A/N: Hey Hey Hey! Here’s my Winter exchange gift for @saucemanboyardee ! I hope that you enjoy this little Sean introspective! I had a fun time writing this, as I’ve never really written for him before!
Thanks to @rdrevents for putting together this fun event!
They buried Davy far from camp.
Dutch figured it was the best option since the ground was too frozen to break the surface. Sean and the rest were inclined to agree. While wolves and other beasts were less likely to approach a larger group, no one was willing to take the chance. They were already in a fragile position; on the run, stuck in the snow covered mountains of Colter with barely any food, meager clothes to keep themselves warm, and little protection from the elements.
The trek to the mountains hadn’t been easy on anyone. Everyone had no choice to but to leave everything behind other than a few minor things they had remembered amidst the hustle. Sean had been lucky enough to grab the photo of his father, but not much else. He had been more concerned with assisting Tilly and Abigail load supplies into one of the wagons. And little Jack wasn’t much help.
Davy’s death; that had been something else. Being an outlaw, one was always aware that death lurked behind every corner and was poised to pounce at any turn. But seeing Davy die like that had been difficult. The entire makeshift camp was already covered in an invisible layer of fragility, and watching the slow and blood decline of a highly valued, able-bodied gunslingers utterly broke everyone’s spirit. Sean supposed the only thing keeping them together at this point was Dutch’s sincere faith they would make it out of the frozen wasteland and find somewhere warm and safe. For now they could only take it one day at a time.
Sean exhaled deeply, watching his breath manifest as a wispy cloud and disappear into the morning air. He had drawn guard duty the previous day and relieved Charles some time ago. Already the frigid air was biting through his jacket and his fingers were stiff from the cold. He flexed the digits to try and loosen them up.
Despite the cold, the landscape around the abandoned town was beautiful. When the snow chose to cease its torrential falls, the rising sun wreathed the mountainside in a splendor of pinks, oranges, and yellows. It almost looked like a roaring fire. If he closed his eyes, Sean could almost feel the warmth.
Trudging through the deep snow, Sean made his way to the back of the dilapidated barn. He wondered who was in with the hostage. He made his own visit earlier in the week. The O’Driscoll, whatever his name, was as pathetic as he had imagined; a big blubbering, crying mess. He doubted the man knew much of anything, but once again, Dutch had faith that if they pried hard enough, he’d eventually reveal something worth while.
He remembered the night Arthur brought him to camp. It had been right after their ambush on an O’ Driscoll camp elsewhere in the mountains. Pure coincidence.
They were a regular thorn in the gang’s side as of late. Sean knew there was a rivalry and Dutch had a rich history with Colm, the leader, but as to the extent of the history, he wasn’t exactly sure. What he did know was they had decimated a good portion of Colm’s men.
A smile tugged at the corner of his lips as he reminisced on the attack. It had been invigorating. The adrenaline coursing through his body, each shot ringing in his ears, the weight of the gun in his hands. Even now his fingers itched to pull the trigger on something. Anything really. A small rabbit or even a squirrel would suffice. If they weren’t confined to the tundra, he’d be out there robbing some poor sap or pickpocketing an unsuspecting passerby. But, until then. he would sullenly resign himself to whatever kept him moving. If he was moving, he was making small steps, and eventually that would lead to leaving this place.
His nasty-ness had bothered more people than he would have liked to admit. So far, Sean had been reprimanded by both Hosea and Miss Grimshaw. MaryBeth had snapped at him too, and she rarely raised her voice. It was clear despite their victory. tensions still ran high.
“Been out here long?”
Sean angled his body away from the perimeter to see Lenny picking his way through the snow; a steaming tin cup clutched in his hands. Wordlessly he extended the cup out to him. Sean nodded his thanks and took a small sip. The heat of the coffee burned his tongue, but he welcomed the heat.
“You’re a real lifesaver, you know that?” Sean said, shooting his friend a toothy grin. “Another minute and I’d have been frozen to the ground! You know me. I plan on causing quite the boom when I go. None of this freezing shit.”
“Yeah? Well, I’m sure you’ll find some way to make it happen.” Lenny replied, chuckling.
