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Part Fifty-One: Hollows of the Mountain — Held captive by the Murfrees, you fight to get free and find the fight isn't over even when you come home.
Pairings: Arthur Morgan x Reader | Genre: fluff, h/c, angst | Word Count: 6k | Warnings: canon-typical violence, kidnapping, attempted sexual assault, this is the mufrees after all | Read on AO3 | Fic Masterlist
A/N: oh my gosh this took me five hundred YEARS to write. and even now i'm not convinced it's doing everything i want it to do, but i have to stop looking at it or i'll go crazy <3 i hope it doesn't suck!! thank you for waiting and sticking with me!
You came to in near darkness, the damp, mineral air of a cave surrounding you before you’d even opened your eyes. It was a monumental effort even to accomplish that, weak and woozy with a throbbing pain in your temple; your breath came in silver whorls in front of you, catching on the wet, tangled hair that had come undone from your braid. Soaking wet and numb with cold, you shivered and foggily tried to take stock of yourself.
You were certain it was a cave that you were in, but you didn’t think it was the one at Beaver Hollow. Your first horrible thought had been that Micah had done something to you, dragged you into the belly of that cave again - but this one was different, narrower, lit only by the far-off light of a fire around the corner from you. You heard the storm, the ghostly wail of air moving deeper in the hollows of the mountain, far-off voices and cackling laughter. Where the hell were you?
Focusing on what you knew, what you felt, you tried to move your hands and discovered they were bound behind you, your arms stuck through some kind of wooden latticing.
“What the...?” A weak glance over your shoulder showed the vague outline of a wagon, maybe - was it the wheel you were tied to? Already the position was starting to hurt, rope scraping at your wrists and your shoulders protesting the strained, unnatural angle. You wiggled your hands to try and break free, but the binding held fast; the clouds of your breath came faster and shorter, panic rising quickly as you suddenly remembered Ennis, John, the strike of some hard, heavy object against your head.
“No, no, no,” you gasped, wrenching your arms painfully in an effort to get free, blood pouring down the side of your face. Fuck. What should you do? Should you scream for help? Would anyone be close enough to hear? You’d seen the light of John’s lantern when you took Ennis’ halter, had been only a few yards down the hill from him - how could someone have knocked you out and taken you without him knowing?
“Help!” Your voice echoed eerily through the cave and seemed to mock you. “Help me! Somebody help me!”
You strained against the rope, digging your heels against the rock beneath you to try and get in a different position, caught in your heavy, rain-soaked skirts and the slick floor of the cave.
“You cain’t get free,” a nasally voice crowed. “Don’t even try.”
Scrambling away from the sound of the voice in the darkness, you curled in on yourself and pressed close to the wagon. Your heart thumped painfully beneath your ribs as you pulled desperately against the rope, looking wildly for the man who’d spoken.
“Who’s there?” you demanded. “Let me go!”
“Look at you, little rabbit,” another voice cackled. “We caught us some mighty fine supper, didn’t we?”
Both of them stepped into the weak light from the cave’s mouth, and your eyes widened in fear and disgust at the look of them. They seemed more animal than human, skeletal and crooked, covered in sores and lesions; you’d never seen a more ghastly looking pair, and they watched you with beady black eyes and all but licked their chops at the sight of you.
“Let me go,” you begged, pulling so hard at the rope that you thought you might break something. Whatever it took to get free, you’d do, but you were so weak that you could hardly muster the strength to keep your head upright. “Please, let me go.”
Another one of them appeared beside you, crouching next to you with a rotting grin, and you gave a low moan as he reached his bony fingers out to touch your hair.
“You’re in Murfree Brood country, little rabbit,” he crooned. “And we don’t let supper run off once we’ve snared it.”
Your gave a pitiful whimper of fear that only made them grin wider, revealing maws of rotting, jagged teeth. What little you knew of the Murfrees was beyond hellish, and not even in your worst nightmares had you imagined being taken by them. His fingers scraped against your neck as he moved your hair and exposed the place where your pulse beat furiously at your jaw.
