Chapter Text
The night before it all went to hell, Arthur had a dream.
Above him the stars were clouded by thin gray clouds. In the dream, the sky became a ghostly field of wet grass. Stalking through the grass was the black coyote that he had dreamt of all his life. It was as if the field trembled in trepidation as a big white snake struck the coyote in the throat. Despite the coyote's struggle, the snake wrapped itself around the its neck. It fell to a kneel as if bowing before a greater force, before it began a grotesque change. The face lengthened, the legs grew, and bloody antlers protruded from its forehead, shredding like on a buck after a rut. The snake seemed to sink into the fur and blend into it. The creature's mouth widened, showing razor sharp teeth, and it began to scream. The sound was like no other Arthur had heard, despite the sound being very human. He woke as the scream became his own shout.
Then it broke into coughs that tasted like the smoked meat he ate yesterday. Surrounding his bedroll, the Heartlands were dry like the sound of violins, not lush like in the dream.
All morning he had a headache above his brows. When riding around looking for fresh meat and pretty pelts, he had to ride Cailleach at a steady trot, making him more observant as he rode through a dense bit of forest not far from Valentine. He believed more in coincidences than in fate, even as his headache disappeared when he spotted Micah Bell on the side of the road.
Though the trees hid them well, Micah's fashion sense gave him away, the white of his hat, the red of his shirt and the black of his coat. There were men standing in front of him, their backs rigid, more like soldiers than any more old criminal acquaintances of his.
Arthur was careful not to slow or quicken Cailleach. As soon as he was a distance away, he led her up a hill. He let her stay in the shade of a tree, before he sank into a crawl so that he could peek out from the hill's cliff edge. As seen from above, the forest wasn't dense enough to hide Micah and the men, and Arthur got a good view of the exchange between them. The sun was on his side, right above him, which would make him difficult to spot for the people below. Micah was facing Arthur's direction, but he seemed to focus on the men who had their backs turned to Arthur. They were dressed in slick black city suits and matching bowler hats, and one of them were holding out a map, pointing at something. Their aura screamed Pinkertons, or at least men from something similar to the detective agency.
Arthur's lips mouthed you rat. He wanted to shout it, but he had to be smart about this. He shoved himself backwards, moved towards Cailleach and opened up one of his satchels with hands that he told himself weren't shaking in anger. When he returned to the cliff it was with his camera ready. He hoped Hosea would've been proud of his quick thinking.
Arthur couldn't see the location Micah was pointing out on the map, but it was probably the location of the Van der Linde gang's hideout. Micah looked intent. Something he said made one of the men laugh and shake his head, and Micah took a step backwards as if threatened. They went to their horses, mounting, putting some distance between them.
Arthur had just taken a fourth picture, when one of the agents spoke.
"I can't say it's been a pleasure, Mister Bell. The next time we see you, which our sources say will be soon, we'll need more information from you. If you decline, our bosses might start asking questions on why all of this has been so important to you. Good day."
Micah did not move before the men had been gone for a minute. Then he ran a hand over his face and grimaced, annoyed if not agitated, and he took out a dirty journal from his coat pocket and scribbled something down.
Arthur waited until he was finished before he kicked out a small rock from the hill. Micah's attention was on it in an instant, but he didn't let go off the journal to wield both guns, opting only for one. The sun was shielding Arthur, so Micah wouldn't be able to see him spit towards him in disgust. Micah gave up trying to squint, and rode in a half-circle towards him, looking for a way up the hill. The curve of the way he rode reminded Arthur of slithering, and he smiled as he stepped away, because he'd never craved stingy reptile meat before.
Micah reached the cliff, the journal gone and both his revolvers out. He slowed Baylock down when he saw the apple at the edge of the cliff, red and fresh, sticking out like a sore thumb among the gray rock, so far from any apple trees. Baylock sniffed at the fruit, but Micah pulled at his reigns and turned him around, and frowned when spotting a white horse among the trees.
"Dutch?" he warily called out.
He mistook Cailleach for the Count, Dutch's horse. Cailleach was no less alabaster and no less stubborn, but since Arthur had wild-caught her pretty recently, the camp wasn't used to seeing her around. Her ears were flat as Micah approached, kicking her feet as if to say that he was close enough.
