“Ma’am, that feller ain’t usually too happy around strangers-“ Arthur began as the woman approached the meanest looking, battle-scarred tomcat he had around. That cat had been here the longest of all his rescues. He expected a growl, or at least some protest from the old cat when she opened the door and picked him up out of the kennel, but to Arthur’s surprise he started to hear the loudest purrs.
“I think this one will do just fine.” The woman said while giving the scruffy cat some loving chin scritches. Arthur smiled at the scene, he was always overjoyed when someone found their new partner.
“Alright, ma’am. It looks like this one’ll treat ya well. Let’s get that paperwork done!”
. ⋅ ˚̣- : ✧ : – ⭒ ⊹ ⭒ – : ✧ : -˚̣⋅ .
Happy Holidays @squidproquoclarice ! I was your secret santa for the @rdrevents Winter Exchange! ///i hope sending through tumblr is okay, i’m awful at figuring out discord sometimes.
I really loved your modern Sadithur AU idea (Arthur runs an animal shelter for misfits, and Sadie comes looking for a cat), I read it and couldn’t get the picture of Arthur in a little apron with dog treats in his pocket out of my head. I kept thinking Sadie would definitely pick the meanest looking cat, but he would end up being a sweetheart.
I hope I did well and i hope you enjoy your gift! I’d never drawn Arthur or Sadie before so i hope i did them justice (: Hoping the holidays treat you well and you stay warm and cozy ❄️
Morning Escape Arthur Morgan, Sadie Adler, sideline Abigail Roberts Writing parsnippet that I put together this week because I needed to feel like a productive writer. Unpolished and unfinished, with hints of Sadithur.
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Weren’t much worth getting up for these days, or so’s it seemed. The summer heat stifled the air, thickened it to an ugly mist that choked the airways and rested heavy on his chest when he tried to sleep. Mold scattered through the rotting walls of Shady Belle, least he figured such with the dark stains clustered ‘round the corners and fancy fixtures that’d one been sign of money and status. Arthur ain’t unfamiliar with the kinds of cough it brings, thick in the lungs, and he blames that for the shallow breath that settles on him when he mounts the stairs and heads down the hall to the slender room stacked with ammunition and his few worldly possessions.
Arthur knew that this was the quiet life Sadie had once, and lost, and now probably appreciated all the more for the years and the pain that had come in between. As he had told Sadie last year, they’d been many people in their lives. The thing now was that this was who they’d chosen to be, rather than the people the world seemed to have forced them into by taking away everything and everyone, and leaving only a relentless, automatic purpose to give each day any sort of direction.
He’d left his shack behind easily enough. She’d left bounty hunting behind easily enough. They’d ridden over the border from North Elizabeth and gotten married in Catawissa, where nobody knew Arthur Bowen and Sadie Griffith-soon-to-be-Bowen, or knew who they’d been two weeks before, let alone nine years. They’d treated themselves to a fine dinner and posh hotel for their wedding night, because given he planned to only marry once in his life, he damn well intended that to be an occasion fit to treasure. And for her, he wanted this new start to be a sweet one.
Then Mr. and Mrs. Bowen had headed northwest, determined to look back as little as they could, to move forward rather than in endless circles. They’d taken the summer and built this cabin up on Deer Ridge, hunted and fished and chopped firewood all to lay in stock for the winter. Made plans for next year, and beyond, in a way that he marveled at, in a way that Arthur Morgan hadn’t and Arthur Lewis couldn’t.
That easy partnership they’d had years ago and back near Mercy seemed to continue. The shells they’d put up of the saint hermit and the bounty hunter kept eroding, but strangely he had no fear of it. She was here, and she’d chosen to be with him, and likewise him for her. They had each other’s backs then, seen each other’s raw and vulnerable spots. He could trust her with his heart and soul just the same.
One thing was about to change, though. She was pregnant. Hadn’t said anything yet, but something in him knew, some part of him that understood even if he couldn’t fully put his finger on the changes. She’d wanted children, mourned the loss of the chance with Jake. As for him, well, he’d told her about Isaac and Eliza. They hadn’t exactly planned this, but they hadn’t exactly taken any measures against it either. And from the smiles he’d seen from her when she was lost in thought, he knew she was happy. So was he.
