V The Phantom Stranger

[Arthur Morgan]

“Nothing exists. All is a dream. God—man—the world—the sun, the moon, the wilderness of stars—a dream, all a dream; they have no existence. Nothing exists save empty space—and you…. And you are not you—you have no body, no blood, no bones, you are but a thought.” ― Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

Arthur felt cold. Bitterly cold. Like a ghostly hand was clasped tight around his soul—bloodless and clammy as death.

A ragged breath left him in a sudden rush, brittle and sharp. It fogged in the air as a puff of fine mist, muffled by the hoarse wailing of the wind coming down from the highest frozen peaks of Ambarino, the jagged mountain range looming over him like a silent monolith to all his sins. It rasped through his lungs, coarse with chill, what felt like thousands of razor-edged frost crystals burrowing into the hollow cavern of his chest. Digging down to his very marrow, to where his blood pulsed warm and red: his heart constricting inside his chest, not unlike a small furry creature struggling to escape an impending autumnal freeze.

Awareness crept back in slowly. Dimly, Arthur became conscious of how his hand was positioned—braced against something in front of him. Felt like… wood, it did. Old wood, at that; rough and fracturing into splinters under the blunt, numb weight of his fingers, the grainy filaments falling to pieces from the intense cold.

The thought crept like an icy worm through his brain, slow and ponderous. Woolly-headed, dumb. Something inside Arthur told him not to open his eyes to look just yet, that maybe he wouldn’t much like what he saw. That perhaps some things were best left forgotten, forever lost to the dusty, timeworn annals of memory.

Arthur opened his eyes.

The snow was cold and glittering, silent as a bed-sheet drawn across the body of a dead man. A frail light cast upon it from the darkened sky overhead, though no moon was visible. Only a glossy veil of thick, velvety black, just the tiniest flickers of stars easily discernible—an entire wilderness of pale celestial bodies, hovering above mountains wreathed in heavy snowfall.

Stillness, the handmaiden to quiet, imbued him with a heavy sensation of lethargy. Coldness and damp seeped into the knees of his canvas pants, nearly cementing him to the ground. That being so, it took Arthur a moment to realize just where he was, his bleary eyes struggling to focus on the details of the world around him.

A handful of graves jutted out from the snow surrounding his kneeling form, some of the headstones tilted at new and interesting angles, nearly fallen over under the onslaught of the harsh mountain weather. Others were marked by thin wooden crosses, similarly roughened by the elements, half-submerged in heavy piles of snow. Observing this, Arthur knew that behind him stood the tumbledown remnants of Colter Chapel, the stormy gale hissing as it wound through the crumbling wooden roof, the paint-stripped steeple jutting up toward heaven in defiance of its derelict nature. And further beyond that laid the ramshackle remnants of Colter proper—the abandoned mining town that he and the rest of the gang had holed up in for so many months, hiding like rats from the law.

But it wasn’t what stood behind Arthur that much concerned him. For there in front of him, marked by nothing but a pile of loose, snow-littered stones and a solemn plank of wood, was a grave.

Squinting at the snow-blurred shape, Arthur leaned forward. The thin slat of wood sat erect in the snow, crusted by a prickly layer of frost. Arthur could just barely make out the words dug into the plank, but he didn’t really need to. He’d have recognized that grave anywhere—only one part of the history of the great troubles that had befallen the Van der Linde gang.

Davey Callander, the grave read. No date. No kind sentiments, no words to signify the bitterness of the man’s loss. Just a name, and nothing more.

Arthur stared at those words for a good while, gaze fixed as if bewitched. His fingers loosened their grip from where they’d been braced atop the grave, reaching down to smooth the blizzard’s unkind detritus away, scraping at the rimy snow until the hastily-carved words were easier to read. His gloved fingers traced that name several times over, his mind turning over a good many things—memories, mostly, and none of them particularly pleasant...

There was no sound; only the continued lashing of the wind around him, whistling as it tore across the old churchyard. It yanked the collar of his duster jacket tight against his neck, threatening to strangle him.

Arthur breathed out slowly, sighing through his nose. His hand dropped, fell back down to hang loosely at his side. The leather of his boots creaked as he made to get to his feet.

“It’s all rather bleak, isn’t it?”

The voice came from somewhere behind him. Shoulders shooting up to his ears like a child caught getting up to something he weren’t supposed to, Arthur spun around.

There, hunched over the flames of a crackling campfire and facing boldly away from him, was a stranger in a black top hat.

Unlike him, the man weren’t properly dressed for the elements. For a dinner party, maybe, or an accountant’s job in an established city like Blackwater or Saint Denis. Certainly not for an excursion into the snowy hills of Ambarino, where you were just as likely to find a corpse frozen upright behind the next rise as a rare glimpse of the sun. Though, now that Arthur was looking a little too close, he got the impression this well-dressed stranger weren’t all that he seemed.

Could’ve been that it was only a trick of the light, but the snowfall seemed to pass right through the man. A light dusting of snowflakes was swallowed up by the black fabric of his two-piece suit, melting away like the dying of stars in a distant midnight sky—or droplets of moisture sinking into a thick swathe of blue-black velvet, supple and soft-like. But there was something else there, too, in the immutability of this man… something the elements seemed incapable of touching. Something far colder than the blizzard raging around them, and twice as ravenous.

“Hello, Arthur,” the man spoke again, still without turning. “Arthur Morgan.”

That got the outlaw’s attention. Drew him up short, it did, his eyes resting on the stranger’s exposed back with keen attention.

A furrow puckered between Arthur’s brows, the corner of his mouth ticking downward in consternation. “Do I know you?”

Turning, the man looked up from his fire. Smiled at him, or perhaps at some private joke. Or, Arthur thought he smiled. It was barely there, a little twitch of the stranger’s mustache, his lips, his chin—a pale shadow of mischief that faded in between one blink and the next, returning the man’s countenance to a kind of serene solemnity that bordered on the grim impassivity of a cold, unfeeling corpse.

“We’ve never been properly introduced,” said the man in the black top hat, with a little flick of his hand. “But I seem to know you, all the same.”

