Who, Cerberus - goodbyelisahoney - Red Dead Redemption (Video Games) [Archive of Our Own] (2024)

Chapter 1: i. “Devil's getting into folk out there”

Chapter Text

John Marston's stallion Thoreau panted for breath, his rider's desperate dash to Blackwater far from over. Snakes slithered away from the horse's racing hooves. Crows squawked menacingly overhead, silhouetted against the lightning that periodically illuminated the night sky, the rain that fell heavy on John's hat and shoulders, the horse's dun-coloured neck and flanks, drenching them both to the bone. The howls of wolves echoed in the distance, heard over Thoreau's hoofbeats. Nature itself in revolt.

He'd left his wife, Abigail, and teenage son, Jack, back at their homestead, bound and writhing on the floor, their veins blackened with some kind of sickness, mouths bloody and snapping, retching with inhuman noises. John heard the same sounds on the wind, dogging his heels into town.

The first few buildings of Blackwater came into view as Thoreau's muffled hooves took up the clatter of pavement, the horse lathered with effort. Then, the main street, nearly deserted. Most of the storefronts and apartments that made up the town's key thoroughfare had darkened windows, signage turned to "closed"; the doctor's, John's goal, among them. But the lights of the saloon were still blazing. A beacon for bad things yet to come.

John urged his horse on towards the saloon, tinkling piano and loud, drunken guffaws emerging out of the deafening rain. He hitched Thoreau around back and dashed for the front, bursting through the swinging double doors. "There's something out there," He said loudly, gesturing emphatically out at the rain, drawing the attention of several men at the bar, the blackjack table, leaning over the rail on the saloon's upper level. "Something evil."

Immediately, whispers and mutterings took over the room, the men conferring with each other. John, well-known in these parts, nonetheless disliked catching "crazy old Marston" among their hushed - and, not-so-hushed, in the case of the especially soused - conversations.

"I'm serious!" He shouted, drawing their eyes - some concerned, some entertained, some just plain pissed off - once again. "Devil's getting into folk out there." A few smirks turned into callous laughter, incensing John anew. "It's the devil! Ain't no other way to explain it!"

"Sounds like either old John Marstonsorelyneeds a drink, or to turn the clock back 'fore he ever first had one!" A waitress chimed from the staircase, a tray of empty, sudsy glasses braced against her hip as she descended, heading for the bar. The laughter increased in volume as John insisted, "I ain't been drinking! There's something going on out there!"

"Drink it is, then," she winked, depositing the tray on the bartop and seizing a bottle of bourbon by the neck, a shot glass in her free hand. She approached him, weaving through the tables and chairs, men whistling at the swish of her skirt, cut high in the front, the shine of her ash-blond hair in the gaslamps.

"I don't want no drink," John seethed through his teeth, "I want-"

"Somethin' a little stronger, cowboy?" She interrupted, teasingly, overturning the shot glass onto the bottle's cork, fingering the rain-drenched fabric of his collar. The men in the saloon whooped, and the bartender hollered, "Give it to him, Ruby!"

John slapped her hand away from his shirt, but it returned, held fast. He felt himself being dragged towards one of the rooms on the first floor, his resistance foiled by several of the men pushing him along. She pushed him into the room, crowing "Ain't crazy horses the most fun to ride, fellas?" to cheers and hollers, before slipping in after him, closing the door and turning the lock, reaching under her skirt with her free hand.

"I'm a married man, want nothing to do with this," John held up his hands, outrage clenching them into fists. Her expression, playful and flirtatious in the bar-at-large, immediately turned grave as she pressed her back against the door, facing him, pulling out a revolver from a concealed holster somewhere by her legs.

"How many are there?" She said, setting the bottle on a nightstand. She swung open the revolver's chamber and peered through it at John, counting her bullets.

"How many...what?" He stammered, confused at her sudden change in behaviour.

"How. Many. Are. There." She repeated, pausing between each word. "The devil-people? Theundead?" John, in the midst of shaking water off of his hat, froze, met her dark eyes.

He said slowly, "They can't be undead, can they?" Abigail had been very much alive until Uncle, that old bastard, bit her in the neck; Jack the same until his mother'd bitten him in turn. They seemed alive, just, well,strange.

"Tell the empty graveyards all across Lemoyne and Ambarino," she glowered, repeating her checking of bullets with a second gun. "Now, think, Marston. How many?"

John scratched at the wet strands of his hair, his beard. "No idea, didn't see them. Just heard them coming after me."

"sh*t," she muttered under her breath, moved quickly to the lace curtain obscuring the window, peered out. She looked into the chambers of both guns again, as if to find more bullets there, sighed when they revealed the number to be unchanged. "You got any bullets, Marston?"

He ran his fingers along the shotgun shells pressed into their places in his bandolier, clutched for the spare box of pistol rounds in his bag. "None for you, I'm afraid." She took a deep breath, nodded.

"OK then, big fella," she fixed him with a sad look, momentarily, before it turned resolute. "I'm off to go rally the troops, sad bunch of drunks and reprobates as they are. We got about thirty minutes before this whole place is crawling with the devil's damned playthings."

She pulled the slide lock back to an open position, rested her hand on the knob, looked back to John. "You know, cowboy, you really should have that drink," she said, nodding towards the bottle on the nightstand. "It might just be your last."

Chapter 2: ii. “Treat your ammo like gold”

Chapter Text

The woman, Ruby, left the small bedroom, John following her to the door with the neck of the bourbon bottle in his fist. He swigged deeply, feeling the liquor coat his stomach, steeling his nerves. Could what she'd said be true, that there were undead coming? And what did it mean for Jack? For Abigail?

From his post at the door held slightly open, he heard the lewd cheers that met Ruby's re-entry into the bar. "Over that quickly, Rube?" Barked the bartender, laughing.

"Not so, Sam," came her uncharacteristically sober reply. "I'm afraid old Marston ain't as crazy as we thought, gentlemen. Y'all feel up to a little invasion of the undead?" The men broke out into grumbled mutterings, and a loud woman's cry sounded out from the second level.

Ruby continued: "If you're a workin' woman - yes, I mean you up there, Clem, stop cryin', darlin' - or a yellow-bellied man, go on upstairs to the third bedroom, the one whose window don't open out onto the balcony. But leave your guns for the brave folks down here. Hey! That means you, Everett! Put that damn rifle down, you cowardly son of a bitch."

"I got a family," a man, presumably Everett, protested.

"Oh, nuts to your family," she snapped back, John nodding from behind the door, bracing himself to rejoin the room. "OK, now, which of you real men want Everett's rifle? It's real nice, a Springfield, covered in coward sweat as it is."

"Free drinks for whoever gets out of this thing alive; just fair warning that it's all gonna be beer," Ruby said, turning empties into fire bottles with all of the barrail whiskey, briefly catching John's eye as he emerged from behind the door. In that short time, she'd turned the saloon into a battlefront, prepared for siege. The men who'd remained clutched pistols, revolvers, an odd rifle or two; their ammunition pooled on the blackjack table, pulled into the very centre of the room.

Her task with the fire bottles completed, Ruby climbed up onto the bartop, hitched one of her revolvers aloft. John recalled - involuntarily, and not wanting to unpack the association - the linocut reproductions of famous artworks in one of his old leader Dutch's books; a buxom woman, Lady Liberty, gripping the French flag, leading her countrymen. Something about Ruby's strong, tanned legs peeking out of the ruffled skirt, her steady gaze and impassioned face, the gun in her hand both prop and pointer, glinting in the light. His cheeks reddened, and he was glad of the attention of the bar directed away from him, at her makeshift stage. The bar was hushed, waiting.

"First of all," she started, holding up a finger. "I don't want none of that hillbilly nonsense, firin' into the air if y'all agree with me; of course you're gonna agree with me, I'm right." She tapped the barrel of the revolver to her sternum. "Treat your ammo like gold, boys. Make every shot count. Sam's ceiling'll thank you.

"Second, these bastards Marston there started running his mouth about are very real, and scary as all hell. They ain't human, though they sure look like they might have been. Aim for their heads, boys. Even if it looks like a lady or a sweet little kid. You shoot. In the head."

To illustrate, Ruby briefly levelled her revolver at a baby-faced man juxtaposed with wildly out-of-control mutton chops, who scowled in response. "Get that damn gun out of my face, Ruby Dufresne."

"Oh, I'm sorry, Blanchard," she obliged him, returning the gunpoint to neutral, aimed at the air, a devilish grin emerging on her face. "I had thought you was a devil baby with two squirrels glued to his cheeks, my mistake." Blanchard smiled in spite of himself, and she shouted over the gruff laughter to finish: "And last; one of these undead f*ckers bites you, you shoot yourself." The laughter stopped abruptly, all cheer suddenly sucked from the room. John's heart clenched, his thoughts racing to Abigail and Jack at Beecher's Hope, the teeth marks sunken into their necks.

"Save us all from having to do the honours after you turn and drink ourselves to death, 'Oh, woe is me, I shot that poor bitten bastard Daniels.'" Ruby crouched from her position at the bar to clutch a grizzled man sitting at the bar by the shoulders, her face theatrically anguished, before she cracked a lopsided smile, slapping the man gently on his cheek. The room mirrored her grin, the sobering moment past, for most.

Ruby marched across the bar, pointing out commands as she spoke. "I want riflemen in the windows, a pistol in front of that room of women and that coward f*ck Everett and one at every door, two at the front. Everyone else; we're running ammo and taking shots at the ones that come close. Y'all good?" The bar resounded a deafeningYeah!, men jockeying into their positions as Ruby hopped down from the bar, weaving through the men to John.

"You OK, Mr. Marston?" She lay a friendly hand on his shoulder.

"Have to say I'm impressed, Miss Dufresne," he said, with admiration limning his voice, "You got your own little regiment going on in here."

She winked. "Amazing what folks'll do for the person who keeps them in their cups."

"I see something!" Cried one of the men from the second storey, and the smiles faded from their faces. John pulled his shotgun around from his back, heaved a deep breath. She retrieved her second revolver from its holster on her leg. They nodded at each other, moans becoming audible over the rain dripping off of the striped awning out front. A brief flash of lightning showed a slew of bodies making their way to the only lit building on the street.

They were as ready as they'd ever be.

Chapter 3: iii. The undead siege of Blackwater saloon

Chapter Text

The grave silence that had overtaken the saloon ended; in sudden flashes of gunfire, in shouts of disbelief. One by one, Sam's windows were smashed open, for the gunmen to better shoot. The first floor secured, Ruby re-holstered her sidearm and grabbed two fire bottles, taking the steps at a run, two at a time, bursting out onto the balcony.

John seized more bottles in both hands, two bouquets of amber longnecks. His shotgun hanging in front of him by its strap, he arrived on the second floor to see her pluck a cigarette from one of the riflemen's mouths, touch its burning ember to the whiskey-soaked rag poking from the bottle's top, hurl it overhand towards the approaching horde. Followed by the second, thrown hard to the right. John immediately saw what Ruby was after: forcing the clusters of undead into a column, making them easier to spot, to shoot. He lit two bottles at once, handed one to her, nodded. They threw together, John's landing further down the street, but Ruby's catching a large undead in the chest, immolating it instantly. "That's a dollar!" She crowed, the fire reflecting in her eyes, hair dripping wet.

Ruby lobbed the remaining fire bottles John'd brought into the street, John firing four rounds off with one of her revolvers, catching as many undead in their faces. The undead were more visible, silhouetted against the flames that were yet to be extinguished by the pelting rain. But, seeing their quarry was not necessarily better for the men's morale.

"Jesus H. Christ!" cried Blanchard, the mutton-chopped man Ruby had teased, looking horror-struck as a small undead sauntered up the street in a disturbing pantomime of a child skipping. The creature dragged a leg behind it, which came looser with every bounce, unbothered, its one remaining eye glowing, seemingly fixated on Blanchard.

"It ain't a child, Blanchard, for f*ck's sake," Ruby admonished, pulling her revolver from John and taking practiced aim, shooting right through the glowing eye. Blanchard turned to her, his face the colour of puce. She patted him on the shoulder, "I'd offer you to go and join Everett and the women, but I knowyouknow I'd never let you hear the end of it. And I intend to make it through this very much alive." Blanchard nodded at her, swallowing deeply, wrapping his hands around the stock of the rifle. "Good man."

She caught John's eyes, gestured for the stairs. He followed her readily. She was Lady Liberty on the bartop, but - and he hated to make the comparison - the embodiment of Dutch Van Der Linde, the old Dutch, himself on the line, equal parts encouraging and cajoling, the men following her orders unquestioningly, desperate to please her. He watched her exchange words with the two pistols at the front door, who included the grizzled Daniels, a fierce shot. She patted his back and pointed at something in the distance, whispering in his ear. Daniels bobbed his head in turn, aimed, fired. Ruby let out a wolf-whistle, yelling, "That's how you do it, boys!" John joined in with the room's cheers, happily, seizing a box of pistol rounds from the blackjack table and bringing it wordlessly to Daniels' elbow, the man nodding his thanks.

One of the riflemen at the window to their left missed shot after shot, the sweat beading off his temples reeking of alcohol. Ruby kicked him aside and seized the gun, taking careful aim and dispatching two fast-approaching undead who were about to breach the front porch. As she turned to berate the drunk, a chapped and gnarled arm grabbed her around the neck, pulling her toward the window, thick yellowed fingernails scratching at her shoulder. John sprung forward and shot the undead, point blank, with his shotgun.

Covered in viscera, Ruby spat onto the ground before smiling at him. "Obliged, Mr. Marston." She said, her eyes and teeth gleaming white in contrast to the red blood splattered across her face.

"Think that might be a new rule, Miss Dufresne?" He replied, tossing her his kerchief. "Don't turn your back to the window during a demon invasion?" She wiped most of the blood off, the red still visible in her hairline.

"I think I like it, sure." She cracked another smile at him. "Could be catchier." The pair fought side by side, moving around the saloon to offer support wherever it was at its weakest, ferrying ammunition between the men, throwing more fire bottles to reinforce the column Ruby had created.

The first light of dawn began to break and the rain slowed to spitting as a loud, distinctly human, cry sounded outside. "Remember your orders!" Shouted Daniels from the door. "No one leaves this building!"

"Pa!" Came the cry, "You still at the saloon?" A young girl was wandering the main street, the picture of innocence, still in her nightgown, dragging a doll by its arm. Behind her, an undead scrabbled on all fours at a sickening pace, its glowing eyes rolling.

In a flash, Ruby was out of the saloon, sliding into a crouch, clutching the girl to her chest. "Cover your ears, chickpea!" she shouted, firing at the undead. The creature's head went off like an overripe grape; what remained of its body fell into a heap. Ruby collapsed to the ground, holding the girl to herself, breathing heavily. She winced at more undead to come, at being out in the open. But, the moaning that had plagued their ears all night had ceased. They were finally, miraculously, alone.

Ruby rose to seated, lifting the girl to her feet, holding her little arms in her hands. "Who's your pa, little darlin'?"

The girl stood proudly, puffed out her chest. "My pa is Mr. Roland Everett!" She declared, and Ruby's face soured. John approached the pair with two beers in his fist, made a waving motion towards the saloon. "Your pa's just inside, darlin', completely safe. You run in and get him." The girl looked between the two before dashing off to the double doors, the men's cheering reaching a fever pitch. He handed one of the beers to Ruby, squatted down next to her in the street.

"Looks like you broke your own rules just now, Miss Dufresne," he said, gently, taking a swig.

"I knew I weren't gonna miss," she replied, stubbornly, downing a gulp of beer and wiping her mouth with her arm, looking at the carnage of burnt and bloodied undead littering the street, shaking her head. She rose to standing, offering her hand to John to help him up, as well. They made their way back to the saloon, Ruby clapping the men she passed on their shoulders and backs as they finally returned to their homes after their long night under siege.

"You know," John said, slowly, not wanting to ruin their rapport. "I gotta save my wife and son, they're all caught up in this. You could help me do that."

Ruby fixed him with a sad look. "I'm real sorry, Mr. Marston," she said finally, shaking her head. "There ain't no savin' them." Her certainty filled John with dread, overtook his short-lived elation at the saloon's victory over the undead. Just then, Sam hauled a few planks of wood in from the back of the saloon, pulled a hammer from his belt loop, started nailing them over the broken windows.

"What's this, Sam?" Ruby questioned, taking another deep drink from her beer bottle.

"Gotta close this place up, Rube," he replied, hammering another plank into place. "'Course you're welcome to stay, I just can't pay you."

John saw his moment, seized it. "I can pay you. Ten dollars a day, if you want. You just have to help me, help my family."

Ruby squinted at him, swivelling the beer in its bottle. "OK then. But my rate's fifteen the day I have to save your ass from your own undead wife."

"It's a gamble I'd be honoured to take, Miss Dufresne." She tucked the beer under her left arm, extended her right hand. John shook it. A figure staggered through the saloon's double doors, clutching its own bottle. Its eyes glowing green.

Ruby scrambled to her feet, the beer falling to the ground and shattering. Her gun was out of its leg holster in an instant and the undead shot clean through its forehead; her skirt fell back down well after the undead did. John approached the felled creature, his own gun raised. He used the snout of his shotgun to tease the bottle from out of the undead's fingers, and Ruby lurched forth, snatching it up and retreating to her barstool.

"What's it say?" John asked, panting for breath. She squinted at the label, her mouth configuring into various shapes.

"N.W. Dee-Dickens... Invij-Invigor..." she attempted, her face screwing up at the bottle. John joined her side, not wanting to embarrass her. "Invigorating," he said, not unkindly, pointing at the word.

"It's invigorating, all right," she mumbled, reddening after her failed effort to read. But John was reading the label again, his face distorted into a scowl.

"Nigel West Dickens, you son of a bitch."

Chapter 4: iv. “When did you see your first undead?”

Chapter Text

John continued to stare at the bottle, grimacing. Ruby took a tentative step backwards, gesturing towards the stairs. "I'm gonna leave you holdin' down the fort, Mr. Marston," she said. "Clean all the brains out of my hair. Then we can saddle up, I guess."

"Mmm," he acquiesced, barely, the nameN.W. Dickensburning into his eyes. When she returned, hair damp, skin freshly scrubbed, revealing a dusting of brown freckles across her nose and cheeks, he'd barely moved, startled when she lay a light hand on his back.

"Ooh, can't wait to bring that jumpiness on the road," Ruby teased, stepping a boot onto the stool in front of him to shine it. The boots were brown, well-worn, free of embellishment. Black riding pants and a simple denim shirt with pearl buttons and blue swallows embroidered on the yokes made up the rest of her ensemble; modest in comparison to her serving outfit. He stared, remembering the rain-soaked blouse hinting at her undergarments the night before, the swishing skirt.

Thankfully, to John, she hadn't noticed, and, satisfied with her boot-shining, stretched and headed for Sam by yet another window in need of boards, throwing her arms around the man's neck. "Take care, y'old coot," she said, affectionately, pressing a kiss to his cheek. "See you after the apocalypse." She released him and headed for the doors, apparently not one for long, heartfelt goodbyes. John made to follow her, but Sam stepped forward, grasping his forearm.

"Take care of that girl, Marston," Sam said, emphatically, holding John's gaze. "Rube's a tough nut, but she'll give too much of herself away tryin' to help you."

"OK," John said, trying to make sense of the man's sombre expression.

"I mean it," Sam said. "Don't let her."

"I won't," John insisted, breaking away from Sam's grasp and offering his hand for a shake, instead. The man reluctantly took it. "Take care, now."

John and Ruby trotted to and beyond the outskirts of town on their horses; John's dun stallion, Thoreau, and a silver bay mare Ruby'd called Sybil. As they passed the wooden sign welcoming them to Blackwater, Ruby gestured towards a few dug out holes at the side of the road. "Them's undead holes," she said, matter-of-factly, John's gaze following her pointing finger. "Folks buried all over this country."

He took in the scattered earth, his stomach sinking at what looked like two dragging claw marks at the mouth of one of the graves, before turning back to her. "How do you know all this? When did you see your first, uh...you know..."

"Undead, Marston, Jesus," she spat, her tone scolding, peering at him from under the brim of her dark green hat. "If you're too afraid to say it, we're not gonna get too far." After a moment, she continued, "I came up in Rhodes, a little town out in the state of Lemoyne."

"Yeah, I know it," he nodded, briefly remembering his gang days in Clemens Point, imploring her to continue.

She gestured a hand forth. "So you'll know it took so long to figure out there were undead among us, as everyone there's inbred and stupid as hell anyhow." John laughed, surprised at her candour. "Ain't much different between a horde of undead and a posse of hillbilly raiders. The undead might smell a little better."

Still grinning, he asked, "so what happened? Once you did find out, I mean?"

"Me and Sybil here escaped," she said, reaching forward in the saddle to pat the horse on the neck. "I fought my way out west and picked up some skills on dealing with undead trash in the meantime, ended up here in Blackwater. Been bracin' myself at that saloon for three months, waiting on them to show up. Guess they were stymied by the river for a time."

"Why didn't you tell anyone, Miss Dufresne? Warn folk down here what was coming?"

She stared at him again, a wry smile pulling at the corner of her mouth. "You told that bar full of people. Tell me," she leaned dramatically forward in her saddle, resting her fist under her chin in a gesture of mock-inquisitiveness, "how did that go, crazy old Marston?"

He chuckled. "Fair point."

They continued on in amicable silence, the dry grasslands of West Elizabeth beginning to turn over into shaded marsh. Now pointed out to him, John began to notice signs of the otherworldly invasion that had taken place; overturned wagons, more disturbed earth. Opportunistic carrion birds lined the telegraph wires, brooding at them as they passed.

"My turn," Ruby said suddenly, slowing Sybil to a walk to wind her finally-dried hair into two neat plaits. "Who is this Mr. Nigel West Dickens what's got your gitchies all in a knot?"

John's face burned; his shame at having known that snake oil salesman for so long twinned with her bald mention of his underwear. "He's a charlatan I have the continued misfortune of coming across, Miss Dufresne. I always swear the next time I see him I'm going to put a bullet in his head, but I end up protectin' him, instead."

"Mr. Marston, are you in love?" John grunted, tried to disguise his smile at her capable teasing, failed.

"Must be," he mock-conceded, rolling his eyes. "In all honesty, I wouldn't be surprised if that idiot's catalogue of poisons didn't start this whole thing."

"So we're huntin' him down, that it?"

"To start," John nodded. "He tends to be wherever a lot of idiots congregate; sell them on as much of his stupid bullsh*t as he can before they figure it out and he has to run for his life, aided by yours truly, more often'n not. Wonderin' how that undead back at the saloon got its hands on one of his tonics."

"Sounds good to me," she gave Sybil's flanks a gentle kick, spurring her on towards Thieves' Landing, John setting the spurs to Thoreau to follow. "Wherever a bunch of idiots meet up, there's always tons of guns and ammo," she shouted over her shoulder, her hair whipping in the draft. "We're gonna need that ammo."

They raced their horses en route to the unfriendly port town, egging each other onwards, hoping to find that crown jewel of idiots, Nigel West Dickens.

Chapter 5: v. Where an old swindler had enough time to let paint dry

Chapter Text

Thieves' Landing. Population: None of Yer Business.

The unwelcoming irony of the sign had never failed to bring a smirk to John's face when passing through the traditionally lawless settlement, but he quelled a jump in his heart at a bloodied handprint smeared over the inlaid "Yer," at the sign hanging lopsidedly, one of the chains loosened from its hook suspension.

As John and Ruby urged their horses into town at a tentative walk, he noticed more signs of trouble; fresh bulletholes riddling the walls of the Thieves' Landing saloon and surrounding buildings, a vulture picking unhurriedly at the rotting corpse of a goat, left in the road. It had always been wild and dangerous, Thieves' Landing, but it had also feltalive. The familiar drunks leering from storefronts or teetering, making water at the side of buildings, of gunslingers determined to prove their worth, of whor*s propositioning from seemingly every window and doorframe; all, conspicuously absent.

"Careful, Miss Dufresne," John murmured, running his hand over his pistol grip, turning his head and shoulders towards her as she took in the scene. "This place's never been kind to women on the best day. Can't imagine what it's like now."

She grinned back at him, tipping the brim of her hat up to better show him her face. "Shall I paint on a moustache, Mr. Marston?" John snickered, spiting the sinking feeling in his stomach. Ruby was athletic in build, and taller than average; but her figure was decidedly, unmistakably feminine, as John kept digging his fingernails into his palms for noticing.

Ruby turned away from him to conduct her own survey of the town, as John continued; "It might be like finding a needle in a haystack; but we could start by casing the saloon, asking some careful questions. You might be able to check the alleys out back for more bottles-"

She interrupted, pointing at a black wagon with stylized lettering in yellow paint:N.W. Dickens Elixir. "You reckon that's his?" John sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose, hating to be made a fool. But Ruby hadn't pointed it out to rib him, she swung her leg over the saddle and dismounted, climbing into the back of the wagon.

"More of them bottles in here, I think," he heard her call from within, and she emerged, holding one in each hand. She tossed one to John and examined her own, resting onto her knees in the back of the wagon, popping the cork and taking a tentative whiff. "Augh," she wrinkled her nose, causing the freckles to gather up, then disperse. "Smells like fuel and swampwater all mixed together."

John looked from his bottle - indeed, labelled the same as the one back in Blackwater - back to the wagon, noticing the wheels were recently oiled, the lettering touched-up with fresh paint. Nigel West Dickens had felt comfortable enough here to maintain the wagon, or paid someone to do so. John followed Ruby's suit and dismounted from Thoreau, leaving the horse unhitched in case of need for a quick getaway. He returned the bottle of elixir - undoubtedly poison - to Ruby at the wagon, and then offered her a hand out. She jumped down next to him, resting a hand on his shoulder to steady herself, the other hand against her forehead and eye.

"Got a headache from that stuff," she grumbled, wincing slightly, before releasing John's shoulder and stepping away from him.

John's eyebrows darted into concerned slashes. "You didn't drink it, did you?"

"I ain't stupid," she retorted, taking deep inhales of relatively fresh air, then, "You think he's here?"

"Well, he loves that wagon," John said, almost absentmindedly. The saloon was their best bet, but he was concerned about the type of Thieves' Landing where an old swindler like Nigel West Dickens had enough time to let paint dry; what it meant for their own safety. Unless, of course, he was dead.

"Tell you what," John said to Ruby, "You check out that saloon, you speak their language enough. I'm going to poke around through the rest of town and see what I can find. If you need me, just holler. This place is small enough; I'll hear you."

"Likewise, Mr. Marston," she tipped her hat to him, taking a few steps backwards en route to the saloon's swinging doors. "I still owe you one from last night." She disappeared into the saloon, where John heard her charmingly drawl, "Any one of y'all have it in you to buy a thirsty visitor a drink?" She would be just fine, he thought, disturbed to find that it annoyed him a little.

John shook his head and headed for the bridge that connected the town's northern half to its south; a mix of industrial, port, and shipping buildings. Graffiti along a wooden fence in white paint proclaimed the stark, if misspelled message:THEIR IS A CURE.

And further down:PRAYSE NW DICKENS.

John's fingers returned to pinch the bridge his nose by habit; he wished immediately to be at the saloon with Ruby, taking her up on her offer to buy her a drink, with several more intended for himself. But, he pressed on, determined to find West Dickens and what he was up to.

He peered into some kind of storage facility and felt an unceremonious clunk to the back of his skull; not enough to knock him out, but enough to make him weak in the knees. He found his elbows held at each side by a man, dragging him through stacks of crates labelledNW Dickens Elixiruntil he was confronted by the man himself, lit from above by a skylight, sitting comfortably on a makeshift dias made from shipping pallets, a scantily-dressed prostitute feeding him from a bowl of grapes. She mooned over him, occasionally dabbing at the corners of his mouth with a square of white linen.

The men accompanying John pulled his pistol from its holster and the shotgun from his back, disarming him, before returning to stand guard on either side of West Dickens and stare resolutely ahead. John stepped to his feet, holding his arms up, taking in a two-storey building with a catwalk surrounding the second floor; various winches and pulleys strung up along the ceiling with coils of rope dangling overhead.

"John, my good man!" Nigel West Dickens proclaimed, spreading his arms wide. "So good to see you, kind fellow."

"Save it, you con artist piece of sh*t!" John bellowed back, and the two guards each tightened their grip on their repeaters.

"Boys, relax," West Dickens soothed, pausing to accept another grape from the woman draped along the arm of his chair. "This is just Mr. Marston's way of communicating, as uncouth and uncivilized as it is to present company." He pressed a simpering kiss to the prostitute's hand, and John grimaced.

"What have you done, West Dickens?" He shouted again, "Folk are acting crazy out there."

"It is upsetting, my boy," the man waved off the next grape, leaning forward in his chair, a smug smile spreading upon his cheeks, his silver moustache and eyebrows as bushy and unkempt as ever, his watery brown eyes gleaming. "That's why I've invented a cure."

"A cure to what? Being dead?" John said.

Nigel West Dickens chuckled, turning back to the woman. "Simple-minded country folk," he said as if to explain, rolling his eyes, and she tossed her head back in a theatrical laugh. West Dickens returned his attention to John. "Surely you've not noticed any of the afflicted around here? Thieves' Landing is a free town."

"And you cured them?" Meeting the rage burning in John's chest was a small glimmer of hope, that the old bastard had finally cooked up something right, something that could save his family. But he recalled Ruby's wrinkled nose, her instant headache; and the glimmer died. "Nevermind, don't answer that. Of course you didn't. The undead probably smelled this poison factory you've built and steered well clear." As he said it, he caught a note of the swampwater Ruby'd mentioned on the air, masking something more acrid underneath.

"Nigel West Dickens will save us!" Cried one of the guards, passionately, clutching the gun so that its sight lined up with his eye, pointing at John.

John scoffed. "'Simple-minded country folk,' you said? They've always been your bread and butter, old man, probably the one thing you do actually know about. You really found your opportunity this time, huh? Got a whole town believing in your lies?"

West Dickens' face darkened. "I was looking forward to discussing the future with you, John, but it seems as though you're after a shorter one than most. I'm afraid if you're not here in the spirit of friendship-" he gestured to the other guard, who raised his repeater, mirroring the first. "-then we'll have to say goodbye."

"f*ck you, Nigel." John spat at the ground.

"Goodbye it is, then," West Dickens said, snidely, and the repeaters were co*cked; John, with nowhere to run.

Chapter 6: vi. “What's. In. The tonic.”