"You ran away, huh?"
Micah followed her back down the hillside, clicking at Baylock to keep him going when he didn't seem particularly happy to get closer to the aggressive, older mare. Micah was so intent on her that he didn't see Arthur exiting from behind a large rock. He turned around at the sound of Arthur's lasso whipping through the air. Micah raised his guns before the lasso landed around him and dragged him off Baylock while the horse ran off. Micah's body fell to the ground with a satisfying thud, the leather coat absorbing most of the impact. Arthur was on him in at once, kicking his guns away, punching him harder than was necessary, and getting him dazed enough to be hogtied. Afterwards, Arthur stood over him studying his new twin revolvers, black and red, immaculately cleaned except a new pair of fingerprints.
"What the hell, Morgan? Is this supposed to be some kind of joke?"
"No joke," Arthur said.
Inside him was a dark thing, one that wanted nothing more than to shoot a man with his own guns.
"You finally snapped, huh? Seems like I had a right to be worried." Micah continued twisting as Arthur threw him at the back of Cailleach. "Watch it!"
"I saw you," Arthur said, "making deals with those fellers. Pinkertons, by the looks of it."
No response, even when Arthur struck a match on Micah's coat and used it to light himself a cigarette.
"Now why'd you go and do a thing like that?"
"Better get your eyesight checked," Micah said, following Arthur's every movement, while simultaneously checking for faults in the rope work. "It'll be your word against mine."
"Yeah, I never was too good with them words."
Micah paused. When Arthur didn't say anything, he shook his head.
"Dutch will come looking for me," he said.
"Sure. Guess I'll better get you someplace he won't look," Arthur said, before backhanding Micah across the face with enough force to render him out cold. He put a blindfold on him just in case.
Micah's horse remained an issue. Baylock had gone into the wilderness beside the road, but kept nearby, bloodshot eyes alternating between being fixed on Arthur and on Micah. Arthur led Cailleach a little closer, torn on what to do.
"Easy boy, I'm not gonna hurt you. Guy who usually does that is right here," he said, slapping Micah for good measure, but there was no reaction except for some bloody drool. "He's napping. It's his turn to get beaten and starved."
There were rumors in the gang of Micah abusing his horse even if no one had caught him doing it. Kieran hadn't commented on it, but Arthur had seen him try to give Baylock an oatcake and being met with a wary snort. If Arthur left Baylock here, there was a chance he'd find his way back to camp, either by himself or by word of mouth, especially with such a unique skull-like look to his face. He seemed too cowed to join up with wild horses anyway.
"You wanna come with?" Arthur tried, clicking his tongue.
He wasn't too surprised when Baylock followed with his head hung low. The darker part of Arthur wondered how much he'd have to put Micah through before he'd react in the same way.
It was awfully fitting, a farmhouse filled with rotten food, the equally rotten corpses just outside the walls. The place was named Chez Porter, the same ranch that he and Javier had robbed not long ago, had not been reclaimed by anyone, the previous inhabitants' violence so strong it lived on in rumor. It was a good place for an interrogation.
Once Micah's body was secured to a chair, Arthur didn't waste any time before splashing a bucket of water over him.
"Don't think I've ever seen you sleep that deeply, Micah."
"Fffuck you," came the spluttered reply, but the wet blonde hair was already whipping around, trying to make sense of the place he was in despite the blindfold. He was strategical, even in ropes.
Arthur pulled up a chair of his own, sitting down and leaning his arms and chin upon the back rest.
"Now, this'll be quick if you just cooperate. I don't know for sure if those men were Pinkertons, but I know nothing good can come off strangers pulling up a map and you showing them information that ain't yours to give away."
Micah spat out a tooth. It rolled across the floorboards, and Arthur watched it go, before being forced to confront the hole that it came from.
"You got it wrong, cowpoke. This doesn't have anything to do with you. If you let me go right now, I'll pretend to forget about this."
"Still trying to negotiate, huh?"