“Please,” you said weakly, pulling as far away from him as you could. “Don’t hurt me.”
More of them emerged from the darkness, so many of them that even if you managed to get free, you couldn’t outrun them all. One carried a torch, and by its flickering light you saw the inhuman collection of ragged figures that seemed dragged up from some horrid, monstrous depth; they were followed by the biggest one of them all, a hulking mass of raw flesh and sunken eyes. Your throat constricted until all you could manage was a shuddering, wheezing gasp - this one could kill you with his bare hands if he chose, and it might be a mercy if he did it quickly enough.
“Look what we caught for ya, Bud,” one of them said, scuttling to your other side in a half-crouch like some large insect. “Purty little thing, ain’t she?”
Bud made some animalistic grunting noise. “She’s scared.”
A wild, feverish hope that he had some humanity in him made you try and speak. “Please - ”
His face split in a cavernous grin. “I like it when they get scared.”
The rest of them shrieked with laughter, their voices an overlapping cacophony bouncing off the cave walls that made your ears ring and your whole body start to shake. Panting, tears and blood streaming down your face, you writhed to get away as one of them grabbed your face and leaned close.
“Look at you, squirmin’ like a pig in the mud,” he sneered, his nails digging into your cheeks. He pulled a long hunting knife and held it so it caught the light, and your eyes widened in terror.
He snickered in unadulterated glee. “Reckon you’ll bleed like one if we stick ya? Slice open yer belly and see what’s inside?”
“No!” you cried, not for yourself but for the baby that was defended only by your fragile body. You drew your knees up to your chest, trying in vain to put something between your baby and that long, jagged knife. “No, please! I’ll - I’ll do anything!”
“Oh, you’ll do anythin’, alright,” he cooed, his hot breath sliding over your skin. “Anythin’ we say. Ain’t no doubt about that.”
You groaned in loathing and horror as he used his knife to slice open your shirtfront and rip it off your shoulder, revealing the soft white fabric of your chemise. The strap of your chemise was next, and he dug his knife-point ever-so-delicately into your skin as he pulled the fabric down, drawing blood as he exposed you to the wide, greedy eyes that riveted to you. You dared not move for fear of a deeper wound, sucking in shallow, rapid breaths.
“What do you want?” you asked. “Money? Guns? I can get them for you.”
His tongue raked over the few black teeth that remained in his mouth in a repulsive display.
“We want you, little rabbit,” he rasped. “Every soft little bit of ya. An’ we’re all gonna get us a taste.”
He traced the blade between your breasts, and you whined in panic and tried to stay as still as possible. Looking up at the dark, jagged ceiling, tears pouring down your face, you prayed for deliverance, death, anything other than being at the mercy of these devils. Refuge in grief, star of the sea. No one was coming. No one even knew you were here. You were going to be brutalized and killed, and your baby would die with you. Pray for the mourner, pray for me.
“Alright, Jed, you've had yer fun,” another groused, impatient and hungry. “It’s my turn now.”
Jed didn't take his eyes off your bloody chest as it rapidly rose and fell, your mouth as it moved in a silent prayer you weren’t sure anyone could hear.
“Ain’t neither,” he said sharply. “You took yer time with the last one.”
How many countless women had been snatched, tied, tortured, and killed by these savage freaks? Arthur himself had found one at Beaver Hollow and taken her home, and you wondered if she’d ever been brave enough to venture outside her mother’s house again. You wished for your mother, for Arthur, for anyone. But you were alone, exposed, as helpless as an animal in a snare, and no one was coming.
He dug the knife point in deeper, cutting across your chest, drawing an anguished scream from you that rose his companions’ bloodlust. The one who’d wanted his turn to mutilate you suddenly lunged at him, taking him to the ground as they wrestled each other over who got the pleasure of hurting you.
“Look at ‘em fight!” Bud howled in glee. “Jeb, get him good!”
