twisted form of seasickness; you had to brace yourself on the tree to steady your feet.
So much had changed, and so much had fallen from you in so little time. The sheer absence of everything was staggering. The notch in your chest felt more like a gash.
You could not go back to John, but moreover, any type of bond you rekindled with him was sure to be poisoned.
You weren’t even sure where you stood with Arthur, now that he had made his resentments clear.
And Abigail…Abigail was something else entirely.
The stitches had been snipped, some by your own doing, some by others, but all of them were Unraveling and you were too stricken to know where to begin.
A wind snaked through the undergrowth and over your skin, carrying with it the frigid promise of winter. Yet another winter, it would seem, spent alone. You were forming a rather troublesome habit.
You shivered and gazed back into camp. From what you could see from the outside, Dutch was making some posturing speech to anyone around and sober enough to listen, a rowdy game of cards had been picked up, and Mac was brandishing a freshly polished revolver to an unimpressed Hosea. It all felt so tangible compared to your own disembodied mind; it felt as though it would all pass right through you, as though you had been made incorporeal.
You held your hands out before you to remind yourself that you were still here and that you would not simply blend away into the upholstery. You had come too far to let yourself disappear.
Life would go on, whether you were prepared for it or not. There were songs to sing, challenges to meet, laundry to fold, pockets to pick, and robberies to plan.
The threads had been tattered and torn, but they were not gone. Some way, you would find a needle, a steady hand, and the courage to begin again. Some way, you would sew this Unraveled mess back together. Some way, you would repair what had been undone.
You just needed to learn how.