Chapter Text

John swallowed deeply. Of all the ways he'd anticipated his encounter with Nigel West Dickens to go, the old fraudster having the jump on him was not one of them. He looked from West Dickens, to the outspoken guard at his right, to the ever-silent one at his left. All three, seemingly resolved in their present course of action.

He was reconciling within himself the thought of begging the man for his life, versus having to live with having done so, when a crash sounded. The sudden noise was closely followed by a loose brick careening to the floor, narrowly missing Nigel West Dickens by mere feet and raining down glass onto the brim of his hat and shoulders. Ruby, a self-satisfied smirk on her face, dropped down from the ceiling skylight, clutching one of the ropes in one hand, her revolver in the other. A counterweight tied to the rope ascended, assisting her slow, almost peaceful, descent.

The intervening shock allowed her to jump and land the remaining feet in a crouch untroubled, to grab hold of Nigel West Dickens easily, her shirtsleeve rolled up and tanned forearm wrapped around his neck, her revolver pressing into the meat of his pockmarked cheek. "Could you sit in his lap for me, darlin', give me a little space?" She said sweetly to the whor*, and she obliged, her whimpering joining West Dickens'. John shook his head, his hands lowering from their twin spots of surrender, an incredulous smirk on his face.

Ruby addressed the guards in the room. "Want to drop those repeaters before your boss gets it? This lady here's wearin' an awful nice dress." The quiet guard immediately dropped his gun and ran - a small comfort to John that not all of West Dickens' men were true acolytes - but the other shouted: "I could just as easily kill your friend!"

Wordlessly, and fast as lightning, Ruby drew her other revolver and shot the man. One moment, he'd had his repeater trained on John. In the next, two of his fingers were missing, shot clean off. "I could just as easily shoot you, and look here, I did." She said, matter-of-factly, as the man clutched his wrist and examined the two bloodied stumps where his middle and ring finger had been.

She disengaged from West Dickens to recover John's pistol from where it was tucked into the now screaming man's waistband, kicking it to skid along the floor into John's waiting hand. John wasted no time, training the gun on West Dickens. The man suddenly shoved the prostitute forward off of his lap; John, distracted by her stumble, missed West Dickens' hasty escape out of a back door.

"I should have known!" He yelled, furious but glad to be alive, his pride - mostly - intact. Ruby tossed him his shotgun and they made after West Dickens, who could really run for a man his age and physique, thanks to years of practice. They exited into an offloading area, yet more towers of crates surrounding them, obscuring their view. "sh*t," Ruby huffed, turning in circles as to where he might have gone.

John gestured back towards the northern half of the town. "He'll be going for his wagon, I'll bet, c'mon," and made to jog that way, Ruby keeping pace behind. Sure enough, they saw the black carriage make a daring - near topple-worthy - turn out from behind the saloon, pulled by two massive draft horses. John whistled for Thoreau; Ruby, for Sybil, both swinging into their saddles and taking off at a gallop after him.

As they thundered past the Thieves' Landing sign that had given John cause to laugh, an increasingly familiar sound filled him with foreboding. Out of the swamp forest surrounding the town emerged the twisted, loping forms of the undead, their heads lolling precipitously on their necks, their awful moans drowning out even the urgent hoofbeats of their horses, the creaking of West Dickens' wagon.

Ruby twisted in her saddle to shoot a particularly fast undead, running on all fours to gain ground on the horses. Her bullet spun the creature out; it tumbled head-over-foot to lay flat on its back. John dispatched a similarly quick one with a bullet of his own; Nigel West Dickens heard the gunfire and tried to seize an opportunity.

"There's too many of them, John, my boy!" He yelled over his shoulder, swerving around a large undead planted in the middle of the road, one which John and Ruby distanced from each other briefly to circumvent. "You and your wild woman there should look for safety, abandon this goose chase! No need to lose our lives over a simple misunderstanding!"

John and Ruby traded looks, keeping their parallel formation. "Wild woman?" Ruby mouthed, a dimple pressed into her smiling cheek even as her eyebrows furrowed. John grinned back, turning forward. "What part of 'goodbye it is' was meant to be a misunderstanding, West Dickens? Why don't you explain it so a 'simple country folk' like myself can get it?" He grinned again at the sound of West Dickens' tremulous stammering.

"I-I'm helping people, John!" The man cried, taking another dangerous swerve off the road and onto the grassy land southwest of Blackwater. The pursuing undead were falling off, receding into dark spots in the distance. "He's gonna kill himself," Ruby muttered, which John barely caught over the horses' hooves and the carriage's perilous creaking. She spurred Sybil on with aYah!and moved up alongside the right of the swerving wagon; Nigel West Dickens took notice of her and screamed, veering left. The wagon swung wide and would have smashed into Ruby and her horse if not for her deft brake; Sybil's rearing hooves tapped against the vehicle's rear door before landing back onto the ground in renewed pursuit.

"Stop this damn wagon!" Ruby shouted, now on his left side. "Don't make me rope you, old man!" As if to show her seriousness, she removed a coil of rope from her saddle, pulling a length of it taut between her fists. The man sighed, pulled his horses to a stop. Ruby slowed Sybil just in front of his draft horses while John caught up, hopping from his saddle directly into the wagon's seat, cozied up next to West Dickens.

"Why don't you make camp, Miss Dufresne?" He suggested, noting the sun's low position in the sky. "I'm going to have a chat with my old friend Nigel, here." She nodded and dismounted, leading Sybil and Thoreau to a tree within sight and pulling out a tent and some gear from John's saddle. As Ruby built a fire and put on a pot of coffee, John turned back to West Dickens, still quivering.

"So," John began, "What thehell."

Nigel winced, raising his hands in feeble defense. "I really was helping, John, you saw how the undead only started chasing us after we left town, I stopped them from entering Theives' Landing. Please, see reason, you brute!"

John hesitated; there was a kernel of truth to what West Dickens had said. "How, then? How did you stop them?"

"Why, my miracle tonic, of course!" The man couldn't resist assuming his salesman's tenor. "A few drops around the perimeter of the town is all it takes; keeps those monstrosities out so that ladies and gentlemen can continue to live lives of leisure!"

John held up a hand, pinched his fingers together in a conductor's cease-music gesture. Nigel clammed up instantly, began quivering, again. "So you're telling me," he began, scrutinizing West Dickens' trembling face with a steely green eye, "The swill you've been peddling for years somehow, magically, repels the undead?"

"W-well, it's my new-and-improved formula!" The man countered, pointing a jaunty finger into the air. John drew his pistol, pressing it into his chest.

"Spare me, West Dickens," he hissed, and a large tear ran down the man's face, the finger deflating, rejoining its brothers in his hand. John drew out his question slowly, deliberately. "What's. In. Thetonic."

"Please, don't!" West Dickens begged, and John couldn't help but think,ah, the natural order of things. "It's some water I picked up and boiled down outside of Annesburg, in New Hanover. Noticed animals around there had a lot of spring in their step, thought it could transfer to people. It was a lucky fluke that those beasts crawling out of the ground seem to hate it. Humans seem to hate it, too...haven't met a single soul that hasn't had their humours fall out of balance after drinking it." West Dickens looked up from his digression. "Please, John! I'm an innocent man!"

John scowled, but pulled the gun away from the man all the same. West Dickens sighed in audible relief. "You surely aren't innocent, but you ain't responsible for these creatures, either." He said, more to himself. John dropped from the wagon's seat, took a box of tonics from the back - any undead repellent welcome - before making a "move along" motion with his hand. "Before I change my mind, West Dickens. Get gone."

"Many thanks, my good man," West Dickens demurred, tipping his hat to John before whipping his horses into a canter, the carriage trundling back towards the road. John watched him disappear over the dim horizon before turning to head to the camp Ruby'd set up, using the glow of the firelight as a guide in the encroaching dark, his forearms straining from the weight of the box.

He approached to tell Ruby about the repellent, about Annesburg, but only the cheerfully crackling fire greeted him, as did a plate of oatmeal and half a carafe of coffee. Ruby was in the tent, the flaps closed. John hurriedly spooned down the oatmeal, drank the lukewarm coffee, hoping she'd wake up in the interim. The night's chill started to overpower the small fire, and John sighed, knowing he'd need to seek the tent sooner, rather than later.

He uncorked one of the bottles of "elixir" and upended it, jogging a tight circle around their camp and horses, trying to avoid the long grasses Thoreau and Sybil were chewing on. With half the bottle remaining, he returned the cork and heaved another sigh, making for the tent with a grimace on his face.

Ruby was sleeping peacefully, on her side, her head resting on her arm, cozied into her bedroll. John's own bedroll was laid out a respectable distance away, and he settled in as quietly as he could next to her, but still started when her eyes snapped open, shining in the dim firelight, her thumb pulling back on the hammer of her revolver, once hidden, now trained on him. But, her face softened in recognition, her hand releasing the gun to reach for his face instead, her fingernails tracing the scars on his cheek. He jerked his head back.

"Sorry, Mr. Marston," she half-whispered, her voice still thick with sleep. "Just curious."

John rolled onto his back, removing his hat. "Wolves." He said, to the tent's ceiling, trying to quell his heartbeat.

"Ah." He could hear the smile in her voice. "Protecting your lady from 'em, most likely."

"Huh?"

"You're all dependable, respectable John Marston with his farm." She explained, and her gesturing hand entered his field of vision. "How else would you have?"

His heart's rapid beating stalled into a dragging heartsickness. In truth, when the wolves had found him on the Grizzly Mountains, all those years ago, he'd been running again, after the gang's disaster of a robbery in Blackwater. If they hadn't attacked, he'd have been gone. He said quietly, trying not to betray his flaring guilt, "I don't think anyone that knew me would describe me that way."

"Well, I sure as hell would," Ruby laughed, "You're riding through the end of days to save your wife and kid. Counts for something, I should think."

A warmth entered his heart, staying the sinking feeling. He smiled to himself. "Speaking of which," he addressed the ceiling, again, "we're pretty close by the farm. I want to drop by there in the morning, check up on things."

Though it would have been impossible for Ruby to have fallen asleep that quickly, John found her eyes closed when he chanced a glance her way. John didn't pursue a response.

Chapter 7: vii. The return to Beecher's Hope

Chapter Text

John awakened to the hazy glow of daylight perceived through the thick canvas walls of the tent, his back stiff and heart, surprisingly light. He wanted to see Abigail and Jack, he realized, even if they were still in their strange state. His head lolled instinctively to its left to look for Ruby next to him, only to find her place vacated; bedroll gone.

He emerged, squinting against the sunlight at full strength, unfiltered by the tent. When his eyes adjusted, he spotted Ruby coming up the hill. She was half-dressed, hair dripping wet, leading Sybil with one hand and holding a carrot out to the mare with the other, laughing as the bay's searching lips whispered against her palm. Sybil having claimed her prize, Ruby lay her free hand to the horse's far cheek, kissed her on her near one.

"You riding with wet hair through all the five States, Miss Dufresne?" John called to her, startling her from her horse's side.

"Oh, Mr. Marston!" Ruby hastened to button her blouse over its undershirt, shoving the tails of the shirt into the waist of her jeans as she approached him back at the camp. "I didn't expect you to wake so soon, you seemed out cold. Thought I'd do a quick dip before we head on up to Annesburg."

"And my house, at Beecher's Hope."

Ruby affected a coy smile, placed a hand on her co*cked hip, looking at him sidelong. "You really want to give me those fifteen dollars, don't you?"

John scoffed. "Things might have blown over back there-" here Ruby rolled her eyes, dramatically "- and if, hey, and even if they didn't, Abigail and Jack are tied up safely; they ain't going to get anywhere near us."

Ruby dug her toe in the dirt, looked away from John and addressed the trees instead. "I ain't sure you're ready to see them like that again, knowing what you know, now." She said, wringing out her hair. John's face darkened.

"Let's leave what I'm ready for to me, all right?" He said curtly, pushing past her towards Thoreau. No one was stopping him from seeing his family.

John and Ruby galloped past a few slow-moving clusters of undead on the way to the ranch, ones Ruby dispatched with the butt of her rifle. She'd lamented, loudly and often on their ride up - John suspected it was her ill-disguised ruse to try and get him back on speaking terms - that they'd failed to get bullets in Thieves' Landing, and this was her chosen ammunition conservation technique.

Still, through the low thrum of anger he felt at his companion, he reluctantly admired her expert form; the barrel seized in both hands as she guided Sybil along with her legs, swinging the gun at each foe in a smooth, unbroken arc, each sickening crack of the gunstock smashing through an undead's rotting skull paired with a triumphant whoop from Ruby.

She was cleaning the rifle of blood and viscera with a cloth when John pointed ahead, gruffly. "There's my ranch." Ruby started from her reverent cleaning, tipped back her hat brim to better take in John's land.

"Real nice, Marston," she replied, whistling. "Got any bullets in your ranch?"

"We can try the barn," he pointed at the large outbuilding. "Need to check on the cattle, anyway." They tethered the horses to a nearby tree, made for the barn. John unlatched the large wooden door and waved Ruby in, which she only did after gripping one of her revolvers. But; nothing amiss. One of the cattle lowed in its stall and John set about depositing hay and pouring water in front of each beast, worried about leaving them out to graze. Another wild, hopeful thought struck him; if Abigail and Jack were back to normal, he could go back to his hard-won life on the farm.

The thought was disrupted by Ruby's low whistle, standing near John's workbench in front of an opened trunk. He dropped the last bit of hay he'd been lugging and sidled up next to her, seeing what was making her eyes glitter. "Wow." She uttered, hands on her hips for a brief moment before plunging them into the arms and ammo John had stored away.

Bandoliers slung over each shoulder and crossed in front of her chest, Ruby hefted a Carcano rifle and peered through its sight. "What's a rancher need with all this, Mr. Marston?"

"Well, I-" she interrupted him with another low "wow," shouldering the Carcano before examining a brutal-looking hunting knife, strapping it to her belt. "I weren't always a rancher."

"Were you an entire army, then?" She said, almost in awe, holding up a Mauser pistol, and then its twin, giving them each a tentative spin.

"Not quite," he chuckled in spite of himself. "Take what you think you'll need, but remember, we need to travel light." Ruby pouted, but shrugged off all but the knife, a single bandolier of long-scope rifle bullets, and the Carcano, returning the rest to the chest. She sunk to her knees to dig out a few boxes of revolver bullets, some pistol cartridges for John's gun. "I'm going to check in on the wife, meet you back at the horses. Won't be more than a minute."

Again, the hope swelled within him, that they'd miraculously be fine. The mad glimmer in Ruby's eyes faded; they filled with concern, instead. "Let's just leave 'em, Mr. Marston. We can come back when we have a real plan on how to help, how about that?"

"Now, what did I say?" He snapped, the smile disappearing from his face. John turned heel and exited the barn, leaving Ruby in genuflection, in front of the trappings of his former life as an outlaw. He marched towards the house, his stomping feet echoing the furious thudding of his heart. An enormous vulture unfurled its black wings and took flight, leaving Uncle's mangled, half-eaten body on the ground. John's resolve flickered, the anger dissolving into a fearful roil in the pit of his stomach.

Still, he pushed open the front door of the house, calling a tentative "Hello?" He proceeded past Jack's room, the kitchen, their parlour. The house was silent save for the creaking his footsteps coaxed from the floorboards. He had just arrived at the closed bedroom door, where he'd left Abigail and Jack two nights' prior, when Ruby entered, panting.

"Please, don't," she pleaded, "for your own sake." John fixed her with a dark stare, pushed the door open. Jack, with bound arms and legs, nonetheless lurched for John's ankles with a snap of his teeth; John jumped deftly out of the way. He'd left Abigail on the bed, but she was no longer there. His stomach twisted when he noticed a damning length of rope in her place; her restraints.

An inhuman shriek sounded behind him, and he turned just in time to find Abigail's hands at his throat, her weight suddenly on him; feet still bound, but hands frighteningly free and strong. He scrabbled for purchase on the floor, away from Jack's flailing jaws, as Abigail's fingernails made small punctures in his neck, drawing her own face closer to him.

All of the hope John had experienced that morning was quashed in the instant he looked into his wife's face and saw only a monster. Dried blood had settled into the laugh lines around her mouth - previously, his favourite feature - and her pupils had expanded beyond her irises, her sclerae, so that they were two black pools into which he could see his own terrified expression, reflected back. She was brute strength and gnashing teeth, and it devastated him.

More still when Ruby appeared in the doorway, brandishing her revolver, eyes wide. "No," John ordered in a wheeze, straining away from Abigail's bite. Ruby snorted in frustration, tossed the gun aside. In two bounds, she was over Jack's writhing form and behind Abigail, looping her arms up under Abigail's shoulders and around the back of her neck, debilitating her. John clutched at his throat, feeling the air return to him, and seized the rope from the bed, wrapping it more securely around Abigail's wrists as she snapped backwards at Ruby, who winced with every attempted bite. Her wrists bound, Ruby released her to fall forward to the floor, where Abigail bellowed a scream in protest.

John and Ruby stared at each other, panting with exhaustion and spent adrenaline, Abigail's contorting body between them. John pulled his billfold from his back pocket, peeled three five dollar bills from the stack, and tossed them unceremoniously at Ruby's feet. He left the house without another word.

Chapter 8: viii. “Why I'm a natural with these undead”

Chapter Text

John retreated from the house, heading for the old walnut tree by the fence, looking out towards Blackwater. He leaned against the tree, sliding down to sitting, grasping a fallen walnut and throwing it in a neat arc over the fence with a grunt, in the direction of the town.

There had been no comfort in this visit back to the ranch. Seeing his wife and son reduced to writhing, twisted bodies on his bedroom floor did nothing but make him hurt. The home he'd worked so hard for had been reduced to a living graveyard. John exhaled deeply, closing his eyes against the bright morning.

After a few moments, he felt the kiss of paper brushing against his cheek, his hands where they rested against his knees. He opened his eyes to see the three bills he'd thrown at Ruby in his lap, and she beyond them, her face full of concern. John gathered the money into a fist, holding it up to her, inquisitively.

Ruby chewed on her lip for a moment before exclaiming, "Jesus, Marston, you hired me to keep you alive, f*ckin' listen to me now and again." His expression flipped from curious to hurt, guilt-laden, and then curious again, when Ruby wrapped her tanned arms around his neck, pressing herself against him. "I'm so sorry 'bout your family, Mr. Marston."

"Thank you, Miss Dufresne," he whispered, awkwardly patting her back, holding her briefly before gently pushing her away. Her hair smelled honeyed as she disentangled herself from him. She backed up to the fence, smiling bashfully.

"You looked like you needed that," she said. "Sorry if I was untoward." John merely nodded, afraid to admit to her - and himself - how right she was. After experiencing the physical and emotional turmoil that was his wife's attack, the press of Ruby's warm body was a salve.

"Want to talk about it?" She asked, carefully, kindly. John shook his head, his only capable mode of conversation after what he'd seen in the house.

After a few moments of still silence, he finally spoke. "How is it you always seem to know what I'm thinking?" He tried to bury the tension that had formed between them, realizing he still knew almost nothing about her. He started with what he did. "You get that in Rhodes?"

Ruby smiled, pulled a strand of long grass up from where it grew out beside the fencepost. "Sure did. Never learned to read books, so I got real good at reading people, 'specially men. Grew up around a mess of brothers."

"How many is a mess?" He was glad of the distraction, something that wasn't his sorry life.

"'Round twenty." John raised an eyebrow, which she noted, corrected. "Not my blood brothers, I mean - I came up in an orphanage."

"Ah." A sorry life of her own, then. He wanted to tell her he too had grown up an orphan, but the story had too many offshoots and digressions. Where to begin, when he was adopted by, and made in the image of, one of the most wanted criminals the country had ever seen?

"Think it's why I'm a natural with these undead," she offered, "Can sleep with one eye open and hell knows I can keep unwanted hands off me."

"So you shot your orphan brothers, that it?" John smiled to show he was joking, but then grew serious. "I've seen a few shots like you in my time, but not many. Where'd you learn your way around a gun?"

"Orphanage, still," she popped the end of the grass she'd plucked into her mouth, slid the sweet inner stem out between her teeth. John noticed how quiet she'd become, her usually cantankerous voice tamed to a gentle murmur. "It was run by a bunch of Catholic nuns who loved old west stories, turned us into a little wild west show. I had a knack for it all, the shooting and roping and riding, so they kept me out practicin' instead of doing lessons with the rest. We did performances for the big families out in Rhodes and some of the surrounding towns."

John's eyes widened at a sudden memory of his time in Rhodes, watching a twig of a girl in a garish red satin dress, standing on the back of a white horse and shooting apples off of the tops of boys' heads with a varmint rifle. "You were Little Red," he said, recalling the name on the sandwich board near the Rhodes bell. "Did you ever perform in that roundabout at the front of town? We saw you when we first came through there; Jack was only about six at the time."

"Yeah, that was me," she said, proffering one of her revolvers to him,Li'l Redcarved into the varnished rosewood grip. "We was out there all the time, hustlin' for tips, keeping Mother Superior in her cups. 'Course, it got less cute once we all filled out, sprung up. We had to retire when two of my brothers beat the teeth out of each other in the middle of a show, over some girl they both were sweet on in the audience." John chuckled, ran his fingers over the engraved name, before handing the gun back, grip first. "The nuns kept us all on as farmhands, still. And occasional protection for a Catholic orphanage in a Baptist town. We looked out for each other that way."

Ruby's way around a gun, her deeply-tanned arms and legs, her ease around men; all of it started to make sense, except: "Where were the girls?" John asked. "Why only boys, and you?"

"Girls got adopted quicker, 'round Rhodes," Ruby answered quickly, averting his gaze. "'Cept me, I know you was about to ask. Folks didn't want a foul-mouthed illiterate who could shoot a bullseye near 'fore she could talk for a daughter, I guess."

She dropped down to seated, suddenly; seizing a walnut of her own and firing it at a nearby tree, where it thwacked audibly against the trunk. John opened his mouth, closed it, realizing he'd struck a sore nerve. He cleared his throat.

"So you worked the farm until the undead came, then?" He asked.

"Mmhmm," she nodded, pulling her hat from her head and setting it beside her. Her ash-coloured hair had dried into loose waves that spilled out onto her shoulders. Her eyelids hung heavy, and her dark blonde eyelashes too caught the sunlight, each gleaming.

"We was out in the fields when a whole gang of 'em came up, out of nowhere. Wearin' civil war uniforms and sh*t, eyes-glowing nasty bastards." Her voice trembled, briefly, until she quelled it with a deep breath. "I was picking with my best brother, Otis, away from everyone else. We had the horses with us, his Sybil and my Anna."The white horse, John remembered. "They was around us almost instantly. I had my guns but he didn't his, and they overwhelmed him. He leaned up against Anna and they climbed all over her, too."

Ruby's eyes opened, and she fixed John with a haunted stare. "I didn't know what they was, I just kept shooting, and shooting, until there weren't any left standing up. Just Otis, lying on Anna's belly. Only, he weren't dead. He looked at me with eyes all black and lunged at me, and I grabbed for Sybil and ran the hell out of there, like a goddamned coward." The tremble came back, but she held firm, wiping at her dry eyes with her wrists, embarrassed.

"I'm sorry," John said, almost inaudibly, berating his own cowardice as Ruby hugged her own arms around herself.

She looked up at him again, pointed back towards the house. "I know what you went through in there, Mr. Marston. It's hard to keep going after something like that. Feels like we've lost 'fore we've even begun."

"But you're always fighting, Miss Dufresne, always." She smiled at him crookedly.

"'Cause I want to be wrong about all this," she replied, waving her hand at the world beyond the ranch. "Those rules I had back at the saloon? I hate those. Just want to get back to a world worth livin' in. It's why I like running with you so much. You're so hopeful 'bout everything."

John snorted, extended a sarcastic hand. "I don't think we've met, Miss, I'm John Marston. You can call me John." He affected a more serious tone, catching her gaze, hoping he hadn't overstepped.

Ruby beamed. "Well, hi, John," she leaned forward to grasp his fingers with her own. "I'm Miss Dufresne."

"I ain't on a first-name basis with you, yet?"

"Hell, no," she sprung up to standing, dusted off the seat of her pants. "I like 'Miss Dufresne,' makes me feel like a debutante or some sh*t like that." She smiled at him again, offered him a hand up from the tree.

As they walked towards their horses, Ruby stopped cold as if she'd been struck, seized John's forearm in her hand. "Green," she said, her mouth agape.

"Green?" John repeated.

"Their eyes," she stressed, pointing at the house again. "Otis', and your wife and son's...they weren't green." John recalled the black pools that had consumed Abigail's blue eyes; no glowing green like on the undead they'd encountered everywhere else.

"What do you think that means?" He asked her, knocking her conspiratorially in the shoulder.

"No f*ckin' clue," Ruby replied, grinning. "But hey, it's the end of the world, John. Got nothin' else to do but try and find out."

Chapter 9: ix. “Strawberry don't want no trouble”

Chapter Text

The Upper Montana river was, like most rivers, arbitrary; a result of hundreds of years of water forcing its way through rock to Flat Iron Lake beyond. Yet, despite its chance provenance, it had become deliberate, in this new world of the undead.

John and Ruby had first crossed the river via the bridge just north of Beecher's Hope. The air they rode into, undoubtedly the same as in West Elizabeth's southern half, nonetheless hung thicker, seemed more effort to breathe. There was a metallic taste on his tongue when John swallowed nervously, surveying the sky for any visual cues of the change he felt in his body. Ruby noticed his hesitation and met it with a grim smile. The atmosphere - like that before a rainstorm, yet, nary a cloud in the blue expanse above them - robbed her of her usual good-natured quipping.

They crested a low hill and spotted the abandoned Fort Riggs, its usual dirt ground cover grown over with a dark moss.No, John squinted, swore to himself he could see the moss moving.Bodies. John had once pointed out a snake ball to Jack on a walk in the forest - hundreds of wriggling garters slithering up and over each other - and it came unsettlingly to mind now. Fort Riggs crawled with so many undead that they'd formed a writhing, shapeless mass, blanketing the entire area. It was impossible to know how many there were.

Ruby and Sybil, a few yards ahead of John, finally spotted what he'd already seen. The horse and rider skid-turned and started galloping south towards the river, Ruby's face white. He and Thoreau followed, gladly. They halted once back over the water, their eyes wider than normal, panting slightly.

"Well," John said, waving his hand vaguely in the direction they'd come from. "That was...uh..."

"A horror-show, John, f*ck," Ruby huffed, reaching back into her saddlebag for a nip of bourbon. She took a drink, forced the cork back in, and tossed the bottle to John, who danced Thoreau back a few steps to catch it. He shook his head slightly before tipping the neck of the bottle to his lips, the liquor hot down his throat. They'd been almost cavalier setting out from the ranch, John forcing his thoughts of his family's condition into a small corner of his mind. But the undead - scattershot so far, more an annoyance than a true quandary, with the exception of the Blackwater saloon - were something of a different animal up north.

John readied himself for another drink; steadying the bottleneck by his mouth, thinking. "We could try crossing further out from that Fort, maybe?" Ruby turned to look at him, stopped fussing with the ends of her hair. "It's out of our way, but we could head up to the crossing over at Owanjila and stop through Strawberry before heading east. Might be more pleasant a ride than..."

He trailed off, taking a sip of the bourbon and then handing it back to Ruby's coaxing fingers, she and Sybil beside him, now. She uncorked and drank deeply, wiping her mouth with her sleeve. "Anything to sparethatfrom infecting mine eyes again, John," she said with a brief laugh, stowing the bottle and tilting her head towards Owanjila Dam.Thou dost infect mine eyes, John thought, unbidden; where had he heard that, before? Ruby spurred Sybil on with a gentle kick, and John followed, dutifully, without the time to puzzle it through.

"Help!"

A scream greeted John and Ruby from the Owanjila Dam's crest; they forced their horses on, drew their guns. A thin man in a torn shirt was stood on a crate, leaning against the parapet wall, dangerously close to tipping over the side and ending up in the river below. Surrounding the crate were three wolves, snarling and lunging up at him. The wolf closest to John and Ruby turned, bared its teeth.

It was a general rule that when a wolf stared and bared its teeth, one looked at the teeth, first. So by the time John and Ruby's gazes had individually moved from the pointed teeth to the wolf's eyes, glowing green; its fur, matted with dirt and old blood; its left foreleg, flesh dangling noncommittally from bright-white bone, they were already committed to shooting, largely free from the additional fear of a wolf, undead.

Their bullets found the wolf's forehead, Ruby's revolver round opening a door to its reanimated brain that John's shotgun shell smashed through. "I got right!" Ruby cried, drawing her second gun and firing through both shining eyes of the wolf on the right; John heeded her without thought, blasting the third wolf's snout clean off, mid-otherworldly bark.

The danger passed, John dismounted Thoreau to offer his hand to the trembling man on the crate, helping him down to a stumbling crouch. Ruby poured some of her bourbon over the wolf corpses, dropped a lit match onto each one.

"Thank you," the man gasped, clutching at his chest, glancing nervously at the heavily-armed pair. "Don't want no trouble, now. I just need to get home."

"Ain't nobody wants trouble, 'specially these days," Ruby flashed the man a wry smile, returning the bottle to her saddlebag after the man refused her wordless offer of a drink with an emphatic shake of his head. "Where's home, partner?"

He looked reluctant to tell them, scuffed his toe in the dirt. "Just over Strawberry way, pretty close to here."

"We're headed up that way, we can take you," John said, mounting his horse. The man hesitated at John's extended arm.

Chapter 10: x. Changing the rules

Chapter Text

"It's going to be OK, Miss Dufresne," John said over his shoulder, trying to disguise the hitch in his voice at witnessing the water-bloated undead before him roll its head on its neck, a worm falling from its ear canal to wriggle in the dirt, bordering on grotesque.

"Bend forward on three, John," Ruby muttered, pushing her back into his a few times.

"Bend-what?" John asked, confusion entering his head, already pounding with fear.

"Three, John! Three!" John ducked forward as far as he could, feeling Ruby's hands seize his wrists as she pushed again, forcefully, into his back, kicking up her legs and rolling over him, stool tied to her ankles slipping off behind him as she landed gracefully on her feet, in front of John's disbelieving face. She threw herself to the ground, tucking her legs deftly through her arms, so that her hands facing front could fish out John's wicked-looking hunting knife, stashed in the leg of her boot. She cut John's wrist restraints so he could free her hands, in turn, and she drew a hidden revolver on the undead that was, at that point, precipitously close, firing an explosive round through its nose.

