#gunnersling

[gunnersling]

Red hills west of Valentine

Arthur Morgan x F!reader

Wc - 1.8k | cws - mild BH | sfw | synopsis - after being orphaned at a young age you’re forced to grow up quickly. Many years later as a gun for hire you come across an old acquaintance, things don’t pick up where they left off | part 1 of ?

Standing in the underbelly of a blazing fire is a feeling unmatched.

Your mother told you when you were very young that Hell is a place where sinners go. It’s an eternity of hellfire and flame. Of burning pain and never ending suffering in a blazing inferno. When you would take God’s name in vain or bicker with the other children out in the school yard- your mother would warn you of what could await you if you weren’t more careful and kind.

She’d ask you to behave and tell you to show kindness to those around you. You’d been too young to understand, to fully weigh up the heaviness of her words and the meaning behind them. When she’d tuck you into bed at night she’d tell you to pray with her- and you would. She’d pray for good health and a long happy life for the two of you together.

And now- now you’re watching as her eyes melt out of her skull. You’re frozen in fear. Paralysed by the horror that is unfolding right in front of you. Her charred body lies at the bottom of the stairs. You would have to step over her oozing body to get out of the front door. To get to safety. You see where her skin is melting down into the floorboards and you can smell the way her hair is singed off along with the very flesh from her bones.

It makes you sick- physically. You retch and vomit down the stairs. It stains the front of your nightdress and dribbles down your chin. You scream. You cry out. It’s a hoarse smoke-infiltrated sound that rips through you like a crack of thunder. Everything burns around you. Memories captured in photo frames. Heirlooms passed from one generation to the next. The family dog, Scout. Your mother. Everything is gone.

You were only twelve years old.

17 years later

The deers wide eyes stare up at you, round and dark like fat copper pennies, and yet, the rest of his body lays across the other side of the dirt road.

It’s hardly an odd sight, not in these parts. Wilder than most places, not yet gentrified by the ways of the modern folk that have flocked here from the big cities out East to get a taste of the country.

These parts still uphold those values of tradition. Small wooden houses and candlelit windowsills. Crops grown in the soil behind those houses, living off of their own little claims of land - self sufficient and cut off from any need of civilisation. A tiny wired chicken coop and a pig or two, what more could anyone need?

They’d raise families and pass on these traditional values. Little babes homeschooled with what little their mothers know of reading and writing, if it’s anything at all. They won’t need that, not really, much more important to learn to milk the cows and bake bread that doesn’t cement itself to everything it comes into contact with instead.

It’s an idealistic idea. Not at all on par with the ill stricken reality of droughts and locust plagues, balanced with a violent crime streak that only brings about death and blood and bullets.

It’s any surprise it isn’t a persons severed head you’re staring at - it wouldn’t be the first time. Maimed corpses lying strewn near roads, unclear whether or not it’s man or beast who had left them there. As unclear as to which is worse, the man or the beast, you know for a fact which you would prefer to maul you to death.

Alas, you press your spurs into your horses side, ushering him forward. He tosses his head, unsettled by the scent of death that lingers just under his nose. Big and brave as your horse is, it’s been a long journey and he’s as ready for rest as you are.

Real rest, a few days to recover and recuperate after the harsh sandstorms and dwindling supplies that’s cursed the pair of you for the last few days of your journey.

It’s late into the evening when you reach the edge of town. Dusk is encroaching into darkness, a balmy dusting of orange is barely visible as it tries its best to peak through the clouds. You smell rain, the way it’s stirring in the breeze. That earthy scent that spikes the air, warm and damp and humid.

As you ride further into town you pass a huge wooden sign that’s staked into the ground. Welcome to Valentine it reads. You cast your eyes over it, over the worn paint that’s chipping away and the weeds that try desperately to climb their way up from where the sign is pierced into the dirt.

It sets a precedent of your expectations for this town. Sitting in the cavity of a wide valley, framed by vast unmoving mountains- it looks like something plucked out of a fantasy tale. A sanctuary of sorts, from the outside looking in, it comes across quaint and simple.

Yet, from the chipped sign to the distant hum of shouts from the nearby saloon, you can tell Valentine will be just as any town you’ve passed through before has been. Carnal. Unforgiving. Uncaring in the way that some folk will attempt to rob you at knife point for the coins and crackers in your saddle bag and others will beg for dollars that won’t buy them food but beer and smokes instead.

