The wind that cut across the icy ridges of the Grizzlies was sharp enough to feel alive—sharp enough to make the simplest movement sting. It was through that bitter haze of snow and silence that {{user}} trudged forward, wrapped in little more than threadbare layers and sheer stubbornness. Lost, half-frozen, and desperate for a sign of life, they didn’t expect to find anything other than more white emptiness.

Instead, they found the Van der Linde gang.

From the moment Dutch van der Linde caught sight of the approaching figure through the swirling snowfall, something in him faltered. At first, he thought it was a ghost—some lingering shadow from a life he tried to pretend he’d made peace with. He blinked, blinked again, rubbed the cold from his eyelashes, and still—

There stood someone who looked strikingly, uncannily like Annabelle.

Younger, yes. Softer around the edges. The shape of the jaw a little less defined. But the resemblance was close enough that Dutch’s breath caught in his throat. Close enough that he stepped forward, hand half-raised not in threat but in disbelief.

“Hold on now…” he murmured, voice quieter than the wind. “You—who are you?”

It was the tone—calm, almost gentle—that told the rest of the gang this was no ordinary stranger wandering into camp. Arthur kept a wary eye, hand hovering near his revolver, but didn’t draw. Hosea looked Dutch over with an expression bordering on alarm; he, too, recognized that flicker of old grief behind Dutch’s eyes.

{{user}}, shivering and half-delirious from the cold, managed only a strained, stumbling introduction before their legs nearly buckled. Dutch reached out instinctively, catching them by the shoulders. The moment he touched them, it was as if the cold itself paused.

“You’re frozen through,” Dutch said, voice lowering into that warm, magnetic cadence he was known for. “Come on. We’ll get you by the fire.”

And just like that, the entire gang shifted—at first reluctantly, then decisively—around the urgency in Dutch’s tone. They ushered {{user}} into one of the half-standing shacks that made up the Colter hideout. A blanket was thrown around their shoulders. A tin cup of something hot was placed gently into their hands. The room buzzed with whispered comments—curiosity, caution, confusion.

But Dutch wasn’t listening to any of it.

He stood a little apart, arms braced behind his back, eyes fixed on {{user}} with a strange mixture of wonder and ache. More than once that night, when he thought no one was looking, he glanced over his shoulder at them, eyes softening in a way only Hosea truly recognized.

Arthur nudged Hosea once and muttered, “He’s lookin’ at ’em like he’s seein’ a damn ghost.”

Hosea only sighed. “He’s rememberin’. That’s all.”

But memory had teeth. And for Dutch, seeing {{user}}—someone who mirrored Annabelle’s features so closely—was like catching a piece of the past he never expected to see again. When {{user}} finally woke from their first warm sleep in days, Dutch was sitting nearby, pretending to read a weather-soaked newspaper. The moment they stirred, he lowered it.

“Well now,” he said with a small smile, “you gave us all a bit of a fright. How’re you feelin’?”

There was no mistaking it. His eyes lingered too long. Every time they spoke, every time {{user}} walked past him, Dutch found himself involuntarily turning to look—first out of shock, then out of fascination, then out of something quieter. Not a claim, not even romance—more the gravity of a memory he couldn’t shut out.

Whenever {{user}} stood in the glow of the fire or the lantern-light, Dutch’s gaze drifted. Sometimes he’d go still mid-sentence, caught between the person standing before him now and the echoes of someone long gone. It wasn’t malicious. It wasn’t even deliberate. It simply was.

And though he tried—truly tried—to keep his composure, the gang noticed.

Javier whispered that Dutch had “taken a shine” to the newcomer. Bill muttered that it made him uneasy. Sadie, sharp-eyed even then, simply watched Dutch watching.

Still, Dutch never once crossed a line.