As the undead fell to the earth, back from whence it came, John cut the ropes around their ankles, returned the knife to Ruby handle-first. "Trade you," she smiled, pulling her other gun from under her skirts and passing it to him.

John whistled for Thoreau, and the dun stallion thankfully came galloping from about where John had left him at the southern side of town, unhurt. He pulled a bottle of the West Dickens tonic out from a saddlebag and ran up to where Ruby was firing off rounds at the advancing undead, guiding her behind him with a protective, outstretched arm. John uncorked the bottle and made a motion as if to throw it, but held fast, the repellent within flinging in a glittering arc in the limited light.

The undead closest to them screeched its displeasure and turned back towards the forest, the others approaching the line, one by one, and then retreating. John clung to the bottle, panting, wiping at his forehead with the back of his arm. He turned back to Ruby, a crooked smile pulling at the scars on his cheek. They'd survived, again.

He moved to mount his horse, but Ruby marched up the steps of the Strawberry visitors' centre, where he could see several of the townsfolk crowded around the window bid a hasty retreat as she approached, then kicked in the door without hesitation. By the time John entered the building, Ruby already had the neck of Maxwell Shivers' shirt in her fist, the barrel of her gun pressed into his throat. "What the hell was that, Shivers? After we f*ckin' rescued you and all?"

The man squirmed in her grasp, but she held firm. "You made fun of me," he gasped out. Ruby withdrew the gun, the indent from the barrel of her revolver leaving a red "o" next to Shivers' adam's apple, and the man collapsed to the floor, scrambling backward on his arms and legs.

"Sure are sensitive, ain't you?" Ruby said, chuckling to herself. "Sensitive Shivers, hey, John?"

"I'll say," John grinned wickedly, pulling his hat brim low over his eyes.

Ruby crouched down to Shivers' eyeline, he, now pushed back against the wall. He shrank from her nonetheless, cowering away from her stare. "Now see," she said, in an edifying tone, "that's makin' fun; see how we're all laughing at your expense?" She signalled to the watching crowd, who laughed uneasily. "There you go." Ruby shrugged at Shivers, and then rose to standing, lazily aiming her revolver in a circle around her at the rest of the people in the room. "Now, give my dear friend Mr. Marston here his gun back, and all the goddamn bullets you have on you, everyone in here. We don't have all night."

There was a moment's hesitation, and Ruby growled: "Either I get all of your bullets, or I kill half of you, and make the other half clean it up. And I ain't sure which half I like better, yet." Most of the men and a few of the women unholstered their guns, then, started shaking out unspent rounds from chambers.

John and Ruby moved between the townspeople, taking bullets into their open palms, and eventually, a woman's purse that John had dumped out to better carry their spoils. It reminded him of his outlaw days, bringing a whiff of nostalgia for the bald thrill of robbing folks blind.

Their task finally completed, Rubytsked theatrically, rolling her eyes. "You had a whole f*cking army just in here, and I bet that saloon across the way is full of guns and ammo, too. And y'all are sacrificing folk, instead. Pitiful." She left the centre without another word. John fixed the townspeople with a disapproving stare of his own, returning his pistol to its holster before following after her.

Like Thoreau, Sybil galloped around the corner unscathed, if upset at the commotion, and the pair mounted up on their horses and off, heading northeast.

Their brief victory, their pockets and bags jingling with Strawberry's bullets, was short-lived as they passed along the cliffs overlooking the old timber company. Once they crossed the line John had drawn with West Dickens' elixir, undead again began to emerge from the trees, lope after them.

"Stay on the road!" John cried, watching Ruby pilot Sybil toward the forest, only for the horse to rear back on her hind legs when an undead shot out from a shrub, bloodied-mouth first. Ruby fired a shot through its throat as Sybil made to return to the road, but the way Ruby was twisted in the saddle made her slip off. She hit the ground with a sickening thud.

The undead immediately saw their opportunity, turned like clockwork towards a struggling Ruby, trying to uncrumple herself from the dirt. John launched himself from his own saddle, seizing two bottles of elixir and pulling the corks out with his teeth, almost retching at the smell that immediately assailed his nostrils.

She was nearly surrounded, but John rushed the crowding undead, flinging the bottles of elixir like a priest with his censer, drops of the liquid hissing against the undead's rotting flesh. The screams of the creatures pierced his eardrums, and still he advanced, shouldering past them to Ruby, cowering in the centre, holding at her thigh with one hand and with the other, firing her revolver feebly at the few who hadn't retreated.

John dropped the empty bottles to the ground as the final undead scurried back off into the forest, rushed to Ruby's side. "You're OK, hey, it's all right," he soothed, cupping a hand behind her neck to calm her, guiding her to look at him. Her eyes were wet, shining in the moonlight, screened by passing clouds.

"You gotta shoot me, John," she croaked, a lump in her throat. Ruby unfurled the hand that was clutching her left thigh, revealed a few trickles of blood just above the knee. "I got bit." John's heart sunk, his hand moved from her neck to her cheek, felt the tear that had fallen. She pulled her face away from his palm, stubbornly wiped at the tear. "I mean it, John, just f*ckin' put a bullet in me."

"No," he whispered, shaking his head. "You shoot yourself, that's what you said."

"Well, too bad, Marston," Ruby snapped, "turns out I'm too f*ckin' yellow for it." The clouds dispersed from the moon, then, bathing John's scars, Ruby's exposed leg, in silver light. John saw the blood from the bite in stark relief, four small black dots. An unbidden laugh rose from his throat, doubled when he spotted the slim trail winding its way from them in the tall grass.

"It's a snakebite, Miss Dufresne," he said, quietly, thoughtlessly lowering his head over her right leg, her lap, towards her left. Pressing his lips to the puncture marks, John sucked an angry bruise into her thigh, spitting out the venom he'd pulled from her bloodstream. He drew forth and repeated his ministrations on the lower bite marks, then pulled back from her suddenly, resting on his knees, blinking heavily as though he'd just returned from a fainting spell.

Ruby stared at the blossoming marks on her thigh, her mouth agape. "Just regular old poison," she whispered to herself, "is it my lucky day, or what." She made to stand, but wavered on her feet, plunked back down to seated.

John gave himself a shake, jumped up, lifting Ruby under her knees and behind her back and whistling for their horses. He pushed Ruby onto his saddle before tethering Sybil's reins to the horn, knowing his even-keeled stallion could guide the bay if she spooked again.

He climbed up behind Ruby, circling one hand loosely around her waist and grasping his reins in the other, clicking Thoreau into a gentle canter that he hoped wouldn't jostle Ruby in her weakened state. He rode aimlessly along the path, knowing the town they'd just left would not be so inclined to help the two.

"Hey, John?" Ruby said, as if sleepy, in front of him.

"Yes, Miss Dufresne?" He dreaded her addressing what had just occurred between them, felt his stomach lurch.

But thankfully: "You reckon we would've been better at the ritual sacrificing of folks, hey, John?" He chuckled, temporarily disrupting the panic growing in his gut.

"I reckon we might have been, sure, Miss Dufresne," he answered, watching her head loll forward. "Can tie a feller up properly, for one."

Ruby laughed, one short sound that bubbled from her chest and convulsed her shoulders. "For one." She repeated, before lurching forward, John's arm catching her from pitching off of the saddle just in time. They passed a crop of northern poppies and John clicked into his surroundings, remembered a cabin nearby that might be abandoned, where Ruby could safely rest. He spurred Thoreau into a gallop, desperate.

John kicked his leg out at a lone undead on the path towards the cabin, slicing his spur through its eye socket and back out, the green glow of the eye fading out on his boot. His stomach turned but he held firm, arriving through the trees to the cabin, dimly lit from within.

He jumped from Thoreau's saddle just in time to catch Ruby's falling body, gathering her dangling limbs until she was cradled against him, pushing through the front door of the cabin to see the low fire, a gaslamp on the table illuminating an open book. He gently tipped Ruby into the old iron bed in the corner of the cabin when an angry-yet-familiar voice called out from the porch, ringing in his ears.

"Ch'va là?"

Chapter 11: xi. An old amica

Chapter Text

John settled a sweating, yet freezing, Ruby into the bed, draping the quilt over her quivering body. He resisted turning around, finding the source of the voice, fearing his sanity had left him completely. It was only when he heard the speaker cross the threshold into the cabin, commanded him to turn, that he did, his hands hesitantly up by his ears, fingers anxiously wiggling.

And it was Lena, his brother Arthur's love, boring her dark brown eyes into his, lowering the shotgun she'd hoisted to point, neutral, at the floorboards. "How?" He gasped out, simultaneous to Lena's questioning "John? What's happened, who is this?"

When it was clear his question would go ignored, he cleared his throat, answered her: "This is Ruby Dufresne, a-a snake bit her, on the leg."

"Snake." Lena repeated, setting the gun on the table in the centre of the cabin, embracing John and stretching to kiss his cheek almost perfunctorily before gliding past him, peeling back the worn quilt to expose Ruby's legs, holding the younger woman's knee in a gentle pincer grip between her thumb and forefinger to get a better look at the bite. Realizing she'd pushed up Ruby's skirt and John was hovering at her shoulder, Lena twisted to look at him, made a shooing motion with her free hand. "Could you give us the room, please?"

John left the cabin immediately, his face burning. He paced back and forth across the small front porch, seeing glimpses of Lena's work each time he passed the window, as if in a series of vignettes. Setting a large, iron kettle onto the fire. Grinding a spray of red flowers and a few bluish ones in a mortar, adding them to a cup. Wiping Ruby's thigh free of blood (an extra-quick glimpse, John having clapped his hand to his eyes once he realized what he was looking at). Tipping the steaming cup to Ruby's lips, holding her head gently with the other hand, lowering her into the pillow.

Lena left the cabin to find John leaning against one of the posts holding up the porch's sagging roof. "She'll be all right," she stated, plainly, her accent rolling the Ls and Rs, just as he remembered. She fished a pack of cigarettes from her pocket and offered one to John before pulling another out with her lips, taking his proffered match with a nod. The grey shot through her dark hair caught the moonlight, as did the smoke streaming from her parted mouth.

After the initial shock wore off, only happiness remained in John's heart to see the woman before him. "You're alive." Lena held her cigarette between her lips to do a small curtsey, winking at him. "How?"

Lena looked off towards the moon, as if they shared a secret he couldn't possibly begin to know. "I heard a voice, John," she said, finally, "it implored me to live. So I listened."

John wiped at his mouth, disbelieving at first. Though, stranger things had clearly happened. "But why didn't you come to visit, then? Jack missed you, dearly." Lena smiled up at him, ruefully.

"You had enough ghosts following you around." Her voice was sad, and she squeezed his hand, her stubborn way of apologizing. He squeezed back before releasing her hand, hugging his arm around his stomach.

"Tell me about it," he exhaled. "You know all these undead running around? Abigail and Jack are caught up in it. No idea how to help them."

"Oh John, I'm so sorry," she said, and she meant it.

"Don't suppose you do know, then?"

Lena gave a grim shake of her head, put a comforting hand to his back, resting her temple against his upper arm.

John nodded in reply, looking towards the Grizzly mountains, lit dimly by the moon and silhouetted against the brilliant galaxy flung up and over their heads. This quiet life had always been the kind Arthur had wanted. His brother had been so sure about the woman exhaling a pretty trail of smoke from her lips next to him. John, on the other hand, wasn't sure about anything. His head swam at the memory of Ruby's weight in his arms, the sweetness of her flesh on his lips. He looked back, unbidden, into the cabin. Lena followed his gaze, co*cked her head towards the window.

"She likes you, you know." Lena said, interrupting his thoughts.

"Oh, you reckon?" John replied sarcastically. "You picked that up while she was unconscious, did you?" Lena removed a royal blue token from her pocket; a small disc of glass with a dark centre, ringed by light blue and white, rubbed it between her fingers.

"You should have seen the look she gave me when I touched you," Lena continued, "I need to get her malocchio away from me." She peered through the window, watched Ruby's sleeping form for a moment. "She's certainly a nubile young thing."

John's cheeks flamed in embarrassment. "Hadn't noticed," he muttered.

Lena smiled wickedly. "Why John, you're as red as a...ruby!" John nudged Lena in her side, mock-forcefully, with his elbow.

"You're really gonna put the spurs to me after two long years, huh?"

"You're my brother," Lena seized his face in both of her hands, squished his cheeks together briefly. "I live to tease you." John smiled before pulling from her grasp, and stalked over to Thoreau, pulled an unopened bottle of the N.W. Dickens elixir from a saddlebag. His stash was a lot smaller than he'd remembered it being; though, he supposed they'd spent three bottles just getting out of Strawberry.

"Wondering if you might have any idea what's in this," he said, bringing it to her and gesturing for her to open the bottle. "Seems to be some kind of repellent to the undead." Lena uncorked the bottle while listening; nearly dropped it when she caught a hint of the stinking tonic within, gagged audibly.

"Stucchevol'," Lena's tongue lolled from her mouth, holding the bottle at arms' length from her as she forced the cork back in. "It stinks; I haven't an idea, John."

"Well, Miss Dufresne and I are heading on up to Annesburg, supposedly the font of all this swill."

"So that's why you're together," Lena nodded, squinting at him.

John waved a hand towards Ruby. "She's like my-my employee. I hired her to help me. You should see her with a gun; like Arthur reincarnate." Lena looked into the window again, as John asked, hoping it'd alleviate Lena's suspicions, "Don't suppose you want to come with us?"

"You know I don't have the stomach for these kinds of adventures," Lena replied, dismissing his offer with a swish of her own hand. "You should see the bullets I found in her pockets, there must be dozens of them."

"Well, I have some idea about that." The squint returned, scrutinizing John's face.

"I bet you do," Lena said finally, and he loved and hated her for her inability to let things lie. But then, mercifully, she did. They sat together on the porch, looking at the stars and talking, about everything and nothing, as they used to do.

Ruby joined them in the morning, the colour returned to her face, her leg sore but functional. Lena left them on the porch to make breakfast as only she could; fresh bread, eggs cooked up with leeks and chard from her garden, a jug of dark, bitter coffee. After they'd eaten, Lena kissed them each on the cheeks and bid them goodbye, pressing a second, uncut loaf of bread into John's hands, two firm apples into Ruby's. They mounted their horses and rode off east for Valentine, leaving Lena to the little life she'd reclaimed for her own.

Author's note: Hello! So, I thought I'd have some fun in this chapter with a cameo from Lena, the main character/love interest in my other RDR story, Vows of Returning. This doesn't change that ending; Undead Nightmare is a "canonical" AU, so I thought, f*ck it, let's do this! I hope you liked it.

Chapter 12: xii. The apple wine of Valentine

Chapter Text

The brief idyll that was John and Ruby's breakfast and coffee overlooking the mountain range was just that; brief. It was no more than a half hour into their ride east that they spotted their first undead, wandering aimlessly, midway up a hill but turning its head, then shoulders to them. It emitted a sickening screech, lowering itself to its hands to mimic a rabbit's frantic amble, hastening its pursuit of the two riders below.

As she had the day before, Ruby pulled her rifle from her back and held it by the barrel, taking a few practice swings in anticipation of the undead's head entering her orbit. But suddenly, looming over the hilltop were dozens more, all clambering to four limbs to launch themselves at Ruby and John.

John yelled, "Ride!" and the two spurred their horses on, eventually abandoning the reins to clutch to their necks, any direction away from the pursuant undead just fine with them. The horses made their way to the Dakota River, just south of Cumberland Falls. John and Ruby urged their mounts to swim to a small piece of land that rose up across the middle of the water, rife with bulrushes, the pair disrupting a few sleeping ducks. The first undead that led the pack let out a brief bark of annoyance on the riverbank, fixing its glowing eyes on both of them and co*cking its head completely horizontally; ear to shoulder. A few others echoed the first, dipping their toes into the bracing water of the river and chirping their frustration.

Thoreau and Sybil snorted and stomped their hooves, their own displeasure noted by their riders. John finally dismounted, beckoning for the Carcano rifle from Ruby's saddle and crouching down to steady his aim, his knee pressing into the cool damp earth of the small river island. He exhaled through pursed lips before firing an expert shot through the first undead's forehead. It buckled and landed in the water, its corpse floating downstream, face down.

"Nice shot, Marston," Ruby gently clapped her fingers to her opposite palm, a pitter-pattering applause.

He stood, brushing off the mud caked to his knee, turned to her, grinning smugly. "Well, all these guns ain't just for show, Miss Dufresne." The undead, not ones to experience fear but certainly, the futility of the river's continued flowing, retreated back over the hill, into the woods. John felt capable, useful; not just trailing after the woman on horseback, who continued to look impressed with him.

"What should we do next, you figure?" Ruby asked, ready to defer, as John returned the rifle to its hollow on her saddle. "Break it for Valentine? Or camp someplace safe?"

John scratched at his beard, grown slightly long in his days away from his shaving kit. "Camp, I think," he said finally. "We don't know how we're gonna be received in Valentine; could well be another Strawberry. If that's the case, I'd rather be rested and ready to move on in the daylight if we find they're unfriendly."

His reasoning was sound, but all the same, they were unable to make camp on the relative safety of the island; it was too narrow, too damp. They settled for the opposing riverbank, John hammering in tent poles while Ruby went upriver, finding and bagging one of the ducks for a fire-cooked meal. Their stomachs full, and lips shining with duck fat, the two crawled into the tent at sundown after John generously sprinkled the elixir around it and the grazing horses.

It was the horses that woke them, braying and shrieking, heard over heavy rainfall that battered the tent's roof. Ruby was outside of the tent flaps first, one hand gripping her revolver, the other clutching her bedroll around her head and shoulders. John followed, his hat brim staving off the worst of the pelting rain, confronted with glowing green points of light, all along the riverbank. Ruby pulled him towards the horses, untethering them and riding them into the water, back to their island of salvation from the day before. There they huddled next to each other, drenched and miserable, until the undead scattered and day broke, and they could pack up their abandoned tent and leave.

The sun shone defiantly, as if to spite the downpour of the previous evening. John and Ruby were completely exhausted by the time they arrived at Valentine, greeted by a haphazard wall that bordered the entire town. Ruby inhaled, her chest expanding as if she were about to make a joke, but all that came from her wearied body was, "unfriendly."

John pointed to a gate wide enough to ride two horses through. He approached and knocked at an adjoining door cut into the side of the wall. A small window slid open at eye-level, and two watery blue eyes peered out. They widened, and the window again slid shut, only for the door itself to open a moment later.

"Friends!" A portly old man exclaimed, a shock of grey hair ringing his otherwise bald head, opening his arms wide. "Were you both caught in that storm last night? You look dampened, both in clothing and in spirit." He chuckled to himself, pulling the gate open and waving them through. "In all seriousness, we're so glad you made it to safety. We'll feast your arrival, no doubt about that. Why don't I have Ennis here-" and here, the man waved to a slender young man with a bowl-cut, barefooted "-stable your horses for you while you get cleaned up for dinner."

John and Ruby traded looks, but had no time to confer about their strange luck; Ruby was pulled by the arm off towards Valentine's hotel by a small congregation of women, and John, urged towards the saloon by a handful of men. There, they led him past the bar into a room with a full, prepared bath, where all of the questions that were swarming his mind disappeared; he was just thankful to scrub himself of the cold, wet evening previous.

When he left the bath, John was given new, clean clothes; a white shirt and tan slacks. A barber in the same outfit - indeed, all of the men he saw donned the shirt and pants - cut his longish, scraggly hair into a handsome fade, trimmed his beard down so that it hugged along his cheeks and jawline. "Thank you," John said, eyeing his scars winking out of the beard in the mirror, allowing himself a rare moment of vanity.

The barber's eyes widened, and he shook his head. "We don't talk here much, mister." He whispered, finally, and John watched his own eyebrows lower in skepticism, concerned about this development.

But soon, he was being ushered back outside, now twilight, the sky a deep, inky blue, a three-quarter moon appearing on the horizon, the stars winking their arrival. The street was aglow in the light of hundreds of candles; burning along the railings, in store windows, and swathed across a long table set in the middle of the street, flanked by long benches. On the table, among the candles, rested two roast pigs, a shiny, red apple stuffed into each of their mouths. The man next to John smilingly gestured for him to take a seat near the centre of the table, between the two pigs and before a small basket of wild roses. The men sat, too, arranging themselves on either side of John, all on one side of the table. One man, wearing the same white shirt and tan pants as the rest, but with a blue topcoat over the ensemble, took his place at the table's head, and catching John's eye, smiled happily at him. John returned the smile, gave an uncertain wave.

His attention was pulled away as women began exiting the hotel in droves, in simple white dresses. He scanned the unfamiliar faces, looking for Ruby. And then, he found her. Her sand-coloured hair was plaited in a thick braid woven in with tiny clusters of white flowers, eyes shining almost turquoise in the candlelight, twinkling. The plain, sleeveless dress skimmed her breasts and hips as she moved, was encouraged to sit opposite John at the table. He stood, involuntarily, catching her eye. She was beautiful, like this.

Ruby opened her mouth to speak, but had evidently been told the same rule as he had. She gestured up and down at the figure John cut instead, appraisingly, raising her eyebrows in approval. He mirrored her, grinning. They took their seats along the bench, eating generous cuts of the roasted pork, boiled potatoes, asparagus. It was all delicious, and so welcome; their first meal since the small duck they'd shared the night before.

John and Ruby continued to smile, at each other, at their tablemates. Despite the quiet, it was not unnerving; John felt at peace, as though he could envision staying here. He took another mouthful of the apple wine being served down the table; sweet, but pleasantly heady. He looked over to Ruby again, who was playing some kind of hand game with the young girl seated next to her; she held her hands, palms-up, underneath the girls' palms, face down, moving quickly to tap the backs of her hands before she could pull away. He watched, delighted, as she tickled under the girl's right palm only to distract her away from tapping at her left, or how her thumb and middle finger seized around the girl's wrist quick as lightning, preventing her escape from the tap to come.

The pair received looks from the surrounding women for their giggling, but to John, the game between the two sparked a small, impossible daydream; as if this Ruby, radiant in her dress, freckles deliciously spattered across her cheeks, were his wife and this girl, their daughter. He felt the thrum of an ache in his heart for the fiction, and then a wash of shame for his foolishness. He couldn't dwell in the feeling for too long; the head of the table rose from his seat, drawing the eyes of all the diners, men and women.

The man cleared his throat, and his booming voice rang in John's ears, after the hours of silence. "As we know, my brothers and sisters," the man began, looking down the column of men, then women, to his right and left. "The animals do not speak, do not allow their interactions to be consumed by falsehood or untruth. They live honestly. They do not take wives or husbands, are not felled by petty jealousy. They live freely, amongst each other." He held out his hands, looking at each John and Ruby, beckoning them. "Come to me, new brother and sister."

The witnessing crowd gently pushed the pair forward, trading them between each other towards the head of the table, until they were standing on either side of the man. Ruby held her hands behind her back, bashfully. "My brothers and sisters," the man spoke, again, "if we are closer to animals..."

"We are further from the scourge of humanity." The crowd chorused, their united voices nearly deafening. Without warning, the man leaned forward, lifting the head of the roast above his shoulders and then onto his own head. The men's side of the table passed the second head forward, a pair of them approaching John with it.

"Embrace your animal, brother," the man commanded, his voice muffled from within the pig's head, its beady eyes looking at nothing. John looked fearfully at the head being lifted towards him, both men selected for the task shorter than him by a good degree. The head of the table began to unbutton his fly, exposing himself to the crowd. "What the hell?" Ruby uttered, staring sidelong at the man's growing erection.

"Don't be afraid," the man continued, turning towards Ruby's voice. "Embrace me, your animal, sister." Ruby seized the steak knife left at the man's place setting, held it in a reverse grip in her fist.

"I ain't afraid, mister," she hissed, her eyes darting around the table. "You might not be able to see it, but I'm primed to cut your pecker clean off, so you best put it away." She moved in a circle around the man to John, grasping his wrist and backing away towards the stables.

"God dammit!" She exclaimed, once they'd put some distance between themselves and the townspeople. "Can't any of you towns just be normal, for chrissakes? Why do you all have to be so f*ckin' odd?" She dropped the knife and they turned to run, tacking up their horses as fast as possible and bursting out of the stable towards the gate.

Only once Valentine was a silhouette on the horizon did they stop the horses and laugh, clutching at their sides, wiping tears of mirth from their eyes. Ruby untied the ribbon from the end of her braid and shook out the flowers; one by one, they spiralled to the earth.

Chapter 13: xiii. “This stupid dress”

Chapter Text

John and Ruby rode through the Heartlands in the darkness, dodging, rather than engaging, the green glowing eyes that marked the scattered undead out on the range. Before long, a halo of yellowed light grew on the horizon; the few lamps burning outside the various buildings of Emerald Ranch. Halfway through their second night without sleep, John paid the exorbitant amount the night foreman charged them for a place to rest with little more than a scowl.

It was a modest cabin - more of a shack, really - with a narrow bed and a woodstove, a small table and two chairs by the door. Ruby made for the stove, feeding in the couple of logs and dry grass the foreman had supplied to them and striking a match, coaxing a merry fire to life in short time, rubbing her bare arms in front of the glow. "I'm good here, John," she said to the flames, her back to him. "You take that bed."

"Don't start that, Miss Dufresne," he warned. "I can sleep in a chair, same as a bed."

She chirped a laugh, reaching her hands closer to the fire still. "Ain't good for your old bones."

The brass on her. He smirked. "These old bones have slept in plenty of chairs." John reached out to lay a hand on her shoulder, to implore her, to find that it felt like ice. The smile disappeared from his face. "You're freezing."

"Lost my warmer clothes back in Strawberry," she said quietly, shrugging her shoulder out of reach, offering him a small smile, instead. "The fire's fine, John, honest. I'll be warm in no time."

He snorted out an exhale, sensing that she'd argue him all the way into the morning, if not the grave. He seized the threadbare quilt from the bed instead, draped it around her. She opened her mouth, but he held up a finger, backing onto the mattress and kicking off his boots, laying back with a groan. "Compromise is when no one's happy, Miss Dufresne, but it might mean both of us get a little sleep." He pulled his hat over his eyes, succumbing almost instantly to a deep, needed slumber.

John awoke to the continued dark, his teeth chattering. The fire reduced to a few embers seen through the woodstove's open door barely illuminated a shivering Ruby, curled into a ball under the quilt. He staggered to his bare feet, clutching his arms around himself. "C'mon, Miss Dufresne," his voice was gravelly from sleep, rasped more so than usual. "We need new ways to be unhappy, here, 'fore we both freeze to death."

She moaned gently in protest, but was encouraged to climb onto the bed all the same, facing the wall, John stock straight beside her on his back, the quilt over them both. Soon, their shared heat warmed them, and Ruby's shivering ceased.

Hours later, John woke to daylight, feeling both the pleasing, warm weight of Ruby's head and arm on his chest, and the heart-wrenching fear of a shotgun's twin barrels in his face, wielded by a rather unfinished-looking young man.

"Get up, stretch," he ordered to John around a lipful of tobacco, prodding him with the gun. Ruby awoke then, springing from John's body, her back pressed against the wall. She looked between them, eyes wide, hands repeatedly making for her hips to find the revolvers, absent, draped over the back of a chair, instead.

"You ain't in no position to argue, feller," another voice chimed, with the strained vocal whine of a particular kind of southern man. An equally-young man with flax-coloured hair seized Ruby by the arm, yanking her from the bed, holding a knife to her throat to stop her struggling. "You're in the sh*t for sleepin' with the rancher's daughter."

"This stupid dress," Ruby lamented, more to herself than the overcrowded room, then louder, "We didn't sleep together, and I ain't the daughter, you hayseed piece of sh*t."

"Su-ure you ain't," the flaxen-haired man singsonged, pausing to spit onto the floor beside him. He hauled her backwards out the door, the shotgun-wielding one prodding John to follow. They marched them down the main causeway of the ranch, past pens of cattle and sheep, drawing the attention of several other of the ranch hands, the foreman.

"Ain't those the new fellers," John overheard one ranch hand murmur to another, as he was forced along towards the ranch's main residence, Ruby cursing a blue streak to her captor beside him. When they arrived in front of the blue-painted house, its cheery garden belying its surly owner within, John felt the shotgun leave his spine, ducked briefly as it was fired into the air.

"Wegner!" The man holding Ruby crowed, waited until the ranch owner emerged onto the porch, his eyebrows knit together. "Look who's been breedin'." He pulled the knife away from Ruby's neck, pushed her forward, so that she stumbled slightly in the street.

"Who the hell is that?" The owner, Eugene Wegner, boomed.

"You need glasses, old man?" The other man wheezed behind John. "Don't recognize your own daughter?" Wegner's eyebrows descended still further down his forehead, nearly eclipsing his eyes entirely. He leaned back into the door, shouted something indecipherable within, and then returned to lean against the porch's column, casually opening the chamber of his sidearm and feeding bullets in. Within moments, a blonde woman joined him, looking anxiously between her father and the mutinying ranch hands in the street.

"I repeat," Wegner said, his eyes free from their brows and steely blue, focused on the unlikely quartet before him. "Who the hell is this?"

"We're paying guests, sir," Ruby shouted, holding up her hands, inching towards John. "These two ambushed us this morning, real inhospitable of them, if you're asking."

"I'm not, miss, but noted." Wegner levelled his gun deliberately at the flax-haired man, now without Ruby as his cover. In one instant John was watching Wegner's finger clench around the trigger, and the next, he was facedown in the dirt, Ruby on top of him, bullets flying over their heads.

She rolled off and pulled at his arm, leading him in a crouch through a pigpen and then the ranch's herd of cattle, back to their room for their things. John pulled on his boots and Ruby fastened her revolvers around her waist, quick as lightning, the two off on their horses before the gunfire had stopped.

Thoreau and Sybil galloped down the mostly-dried waterway of Dewberry Creek until the sun beat down on them both, threatening noon. They pulled to a stop to water their horses, heave sighs of relief. "Give me your clothes," Ruby ordered, alarming John. She tried again, "you still have your old clothes? I need this f*ckin' dress off." John dug through his saddlebags and saw that the Valentine folks - for all of their strangeness - had thankfully stowed his vest, shirt, and jeans for him. He ducked around a clutch of trees and reemerged looking as himself, extending the white shirt and pants to Ruby. She dressed, too; the pants cuffed and tucked into her boots, white sleeves rolled up to her elbows.