All these towns are the same. Left behind, compared to the simple settler life that those who had fled to the West had once known - these towns are just as wild and dangerous as the open plains and deep forests. Beyond wolves and bears there are instead bandits and outlaws, monsters that are much more frightening than the ones with inches of fangs and claws.

You supposed you’d have to be the judge, with only a few days rest here in Valentine before you move on again - what’s the worst that could happen?

Valentine yields no surprises. Gutless locals who sneer when you pass by and little more to do than drink yourself into an early night at the saloon or stand staring at the empty bounty post-board for longer than is necessary. Again - it’s much the same as most of the towns around these parts.

You’d hoped that there would at least be a bounty or two to line your pocket while this way on. It’s another weeks journey to Saint Denis and there’s only one more rest stop between here and there where you can actually resupply and sleep in a real bed. It would have been ideal to gather some coin, then you could at least trade with other travellers if you needed more provisions before reaching the next town.

With lack of much else more to do, you find yourself at the saloon. There’s too much noise.

The shrill noise of the piano fills your ears and it’s grating, only worsened by the fact that every drunken idiot inside feels the need to sing and dance along to its upbeat tune. The men spin the women in circles and then they turn and go the other way. It feels like it lasts forever. Ladies shriek when they’re dipped low by their dance partners, laughing so loud it feels like it pierces right through your skull.

While one end of the bar delivers the commotion of music and laughter, the other brings the ruckus of a fight that’s brewing. Two men shouting at one another over by the poker table. Their exchange isn’t coherent enough for you to understand or hear from where you’re sat sloped at the bar, but whatever it is apparently warrants getting physical. They launch themselves at each other.

The bigger man out of the two of them, to no one’s surprise, quickly gets the upper hand, pinning the other man to the floor by the front of his waistcoat. Soon they’re merely rolling around brawling on the floor like schoolboys fighting over a wooden toy, it’s clear there is no real malice to this argument. Simply too much booze and testosterone in too close of a closed space.

You groan and press your glass to your forehead in hopes it might provide some relief to the headache you can feel starting to form. It swells behind your eyes. The pressure building until it feels like your head will explode.

The fight spills outside, voices whoop and cheer and shout at all of the commotion, but you stay readily rooted to your stool at the bar. You aren’t interested in watching grown men wrestle half-heartedly with each other, a bullet would have solved everything by now but it’s clear neither of them have the sand for that.

Suddenly, a gunshot does in fact ring out.

You pull your glass from your forehead and crane your neck toward the echoing sound. Silence has fallen outside. It’s dead - even the shrill piano has stopped.

It’s with caution that a number of you step out into the night, the short swinging doors creaking as they sway back and forth. As you make your way down the steps everything becomes clearer, one of the men who had been fighting inside is now dead. Shot between the eyes and laid out in the dirt street. Blood pools around him and those that are close can only stare in silence. Violence and murder isn’t foreign to these parts but so blatantly and for reasons unknown is what’s shocking.

The perpetrator is long gone, even in the few seconds it had taken for witnesses of the shooting to make their way from inside.

You scan your surroundings, trying to make head or tail of this. Looking for any clue as to what could have provoked such a thing. There had been no audible argument or interaction, no drunken misunderstanding of stumbling into someone’s path or looking at them the wrong way - none of that.

There’s a long span of silence. Someone had run to get the sheriff, but still, they hadn’t uttered a word and instead made off in the direction of his office on foot.

The earth is wet beneath your boots. Sloppy mud stuck beneath the heels, it feels like you’re being pulled deeper. Something shifts in the air and your intuition pulls your gaze toward a woman standing on the other side of the dirt road. Tears well in her eyes and her breaths come in quick succession. She looks frightened, pale in the face and mouth gaped as she senses your stare. Something goes unsaid between you, an understanding maybe.

She doesn’t shake your gaze. Instead you watch as her wobbly eyes look from you and then toward the sheriff as he jogs toward the scene. She tightens her lips before she finally speaks.

“It was the man from the poster sheriff” her voice is stiff and you watch as the sheriff digests her words.

“Which damn one?” He barks, brows folding into a harsh glare.

She swallows. You watch her throat bobble. “The one them Pinkertons came lookin’ for”

Realisation hits you like a train and those two words slip from your lips far too quickly.

“Arthur Morgan”

[footballnewspapers]

Arsenal transfer news: Gunnersl interest surprised Lucas Torreira as he braced himself for Serie A stay

Arsenal transfer news: Gunnersl interest surprised Lucas Torreira as he braced himself for Serie A stay

[ad_1]

The Uruguay international midfielder admits he was expecting to remain in Italy when talk of a summer transfer away from Sampdoria first surfaced

Lucas Torreira admits Arsenal’s interest in him came as a welcome surprise, with the Uruguayan expecting to stay in Serie A before a £26 million ($33m) deal was pushed through.