He closed his eyes sometimes and tried to fight against the fear that he would lose another child, or fail them as he would Isaac. That there would be something that he couldn’t fight against, and he’d come home again someday to find them dead too. Just the same as Sadie woke in the night sometimes with a gasp, clinging tightly to him, at the fear of men breaking into the cabin intent on doing violence.
But they’d get by, day by day, week by week. The bleak worry sometimes might hang them over the edge of a cliff, the abyss of the past yawning dark and horrible below them, but he believed she would always, always hold onto him with all her might to keep him from falling. How could he do any less for her? That it was a happiness aware of sorrow and the fear of loss didn’t mean it wasn’t a wonderful sort of happiness all the same. How long had it been since he’d actually felt the spark of joy and anticipation within him? So long he couldn’t even recall directly. But here it was all the same. They weren’t too old or too damaged to have that for their own, and that notion never failed to make him grateful for it.
For now, he had time to come to terms with the mingled joy and grief. Whatever feelings she was having about lost chances with Jake and lost years, he would give her that time too. She would tell him when she was ready. And then they’d look forward to their son or daughter together.
The way things had gone had delayed plans a bit, but finally, finally, they’d found a house to take on together. Much as she loved Caro, Harry, Josh, and Maddie, and as much as Arthur loved John and Abigail and Jack, Sadie thought either of them might have committed murder if it had gone on much longer. Staying with one’s siblings for a time in a new city was one thing. Staying with them through months and months of 24/7 togetherness in a pandemic…well, if nothing else it had given her and Arthur something to ruefully laugh about together. She didn’t think she’d have gotten through those earliest days without those texts and Skype chats.
But now here they were, and this was their house. A bit of an as-is fixer upper, especially given it had been sitting vacant with the snowbird owners going back and forth about making their seasonal-turned-years-long move to Georgia permanent. But what wasn’t a bit of a work in progress these days? She and Arthur had already pored over swatches and websites and plans, Arthur sketching things out with that surprising skill of his. They’d spent more than their share of time in Lowe’s debating paint and arguing about the merits of various faucets and cabinets for the kitchen, but agreed that a good stove and oven were a top priority.
They’d finally gotten the keys and the closing signed, and now here they were, staring at a house that was theirs, and desperately in need of a deep cleaning before actually doing anything with all those grand plans. She eyed Arthur. “Well, guess it’s time to evict the dust bunnies.”
“They’ve definitely been busy breeding these past years,” he agreed with a shrug and a laugh. “Living room first?”
“Oh, no, no.” She gave him a wink. “Bedroom, honey.”
He shot back a knowing smile. “Because it’s very practical to start upstairs and then move our way down so we ain’t tracking dust through a clean downstairs?”
“Utterly practical. I can’t fault your logic.”
“That is, of course, not the only reason to want the bedroom done first.”
“Of course. I want to sleep somewhere comfortable as soon as possible.”
They’d spent plenty of time picking out a bed. God, the idea of the sheer luxury of a new queen sized bed, especially after nearly two years now of the old twin bed at Caro’s with its saggy mattress? Her back and hips, if nothing else, told her too many mornings that she was far, far closer to forty than twenty, and she couldn’t sleep like that indefinitely. And the idea of having Arthur there every night…even better.
It wasn’t like how it had been with Jake all those years ago. They’d finally moved in together a few years out of college. It had been a matter of mismatched furniture from Walmart and Goodwill and Craigslist, a mishmash of dishes and kitchen stuff and linens, that followed them from apartment to apartment and then to a house, slowly replacing a piece here and there as it wore out. It had been like that still, even well into their thirties despite having enough money, because by then the whole thing was comfortable in its mismatched coziness. But they’d never quite gotten to plan a home from the very start like this. She was glad she and Arthur would get that experience together, to have something different from how it had been with Jake, and she suspected he was glad to have something different from how it had been with Eliza.