Yet another close call with humanity's more nefarious side brought to John and Ruby the same thought, independent of each other. Their altercations with the undead were welcome, they found, if in their straightforwardness and not so much their severity. The undead wanted to bite. John and Ruby, on the other hand, wanted them back in the ground. Both agreed it was much preferred to the current clutches of madness - sacrifice, animal worship, insurgency; not to mention the unquestioned reverence of someone like Nigel West Dickens - experienced by settlements of living people.

So it was that the pair decided, wordlessly, to take their chances in the wild and spend their next night once again in the tent, their camp ringed with repellent elixir, away from the so-called civilized world. John cooked up the rest of their bread, now stale, in some fat, split the remaining apple between his palms, handing half to Ruby as they both reclined by the fire. They hadn't spoken more than was necessary all day, an awkwardness between them, but she thanked John and tentatively asked after Lena, or, as she'd put it, "that woman who gave us all this stuff."

John smiled into his cup of coffee. "She was my brother's girl, my adopted brother. He passed."

"I'm sorry," Ruby said quietly, pausing to fix John with sad, knowing eyes. "Who was adopted? You, or him?"

"We both was," John affirmed, dumping out the rest of the brew onto the ground, leaning back on his hands. "I'm uh, I'm an orphan, too, as was he. We was both in a gang of sorts, raised up by a couple of bandits. But good bandits, if that makes sense, any. Not sure it ever did, myself."

Ruby laughed. "Could say the same, you're confusing me."

"Tell me about it," John grinned again, fed a twig into the fire, watched it yield to the licking flames, disappear into ash. "They was my family. Abigail ran with us too; my son, Jack, was born into the gang. All of us, together. We learned to read and fish and hunt as well as, well, you know, gang deeds." His voice faltered at the last few words, unpleasant memories flooding back to him of the good folks they'd lost, the sting of his adoptive father's betrayal, the gang's descent. Ruby noted the tightness in John's jaw, the fire dancing in his eyes, held unnaturally still.

"Did y'all talk the same, too?" She asked, finally, a grin on her face, the dimple in her cheek back. John was pulled from his reminisces, co*cked an eyebrow at her. "Like y'all poured gravel into your mornin' oats, I mean.These old bones love sleepin' in chairsand the like." Her impression of John was uncanny, and he hurled his half of the apple core at her, in jest. She'd done it again; anticipated what he'd needed to sit with his feelings. He was so grateful for it.

The dimple faded, Ruby's expression grew serious. "It does give me an idea, though," she said, standing and looking to the southeast. "We could see if some of my brothers are still 'round Rhodes; see if they might help us?"

"Hmm," John sounded, noncommittally. One part of him knew they could use the help, more guns, more watchful eyes on the road to Annesburg. Another, more secretive part, deeper within himself, feared he couldn't hold a candle to Ruby's beloved brothers, and that their joining would mean the end of their own easy partnership of two lost people riding through the end of the world, one for which he'd come to care very much. Maybe it was only easy to him. He looked up to find Ruby watching him, anxiously.

"I know, I know," she shook her head slowly, holding up a tentative hand. "We're a bunch of hillbilly orphans who can't much read."

John sat up, holding out a hand of his own. "Miss Dufresne, it ain't like that at all-"

"-but," she continued, chancing a smile at him. "The lot of us were still smarter than any damn person we've met so far, wouldn't you agree?" John settled back down, sighing a deep breath.

"Certainly I would," he stated, hoping to show her that he didn't think her stupid, at all.

"So we'll make for Rhodes in the morning, then?"

"Sure will." Ruby bid John goodnight, then, crawling into the tent, leaving him alone with his unease and mixed feelings, as well as the recent memory of her sleeping curled into him, the comforting weight of her head on his chest.

Chapter 14: xiv. St. Philomena's

Chapter Text

The sunrise lit up the interior of the tent in pinks and golds, pleasing to John's squinting, waking eyes. Pleasing too; Ruby's freckled cheek, nestled into his left shoulder, her hand balled into a fist against his sternum. Her honey-scented hair, the golden flyaways ambling about with each of his careful breaths. He didn't know how long they'd been asleep like this, didn't know how much longer he'd have. This morning was a peaceful respite from their journey so far, the luxury of being close to Ruby without a gun in his face, or poison coursing through her body, or Abigail at his throat.

It was the thought of Abigail that guiltily stirred him, feigning his awake at the same time as Ruby came to, lifting her cheek from him and then blushing, retreating to her side of the tent. "Like a moth to a flame, in my sleep," she muttered, rubbing at her eye with the palm of her hand. "Mr. Marston, oh, I'm so sorry."

John winced at the returned formality, reinforcing the end of their closeness, as well as the familial bonds he was dragging with him cross-country, ones that seemed increasingly absurd to maintain. He arranged himself to seated, feeling about him for his hat. "Think nothing of it, it's just the cold." She nodded at this, emphatically, mumbled something about seeing the horses, and left the tent, and John within it to wonder, hopefully;was it just the cold?

They tore down the camp after a near-silent breakfast; a skillet of oatmeal that they shared, dug their spoons into one at a time, and coffee. But, Ruby returned to her usual self on the road to her hometown, recounting the time one brother painted glue on his palms to climb the barn, only to be prised from the barnboards with a crowbar, or when another brother had found a moonshine operation in the woods nearby their farmlands, and drank himself nearly blind, only to have his vision return in the middle of Sunday service; which the nuns were all to quick to deem a miracle.

John smiled tightly, forced laughs when appropriate, trying to ignore the heaviness in his stomach that they were closer than ever to the men Ruby adored, to his certainty that this was their last ride together where he had the privilege of being her willing confidant, her partner.

But he wished he could take it all back - the petty jealousy, feeling sorry for himself - when they turned onto the main street of Rhodes to find it deserted, a ghost town. John almost felt thankful Ruby couldn't read the white graffiti splashed across the train station -WE ARE FORSAKEN- but he knew she could see the unsteady hand with which it was painted, and the redoubled horror on his own face.

Beyond the station, the locomotive of an army train lay in a ditch, twisted from its attached cars still on the track. Tattered, once-white flags hung from windows, off balconies; no one to bring them in from the red dust and wind. They rode through the town's main drag, an uneasy anticipation fluttering in John's heart, like they were coming up on a surprise party no one wanted. Ruby was silent on her horse next to him, her lips parted, eyes wide in disbelief. John recognized in her expression what he'd come up against at Beecher's Hope, confronted with his family's monstrosity. Loss. Unthinkable loss.

He dismounted, holding Thoreau's reins in one hand, reaching out to her with the other. His hand found her wrist, and he left it there, not knowing what he could say that'd mean the same. Her head swivelled to look at him, he saw her chest expand in a galvanizing inhale. She stroked her fingers along his, clearing her throat.

"We might best start lookin' for my brothers who left before the undead came up. Won't have no-" her voice cracked, but she pressed on "-no way of findin' the ones that were here." John nodded, suggesting that they might find records at the orphanage, if she'd lead the way. He climbed again on to Thoreau's back, trotting after Ruby, who guided Sybil along with her legs, holding her wrist where he had, moments before.

After hitching their horses and laying down hay in the trough by the front gate to the orphanage, John and Ruby approached the large, white-washed wooden house; the ornamental crucifix on the topmost gable throwing a complicated shadow in their path.

They circled the house to enter through a side door, leading into the kitchen and adjoining dining hall; passing rows of dark wooden tables lined with matching benches, out through a hallway fringed with portraits of various saints, and a wooden statue gazing benevolently through its pupil-less carved eyes at them,St. Philomenainscribed in the plinth at its feet.

John trailed after Ruby as she climbed one flight of stairs, then two; trying the knob on a door at the end of the hall,Mother Superior: Officepainted on the glass. John revealed a small knife in his palm, and Ruby stepped aside so that he could force it into the space between the door and its jamb, pushing until a telltale click echoed throughout the floor. He pushed the door open, gestured for her to enter first. She curtseyed playfully, before giving her head a shake, remembering their sombre calling in the orphanage.

The office at John's first glance could have belonged to any clerical professional, provided they were religious; a large crucifix hung behind the desk, papers, some gathered tidily with twine, lay in ordered piles around the room. As his eyes adjusted to the sunlight streaming in through the half-moon window, he noticed that the posters and photos lining the walls were not of saints or Bible scenes, but memorabilia from the wild west show of Ruby's youth. He paused to smile at a photo of Ruby, a gangly girl of no more than ten, dead centre among her brothers, hoisting a rifle with a toothy grin.

Ruby sidled up next to him, pointed at a large, Black boy standing behind her in the photograph, his expression as serious as hers was silly. "That's Lyndon, one of my favourites," she said, fondly, "he left maybe a year or two ago to try and make his own way, someplace more tolerant than this Dixie sh*thole." John stepped away from the photo, lifted a stack of papers, began rifling through them.

After ten minutes, the name -Thomas, Lyndon- jumped out at him, neatly handwritten at the top of a single-page file. He waved the paper through the air. "He might be out in Saint Denis, says this." He returned the paper to its place in the stack. "What do we know about Saint Denis?"

Ruby returned her gaze to John from the windowpane, distracted. "Saint Denis," she repeated, cluing in, "supposedly another free town, from what I heard while headin' west. Not sure how they managed, with all them people."

The pair continued on their search, like this, Ruby pointing out her orphan brothers who'd left after the show had fallen apart but before the undead had come, and John finding their corresponding files; locating a Jasper, once a wiry, shrewd-looking boy, potentially up in Butcher Creek, and a Liam, his freckles visible even in blurred black and white, apparently mining in Annesburg.

He was looking for a Jesús - "weren't we all, John," Ruby quipped, some of her good spirits returning - when he found a thicker bundle of papers in the Mother Superior's desk drawer, bundled in twine, the first page labelledDufresne, Ruby. He tugged gently at the string, unfurling the knot and setting it aside before flipping through the first few pages, interspersed with woodcut handbills advertising the show as far as Tumbleweed, abysmal progress reports on Ruby's schooling, a behaviour citation and its adjoining punishment:Told Father Monyhan to 'go f*ck himself.' Ten Hail Marys, administered strap, no dinner.

"That his?" Ruby asked, curiously, perching on the desk next to John's leaning figure to look over his shoulder.

"No, yours, Miss Dufresne," John smiled. "Reading all about your good deeds 'round here growin' up." He turned over the citation to the next page, and his smile vanished. A request for adoption, written in the same neat handwriting, stamped in red:Adoption deemed unfit by orphanage. Then, another. And another. John's heart caught in his throat at the no fewer than eight requests cradled in his palms; he covered his mouth, feeling sick.

Ruby's eyebrows furrowed at his sudden change in demeanour. "What are those? What does that mean, that red stamp?" She pointed to the ink on the page, looked between it and John's guilty, sorrowful eyes. After a moment's silence, she prodded at the ink again. "Tell me, John."

"It, uh," he spoke as if through a mouthful of tar, the words just as acrid in his mouth. "It says you were up for adoption, but the orphanage said no. They was probably just protectin' you from bad folks." He added in a rush, hoping to salvage whatever he could of Ruby's memories of her home.

Ruby shook her head, her lips pressed into a thin line. "That can't be right," she said quietly, taking a few of the pages from him, looking from one to the next, as if she might spontaneously learn to decipher the words. She slapped at the stack in John's hand again. "Look for the Wilsons. Family came to see me called Wilson. I stayed over at their house and they said I'd get to stay always, if I wanted. But Mother Superior said they changed their mind because...because I was always swearin'." Her voice sounded desperate, pained, and John would have done anything to have lit the pages on fire, to burn down the entire f*cking orphanage, to save her from this.

But she stared him down until he returned to the pages, fishing one labelledAdoption Request: Dufresne, Ruby. By: Wilson, David and Wilson, Janefrom the stack, the telltale red stamp glaring from the middle of the page.

"I'm sorry," he offered, feeling useless, letting the page drop from his fingers to float to the floor. "I'm so sorry, Ruby." She looked at the page from her seat on the desk, her face blank.

After an eternity, Ruby spoke, in a whisper, "All those years, I thought I weren't wanted." She hopped from the desktop, strode towards the office door. "She was keepin' me here, instead." Ruby wound her fist back for it to fly through the door's window, right through the painted label. She stared at the glass studding her knuckles, blood running in rivulets down her arm, and let out a single, plaintive cry.

John crossed the room without thought, gathered her shuddering body into his arms. "You're wanted, darlin', oh, you're wanted," he repeated into her hair, clutching her to him until he felt her muscles relax, her shoulders ease from where they were pressed against his chest. He pulled back just slightly, stroking the hair away and wiping her cheeks dry with his thumbs, her face framed by his long fingers.

He looked into her glittering eyes, the freckles that charted a spattered path from one perfect whorled ear to the other, her plump, pink mouth. "You're wanted, Ruby," John said, before pulling her to him, to his insistent kiss. Her lips parted, only briefly, before she pushed off of him, leaving a faint, bloodied handprint on his vest.

"Best fix my hand," she mumbled, her face burning, slipping through the door. John sunk against the wall in the office until he was seated on the floor, listening to her footsteps pounding down the stairs, staring at an illustrated poster of her childhood likeness, in profile, aiming a rifle at some unknown quarry, off-page.Rhodes' Li'l Red will Steal Your Heart!read the yellow text, cheery against the deep blue background, the red satin dress. He held his chin in his hand, never feeling more foolish.

Chapter 15: xv. Three's a crowd

Chapter Text

John breathed heavily from his place on the floor of the Mother Superior's office, twisting his wedding band around his finger, his heart aching. He felt bad enough that he'd pursued Ruby as a married man, and at one of the lowest moments of her life. Worse still, that his pursuit went unrequited. He pulled the ring off and peered through it, caught notice of the bloody handprint she'd left on his vest. He licked his fingers and thumb, blotted at the accusatory stain, sighed.

Briefly, John had felt needed, gallant, even handsome. After seeing Ruby's blushing face, how quickly she'd run from him; just foolish, old. They hadn't needed to find Ruby's brothers for him to become irrelevant to her; he'd done it all on his own.

He'd been trying to pause his own self-loathing enough to figure out what to do next; thinking Ruby had moved on without him. His sunken heart leapt, then, when he heard her boots on the stairs, coming closer. He rose from his position on the floor, unholstered his pistol and held it at his side, just in case.

But it was her, and fully her; panting from the effort of climbing the stairs as quickly as she had, eyes blue and twinkling. John felt his own eyes crinkle at the corners, so glad was he to see her, to not be left alone. "Ruby, Miss Dufresne, I'm-"

Ruby held up her hand, interrupting the apology on his lips. "I found someone alive."

John followed Ruby on horseback, back into the deserted town. Or, almost deserted. She led him into Rhodes' general store; its shelves bare, turned over for its stock of goods and provisions long before. "It's safe, sir," she called, "just me again, with my friend."

A large man, hair grey where he still had it, rose from behind the counter, his hands up. John recognized the bushy moustache and tremulous countenance of Simon Pearson, the Van Der Linde gang's former cook.

"John Marston, as I live and breathe! Is that really you?" Pearson boomed, rushing from around the counter to shake John's hand, then envelop him into a hug. John broke from his embrace, awkwardly - the man smelling uncharacteristically sour and characteristically, strongly of booze - and held him by the shoulders instead.

"Good to see you, Pearson," he said, meaning it, "Didn't realize you'd settled out here."

"Oh, sure," Pearson leaned back against the counter, "Guess it would have been soon after I left you all at Beaver Hollow, back before 1900. Met my beautiful Ethel and stayed out here, started running this shop after her father got too old to do it. Sent her off when the first few of those beings ripped through town, and thank goodness. Stayed here to watch the store."

What John hadn't remembered about Pearson, but which again became immediately apparent: the man loved to talk. "Did you know we have a bonafide Rhodes celebrity in our midst, Mr. Marston? Miss Dufresne here is that same young girl we saw roping goats and shooting at orphan boys when we came through all those years ago."

Ruby blushed and John tried changing the subject; her past still quite raw in both their minds. "Yes, Mr. Pearson. It's why we're here; both Miss Dufresne and I-"

"Your little Jackie had that handbill about Miss Dufresne here, as I remember!" Pearson chuckled, slapped at his knee. John and Ruby's smiles grew tighter on their faces. "Asked nearly everyone at camp to read it to him, over and over. 'Li'l Red is the prettiest girl I ever saw.' Near devastated when we forgot it in the move to Shady Belle. But kids forget, they always do. How is little Jack, John? Probably not so little anymore, hey? And Abigail? That woman keeping you honest?"

The bell over the door chimed, announcing Ruby's rushed exit. John watched her approach their horses, fear clenching his stomach that she was fleeing, again, but saw her pull a brush from Sybil's saddlebag, combing out the knots in her silvery mane.

"Pearson, as grand as it is to see you, we don't have much time to reminisce," John's expression had darkened, but he tried to keep his voice level and free of the annoyance he most certainly felt. Pearson's face fell, chastened. "We need information on Saint Denis, anything you happen to know. Miss Dufresne's orphan brother Lyndon's out there; we're going to try and find him."

"Saint Denis, huh," Pearson rubbed at his chin. "It's a free town; they blew out all their bridges heading into the city, so the only way in is through that big cemetery they have by the north of town. Get all their supplies in by ship and living the life of Reilly out there, like none of this even happened. The cemetery keeps folks out and they have a convenient place for all their undead who can't find their way over the walls. A paradise, as far as they come." John had been to Saint Denis; paradise would not have been how he'd describe the sweltering, lecherous, and socially-stratified city.

The door chimed again, signalling Ruby's return, as John remarked, gravely, "So the only way in is through a cemetery's worth of hungry undead." He turned to look at her, his arms positioned in a hopeless half-shrug, only to be met with her mischievous smile.

"Think I found something on the army train that could help with that," she said. "Either of you fellas ever used a Gatling gun before?"

John encouraged the gentle draft horses pulling Pearson's supply wagon, Pearson plunked in between himself and Ruby on the crowded seat. The Gatling gun was loaded in the back in pieces, several belts of ammunition jingling almost merrily as the wagon juddered over ruts in the road. Thoreau and Sybil obediently trotted behind, completing their convoy through the marshes between Rhodes and Saint Denis.

It was dusk, but it may as well have been night; the Cypress trees loomed tall overhead and threw mottled patterns over the path. John muttered to himself about the reduced visibility, glad for the distraction and for Pearson, a physical barrier between himself and Ruby. She, for her part, held her rifle in a ready position against her chest, scanning the swamps for any undead, in addition to any of the usual nightmares they had to offer.

"Odd we haven't seen much undead," she remarked, absent-mindedly, interrupting what seemed like Pearson's thousandth anecdote about his wife, Ethel. John was thrilled that the man had found what sounded like happiness; a purpose, a home, a good woman who cared for him. He just wished he didn't have to hear about her quite so much, when his own marriage, his home, felt so fraught. He was thankful, then, that Ruby had broken her silence on the ride, to steer the conversation in a different direction.

"They go where living people are, or they die, starve," Pearson explained. "Rhodes isn't much of a draw to them anymore, on account of everyone being gone."

"Can't say I'm upset about that in particular," John joined in, slowing the horses to roll gently over the upcoming train tracks. "Been nice not to worry about being eaten for a change." Ruby leaned forward over Pearson to grin at his wisecrack, and John, soothed to see her happy, smiled back.

So it was only Pearson, oblivious to the pair grinning around him, who spotted the two, tiny points of green light on the road ahead. "Hey, hey, slow up, John! There's something up there." John and Ruby's heads each flew forward, and John pulled on the reins to bring the wagon to a halt.

"You reckon it's an undead lyin' down?" Ruby whispered, aiming her rifle and squinting at the lights, located towards the ground, flickering slightly.

"Not sure," John whispered back. Pearson quivered in between them, let out a surreptitious belch.

John stared down the man, scowling. "You serious?"

Pearson patted his belly, looking bashful. "Stomach's prone to acting up when I'm afraid." Ruby lay a kind hand on his shoulder.

"It doesn't seem to be movin' much," she said, "maybe it's starvin', like you said." She handed the rifle to John, seized a lantern and touched a lit match to the wick, climbed down from the wagon with the lantern in her left hand, a revolver in her right.

John's own stomach clenched and fizzed, something feeling very off about the twin points of green light on the road. "Careful, Miss Dufresne," he warned, looking away from the rifle's sight to watch her silhouette move behind the bobbing lantern.

She turned back, smiled at them both. "Born careful, boys, don't worry about me." But then the lights began to move, slowly at first, and then rapidly, towards her. She took a few steps backwards, her revolver arm fully extended, the lantern held aloft to try and catch a glimpse of whatever it was that approached.

Then, in the very edge of the pool of light the lantern cast came a bloodied, scaly snout, cracked into a permanent, sharp-toothed grin. The green lights - eyes - belonged to a fifteen-foot, undead alligator. Rags of toughened flesh hung off its joints and cheeks, and the beast swung its mighty head, forcefully, catching Ruby in the stomach and throwing her further down the road, the gator in between herself and the wagon. The lantern flew from her hand and hit the marsh, going out in a whisper.

John screamed her name, jumping from the wagon and springing up from his landed crouch, holding the rifle up in front of him and seeking - fruitlessly - the gator's eyes in the darkness. He couldn't hear anything but the sound of his own, frantic breathing, and then, Pearson's rushed praying back on the wagon's seat. "Pearson, please!" He hissed, rendering the man silent.

There was a brief flash of light; a gunshot. The frieze John saw in that instant was Ruby, laying on her back in the road, holding the revolver in front of her; the alligator, prowling towards her, unfazed by the bullet she'd put through its right leg.

It was all John needed; he opened fire, burning through all five rounds that were in the rifle's chamber. Each muzzle flash revealed the effects of the bullet before it; the alligator slowing, dark blood pooling down its sides, turning its massive, grinning head John's way. He had not stopped it, and now it was after him.

"Head down, Mr. Marston!" He heard from the wagon. A new light arced up and over John's head, and landed squarely on the alligator, igniting. The fire bottle Pearson had thrown caught, and the three, from their individual positions, watched the beast thrash and snap its jaws, burning into its final death.

"Great throw, Mr. Pearson," John said, genuinely; both thankful and sorry to the man he'd regretted bringing along only moments before. Pearson smiled, scratched at the hair behind his head, said he was glad to be of help.

John moved to Ruby, offering her a hand up from the dirt. She let him pull her to her feet, staring in disbelief at the still smouldering gator before pulling her gaze away; to John. "You OK?" He asked, his hand lingering on her upper arm before he remembered himself, removed it. She nodded at him, relieved.

They clambered back onto the wagon, headed on without incident to the small clutch of houses that lay on the outskirts of Saint Denis.

Ruby borrowed John's binoculars, surveyed the graveyard wall in the distance, the small scout fires burning along the topstones. She removed the binoculars, turned to stand and face John and Pearson, cleared her throat. John was ready to do whatever she said, a small thrill in his heart being at her command, once again.

Chapter 16: xvi. Assault on Saint Denis

Chapter Text

Ruby paced in front of John and Pearson, in her element. She explained to them that through John's binoculars, she'd spotted an array of guards along the cemetery wall. The former entrances into the city were - perhaps literally - minefields of barbed wire and spiky, wooden abatis; so the wall was their better bet.

"And I don't want us killin' any of those people guards up there," she said, almost scoldingly, wagging a finger and gesturing behind her towards the wall. "Ain't their fault the powers-that-be are a bunch of selfish f*cks. No, better still if we can get them to help us clear out that cemetery of undead. Probably tired of watching them mope around all day, hungry, moanin'.

"John, can I count on you to turn on that old Marston charm and start yelling about the devil or some such?" He grinned to himself at her teasing, at the memory of their first battle together, which started much like this one. "Soon as we get those guards to scatter or join us, I want you on that Gatling, ready to shoot at first daylight." John nodded, patting the barrel of the Gatling tied to Thoreau's back.

"Now, Pearson," Ruby's attention shifted to the fearful man stood next to John, approached him holding out the Carcano rifle. "This ain't about stackin' cans, you hear me? You think you can handle this fella?"

Pearson snatched the gun from her, demonstrated that he could reload it, peered through its sight. "I was in the navy, you know," he said, sniffing.

"So you can get piss drunk and still swim, not sure what that has to do with rifles." John stifled a laugh as Pearson looked stung, and Ruby softened in tone and manner, laying a hand on his shoulder. "Just do whatever the hell you did with that fire bottle back there, amazing, inspired work." She patted the shoulder and stepped backwards, looking at them both.

"We're invaders, gentlemen," she grinned, looking delighted by the prospect. "Pearson, keep an eye on us until I give you a wave from the wall and then get yourself some rest; you'll hear the Gatling soon enough. John, you're with me."

Ruby proceeded up the street, quiet and light-footed on her boots; John followed, leading Thoreau with the gun. It was dark enough that they could easily avoid the dim pools of light cast by the torches along the cemetery wall, and they were soon leaning up against its cool stones, Thoreau tossing his stately dun head and snorting in protest at the stench of undead on the other side.

"'S'OK, boy," John soothed in a whisper, patting the stallion's neck to still him as Ruby climbed into a stirrup and then stood on the saddle, stretching her fingertips up towards the edge of the wall, gripping it before digging her toes into whatever gaps in the stones were available. Her bandaged hand slipped and John's stomach gave a sickening lurch as she swung hard to the left, but she sought and found purchase among the stones, hauling herself up and over the edge.

Her head and shoulders popped over the side, her hair caught in the evening breeze. "C'mon," she whispered, reaching for the ropes tied around the Gatling on Thoreau's back, and then John's own hands. They hauled up the gun as quietly as they could, muffling their groans at the weapon's weight, and John leaned back over with a hissedGit!at his horse, shooing him to safety. When he rose to standing, he saw a guard to either side of them, their repeaters raised.

"Y'all volunteerin' to be dinner tonight?" The taller of the two asked, spitting a neat arc of tobacco juice from his teeth over the wall.

"Oh, so the undead get to eat, and y'all don't?" Ruby responded, shaking her head as if she couldn't believe the injustice. "Hardly seems fair, given y'all's sacrifice for them people in town."

"It is our duty," said the shorter of the two, his accent gently French-inflected, "We take turns."

"Mmhmm, oh, I'll bet," Ruby nodded, taking a slow step forward. "Tell me, how often do you have duty?" The guards traded looks, until the shorter confirmed; "three times a week, sometimes four."

"Right, and there's how many of you all up here?" Ruby mimed counting the other guards scattered throughout the wall. "Guessin' you see a lot of the same folk during your turns?"

"What does that have to do with anythin', lady?"

"She's saying that while you all babysit these devils-" John paused briefly to look at Ruby, whose eyes widened in surprise, suppressing a laugh "-thousands of folk down there go on about their business, get dinner, see a show. Don't seem fair, to me."

"Nor me," Ruby affirmed, "which is why we're puttin' an end to it, tonight. You can help or leave; we don't have any quarrel with y'all." The guards stared as John began to set up the Gatling gun, giving it a test swivel on its base. "Mind telling your colleagues, along the wall, too? I'd love a few helpin' hands where I can get 'em." She beamed at the two, practically batting her eyelashes.

The shorter guard muttered, "I think I will just go home," and made his way along the wall, but the taller stepped forward, shaking Ruby's hand, then John's. "Y'all think dynamite might help?"

Ruby and John looked at each other, blinked. "I reckon I've never been in a situation where it would, but this might just be the exception," she said, slowly.

"I'll get that for you, miss," the guard declared, and John smiled to himself; these new men eating out of Ruby's hands, already. "City said I couldn't bring in my ma over from Lagras, f*ck the load of these bastards." They watched him move along the wall, talking with the other guards. Most left, hopping down onto the far side, but some stayed, and soon, they had a squadron of five with them on the north wall, and as many sticks of dynamite to play with.

As they waited for the sun to rise, John murmured to Ruby, out of the corner of his mouth, "Why didn't we just make for the other side of the wall while our friend here was recruiting? Seems like a lot of effort ahead of us, still."

Ruby, who'd been smiling since the word "dynamite" had entered into her evening, turned serious. "Because it ain't fair, John," she said, holding a hand out to the glittering lights of the city spread before them. "That they get to have all this while the whole world turns to hell."

"Oh," he said, chastened, sitting with what she'd said.

"Besides," she continued, the smile returning, "I really want to blow somethin' up."

When the sun first peeked over the blurred, grey-green line that represented Sisika Penitentiary on the eastern horizon, Ruby gave John a solemn, slow nod. He fed the belt of ammunition into the Gatling and seized the crank, pointing the barrel at a large, ambling undead down below. With the first careful turn of the crank, it began.

The twisted and gnarled, the bloated and fleshy, the barely moving; all of the undead horrors down below were subjected to the Gatling's deadly spray, ripping holes through long-dead sinew and bone, rendering them motionless. Chips of masonry flew, adding to the almost cheery, repetitivetink-a-tinkof the gun shuddering in John's hands, the muscles in his upper and forearms tensed and strained to keep control of the weapon. Ruby moved along the wall, giving gentle reminders to the men they had to hold fire unless their position was threatened, to save their ammo until it was needed.

But one, a nervous, slender fellow who'd had his finger on the trigger of his repeater all night, let out a cry and fired on an undead close to the wall that could best be described as distended; its flesh pushed out as far as it could by some unknown interior force. Unknown until the bullet hit it, that is. The flesh of the undead snapped back from the bullet's entry point - a needle into a balloon - and let loose a cloud of stinking green vapour.

As the men and Ruby hacked and coughed at the stench, the remaining undead in the cemetery moved as one towards the cloud, climbing on top of each other, the ones on top dangerously close to the wall's edge. Ruby, her mouth buried into the crook of her elbow, gestured emphatically to either side of their current position, yelling, "Move, dammit! Move!"

Two guards helped John carry the Gatling between them towards the eastern wall, and their dynamite-procuring friend - whose name was Daniel - followed with its base and ammo. The other two guards jumped ship, figuratively, leaving Ruby alone in front of the growing pile of undead. She lit a torch and dropped it over the pile, watching it scatter to avoid the flames. Then, she plucked a stick of dynamite from the bundle, dropped it as well, and ran.

John watched her run turn into a desperate leap as the dynamite hit the burning torch down below, blasting several undead into irreconcilable pieces, and blowing a hole into the northern wall. As the smoke cleared, she emerged from it, examining her scraped elbows, touching a hand to a small cut in her cheek, where a chip of stone had caught her. "Deserters, in my regiment?" She mock-scoffed, flashing John a lopsided smile.