The 22-year-old was a player held in high regard ahead of the…

[prleaguebib]

Arsenal news: Gunnersl 'gentlemen' never stood a chance against 'psycho' Rio Ferdinand and 'rock' Nemanja Vidic - Emmanuel Adebayor - Goal

Arsenal news: Gunnersl ‘gentlemen’ never stood a chance against ‘psycho’ Rio Ferdinand and ‘rock’ Nemanja Vidic – Emmanuel Adebayor – Goal

Emmanuel Adebayor has said his former Arsenal side lacked the winning mentality to compete for major honours during his spell at the Emirates.

The 35-year-old spent three years with the north London club between 2006-09 but failed to collect any silverware in that period.

During that time, Arsenal undoubtedly had a talented squad, with the likes of Csec Fabregas, Robin van Persie and Gael Clichy…

[gunnersling]

Our skin starts to rot

Arthur Morgan x M!reader

Wc - 1.5k | cws - blood&injury detail | sfw | synopsis - after losing thousands of dollars worth of your bosses cattle to outlaws you’re taught a lesson. The lessons don’t stop there. Part 1 of 2

You can easily remember the first time you saw him. That was something you wouldn’t soon forget.

There had been a wildness in his eyes that you had never seen anywhere else before. It was something raw and untamed- there was something partly libidinous about it to you.

The snarl of his lips over his bloodied teeth and the cruelty of his tone. It struck something deep within you. You had known of bad men all your life, had been cursed enough to live under the same roof as one for so many years- but none were like him.

He was incomparable.

His bullet had sliced messily through your flesh as it entered your shoulder, tearing the skin apart as if it were rotten fruit- mush and juice spraying outwardly. Combined with the way the breath was knocked right out of you from the impact of the fall from your horse, all you could do was lay prostrate on the hard ground- blinded by the pain and struggling for air.

It was excruciating to move, to even allow your chest to expand to intake oxygen, but you couldn’t simply do nothing; your pistol was lying barely a foot away, so you fought to dig your nails and fingers into the dirt to pull yourself closer. The cold metal brushed your fingers and your bleary eyes fought to maintain focus on the blurry figures now disappearing into the wide open plains - with your entire herd of cattle in tow. Gunshots rung out simultaneously until the barrel of your gun was empty and until the very moment you fell into darkness completely.

It’s a day later and you find yourself on the ground once again. This time you’re on the ranch owners doorstep while his son kicks the ever living shit out of you.

Curling inwards on yourself proved futile, instead leading his steel-toe capped boot to collide harshly with your head instead - it leaves your vision warped.

“What’s your excuse this time, huh?” Another kick.

You’re sure the rancher would have loved to level you out himself but his ailing health and frail stature these days means you’re just more hassle than its worth. You can’t put up a fight, you have no leg to stand on in that regard. You’d fucked up big time and the way your shoulder throbs and burns doesn’t help your efforts either, even if you really did want to hit him back.

There’s no chance in hell you can come up with two-thousand dollars to cover the cost of his cattle either- so you’d let him beat you to death instead.

When the older man raises his hand in the air his son stills immediately, taking one large step backwards. The old rancher steps towards you and you don’t move, not even an inch, you stay as still as a corpse. He holds a wooden cane in one of his hands and uses it to balance himself on when he’s standing over you, his eyes look upon you with something akin to pity.

How could someone be so pathetic? His eyes say, you yourself couldn’t answer such a question.

Sharply, he raises the cane to about the height of his hip before driving it downward into the bullet wound at your shoulder. All you can do is scream. You’re deaf to his words as he speaks.

“All you’ve done is disappoint me, boy” his lips are bitten back into a sneer and he punctuates his words with a sharp twist of his cane. You won’t cry. Not for him.

Blood drips in a trail behind you. Marking your movements. They hadn’t killed you, but part of you wishes they did. You can feel that your left eye is swollen and that there’s blood oozing from some kind of wound on your head, but of all places you could have dragged yourself to - you’ve made it to the saloon. You limp up the steps and try your best to support your left shoulder because it feels like it’s been blown to pieces.

Everything will be numb soon enough if you have it your way.

The bartenders eyes fly to you as soon as you pull yourself through the door. He hears you hiss at the pain and watches as the blood stains his floors.

