#luckturned

What came to him was something his father, once-met and forever-loved, had told him.

"The difference between man and animal," Hosea Matthews spoke into the dust-mottled light falling through the colonial windows of Shady Belle, without looking up from the maps of a bank that he had spread out on a large desk over which he stood hunched, "is that an animal will bite its own leg off to get out of a trap. But a man might master the pain and think through it, so that he might come out of it in a wiser manner."

He did look up then. Son, in no way diminished by the absence of his blood in Arthur's veins. Son, on account of the myriad ways in which Hosea saw his teachings reflected in the way the boy wove his thoughts and actions into the tapestry of this world. Boy, because he could never not look at the man and think him that, for all that he raised him and so, in part, counts himself accountable for leading him to where they were now.

Maybe it was staunch optimism blinded by the bonds of trust between them all, but Hosea couldn't shake the grip that perseverance had on his soul. Nowhere had they yet gone where Dutch wouldn't find a way to see them through darker roads, so long as they stuck together. Some had come and gone over the years, Hosea himself among them once, and he wondered if half of the crowd as was with them now might not be with them anymore come year's end … but he did see an end to this troublesome year – and didn't that count for something?

So here they were, at the edge of the mountains where the land was a sea of roiling grass around the only house you could see, in the vastness, in the endlessness. In the chasm that separated the living from the remembering. So here they were, the sun a fist in the sky and beating down relentless in the thick heat of summer-

-and this was what he wanted to escape to?

The dust had barely settled over the trampled legacy he'd left down south, all that had come to pass (the living and the remembering, Mary thought) and she wanted, desperately, to shake him so as to dislodge some ounce of sense that must be left, corroded and ossified, in that willful head of his. Shake him and ask him if he was mad, if he wanted to die, if drowning from a wet set of lungs was really that much more preferable to sharing the air she breathed.

She did and said and asked none of these things, found her tongue a thing even harder to dislodge than the stubbornness of men.

There was a glint in her eye, though, that unraveled the word burden as it lingered between them, on the porch, in the wind. She wanted to see him here, sun-kissed and full-cheeked and healthy. Your hands are made for this, she'd told him once, half a lifetime ago, as she watched him handle a skittish filly with the bottomless patience of a man who knew how to hold love in his palms. She wanted those hands here, now, to tend to her horses, her land, her.

Because the only other path in front of her right now was to say her goodbyes, again. Again. The amount of times she'd said goodbye to Arthur Morgan – in heartbreak, in wilful abandon, in cold calculation, so that she would not one day have to say goodbye standing over his grave.

How close they had come to that grave anyway had taught her a lesson she wouldn't likely forget for the rest of her days, and so here they were. At the edge of the mountains, in the summer sun, a treasured pocket of the earth tucked away where they could simply be, and speak their truths at last.

"If you take one more step," Mary Linton said, "I'm gonna do what I should've done all them years ago. I'll pack and leave and come with you. Arthur, the only way you're a burden to me now is if you make me say my goodbyes yet again. Do you understand?"

Don't make me beg a sentiment between each and every syllable, and yet the widening of her eyes made her beg anyway.

Oh, the irony of their roles reversed.

she’s  quiet  for  a  long  time  -  longer  than  she  intends  to  be.  in  the  silence,  eliza’s  fingertips  absentmindedly  trace  a  variety  of  wobbly  &  unspecific  shapes  over  arthur’s  forearms,  wrists  and  palms:  a  tangible  reminder  that  tethers  either  one  of  them  back  to  reality.

she  never  got  to  say  goodbye  to  lenny.  hosea  …  christ,  it  feels  like  a  mortal  sin  to  keep  on  going  without  hosea.  hell,  have  they  even  had  a  moment  to  breathe  since  losing  sean?  kieran?  jenny?  right  now,  she  is  grateful  for  who  remains  &  equally  as  terrified  of  what  dutch’s  plans  for  the  future  hold  -  eliza  fatefully  reminds  herself  that  she  is  still  sitting  here  with  arthur.  he  is  alive,  and  she  can’t  bear  the  thought  of  what  her  life  would  look  like  if  that  weren’t  the  case.  that,  alone,  spurs  her  back  into  this  very  moment,  giving  his  hands  a  gentle  squeeze.

“i  don’t  think  tha’s  a  bad  thing,”  she  murmurs,  voice  barely  above  a  whisper,  “tha’s  what  he  used  to  want  us  t’do.”  dutch,  that  is.  purveyor  of  the  true  price  of  freedom:  question  all  so  that  you  learn  all.  now,  it’s  different.  even  if  she  asked  dutch  for  details  on  his  ever-evolving,  so-called  plan  …  eliza  doesn’t  think  that  she’d  get  an  honest  answer.

the  truth  of  what  the  men  endured  across  the  sea  is  jarring.  hard  to  fathom,  even,  considering  that  the  lot  of  them  have  persevered  through  what  feels  like  worse  -  to  witness  arthur  recanting  it  is  enough  to  bring  her  pause.  (she  loses  all  the  color  in  her  cheeks  at  the  mention  of  a  cold-blooded  dutch.)

there’s  cracks  in  these  marble  walls  -  arthur  is  the  only  person  she’ll  admit  it  to.  “it  don’t  feel  safe  anymore,"  eliza  sighs,  still  mindful  of  speaking  above  a  breath  of  air,  "but  we  can't  just  ...  leave."  can  we?