 

[Arthur Morgan]

Arthur chuckled. It was a sharp and ugly sound.

“You have me at a disadvantage, then,” he responded coolly, eyeing the man from under the down-turned brim of his hat. The smirking curve of his mouth was entirely devoid of humor, a little flash of gritted teeth showing as he spoke, “Because I sure don’t know you.”

Any other man might’ve taken umbrage with his tone, Arthur reckoned. But the well-dressed stranger only glanced at him briefly out of the corner of his eye, seeming more concerned about his little fire than much else. He even paused for a moment to adjust his tie before speaking, rolling his shoulders and giving a funny little twitch.

Like a damned snake settling into its skin, thought Arthur, though he weren’t quite sure why the comparison had occurred to him. It seemed fitting, in any case. And goddamn unsettling…

“Rare, for a man to recognize that. Very perceptive, for an outlaw turned hero,” the strange man replied. “Why don’t you have a seat beside my fire, Arthur?”

Something about this man assuming they were on first-name basis rankled. Got his hackles up, the fine hairs lifting at the nape of his neck—a cold shiver trickling down his spine, like someone had gone and walked over his grave.

The corner of Arthur’s mouth ticked downward. His blue eyes were steely, the set of his jaw a sharp, hard line. Were it not for the shaky rise and fall of his chest, he would have appeared almost statuesque in his unsmiling certainty, nothing but a particularly lifelike block of stone.

His answer was clear even before he spoke.

“I’d rather stand.”

At that, the strange man’s head tipped to the side, and there was that funny little not-a-smile again. His dark eyes fixed on Arthur’s even as he picked up a loose twig from the snow, idly twisting it between his fingers like a conductor’s baton.

Something about that look felt oddly penetrating, like Arthur was an insect pinned to a cork board under the man’s stare. He didn’t much like it. In fact, he hadn’t much liked anything about this encounter thus far, every animal impulse within him demanding that he turn around and tear off in the opposite direction. Maybe it would’ve even been the smart thing to do, but Arthur Morgan was no yellow-bellied coward. Whatever this man wanted, even if it was just to get a rise out of him, he wasn’t going to back down without a fight.

“You know,” said the strange man, very matter-of-fact, like he was only discussing an impending change in the weather. “Most dead men try to change their manners after being resurrected. They take advantage of their new lease on life to prove their piety. But you…”

The man trailed off, seeming almost prepared to leave the rest unsaid. The weight of his gaze shifted away at last, and Arthur could breathe a little easier, even if it weren’t by much.

Skrrtch. Skrrrtchh. The man nudged around the contents of his campfire, slowly and methodically stoking the flames higher, appearing to mull over his next words a little while longer. A few stray embers skipped out in little sparks of reddish-orange, sizzling as they struck the damp snow. Gusts of smoke kicked up into the air as the little cluster of burning branches and dried leaves was disturbed, the dark fumes smelling strongly of mountain pine: crisp and faintly sweet.

“Then again, perhaps I shouldn’t expect less from one of Dutch van der Linde’s finest enforcers,” the man continued, and though the words themselves was phrased to sound almost like a compliment, they came out sounding more like a curse, at least to their intended recipient’s ears.

A powerful shudder went through Arthur at the pronouncement, starting at the crown of his head and ending at his feet. A shade of terror crossed his face like a cloud passing in front of the sun. Naturally, he fought to hide it behind a smokescreen of broad-shouldered, bold-necked bravado, though he reckoned nothing could hide the sudden uptick in his breathing, nor the rabbit-quick thudding of his heart inside his chest.

“I left that life behind,” Arthur bit out, voice low and fierce with emotion. Every word burned like sin as they slipped past his lips, like a nip of bitters searing across his tongue—unchecked clove and cinnamon assaulting his senses. “Ain’t nothin’ left. If you don’t know that much, you sure as hell don’t know nothin’ about me.”

The man in the black top hat only shook his head, seeming amused.

“But I do know you, Arthur Morgan. More than you’ll ever realize. You live in fear that those around you will recognize what you are… that you’re still the same as you ever were. More of a think with your fists type, ain’t you, just like your criminal father… honoring his legacy, I suppose, after his hanging. What would your mother think of you and your ‘honorable’ exploits, I wonder?” the strange man paused in his prodding of the fire, looking up. “Was dying from illness your way of paying your respects to her, too?”

The casual cruelty of the words shook Arthur to his core. It weren’t anything he hadn’t heard before, mind you, but he’d never heard the words from someone he hadn’t already grown close to, and not ever from someone he hadn’t placed the burden of his trust in. Something about this stranger knowing all of it, though… something wasn't right.

“You shut your goddamned mouth,” said Arthur, slowly. “Before I damn well go and shut it for you, partner.”

But the strange man simply gazed back at him, an infuriating kind of impassivity to his stare.

“You’ve let this strange new universe tame you, Arthur. You’ve gone soft. If your new allies only knew the type of man you used to be… do you wager they’d still want anything to do with you? Would you stake your life on it, in the end?”

 

[Arthur Morgan]

It was simple thinking, drawing his gun and pointing it at the man. Simple thinking, and perhaps he shouldn’t have gone and done it, but it seemed to have always worked out well enough for him in the past. Nothing like the threat of catching a bullet right between the eyes to shut a feller up, now was there?

“That a threat?” demanded Arthur, not really looking for an answer. The hand holding his gun didn’t waver, his fingers curled tight around the grip, so tightly that he wouldn’t be surprised if the shape of his fingers was seared into it long afterward. “I think I told you to shut it, partner. Don’t try me.”

It was like the strange man didn’t even see the damn gun. Barely registered it as a threat, even. His black eyes remained fixed on Arthur’s face, expression eerily intent. Almost as if he were searching for something, though Arthur had no idea as to what that could’ve been. It was a look that said he was daring Arthur to do something, anything.

Say when.

“I reckon,” said the strange man. “That the old Arthur Morgan would have shot me already—”

CRACK!