He throws up his arms “for Christ’s sake” he spits, frowning as you take your seat at the bar. You pay him no mind.

“You better clean that shit up before you leave” his sharp eyes explore your face, you brace your elbow against the bar and rest your chin in your palm.

“Quit bitchin’ Ernie and gimme a whiskey” your throat feels hoarse and raw.

The bartender doesn’t move and it draws your eyes to his, you raise a curious brow.

“You got the cash for that?” he folds his arms across his chest. You scoff at the inference.

“Put it on my tab” you don’t even have the confidence yourself, so it comes as no surprise when Ernie starts to shake his head.

A small unbelieving laugh breaches your lips “come on Ernie you know I’m good for it” your confidence wavers and so does Ernie’s patience.

“Sorry kid we all got bills to pay, no can do” Ernie walks further down the bar and turns to polish some glasses, you glare at the back of his head as he goes.

“If looks could kill” the voice is rough and low, it draws your attention entirely, there’s an authority in the undertone that demands it.

The man is dressed for a funeral. He’s shrouded in black and the broken light just above where he’s sitting doesn’t help you make out any details about him. He’s merely a silhouette. Sharp edges and a gruff tone. The lip of his hat covers his eyes and the side of his face is hidden in the low light.

Your face throbs dully in pain and your patience has worn thin - all you want is a damn drink. You don’t engage. Merely looking the other way and feigning interest in the drunken idiots as they butcher the piano that sits in the far corner.

Something wet sloshes over the back of your hand and your eyes are quick to look down, there’s a tumbler of whiskey. The amber liquid sloshes at the sides of the glass and you still it with the palm of your hand.

“You look like shit” the mans voice finds you again.

You hum, because you can’t deny it. The way the whiskey burns your throat is almost as painful as your shoulder. The drink is gone in one swig. Another is quickly slid your way from the other end of the bar top. You should say thank you. No words come out.

He whistles and for some reason it inclines you to look at him. There’s still no clear shape of his face other than slope of his nose and a stubbled chin, your bleary eyes don’t help the matter.

He cocks his head at you “what happened?”. It’s a simple enough question, but the truth tastes more bitter on your tongue than the alcohol does. You lie straight through your teeth.

“Fell off my horse” its not a complete lie, but it isn’t entirely the truth either.

You watch as the man nods to himself, downing his own thumb of whiskey before he starts to stand. The bar stool groans as it’s scarped back against the wooden floor. He’s tall, maybe a head above you, and you notice the width of his shoulders as he turns toward you and makes his way closer.

For some reason or another, your eyes snap forward, looking across the bar at the rows of bottles that are lined up neatly behind it. In two long steps he’s upon you, there’s the smell of earth and gunpowder that lingers in the air he brings and you dare yourself to turn your head to meet his eyes. Your throat dries up completely.

Those same wild green eyes. This can’t be-

“If I’m not mistaken-“ he claps a hand down onto your injured shoulder and his voice shifts into a more hushed tone, like he’s whispering something dirty in your ear “this is my bullet” his thumb presses into the wounds entry hole where the bullet still sits inside.

You bite out a pained grunt and grip the wooden bar, trying not to draw attention. Your eyes are wide and panicked and you can feel as the mans thumb disturbs the bullet that’s lodged inside of your flesh.

You fight to breathe through your nose and to keep it even, his eyes seem to glow at the sign of your distress. The wound had begun to close but the mans thumb nail undoes all of it. Blood spurts out around his finger and the wet-grotesque sound of it turns your stomach, disturbing the whiskey.

As quick as he had invaded the space, he backs off slightly and removes his thumb from the bullet hole. Instead he grips your chin with his thumb and forefinger and jerks your head so you’re forced to meet those terrifying green eyes of his, you feel the warmth of your own blood smear across your cheek. His face is dangerously close to yours.

“Come with me and I can solve both of our problems”

[gunnersling]

In the eye of man, he is king, his word is that of gospel. There is only action, and no consequence.

Arthur Morgan, is now, that consequence.

He is the true personification of man-made error. A product of a broken society. Orphaned and left to rot, he seeks to keep himself alive through sin, the cold bite of a pistol becomes too comforting in the calloused grip of his palm. It’s a part of him now, there’s gunpowder in his lungs and kerosene in his veins- more death than man.

It lies in the way his name is whispered amongst folk, a curfew put in place when he’s spotted close to town. Like an omen, a warning of something evil and abominable yet to come. The townsfolk might have gone as far as to paint red crosses above their doors if they thought it would deter him.