In the distance, they heard the crack of the Carcano, Pearson finishing off the remaining undead that spilled through the breach in the wall. The graveyard, previously roiling with shifting undead, was still. A committee of vultures made themselves and their intentions known, lining up against the opposite wall, glaring down at the feast before them.

John bent to tap at Ruby's scorched pant legs, which had briefly caught fire in the blast. "Looks like you're back in skirts, Miss Dufresne." She blew an errant lock of hair off of her face, squinting at him.

"Don't get all excited on me now, Mr. Marston," she admonished, staring him down. He felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, that he'd overstepped; counteracted immediately by her arms around his neck, her joyful laughter. "We did it, boys!" She cried, and the remaining guards' cheering around them was palpable.

Ruby released John and handed the remaining dynamite to Daniel. "Would you do the honours, partner?" Daniel looked confused, but she pointed at the other, intact walls of the graveyard, winked. "Gotta get your ma over here some way, right?"

John and Ruby leapt from the wall close to the new hole she'd put in it, landing safely in the long grasses. Pearson greeted them, leading Thoreau and Sybil by their reins and holding forth the Carcano, pushing into Ruby's arms once he was close enough. An explosion - Daniel, with the dynamite - sounded behind them, and Pearson flinched.

"Think that's enough excitement for me, Mr. Marston, Miss Dufresne," he said, handing them the reins of their respective horses.

"You did real well, Mr. Pearson," Ruby said warmly, clapping him on the back.

John nodded in agreement. "Like a cornered tiger out there." Pearson returned the nod, shook John's hand, and waved off, heading back towards his wagon, leaving the pair alone again to face the breach in the graveyard wall.

They approached it together, leading their horses. John offered a hand to Ruby to steady her as she stepped over the rubble, which she took, smiling. They crossed the graveyard and exited through the second hole into Saint Denis, looking for Lyndon.

Chapter 17: xvii. “Y'all been through it”

Chapter Text

If Saint Denis left the guarding of its graveyard walls to an unlucky few, it was as though the entire town had mobilized to repair the breaches that Ruby had blown into them. John and Ruby moved against the current of distressed citizens clutching wooden boards, trowels, hammers and nails, trailed by their horses, nickering at the hubbub.

"Excuse me, do you know Lyndon Thomas?" Ruby asked of a woman leading a young child by the arm towards the park, who shook her head, and then the same of a man with a stack of planks in his arms.

"I'm a bit busy, trying to fix the damned wall," he snapped back.

"Oh, real easy to burn those," she replied casually, John snickering at the man's soured expression.

Ruby continued on asking the people passing them by about Lyndon; something John found hopeless - the city more populous than any other he'd visited - but also, innocent, and sweet. So much so that he started galvanizing himself to break it to her that she might not find Lyndon this way, when a family of four - dressed for church service, it looked like - pointed towards a small clutch of houses with a shared, fenced-in yard, a large bonfire crackling merrily beyond it.

"C'mon, John," she urged, tugging at his wrist and making for the fence, identifying a small gate that they eased the horses through, one at a time. A man resembling the large boy in the photograph John had seen rose from a stump by the fire, dropping the small carving and knife in his massive hands to the grass at his feet.

"Lyn?" Ruby exclaimed, letting Sybil's reins fall from her hand and running to him. "Jesus Christ, I can't believe it." They embraced, the man lifting Ruby clear off the ground and spinning her around before easing her back down to her feet.

"My Ruby girl," he said, his voice soft, undersized for his large frame. He held her face between one thumb and forefinger, adoringly - he could have crushed her head like a grape, but John sensed that was not this gentle giant's style - before turning his attention to John himself.

"This is John Marston," Ruby lay a hand on John's back, pushing him towards Lyndon. "He helped me track you down. We've been through it, my brother."

"That so," Lyndon said, scrutinizing John for only a moment before breaking into a brilliant smile, enveloping John's hand in both of his own. "Thanks for taking care of my girl here, Mr. Marston, real kind of you." Again, his voice was breathy and gentle, surprising for his body.

"Someone I want you to meet, too, Rube," Lyndon continued, walking backwards and leaning into the house to their left, calling inside. A beautiful, dark-complected woman emerged from the house, wearing a colourfully embroidered blouse, looking through her thick eyelashes at them, bashfully. "My wife, Marta."

Ruby looked between Lyndon and Marta, Marta's swollen belly hinting at a third family member she'd yet to meet. John caught in her expression a fleeting sadness; that she'd never ask Lyndon to join them now that she knew he was expecting a child. But it was over in an instant, Ruby wrapping Marta into a half-embrace, her other hand splayed over the woman's stomach, beaming at them both.

"Y'all been through it, huh," Lyndon smiled again, seeing these two women he loved holding each other at the elbows, like they'd known each other for decades. He led John and Ruby to a small worker's bunkhouse on the property where they could rest; showed them the shower - and then how to use it.

John and Ruby took turns in the strange contraption that was nonetheless welcome; dirt running off of their bodies in eddies towards the ground, leaving the skin underneath ruddy and clean. They each changed into spare clothes; Ruby, the white dress from Valentine, John, into spare jeans over his union suit, and slept away the afternoon in their bunk beds, exhausted from the night's events.

He awoke in the early evening, Ruby already outside, sitting on a log at the fireside next to Marta. John joined them on a small folding stool, nodding to Lyndon, again perched on his stump. Marta rose from her place and handed John a small stone plate of golden, rectangular dumplings that tantalizingly steamed.

"Tamales," she said quietly, her Spanish accent breezing over the word, extending a compact hand to implore John to eat. The perfectly-steamed corn exterior was velvet-like on his tongue, the ground meat inside singing with unfamiliar seasonings that warmed his stomach.

"It's good," he said, smiling at her, and she blushed, her eyelashes pointing down to the ground. "Uh...muy bien." He tried, clumsily, and the group laughed. She was pleased that they liked the food, offered them seconds they both took. John and Marta were mostly quiet at the fire, listening to Ruby and Lyndon reminisce about their days in the orphanage.

"Near thirty of those Lemoyne Raiders shown up at the door that one night, remember, Lyn?" Ruby, who'd had a couple of beers and was extra emphatic as a result, her eyes sparkling in the firelight. "It were our own war of Reformation!"

"Counter-reformation," Lyndon corrected, in his quiet way, "we was a Catholic orphanage," prompting a shriek of laughter from Ruby.

"Whatever you wanna call it, brother," she shrugged, returning to the log. "The point being, I ain't never seen grown men cry that much, until old Otis put his head in the schoolbell and started pretendin' to be the voice of God, callin' them heathen folk and the like." John and Marta joined in on their laughter; it was infectious.

At one point in the night, Lyndon fetched an old guitar, tuned it up, sang old hymnals in his beautiful, deep voice, Ruby joining in on the harmonies in her own, rendered sweet - if slightly off-key - in song. John looked around himself, feeling what he hadn't in a long time; surrounded by a happy family. He let the warmth of the fire heat his face and hands, the simple songs find and soothe his weary heart. He found himself beside Ruby on the log, Marta having moved to sit on Lyndon's knee.

The couple rose and stretched, embraced Ruby and John both, bid them goodnight. The two returned to the log, sipping on their beers, staring into the fire. The silence was not unpleasant, but the experiences of the evening weighed on John, compelling him to speak his mind.

"You know, Miss Dufresne, I'm real sorry for what happened to you. It was wrong of that woman to keep you like she did."

"But?" She smiled at the fire, preempting him.

"But," he repeated, smiling in turn, "you got a lot of love in your life. I saw it tonight. Lyndon loves you. Marta just met you, and she loves you. I'm sure all of your other brothers and wives, if they got 'em, love you too."

"True," she said, uncharacteristically brief, still captivated by the flames.

"Having parents ain't all it's cracked up to be," he continued. "My real father was a drunken fool, my adoptive father was an idealistic fool, and...I'm a fool too, a real sh*t father for my son."

Ruby's head shot up, her hand finding John's knee. "I'm not gonna sit here and listen to you talk about yourself like that," she said, forcefully, but then took notice of her hand and retracted it, her fingers curling into her palm, hovering over his leg, her face reddening. John looked from the hand to her, hardly believing what he felt blooming between them. Tentatively, he reached out, pushed his fingers under hers, releasing them from her palm, intertwining them with his own.

She looked away, speaking into her shoulder. "I don't want to make you do something you'd regret, John."

"Youmakeme?" He scoffed, gently, easing another hand forward to cup her cheek, guiding her to make eye contact with him. "I thought back in the orphanage, you..."

"I was worried about your family, John, about getting in between you all."

"Don't know what there is to get between, anymore," he said, and in saying it aloud, realized he'd believed it to be true for quite awhile, perhaps even longer than he was yet willing to give due. "And that's got nothing to do with you, you hear me? I want this." He redoubled his grip on her hand, trailed the hand on her cheek down her neck. "I want this, if you do."

"I do," she said, in a whisper, leaning forward to brush his chapped lips with her own. She rubbed the tip of her nose against his, before kissing him again, more deeply, releasing his hand to wrap an arm around his neck. Ruby broke from the kiss first, rose to standing, offered him a hand up.

John hesitated as she softly tugged his hand in the direction of their bunkhouse, her smiling eyes filling with concern. "I thought because I'm so much...ah..."

"Older?" She filled in for him again, and he reddened, nodding. She leaned forward, conspiratorially, tilting her chin to whisper in his ear. "It's been all farmhands and country boys, my whole life, never a man, like you, John." she said, fixing her blue eyes on his, a blush blossoming across her cheeks and neck. "I want someone who can tell me what to do."

Ruby strode purposefully into the bunkhouse, then, and he felt his pupils blow out with lust, compelled after her. He knocked the door open, taking her by surprise, grasping around her waist from behind with one hand and burying his fingers of the other into her hair, gently pulling her face back to him. He kissed her, his tongue probing against hers, breaking off to suck a mark into her exposed neck.

The hand around her waist crawled up to rest in between her breasts, a warm weight against the night's chill that had settled into her skin. She held the hand, nudged it towards her right breast, and John took the hint, rubbing at her nipple with his thumb through the thin fabric of the dress. Ruby stifled a moan, and he let go, stroking her cheek and kissing along her jaw, rubbing his stubble there.

"I want to hear all of those pretty little moans, darlin'," he whispered, releasing her hair to skim the fingers of both hands down her neck and across her shoulderblades, pulling at the dress' straps to fall down her arms and off her body, leaving a trail of gooseflesh in his wake. He marvelled at her responsiveness, at her beautiful body in the faint lamplight, awakening to his touch.

He reached a hand down towards her undergarments, plucking tentatively at the waistband before stopping. "This all right?" He asked, and she nodded, quickly. "You sure, Ruby?"

Then; there it was, threatening to undo him entirely. "Please." He plunged his hand down to find her wet, teased a fingertip along to rub against her, drawing another moan from her lips. She bucked into him, her ass pushing into the erection that strained, painfully, against his fly. John couldn't wait anymore, urging her gently onto the lower bunk, on her back, pulling off his jeans and union suit as quickly as he could, rushing to meet her.

"Now hold it, cowboy," she said, smiling, a hand to his thigh stopping him from joining her on the bed. "I want to look, same as you." John had been naked, but now hefeltnaked, her eyes roaming over his lean frame, hand reaching up to trail along the few scars that had made it onto his shoulder and chest. She nodded, the smile growing to show her teeth, crinkle the corners of her eyes. "I approve. Come here."

He climbed on top of her, then, easing a finger into her and searching for her nod before replacing the finger with himself, shuddering at the feeling. He was closer than he'd realized, but she seemed to be, too, taking his instruction about her noises at face value and gasping into his ear, her pulse fluttering at her throat, held gently under the pad of his thumb.

John cradled Ruby's head, her soft, ash-blond hair, through his final, erratic thrusts, pulling out to come in three thick stripes across her stomach, his head finally clear enough to tease her into her own climax. She wiped herself off with her bloomers and settled back into him, panting, and beaming.

"You are quite something, John Marston," she murmured, her eyelids heavy.

"Likewise, Ruby Dufresne." He whispered back, kissing her crown, both of them finding a deep sleep.

Chapter 18: xviii. For whom his watch was wound

Chapter Text

John didn't sleep long, waking at the first few chirrups of birdsong in the early morning, a rogue rooster's crow somewhere in Lyndon and Marta's Saint Denis neighbourhood. In the dim light, he could count each individual freckle on Ruby's sleeping face, where her tan abruptly turned into pale; on her breasts and stomach, there, more errant freckles to discover.

He could no longer resist stroking along her side with his fingertips, the valley of her waist and summit of her hip, palming, then gripping her ass under the blanket and pulling her toward him, prompting a small whimper from her parted mouth. Ruby's eyes opened an inch from John's, searching for just a moment before she smiled in recognition, kissing his lips, under his jaw. She grazed the scars on his face. This time, he welcomed it, closing his eyes to feel her fingernails along the hairline gaps in his dark beard, to feel blessed for finding himself there at that moment, at the mercy of her touch.

"Ain't you sweet," John murmured, pressing his lips to her forehead. She pulled back, smiling wickedly.

"And thus I clothe my naked villainy with odd old ends stolen out of holy writ," she recited, holding up her index finger, "and seem a saint when most I play the devil."

"You speaking scripture to me, honey?" John seized her wrist, bit at the meat of her palm, and she squirmed, giggled.

"No chance in hell," she gasped out, barked a laugh, "it's from a play some English fella wrote. We saw it when we was kids. I loved it so much I tried to get my brothers to read it to me enough times to remember it all." She looked momentarily rueful. "'Course, I couldn't."

John released her palm from where he held it between his teeth, kissing her hand instead, gentle where he was rough, coaxing the smile back to her face. "Thought it was the Bible."

"I don't believe in God or any of His lies, John," she replied, matter-of-factly, rolling her head back to the pillow, to stare at the wooden slats of the bunk above them. "Pray for a mama and a daddy your whole life; will knock the faith right out of you."

He ran his hand in absent-minded circles over her bare stomach, reached across her to caress her upper arm, her far cheekbone. She tucked her chin to kiss his fingers, a dangerous flash in her eyes preceding her taking of his index finger into her mouth, sucking until her cheeks hollowed, her tongue flicking over his fingertip. John groaned, his eyes squeezing shut in pleasure, his co*ck springing to attention at the thought of her skillful mouth on it.

Ruby rolled over to straddle him, urging his wet finger to her nipple, hunched forward to avoid banging her head on the upper bunk. But there was a knock on the door, and she did in surprise anyway, rolling back off of John's yearning hips to sit against the wall, holding her head where it had cracked against the wood.

"Rube, Mr. Marston?" Lyndon's whispered voice sounded on the other side of the bunkhouse's door. "Y'all best get ready to go; town ain't too happy about that wall, Ruby girl." John and Ruby's eyes widened at each other; they each scrambled from the bed, locating their clothes, boots, guns.

In mere minutes, Ruby had wrenched the door open, meeting Lyndon's curious face. He took note of the one bunk, neatly made, the other, rumpled and dishevelled; the triplet to the equally dishevelled Ruby before him, John behind her, his cheeks burning under the brim of his hat. Lyndon only smirked, handing Ruby a basket.

"From Marta, for the road," he explained, squeezing Ruby's shoulder and accepting a kiss to his cheek, and then, once John exited the little building, reaching forth for a handshake. "You watch after my girl, now, Mr. Marston."

"I watchhim," Ruby laughed, over by the horses, pulling Sybil's saddle onto her back and fastening her girth before climbing on. John gripped Lyndon's hand, hoping his feelings, his silent pledge to protect her, were clear. He nodded at the man and released his hand, greeting Thoreau with a pat before administering to his own saddle.

The two kicked off, waving to Lyndon behind them. They galloped through the early morning streets for the graveyard wall before it sealed up entirely. The city glad to see its invaders gone, they were back on the road north to Annesburg; nothing, and everything, changed.

John couldn't help but reflect on the previous night's events, as he followed Ruby along the boards laid over the swamplands outside of Saint Denis; their horses' hoofbeats making decisive, resonantthwumpsagainst the wood. For one, he'd had no opportunity to think about what it'd meant at the time, his mind - normally clouded with thoughts, with doubt - blissfully clear. He'd focused only on her sounds, her expressions, the feeling of her body in his hands, around him. Vocal, gorgeous, responsive. When he could get her alone again was a priority edged ahead of the purpose of their journey, ahead of everything.

Your watch is wound to her time, now. He heard the old expression favoured by his other "parent" in the gang, Hosea Matthews, so clearly in his mind. Hosea had spouted the wizened phrase at Dutch when he'd first met his Annabel; John just a surly teen, then. He had said it about John the first time he'd lain with Abigail too, he remembered suddenly, a twinge of guilt in his stomach. But even then, there was no doubt on those boards for whom his watch was wound, Ruby's hair streaming behind her, her ass shapely in her saddle, encased in the white dress that had provoked him to daydream so dangerously, in Valentine, about them both; the dress he'd slid off her willing body the night before.

He squirmed in his saddle at the memory, pleasantly uncomfortable. They were at the final stretch of boards before coming into the rocky fields and forests of eastern New Hanover, and, unfortunately, they would not be as easily traversed as in their recent past. The clatter made by their horses' hooves had invited some unwanted company.

A lump in the swamp unfurled itself to standing to reveal an undead, swathed in muck, its glowing eyes illuminating the mud dripping off of its face in globs. It seemed as though to stare at them for a moment before rushing the boards, making its way for Ruby in front. She pulled out her rifle and held its barrel in her fists; Ruby at bat, once again.

As she swung the gun, the undead did something neither of them expected. It ducked. No sooner had Ruby realized what had happened that the undead seized the rifle's stock and pulled forcefully. Another undead arose from the swamp and made to startle Ruby's horse, risking her falling from the saddle yet again; John's stomach lurched for the woman between the two, a muddy undead's handprint on the pristine white of the dress, her mare prancing on the spot, upset.

"Let go, Ruby!" He shouted, and she came to her senses, releasing the rifle barrel, causing the undead pulling it to stumble backwards, and spurring Sybil forward to safety. John followed, putting a bullet into each undead's head and retrieving Ruby's gun from the undead's failing hands, riding up next to her to return it. She took it from him, blankly, her face indecipherable as she returned it to the saddle, kicking Sybil onward.

They rode on until they were free of the planks, the swamp; John reached over and gently seized Sybil's reins, urging her and her rider to a slow stop once he was sure there were no more undead after them. Ruby's facial expression was the same, eyes squinting despite the overcast day, mouth set firmly into a line. John dropped the reins and reached for her hand instead, squeezing at her fingers. "You're OK, sweetheart. We're good."

She looked at him as if startled, as if she just realized he was there next to her, holding her hand. The rifle was still grasped in her other, and she shouldered it, releasing John to do so. Her cheeks flushed. "Them undead were way too smart." She rubbed up and down her bare arms, looking back to where they'd come from, the two still bodies of the fallen undead attracting a lone grey fox, loping out from the swamps to investigate.

John understood what she meant, staring at the handprint on her dress. They hadn't just barrelled after them, as usual; the undead had coordinated an attack. Choosing the smaller of the two, and then exploiting Ruby and her horse's vulnerabilities to try and pick her off. He followed her gaze back to the swamps, noticed the glints of ivory bone poking out of the marsh. They'd clearly been successful, in the past.

"Looks like they eat well, anyway," he tried to joke, but his own words just turned his stomach. Ruby's face screwed up further.

"Or maybe I'm just stupider than a dead thing," she huffed, her hands on her arms now moving at a frenetic pace, shivering. "You ain't," John soothed, reaching for her again, to find her arm cold. He pulled his shirt from his saddlebag and held it open behind her back, for her to feed her arms into.

"Where's the next town?" She gave him a small smile in thanks for the shirt, wrapping it around herself.

"Van Horn's up ahead," he remembered to himself, scratching at his chin, "it's a disaster; sailors and miscreants and the like, all caked in rust and filth and whiskey. Can't imagine how the undead would make it any better. We should just ride around it."

"I need warm clothes if we're gonna keep heading north," she stated, burying her chin into the collar of John's shirt. He noticed her breathing deeply, inhaling his smell, and it stirred him.Ifthey kept heading north. Implying that they could just stop here, instead, discover each other as they had, so much, about things they'd rather not.

But Ruby never spoke in riddles and contradictions, and John gave himself a shake. "To Van Horn, then, my lady," he tipped his hat to make her laugh, and it worked. "After you."

Chapter 19: xix. “Welcome to Van Horn!”

Chapter Text

He couldn't help it; John's face contorted into a wince as the Van Horn lighthouse came into view, as rusty and weathered as he remembered it to be. The rest of the port town was obscured by a makeshift wall, a handful of undead groaning before it. Unlike their swamp cousins, these ones had not been blessed with any particular intelligence, and they bumped up against the wall repeatedly, their undead caterwauling punctuated by the dull thumps of their bodies hitting against the planks of wood and sheet metal.

John heard the crack of Ruby's rifle firing to his right, then heard it three more times. The undead slumped against the wall one final time, their blackish blood painting wide streaks that charted their paths down to the ground. He glanced at her, saw her continuing to aim between the still corpses, felt concern bloom within him at Ruby's sudden skittishness, her willingness to "waste bullets" - what would have typically been her words - on some of the stupidest undead they'd yet come across. She was still shaken from their earlier encounter, he thought, or perhaps, all of the cumulative encounters they'd come across until that moment.How many undead can one person see, can one person get attacked by, before it gets to be too much?

To give her a moment to recuperate and gather herself, John approached the small door in the wall; not unfamiliar to him after their experience in Valentine. An alert, but friendly man opened it before John had a chance to knock, his frizzled grey eyebrows narrowing and widening repeatedly at the two of them. "I heard gunshots, y'all all right?"

"Yes, sir," John nodded. "We was just-"

"Either of you bit?" The man's eyebrows narrowed the furthest they'd ever had in their brief encounter, joining over the bridge of his nose.

"No, sir." John's nod abruptly turned into a shake as he gestured at himself, at Ruby, as if to invite inspection. But it wasn't necessary. The man stepped back from the door and waved them in with a "Very well," and instructed them that they'd need to dismount to pass through the doorway.

John went in without incident, but he heard Ruby snipe behind him: "You gonna separate us and tell us to keep quiet? Or knock us out and feed us to the undead? Or wear a boar head and take your pecker out, hmm?"

The man stared at her, and then laughed, holding his sides, his eyebrows raised enough to show his eyes wet with tears. "The mouth on this one, mister!" He said, addressing John, slapping his knee. "You sure got your work cut out for you!" Ruby scowled as the man waved her on, repeating her invectives gleefully before gasping out, "Welcome to Van Horn!"

While the lighthouse may have been the same, the town that John and Ruby took in was nothing like he'd remembered. The main strip was devoid of the odd stumbling drunk or duelling gunslingers that had graced the Van Horn of twelve years' past. Instead, it appeared to be a bustling marketplace; near-spotlessly clean, with a butcher's stand, gleaming windows showcasing the displays of storefronts, and at least a hundred people moving to and fro, about their business.

"You see a tailor, John?" Ruby asked, tugging at the skirt of her dress. He peered over the crowd and spotted a sign shaped like an oversized spool of thread, hanging over a shop. "Yeah, think so." He answered, taking her free hand in his and leading the way.

They hitched their horses outside of the shop, entered. The tailor looked up from hemming a pant leg; his thin moustache waxed upwards to touch the apple of each of his cheeks. When he greeted them, his voice was gently French-accented.

"You always in Van Horn, mister?" John asked, his curiosity getting the better of him.

"Ah, non," the tailor nodded sagely, closing his eyes. "My shop was in Saint Denis, but I had left town to pick up fabric when thechangehappened."

"You were caught on the outside," Ruby spoke up, her fingers grazing the silk of a dusty pink gown fitted over a mannequin.

"Yes, mademoiselle," he nodded again, his movements almost comical, if the man weren't also so earnest that it would have been too cruel to laugh. "But we find our home here in Van 'orn, and it is a good one in the end."

Ruby flipped through the tailor's catalogue, selecting a pair of riding pants, a new denim shirt, a black corduroy jacket lined with coyote fur. John put a stack of bills on the counter, piped, "maybe two each of the pants and shirt, if you wouldn't mind," he chanced a smile at Ruby, "this one's clothes ain't long for this world."

"Only lately, since meeting you," she shot back, returning his grin, causing the tailor to blush at their forwardness.

"I can have these ready tomorrow morning," he said, pretending to be very interested in his notes on Ruby's measurements. "Will you be staying at the hotel? I can have them sent there."

Ruby said "Tomorrow?" at the same time as John's "Hotel?" - the thought of a night with her, completely alone, clouding his thoughts.

That is, until Ruby said, "We was just hoping to pass through, you see. Any way they could get done a little quicker? Maybe you could sew faster?" She mimed sewing, speeding up her arm until it rocketed up and down, encouraging a small titter of laughter from the tailor.

"I do my best," he replied, and they left the shop, the tailor to his sewing.

Ruby seemed in good spirits as they retrieved their horses and continued to walk them down the street, towards the hotel. She pointed at a lunch counter and waved a couple of bills at John. "Lunch is on me, Marston," she smiled, "why don't you hitch these two and I'll meet you at the pier, we can have ourselves a waterside feast?"

John followed her orders silently, hitching the horses outside of the hotel, whether in a hopeful bid for the wicked thoughts that had crept into his mind in the tailor's shop, he wasn't sure he wanted to know. He made his way down the pier, this too, changed from what he remembered of it. A man sold shaved ice to children -children, in Van Horn!he thought in disbelief - from a red-and-white striped cart, and a planter of bright sunflowers defied the cloudy day in the pier's dead centre, the benches surrounding it filled with happy families, a few adoring couples, and an elderly man feeding seagulls from a heel of bread. Van Horn too had grown odd in the intervening months since the undead had hit; but in the sense that it became opposite to what it had been. It became, in short, a nice place to live.

He glanced back to the lunch counter to see Ruby dancing with impatience; fourth in a line of people awaiting service. Figuring he had time, John entered the large storage barn at the end of the pier; still surprisingly a fence after all of the other changes that had come over the town. The daylight filtered in through murky windowglass, motes of dust revelling in the shafts of light. John smirked to himself, glad to see something solid, immutable amid so much transformation.

He dug through a small basket of old tools, rusted beyond repair, and surveyed a few posters on the wall, sunfaded and yellowed with tobacco smoke, when his gaze fell upon an old Otis Miller comic; the kind of Penny Dreadful adventure Jack used to love reading growing up. John gripped it in his hands, flipped through a few of the pages, finding the language plain and sparse, with plenty of illustrations.

"How much is this?" He said, overloudly, his excitement getting the better of him.

"That's ten," the cable-knit clad storeowner replied.

"Ten cents?" John dug into his pocket happily for the change, but the man shook his head.

"Tenbullets," he emphasized, hissing out thes. John stared between the man and the book in his hand.

"You serious?" The man smirked. "I look like I'm joking?"

John huffed out an exhale, looking at the book again. After a moment, he slammed the book down to rifle through his bag, pulling out the woman's purse from Strawberry and counting out ten bullets of various calibres and metals, looking surreptitiously over his shoulder as if Ruby were to come bursting in and raise hell about ammunition at any moment.

When he met Ruby at the pier's edge and plunked down next to her, the book tucked into his bag a burning secret, she smiled at him, unaware, passing him a bread roll and a piece of cheese and cooked ham, all wrapped in waxed paper. She tucked in happily, swinging her dangling legs and pointing at the far shoreline, the procession of tugboats that presumably fed goods to hungry Saint Denis.

John could only muster a few bites of his own lunch before it became too much; he pulled out the book and brandished it before her, announcing, "I got you something." Ruby looked from his face to the book in his hands, obviously a child's story, and her smile disappeared.

"John, what's that for?"

"To help you to learn to read, see," he opened the book, pointed at the spare lines of dialogue, the few descriptive passages that headlined certain panels. "I thought it'd be easier this way, because there's pictures-"

Ruby pushed the book towards him, frowning deeply. "I don't want to do that, John, it's too late."

"I'm gonna help you, too," John's enthusiasm from the store spilled over to her, and she recoiled briefly.

"No, John," she gave the book another shove. In a smaller voice, she added, "It's embarrassing for me, I don't want you to help." John saw her gaze back out over the water, feeling stung. But an idea struck him.

"Can you swim, Ruby?" He asked, taking his hat off and setting it beside him, along with the book and his bag.

"Sure, course I can," she said, her voice curt.

"I mean, well?" He pulled off his boots and added them to the pile of his things, removed his gun belt.

"Yes, John," she replied, exasperated. "I swim well. But I don't know what that has to do with reading." Ruby could say no more, because John had slid forward off of the pier's edge, into the fetid water. "What the hell?" He heard Ruby shriek, saw her looking over the edge with her hands on her hips, watching him burst from the surface briefly, gasping and choking, before he went back under, his brief, desperate splashes the only indication that there was a man underwater.

His panicking brain heard the splash of someone entering the water next to him; through the thicket of bubbles that tickled his face he saw Ruby's hair, greenish underwater, the white dress blooming around her. She seized around his chest, under his arms, and kicked off of a post caked in tiny mussels, rocketing them both to the surface. She clung onto the post and supported John as he spluttered, coughing up the brackish water from his lungs.

"The f*ck is the matter with you, John?" She shouted, accepting a rope ladder from a concerned passers-by above and holding it steady so that John could climb up, before she followed. The two lay on the pier, exhausted and struggling for breath, a few onlookers giving them a wide berth.

"See," he gasped, still wheezing from near-drowning, "we both know different things, we both help each other." He forced out the end of his sentence, the last of the water leaving his mouth in a loud hack.

"Not sure you know anything at all, you absolute dope," she admonished, wringing out her hair. "Like I'm going to trust you to teach me anything at all." But once they'd bathed themselves of the sludgy harbour water and retired to a hotel room for the evening in clean clothes, Ruby conceded to sit and follow along with John's careful reading of the first few pages ofOtis Miller and the Black-Hearted Lady; to trace over the capital letters he started with his nub of pencil spelling her own name,RUBY DUFRESNE.

He stood over her shoulder, watching her progress, pointing out letters and gently noting the sounds they made, encouraging her with small murmurs of praise when she finished a particularly long word or sentence. For all of his patience and kindness, Ruby made for a terrible student, fiddling with the pencil and groaning with the effort.