As always, Arthur’s aim was impeccable. By all rights, the bullet should’ve blown straight through the man’s temple, leaving a spray of gore, bone and brains over the damp snow. It should’ve left a bloody, hideous hole where the man’s face had been, and probably shredded that infuriating black top hat off his head, besides.

Instead, the scene before Arthur was quite unchanged. The strange man in the black top hat merely stared at the still-smoking barrel of his gun, his skull still perfectly whole and his suit unsullied by his own lifeblood. He stared a moment longer before his gaze slowly, slowly tracked back over to Arthur’s face. All casual-like, like there hadn’t just been a very earnest attempt upon his life.

The strange man didn’t say a word. Hell, he didn’t need to say anything. What was there to say?

Breathing hard and quick all of a sudden, Arthur lowered the gun. His trembled from where they were wrapped around the grip, though whether it was from the freezing temperature or some other unnameable, horrible emotion, he couldn’t be certain.

“Who…” Arthur stammered. Choked on the words before they’d even properly had the chance to form. “What the hell are you?”

Now that got a real smile out of the man, it seemed. It was a thin, bloodless quirk of his lips, made all the more eerie by the stranger’s apparently never-ending supply of patience, but there seemed to be a genuine spark of humor in his eyes, all the same.

It was not a comforting smile by any stretch of the imagination.

“No one important. Certainly not someone you will remember upon your return to the waking world. But, I suppose you could call me… an accountant, of sorts.”

“An accountant?” Arthur snorted at that. He shakily holstered his pistol, disbelief rolling off him in waves. “Sure, and I’m the Duke of Cornwall. What do you want? Why are you… here, talkin’ to me?”

“I’m only curious,” said the man, then seemed to stop himself short. He paused, looking about at their surroundings. Visibly drinking in the sight of the cold, dilapidated ruin of Colter, only the barest shell of a settlement left behind.

Shaking his head as if to clear it of some notion, the man tried again. “I’m curious. Why would you come back here?”

“What?” asked Arthur. Where did that come from?

“The grave of Davey Callander,” the man elaborated, indicating the aforementioned grave marker with a tip of his behatted head. “He wasn’t a good man, and not a particularly good friend to you. It’s miserable here, cold. Nothing but bad memories for you, and this dream is yours alone to dictate. Why would you come back here?”

Arthur looked around. It was true, sure; the Callander brothers hadn’t been real close friends of his, Davey least of all, vicious bastard that he was. Too deep in the drink, those boys were, though Arthur supposed all of ‘em were, at one point or another. And yet, he’d taken to hunting up around these parts, even though it weren’t nothin’ but skinny rabbits and even leaner deer. Had stopped by, every now and again, and stared at that old plank of wood. Wondered at what his life had become. What it could’ve been, if only he’d been a little more perceptive, a little more quick to act, a little less afraid of rocking the boat. If he’d only been able to catch Dutch’s slow descent into madness before everything had collectively turned to shit, the whole gang cannibalizing itself in the aftermath.

At last, Arthur shrugged. “S’pose I just wanted to… visit.”

Truthfully, he didn’t know what else there was to say. It seemed obvious to Arthur, a simple and almost formulaic part of life. Everyone went through it: the loss of a friend, a family member, a parent—possibly even a life partner, or perhaps the horrific, gut-wrenching death of a child. Arthur just so happened to have gone through it all, weathering every loss just as he’d stood against every other attempt at ruination of his life.

Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance… it was all old hat at this point. He could bear it, even if the grief still came in waves. It would fade, with time, but never truly go away. Arthur could live with that, he supposed, if it meant he’d never forget those he’d lost.

“Did Davey Callander’s death hold meaning for you?”

The question was abrupt enough to be surprising. Tearing his eyes away from the sad, derelict little grave and its miserable pile of stones, Arthur stared at the man, who appeared nonplussed beyond belief.

“He died,” the former outlaw said, after a beat of silence. “He died, and I missed him bein’ alive, for a time. We all did: him and Jenny and Mac, too. And now I visit. Not much else to it.”

“But you’ve visited his grave many times now. You even visit this grave in your dreams,” the strange man insisted, nodding to the grave beside them. “Just as you visit all of the graves of your friends, dream or otherwise. Most people… well, most would call that devotion, Arthur.”

Arthur dragged one hand down the side of his face, scrubbing at the scratchy pockmarks of stubble lining his chin. His eyes darted around, as if he was searching for the right words in the glacial landscape around them. None were forthcoming, it seemed.

“That ain’t…” he growled, inarticulately frustrated. “He weren’t nobody special to me. He was just somebody I knew.”

“I see, yes,” said the strange man, even though it was evident that he didn’t. Not really. “Then why do you visit?”

Oh, but how to explain? Just remembering the circumstances that’d led to Davey’s death caused him pain, just as it did with all the others. But even still…

“I want this grief to stick with me. I want to remember,” Arthur spoke slowly, giving the words the space they needed to breathe. “If I let it go… I s’pose it feels like I’m forgetting the respect, the love I had for them. The things I never got to say out loud, that I might’ve wanted them to know.”

“Loyalty,” remarked the stranger, almost as if he was a naturalist remarking on some odd new specimen he’d never encountered before. Then, “Even in death?”

Arthur considered briefly, but he hardly needed to, the answer leaping from his tongue with an alarming quickness: “I reckon so.”

The stranger studied him, still knelt down beside his fire. He had set the stick aside for the moment, the flames having reached an evidently satisfactory height. The pressure of his gaze was a steady, even weight, rife with an alien kind of curiosity that Arthur had never before seen in a person. But then again, this weren’t an ordinary man he was dealing with, now was it?

“You consider yourself responsible for his death. For all the death and misfortune that has followed you since Blackwater.”

It was a statement, not a question, and Arthur couldn’t find it within himself to argue. It was true, anyhow.

“I do.”

The strange man nodded slowly, contemplative. “It’s not an idea without merit. You weren’t there to keep the heist from spiraling into disaster… to prevent the massacre of your friends. You weren’t there to stop Dutch van der Linde from painting a wall with Heidi McCort’s brains. He killed an innocent woman, and here you stand, mourning the loss of your fellow killers. Do you really believe you could have changed it all, if you had only been there?”