Arthur stood and went towards the fireplace. He made sure to make good time as he picked up a pair of tongs, letting them scrape against the rock, and then the floorboards, closer and closer. Fascinated by Micah's sudden silence, Arthur poked the tongs against his cheek, plucking off a finger's worth of beard hair. Micah hissed, and it was all Arthur needed to shove the tongs against his teeth, wiggling it inside, with a steadying grip on the hair – careful not to mess up the blindfold – in order to extract another tooth. It was mostly the same as always, this kind of torture, the stench of iron and mouth odor, but although Micah yelled in anger, he wasn't begging or screaming yet.
Arthur made sure he'd gotten the whole root, something Hosea had taught him to pay attention to in one of the more unsavory parts of their line of work, before Arthur let it fall to the floor with the other. The most important thing was to stay in character, keeping the interrogated guessing what was next, making sure not to lose oneself in the violence. The sweat on the back on his neck cooled in the wind coming through gaps in the farmhouse's walls.
"You better talk."
"That high and mighty shit really is an act, isn't it?" Micah laughed, spittle and blood flying.
"Two guns, two teeth …" Arthur said, ignoring him. "Seems to me like there's a theme developing. What else do you have two of, huh? Maybe I'll ask Bill for some tips. Would you like that?"
Micah shuddered, but he still didn't seem afraid, more flattened, as if he was in the process of mentally detaching himself from the situation. Torture was only effective insofar the tortured stayed afraid. Arthur would have to move fast, would have to hit something that really hurt, something that for Micah would be worse than gelding. Arthur threw away the tongs as he got an idea.
He took out of knife and cleaned it with some leftover moonshine, before walking behind Micah. The ropes around his hands were particularly excessive, maybe a little too tight judging by the color of his fingers. All the more painful, Arthur thought, as he bent down and held the knife to the fingernail of Micah's right thumb. Micah's struggle was immediate, but even if there was an instinctive component to it as the tip of the blade cut into sensitive nerve endings, removing the nail, the intelligent part of his mind must've realized how this would impact his rapid-fire style of shooting with revolvers. Arthur worked slowly, telling himself it wasn't because he enjoyed it.
"You gonna talk, or do I need to take the other one too?"
"Wait …"
Micah's throat was raw, and there wasn't any of the laughter left from before. His jaw was already swelling up. The shuddering was also different, involuntary spasms from when his wounds throbbed in time with his heartbeat. Strange, that a creature like him could possess a heart. Arthur had once ruined the nail of his little finger in a lock box during a stagecoach robbery, and it'd taken five months before the nail healed. He preferred inflicting on others what he himself had felt, to better gauge the reaction. But he also knew that hurting someone's thumbs was the worst one could do to someone who wielded revolvers. Yet Micah still hadn't screamed.
"Yeah?" Arthur laid a hand on Micah's shoulder. The flinch made him feel good, he couldn't help it. The future of the gang might be hanging in a thin thread if Arthur didn't get Micah to talk soon.
"Like I said, it doesn't … This thing began long before Blackwater. It's personal."
"And here I thought we were brothers," Arthur said, and he made short process of the nail on the left thumb, even as Micah was protesting wildly and swearing that he was telling the truth, shit, you damn bastard - !
Afterwards, Arthur was looking around in the cupboards. He found the moonshine bottle from before, and winced as the busthead burned his throat. He didn't look towards Micah, although he heard the hisses, the catching of his breath. The view from the window was nicer. The trees swayed peacefully, as green as the ones he'd found Baylock standing amongst. He was still out there, but he kept his distance. He wondered if horses could feel vindictiveness towards a bad master, but he wasn't sure, and tried to make peace with the fact that any vindictiveness he felt was his own.
"I'm in half a mind of getting of going out there, picking up one of the poor guys who used to live here before I came along, and coating you in it what's left of them. A missing nail or two won't kill you, but an infection will. You'll have to remove the thumbs if you want to live. And knowing you, you won't want to."
Micah caught his breath. The blindfold had half come off, and the visible eye was still blinking at the light in the farmhouse, blinking out tears. Even so, the expression in the eye was icy.
"If you'd just listen," he said, pain finally cracking open the drawl. "I hired a branch of the Pinkertons long before Blackwater. They specialize in keeping an eye on people. It was anonymous."
"Your mug have never been anonymous."
"Paperwork was. Or it used to be, anyway, before that son of a bitch Cornwall got involved. I didn't … I wasn't gonna betray you lot! I didn't mention no locations. I was feeding them half-lies, we both know that those are better. I said that they'd just had to wait, and the gang would split up by itself. Just … I needed information, which I got. I was riding away from them for good before you showed up."