They’d come well-armed with plenty of Pledge and rags and a vacuum and Swiffer dusters. Soon enough a storm of dust filled the air as the great dust bunny eviction began, and even though they’d be sticky and dirty and sweaty by day’s end, she knew already they’d look at their work with a hell of a lot of pride and satisfaction, starting to make this place their own.
Beatrice wasn’t sure whether it had been one day or two since the doctor had come. She’d seen the look in his eyes, heard the hushed tones with which he murmured to Lyle over in the corner, and with Lyle cursing as he left the wagon and the pallet where she lay, she’d known what she already felt deep in her bones.
The fever and the pain that had once consumed her had faded, felt now at some peculiar remove like hearing music from another room. It would all be over soon, and that was a relief. The vultures might be circling, so to speak, and she’d seen so many of them in the five years since they’d arrived in America. She felt them watching her now just at the edge of her vision, not certain whether they were real or phantoms, and not certain whether it mattered. Exhausted as she was, she could only accept it. This was her end.
A part of her wondered whether she had caused this by her thoughts. The nervousness and sometimes despair over being pregnant again, worrying what she would do. David and Arthur both had readily crossed Lyle’s temper, for all David had been just a baby yet when he died. Having lost two already, she knew the signs. But this time, the bleeding hadn’t stopped. Maybe it was being four months along this time that had done it.
We go together then, you and me, she thought towards that child that would never be, now finally able to offer them nothing but love and tenderness rather than having it mingled so heavily with trepidation and fear. Perhaps we shall see David, and your other brothers or sisters.
But peaceful as that notion was, that still left Arthur. He’d be alone with Lyle after this. Lyle had gone to town hours ago, awkwardly grunting something about getting supplies. She suspected it was only that he couldn’t sit here and watch her die, and that he’d be at the saloon nursing his sorrow. Hard-handed and angry as he sometimes was, there was a peculiar vulnerable and tender streak in him all the same. She was only thankful Lyle had taken Arthur with him. He’d chased Arthur off most of the time since Beatrice took to bed, growling for him to go find something useful to do. Sparing him the experience of it, she supposed. She thanked him for that.
She’d managed to talk to Arthur last night, though, when he’d crept in after Lyle went to sleep. Given him the portrait of her taken earlier that year in Wyoming, and showed him the papers she’d hidden behind it. Papers neither of them could read, but papers that would hopefully be the key to a better future all the same. The ones that officially made him an American boy, not just another immigrant child. He would belong here. He already sounded far more American than Welsh, and she was grateful for that. She could only hope he’d have the chances she’d wanted for him, even if she wouldn’t be here to see it.
In the end, that was all she could do for him. It seemed so little, and she was afraid for him all the same.
Hearing the creak of someone climbing in the wagon, she couldn’t help her surprise. Lyle had come back so soon? No, that couldn’t be. But she heard footsteps approaching, and she heard the scrape of glass and the hiss of a match, saw the brightening behind her closed eyes as someone lit the lantern that had gone out awhile ago. It hadn’t mattered to her, but now that there was light again, she opened her eyes to look at who had come to call.
She didn’t know either of them by sight, fair-haired and well past her own twenty-eight years. Neighbors? No, they were far from anyone. Lyle had made certain of it. Who else would simply climb up into the wagon like this? KInd strangers, perhaps. “Are you looking for Lyle?” It always seemed to come down to that. She closed her eyes again. “He isn’t here just now, and I’m sorry for whatever he’s done, but I’m afraid we don’t have much for the taking.” Money ran through her man’s fingers like water, fast as his quicksilver dreams of riches.
“Should we…” The woman spoke, her voice soft.
She was too tired for this. “Are you missionaries, then? I suppose the saving of a soul becomes even more important at the very end. There’s no need of that. I’ve made what peace I might with my God, I assure you.” Even if she’d come so far from the girl who’d attended chapel so faithfully back in Aberdare.
The man finally spoke up, his deep voice low and gentle. “No. You don’t need to worry about missionaries.” The words in Welsh, no less, and the familiar lilt of it lifted her spirits in spite of herself. “Mam, it’s me. It’s Arthur.”