“I could have stopped him from killing that girl.”

“You don’t even know what went wrong during the robbery,” the man pointed out. “You might have deemed killing her justified, just as the others did, in the end.”

“I would have tried,” argued Arthur. “I would’ve made him see, if I’d been there. I would have found a way out, for her. For all of us.”

“A way out,” echoed the strange man, tone suddenly bland, as if he was swiftly tiring of this new direction their conversation had taken. “But what if there hadn’t been a way out, Arthur? What if you couldn’t make him see? This speculation is pointless; the heart of the matter is that you simply were not there, and Dutch van der Linde was not a strong enough man to even try to find another way out. He was a charismatic leader, of course, and had lofty ideals about freedom and individuality, but he was always going to kill that girl. Call it however you like: fate, destiny, or simply unfair. Dutch van der Linde was a liar and a killer, just as all of your lot were, and nothing you could have done would have changed that.”

Arthur blinked. “I don’t—”

But the strange man was insistent, now, and completely ignored him. “Consider it. What could a pretty young thing like Heidi McCourt have done to stir up Van der Linde’s rage, other than beg for her life? The bad seed was already there. It was planted long ago.”

And Arthur did consider it. Javier had said it was “a bad situation,” what happened in Blackwater, but he hadn’t delved into the details with Arthur. It was enough to make one’s imagination run wild, though, and Arthur had spent many a night since pondering over just what had gone wrong on that damn ferry. It was possible he would never know the true answer, now.

“Like father, like son,” the strange man was saying, as Arthur grappled with that notion. “I seem to recall something you said, once upon a time, to a young man whose mother you widowed.”

It was as if the words were passing through a thick barrier of fast-moving water, distorted and echoing from far away. Arthur felt almost as if he was drowning in memory, barely able to keep his head held up above the flood.

Dimly, he turned to regard the man. “What’s that?”

“Downes’ boy. ‘Revenge is a fool’s game,’ I hear is what you told him. Yet just a short while ago, you will remember, you were ready to shoot me dead for crossing you. Personally, I find it a little… ironic.”

“I never claimed to be better’n a fool,” snapped Arthur, though the hunted look on his face betrayed his true feelings. “Besides, it’s not like I ever asked for any of this—this unnatural situation. I never asked to get brought back! I got what I deserved, didn’t I?”

He looked up for his answer, every line of his face reeking of desperation. Of hope.

The strange man's dark eyes glimmered with satisfaction, winking like a morning star at twilight.

“Death always takes what it’s owed, Arthur. And here, in the present, there is still a debt to be paid.”

 

[Arthur Morgan]

”I myself have no existence; I am but a dream—your dream, a creature of your imagination. In a moment you will have realized this, then you will banish me from your visions and I shall dissolve into the nothingness out of which you made me. I am perishing already, I am failing, I am passing away.

In a little while you will be alone in shoreless space, to wander its limitless solitudes without friend or comrade forever—for you will remain a thought, the only existent thought, and by your nature inextinguishable, indestructible. But I, your poor servant, have revealed you to yourself and set you free. Dream other dreams, and better!” ― Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

Discomfited, Arthur couldn’t quite bring himself to speak. What was there to say, after all, to this man, this strange entity looming in the middle of a goddamn blizzard, who seemed to know him about as well as he knew himself?

So when the man, whose name Arthur still didn’t rightly know, said, “I think you’re going to wind up hurting yourself, Arthur,” it didn’t even click at first. It didn’t register because, as Arthur was already beginning to reckon, it was a statement more of an observation than anything else, an observation based on a suspicion that Arthur was already beginning to feel himself, one which said: “I don’t think it’s going to be good, what’ll happen to you, when you realize the truth. I don’t think you will like what comes next.”

Arthur felt sick. Sicker than he had in a long time. Memories tapped like the cold barrel of a gun against the back of his skull, hot blood roaring in his ears, his throat burning— burning—

A whispering susurration of burning wood filled the silence. The steady crackling of the flames was suddenly much easier to hear; the harsh howling of the wind had softened to a low, unsteady murmur, the sound reduced to a level reminiscent of someone speaking through a roadside inn’s wall. Muffled and just out of sight. Seemed that the storm had finally died down, the snow falling in chaotic swirls until only a few stray flakes could be seen dancing against the slate gray bowl of the sky.

Beyond the shadow of Colter’s crumbling chapel and the small graveyard scattered around it, Arthur could now just barely make out the looming shape of the mountains that bordered Spider Gorge—the southern-flowing river that dripped down from the northernmost point of the territory, running clear with cold glacier water and fat, red-bellied salmon.

Somewhere up there, Arthur knew, was a little wooden cross planted among the trees. They’d put Jenny there. His memory of the spot was clear—the place where they'd dug up the frozen ground to lever her body into, with its tiny marker all too easy to miss. She was probably buried knee-deep in a snowdrift by now, hidden from the rare traveler or fur trapper who might be inclined to venture this far north.

His gaze flitted back to the stranger and his lonely little campfire. Long, dark shadows were cast along the man's face by the red light of the fire's glow, flickering oddly.

It struck Arthur again, how just plain unnatural this stranger seemed. He looked certainly out of place in the wilds of Ambarino, what with his crisp two-piece suit and black tophat. Even his damn mustache was at odds with the rough winter landscape around them, all deftly feathered and slicked to perfection.

Arthur fought back a cough, stifling the sound with the back of one balled fist. Tasted something sharp and metallic creeping along the roof of his mouth, a sour, coppery warmth bleeding across his tongue in a syrupy-thick glide.

His strange companion—if such a person could even be called ‘companionable,’ after all—appeared to perk up at the sound. Just a slight twisting of his neck, but it caught Arthur’s eye all the same. He saw it, how the man’s head canted to the side in a slow, deliberate movement that seemed about as sinuous as the coiling of a snake.

Despite Arthur’s best efforts, a muffled and pathetic hacking still managed to escape from between his fingers, the racket seeming to ricochet off from the hollowed remains of the abandoned town, magnified in all its grotesque intensity.