"You're still a rat, as far as I see it. Who's this person you're watching, anyway?"
When the other became silent, Arthur took a step towards him. He smiled as Micah tensed. Arthur took another swig from the bottle, waiting for Micah's will to survival to win against his paranoia.
"It's my brother, alright? He's an even bigger asshole than you. Sheep farmer out west in California, a few days ride from the border of New Austin."
His voice took on an airy tone, and Arthur needed to bring him back down with him, here in the dirty room.
"So you'd sell out the lot of us for some lousy family reunion?"
"No," Micah said, teeth snapping like a dog's. "No, Dutch is more like a brother to me than Amos ever was. But he's got one thing that Dutch hasn't."
"Humility?"
"No, funds, you moron. Amos might hide himself behind righteousness, but he betrayed us at the end, me and my daddy. Denied his heritage, but not before stealing three generations of our hard earned cash and trinkets. My grandfather's, my father's, even mine, from my first few years running with Amos. The Blackwater money is pocket lint in comparison. There are tales about the Bell inheritance, Morgan. You're just too stupid to give them any credit."
It was hard to tell if a man was telling the truth after being inflicted pain on. Dutch had warned him about it. Dutch, whose shadow was whispering at the back of Arthur's mind, drooling with the idea of seventy years of crime money. A sum that could help the gang disappear, if not their problems. But Micah was a liar, openly admitting to preferring half-truths.
Arthur reached towards his own shoulder and tried to squeeze out some of the tension. When he spoke, he made sure it was in a disinterested voice while staring at the blood on the floor.
"How do you know he's not just donated it to charity, being righteous and all that?"
"That's what he said he would do," Micah said, grinning with blood on his remaining teeth. "But I grew up with him, okay? I always thought he was hiding it away somewhere, saving it for his kids when they came of age, provided they believe what he believes. That's his whole thing." Micah tried to make a dismissive gesture with his head, but small twitches of pain aborted the movement.
"You got any proof?"
"Yeah. Inner pocket."
Arthur made a noise of disgust as he approached. He felt as though he was sticking his hand in a barrel of eels, reaching into the open jacket, underneath the ropes, fishing out the journal. Micah smelled like cigarettes and sweat, leather and gun oil, and something sweet underneath it all, and Arthur breathed through his mouth and avoided Micah's visible eye.
His handwriting was unreadable, a scrawl of numbers and letters, like some kind of code. But when Arthur flickered through the journal, a photo and a few papers fell out. It depicted a large house, almost a small estate. A different hand than Micah's had scribbled in a far more readable on the back of the photo, Calligram Street 4, Snow Hill. The papers put a man named Amos Bell as the owner of it.
"This your proof? A house?"
"Not just any house," Micah said. "It's a fancy one, reserved for rich fellers coming up there to hunt big game. Amos doesn't have that kind of money. Nor his bitch of a wife, because her family cut her off when they ran away. Don't you get it? One of his daughters is being married off, so he buys her the biggest place in his shit town. If he was just a farmer, he'd never manage to buy a thing like that without a loan. But he doesn't use loan sharks, he doesn't place bets, and he isn't a risk-taker, so I don't see any other explanation."
"But why a vacation house?"
"Because Amos is a piece of shit control freak. He thinks that children's home is with their parents. Any other house for them, no matter how grand, is just a vacation. He's so annoying," Micah said, and he sounded younger than he'd ever done before. But his eyes, when they slid over to Arthur's, were doing that dead thing, just as impossible to read as his drawl. "Listen, Morgan, if you let me out of here, I'll let you get a cut. Hell, you could even join me. My brother's not too safe to go at alone."
"Was that your plan, then?" Arthur asked, ignoring the offer. "Sell us out and then ride into the sunset through New Hanover, West Elizabeth, and even worse, New Austin, and then if you somehow manage to survive all that, go to your brother in California, and then just make him tell you where your so-called inheritance is, hoping he even has it?"
Arthur held his knife up to the light from the outside. He weighted it in his hand, knowing how quick it could be if he wanted to end this for good. How Micah's would be just another body rotting on the estate, as putrid and unrecognizable as the rest of them.
