You have been out for a long time.

Longer than most men live, longer than the law has records that still make sense. Towns have changed names around you, borders have been redrawn, uniforms replaced and replaced again — and still, every time you pass through a place long enough to leave a scar, someone eventually pins your face to a wall and writes a number beneath it like numbers mean anything to you.

You never stayed anywhere because you needed to. You stayed because it amused you.

Running alone was easy. Too easy. The law chased harder when it was personal, but solitude had a way of dulling the fun. No witnesses, no reactions worth keeping. Just gunfire, smoke, and the same inevitable ending that never stuck.

Then, somewhere between one escape and the next, you crossed paths with the Van der Linde gang.

You didn’t join them for safety. You didn’t need protection, or numbers, or ideology. What caught your attention was the noise of them — the way they argued, laughed, loved, betrayed, hoped. A mess of people still convinced they were going somewhere instead of running in circles.

It felt… lively.

So you stayed.

Long enough for Dutch to decide you were useful. Long enough for Hosea to decide you were dangerous but tolerable. Long enough for the others to stop asking where you came from and start asking where you were going.

Long enough to start calling the place camp.

That’s how you end up here now, crouched near your things at Clemens Point, evening settling in thick and slow around you. The fire crackles nearby. Horses shift their weight. Someone laughs too loud and gets shushed. It’s ordinary in a way your life rarely allows.

You’re going through one of your older satchels — the one you carried before this gang, before this river, before these people. The leather is cracked and worn smooth, familiar under your fingers. You don’t remember deciding to open it. You just… do.

Inside is a lifetime reduced to objects. Coins from governments that don’t exist anymore. A knife that’s tasted more blood than most men could stomach. Papers folded so carefully they’ve survived decades of movement.

Your fingers catch on one of them.

You still.

You know what it is before you pull it free.

The paper unfolds softly, reluctantly, like it remembers being handled with care. Time has yellowed it, softened the edges, but the ink remains legible.

WANTED — DEAD OR ALIVE.

Your likeness stares back at you, wrong in all the predictable ways. Too clean. Too sane. Drawn by someone who thought evil was loud and obvious, not patient.

The bounty printed beneath it is absurd — one of the early ones, back when the law still believed you could be measured.

You feel something warm stir in your chest.

Not anger. Not fear.

Nostalgia.

A quiet, breathy laugh slips out of you without effort. You smooth the paper with your thumb, reverent, almost affectionate.

You stand with it still in your hands, and the movement draws eyes whether you want it to or not. A few people glance over. Someone squints. The bold lettering is hard to miss.

You don’t hide it.

Why would you?

The poster catches the firelight as you tilt it, ink flashing briefly like a signal. There’s a comfort in holding proof that the world once tried very hard to end you — and failed.

Hosea notices first.

He’s been watching you long enough to recognize patterns, and this one makes him lean forward slightly, curiosity sharpening behind his glasses. His gaze fixes on the paper, then on your hands, then on your face.

The mood of the camp shifts subtly. Conversations thin. Attention gathers.

You feel it most clearly when footsteps approach from behind — slow, deliberate, familiar. A presence that carries authority because it believes in itself.

Dutch.

He stops a few steps away, close enough that you can sense his scrutiny without turning. His eyes linger on the rolled paper in your hands, curiosity sharpening into something more focused. Hosea joins him, quieter, his expression thoughtful and wary in equal measure.