"Just a little more, sweetheart," John coaxed, pointing at the page in front of them. Ruby glanced at him sidelong, a wicked grin growing on her face. From sitting, she slid her hands down the sides of his pants, tracing her thumbs along the insides of his hips. John cleared his throat. "What are you doing, Miss Dufresne?" He asked quietly, trying to keep his breath from hitching.

She pulled one hand out to unbutton his fly, her fingers working nimbly to free his growing co*ck. She sank from the chair, kneeling in front of him, her mouth so close to him that he could feel her hot breath. That he could feel too, the words, "Can't much read with my mouth full, can I, John?"

And he thought to argue the point, but then felt her mouth around him, and, blissfully, couldn't think of much else at all.

Chapter 20: xx. The beckoning eye of God

Chapter Text

John, awakening, reached to the space to his right in the luxuriously big hotel bed, only to find it vacant, cold. He pushed the heel of his hand into his eye to rid it of sleep, to better look for Ruby. Through a squint, he spotted her curled into a chair wearing his shirt, her long, tanned legs tucked into chevrons, knocked askew; one splayed to the side, the other upright, her knee a prop for her chin. She was reading the adventure book, her face scrunched up at the page, her thumbnail between her teeth in concentration.

He smiled to himself and closed his eyes, leaving her to it, listening to the rain lash at the windows and patter against the roof, punctuated with Ruby's occasional sigh of frustration, or much less occasionally, the laboured turn of a page.

When the rain let up, John dragged himself from the bed - the last time he'd allowed himself to sleep in, he couldn't remember - and nudged Ruby from the chair, beckoning for the shirt. She clutched it around herself in teasing defiance before relinquishing the garment, handing it to him. Her breasts were tempting to him in the brief moment they were bare, before she caught his gaze with a wink, pulling on an undershirt, then her denim shirt and pants, newly delivered from the tailor's.

"Would you look at this, John!" She exclaimed, doing a couple of performative lunges and repeatedly drawing and reholstering her right revolver, twirling it once in each interval. "Feel dressed to kill a few undead today, I reckon."

"It is a murderous figure you cut, honey," John's voice was low, dangerous, and she smirked as he moved behind her, burying his nose into where her starched collar met her neck, running his hands down her stomach and thighs.

"We'll be paying for another night at this rate," she said, quietly, turning around to hold his chin in her fingers, rub her thumb over his lips. John, buzzing with need, couldn't tell whether she was scolding or encouraging him, but erred on the side of caution; he kissed the pad of her thumb and stepped away from her, opening the door and waving her through. They pulled on their coats and made for their horses, ready to ride out to Butcher Creek, in search of Ruby's brother, Jasper.

Ruby would have the opportunity to test the killing power of her new clothes soon after leaving Van Horn, and several times after; there were so many undead in Roanoke Ridge that their moaning was a constant drone on the wind, all around them.

When the land turned from grasses to forest, it seemed particularly close and claustrophobic, the treed canopy over the path blocking out the sunlight. The dappled sun through the leaves reminded John of so many undead eyes, watching their procession. The wind whispering through the trees played tricks on them, and they swivelled in their saddles, John's shotgun and Ruby's revolver each at the ready, clutched in their white-knuckled hands.

"I heard about folk out here called the Murphys," whispered Ruby, "supposed to be terrifying."

"Murfrees," John corrected, nodding, "and yeah, they ain't nice. Almost like they're undead already."

"You seen 'em?" Her eyes went wide, and her hand redoubled its grip around the gun in it.

John nodded again, pointed vaguely northeast. "Used to live up here, with the gang. Were our dark days, when things were getting real bad. Ran into the Murfrees now and again; they did nasty things like string people up for the fun of it, lay traps for folk to fall into. I don't miss it here." He continued looking off towards Beaver Hollow, the final camp of the Van der Linde gang, where they'd splintered, irreconcilably. He felt a warm hand on his wrist and started, looking into Ruby's face, full of kind concern.

"There's my jumpy fella," she cooed, squeezing his arm before letting go, encouraging Sybil into a light trot. He gave himself a shake and spurred Thoreau on to follow, the pair ducking under low hanging tree branches and listening for the moans that surrounded them to grow louder; a true threat.

After an hour or so of riding, Ruby held up her fist, slowed Sybil to a stop. She hopped from the saddle to peer at something hanging from a tree; different strands of yarn woven around two twigs crossed into anx, spinning in the breeze. "This is a God's eye," she said, "Jasper used to make these all the time, come on."

They travelled slowly down a side path, the forest floor only slightly disturbed there, suggesting its routine use by just one or two people at most. More God's eyes; some sun-weathered and faded, others nearly brand-new, rotated on branches along their way. The forest seemed to close in on them, the sky almost completely obscured if not for the crown shyness of the trees allowing small cracks of late-day blue to appear overhead.

It wasn't long before they found a small clearing, on which sat a dilapidated shack made of aged, weatherworn wood, a cooking fire to its right, and in the branches surrounding the clearing; hundreds of God's eyes, whirling in the wind. An old, sickly looking grey horse tethered to a post whinnied in alarm, and a figure burst from the shack, clutching a rusted shotgun, aiming at them from his post on the porch.

"It's me, Jas," Ruby said clearly and slowly, her hands up to placate the man, dressed only in overalls and flapping shoes, his prematurely thinning hair standing on end. He lowered the gun slightly, peered over it at her.

"Saints be praised if that ain't my baby sister," he said, descending from the porch and offering her a hand down, then a long hug. "Praise Jesus you're safe, little Ruby."

"Ain't so little anymore, Jasper," she chided kindly, patting his shoulder and gesturing to John, still frozen on his horse. The man followed her hand, looked at John again, more closely. John noticed how his left eye repeatedly winked, of its own volition, how his breath wheezed through a mouth missing several teeth. He thought back to the clever, shrewd-looking boy he'd seen in the photo, tried to reconcile it with the twitching, gaunt man before him. "This here's John Marston, Jasper; he's my friend and helped me find you."

John hopped from his saddle and extended his hand, which Jasper stared at overlong before shaking it. "The Lord blesses you, Mr. Marston."

"Er, thanks," he said, uncertain, "I hope He does the same for you." It was seemingly the right thing to say; Jasper grinned widely, pumping John's arm a few more times before letting him go.

After stationing their horses next to Jasper's old nag and laying down hay and water for them, Ruby explained why they'd come; that they were hoping to find the source of the undead, and if there were any way to cure the afflicted. She didn't mention John's family, and he didn't correct her; both of them clumsily dancing around the issue. Jasper, for his part, didn't notice, punctuating Ruby's story with invocations to God, or a clasping of his hands, as if in prayer, or making the sign of the cross.Clearly, thought John,not all of Ruby's orphan brothers left their faith behind.

Jasper told them that something had happened in Butcher Creek, that they'd be able to see it first thing in the morning, and that he wanted to surprise them. He rubbed his hands together, delighted by the prospect, and Ruby acquiesced, patting her brother's shoulder again. She followed him inside to help cook, leaving John to pet the horses and sneak a few sugar cubes to the underfed grey horse, currying its favour.

He'd expected Jasper to be like Lyndon; warm, considerate, quiet. But it amazed him how different the two men were, that the likelihood of her remaining brothers, flung wide across the states, would all be different. He wished he could have met Otis, whom Ruby seldom talked about but who had taken such a piece of her heart, broken it when he'd died.

As the light left the sky, the God's eyes, and their own, illuminated by the firelight, the trio ate a simple dinner of grits cooked with some kind of small animal - John knew it wasn't rabbit, but couldn't say he hoped for squirrel, either. When Jasper retreated into the shack and reemerged with a banjo, John expected a hymnal; similar to the songs he'd heard at Lyndon's.

So it was to his surprise when Jasper instead picked out the first few notes of "O, Mollie," a standby of Uncle's around the campfire; the gang's, and then the Marstons' own, at Beecher's Hope. Jasper's warble was suited to singing, and Ruby joined in with her own sweet voice:

O baby, O baby, I've told you before;
Do make me a pallet, I'll lie on the floor.
I've rambled and trambled this wide world round;
Raisin' hell with the gang, that's where I am bound;
It's with these gunslingers, dear Mollie, I'll roam;
I'm a rabble rouser and Dixie's my home.

The song washed over John and clutched at his heart; unbidden, a bitter tear fell down his cheek.What the hell am I doing?A swell of guilt bloomed in him and he felt ashamed, sitting next to this woman he'd lain with while his wife and son suffered, while Uncle's body lay picked over by vultures; he hadn't even thought to bury him.

He felt Ruby's swaying body nudge into him and he leapt to standing, too quickly, startling her into silence, her concerned eyes boring into his as Jasper continued on alone, unaware. John excused himself, claiming tiredness, creeping into the tent he'd set up earlier and closing the flaps. He listened to the banjo stop, with Ruby's encouragement, the murmured conversation between her and Jasper eventually lulling him into fitful sleep.

John woke when it was still dark, Ruby's gentle hand shaking at his shoulder, her eyes worried. "I'm sorry to wake you," she whispered, a tallow candle in a holder their only light in the tent. John exhaled, not wanting to talk to her about his abrupt departure from the fire, not ready to sort through his feelings.

But she lifted the Otis Miller novel to where he could see it, lit from the flame. "What does this damn word say?" He couldn't help but smile at her doggedness, that she couldn't wait until morning.

"That's a tough one," he said, sleep still in his voice. "Maelstrom." She smiled in turn, thanking him, moving to retreat to her side of the tent. John pulled her hips to him instead until she leaned her back against his chest, so he could watch over her shoulder, pepper the freckles along her shoulderblade with kisses, listen to her stammer slowly through the words, each completed one a victory.

He was more confused than ever but couldn't deny this feeling, something more than lust; but there was that, too, as Ruby set down the book to take his face in her hands, pressing her lips to his, feeling her artful tongue enter his willing mouth, his own body relaxing into her kiss. She'd pulled him from the water, but he had yet to stop drowning.

The next morning, they were dressed and ready before Jasper awoke, and the trio rode into Butcher Creek. Jasper excitedly led them to a makeshift stage, around which several people, local and otherwise, had crowded. An old man clambered onto the planks, opening a palm to the sky and smiling, revealing his own gapped mouth, a twin to Jasper's.

"Behold, ladies and gentlemen, a miracle!" The crowd closed in, and for a moment, they couldn't see the small figure that had stepped onto the stage, guided by a woman in a greyed dress, hair hanging limp from her scalp, beaming all the same. The first wave of observers made off, having seen their miracle, and allowing John, Ruby, and Jasper their own view.

Through John's confused feelings, the scent of Ruby still on him, his guilt was assured; a young girl stood before them, clearly alive, an undead's bite still visible on her neck.

She had been cured.

Chapter 21: xxi. An unparalleled gift

Chapter Text

The crowd dispersed; they'd had their fill of the "miracle girl." All save for John and Ruby, who stared, fixated on the sickening bite on her tiny neck; Ruby's mouth hanging open, John's covered by his disbelieving hand.

Ruby moved first to vault herself deftly onto the stage, landing with a gentle skip a few feet from the girl and her mother. John clambered after her, leaving Jasper on the ground below to observe gleefully, still under the impression that he'd brought them to an unparalleled gift.

"Hello there, hi, how d'you do," Ruby said in a rush, addressing the mother, and the girl as an afterthought. John joined her at her elbow, peering at the shy girl seeking to disappear in the grey pleats of her mother's skirt. "Tell us how in the fu..." She caught herself. "Please, tell us how this happened."

The mother simpered a smile, her tired eyes lighting up. She cradled the girl's wispy-haired head in her palm, forcing her forward. "Dottie came up from the river in an awful distemper, didn't you, sweet? But your ma knew just what you needed."

"Which was?" Ruby's hand rotated emphatically on her wrist, an "out with it" motion. The woman's smile vanished, her eyes growing cold.

"Fifty dollars." Ruby's eyes widened and she looked to John, one hand resting unconsciously on the grip of a revolver. John grimaced, pulling his billfold from his back pocket and counting out fives and tens, slapping the money into the mother's outstretched hand. She counted it herself, her gaze narrowing greedily at the amount of money she now possessed, and tucked it carefully into the front pocket of her dress.

"It were just potent health curative, that's all!" She grinned widely, then, self-satisfied that she'd seemingly tricked the pair. But John shook his head.

"No way it could be," he said, his voice low, "tried the same on my wife and son, with no luck." Ruby crouched down to look directly at the girl, beckoning her forward with a finger.

"I'm tellin' you, fella," she asserted, "potent health curative with some water, that's all it were. Always water it down for Dottie here as she don't much like the taste." She stroked the wisps of coppery-coloured hair that had fallen into the girl's eyes as she moved closer, tentatively, to Ruby.

"You OK, little darlin'?" Ruby asked softly, nudging the girl's cheek with a knuckle.

"She don't remember nothing," the mother said. Ruby broke her eye contact with the girl to look up at her mother.

"Probably a blessing," she stated, and Jasper nodded sagely at this from his position at the base of the stage, crossing himself. Ruby returned her gaze to the girl and pulled a face, winning a tiny laugh, before standing back up. "Where do y'all get your water?"

"Usually the well, but it's been drier than normal. Go down to the Kamassa to get it." Ruby turned her attention to follow the woman's outstretched finger, to the river flowing along the town's western edge.

"OK, thanks," she left abruptly, hopping down from the stage, John following with a scowl on his face.

"Was hardly fifty dollars' worth of information, Ruby," he muttered to her.

"Oh, come on, moneybags," she smiled at him, prodding his side until the scowl broke. "It's both, John; something about that water and medicine mixed together. Hey, Jas?" She called to Jasper, who'd left their conversation to stroke the nose of his horse. He looked up at them, his blank face breaking into a brilliant smile.

"Ain't she a miracle, Rube?" He asked. "Like Christ himself came down to bless her and her family."

"Sure, Jasper," John noticed how Ruby, normally bouncing off the walls when she had to wait for anything, was tirelessly patient with her brother and his constant proselytizing. "Was wonderin' if you knew where this river's headwater was?"

Jasper's face changed from joyful to pensive; he scratched at the few errant hairs that sprouted from his chin. "Elysian Pool's just up this way-" he pointed north, up the path that ran through Butcher Creek "-river comes in from there."

"Great, Jasper, thank you," she beamed at him, clapping his back. "C'mon, boys, let's go on to that pool. Jas, you lead the way."

John and Ruby smelled Elysian Pool before they saw it; an eye-watering, sulphurous stink that compelled their kerchiefs to their faces, coughing haggardly. Ruby tied her paisley cloth over her mouth and nose and John followed suit, winking at her. "Hola, bandita," he chirped from behind his bandana, and relished her pronounced eyeroll, the blush that formed on the parts of her cheeks he could see.

Jasper, indifferent to the smell or simply better at handling his reaction to it, proceeded on down the pair of switchbacks towards the water's edge, the pair following him. A small waterfall rushed at the pool's northern end; a small bridge abutted its eastern point, where it turned into the river they'd followed to get there. The water glittered preternaturally, in absence of any sunlight, and John narrowed his eyes at its rippling surface, just as Ruby said, "Awful stinks, don't it? Don't think I've smelled nothin' so bad since that snake oil we got, John."

John sat up suddenly, fished for a bottle of Nigel West Dickens' elixir from his saddlebag. He pulled the cork and sniffed, confirming Ruby's guess; the stuff stunk near identically to the Pool before them. "Think you're right," he recorked the bottle and tossed it towards her outstretched hands, dismounted from Thoreau to take a closer look at the water.

It wasn't glittering; it glowed. John charted small points of glowing light that moved erratically under the surface, pausing, then darting forward, spinning in small circles, growing larger and smaller. He leaned forward further, the triangular end of his bandana skimming the water's surface. "Aw, hell," he murmured, realizing the stink was on the kerchief, rendering it useless.

He made to untie the knot from behind his head when a fish leapt from the water, its jaws unhinged before it fastened its tiny, translucent teeth onto the bandana, just as John pulled it from his face. "Jesus!" He shouted, dropping both fish and kerchief to the ground and falling backwards, watching the fish flop violently in the dirt, its marble-like eyes unmistakably glowing green.

"Undead fish," John gasped out, pointing at the fish, kicking it away from him with the heel of his boot. Ruby rushed forward, volleying it back into the pool with the butt of her rifle, John's kerchief gone with it. John was right, but it wasn't just the fish; as they slowly realized. Two jackrabbits gambolled in the nearby grass, their long front teeth gnashing, black eyes replaced by green ones; a small herd of deer on the opposing shore looked up from their grazing to fix them with deadened green stares.

"This is where your friend got his stuff," Ruby said, offering John a hand up, pulling her kerchief down to rest around her neck.

"Ain't my friend," John reminded, brushing the seat of his pants off, grimacing at the association. Ruby made an overt nod at Jasper, who guffawed, happy to be in on the joke.

"Either way, John, look," she pointed at where the fish had splashed back into the pool, at the deer, who continued to watch the three, their jaws slackened. "This is it; somethin' about this water is makin' things undead, but also bringin' the bitten back to life, if you mix it with health cure."

"There's tons of it," added Jasper, "enough to cure everyone."

John stared at the spot in the pool, watched the ripples dissipate into nothing, the fishes' eyes glowing underwater in hypnotic, indecipherable patterns. He felt Ruby's presence next to him, quiet and solid. He pulled his gaze from the water to look at her, noticed her hand outstretched.

"Hope you didn't give all your cash to that old bat," she joked, half-heartedly. John looked from her hand to her face, confused. "Ain't no reason to stay together no more," she said, more quietly, "if you found what you was after, I mean." John realized what she was saying, what she was after, her words wounding him.

"Ruby-" he started, and her upturned palm turned into a halting gesture, her eyes closing.

"Can't much do my sums, surprise, surprise, so I'll just have to trust you won't stiff me." Jasper looked between them both, his own confusion apparent on his face.

"Ruby, now," John tried again, his voice a hoarse whisper, his fingers closing gently around her wrist. "You serious?" Her eyes opened slowly; her expression, through her self-effacing grin, was pained. John moved closer to her, to speak even more quietly. "Ruby, we don't know that these hill folk know what they're doing, hey? I ain't giving Ab- my family this poison to drink unless I'm sure about it. And we still need to find out how to keep these damn bodies buried, too. This ain't gonna fix that."

He said all of the things he could because he was too afraid to admit to Ruby, to speak aloud, that he didn't want to leave her. He wanted to continue existing in this space of travelling with her; teaching her to read. Waking each morning with her head on his chest, her sweet scent in his nose. He felt himself tearing into two, not knowing which half to mend, which to leave behind.

"Hey, Jasper?" He said, through a croak in his voice, finally releasing Ruby's wrist.

"Mr. Marston?" The man replied, quizzically, not following what had just happened between the two.

"Where does that waterfall flow in from?" He pointed to the spray of white water flowing from the north end of the pool.

"Two places," Jasper grinned toothily, happy to help. "Goes all the way up backwards to Brandywine Drop on the surface, but links up to some of the mines out in Annesburg underneath."

"Annesburg, 'course," John nodded, nudging Ruby's shoulder, over-excitedly. "Your brother Liam's out that way? Looks like we should check it all out." She stood frozen, staring at the water, and John lay a hand to the small of her back, not caring what Jasper saw or thought. "Right? To Annesburg?" His voice was so hopeful he disgusted himself.

She returned his nod, removing his hand from her back with a small squeeze, approaching the edge to stopper some pool water in a spare bottle, cork it and return it to her saddlebag. They mounted their horses, Jasper agreeing to lead them on to the mining town.

"Jasper?" Ruby called forth, and John tensed, fearing she was going to stop them and send John on home.

"Yeah, girl?" She paused to turn to John, a wicked smile appearing on her once-sad face.

"You know of any waters that can magically teach a feller how to swim?" John took off his hat to swing it at her, provoking her shriek of laughter. They carried on north to Annesburg, John glad of their companionship for as long as he'd have it, and terrified it would end all too soon.

Chapter 22: xxii. Annesburg: a gilded city

Chapter Text

Jasper led John and Ruby through the back trails into the northern mining town of Annesburg. John was surprised to see that the black smoke that had clotted its skyline in his younger days was suspiciously absent, the clouds breaching to reveal a bright-white midday sun, harsh on their eyes. In place of yesteryear's earthen, smoky smell of burning coal was the stink from the pool, everywhere, sharpened and chemical. Ruby's eyes watered as she glanced to John, the lower half of her face buried into her inner elbow. Their horses tossed their heads repeatedly, nickering their distaste.

"You get used to the smell, miss," a man winked at her from where he leaned against a fencepost, rubbing knuckles sheathed in gold rings against his chest. "In fact, I know a little place where it ain't so bad, if you want to join me." A gold coin gleamed from a heavy chain around his neck; when he flashed her a grin, a gold eyetooth sparkled in the light. They stopped their horses, Jasper noticing he wasn't being trailed and pulling up on his nag's reins, too.

"Sure there's all kinds of smells where you're goin'." Ruby's voice oozed charm, so much that it took John a moment to realize she'd insulted the man. The man himself still seemed unaware as she continued: "I'm lookin' for someone, actually, a Liam Flannery, supposed to work in the mines 'round here?" At the name, 'Liam Flannery,' Ruby assumed a hint of an Irish accent, as she was prone to do. John caught her increasingly mimicking his own hoarse voice back to him since their night camped by Dewberry Creek; always in jest.

"You Liam's girl?" The man looked frightened, then, glancing between Ruby, John, and Jasper; rising from the post to stand up straight.

"His sister," she replied, and he blanched still further, murmuring, "that's worse. Wait here, I'll send him out to you." Ruby dismounted from Sybil's back to pat at her neck and nose as the man trotted forth into the dark maw that marked the entrance of the mine, disappearing from sight. John found his hand travel to the grip of his pistol a couple of times, to reassure himself of its presence.

After a quarter hour, John and Jasper now both dismounted and sharing cigarettes while the three horses drank from a trough, a short, stocky man emerged from the mine entrance; conspicuously clean. His burly arms, corded with muscle, were covered in freckles, as was his stoic, ungenerous face; painted with a brush where Ruby's were spattered. Her own freckled face was smiling, now, as was Jasper's, next to John.

"Oh, he's grown, has he?" She teased, stepping forward to squeeze the man's bicep and laughing. She took his hand briefly, leading him to Jasper, whom he embraced, and then to John. John met the man's steely grey eyes, which he was certain were scrutinizing him. "John, this is Liam Flannery, my brother from the orphanage."

"John Marston, pleasure to meet you," John said, extending a hand after Liam failed to do so. Liam hesitated for a mere moment - almost missable, if John hadn't already been waiting for the courtesy - before reaching out his own broad, square hand for a shake.

"Pleasure's mine, if'n you brought my sister back to me," Liam replied, just the hint of a lilt of accent in his voice that hadn't been scrubbed away from his years in the orphanage, the same that he'd heard parroted by Ruby moments before. John noticed it was similar to the accent she used to quote her favoured play, the one she obsessed over memorizing; maybe Liam had been the one to read it to her, most. He felt a twinge of jealousy that he tried to dismiss, only somewhat successfully.

"Actually, Liam, I brought John to you," Ruby corrected kindly, grasping both of their hands as the handshake ended, releasing Liam's to momentarily seize Jasper's as well. "We've been on one hell of a ride, he and I, up and over country, dealin' with these undead."

"And you've ended up at our golden city," Liam said, and as he did so, they took stock of the gold buttons on Liam's vest, the chain glinting from his buttonhole to pocket, a stud winking at them from one ear. They didn't have time to dwell on the expensive sartorial choices of Annesburg miners, though, because what he'd said next flabbergasted them. "This is where it all began."

"What? How d'you mean?" John asked, his mouth agape. Liam turned his head to look at him, before turning back to Ruby, all of his focus reserved for solely her. Even Jasper was excluded, and he seemed to know it, skulking by the horses and feeding them slices of an apple he procured from his dungarees' pocket.

Liam gestured forth for them to walk down the winding path leading into the main strip of Annesburg; workers' housing and a small handful of businesses, divided by the train tracks running through the street. Everything in the town had been gilded; the doorknobs of the houses, wagon wheels, the hammered letters spellingGUNSMITH, even the train tracks themselves, and the iron nails used to hold them into the earth, had been replaced with gold ones.

"One day when I were in the mines," Liam said finally, breaking his silence, interrupting the trio's wide-eyed gape at the ostentatious splendour around them, "my pickaxe hit something liquid; a pocket of something. I put a bucket underneath in case it were oil, came topside to check it out. But it weren't no oil; more like a green syrup, Rube, stinking to high heaven like you can smell all around you. But my axe had gone gold."

"So the syrup turns things to gold," she said, nodding despite the stark disbelief of her expression.

"Not things, just metal," Liam replied. "Any metal; which the bossman were all too quick to seize on, as you can see. Once he found out he could dilute the syrup some to have the same effect, he closed the mine for coal and started manufacturing gold, instead." Liam pointed to the old coal refinery, which had been somewhat repurposed; two huge wooden pools stood on the catwalk that crossed over the train tracks.

"All the gold you could want," Jasper breathed, crouching down to rub his finger against the smoothed head of a golden rail spike.

"Sure, if you're all right with the side effect of the dead coming back to life," Liam scoffed. Jasper, admonished, sunk his head between his shoulderblades. John and Ruby's mouths hung open; the answer to the undead that they'd chased for days no more than a flippant remark.

"'Course, the bossman is, so we kept on producing even as the world went to hell; he used the gold he made to build fortifications all around town and nearby graveyards, hired security and kept us miners on to find more of the stuff."

"Y'all gotta stop," Ruby said, forcefully, her hand in a determined fist. "The worldisa hell, Liam. Folk are out there actin' all kinds of crazy."

"Don't I know it, it's the failed dilutions that ran over and infected the waterways, spread through the states. It's all in the water and doesn't stop until we do. And 's'why I'm glad you're here, Rube," Liam responded. "You're gonna help me take the bossman down."

"John, too," Ruby volunteered him, her hand to John's upper arm, which Liam's eyes followed, narrowing. "You should see him with a gun."

"He's meeting with me tomorrow," Liam ignored Ruby's statement, continuing on, rankling the swell of pride that had bloomed in John's chest. "The boss, Winstanley. Thinks I have a line to finding more of the stuff. I'm going to kill him, with your help."

"We'll all help," Ruby replied, forcing her way through Liam's resistance to talk to anyone else but her with a false cheeriness. "Many hands, and all that? Anything to keep them undead f*ckers in the ground."

"Fine," Liam agreed, his eyes never leaving hers.

The four - John, Ruby, Jasper, and Liam - approached the workers' fire in the evening with their plates of dinner and prepared to sit at its edges; only for one of the men to take notice of Liam and make haste to move. So it was by the fire that they ate the bland, but smell-masking stew, discussed what would need to happen after the new gold tycoon of Annesburg, Lyle Winstanley, was summarily dispatched.

"Dam the waterways, until they're diluted enough that they don't bring the undead up." Liam said, as if by rote. He'd clearly been thinking of it for some time.

"This affected us all the way down in Blackwater," John countered, "how long's that going to take?"

"As long as it needs to," Liam replied, annoyed.

"Just as important to cure the afflicted," Ruby piped up, spooning the rest of her stew into her mouth so that she could better use the spoon to exaggerate her speech. She circled it around in an emphatic cyclone, gesturing all around her. "They keep makin' new undead."

Liam snorted, and Ruby dropped the spoon in surprise. "There's no cure, Rube."

"Sure is, brother," Jasper said, happily, "took these two here to see a little miracle down in Butcher Creek; by the grace of God, a girl been blessed with her life back." Liam looked skeptical, and John felt compelled to defend what he'd been willing to dismiss earlier that day.

"We saw her, big bite in her neck and everything. Girl's mother told us it was health cure mixed with the polluted water in the pool; makes sense if it's all this stuff."

"Makessense," Liam snorted again. "Bet you paid for this 'information,' too?" He stared John down until he nodded, grimacing. Liam laughed, a brief bark. "All I need to know; those hill folk swindled you. Don't tell me you were in on the take, Jas?"

Jasper's eyes widened before he hung his head in shame, "I weren't, Mr. Marston, honest. Hand-to-God, I thought it were true." Liam continued to chortle; mean, given Jasper's hangdog expression. John patted Jasper's back before turning to see what Ruby made of all of this, only to find her swing her head pointedly away. She'd been staring at him, trying to read his own expression.

"Where you all going to sleep?" Liam asked suddenly, looking between the three. "Rube, I have some room at mine if you like, and Jas, Mr. Marston, the gunsmith's across the street rents a room out for passers-through, if you want to sleep indoors; they got two beds if I remember."

"Actually, Liam, I thought Jasper might stay with you, if you got the room?" Ruby interjected, moving to take John's hand, surprising them all. "John and I, well, we've grown rather accustomed to each other." She smiled bashfully, then, and John felt his heart leap to his throat, managed to squeeze her fingers in turn. Jasper's pout vanished; he beamed at them both.

"I thought you two was each sweet on the other, how fine," he reached forward to clap John on the back before clutching Ruby in a sideways-hug, tousling her hair. As for Liam, his eyes flickered briefly, and his expression soured. The pregnant pause was enough to agitate Ruby's mile-a-minute sensibilities, so she rose from her seat and motioned for Jasper to join her at the rocky outcrop looking out over the town, pointing up at the constellations beginning to appear in the night sky. John and Liam were left at the fire, alone.

In the ensuing silence, John thought back to how Ruby's brothers had varied, but none more so than Liam; who seemed caustic and possessive where the others were open and welcoming, unwilling to entertain anything other that what he'd already decided. But Ruby had embraced him when they'd met, listened with rapt attention during their tour of the town, volunteered them all to Liam's cause without a moment's hesitation. Buoyed by her assertion that they two were "accustomed," John tried to put his feelings of jealousy and animosity aside and talk to the man.

"Those two interest me," he said, assuming a friendly tone in his voice, pointing at Ruby and Jasper. "She's real patient with him, ain't she?"

Liam stared into the firelight, took a pensive sip of his beer. "She's real protective of him," he corrected, finally. "Saved Jasper from a bad visiting priest when we were kids. She weren't more than seven, but hid under Jasper's covers when Father'd come for him in the night, threw them back and aimed a gun right at his privates. Told him if he touched any of us she'd blow his pecker clear off, and he could go f*ck himself in the meantime." Liam smiled, briefly, warmer than John had yet seen. He recalled the behaviour citation in her records back at the orphanage, realized there was a darker story behind the small report he'd read.

"She caught hell for it," Liam continued, looking to John. "But she took it all; she was there for us, same as we all were there for her."