A third took his chance, throwing himself on top of you and rucking up your skirts, and everything else went up in a powder as you writhed and screamed and kicked at him.
“Get the fuck off me!” you yelled, driving the toe of your boot straight up at his jaw. His head snapped back as his teeth clacked noisily, and blood spewed from his mouth as he yowled in pain.
“Hold her down!” he shrieked, and two more of them took your legs and pinned them wide, their clawlike nails ripping your tender skin, leaving you open and vulnerable to the hideous, revolting freak of nature that crouched between them. You screamed and sobbed and begged incoherently, unable to move at all, yelling Arthur’s name over and over even though he was miles away and you were alone, completely alone, and you could do nothing but let their scaly hands and wicked laughter grope and claw and squeeze at every inch of you they could reach.
“No, please, please,” you moaned, sobbing and screwing your eyes shut against the onslaught of repulsive, painful sensations on the insides of your thighs, your breasts, your face. The one on top of you pressed his mouth to your ear, his blood smearing across your cheek.
“Yer too far for anyone to hear you screamin’, little rabbit.”
The sound of a gunshot echoed through the cave, and your eyes flew open to see all of the Murfrees look towards the cave mouth.
“Shit, they’re comin’ for her!” one of them hissed.
Your whole body thrilled with some nauseating, desperate hope. You didn’t care who it was - you’d take your chances with Micah or Colm O’Driscoll or the devil himself, and you screamed until your throat was raw, begging for help, for rescue, for a death that would be quicker than this one.
Chaos exploded like a lit powder keg, gunfire ringing over the roll of thunder, voices shouting and cussing and bellowing in pain. It came closer, deeper into the cave, rattling your skull as it echoed off the stone; a few of the Murfrees ran out to the woods to stop whoever was coming, and you heard the dull thud of bodies hitting stone under the waves of gunfire.
“Ricky, we gotta go,” the giant one said, unsure and afraid. “They’re comin’.”
“Jest gimme a second,” he spat, fumbling under your skirts and yanking your bloomers down your thighs as you sobbed and struggled under him.
The sonorous crack of a pistol and the red flash of a muzzle flare came too quickly to register, and the biggest one suddenly swayed with a fist-sized crater in his skull. The last two beside him were shot through the head in quick succession, and in the light of the torch before it was doused in a pool of water, you cried out in horror as the giant one took a step towards you, the mass of his body giving one last attempt at life before he toppled and fell to the wet stone below.
“Wait, don’t shoot me!” the one on top of you screeched. “You gotta - !”
Someone, a great big grizzly bear of a man, wrapped an arm around his throat, wrenched his head to the side, and broke his neck with a sickening crunch.
“Oh, Arthur!”
You knew from the silhouette alone that it was him, huge and powerful and strange in the eerie light. Your heart almost came out of your throat, and you choked and shuddered and sobbed in abject misery as he tossed the man’s body aside and knelt before you.
“Are you hurt?” he asked roughly.
You couldn’t answer, out of your mind with relief and fear, your head spinning so badly that he blurred in a crashing wave of sound and darkness. How was he here? How had he known?
“Lady, are you hurt?” he said again, insistent and forceful.
“My hands.” You could hardly breathe around great, gasping sobs. “Arthur, my hands are tied.”
He reached around you, surrounding you with his bigness, and you were shocked at the fear conjured up by the feeling of a man’s hands and breath and muscle so close to you again even though you knew he wouldn’t hurt you. Everything felt foreign and terrifying, even him, and you trembled violently as he cut the rope that bound your hands.
“Put your arms around my neck,” he said. “I’m gettin’ you outta here.”
“But my clothes,” you sobbed, feeling your nakedness, clumsily attempting to cover yourself even in the darkness, even when it was only him. Your shirt was sticky with blood as you pulled the torn front of it back together as best you could, your bloomers still around your ankles, your skirt rucked up to your hips. You struggled to move around him, frantic, humiliated, overwhelmed by the feel of the wet, clinging fabric, the pain and weakness of your useless body that shook uncontrollably.