Now that snapped her to attention, and she opened her eyes, finding she had some fury to spare yet for someone who’d tease her like this as she lay there dying. But she saw those eyes looking at her with a sad, knowing tenderness–that familiar blue-tinted green, the eyes she saw whenever she chanced to have a mirror. The ones she saw too every day in her boy, her Arthur. His hair–it was dusted with grey, yes, but the same dark blond as hers. Lyle’s brows for certain, and something of the cast of his cheekbones.
Her boy had just turned seven last month, and yet she’d swear he also sat here beside her now, a man of at least forty, perhaps fifty. She looked at him, and something in her knew him, something deeper than blood and bone, an echo within the soul. “So you are.” She didn’t know how it could be so, only that it was. She drank in the sight of him. Such a large man, tall and broad. He hadn’t gotten that from Lyle, perhaps instead from her own father Dylan, such a large man he’d been permanently stooped long before he died from working in the cramped mine tunnels. Seeing the marks of age on him, the lines etched into his face, and the scars–the small nick on the bridge of his nose, another on his right cheek, and a large one on his chin only somewhat hidden by a short-cropped beard. Child-Arthur was healing a similar cut on his nose even now, earned by tumbling off the wagon while playing out a week ago, and by the look of it she’d known it would scar, just as it had on this man. She glanced past him to the woman. Tawny hair, a riot of freckles, amber eyes, a large scar on her right brow. Watching Beatrice just as carefully as she was watched. She asked, speaking in Welsh and managing some good humor, “Well, my boy, who is this you’ve brought with you?” But she already suspected.
If she hadn’t already believed, that shy smile, that half-lowering of his gaze, would have told her. “This is my wife. Sadie.”
“Pleasure to meet you.” Her Welsh was less polished, her accent more obvious to Beatrice’s ear, but it surprised her all the same to hear it. Had Arthur taught her? There were a thousand other questions.
But she licked her lips, needing now to ask the important question: “Why have you come? And…how?” She switched back to English for it. He was an American, her boy, and she would have him be so to her at the end. She’d fought hard for that. It was good he hadn’t forgotten his Welshness entirely, but some things needed to be kept close and secret. She knew that full well.
“How? I don’t know for sure. There’s some red-headed fella named Sinclair who’s gonna have some explanations for this.” He leaned in, and reached out to take his hand in hers. A large hand, work-roughened, so unlike the small hand she still took sometimes to hold onto him in crowds and the like. “Why? That’s a question that’s got more answers than I know what to do with, really. Cause I…” He sighed, shook his head, and the aching look in his eyes told her too much.
“I know there’s no return from this, <i>fy ngwash i</i>. It’ll be soon enough. I knew it last night when I gave you those papers. Did you have the use of them?”
“Sort of. We ended up in Canada, so uh, proving I was born in Wales actually helped us there.”
“Not America, then?”
“There was better land in Canada.”
“So you’re a farmer?” She couldn’t help but brighten at that. She’d wanted something like that for him. Something peaceful, gentle, nothing like Lyle’s life.
“Horses, mostly. Some sheep, cattle, and the like. It’s a good place. A pretty good life. And the rest, well…”
“You’d best tell her, Arthur,” Sadie said, her voice full of the twanging accent she’d heard in New Austin and some parts of Texas. “She’ll see it eventually anyhow.”
He sighed, shoulders sagging. “I reckon you will at that. It weren’t…all what you hoped for me, Momma. Daddy ain’t gonna live but another four years past this. Gets hanged for horse theft in San Francisco just after Christmas. After that, a lot happened. And it took me a long time to get things right.”
“Then tell me how it was, son.” She heard the tone of both inflexible command and gentle invitation in her words, and knew it for the way she spoke to him sometimes as a mother, asking to know the truth of something. Usually when he’d done some petty mischief or theft that she knew was Lyle’s influence on him. You must tell me, and perhaps I’ll tell you that it was wrong and why, but I won’t hate you for it. Because I love you enough to want you to know what’s right. She saw that conflict in him already, a boy who could steal candy from the store and shrug about it, but who’d come home the next day taking a beating to save a stray cat from being kicked to death by some older boys.