Sucking in a wheezing breath, Arthur blinked blearily up at the stranger.

"What’d you say your name was again, feller?" he just barely managed to ask. His bloodshot eyes struggled to maintain some semblance of focus, eyelashes bronzed around the edges where the firelight touched them, stinging with the cold.

Abandoning the tending of his fire for the moment, the stranger stood and turned to face him proper.

Arthur had become so used to the man’s crouched posture—bent like a vulture over his campfire, gaze fixed upon the flames—that he found himself quite taken aback by the man’s unexpected movement, caught flat-footed by the full impression of the stranger’s sheer presence hitting him at last.

Even though the stranger appeared to have all the hallmarks of a living person, and even though he looked person-shaped in the way he moved, breathed, and spoke, something about him was decidedly unsettling. Almost as if his form seemed reluctant to catch the light cast from the dancing flames of the fire, the long shadows of the night likewise not able to touch upon his features like they should have.

An uncanny sense of trying to mimic the human form hit Arthur like a wash of frigid ice water—as if he were looking at a painted portrait, not into the face of a real person.

The former outlaw shifted backward on one heel, unsettled, his boots giving a tell-tale crunch as the snow adjusted to his weight. He felt off-balance, like his head was stuffed full of cotton, thoughts fogged with glimpses of distant memories that were old and layered with dust.

The man inclined his head, dark eyes steady. The smile that twitched at the corners of his mouth seemed to be one of amused derision. "I’ve already told you what I am."

Arthur merely shook his head, lifting his chin to fix the stranger with a steely-eyed stare.

“Then tell me somethin’ else,” he said, voice hoarse. “Why am I here? I ain’t dead, not anymore. You want somethin’ from me, or else I wouldn’t be standin’ here. So what is it?”

“Like I said… a debt remains unpaid,” the stranger’s eyes narrowed as he spoke, and Arthur felt the heat of the man's gaze on him like a burn. “You and that… mercenary fellow. What was his name—Wade Wilson?” The man shook his head with a rueful chuckle. “Different as you are, the both of you have an… interesting relationship with Death. An affair such as that comes with strings attached.”

Despite his trepidation, Arthur forced a laugh. “Yeah? I could’ve told you that much. He was in my head, after all. Just as much as I was in his.. Just ‘cause you can pull that mind-reading nonsense like Althaus—”

“Ah. Yes. The Andromedan,” the man interrupted, countenance twisting in distaste. “Yes, I remember. We do share… certain talents.”

“So that’s your business,” said Arthur, feeling a little bit more sure of himself. He gestured to the snowy hills around them with a flap of his hand, the movement sharpened by his irritability. “You did this to me. You brought me here, didn’t you? Invaded my mind without my say-so.”

“You could call it manipulating your subconscious, really,” said the man. “To use only the most polite of terms.”

“Polite terms. Yeah, right,” said Arthur. “So what are you, then? Some kind of… brain ghost? Another Andromedan? No offense, but you don’t look the part, feller.”

The strange man seemed to consider this, a peculiar almost-smile parting his lips.

“I’m no spirit, nor do I belong to the same people as your dear General,” he enunciated, the words slow and even, almost condescendingly so—like a schoolteacher explaining arithmetic to a group of sharecropper’s children. “But do I know the truth about you, Arthur. The whole truth, mind you, and nothing but the truth, all regarding your past, present, and… well. We’ll see about the future.”

Arthur’s heart skipped a beat. “Yeah? And what truth is that?”

“That I am the one you owe a debt to. And you, as you once were, were not in any fit state to pay it back. So, the universe saw fit to make some… much-needed adjustments.”

“Adjustments,” repeated Arthur, a sinking feeling in his chest.

“Yes. Adjustments. You were dead, and now you are not. You were sick, once, and now you are not. Now, I would call that an improvement, wouldn’t you?”

 

[Arthur Morgan]

Despite the intense chill in the air, Arthur felt a cold sweat break out over his back, prickling right between his shoulder blades.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” he muttered, then shook his head—roughly, as if the motion could somehow dispel the dark thoughts clouding his brain. “Look, mister. I’m cleaning up my act, bit by bit. I can’t quite stand the man I see in the mirror, but I’m getting there. I’m changing. I’m sure as hell better than I used to be. And I ain’t lookin’ to be nobody’s attack dog. Not anymore.”

“Is that so?” said the man, dark eyes keen upon his face. “Not even at your General’s command? I find that hard to believe.”

“Well, no,” Arthur said, bewildered enough to let his confusion seep into his tone. “That’s the honest truth.”

“I've found that the thing about the truth,” the strange man mused, “is that it does not always reveal itself to everyone. It reveals itself to the few, and it is what those few can’t see that shapes their world, their experiences. Divine predestination, some might call it, or simply the laws of our creation, rather than inspired human words. Perhaps you simply aren’t seeing… the full picture.”

He smiled at Arthur.

“But you are not a religious man, are you, Mr. Morgan?”

Meeting the man's eyes, Arthur shifted uncomfortably. It was true, but he didn’t see how that was relevant.

“Oh, I suppose you have good reason to doubt,” the man continued to speak, still smiling that pale, thin-lipped smile of his. “Some reason you can’t admit to yourself, I should think. I can understand that.”

Arthur couldn’t think around the powerful fog in his head. Something inside him rankled, deeply disturbed and angered by the man’s words. It hurt, lashing out like a beaten dog, pressing against the inside of the former outlaw’s skull with all the pent-up rage of a brewing midsummer squall. That something, even locked away deep inside as it was, understood well that he was on the edge of some precipice—some enormous, world-shattering realization, his boots teetering right on the edge of the cliff.

The former outlaw wasn't too sure if he felt comfortable being near that cliff. He felt threatened, terrified even, like some great horror was lurking beyond the fog of his memories. Arthur could sense it, like a whisper in an otherwise silent room, just there, not a part of his thoughts, but just there. And yet, when his mind tried to grasp it, to make it real, to make it all make some kind of sense, it was like he was surrounded by a thick, gray mist. Utterly unable to grasp it.

