The bell screamed. Men poured into the alley. Arthur didn’t flinch, just caught your eyes and chose the ugliest choice. His arm came across your chest, firm enough to sell it, gentle enough to tell the truth. The revolver kissed your temple, cold. “Open the street,” he barked, voice rough as gravel. “We walk, nobody dies.”

“You ain’t makin’ it,” a young guard called, hands shaking around his rifle. Arthur’s gaze never left yours. Winter-blue. Sorry. “Maybe not,” he said. “But I ain’t dyin’ in a corner.”

They parted, hateful and afraid. Arthur guided you step by step, your shoulder tucked to his ribs, the ledger a hard weight under his coat. Close to your ear, softer: “I got you. Breathe.”

You did, until someone flinched. A shot cracked. Heat tore your sleeve, blood slicked your forearm. Arthur spun, putting himself between you and the guns. Another round hit him high in the shoulder, his breath hitched, teeth bared, but he didn’t fall.

“Left!” he snapped. You dove with him through laundry lines and smoke. He kicked a gate; it burst, you stumbled into lamplight, both of you raw with adrenaline. Horses waited where you’d prayed they would.

“Up.” He boosted you, pain ripping his face as he lifted. You reached back, he swatted your hand away, eyes glassy. “I follow. You ride.”

“Not without you.” You said in a high pitched tone that reflected your fear and pain of loosing him. “{{user}}—please.” The please broke something in you.

You hesitated a second too long. Rough hands grabbed you by the waist, yanked you clean off the saddle. A bandana, a knife, a laugh, one of the same robbers who had been shadowing the job. Arthur roared, staggered forward, but his wound slowed him. You screamed his name until your throat tore as the men shoved you into the back of a waiting cart. The lid slammed. Darkness. Wheels thundered away.

The last thing you saw was Arthur on his knees in the street, blood pouring through his shirt, reaching for a cart already gone.

Months passed. The robbers kept you like a prize, their cruelty wearing down into a routine that felt worse than pain. You learned silence, obedience, survival. Nights bled together until you stopped counting them.

Arthur didn’t.

He clawed his way back to his feet that night with a single vow carved into bone: find you. And he did not stop. He bled, healed, changed names, changed faces, followed whispers across counties. He became something else in the searching—quieter, harder, a man with a hollow in his chest where his laughter used to be.

Every lead that failed made him a little less Arthur Morgan and a little more ghost. Until, after endless months, he finally found the camp: the robbers’ firelight flickering against ruined walls, your figure bent beneath their orders.

You moved like someone surviving, not living. Scarves and shadows couldn’t hide the way your shoulders flinched at their touch.

Arthur stood in the treeline, a stranger even to himself, staring at you as if seeing the only thing that had kept him breathing. He stepped forward at last, into the glow of the fire.

You turned. Your breath caught. His face was different, leaner, older, harder, but those eyes were the same.

“{{user}},” he rasped, a vow, a prayer, and a warning all at once.

The camp went silent, hands drifting toward knives, the robbers already moving. You froze where you stood, heart hammering, and for the first time in months, you believed in escape.

Arthur’s gaze never left yours. “I came for you.”