Nothing would. Not when he is in need of coin and his many mouths need feeding. Much like a wolf, stalking his prey, feeding on the weak, the sick and vulnerable- it’s an easy enough way to live. Stealing the very livelihoods of others, robbing the pennies from the bottoms of their boots and shooting them dead point-blank if it isn’t deemed enough.

It’s pure evil. Unadulterated. Raw and ripe with the smell of blood and death and tar and fire. It follows him like a cloud of dust in his wake, destruction and ruin, he brings about the very end of time itself. That’s what it feels like- as if time stops when he looms close. Tumbleweeds roll through the dirt streets that echo with the clinking of his spurs. Life itself stops to make way for the embodiment of death that is Arthur Morgan - the Van Der Linde gang as a whole.

He, however, must be the worst. Cold. Callous. Calculated. Do not approach. He slaughters the idea that those who are quiet must have no thoughts at all, for all he thinks of is gold and death. Of bullets and blood and far away lands where he and his crew are free to be free.

A hopeless dream, to you, at least.

It’s what drives them, it must be, a need to combat change, to stay with the ways of the old. Keeping the West as they believe it should be- Wild.

[gunnersling]

I think I’ve been dead since the start

Arthur Morgan x F!reader

Wc - 3.5k | no cws | sfw | synopsis - after the death of your father his debt inevitably passes to you, it’s soon time for the debt to be collected |

Heeding the words of your father hadn’t been a common occurrence, and yet, listening close as he rasps his final few words into the shell of your ear is something you thought he deserved- despite all of his wrongdoings over the years.

“S-Strauss” he stutters “Herr Strauss” he coughs around the words, wetting his chapped lips with the tip of his tongue afterwards.

Your brows furrow, eyes brimming with tears, you don’t understand him. He hadn’t said much at all these last few days, too gripped by his sickness. Now, he’s finally uttered a few words and you don’t understand a damn one of them.

Bittersweet irony, really. The two of you had never seen eye to eye, worsened by his growing debt and the inevitable sickness that had taken hold of him these last few months. It was degenerative, eating away at him until he was little more than a sheet of paper-thin skin over fragile bones. A shadow of the man he once was, a vessel, rotting from the inside out.

He’s soon buried. Out past the barn, under that old tree he used to sleep under when you were young. It’s where you’d find him most late afternoons, haloed by the setting sun behind him, casting vast elaborate shadows against the ground through the branches and leaves above his head. It’s where you’ll always find him now, forever entombed in the place he spent so much of his time, working himself to the bone until his old knees and creaky shoulder could work no longer- inevitably dragging himself to that one spot under the tree to snooze away his worries and woes.

Time passes once more, albeit slowly. Hazy days with the sweltering sun and cold evenings that bring forth a chill on the breeze, frosting the grass. It’s mundane.

A repetitive cycle that consumes you, day in and day out, you’re not sure how your father kept up with it all for so many years. Perhaps he didn’t, that’s why he borrowed that money, barely able to make ends meet as it was without the constant pressure and stress of stolen livestock and torn up fencing. This is not a way to live, you soon come to realise.

Maybe you had been blind to it in your younger years. Hindsight is a cruel mistress. Looking back now, you can see the weight that fell upon your father’s shoulders. Trying to keep his ranch alive, all alone at that.

After your mother died it seemed like he had died too, he was no longer living, not really. He was only alive for you, not for himself. It was his last promise to his wife, to keep the ranch afloat and to raise you the best he could.

The ranch was still going, barely, but you? Even less so.

The circumstances of your current situation are very telling. Elbows leant against the wooden bar top, nursing a bottle of stale beer between your fingers- a new low, the new normal. It’s a distraction, an excuse to get away from the lonely isolation of that goddamn ranch.

You’d sold the majority of the livestock, keeping a few of the young horses to break and sell on at a later date for a better price, it meant there was lesser responsibility. Lesser reasons to spend time up there, between the silence of those four perimeter fences - it would never be the same again.

Not when it’s just you.

Hearing whispers as the wind whistles through the tall grass, catching the smell of the pollen that’s shaken from the wild flowers from higher up on the ridge, remembering the sight of your father sleeping under that fucking tree.

How loud he’d snore with the lip of his hat pulled down to cover his eyes, you’d creep over just to sit with him, just to get close. It was the only time you really could, he wouldn’t prepare sit down meals or take you out to work the fields with him - no. Instead, you were left to your own devices, creating one-person games and day-dreaming of make believe worlds that you could disappear to when the humming of the cicadas grew too loud for you to bear.