“In any case,” the strange man said, still studying him in his unusual way. Like Arthur was a particularly intriguing puzzle he had yet to figure out. “You were certainly Thomas Downes’ reaper. At least, that is how I hear it. Was he a good man, do you think? A charitable man? A kind, gentle man?”

“He was a good man,” Arthur murmured, with certainty.

The strange man nodded—but of course, he’d already known. “A good man, indeed. A good man…”

He took a step towards Arthur, then. Casually stepping into his space, completely unintimidated by who Arthur was. What Arthur was, as the outlaw was coming to find out.

“What I think, Arthur,” the man whispered, leaning forward, voice curling into a conspiratorially cheerful lilt, “is that you are a bad man. Lucky as you are, though, the Crossroads is in need of a few bad men.”

Arthur’s head had finally begun to clear, at last. He found that he didn’t much like this man drifting into his orbit, and straightened his spine, glaring.

“I won’t ask again, partner. What do you want from me?” he demanded, voice firm.

The strange man took a hasty step back, as if it had been a mistake to lean forward, to move so close to Arthur. His gaze drifted from the grizzled cowboy to the old Colter chapel and back again. He seemed irritated, uncertain—even reaching up to adjust his suit jacket, the first truly human habit Arthur had observed in him.

“The spirit inside you,” he said at last, and Arthur felt his heart jerk. The man must have seen something of Arthur’s feelings in his expression, for he once again assumed an aura of condescension. “You know what I’m referring to, of course. The spirit inside you, it thirsts for vengeance. Son of Adam and creature of sin that you are, doomed to crawl on your belly in the mud—but that spirit is incorruptible, godly and ungodly in equal measure. It will seek and destroy whatever creature you deem deserving of it. It knows nothing of mercy; only guilt and damnation.”

A sigh left the man, then, forming a cloud of pale mist in the crisp winter air. He turned, surveying the pitiful collection of graves around them, before glancing back at Arthur.

“What I want to understand, Arthur… is why you have been chosen. It was not Karl Jak’s will alone that gifted you with this power—the relic you hold is but a fragment, after all. There is… something else about you, something in your soul that was tripped, irreparably changed, upon your arrival in the Crossroads. Perhaps it was within you all along. Who’s to say? Whatever it is, I think it is within your best interest that we uncover it. Together, of course.”

Arthur stared at the man. It was all a lot to take in, that was for sure, but he wasn’t so easily fooled. There was some point the stranger was circling around, just as he had been for some time. And it was becoming increasingly frustrating that he hadn't gotten to that point, just yet.

“Together?” he repeated, incredulous, suppressing the urge to snort an ugly laugh. “You think I’m just gonna… what, let you prance around inside my head until you’ve got me all figured out? I think you can keep on dreamin’, partner. If I wanted someone pokin’ around in there, I’d ask Althaus to do it.”

“You misunderstand,” the strange man replied, distractedly. “I am not concerned with knowing you at all, Arthur Morgan. I know you, have known you, more than you will ever be able to comprehend. That is why I’m so curious about these… gifts you have received. I find it terribly strange.”

There was a beat of silence as Arthur considered the man’s words, a wrinkle appearing between his eyebrows. If the man already knew him, then why did he…? Ah. Abruptly, Arthur’s face cleared of its confusion, eyes glinting with renewed clarity.

“Because I’m lower than dirt to you,” he said, slowly, voice tight with his realization of the stranger’s motivations. “You’re checking to see if I’m worth it.”

Chin lifting, the stranger folded his arms behind his back, rocking backward onto his heels. “In a sense.”

 

[Arthur Morgan]

Arthur tore his gaze away from the strange man stood before him, looking down at the snow beneath his boots. A bitter-sounding chuckle slipped past his lips, rough with emotion and the cold, echoing strangely in the eerie, snow-dampened silence.

“I think you’ll be mighty disappointed,” scoffed Arthur, dragging one hand down the side of his face, the trembling fingers lingering over his mouth. He tried to keep his gaze ahead, to look anywhere but the grave sitting beside him, yet his eyes were pulled inexorably towards it. He wanted to look away, to forget, but his heart, weak as it was, wouldn't let him. “You said it yourself—you know me. You know what I am. I’m a bad man. S’all I ever was.”

But the strange man in the black top hat just shook his head.

“Make no mistake, Arthur. I am not here to coddle you, to comfort you with empty platitudes about the power of redemption, of forgiveness, of love. Time and sin has worn away at your humanity. You believe in nothing, speak nothing. You’re a dead man walking. And yet, you have been given the opportunity to start anew. To leave your bloody past behind, and make something of yourself. Already you have garnered the notice of the Arbiters, have gone toe to toe with gods,” the strange man shook his head, letting an incredulous note seep into his tone of voice. “And all for what? For sacrificing yourself for your fellow liars and killers? For returning to your most base nature, and taking lives in the Abyss? Surely a good and holy man such as Thomas Downes would have deserved a second chance just as much, if not more? Not a man such as yourself, a bad man, a man without piety!

“These questions are not unfamiliar to you—I know that you have felt them yourself. That the blasphemy of your continued existence troubles you. That it keeps you awake at night. Just like your friend the General, and all others who are brought to these Crossroads after death, or exile, or some other immense disgrace."

The man barked a laugh, short and without any true humor in it. His black eyes glittered as they studied Arthur's face.

“Has it not occurred to you, then, that the powers that led to your resurrection do not care about morality? About your foolish little life prior to this existence? Perhaps, like myself, they are only curious. But that would be too simple of an answer for you, I suppose. Your lot are all the same, always searching for meaning where none exists, or creating one that is utterly false, better suited to your moral designs.

“But here, I will tell you a secret: the universe is made of checks and balances. Good, evil, and everything that exists in between—the divine and the wicked, seated upon a grand scale that very few can perceive. This, this is the truth. The single, immutable truth that no human impunity can alter. And where do you fall on that scale? Believe it or not… somewhere in between!”