With an uncanny calm and efficiency, he pulled your bloomers over your boots and cast them aside, then pulled down your skirt down to cover your legs. When he went to button your shirt, his hands came away red.
“Where’s all this blood comin’ from?” he asked. When you couldn’t stop crying long enough to answer, he put his hands on either side of your face and made you look at him.
“Answer me, girl. Where are you hurt?”
You held tightly to his wrists, your tears running hot over his fingers. “They cut me. On my chest.”
He swore. “Are you hurt anywhere else?”
You felt the pain of a million scratches and scrapes and bruises, but none of them were as bad as the gash on your chest and the throbbing in your temple.
“My head,” you managed, closing your eyes tightly, pressing his hands closer to try and hide in the breadth of his palms. “Arthur, is it really you?”
“It’s really me.”
Your vision spun. “I don’t... don’t feel very good.”
“I know, sugar.” That was the gentlest his voice had been, and though it was still colored with the tension that radiated from him, you latched onto it like a lifeline when your whole world felt cruel and merciless and dark.
“Hold onto me,” he said, easing you into his arms. “Let’s get you outta here.”
Tucked against his chest and cradled with a fierce, protective kind of tenderness, you finally felt the difference between him and all the men who had touched and grabbed and hurt you. Some tight cord of regret and relief and pure, bone-deep anguish snapped inside you then, and you wrapped your arms around his neck and cried like a little girl.
“Okay, sweetheart.” He rested his head against yours for a moment, and his voice was thick and rough around the edges. “I gotcha. I’m gonna take you home.”
The time between leaving the cave and coming back to Beaver Hollow was a blur of darkness and rain as you teetered on the painful edge of consciousness. John, Charles, Sadie - they’d all come to get you too, and at home, worried voices overlapped as Arthur carried you to your tent. When he sat you on the edge of the bed, you heard him call for Abigail.
“She’s hurt pretty bad,” he said, his voice low and the slightest bit unsteady. Now that you were home and safe, that gunslinger’s cool of his started to slip a little, and you knew he was more out of his element here than he had been hunting down the Murfrees. “I thought it might be easier for her if you were the one lookin’ her over.”
“Oh, Arthur.” Abigail’s voice was hushed and pained. “Did they...?”
“I don’t know. She was so upset, I didn’t know if askin’ would make it worse.”
You gripped the edge of the bed, trying to stay upright, woozy and nauseous as you screwed your eyes shut and tried to remember how to breathe. The softness of the quilt, the warm light of the lantern, the drum of rain on the canvas roof - you barely registered these comforting signs of home and safety, still trapped in a miasma of pain and lingering panic, terrified you’d open your eyes and find yourself in the cave again.
You flinched when Abigail put her hand on your shoulder, startled back into awareness.
“Shh, alright,” she soothed, soft and worried. “It’s just me, lady. You’re home. You’re safe.”
She knelt in front of you, taking your hands in her own, your scratched and bloodied fingers cradled in her cool, gentle touch.
“I’m gonna help you get cleaned up,” she said calmly. “We’ll get your hurts tended to and get you in somethin’ nice and warm. Can you tell me where you’re hurt?”
“My chest,” you said weakly. “And my head. Those are the worst.”
She gave a hum of agreement. “Okay. Let’s get you outta these wet clothes so I can take a look.”
Suddenly, panic flared to life again, and you glanced at Arthur with an awful, knotted feeling in your stomach.
“I don’t want - ” You swallowed thickly and met her eyes, pleading with her to understand what you meant when you didn’t even understand it yourself. “Can it just be you, Abby?”
She didn’t even look over at him, focused only on you. “Of course. Arthur, will you wait outside?”
He hesitated a moment, and his usual drawl was tight when he spoke. “Sure. Let me know if you need anything.”
You hated the relief you felt when he left and the canvas fell back into place behind him, confused and guilty at the undeniable fact that you didn’t want him near.
“Do you think he’s angry?” you asked quietly.