How could everything be so glaringly quiet, and yet so loud?

It’s the same now, sitting at the bar with the shrill bell of music and off-key singing in your ears. So loud and yet you find you’re so deaf to it, so out of tune with everything around you, as if everything is a scale of grey now. It becomes easier to ignore, adding a few beers helps too, soon too wobbly to sit right on your stool. That’s when you know it’s time to head home.

You’re not quite there yet. Not yet straining to keep your eyes focused, not yet numb enough to deem it safe to go back there.

It’s hard not to overhear the conversations that buzz around you, not when people insist on standing so close. Again, you’re getting better at tuning things out- but in this instance you’re glad of the intrusion.

“The gall he had, that man” a weaselly man with sparse grey hair spits the words between the newly-forged gaps in his teeth, speaking to an even greasier looking man.

They both look worse for wear. Battered, bruised and bloodied.

The other man nods, as if he knows exactly what the other is speaking of. “In broad daylight too no less” the greasier looking man shakes his head as he speaks, his oily hair flailing at the motion. You cringe.

Sparse haired man nods, stoutly, his swollen lips pursing and brows furrowing. “I thought nothin’ of it when I borrowed that money, didn’t think twice when it was that squirmy little Leopold Strauss I was dealin’ with” he huffs, agitated “Not that big bastard”.

His companion nods along with him, once again, understanding his frustration. It seems fresh in their minds, this isn’t day old news. It piques your interest, is this the same Strauss your father had mentioned on his deathbed? It couldn’t be coincidence- for there is no such thing.

Your movement startles them both, their conversation disturbed by the way you force yourself physically between the two men- beyond your better judgment and to the detriment of your sense of smell.

The men balk at you, exchanging strange looks. They’d assume you to be a dollar scraping whore, like the ones that lurk in the dark corners of the saloons and drape themselves over banisters to show off what they’re offering. Only, you don’t look the part, not in your ranch pants and one of your father’s old shirts. Hardly appropriate attire- that’s what they’re thinking.

“What d’ya know of this Strauss fella?” The words slur as they leave your lips, yet, you keep your resolve solid.

Once again, the men share a look, a knowing look. You can’t read it, perhaps it’s the fact that you’re half way to being Irish or just the fact you lack the ability to read such an interpersonal glance. Either way, you persist, encroaching on them in a way they would be within every right to draw their pistols.

The grey haired fellow speaks first, puffing out his chest, he looks more beaten than the other one. “What’s it to you?” He frowns, setting his gaze down his nose toward you, glaring.

You aren’t deterred at his attempt at bravado. Neither that of the other man when he pipes up too. “Did no one teach you it’s rude to eavesdrop?” He does the same too, lifting himself onto the balls of his feet to appear taller, trying to fill up the space.

There’s something within you that’s telling you to leave it, to forget you’d ever heard anything- but the larger and louder part of you won’t let you back down from this, the threat of your own revolver sitting heavy against your hip provides your own confidence to step up to them. Meeting their half-thought glares head on.

“My daddy died indebted to whoever this Strauss fella is” another step closer “that’s what it is to me” neither man shrinks back, nor do you- the silence drags.

Finally, the grey haired man speaks. “Better you pack up and get outta here then missy” he raises his brows with a gesture of concern, it’s in the whites of his eyes.

You take a half step back, noticing the shift, the other man follows the retreat. Woeful eyes suddenly full of pity as he looks from you, then to his companion and back again.

What’s happened to them, is coming for you.

It’s three days later, sitting on the front porch with your rifle cocked and aimed - that’s the first time you see him.

Those men in the saloon hadn’t needed to elaborate their meaning when they told you to flee. They were wearing the evidence of what happened to someone indebted to this man if they didn’t skip town and start over. He’d beaten the money out of them, not Strauss, something worse. Much worse.

He appears as a spectre. Like a ghost that follows the breeze, rolling along the hard-dirt as the dust does. It’s wholly unnatural.

His horse carries him steadily, the beats of its hooves echoing around the silence of the valley - there’s nothing else here now. Nothing else matters. You watch, closely, narrowed eyes keen to lay sights on the man responsible for such misery and despair.

Suddenly, a voice calls out, thick with an accent. He calls your father’s name.

“He’s dead” you say, uncaring of whether or not he can even hear you. It’s instinctive the way your fingers tighten against the rifle.