"Well, I can see how that'd make for a bonding experience," John felt himself warming to Liam and Jasper both, until Liam's eyes again grew steely, his expression cold.

"We are kin, Mr. Marston," he said, "you are not." John felt his own eyes grow flinty, his brow furrow.

"Ruby and I have become quite close," he asserted, rolling his shoulders twice, desperately trying to unclench his balled fists.

"Don't flatter yourself," Liam's voice was ice, his expression only hostile. "She just loves easy."

A fire burned in John's chest, and he retorted, "She may, but I don't," and as he said it, he realized it to be true. He hadn't strayed at all in his year away, faithful and loyal to Abigail in all the intervening years since. Until Ruby. "And she's special to me," he added, rising from the fire and stalking off toward her and Jasper, without another word to the scowling man behind him.

"Hey, Mr. Marston," Jasper greeted, waving excitedly. "Did you know our Lyndon's gonna be a daddy? Ain't that a blessing?"

John tried not to be dismissive, resting a temporary hand on Jasper's shoulder. "It sure is, Jasper." He stepped to Ruby, taking her hand. "Hey, may I borrow Ruby for a minute, here?" He pulled her onward and she waved at Jasper bashfully, unsure of John's sudden urgency.

Ruby followed John at a jog, trying to keep up with his long strides as he pulled her along after him, heading down the path between the workers' housing to the main drag of Annesburg, to the gunsmith's, where he slapped a stack of loose bills on the counter, startling the half-asleep store owner, who gestured noncommittally at a door towards the rear of the store.

John pushed through the door and led Ruby inside, closing and locking it behind them. There were two beds, just as Liam had said, and a small nightstand with a pitcher and washbasin; but the room was clearly a storeroom most of the time, with shelves of ancillary products like gun oil and stacks of hunting bait, restorative tonics. "John, what in the hell's gotten into you? You're like a man possessed!" Ruby exclaimed, freeing her hand from his grip.

He tried to find the words but couldn't, her shining blue eyes, ash-blonde hair lit by moonlight, the freckles across her face, her quirking mouth, the curve of her hips; all conspiring against his ability to speak. So he crashed against her, instead, his hands roaming over her warm, yielding body; his mouth, devouring and sweet by turns against her own.

Chapter 23: xxiii. Belonging

Chapter Text

John closed the space between himself and Ruby until they were pressed together, the palm and fingers of his right hand firm on the back of her neck, his left hand roaming its way under her shirttails, running up between them on the inside of her placket. They were undressed in a minute, in less, clothes abandoned recklessly around the room, bodies reuniting unencumbered. He ran a hand along her arm, felt the ripple of lean muscle under such softness, before throwing her down onto the bed, on her knees, nudging them apart with his own.

He slipped a finger into her mouth, craving the attention of her tongue even as he pushed into her, dripping wet, feeling Ruby's hot breath on his hand, then his cheek, his chin hooked over her shoulder. She leaned back onto his co*ck and touched herself, lazily, looking at John through heavy-lidded eyes, rolling her hips to ride him, coax him deeper. His roaming hand moved desperately; on her hips, squeezing her ass, her breasts, clutching her chin.

Liam's words came again to John -she just loves easy- and his grip around Ruby's waist and jaw grew firmer, sinking his teeth into the flesh just above her collarbone. "Oh!" Came Ruby's surprise, her mouth perfectly round, lips swollen and darkened from John's roughened kissing.

He felt the heat pool in his stomach and buried his head into the hollow of her throat, the words bubbling up from deep within him, "You're mine. You're mine. You're mine." He repeated it even as he came, his growling transforming into a strained, pleasured whine, holding her tightly to him as the fluttering around his co*ck turned into the longer, clutching waves of her own release.

John lay back on the bed and stretched his legs out, pulling her with him to nestle against his side, their chests heaving, shimmering with sweat, momentarily silent. Ruby played with the dark, straight hairs on his chest, tugging gently on three or four at a time, until he seized her hand and kissed it.

"Did you mean it?" She said suddenly, pushing herself up to hover over him, her eyes searching his.

"Mean what?" He watched her eyes shift sideways, away from him, the fading flush on her cheeks bloom anew, in the scant light offered by the lantern.

"That I'm yours." A stone grew in John's stomach, pinning him to the mattress; his own eyes slid in the opposite direction, so that he was looking entirely away from her when he uttered, a little more than a hoarse whisper: "I did."

She appeared in his field of vision, beaming. "I hoped so, Mr. Marston," she said, kissing him sweetly and nestling under his chin.

John stroked her back until he felt the breaths against his sternum slow, grow heavy. He couldn't sleep, however; his body was charged, both with the runaway passion he'd felt for Ruby, and for the fear of the unknown; tomorrow's plan to overthrow Winstanley, the gold tycoon of Annesburg.

Killing was something John had put behind him; or at least, he'd thought so. And he had no doubts about the deadliness of the woman in his arms; but where she'd dispatched plenty of undead in their short time together, he wondered about her willingness to take another life, whether she ever had. It was a lot for her brother to ask of her, in any case.

John drew Ruby closer to him, suddenly protective, and heard her whimper against his chest. Sleep found him then, the honeyed smell of her hair a balm against the fetid town air, eyelids heavy with the promise that she belonged to him.

John and Ruby met with a waving Jasper and sullen Liam, at first light as they'd discussed, leaning against the side of the bierhalle located right next to the factory. Liam made a show of pulling his gold watch from his vest pocket, prompting the cover open and checking the time.

"I'm due to meet Winstanley in a half hour," he said, gruffly. "You all know what you're doing?" Where the night before he'd only had eyes for Ruby, that morning he chose to look at Jasper or none at all, aiming his gaze over their shoulders or to the stones by their feet.

Ruby followed Liam's avoidant gaze until she'd forced herself into it, reaching out and squeezing his arm. "Takin' care of the guards outside until your boss' own security comes on out, so you've got a clear shot at him. Did I miss anything?" Her voice went up and John saw her squeeze again, imploring her brother to look at her.

"You got it," Liam gave her a curt nod and pulled from her grasp, made his way up the squeaking iron stairs - of course, their railings gilded and shining - alone. John and Ruby were armed to the nines and stayed at the side of the bierhalle to avoid unwanted attention, so it was Jasper who watched Liam's ascent towards the small office built into the side of the refinery, a little wooden box cast into the sky.

John blearily looked at the train hissing in place, blocking the workers' cottages from view. The hiss was so pervasive that it took him a moment to clue in to Jasper's whispered, "he's in, let's go." Ruby tugged the cuff of his leather glove, pulled her bandana over her mouth and nose.

"There's my gorgeous outlaw," John grinned. He saw her eyes brighten with a concealed smile of her own, even as a golden eyebrow raised.

"Don't get distracted now, Marston," she mock-scolded, holding both revolvers aloft and looking between them, nodding. She led them up the stairs to the catwalk, quickly crouching behind a few barrels of the diluted syrup, peering between them at the couple of armed guards patrolling the gangplank, repeaters clutched in their arms.

"We're sure we don't want this stuff no more?" She whispered, looking at them both again, and then at the cork pushed into the side of the barrel. Both John and Jasper appeared pensive; John rubbing his chin, Jasper scratching at the back of his head.

"Could make a fair bit of gold with one of those," John pondered, thinking about all of the metal he had back at the ranch. But Jasper shook his head, surprising them both.

"The Lord is my shepherd," he said, matter-of-factly, pulling the cork out of the barrel with a decisivepop, "I shall not want." The syrup immediately began sloshing out, turning the latticed iron underfoot into pure, gleaming gold. They heard the guards across the way shout in angered surprise, their running footsteps clanking along the catwalk in their direction.

"Appreciate the sentiment and all, Jas, but I do wonder about your timing," Ruby quipped, standing and turning to aim her revolvers at the approaching guards. "Guns down!" She ordered, a bellow from deep within that even John felt in his intestines. The men slowed their running but didn't lower their repeaters, so Ruby aimed at one of their hats, firing a practiced shot to send it flying clear off his head.

"That one was on purpose, and the next one I put through your forehead will be too, 'less you put that f*ckin' gun down." John stood, as well, raising his shotgun at the second guard. At his feet, Jasper slunk around the side of the barrels, quiet and sinuous, snake-like. Overhead, the pounding of more boots on the upper levels rang in their ears.

The hatless guard raised one hand to his ear to try and block out the sound, and Ruby fired again, right through his palm. "Gun down, I said!" Her shooting was immaculate, but John noticed the wavering in her voice, as too did the second guard.

"How about you put yours down, girlie?" He said, fixing his repeater barrel on her as his colleague sunk to the ground, clutching his wrist. John felt his finger instinctively close around the shotgun's trigger, but no need - the guard was suddenly jerked sideways, disappearing from view behind yet more barrels.

John and Ruby rushed the guard to find Jasper expertly tying knots around the man's wrists and ankles, and then those knots to each other. John should have known that the God's eyes were some indication; the man was a master with rope. The trio moved through the remaining guards, leaving them tied and writhing or nursing painful, but ultimately nonfatal wounds.

They found themselves a short staircase away from the office doorway when a shot rang out within, and they traded fearful looks. Ruby ran for the door without hesitation, throwing herself against it shoulder-first and scrambling to a crouch, her revolver barrels taking aim at each the remaining security guard and Winstanley in their surprise, the other guard dead on the ground, a bullethole through his temple.

The security guard fired his gun, already trained on Liam, but Ruby rushed him and knocked his arm, sending the shot wide. John, arriving into the room, wasted no time blasting a shotgun shell through the guard's chest, sending his corpse flying backwards.

Trying to use the distraction to his advantage, the well-dressed man John presumed to be Winstanley ran for the door; but Liam's bullet followed him, catching him in the back just as he reached the low railing overlooking the diluting pools. His body pitched forward and landed with a splash, his blackened blood mushrooming into the viscous liquid in the pool.

The four stared at the body floating in the pool for a moment, disbelieving their altercation had ended so fast. As they descended the iron stairs, Ruby sidled up next to Liam, giving him a brief side-hug and murmuring, just loud enough that John could hear behind her, "Glad that weren't you shot in there, brother."

Liam opened his mouth to reply, but his eyes widened suddenly, and he shoved Ruby between him and whatever shadow had appeared in his vision. Winstanley; his eyes glowing an unholy green; gnashing his teeth. John didn't hesitate, he pushed forward and flung his left arm in front of Ruby, forcing her back as his other hand brought his pistol against the undead Winstanley's temple. He pulled the trigger a hair's second after the creature's teeth sunk into John's forearm.

The neutralized Winstanley fell with a thud to the gangplank as John and Ruby stared at the crescent bitemark and then to each other, horrified. John moved the pistol towards his own temple but Ruby knocked it from his fingers, a sob mangling her throaty command, "Don't youdare."

His unarmed hand went to brush the tear from her blue eye, but soon the blue was lost from it, pulled outward, faded to grey. Grey too were the freckles spattered across her cheeks, the blue sky overhead, sapped of colour.

John's world became avoidance, and attraction, to the two colours in his otherwise grey field of vision. Avoidance of the green pool that stunk and repelled him, and attraction to the reddened meat before him, succulent, heaving with life.

The meat pushed him back but he advanced, powerful and ruthlessly hungry. His hand found purchase around the meat's neck and clenched; soon, it would be his.

Chapter 24: xxiv. “'Cause you were still living”

Chapter Text

CW: This chapter begins with an undead attack in detail and it might be triggering for violence and assault. You can skip to the first asterisk (*) if that's the case. <3

John's hand gripped tighter around the neck of the meat stood in front of him, provoked by the vibrant red of its flesh, the irresistible sound of its heart struggling to pump blood through its extremities. Its fingers, capped in sharp fingernails, dug into his hands and pulled them back from its neck, infinitesimally; enough for the meat to wheeze, "Liam, no."

The second meat - toughened, burlier - held the sculpted metal clutched in its hand aloft and bellowed, "So I'll just let him strangle you to death, then?" The words meant nothing to John, a series of syllabics that only frustrated him, banging around his ears and disrupting the glorious sound of his prey's heartbeat, the hot tears that ran from its eyes over his fingers, the strained whimper he coaxed from its lips. He turned to look at the second as it continued its shouted invective, and only noticed one of the hands leave his own as the meat's fist collided with his cheek, sending him spinning, landing with a clunk on the iron catwalk.

He was back up in moments, his body designed to do nothing but keep pushing until it was sated, seeking out the meat with a snarl. It had its own metal grasped in its fingers, pointed directly at him. John watched more of the tears roll down the meat's cheeks, smelled their salt on the air. It shouted, "Hey! Hey! No!" Whirling its aim to point at the other, who'd lowered its metal chunk to also point at John. He looked between them both, squalling a hoarse cry of frustration, before lunging again at his prize, its soft hair grazing his fingers as they sought purchase around its neck.

But something had seized his neck in turn, and he was yanked back with force, his back finding the iron floor, knocking the wind from him. His hands found roughened rope tightening around his throat, and he kicked out, shrieking furiously. A third meat entered his field of vision, looking over him. "Try it, Ruby!" It said, looking beyond John's struggling face even as it eliminated the slack on the rope held tightly in its hands.

The hair brushed his face, then; the smallest meat - his own - sitting on his chest, its knees nestled within his armpits, leaning forward and forcing a bottleneck into his mouth, something foul within coursing along his tongue and throat, scalding and repulsive. The meat held him from thrashing, firmly by his forehead with one hand, and gently stroked his cheek with the other.

Through the shifting greys, reds, and greens of John's vision, two blue eyes emerged, glittering with tears. He followed them out of his nightmare, trusting intrinsically that they'd know the way.

John came to in a daze, his head in Ruby's lap. He felt the immediacy of her touches before he opened his eyes to see them, stroking his hair, cognizant of her fingernails raking through the growing-out fade, along the fault lines of his scarred face. The warmth radiating from her legs as his shoulders lay against them. "It worked," he heard her say from above him, her voice hoarse. He opened his eyes reluctantly, relishing his position and her gentleness, only to see her face wet with tears, her mouth trembling.

"What worked?" He asked, reaching up instinctively to cup her cheek with his hand, thumb a fresh tear from it. "Why you crying, darlin'?"

Ruby smiled sadly, kissed his palm, running the backs of her fingers down the sides of his face anew. "The cure, John. It worked." Her hands left his scars to graze a sore spot on his left arm; one he sat up to better examine. A cruel-looking bite; red and purple. Beyond it, Winstanley's corpse.

The ramifications of finding a working cure for the bitten hit him all at once: unlocking possibilities he'd thought were closed to him, jeopardizing futures he'd barely dreamed about. He felt Ruby's warm hand rest on his chest, turned his head to find her nodding solemnly, trading a knowing look.

"'Cause you were still livin', Mr. Marston, praise Him," Jasper intoned, crouching to smile at him. John glanced at the rope dangling from his long fingers, put a hand to his own neck, hot with irritation. His eyes then sought and found Liam, skulking at the fringes of their scene, pointedly avoiding eye contact. Jasper continued, "Cure can only work on the livin', I think, not a true undead." Ruby's hand tensed on his chest, retracted. She rose to standing, her arms crossed in front of her.

The gears in John's mind turned as Ruby moved to confer quietly with Liam, beckoning Jasper to join them. In turns, her brothers glanced back at John, sitting dumbfounded on the iron, seeking out injuries he couldn't remember getting; scratches in his palms and wrists, a sore neck and back, an aching molar, and above all, the sickening bite on his forearm. It dawned slowly on him that if Abigail and Jack had any chance of returning to life, if what Jasper had said was true, he'd have to rush back with the cure before they succumbed to starving, before their blackened eyes turned green and glowing.

"Ruby," he said, drawing her attention away from the two men, back toward him, intending to ask her to go with him, to return to Beecher's Hope. But the words caught in his throat when he spotted, finally, her own neck, purple with fingermarks.Mine, he realized, sickened with himself. Whatever he'd done while bitten, he'd done to her.

"Leave it, Marston," Liam snapped before she could respond, laying a theatrically protective hand on her shoulder and pulling her back to their circle. Jasper, for his part, rubbed Ruby's back, meeting her wavering expression with a kind, sad smile.

Surrounded by her brothers, John felt compelled to slink away from Ruby, but saw her face despondent, yet beautiful, the freckles remerging out of the flush that had spread across her cheeks. He forced himself to speak. "I want you to come back with me, honey," he said, startling the three to all look to him; Ruby's expression suddenly inscrutable.

Liam scoffed. "You can't be serious, Yankee," he hissed, squaring his shoulders and looking back to Ruby, his voice lowering to a timbre John couldn't comprehend at his distance; save for his final words to her; "You can't. Youcan't."

Ruby looked between Liam and John for a time that seemed impossibly long, John's urge to bolt conflicting with the ache in his heart at the thought of a lonely ride; no, a lonely life, one without her in it. Again, he stayed.

She made to speak but all that came was a dull rasp, so she tried again, clearing her throat and saying, as loud as she could muster, "Well, it's my damn decision, ain't it?" She made to embrace Liam but he pushed her away, stalking off to descend the remaining stairs.

Jasper shrugged, murmuring as he enveloped Ruby into a long-limbed hug, "He'll come around, don't you worry." She kissed his cheek in farewell, and he disentangled himself to offer John a handshake, one he used to pull him to standing, clasping his opposite shoulder, a brotherly gesture. "Mr. Marston, may the Lord bless your endeavours."

"Once I figure 'em out, I'll be sure to appreciate that blessing," John cracked, returning Jasper's toothy smile with a wry one of his own.

"He knows," Jasper winked, before looking skyward. John didn't share the man's faith, nor did Ruby; but he appreciated his well wishes, knowing that was just the form they took, from him. Jasper shared a final, knowing look with the pair before following after Liam, leaving the two alone on the catwalk.

They descended the stairs themselves, whistled for their horses; it seeming like a lifetime since they'd last rode. Mounting up, John and Ruby made for Van Horn; hoping to find an express boat to Blackwater, and then on to Beecher's Hope.

Chapter 25: xxv. “Coming your way”

Chapter Text

Back in Van Horn, John bribed the captain of a small cargo ship heading back west; one with a couple of available stables for Thoreau and Sybil, a spare crew's room - vacant after a fatal undead attack in their last port - for himself and Ruby. She beelined for the room once they'd settled the horses in for their boat ride to Blackwater, leaving John on the deck, alone. He gazed over to Van Horn's hotel, the night they'd spent there a seeming age ago; the life he was returning to, farther eons back still. The boat juddered to life and set sail, lurching from the shore.

John spent time with the horses, chatted with the scattered crewmen until he sensed he was only annoying them, watched the shoreline slowly transform from hazardous rock to murky swamp, to Saint Denis' artificial coast of breakwalls and harbour docks. He was offered a coffee and piece of bread, and took these down below deck to Ruby; a useful foil to speak with her, to suss out if she wanted to speak to him, in turn.

The little room where they'd been stationed for their journey was intended for four crew; two sets of narrow bunkbeds in an "L" shape, an arms' width of standing room, three drawers built into the wall for storage. When John entered, it took him a moment to spot Ruby; lain in an upper bunk, backlit by a porthole window facing out towards the opposing shoreline, legs crossed at the knee with the bare toes of her crossed leg skimming the ceiling, the Otis Miller comic open on her thighs.

Her head rolled to look to him, but her expression didn't warm, remained curious and consternated. He held up the slice of bread, the tin cup of coffee, still steaming. "Breakfast," he said, and then repeated, interrupted by the sudden sounding of the noon churchbells, heard warped and reverberated out on the water.

"Just in time, John," she mumbled, a small smile on her lips, leaning over to take the coffee and bread with a nod of thanks. She took a careful sip from the steaming cup, and then rolled back to supine, setting the coffee onto her stomach and holding the book aloft. He stood awkwardly, pretending to be interested in a small rumple in the empty bunk's coverlet, cleared his throat a few times. But she said nothing, pointedly interested in the book, and he couldn't think of anything to say in turn, so he exited, making for the deck once again.

John had never been one for social graces or intuition, but even he knew Ruby was ignoring him, so unlike her in all of their time together. It had to be where they were headed,has to be, he thought, again, clinging to hope at her determination to return with him despite their reason for going - saving Abigail and Jack from the clutches of affliction.

The changing view of the coastline - Van Horn, to Saint Denis, to the pronghorn-limned beaches southwest of Rhodes - served as a chronicle in reverse of his unexpected journey with Ruby, someone he hadn't thought he'd meet, much less admire; admire, much less adore. And he did adore her; a love different than what he'd ever felt for Abigail. He and his wife had been little more than two kids, ones who - she immediately, he eventually - did the best they could with the hand they'd drawn. But had he ever gripped Abigail to himself, felt his blood boil with want, dreamed wildly about her whenever they were separated; and they had been separated, many times in as many years?

John spat the bitterness from his mouth over the boat's railing, wiped at his lips just as a crew member urged him to return to his room. "The captain don't want anyone out in the dark who don't need to be, Sir, if you'll pardon me."

"Sure, yes, 'course," he nodded, stepping from his view of the glassy, dark green water; the ripples gilded in the rays of the setting sun. He hurried to their room, galvanized by his reflections above deck, and Ruby rose to sitting upon his somewhat dramatic entrance, flinging their oblong door open with a metallic screech, eyeing him cautiously.

But he grew timid, confronted with her, lit by a small lantern hung on a hook protruding from the wall. He seized her dangling ankle, gently, looking at her foot instead of her face when he asked, "You get a lot of reading done today?"

"Some," she responded, wriggling her ankle from his grasp and sliding from the bunk to land in a quick crouch, rising to standing immediately afterward with a hand on the doorknob to leave.

John reached out to halt her, to tell her about the crewman's instruction to bunk for the night - but she flinched from his approaching hand, her own, protective hand flying to her throat. His heart sunk, instantly. She hadn't been avoiding him because of their errand; she was afraid. The light tremor in her shoulders, her eyes, narrowed in suspicion. All wounded him.

"Ruby," he said, quietly, stepping away from her, holding his hands aloft, sinking back to sit in a lower bunk. "You afraid of me, darlin'?" The tremor in her shoulders grew to an errant shiver, her eyes looked guiltily away, a finger tracing along the rivets in the closed door.

"It's only me, Ruby, just me," he continued, softly. She looked over her shoulder at him, panted out a nervous breath. "I'm standing up and coming your way, honey, 'less you don't want me to."

"I want you to," she said, near inaudible over the thrum of the ship engine. He stood and bridged the distance between them, his hands still raised up around his ears. Her blue eyes sought out his, for assurance that they were still mineral green and not blackened, soulless.

"It's just me," he repeated, holding her gaze. "Just your John. I won't touch you any way you don't want." Ruby nodded, her chest heaving, on every deep inhale her breasts brushing against his own torso, so close they were to one another.

With a hand flat on his sternum, Ruby guided him to sit back onto the bottom bunk, to lean back, to arrange his wrists behind his head, against the cool metal of the bedframe. She removed the bandana from her neck, rolled and then tied it in a figure eight around John's wrists, securing the knot to the frame, his hands in misaligned prayer against his hair.

She undressed him, next, pulling off his boots and socks, unbuckling his belt and unbuttoning his fly and shirt, removing the fasteners from his suspenders. John lay naked, shirt open and useless by his sides as she took off her own clothes, deliriously slow, each button on her blouse taking an age to his hungering body, his co*ck standing to attention, leaking in anticipation.

Ruby climbed into his lap, holding his hips down with a firm hand to keep him from bucking into her - he would have done it, he realized, so desperate he'd become - and lowered herself onto him with a sigh, her mouth capturing his for a kiss.

She'd never led him in bed in their time together, always content - indeed, more than content - with yielding to his desire. But this was different; in his restraints, he couldn't turn her over to see, nor reach down to touch, the cello-like dimples that he knew appeared in her back whenever she rolled her hips on him. He couldn't grasp her jaw and lower his teeth to her neck, nor swirl his tongue over her hardened nipples, nor seize her hair in his fingers.

In absence of being able to run his hands along her body, he instead focused on how, at her touch, he came around to the pieces of himself he regularly put down, despised. A quiet litany of negative thoughts he'd harboured against his slender waist, her hands running along the lean muscles adjoining his chest and hips; his chapped, thin lips, brought to plumpness from her teeth dragging on them; and above all, the scars; the scars he hated for everything they represented - cowardice, disloyalty, weakness. Transformed by her reverent fingers, her lips and tongue, into sites of love.

The boat docked into Blackwater in the early morning; the sun just cresting over the water, sky mostly cloudless. In the fortnight - in less - that John had been away, the town had transformed into one designed to keep undead out, much like the others they'd visited. Makeshift walls circled it on three sides, the open side out to the water.

John and Ruby set out on their horses, making for the gate. Roland Everett, the saloon coward Ruby had berated on their first night together, quickly surrendered his guard post, let them pass through at so much as a skimming of her fingers to the grip of her revolver, a stern look from John from under the brim of his hat.

A cluster of undead met them on the other side of the wall, turning their glowing gaze to the two living on horseback suddenly among them. A tall, gangly creature, with limpened grey hair that clung to where its scalp hadn't fallen away, let out a nauseating screech - one cut short by Ruby's revolver bullet finding its eye.

"Why waste bullets, Miss Dufresne," began John, smirking, digging around in his left saddlebag, "when you could use dynamite?" He handed her the stick, her face aglow in disbelief, eyes saucer-like.

"Oh, Mr. Marston," she smiled, kissing the dynamite before flipping it once, a flick of her wrist. "You do know how to treat a lady." Ruby stood in her stirrups to throw the stick overhand, whirling true towards the centre of the undead horde. Her bullet followed, perfectly timed; and the two spurred their horses away from the blast, laughing delightedly, maniacally, as limbs landed around them, dull thumps littering the great plains.

They made good time returning to the ranch, dismounting in tandem and rushing for the front door, the bedroom. Abigail and Jack's bodies, barely moving, were a sobering sight; glowing green flickered in Abigail's dark eyes. Ruby took her mixed bottle of pool water and health cure and moved to Jack, leaving John to administer to his wife.

He stroked her dark hair back from her face, grown gaunt and puckered in hunger; she snarled feebly at him, but was too weak to bite. John tipped his own bottle of cure to her lips, holding her forehead still as she writhed away from it. "C'mon, Abigail," he coaxed. Beyond them, he saw Jack's writhing slow, his head incline to better drink from the bottle Ruby held for him; but there was no change in her, still squirming, still fighting the tonic being poured into her mouth.

"C'mon, darlin'," he pleaded, again, "You got this, honey." A small line of blue appeared in her all-encompassing pupils - her irises returning - as a dull clunk signalled Ruby's empty bottle hitting the floorboards, then the bedroom door banging shut.

"John?" Abigail's voice was hoarse, feeble, and pulled his attention back to her face, cradled in his hand. "John, what's happened? Why am I on the floor?" He heaved a sigh through his nostrils, took her hand.

"It's all right, Abigail, Jack, I've got you." John helped Abigail to sitting, reached his now free hand out to grasp his son's. "You're all right, I just-" John let their hands go, leapt to standing, Abigail's concerned eyes following him to the door. "-I'll be right back, hang on."

He ran for the front of the house, for where they'd left their horses, but only Thoreau looked back at him, tossing his stately dun head, furious to be left tethered while his running mate was off. Indeed Sybil, and Ruby, were gone, leaving John to rebuild the life he thought he'd wanted.

Chapter 26: xxvi. Midas rains

Chapter Text

The world returned to normal, in the strict sense that it wasn't crawling with undead. The people of West Elizabeth and the surrounding states stayed on the alert for the so-called "Midas rains;" weather systems that spattered exposed metals with gilt, saw a few buried unearth themselves. Citizens watched for greenish clouds, smelled the copper and sulphur on the air, and knew to sleep next to their rifles those nights.

John's world, though, became smaller. He grew distant from the family he'd worked so hard to save, instead spending free time not working the farm writing letters to Lyndon, Jasper, even Liam, all coming back return-to-sender for him to hastily burn.

He spent most evenings nursing a whiskey at the Blackwater saloon, hoping, each night, that she'd emerge through the swinging doors, descend the staircase with a tray braced on her hip, seize his collar in her nimble fingers and lead him to the back room. Sam, for his part, never charged him.

John could chart the passing of time at the saloon's bar top, looking at his own sorry reflection in the mirrored backsplash, his hair growing out to once again skim his shoulders and then, eventually, without Abigail to trim it, become so long that he has to gather the dark strands in a tie.

Jack defected to Canada to fight in the war despite John's arguing for him to stay; his son couldn't understand he'd fought an entire war with just two soldiers for most of it, and the only person who'd understand had disappeared. Despite the angry terms on which Jack had left, he'd been happy to see his son's sweet, round-cheeked bride in the photograph they'd sent, Jack's face so much like his father's now that it'd outgrown its youthfulness, seen death of its own. Abigail left to join Jack and his wife in England in 1916, having enough of John's surliness and distance. There came a second photo of the smiling three, plus a baby that was genderless in its baptismal whites, mewling for the camera.

John fired all but two of the farmhands to better distract himself with work; the ramifications of this decision he too saw in the saloon mirror, his arms grown thick from labour, straining in his shirtsleeves. He did not take, nor send, a photo to his family in turn, dully realizing himself a grandfather at forty-three, feeling impossibly old.

The year after Abigail left, the dull ache in his molar - one he'd had since briefly afflicted by the undead's curse in Annesburg - reached a fevered throb, and he travelled to Saint Denis for tooth surgery, taking the train and marvelling at the changing landscape beyond his window; the automobiles on old roads paved over, the warships stationed outside of the city port.

Saint Denis itself swarmed with new recruits in their fresh army greens, naval whites, all prepared to join the allies against old Kaiser Willy, on the ropes - or so the papers continuously tried to tell him. John found the dental office and exited a quarter-hour later, tonguing the gap where his molar had been, his gums numb with cocaine, thinking he could have saved the money by having the Blackwater barber rip it out instead.

Standing on the street corner, John was faced with a massive billboard, one advertising "Dickens and Flannery's Miracle Syrup," underlined by the exuberant tagline, "Life is for (the) living!" A painted bottle stood stories tall, deep green and sparkling, flanked by two men; Nigel West Dickens, painted twenty years his junior, and Liam, tall and statuesque, nary a freckle found on his hyper-masculine likeness. His blood boiled and he clenched his fists by his sides, not realizing he had wandered into Saint Denis' Chinatown, right beside the decorative, taxidermied alligators in the gunshop's front display, a little bookstore next to it, labelledKing Booksin gold paint on the window.