She eased your ruined shirt off. “I reckon he knows why you don’t want him in here right now.”
“But I...” You sucked in a sharp breath as she took your chemise off, the fabric sticking to the jagged wound curving over your breast. “I don’t even know why.”
“You don’t hafta know, lady. He’ll do whatever you need, even if it don’t make any sense to either of ya.”
You knew that was true, at least - you could ask him for the moon right now, and he’d find a way to get it for you. He was no doubt cold and wet and tired, maybe even hurt, and he’d let himself be kicked out of his own tent for your sake, for no good reason. He’d seen you naked countless times, had been more intimate with you than any other person in the world, and you couldn’t stomach the thought of him being near right now.
“I don’t want him to see me like this,” you said softly, your voice fragile. “I feel... dirty.”
She took your boots off, then your stockings, then seemed to realize you weren’t wearing anything else under your skirt.
“Did they hurt you, lady?” she asked carefully. “I mean, in a bad way?”
You swallowed. “They tried. They would have if Arthur hadn’t come when he did. And they...” Your eyes pooled with tears. “They touched me everywhere. I feel them all over.”
“Do you want a bath?” she asked.
You shook your head. You wouldn’t dream of making anyone go through the trouble of getting a bath ready for you in the middle of a storm in the dead of night, even as much as it might have helped.
“I’ll be alright,” you said, and it came out so pathetic that you were almost embarrassed by it. You wiped the stubborn tears from your face and tried to take a deep breath, but it shuddered and hitched and wouldn’t quite be swallowed down.
“I just need to...” You didn’t know what. Abigail did, at least on the practical end, and you were completely pliant under her tender hands.
“Let me help you outta that skirt,” she said gently. “An’ I don’t mind you bein’ naked as a jaybird if you don’t.”
You surprised yourself with a watery laugh. “I don’t mind.” It was different with her. “Thank you, Abigail.”
“You ain’t gotta thank me, lady. I’m glad I can help.”
She told you to be thinking on what medicines she needed to treat you with as she examined the numerous cuts and scrapes that bloomed all over you, and your mind grabbed onto that task with a reassuring clarity and focus. At your direction, all your wounds were washed with moonshine, the gash on your head and the deeper part of the cut across your chest were stitched, and both were smoothed over with the same liniment of mint and ginseng that covered the marks on your thighs and the rope-burn on your wrists. With a pan of warm water and a soft washcloth, Abigail cleaned the worst of the blood and dirt from your skin; she helped you into a clean flannel nightgown and brushed your hair, toweling it dry and braiding it before she finally put a quilt over your shoulders.
The relief of finally being warm and bandaged and clean made you realize how exhausted you were, and you struggled to stay awake as Abigail tidied up and put your little home back to rights.
“Why don’t you lay down, honey?” she suggested kindly.
You could only nod, and she tucked you in like you were a little child, smoothing your hair back from your face.
“Lady, I... I’m real sorry,” she said softly. “It’s a hell of a thing.”
“Yeah.” You curled in on yourself, holding your hands under your chin, staring blankly at the table beside the bed.
“Do you want Arthur to come in?”
You weren’t exactly sure, but you also weren’t completely against it now, and you nodded. Now that the grime of suffering had been cleaned off and wrapped under clean cotton and flannel, you felt maybe like you could be close to him and not get him dirty too.
With a last brush of her hand over your hair, she dimmed the lantern and left, and for a long moment there was only the sound of the rain and your own muddled, hazy thoughts. The poppy syrup you’d taken was tugging you towards sleep, but you didn’t want to be alone; still, you were helpless to keep your eyes open, and you lay in your soft bed with the feeling of being buried under a rockslide - quiet, heavy, frozen, strangely at peace with being stuck somewhere between alive and dead.