"I don't lie about this," Micah said, quieter than before. "Dutch would believe me."
Arthur felt something strange surge up in him, a mixture of pity and envy. He squashed it down.
"Do you know what a camera is? Big lumpy construction? I took four pictures of you dealing with those Pinkertons, pointing at a map. Now, I ain't calling you a liar. But if I show those photos to Dutch, he might come for you for a different reason than you think."
The resulting silence was eerie. Micah didn't move, he just stared at Arthur with his one eye, looking more unhinged than usual. Smiling must've hurt his face, but he did it anyway. "We're more alike than I first thought, Arthur."
Arthur rolled his eyes. "You sound like the bad guy from one of Mary Beth's books, right before he starts an evil monologue. Next you'll be telling me that we have the same father."
"We don't."
"No, we do not," Arthur said.
He held up the moonshine like a peace offering, but there was nothing peaceful about Micah's curses when Arthur poured some of it on the bloodied patches where the nails on his thumbs had been. They were such small wounds, but he knew Micah was very aware of them.
"Calm down, just getting you cleaned up. Didn't forget your mouth, either."
Arthur held the bottle to Micah's mouth in a way that had to be painful to his gums, while making sure that the moonshine came in uneven pace until Micah was choking and coughing. He didn't stop until the bottle was empty, most of it having stained Micah's shirt.
"Good boy," Arthur said, patting him on the head.
Micah shuddered. It was easy to mistake that sort of thing for fear if one hadn't been in the game as long as Arthur had, and seen the way Micah's knees clenched together. Pointedly, Arthur looked down on Micah's crotch. And then he took a step backwards, unable to hold back his laughter. Micah was already pale, but it was the first time Arthur had ever seen him look caught off guard, and it suited him. It made his eye very blue, like some kind of precious jewel, or maybe a kind of dangerous crystallized chemical that seeped its poison into the handler.
"I knew you were a sick in the head from the very start, but have you had a hard-on during the entire interrogation? That's why you're such a dog to Dutch?" Micah's head whipped up, but Arthur could almost hear the retort and was quicker, "At least I don't get off on it. You're disgusting."
"You're disgusting," Micah said, slurring slightly. "Fuck off."
"Oh, I will. But I'll be back soon. Pray I come alone."
"I never pray," Micah said. "Why not just kill me?"
"Because I heard the way you spoke of your brother. Even if you are a creepy, slimy, selfish piece of shit – and you truly are all that – there seems to be some truth to the story. You want the money. That's the only thing we have in common right now, Micah, and the only thing keeping you alive. If it even exists."
Micah didn't answer. Even in his exhausted, intoxicated state, he was still looking around for escape routes, even as Arthur approached while flexing his fingers. He removed the blindfold completely and took his time putting his hands around Micah's throat, running his thumb over the windpipe just to show him how easy it would be to render him dead rather than unconscious. Usually, any attempts at strangulation were better done from behind, but this was already personal, especially in the way that Micah held eye contact.
It reminded Arthur of the night he got ambushed by a panther while equipping a shotgun. It limped off, and although the pelt was likely unsalvageable, Arthur had followed the yowls into the dark forest until he found it squirming under a tree split in the middle by lightning. The panther had stared at him, eyes burning bright, with a sense of betrayal as if it was Arthur who had upset the natural order of things by seeing it weak. The creature couldn't help being what it was, no more than Micah, struggling in earnest and aroused at the same time, could help being what he was.
When he finally sagged in his chair, Arthur let out a breath that he didn't know he had been holding.
"Crazy idiot," Arthur said, but he didn't know who of them it was directed at.
He dried his hands on his pants, but the slimy feeling didn't disappear before he exited the farmhouse and stood there smoking for a while. It should've made him relieved, he supposed, that no matter what would happen, Micah probably wouldn't be let back into the gang. Yet it seemed to be just one less problem among many; the men wanting them jailed or hanged, Dutch wanting a greater freedom, and all the people caught between.
The only thing Arthur remembered from his nightmare was the black coyote. It had followed him for some time, as difficult to capture with words as the strange specks that sometimes floated over his vision. He did not remember the snake, the deer with teeth, nor the scream.