And beyond the window, a woman reading behind the counter; familiar, if softer, the freckles on her pale cheeks all the more pronounced, ash-blond hair centre-parted and victory-rolled. Ruby had lost her fire, looked tired. She squinted at the page, mouthed a few words, made notes in a little book on the counter. John stared at her, so enraptured that he startled when a small girl ran past him, jangling a strand of bells hung over the door, and Ruby momentarily ignited, eyes wide, smile beaming. She lifted the girl up, kissed her cheek, seated her on the counter and held her little arms in her hands. He had seen this before; a fleeting daydream in Valentine.

John was in the shop before he even realized he'd been walking, removed his hat, held it to his chest, stunned into silence as Ruby stared at him.

"Well, what a surprise," she said finally, her voice softer, too. "Say hello to Mr. Marston, Anna." She helped the girl down from her perch, held her shoulders to stand in front of her legs, stroking her same ash-blond hair from her forehead.

"Hi, Mr. Marston," the girl, Anna, said to the ground, until a nudge from Ruby prompted her to look up, dutifully, revealing a flash of jade-green eyes. "May I go, mama?"

"You may," Ruby waved the girl on, and she ran up a narrow staircase next to the counter. They looked at each other, a small smile on Ruby's lips, John's face crestfallen and confused.

He took a deep breath. "You don't know how long I've been looking."

"But you're just passin' through today, that right?" She arranged a few of the papers on the counter, placed a receipt into the book she'd left splayed open, marking her place carefully.

"Well, I, I-" he stammered, and Ruby interrupted: "You here for the dinner hour at least, John? sh*t, was a simple question, I thought." She smiled more broadly, to signal to him that she was kidding. "Won't you join us?"

And so, John found himself eating something Ruby called lo mein in the tiny apartment above the shop, she leaning against the stove while Anna and John sat at their little ramshackle table. He was skeptical about the food; noodles shining with fragrant cooking oil and interspersed with unfamiliar vegetables, but enjoyed it, as hard as it was to eat.

"Use these, Mr. Marston," Anna said, in her quiet little voice, placing two narrow sticks in his hand and configuring his fingers around them, showing him how to open and close his hand to seize the noodles from their paper box in clumps.

Ruby laughed. "Sure as sh*t easier than a fork, ain't it?" The little girl's face grew shocked, and she whipped her head around to stare down her mother. Ruby feigned shame, covered her mouth with a flat hand. "Oops, my apologies, ain't supposed to curse in front of her highness."

The meal finished, Anna grasped John's hand by his index finger, whispering to him that she'd like to show him her toys, while Ruby cleaned up. His heart broke at the contact, at the constellation of freckles across the girl's cheeks, her mother's; at her shy spirit, unequivocally his.

Next to the cot in the corner of the room were Anna's prized things; a small stack of books, and a horse and cowboy doll, designed to fit together. She play mimed them jumping over the books, arranged as makeshift oxers along the floor. "You know," John said quietly, watching her second run of the circuit she'd created, "your mama used to do things like this."

"Don't fill my girl's head with no nonsense, now," Ruby chimed from the kitchen, banging a final glass overloudly back to its place in the cupboard. "Bedtime, Anna girl."

"Mama, no!" Anna whisper-shouted in protest, then looked to John, suddenly conspiratorial. "Mr. Marston said he'd read a story."

"Well I heard no such thing," Ruby admonished, taking the toys and returning them to the overturned crate Anna used as a nightstand, lifting the girl into the cot and kissing her forehead, stroking her hair from her eyes. While it matched Ruby's in colour, Anna's fine hair, too, was John's; featherlight, prone to tangling.

Ruby put out the light next to Anna's bed, the kitchen lamp, beckoning John to join her in the apartment's small bedroom; a window pointing out into the street, the walls glowing red and treacle yellow from the lanterns outside. She sat in the window, looking out beyond, fingering the lace curtain with the hand not settled in her lap. John stood by the door, all of his uncertainty and rattled feelings bubbling up at once.

"You didn't tell me." Her eyes flashed, then, sapphire-like in the dim lighting, but still, she said nothing. "I would have come. I would have wanted to be here."

"John, I-" she shrugged, glancing back at him before settling her gaze beyond him, over his shoulder. "I don't want to get in the way."

He forced himself into her field of vision, stepping closer. "The way of what, Ruby? Abigail left me, finally, but even if she hadn't." He breathed deeply, his chest expanding, snorting through his nostrils. "I would have come." He repeated, taking another step.

Ruby shivered, then, a brief shake of her shoulders. She looked at him suddenly, smiling. "She's your girl, Anna, through and through."

"What a terrible thing to say," John scoffed, returning the smile. "She don't seem foolish."

Ruby's smile turned to a brief laugh. "Not foolish, decent. Loving and goodhearted. And careful, too; thank god one of us is. Her name is Dufresne like her mama, but my Anna is a Marston." She rose from the sill to place her hand gently upon John's crossed arms, squeezing once. "And what a joy," she added, making clear what she thought of it.

The church bells on the far side of the street chimed nine, and Ruby started, removing her hand from John's arm and seizing a navy boilersuit draped over a chair. She stepped into the garment, tying her beautiful hair up and away into a kerchief. "I have shift, if you want to stay, you can sleep here; keep an eye on Anna."

"Shift?" He roused from his spinning thoughts, looked to Ruby.

"Factory work," she grinned at him ruefully, passed him to the door. "Got to pay the bills somehow." She slipped through the door, leaving him in the room alone. From the lone window, he watched her walk quickly down the street, arms crossed in front of her, shoulders hunched over, wondering what such a skilled rider was doing without a horse.

Chapter 27: xxvii. Telling stories

Chapter Text

John sat in the silent apartment's bedroom alone, thinking. With Ruby out, and Anna asleep in the next room, he could take in his surroundings free of their twin, all-encompassing distracting influence. The place was shabby, but carefully tended to; he took notice of the cigarette cards that Ruby had grouped and tacked to the walls, the colourful crocheted blanket draped over the foot of the bed, a small shelf made of discarded bricks and planks, teeming with books.

He was inspecting the titles on offer - grinning to himself at the preponderance of Otis Miller comics, touched to see that the first he'd given Ruby had prime-of-place as the leftmost one, even though it was out of consecutive order - when a tiny voice asked from the doorframe: "Where's mama?"

Anna, in her nightgown, her white hair lit red from the lanterns outside. John froze, having always thought himself terrible with little children, regardless if they were his own or not. He cleared his throat of the phlegm that had ruthlessly spawned there.

"She's - hgrhm - she's at work, darlin'."

The girl was sleepy, her emotions unwieldy and chiefly governing her reactions, and, terrifying to John, her eyes filled with tears. He held up his hands as if diffusing a shooter or wild animal. "Hey hey, now," he soothed, "I ain't happy she's there either. How 'bout we read until she comes back?"

Anna regarded this new option with a tilt of her head, rubbed a tear stubbornly from her eye, nodding. She took his hand and pulled him back to the cot, selecting a story from the stack next to her bed and sitting next to him, tucking her legs under her bottom and gesturing for him to hold the book open. She read beautifully, affecting different voices for each of the characters and patiently telling John when to turn the page.

He marvelled at the little person next to him, one he'd ostensibly helped create, and felt a clutch in his throat; that he was thrice a father with no children of his own. Anna, for her part, read to her last remaining moment of wakefulness; then slouched into his side, out cold. He tensed into an uncomfortable stillness, a tentative hand on her little back.

At some point, he must have fallen into a stiffened, unnaturally upright sleep, because John woke to a gentle shaking of his shoulder, Ruby in front of him with a finger to her lips. He groggily watched on as she extracted Anna from his side, positioning the girl onto her pillow with a kiss to her hair, then led John to the bedroom, both of his hands in hers.

Ruby closed the door and wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling the tie from his hair and winding her fingers into the fine, dark strands, pressing her mouth to his. He dipped his nose into her neck, sliding back the kerchief and revealing her own hair in a cloud of honeyed scent, intoxicating, overwhelming him with need.

They removed their clothes in the flurry that was familiar to him, and John crouched to lift Ruby by her thighs and topple her onto the bed, following ravenously, trailing his mouth down her body while she directed him, laughing quietly, to the pockets of the mattress that didn't squeak. She rolled over to straddle him, running her hands along his broadened shoulders, down his chest, grown barreled from hard labour done alone.

They clung to each other, a race to fit together until their bodies joined completely. Ruby's hand buried again into John's hair, her mouth on his neck. He whispered, "God, I missed you, honey," feeling the endearments naturally come back to him, the weight of Ruby in his arms, where he felt she belonged. His daydreams came through in brilliant flashes; Ruby and Anna on the ranch with him, teaching Anna to ride a pony, Ruby on her knees in front of his chest of guns, in front of him, in front...

He sensed the building heat in his lower belly as felt her lips brush against his ear, braced himself for the tease that was due to come, but instead she murmured, "needed a reminder of a good man," and he felt her body tense and then release, a single sob. He pulled back from her to study her face, grasped her chin to keep her still, her eyes on him.

"It's OK, darlin'," he hushed, kissing her cheek as he lifted her off him, his release pushed aside for the more urgent need of helping Ruby in crisis, her eyes wide and wild, mouth open in wordless panic. "Whatever it is, it's OK."

"It ain't," she hissed, her eyes cutting from his to the window. John moved until he was beside her, drew up the crocheted blanket until it was wrapped around each of their shoulders, his arm protectively encircling her waist.

"Tell me," he was loving, kissing her temple, caressing her cheek with the back of his fingers, a pair of doves. The morning light started to creep into the room, battling for dominance with the still-lit lanterns outside, introducing soft lavenders and pinks where there'd been only salacious, vibrant red. Ruby still had yet to speak, to explain her sudden shift in mood, so he offered: "I want you to come with me, if that's what you're afraid about. You and Anna. We can give her our kind of life."

Ruby shook her head, wounding him, and then seeing she'd done so, kissed his fingers, touched his forehead and cheekbone. "No, John, that's not it." She fell silent again, and John waited, patiently, stock-still save for a repeated rubbing of her shoulder.

"It's the factory," she croaked, finally, through the hand she'd clasped over her mouth. "It's Liam's factory, where I work. Liam and your friend's, Mr. West Dickens." John's stomach sunk, the billboard he'd seen the day before burning in his mind's eye.

"I was desperate for money when I had Anna," she continued, looking down at the floor, "I found that I could work at the bookstore in exchange for livin' in this place upstairs. But it weren't enough, and she needed so much help; a wet nurse when I couldn't feed her, medicines for all kinds of infections she got. I sold Sybil, much as it broke my heart." She glanced at him, then, guilt all over her face, and his own guilt doubled back on him; that he wasn't there to help her out, that she'd suffered with and for their baby alone.

"But Liam had come through town after I'd written him, said he was opening a factory to make cure, right here in Saint Denis. Offered me a job on the spot as his secretary, only, seeing as he thought I still didn't know how to read or write, he, ah-" Ruby's gaze swung back down to the floor, and she said as if pinched, "-he had different duties in mind for me."

John's fists clenched, then, hot blood coursed through him, so limitless was his anger. He'd assessed correctly that Liam's feelings for Ruby were beyond a foster brother's love for a sister, all those years ago, but he'd acted on them in a way that was so hateful that were he in front of John at that moment, he'd have killed him on the spot. Ruby sensed his boiling rage, stroked his arms and chest, his face.

"Nothing happened, John," she said, firmly, holding his gaze again. "I shoved him off, the f*ck, but he punished me. Put me down below in manufacturing, giving me the shifts at night so I only get to see Anna in a few hours between when her school ends and work begins."

"I'm so sorry, Ruby," he stroked her hair, inhaled the honey smell, tried desperately to centre himself, ease the guilt and anger that rocked him from within.

A shaft of sunlight broached the window, then, lighting her hair, catching the shimmering tears in her eyes. "That ain't it, though," she swallowed, her voice dropping to a near-inaudible volume. "They're makin' more than cure in that factory."

The clandestine way with which she said it, the absolute terror on her face, made John's heart stop. "What?" He uttered, with great effort.

"Liam didn't think I could read, so he was careless with all his damn papers, but I saw it, tonight; they found more of that stuff, and they're makin' weapons for the war." The pictures of thousands dead on battlefields in Europe flashed across John's vision; dead that could be brought to life, weaponized, with mere litres of the green Midas syrup. Jack, his wife and child, and Abigail, and all the others over there, in the crosshairs of another undead nightmare.

"We've got to stop him," he found himself saying, and Ruby smiled, a lifeboat sent to keep him from drowning in his return to hopelessness.

"Knew you'd say that, my love," she kissed him, then, and dropped to the floor, reaching under the bed, procuring a cigar box. Opening the lid revealed her two revolvers, their custom carvings, barrel-to-opposite-grip, Piscean. She handed him one, grip first, and opened the cylinder of the second, counting the bullets within. "Think we're about due to take down another greedy bastard, wouldn't you say?"

Chapter 28: xxviii. “I know what you're cooking up in here”

Chapter Text

Ruby buzzed around the small room, John's hair catching in her subtle wake. She crossed in front of him, the revolver held aloft in her crooked arm, gathering up her clothing in her other hand; a heavy skirt from the dresser, a blouse with a lace-trimmed collar from the wardrobe, back to the dresser for a pair of dainty white socks. She set the gun down to button the shirt over her bare chest, then realized she was missing her underclothes, stripped back down, started over. She was unfocused and erratic, shaking when she was still, and made repeated, fleeting looks toward the other room, to where Anna was sleeping.

"He can't know that we're there to confront him, least not at first," she said, a repetition of a statement she'd made five minutes before. John felt a pang of concern and stood up, moved to her slowly. He wrapped his long fingers around her wrists, gently keeping her still. For a moment, he'd seen a flash of the Ruby he'd known six years ago; but she had been someone with nothing to lose, then.

John released one of her wrists to cup her cheek, comb her loose hair behind her ear. "How about you stay here, while I pay dear Liam a visit?" He said it intending to sound cavalier, but couldn't help the low growl in his throat on 'Liam.' Ruby's eyes fixed on him. "I have some opinions on how he treats his employees, much less his sister."

Her gaze slid again to the door, a moment of seriously considering his offer, before she shook her head, forcefully. "No, you'll need me to get in. I'll distract Liam while you talk to Mr. West Dickens." John scowled, having forgotten for a moment that Nigel was a piece of this puzzle. "He owes you his life, John; don't let him forget it. Get him to help you get the stock of weapons, maybe find somewhere to take it from there."

"My ranch," John offered, and Ruby's eyes widened. "I can bury it safe, watch over it." Her face was one of gratitude, then, and she embraced him, breathing deeply into his bare chest, finally still.

She fastened her hidden holster to her thigh, pushed the revolver into it, threw the skirt overtop. John held his town clothes out to her, perplexed. "Oh, you can't wear those, Mr. visitin' rancher," she stifled a laugh. "Here." Ruby took the clothes from him, save for his undershirt, proffered her discarded boilersuit. It went as far as his torso but had no hope of going over his shoulders, so she tied the arms around his waist, concealed the second revolver behind his back, tucked into the waistband, and shrugged.

"Do I look professional, you think?" John smirked through his false-sincerity, and she clamped a laugh to her mouth. "I really want this job," he continued, and she batted his shoulders, laughing still. Anna walked in as Ruby was tying John's long, dark hair into her kerchief, snorting audibly.

"What are you doing, mama?" The girl asked, unsure of this playful side of her mother.

"Playing dress-up, my darlin' girl," Ruby replied, tucking a loose lock of hair into the fabric and turning to their daughter, "don't Mr. Marston look fine?" Anna giggled. "C'mon, slowpoke, we've got to dressyouup, for school." Ruby left the room to get Anna dressed, and John sat alone on the bed, breathing deeply, galvanizing himself for their endeavour to come.

After dropping Anna off, Ruby lingered by the schoolyard fence, her face wistful watching the girl play hopscotch with her classmates. John lay a comforting hand on Ruby's back until she shook herself into focus, then trailed her to the western side of the city, the industrial district. The Dickens and Flannery factory was set up just across the southern bridge into town, rebuilt after all of Saint Denis' undead madness. The same illustrations on the billboard John had seen in Chinatown were plastered over its windowless façade, the smug expression on Liam's likeness - if he could be so generous with the word - igniting a rage in his chest.

He felt Ruby's hand on his shoulder, suddenly, two platonic slaps, as they approached a side door, set somewhere within the massive West Dickens' arm. "This here's Hector, the new mechanic," she said cheerily to a watchman at the front door. The man's eyes looked to John's, scrutinizing him for a moment. "Don't speak much English, and even the Mexican girls say he's a bit of a dullard, but hell if he isn't built like a brick sh*thouse, hey, Reg?"

The guard's gaze broke with John's, to laugh with Ruby. "I'll say, Miss Dufresne."

"You keep well, now," she said, still smiling, waving for John to follow her into the factory. As they passed through a small anteroom of cubbies for changing staff, and then into the massive production room, proper, the familiar smell of combined sulphur and swamp that signalled the green syrup's presence assailed John's nose.

"Don't block your nose," she whispered out of the corner of her mouth, "you'll look too new." John lowered the arm that he was hoping to bury his face into, to stave off the smell, and quirked his eyebrow at her.

"A dullard, you said?"

"Just a bit," she smiled back, then crouched behind a pool of the syrup, dragging John with her by the collar. She pointed at a raised gangway, two gleaming oaken doors with brass fittings set into the otherwise drab factory walls. "Liam's on the right, West Dickens on the left," she whispered. "There's a door joining their offices, too, from the inside. Talk to West Dickens and see if you can't get him to start loading up - they ain't made much of the weapons yet - and then listen at the door in case I need any help."

"You sure you're gonna be OK, honey?" So much of what John meant was unspoken, but Ruby heard it anyway in his tone, in the hitch in his voice, and kissed him as affirmation. They ascended the stairs, and as Ruby lightly rapped her knuckles on the door of Liam's office, John strode right into Nigel's, figuring the direct approach would have the most impact on the old, cowardly swindler.

The look on Nigel West Dickens' face once he recognized John's confirmed his choice. The man immediately leapt behind his desk, raising his hands in the air, peering over the desktop with a milky eye, threatening cataract.

"I ain't even got my gun out, Mr. West Dickens," John lamented, approaching him steadily.

The man's voice trembled out from the other side of the desk. "You're just here for a friendly chat, then, John?"

"Well, I wouldn't say that, either," John, shaking his head, appeared in front of the cowering West Dickens. "I came to see the man from your billboard, but you don't quite look the same."

Nigel's face soured. "Well, that's hardly fair, John. A man needs to take advantage of advertising's ameliorating qualities, much as the average man or woman can take advantage of the boosting effects of our full range of restorative tonics and elixirs." John pinched the bridge of his nose with one hand, annoyed already, and pulled out Ruby's revolver from behind his back with the other, pointing it at Nigel, whose hands shot back up; his quaking resumed.

"I just- please, save it, Nigel," John sighed. "Look, I know what you're cooking up in here, and it ends today. You're going to go downstairs, pack up all of those weapons you're creating, and load them into your wagon. Then, you're going to drive me all the way back to Blackwater. What you say next decides whether or not I let you eat and sleep on the trip over, so be careful."

Nigel affected a tremulous smile, then gambled a shrug. "W-weapons, John? We are in the business of restoration, of healing-" John moved like a ghost, Nigel's collar in his fist, the gun's snout pressed up and into his fleshy neck.

"One. More. Lying. Word." He hissed, provoking a strangled yelp from the older man in his grip. "You owe me this, old man. I spared your life once. Give me occasion to do it again." Nigel nodded, then, his eyes closed in defeat.

"OK, John. I'll be out front in a quarter-hour."

"You best be, Nigel." John released the man's neck and stepped backwards, allowing him to pass through the office, praying that he wouldn't try to dash off again, hoping that the defeat in the man's cloudy eyes was signal enough to take him at his word. He crept over to the adjoining office door, then, pressing his ear to the wood, making out the muffled conversation of Ruby and Liam within.

"The little wean's doing well, then?" He heard Liam say, his voice as assured and confident as John remembered it to be in Annesburg. His tone was friendly, but John thought of the circ*mstances of Ruby's night work and could only read it as dangerous, the devil's snarl dressed up as a grin.

"Real well," Ruby replied, and John was shocked at how even-keeled she sounded, all of the warmth she'd once had for her brother like it'd never left. "Smart as a whip, her teacher says. But her classes are getting harder, which is why- well, I'm hoping to spend more time with my girl, maybe come back to day shifts."

Liam snorted. "You want to go back to days to help your girl with her schoolwork? Ain't that a little blind-leading-the-blind, sister?" John clenched his fist around the gun still in his hand, willed his enraged heartbeat to slow down.

"Well," Ruby's voice sounded defeated, "I was more hopin' I could learn too, with her, in the evenings." Liam laughed again, a cruel, empty sound.

"Sometimes you just need to give up on what can't be done," he admonished.He's enjoying this way too much, John thought to himself, his only clear thought in all of his blind rage.

"Like you should give up on sellin' those weapons to the army, you mean," she glowered in return, unable to keep up her ruse.

"What?" Liam's angry surprise radiated into the quiet office John was crouched in.

"Why'd you make those in the first place, Liam?" She continued. "Running out of customers?" She sounded righteous, fearless, and John wanted to burst through the door, lift her up, kiss her. But, still, he waited.

Liam let out a third, hollow laugh. "My sister has more business sense than she's let on, I see."

"And that cure ain't yours to sell, anyway," Ruby said, her voice gaining strength. "You were the one who said it weren't real, it was Jasper who figured it all out. You couldn't have involved him as you made your millions? He's your own damn brother, Liam."

"That addled dunce?" Liam shot back, and John heard movement, the pounding of feet dulled by carpet reverberating through the suspended second floor. "Not surprised you'd advocate for our brother, suppose you've always had a soft spot for the meek and downtrodden, Ruby. Like any great St. Philomenian." His voice dripped with malice.

"Like I had for you, you mean?" She said, so quietly, John could barely hear from his position. "You came to us so late and never quite fit in with the rest of the show, did you? Were never much of a rider or roper. That shot in your bossman's back were the first I ever seen you f*ckin' land."

John heard an enraged growl, then, a small whimper, and made to open the door. He came in on Liam's well-appointed office to find Ruby's neck in Liam's fist, his gun in her face. "Let's see if I can get a second, then, you bitch," he snarled, turning to look at John, his own gun raised.

Chapter 29: xxix. Striving

Chapter Text

"Drop the gun, Liam," John ordered, pulling the hammer back on the revolver with his thumb.

Liam laughed loudly and disparagingly at John's appearance in the doorway, swivelling his body around the seated Ruby to hold her around the neck with his arm, the gun pressing into her right temple.

"He'sstill skulking around?" Liam hooted, crouching slightly to meet Ruby's furious eyeline, looking between her and John, the revolver levelled at him. "Don't tell me the little whelp is Marston's? She a great lummox then, just like him?"

"No," Ruby seethed, through gritted teeth. "She's beautiful, just like him." Liam released her neck to pet her hair, glaring provokingly at John.

"She'll be a beautiful orphan, then, just like her mama," Liam lowered his lips to the crown of Ruby's head, which she winced away from. "But don't worry, dear sister," he whispered menacingly into her hair, "she'll always have a job at Uncle Liam's factory."

John expected Ruby's face to further crumple, but her features softened instead, the line disappearing between her eyebrows, her blue eyes clear and peaceful as she caught John's, equal parts worried and raging. Her left hand flew up like a shot, pushing the barrel of Liam's pistol away from her head. With her right, she drew her revolver out from under the skirt and into Liam's throat, firing without hesitation, the shot ringing in their ears.

Liam's body - finely dressed, muscular - wheeled backward, hitting the floor with a dull thud. Half of his face was missing. Ruby's body shuddered and she dropped to her knees, letting the revolver fall from her hand to the rug. John rushed to meet her, kneeling behind her and wrapping his arms around her shoulders. He felt her nestle into his forearm, her heavy breathing tickling at the wiry hairs that sprouted there.

"He was my family," she whispered, staring at the corpse. "He was terrible, but he was my family."

John stroked her hair, kissed her cheek. "I understand," he said, because he did.

Ruby turned in his embrace, gestured for them both to stand, holding his face with her left hand and seizing her revolver from the floor in her right. "We got to go, I got to get Anna." Her feet danced anxiously, nearly jogging on the spot. "Maybe off to Jasper's in Beaver Hollow? Or find Lyn in Mexico? How big is Mexico?"

John couldn't help but grin. "Pretty big." He led her out of the room via the side door, out through West Dickens' office, and down the stairs, then out of the factory. Maybe the first miracle the man had ever worked: Nigel West Dickens was waiting outside, as he'd promised, with the wagon, horses tethered and ready to go.

"This is my ride," he said, his voice suddenly strained. "Don't suppose you- you'd take a chance on coming home with me, instead?"

Ruby's face grew rueful, and John felt his heart wrench painfully in his chest. "John, you don't want this - me and a little girl."

"Ourlittle girl," he asserted, albeit quietly, stepping forward to close the distance between them. "And I do." Ruby shook her head, looked to the dirt at their feet, but he seized her chin to look at him, emboldened himself. "You may not want me and if that's the case, I'll leave, I'll never bother you again. But I want you, Ruby. You're the only damn thing in my life I did decide on."

The words hung suspended in the air between them, a deep shame slowly crawling up John's back with every second Ruby remained in stunned silence, staring at him, her mouth agape. But it quirked into a smile, first small, then beaming, and she pulled his face to hers for a kiss.

"Yes, John, I do. I want you, so f*ckin' bad." She laughed delightedly, kissed him again. "I'm going to get our things and pick up the girl - come and get us at her school!" These last words yelled behind her, she off at a run down the street, leaving John in an ecstatic daze, wiping at his mouth.

Nigel cleared his throat dramatically. "I'm assuming you were responsible for that gunshot upstairs, John, so best we get moving?" John shook himself and climbed into the driver's seat, piloting the horses out as far as the forests outside of the old plantation house, Shady Belle, where he unhitched one of the draft horses and raced it back towards the city.

Ruby and Anna were waiting for him alongside one small suitcase outside of the school, Anna looking bewildered at the change to her routine. Ruby lifted her to John, who sat her on the horse's massive back, and then lent a hand up to Ruby, sitting between them. He managed the reins in one hand, the suitcase in the other, and took the long way around out of the city, away from the factory.

"We should say goodbye, right, Anna?" Ruby shouted to the girl over the wind rushing in their ears. Anna, who'd been morose for the ride out, perked up a little. "Adieu, Saint Denis!" Ruby waved theatrically, blowing kisses to the receding skyline, and Anna parroted her, giggling.

And then it was just the three of them; surviving, happy. On returning to Beecher's Hope, Ruby settled Anna into Jack's old bedroom while John unloaded the wagon of its weapons into the loft of the barn, waved Nigel off.

While Anna spent her first few days at the Blackwater schoolhouse, John dug and then brick-lined a cellar, deep into the ground. Ruby slept away most of these days, exhausted by something she couldn't quite define, but made sure to drag herself from the bed to bring John a daily beer from the ice chest, to press the cool glass bottle laughingly against his bare torso, to brush his hair from his eyes as she did for their daughter.

When the cellar was completed, John called Ruby for a last inspection. She peered at the small vials of weaponized syrup that surrounded the little room, set into boxes filled with sawdust, nodding.

"So we'll seal it up, then?" John asked, a forearm to his head against the bright day. She held up her index finger in a "just-a-minute" motion, ran up the few stairs to ground level and off to the house. In moments she was back, her two holstered revolvers in her hands. She placed them on the ground, in the middle of the vials, at their feet.

"You sure, honey?" He asked, looking between the guns, "Li'l Red" carved into their grips, and her.

"Yes," she breathed, a serene smile playing on her lips. "I'm done."

"But what about the old ways? Our kind of life?" John couldn't imagine moving through the world without a gun at his hip, and thought she was of the same opinion.

"Was it the kind of life you wanted, John? The more I'm away from it, the more I don't miss it. The violence. Even the grandstanding." She took his hand and led him from the cellar, laboured to close the large, steel-enforced doors, chaining and then padlocking them. "Maybe this is who we really are," she continued once done, gesturing out towards the ranch, a few cattle grazing in the fields to the east of them, the gardens she'd weeded while he worked, the sheep in their pen, bleating. "Certainly what I always wanted. To be- just folks striving."

So, they strove. John took Anna to school every day, as the leaves in the trees turned golden and fell from their branches, as the first snow rocked the ranch and forced the cattle and horses into the barn. One schoolday, early in the new year, bundled in her new woolen coat, Anna kissed his cheek before sliding off of the back of Thoreau, yelling, "Bye, pa!" on her way through the gate. She never called him anything different after that.

Taking his two girls - as he revelled in saying - through town, John was often teased for his younger wife and daughter, but soon grew younger, too; carried himself taller, took care in his grooming, had a new bounce in his step, an easy smile on his face.

John had always been proud of the families he'd found himself in. Guidance from his mentors and brothers in the gang; a love wrought of hardship with Abigail and Jack. With this family, Ruby on his arm, Anna skipping ahead, he finally felt it. A swell of pride in himself.

End.

Chapter 30: Afterword and Notes on Who, Cerberus

Chapter Text

Spoilers for this story ahead!

If you made it here, thanks so much for reading! I super-appreciate you and would love to hear any thoughts you have on this story.

I'd love to say I had a big plan but I approached the start of this story with just a couple of scenes in mind - the siege of the Blackwater saloon and an eventual connection between John and Ruby after some bad stuff went down. The rest sort of unfurled unevenly; I'd set out to write a horror-western but somehow, along the way, my Sergio Leone playlist got mixed up with Sufjan Stevens and there you have it, romance city. The song especially responsible is “To Be Alone With You” from Seven Swans.

The play that Ruby loves and is determined to learn is Shakespeare'sRichard III- it's where she gets the very unRuby-like phrasing "infecting mine eyes" from, and why she names both her horse and her daughter Anna, after Anne, a character in the play.

But a lot of the other coincidences were very accidental - a reader on Wattpad asked if I'd named the working girl in the Blackwater saloon Clem after Clementine from The Walking Dead TTG - I did not! Ruby's stage name is Little Red, and John is literally the wolf guy - did I plan this? Also no! I had some fun giving John a happier ending than either RDR1 or Undead Nightmare ever had for him, so I hope you liked it, too.

Thanks again for reading! 🙏🏻💕