So he told her. And perhaps it wasn’t the worst she could imagine after hearing Lyle was dead when Arthur was eleven. But it made for no pretty picture. Hearing he’d been taken in by criminals, and ones far better and more sophisticated than Lyle could ever be, something broke within her heart. She’d wanted so much better for him. But even as he didn’t quite look at her, he kept talking.
He told her of the gang he’d been in, of seeing no other life or future for himself. Told her of a little boy named Isaac, her first grandchild. You’ll meet him someday, long before you should. He’s such a good kid. I know you’ll love him, and he’ll love you. Told her of nearly three decades of mistakes and failures after this. She might have thought it was a life of only regrets, but then he told her of a new life he’d made, of Sadie, of Canada and the children who had lived, grandchildren she would never see: Beatrice, named for her. Matthew. Susanna. Andrew.
She felt that pull, as if being summoned. Light fading, like a fire dimmed now beyond embers. Arthur must have seen it as well, because he stopped telling her about little things, and reached out to take her hand. Beatrice felt someone else take her other hand–Sadie, then. “I don’t exactly know how we got here,” he said quietly. “But I know how it was that day. I came back with Daddy and you was gone already. And…that always stayed with me. That I wasn’t there. And I know how it is. Nobody ought to die alone like that.” There was some kind of knowing weariness to his voice at that, a question she would never be able to ask and he would never be able to answer for her. “So here we are.”
So much that would be left unsaid, but no matter. She would see in time. She would see all of it, and there was comfort to it, because now she knew her boy would be all right in the end. That he would remember her too, that he loved her. That put her fear to rest, and so now she could rest. There were no vultures now, only the final words of love and farewell spoken, and the reassurance of the hands holding hers as everything faded into peace.
The dead had walked for six months now. In that time, Arthur had wryly been thankful for yet another reason that he and Sadie were here in Nuevo Paraiso. After all, where the only people they had killed were a handful of Del Lobos who’d come at them. Being back in more northerly places with much bloodier memories, and possibly seeing the faces of people whom he’d been the death of once already, and having to put them down again, might well have been too much.
It wasn’t exactly the peaceful life he’d long envisioned, but at least the fight was now for something good, something clear and fine. They fought to protect the living and to give the dead rest again, and he could accept that. He was certainly helping people by this, and that helped balance his very lopsided scales somewhat.
And for today, he and Sadie were out hunting. Not for the undead, though their eyes and ears were keen for that, but for food. The people of Chuparosa, thankfully safe within their gated adobe walls, always needed feeding, and nobody was fool enough to go out alone unless they wanted to become undead.
Bea and Mattie were safe back home, under Karen’s watchful eye. Some said that for both parents of young children to go out together was foolishness, giving Sadie a glance that invited her to stay home as they thought a woman clearly ought but both he and Sadie knew there was nobody else either of them would trust more in the danger of the desert and the risen dead than each other. Going out together meant they both came back alive. That was how it had long been between them, and how it was, and that was that.
“I swear,” he said, tracking a herd of goats, their shaggy coats indicating they’d run wild for a while now, “if I ever find out there’s some bastard who started all this–”
“Nobody knows,” Sadie pointed out. “Some fool touching some cursed artifact, or making dark deals with the Devil, or if it’s supposedly just God’s judgment like the preachers keep ranting, who the hell knows? Until we know that, ain’t no fixing this. All I know is we’re alive, and I aim to keep it so.”
“That’s the way of it, just about,” he acknowledged, and suddenly something in the middle of the goats caught his eye as the goats scattered, bleating and screaming. A wolf? Quickly snapping to it instead, Sadie beat him to the shot, and the thing dropped in its tracks.
Heading up to it, he could only stare at it. “Jesus, that thing looks like a wolf humped a boar and a porcupine.” The ridged back and pointed snout, the quills, and the grey-green skin and eyes that were an unsettling red even in death, told him that like much these days, this was no natural thing. He’d heard people talking about these beasts. Chupacabra, they called them. The goat-sucker. The sharp, bloody teeth and the goat it had dropped with one bite certainly made some eloquent argument for that name.