On the murky edge of consciousness, you heard Arthur come in and try to be as unobtrusive as a big man in a small space could possibly be. The sound of him taking off his wet clothes, the jingle of his spurs and his belt buckle, the clothes chest creaking open; all of it was comforting to you, a reassurance that he was near and wouldn’t let anything happen to you. It startled you a little when he muffled a volley of coughs, trying to keep them bottled and quiet for your sake, and you opened your eyes to see him all but buried in the crook of his elbow.
“Arthur,” you said, your voice raw and quiet.
He looked over at you and winced. “I was tryin’ not to wake you. Sorry.”
“That’s okay. You need another dose of English mace.”
“I’ll get some in the mornin’,” he said, his voice gravelly as the fit tapered off. “It’s been workin’, though. This is the first coughin’ fit I’ve had all day.”
No doubt it had been the gunfight in the freezing rain that had done him in, and you were more awake as you watched him brush his damp hair back from his face and finally draw a deep breath.
“Can I sit?” he asked, gesturing to the bed.
You nodded, moving to make room for him, reassuringly glad for his warmth as his thigh nudged against your knees. For a while, you just listened to the rain; you usually loved it when it rained, the distinct sound it made on canvas, the feeling it gave of you and Arthur being the only two people in the whole world. But you had the scars to prove that there were more then just the two of you, and you took little comfort in the things that would have made you happy so easily before.
He ran a hand over his face, breathing a deep sigh.
“I don’t know what to say, darlin’.” His voice was pained and tired. “I got no idea how to make this better for ya. I wish I could’a stopped it from happenin’.”
You didn’t say anything. You didn’t know how to make it better either, and you wished he could have stopped it before it began too.
“How did you find me?” you asked, your voice shot after all the screaming you’d done in the cave.
He didn’t take his eyes off his boots. “Charles tracked you. Me an’ Sadie rode in, found John lookin’ for you. We got lucky.”
Even if Arthur and Sadie hadn’t been on their way back, you were comforted by the knowledge that John and Charles would have found you, at least. Though the outside of the Murfree’s cave was a blur to you, you knew your friends had all come to help Arthur get you back, and the gratitude you felt for their willingness to risk themselves for your sake was almost unbearable.
“Was anyone hurt?” you asked, looking him over for injuries.
He shook his head. Still, he flexed his right hand, the bruises forming over his knuckles evident even in the dim light.
“Is that... from the O’Driscolls, then?” you asked hesitantly. You hadn’t forgotten that he’d been in Saint Denis this morning, risking getting captured or killed just to see Colm swing.
“No.” He cleared his throat. “I punched John.”
Your eyes widened. “Why?”
“Because he took you out of camp and let you go off on your own.”
You sat up then, grimacing at the pain that webbed across your chest over the tightening guilt and anger. He moved towards you a little like he wanted to help, but you pulled away from him before he could.
“It wasn’t his fault they took me, Arthur.” A fresh wave of tears stung your eyes. “I can’t believe you hit John because of that.”
“Well, believe it,” he said flatly. “‘Cause I sure as hell did it.”
“But I was the one who decided to leave camp,” you protested. “I went to help them get the horses back in. John told me you’d be mad, but I said to tell you it was my idea, because it was.”
You felt sick and pressed your hands to your stomach. You hated the thought of them fighting over something so stupid, something that you’d done.
“Arthur, that was wrong of you. You have to apologize to him.”
“He took it like a man. Said he knew why I’d done it, that he deserved it.”
Your tears overflowed then, tracking down your cheeks that had only just been washed clean of the torrent of tears from earlier.
“Then he’s wrong too,” you said brokenly. “It’s not his fault those animals took me. I left camp and he tried to make me stay, but I didn’t listen. So if it’s anybody’s fault, it’s mine.”
Pain flickered across his expression then. “It ain’t your fault, lady.”
“And it’s not John’s either,” you said, your voice tight. “Did hitting him make you feel any better?”
His jaw worked. “Not really.”
“Of course it didn’t. Because you knew damn well he’s not to blame for what happened.”
Neither of you spoke for a long moment, and you swiped angrily at your tears.
“I didn’t mean to make you upset,” he said finally.