Arthur glanced up from Davey’s grave. When he next spoke, it was with a careful slowness that belied his lack of trust, a cynical frown twisting his mouth. “I thought I understood what you meant when you said I owe a debt to you. But now you're talkin' about the universe, and I don’t understand what it has to do with me. What debt am I really paying? Why the hell are you talking about some… ‘grand scale?’ Explain it to me, real slow, 'cause I don't understand.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to,” the man replied, coy, mustache twitching with his grim, thin-lipped smile. “Not yet, and likely not for a very long time. Although your will is strong, your mind is still young. The point is this: you could lie down right now and die again, for all I care—not that I believe the Arbiters would let you—and all would be just as it was. Oh, your friends would weep for you, but there would be others to take your place in the balance. You must understand, although you are a perfect reflection of mankind’s many faults, you were never meant to be… special. And yet…”

The strange man’s voice trailed off into silence. He tipped his head back to take in the sky above them, the wind howling as it scoured across Ambarino’s highest ice-covered peak. A few dainty flakes of snow drifted down to settle upon the brim of his hat, his shoulders, swiftly melting upon contact with the black fabric.

“And yet…” the man in the top hat turned his head back toward Arthur, dark eyes glinting with a strange malice that matched the frigid desolation of the world around them. “I am here.”

Arthur’s eyes narrowed, his mouth pursing into a thin line—his hands balling up into brittle, trembling fists. “You’ve done nothin’ but talk in circles, feller. Matter of fact, I don’t reckon you’ve given me a single straight answer this whole time. What’s your game?”

“No game,” the man replied. His expression flattened, his tone once more devoid of all emotion. “No game. Like I said, I am only curious.”

Arthur shook his head, eyebrows furrowing. He opened his mouth, primed to ask another question, but as he gazed upon the strange man, the words got all caught up in his throat, like he was choking on them. Curious, huh?

Both men stilled, staring at each other for a long moment in silence, a hundred unspoken words swirling in the air between them. Both intrigued and, apparently, uncomfortable with the way things stood. For vastly differing reasons, of course.

Arthur’s curiosity warred with his wariness—he didn’t trust the man, didn’t like him, and felt an instinctive revulsion for the way he spoke to him, like he was an errant child in need of... what? Guidance? A firm hand? But the more he studied the stranger’s pale face, his dark manner, the more he felt an odd sense of recognition, of knowing—as though they had met before. But that was impossible.

Wasn’t it?

Arthur racked his brain, frustrated. Afraid, too, he realized. Real afraid.

“I…” he began, haltingly. “I’ve… seen your face before, ain't I? Somewhere... somewhere else. Somewhere… before.”

“You have,” the strange man replied. “Do you think it mere chance that I have sought you out, Arthur Morgan?”

Arthur considered this, his eyes narrowing. He tried to match the man’s face to a name, time, or place, but couldn’t muster up enough coherence to do so. As such, much like a candle, the brief moment of recognition was snuffed out quite soundly. Arthur suppressed the urge to groan in frustration.

“No,” the man continued, seemingly reading Arthur’s mind. “It is not chance. It never was. Have you ever wondered, Arthur—after every person you have met, every man or woman you’ve killed, every dollar you stole—‘What if?’ What if I had chosen to do things differently? What if I did not leave? What if I had spoken up? What if I had been gentler, more kind from the very start? What if, what if, what if… And now, after everything you have done in the past, the choices you have made and the lives you have taken, what if you had been a better man? What if you had made other choices, and sooner? What if you had been, quite simply… more?”

Arthur looked away, desperate to escape the man’s searching look. He had a suspicion of who this man was, now, but he weren't ready to face it. His gaze caught on the nearby mountainside, tracing the rugged slope, the skeletal trees half-submerged in the snow.

“What are we doing here?” he asked, voice hoarse. “Why have you brought me here, really?”

“Well, I don’t know about you,” the strange man said, and Arthur could hear the crunch of ice under his fancy dress shoes as he shifted, “But as for myself… I’m simply enjoying a beautiful night.”

Arthur turned back. There was the faintest hint of a smile on the man’s face now, and an unreadable look in his eyes, as though he knew something that Arthur didn’t. He half-expected the man to disappear into thin air any second now, like some kind of magician or phantom, but instead he gestured to the landscape before them.

“Look around you, Arthur— it's a sight worth seeing.”

And so Arthur looked. He looked out across a vast, snow-covered plain that stretched out towards the distant mountains, a sea of shimmering white and silver, glittering under the cold light of the pale winter sky. But as his gaze lingered on his surroundings, a surreal transformation began— the blanket of snow melted away until the ground beneath him turned into the murky, earthy brown of a marshland, the sky above him shifting, darkening, until the very stars seemed to be engulfed by a curtain of inky black shadows.

Arthur startled and took an involuntary step back, thick mud and silt oozing up to his ankles, the cold water lapping around his boots, as if trying to swallow him into its depths. Gaze darting around, the former outlaw’s eyes traced the surface of the marsh, the entirety of which was dotted with thousands of tiny glowing embers—fireflies, he realized, as his gaze drew upward to the sky overhead, which was flecked with several large, greenish streaks, which he recognized as shooting stars. Only the occasional tree broke through the thick film of the mud-covered plain, patches of grass sprouting around their roots and Spanish moss hanging in dewy drapes from their branches. It was—

“Beautiful,” the strange man said from behind him. Glancing back, Arthur could see that his gaze was fixed on the stars above—decidedly not on the wild land around them. “Isn’t it?”

Arthur frowned, crouching down in the muck to get a closer look. He recognized this place, knew it about as well as he knew the bitter cold and desolation of Ambarino, but…

“I… I never seen anything like this,” Arthur replied, sifting a few beads of mud between his fingers, watching as it clung to the pads of his index finger and thumb. “What’s happening?”

Moving to stand beside him, the strange man sighed, shaking his head. Like Arthur was a particularly poor student, disappointingly slow on the uptake.

“This is your story, Arthur. And out of all the paths that could have been taken, you chose to take this one—the one that led to a life of violence and death, mire and mud. You were born into a world, into a life, where men like you work, live, breathe, and bleed suffering. And you decided that, as a man, it was up to you to survive… at any cost. Because that’s what men do. They fight, they struggle, they kill. Men are like this marsh, Arthur.”