He sighed, reaching for it to skin it. The goat they could use, for certain. They couldn’t eat the meat of the chupacabra, because it would make them sick, but the pelt and claws and the like would fetch good money as a curiosity from someone. There had been some Harvard or Yale–maybe Princeton–professor down here making noises about wanting to collect specimens. If he hadn’t gotten eaten yet, maybe he and Sadie could sell it to him. He glanced over at her, unable to resist a slight smile. “You ever miss them days when the strangest thing that happened to us was outrunning Pinkertons?”
She laughed, patting him on the shoulder, before crouching to skin and butcher the goat. “Sure. Though at least the shamblers are dumb. That’s a comfort.”
Arthur well understood by this point that they were supposed to look after the littles, Jake and him. Though Sadie, of course, would insist she needed no looking after, even at seven, and nine-year-old Henry alternated between worshipping the two twelve-year-olds and insisting he was old enough to not be treated like a baby. Only five-year-old Caroline went along with things peacefully enough…at least until she got a notion in her head and wandered off, chasing whatever it was that she did.
He and Jake had been poking curiously at some bones bleached in the desert sun, trying to figure out what kind of beast had been there, and turned back to see only Henry and Sadie there studying them too. “Where’d Caro go?” Jake asked, a note of alarm in his voice.
Sadie looked around. “Dunno. Ran off again.”
“Well, we’d best go find her,” Arthur insisted, all sorts of visions of Caro being turned into bleached bones herself out here in the desert. Too many bad things out here to be cautious of, and that was for sure. Thirst for sure. Snakebites from the rattlers ready to defend their territory. Running across men worse than his daddy had been who might not be kind to a little kid, and Momma and Aunt Elsie and Aunt May and Uncle Rob were all worried about things stirring up here in Gaptooth Ridge.
He’d seen some things traveling with his pa before he’d gotten killed over a poker game in the Tumbleweed saloon. Knew bad men well enough, he guessed. But there were things about some of those men he’d seen hanging around Tumbleweed of late that set a low note of alarm even in him. The way they wore their guns, the way they looked at things, the easy swagger in them like they thought they owned the whole town and the whole county besides, told him these weren’t men who’d do no more than try to rob up a store.
Jake didn’t think it would amount to much. But Jake was a good kid. A preacher’s boy. Someone who grieved his pa’s death earlier this year so much, and Uncle Will, Will Adler, had been pretty near to a saint. Good enough to try to be a fine pa to Arthur, along with Rob Griffith. Good enough to take in Beatrice Morgan and her son and call them kin these past six years. He missed Uncle Will too, but he didn’t say so too much. It would feel like stealing that grief from Jake, from Will’s actual son. Claiming something he had no right to have, and his own father had left him with nothing but a name, a battered hat, and memories of a loud voice and angry blows. He almost envied Jake in some ways to have a father to mourn, and how messed up was that?
He knew he didn’t come from that kind of blood like Jake did. Lyle Morgan might not have been that dangerous compared to the men coming down from Rathskeller Fork, but he’d been bad. Arthur was trying, doing his best to be something different. Most days it seemed possible enough, but he supposed he could never be as good as Jake. But at least he knew enough to help protect the younger kids from what was maybe coming here. Assuming they hadn’t lost Caroline, anyhow. Swallowing his panic, he said, “Sadie, you come with me. Jake, you take Henry.” That was the thing sometimes. Jake didn’t like to make those kinds of decisions, so he and Arthur worked well together as a team there.
They found Caroline in the shade of a busted-up old wagon, studying a lizard. She looked up at Sadie and Arthur and beamed, pointing at it. “See? It’s a dragon!”
Tiniest dragon ever, Arthur thought, but he couldn’t help but smile at Caro’s imagination, as ever. “Sure is,” he said. “Don’t want to get too close to it. Dragons like stealing little girls, I hear.” Caro gave a shriek of laughter at that, giggling in that happy, openhearted way she had.
“They take princesses, silly. Not a princess.”
“No, you ain’t a princess, you’re just silly yourself,” Sadie said, rolling her eyes, but smiling at her sister all the same. “Come on. Let’s go home.”
i’ve been playing a lot of RDR2 since i finished RE8 and I gotta say I love Arthur so much ! He is shippable with so many people but I think he looks awesome with Sadie