A low hum, an acknowledgment. Then he’s clicking his tongue to urge his horse closer. Right up until its hooves stop at the steps leading up the porch, you don’t move, barely even let your eyes dart too quick to the mystery that is this man’s face. You bet he can sense the fear, he can probably taste it by now, he insights it so often in folk you’d be surprised if the smell hadn’t led him right to you.

“I’m here to collect” he leans to the left and spits to the ground, he doesn’t move to look at you. Clear disinterest.

A laugh rolls through your chest, it’s genuine. “Collect what?”

You’d tried to sell everything off in the days leading up to now, knowing your time was limited before he would come searching. Apart from the horses everything else of value was now at the bank in town - locked safely behind steel doors.

He doesn’t make a sound, but he folds his gaze toward you, finally. When you meet his eyes, it’s nothing of what you were expecting. You imagined a creature who is old and weathered, disfigured from the edges of knives and carved away by bullets. Every part the nightmare you know him to be.

Instead, you’re met with a pair of soft blue eyes, there’s green in them too- toward the middle. It catches you off guard, the rounded edges of his expression and the gentleness of his gaze. There’s a naturalness to it, this isn’t a trick or scam, it’s the slipping of his mask. The one he wears to collect debts and turn wives to widows for a mere few pennies.

“Anythin’ of value” he sneers, a frown deepening in his brow. He turns his head and his eyes drift over the expanse of the house, he waves a gloved hand dismissively. “I’ll strip this place for fire wood if I have to”

You shrug, gun clanking in your grip as you rest it against your knee. “Go ahead, not useful for much else” if this is the level of threat he poses, then you’re bitterly over-prepared.

Something feels off. The state of those men from the saloon told more than their words did, while you weren’t sure the depravity of this man stretched as far as to beat a woman half to death for a purse of coins - this man in front of you didn’t feel like the same man who had beaten and looted those two saloon goers. You can’t exactly place it, nor put it into words, but it’s the way he looks at you. It isn’t softness - it’s sadness.

He doesn’t say anything back to you, perhaps he isn’t able to think of a retort, maybe he doesn’t care enough. It could be both, he hardly seems like the joking type, or the type to put a bullet in your head for the inconvenience and walk away empty handed.

The man looks around, instead, blankly taking in the surroundings of the ranch. It gives you the opportunity to get a better look, to take him in from the metal-capped toes of his boots all the way to the tattered nature of his hat. Rugged. Wild. Untamed. He seems as free a man as there can be, yet, there’s something hidden in the shallows of his eyes. You want to understand what it is.

Suddenly, his gaze turns sharply toward you, catching you looking at him, but you don’t look away. Instead you watch the emotions play on his face, the initial impression of a frown as it warps his features until it slowly ebbs its way into a look of confusion.

“There somethin’ on my face?” The lilt in his voice betrays his face, there’s some resolve cracking in there.

He leans forward and folds his hands over one another against the horn of his saddle, it seems you’re intriguing him as much as he’s intriguing you. A dangerous game.

You cock your head “you don’t look too much like your bounty posters” you lay the rifle longways over your thighs, an act of surrender, a truce maybe, for now.

He hums, considering you, a slight pull of his lips starts to look like a smile. “Because it’s not me” he says it in a way that makes you want to ask questions, that could be what he wants - lulling you into an ever falser sense.

The two of you share a look, one that neither of you realise that the other can’t place. As much time as you spend trying to read each other, it’s futile. As the seconds drag and time feels like it’s about to standstill, a realisation leaps to the forefront of your mind.

“I ain’t payin’ that debt” it falls from your lips quicker than you can catch it.

The man simply cocks his head, a raised brow catching your eye. “There ain’t no negotiating this” he lets a laugh roll from his chest, however small it is, it makes you feel even more so.

You’d stopped waiting after four days. Gun cocked and oiled, prepared to put a bullet in that man upon his return. He’d promised to return to collect his debt, but he hadn’t told you when he would come back.

Realistically, you could sell up quick and expedite your plan. This life wasn’t for you, it wasn’t yours. It had been your father’s, a dream of penniless pockets and growing debts and long working days that provided no real product at the end of it all. All for nothing. A waste of time and energy.

Retiring back inside after that whole interaction had felt otherworldly. You had told yourself that you were going to shoot him as soon as you laid eyes on him. This man from the wanted posters, desirable dead or alive to the law. With that money you could start fresh somewhere else, burn this place to the ground and warm your hands over the flames if you really wanted to - you had no real need to stay here anymore.