Sean chuckled himself, before they lapsed into a comfortable silence. It was easy for that to happen. Sean regarded Lenny as one of the good ones. He was always down for a laugh, even if he didn’t always agree with his antics and typically lended an ear whenever he was in a piss poor mood. Of course he tried his best to return the favor, but sometimes Lenny’s problems were too sophisticated for his liking. He had a particular habit of using big words Sean couldn’t understand. Sometimes it wore at his self-esteem. But it was comforting that Lenny never expressed that to him, and, if Lenny believed in him, maybe he could believe in himself.
“You know, I’m pretty sure Pearson’s finished making something out of the deer Arthur and Charles brought back. Want to go check it out?”
Sean glanced over at him. “I don’t know. Hosea might get after me again if I leave my post.”
“Come on, Sean.” Lenny reasoned. “Javier’s going to relieve you any minute, right? Let’s just go get him now.”
Gently clapping him on the back, Lenny turned and began to retrace his steps to the main cabins. Sean took a moment, glanced once more at the perimeter, before following.
“Oi! Wait up!” He called, jogging after him. “You better save some of the stew for me!”
“Well,” Sean said with a sigh and a raised glass, “Prohibition, eh? Here’s to the end of fun for the rest of America.”
“They just get to experience what we have for the last two years,” Karen pointed out dryly. The territorial legislature, in all their almighty wisdom, had voted to ban alcohol here two years ago. “And I’m sure they’ll figure out the same way to deal with it, just like here.” Runs over the Canadian border, fishing boats bringing booze in from Canada as well, and stills popping up everywhere like some kind of drunk mushrooms. “Dry ain’t ever gonna be dry. It’s human nature.”
It didn’t hurt that the law was so thin on the ground up here in Alaska that people were mostly left to their own devices, which was how many preferred it. It was certainly how the former Van Der Linde Gang preferred it, and though she expected the law would still think of them that way, she hadn’t thought of them by that name in years. They’d left Dutch to find that peaceful place away from everything that they wanted, and they’d come and found it here. Dutch? For all his talk about an unspoiled haven for them to make their own, it seemed he’d wanted something different in the end.
The law had finally caught up with him nine years ago. News made its way slowly to Alaska sometimes, especially away from bigger towns, but it made it here all the same. It had been so long, but still–there was a finality to that news. The end of something, grieving more the idea of Dutch that had turned to ashes more than the man he’d proved to be. Because now there was no chance Dutch could ever live up to the sparkle and shine of that promise, mere fool’s gold that had fooled them all. She’d seen Arthur on the front porch of his and Sadie’s cabin that night, looking out into the distance, and seen Sadie there with him, her arm around him. Of course he’d take it hardest, as he had back then. He’d been with Dutch the longest.
But they’d made their choice twenty years ago, and they hadn’t regretted it. Sean got that grin of his that she knew meant some outrageous idea was about to happen, and she couldn’t help but smile herself at it, waiting for what he’d say. “Lenny and Tilly are clever ones with designing things, and Arthur and Sadie are good at tinkering just about anything up. We all know it. We’ll get something built. But just enough to keep us with a bit of life, that’s all. Don’t want no trouble, hey? We saw how being in the moonshine selling business goes rotten with those Braithwaites back in Lemoyne. No thank you, sir, to all that.”
She reached out and ruffled his hair, as much grey as ginger now, her fingers instinctively seeking and finding the scar that marked where a Grey bullet had creased his head long ago in Rhodes. An inch further over, Sean not turning to answer Arthur–that was the difference between life and death. She still remembered how shaken he’d been at camp that day, talking about how close he’d come to being another casualty of the day. Sean being Sean, his irrepressible high spirits came back eventually, but seeing him that shocked and sober had stayed with her.
Yes, better to not end up in some kind of war like the Braithwaites and Greys. They might want to thumb their nose a little at stupid laws, but there was the difference in that and deliberately waving a red cape in front of the lawmen. They’d learned the latter at painful cost in those dark days of 1899. She teased him, “You gonna be our barkeep, Seannie? You talk enough to be one.”
Ever notice how Sean from RD2 looks like Domhnall Gleeson? I literally thought he must’ve done the mocap for Sean. Plus their both Irish! I was wrong. So what the hell happened?
