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Word travels fast, especially when Pinkertons travel in buzzing hordes, their swarming around rotting carcasses tearing it apart in unholy desecration, a fit warning to their targets just not to die. If they did, even just minor in their slip-up, a faulty link in a well-known but slippery chain, well…He saw it coming. That's what he tells himself at least. It's easier that way, all the signs were there- people jumping ship left and right; Dutch getting sloppy, the way Arthur looked at him like he knew. But he'd be lying if he said he could feel it when it happened, deep in his bones, in the rumble of his heart. That brutal chill that sweeps your body, torrid, unmistakable.They look like little ants, he thinks to himself as he watches them carry out their little infestation of Annesburg from his vantage point in the trees. They haven't torn it apart, merely swept through it, sloppily but calculated nonetheless. Obviously, they had known vaguely where to go, apparently Molly's doing although her expression still haunts him a little. She admitted to it sure, but he found doubt festering deep around the corners of the memory when he thought about it too long. So he didn't think about it. Not until he found Mrs. Grimshaw. The wound bore little resemblance to the late Mrs. O'Shea but the placement was close enough to give that bitter kick of familiarity. For better or for worse.She was by herself, save, a few Pinkertons but this was different. Her expression was pained and her lightly powdered face was streaked with tears and drool pooled at the corner of her mouth. Her dress was streaked with dirt giving him the impression that she hadn't died where she fell, she would have kicked and grasped and clawed he could count on it, but that didn't change the shade of black the congealed blood that seeped in between her fingered and stained the dress she tried so hard to keep clean. It must've got her in the liver, maybe her stomach, it didn't matter. Not when she lay at his feet, eyebrows knit together, her determined gaze fixed on some scene he couldn't see.He buried her on the hill. A pretty spot in Roanoke that sprouted flowers in the springtime, he figured she'd like it, they bloomed all her favorite colors.It was a mess. He felt it. He knew deep down in his soul that Arthur was dead, so he stayed, and he looked. He spent weeks dodging Pinkertons on top of the persistent thieves of the district that fed on their abandoned riches, though they weren't half of what they once had been. He rode along the valley and eventually boarded a train through the mountains and oh. Oh Arthur.His legs went weak. He turned away. The gentle thunks and rattled of the train car shaking the tears that pooled in his his eyes, but didn't fall. his hand struck his mouth and pressed hard as rigid breaths came short from his nose in huffs of cloudy condensation.He bails from the train, it's muscle memory the way his feet hit the ground planting firmly to balance him and he stills almost tumbling over into the snow from the impact. He tried desperately to convince himself the body half buried in the snow wasn't Arthur Morgan. He stood staring at the ground too long, trying to fight the tears that welled in his eyes.He felt it burning in his throat, grabbing at his neck, trying to will him back. Back down the mountain. Back to the valley. Back to his family, full and waiting with their open arms. More than anything on the planet he wanted just to be whole again. But his feet carry him forward, mindlessly trudging through the grass and stones back into the path to find his way to Arthur. To pick up his broken pieces knowing that he could never put them back together. He doesn't feel it now, and looking back on it the details get foggy. But if he closed his eyes he could feel the bite of the cold on his cheeks and the rough feeling of the tarp as he lay it over the snow and dug beside it. Under a little under 5 inches lie his Arthur. He didn't have it in him to look at the face of the man when he lifted him out of the cold. He didn't have it in him to look the man in the face when he brushed the dirt and rocks from his body, and he didn't have it in him to look the man in the face when he placed him on the tarp. But just after he paused. His eyes trailed up from his worn boots to his riding pants and empty leather holsters, to his hands, split and bloody but relaxed all the same.For the first time in a while, maybe some 15 years, he felt that prying inclination to drink. It wasn't the same yearning he had to sip some cheap scotch until his words grew sloppy and his sight grew cotton fuzzy at the edges, no. instead, it was a harsh, drowning need to burn. To force it down is brutal gulps until it blinded him, consumed his brain in fog so thick he no longer wondered- never had to think about what happened, never had to think about that gnawing awarity, the abysmal sorrow. it wasn't just Arthur, was it? For the first time, he had felt the loving light of a family, one that didn't think twice about welcoming him into their open arms. Now he was forced to watch as it ate itself from the inside out.Only then did he begin to cry. Crouched in the snow beside the corpse of his best friend, heavy, hot tears flooded his vision, stinging his eyes coldly at the edges, and sobbed in broken breaths until his muscles weak and shoulders heaving trying to cope with the agony.He buried Arthur ritualistically, it's the only way he could get through it. Laying him to rest. It sounded so sweet like that, but the act was something more like work, dragging on tedious in its heartbreaking nature like some belligerent task. The coins he'd placed gently over the eyes was the last of its nature. The last time anything would ever be so loving to poor Arthur. And as he stacked dry wood and brush to melt the frost in the hard ground his hands trembled because what else could be do? He could let himself think, and cry, and shake. Right? A few moments allotted just to get lost in it. Jesus.He draped a blanket over Arthur, while he waited. it was foolish, he knew that, but it was cold. The snow wouldn't let up and he knew how miserable it made the other man. “Damn it, Arthur.” He tried hard to dredge up some kind words, like the more civilized folk did but It all seemed to elude him. He wanted to just pass off the hard bits to someone else. Why couldn't this be the job of someone else? He could barely bring himself to speak, so he doddled a bit with his words, regurgitating the happy little remembrances of Arthur they used to joke about when he was alive. Oh god. When he was alive.He dug, and he dug, and he dug, and when he knew it was enough he dug deeper because damn the beast that dare catch scent of him enough to burrow beneath the flesh of the earth just to reach him. Damn the worms that he's helpless to keep away. And damn the earth for its unrelenting embrace.‘of course, I'll face you west, Arthur. Don't think I've forgotten. Don't you think for a second that I could ever forget.’