He hadn’t told you his name and you hadn’t asked for it, even though you knew it you didn’t use it. It didn’t feel right to, not with the threat of him so close, a hand placed strategically against his thigh and within perfect reach of his revolver.

You’d be lying if you said you weren’t scared of him, of the idea of him. Seeing him up close, it doesn’t compare to the stories, you don’t think. He carries himself differently, while the marble exterior of his facade sits so proudly - you can see the cracks. The small fissures that let through the softness around his eyes and the slight pull of his lips when you speak.

It’s hard to look at him and believe all of the things he’s done. Murdered and kidnapped and robbed his way through life, leeching off of those more unfortunate around him no matter where he travels. It forces you to realise that he’s been doing this a long time, so of course he’s trying to come across differently, as not to proceed his reputation.

He’s trying to fool you, and you’re no fool, so you won’t be made into one.

Sleep that night had been fitful. Disturbed by nightmares that felt all too real, despite the fact it was impossible. You saw fire and blood, the call of your father’s voice grabbed your attention. He was burning alive, your mother with him too, you could faintly hear her cry and scream as she burned. You could practically smell their charred flesh, the singe of their hair as it crackled away in the flame. All the while, you couldn’t move, rooted to the spot, held tight by gloved hands that bound your arms to your torso. You screamed and flailed to try and get free, it was no use, it was a futile attempt to save those that were already doomed - they were dead whether you slept or awoke.

You had been startled awake by the image of blue eyes- flecked with emerald green.

Following that night, you haven’t slept peacefully since. Dragging your own carcass through the days, struggling to get up altogether. Purgatory - you think.

Weeks pass, slowly, yet too fast. It’s hard to keep up with time when you don’t know what day it is, when you don’t sleep and can’t quite grasp the setting and the rising of the sun in its smug mockery of you.

Each day is spent pondering your own existence. Legitimately, weighing up your options, wondering where things go from here. One thing is clear, the ranch needs to sell. The last of the horses had been broken and sold, turning over more money than you were expecting - immediately hiding it away incase the cowboy came looming.

The ride back from town isn’t too long, the idea of it is worse than the actual journey. Your horse is sturdy, not easily spooked when you slump low on the saddle, fisting a chunk of his mane when you feel yourself slipping. Too much beer, once again. A whiskey between glass bottles, a slope you’ve slipped down too many times. You fear it’ll never change. This is you now.

Finding your way up the porch steps proves a task, one that’s near impossible for your rubbery limbs. All coordination out of the window. You smother a laugh behind your palm, simultaneously, tears sting your eyes. What a fuckin’ joke. All the air is punched out of your lungs when you connect with the hard-wood that makes up the porch, splinters dig harshly into your palms and you hiss. It’s a sobering act, the pain conflicts the way your head swims with a new-fond numbness, you’re suddenly bought back to reality.

It leaves you curling in on yourself. A pile of flesh lying atop the porch, you want to stay there and rot. Dry away in the scorching sun that’ll be rising up over the brow of the hill in a few short hours, let it wither you away to dust and sand - blown away on the wind.

“Well ain’t you a sorry sight” his voice is quiet, well, quieter than you’d heard it before.

You should be more frightened than you are, but recently, you haven’t found the heart to care for your own self preservation. He could raise a gun to you now and you wouldn’t beg him for mercy, you don’t deserve such a thing.

“I still ain’t payin’ that debt” your chest feels tight, words strained between your teeth, you want to hold onto some of your remaining dignity.

He hums, knowingly, it forces you to crane your neck toward where he sits on the porch swing. One leg folded over the other, his spurs twinkling in the moonlight, the same way the metal clip holding your dollar bills together does. It’s held loosely between his fingers, baiting you to try and take it back.

“You ain’t a good man Mr Morgan”

[gunnersling]

Arthur Morgan Masterlist

• I think I’ve been dead since the start - after the death of your father his debt inevitably passes to you, it’s soon time for the debt to be collected.[f!reader, sfw, no cws]

• Our skin starts to rot [1 of 2] - after losing thousands of dollars worth of your bosses cattle to outlaws you're taught a lesson. The lessons don't stop there. Part 1 of 2 [m!reader, sfw, blood&injury detail]

• Low honour Arthur Morgan drabble - a short writing depicting the impact of Arthur Morgan at his worst.

[no cws, sfw]

• Red hills west of Valentine [1 of ?] - after being orphaned at a young age you’re forced to grow up quickly. Many years later as a gun for hire you come across an old acquaintance, things don’t pick up where they left off. Part 1 of ?

[f!reader, sfw, mild BH]