The strange man laid his hand upon the marshy ground, his fingers sinking into the mud. Claw-like, gnarled. Tearing the good earth asunder.

“A man is mired in this thick, viscous sludge. And you have done nothing but wallow in it, feeding on the worms and grubs that dwell beneath its surface. And you have done so gladly,” the man said, withdrawing his hand and scowling distastefully at the mud that clung to it. “You’re so willingly mired in this filth. No wonder we've found ourselves here.”

Arthur paused, frowning. He didn’t know what to say to that, didn’t know what to think, what to do. What's more, he didn’t like the tone of the man’s voice—or rather, the words he was saying. It almost sounded like he was mocking him. But now wasn’t the time to get offended at the man’s harshness, not yet, not when he was so... so fascinated by what he was saying.

“I… I ain't been perfect,” Arthur muttered. “I ain't ever claimed to be that. I ain't… I'm not even sure I know what a good man does, I've only ever had an idea of it. I guess…”

He grit his teeth, sucking in a deep, steadying breath as he continued to stare at the strange man through the darkness.

“I guess I ain't never been much of a man at all,” he finished, shrugging one shoulder.

The strange man nodded slowly, his gaze shifting away from Arthur and towards the marsh ahead. As he did, Arthur followed his gaze and looked up—and what he saw made him suck in a sharp breath from shock. For at the edge of the marsh, where it met the still-dark sky above, stood a pair of graves beneath the lofty branches of a nearby tree.

They were freshly covered with mounds of dirt, these graves, but names had been carved into each of the wooden headstones, names that stood out to him clear as day, even under the cover of nightfall: Hosea Matthews. Lenny Summers.

Arthur's feet moved of their own accord, slowly clomping and sloshing through the damp terrain as he approached the pair of graves. He felt exhausted, his vision struggling to keep up with a thick grey mist that seemed to dance around him, shifting in and out of his awareness like a ghost. Yet, as he narrowed his eyes and squinted through the darkness, he was almost mesmerized by the strange blue-green light that shone from the stars overhead, casting the path before him in a soft, welcoming light.

It was almost calming in a way, yet Arthur still felt an undeniable sense of dread. He didn't deserve to visit nobody's grave.

He knelt down on his knees and rested his hand on one of the recently filled graves. The muck had begun to bake from the sun at this height, it seemed, and a biting chill crept through his fingers and into his skin at the touch, yet it didn't matter. He was too distracted by the strange man's presence, the words he had spoken. He wasn't sure how to respond.

"There any point in showin' me the graves of all my friends, mister?" Arthur whispered, finally, after a long beat of silence.

The man's footsteps crunched behind him, and he could almost feel the man's presence shifting through the air, a tangible pressure building just over his shoulder. Seconds later, the man appeared beside him, his outline blurry in the darkness.

"These men sacrificed their lives for a cause you believed in," the man said. "You feel that their blood is on your hands. That their lives were forfeited so that you might have a chance to be better."

Arthur's hand tightened on the mossy edge of the grave, and he closed his eyes as the feeling of guilt washed over him. In that moment, if he could have, he would have given anything to have his old life, to have those moments back that he'd lost, the moments that he would never get back. Moments that, for all intents and purposes, he'd wasted.

"You feel that their lives were wasted," the man continued, his voice hardening. Arthur opened his eyes, saw that the man was kneeling beside him, almost too close for comfort. "And yet you're so full of fear and doubt, you've come to hope that, maybe, if you just leave the mud that shapes all men behind, if you could only forget, everything will be perfect for you in the end. Is that right?"

“I ain't got much of a choice but to feel that way, now do I?” muttered Arthur bitterly. “Out of all of 'em... who knew that I'd be one of the ones that got to walk away, in the end. I didn’t want that, and I sure as hell didn’t deserve it.”

"And the guilt's eating you alive, isn't it?"

“Even if it is, what’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing at all, nothing at all. But you’re in grave danger, Arthur. You are in danger of forgetting yourself in the pursuit of something greater. You need to remember this,” the strange man nodded to the graves. “Remember them. That is the key.”

The man's voice sounded so strangely earnest and serious, so very different from the cold, mocking tone he'd maintained thus far, that Arthur's body tensed up. He swallowed a lump in his throat, and he pushed himself up on his feet, grimacing as the water splashed and the mud slipped between his fingers, his knees wet with cold silt.

“Ain’t no one can say for sure what’s gonna happen in the end,” he replied, glancing over his shoulder at the man. “I can’t spend my whole life wormin’ in this mud.”

Rising to match his height, the strange man faced him, a warning in his eyes.

“You’re in danger of giving up that which makes you human, Arthur. Your honor, your humility, your memories. Lose those, and you might as well shed your skin and decay, rot away in the muck and be forgotten by the world. No Spirit of Vengeance will save you from yourself; it will only burn away that which makes you weak. And this,” he gestured around them. “Is weakness.”

Arthur shook his head, his eyes shifting from the graves to the man.

“It ain’t gonna be like that,” he said. “I been there and done that, and I’m never going back to being anything less than who I am now. I'm set on being better, doing better. I’ll remember.”

“Is that right?” the man said, gaze intent upon him. “You truly believe that.”

“I do,” Arthur said, lifting his chin. “I won't let myself fall again.”

A brittle silence descended between them, only broken by the pounding of Arthur's heart. The man said nothing, and he reached up and ran his fingers along the brim of his hat. The brim tipped up slightly, partially obscuring his eyes and giving them a strange, haunting glimmering as he looked at Arthur.

“It’s a start,” he drawled, after a beat of silence. Abruptly, he tilted his head to the side, as if listening for some secret signal that Arthur could only hope to detect. “High time for a change of scenery, don’t you think, Arthur?”

With that, the man turned and began to walk away, his silhouette fading until he was swallowed up by the darkness.

For a long moment, Arthur hesitated, his feet feeling much like lead as he dragged himself away from the two graves. He glanced back one last time, taking in the silent wooden planks sitting upright among the muck, before slowly turning away. He forced himself to move forward.

Arthur followed.