Gingerly, you touched the bandage on your chest, feeling the pain of it flare beyond what the medicine could temper. “You’re crazy if you think punching your best friend over something I did isn’t going to make me upset.”
He looked over at you. “Why did you leave camp? Anybody coulda got the hosses in. Even if those sons of bitches hadn’t gotten you, it still would have been hard, dangerous work, and I told you not to leave.”
“You told me not to leave by myself,” you said. “I went with John to do something I’m perfectly capable of because Bill and Javier wouldn’t go. And it would have been fine if we didn’t live in the middle of fucking nowhere with a bunch of sick bastards around every corner.”
Suddenly anger eclipsed every other emotion - you were angry with the Murfrees for terrorizing every corner of these northern ridges, angry with Dutch for bringing you here, angry with everyone else for following him straight into hell.
“What are we doing here, Arthur?” you said, a strange, desperate loneliness consuming you. “Why is everyone packing up and moving to the most dangerous part of the country just to try and save Dutch from the consequences of his own actions? He’s the reason we’re here. Him and his stupid fucking plan to get us all killed.”
His expression shadowed. “I ain’t real happy with him right now either, but it ain’t Dutch’s fault they took you.”
“It wouldn’t have happened if we were anywhere else” you said miserably, wondering how you still had any tears left to cry. “I can’t even go a few feet from camp to help with something so simple without being kidnapped and brutalized, because we live somewhere no one in their right mind would live, somewhere the law won’t even go.”
You looked up at him, your breathing ragged, the tight, painful feeling of a sob lodged in your throat.
“Did you kill all of them?” you demanded. “All of them that took me, are they dead?”
He didn’t seem surprised by the sudden shift in your anger again. “Yes. They’re all dead.”
“Good,” you said bitterly. You pressed a hand to the gash on your head, feeling it start to throb again until it made you woozy. “I hope they rot in hell for what they did to me.”
You swayed a little with a swing of dizziness, and when Arthur put a hand out to steady you, you didn’t pull back.
“Okay, easy,” he said, his voice low and concerned. “You’re workin’ yourself up, girl. I know you’re angry, but you gotta take it easy.”
“I don’t want to take it easy,” you said, barely able to get the words out. “I want to go back there and kill them all myself. I want to help my friends without being knocked out and raped by a bunch of freaks.”
He swallowed, his face ashen. “Did they rape you?”
“No, but they - ” You couldn’t catch your breath, groaning with the effort of getting air into your lungs. “They were going to, and I know it could have been worse than it was, but - ”
“It’s plenty bad already, girl.” His voice was hoarse with emotion. “Just because it wasn’t as bad as it could have been don’t mean it wasn’t bad.”
You felt their groping hands, their hot breath, their nails digging into your skin. You felt your weakness, your fear, your overwhelming anger.
“And I couldn’t do anything!” you said, anguished and furious and desperate. “If I had a gun, if my hands hadn’t been tied, I could have stopped them! But instead I had to let them hurt me and tear off my clothes and treat me like I was nothing!”
The sob stuck in your throat finally caught and poured out of you, and you didn’t want to cry any more, but there was nothing else you could do. He pulled you into his lap and tucked you against his chest, wrapping his strong, steady arms around you as you gave miserable, heaving sobs.
“I d-didn’t want you to look at me and s-see what they did to me,” you managed, each word so full of heartache you were choking on it. “They made me ugly and dirty and I - I couldn’t bear to see if you’d l-look at me any different.”
He held you closer. “Ain’t nothin’ in the world could make me see you different than who you are. You hear me? Nothin’.”
“But I - I’m ruined.”
He stiffened, his whole body reacting to that.
“Don’t say that,” he rasped. “You ain’t ruined, girl. It’s not - ” He struggled with what to say, how best to comfort you. He pressed a kiss to your hair, comforting you in that little way as he tried to put his thoughts into words. For a long while, he just held you, and you clung to him as wave after wave of it crashed over you.
“There’s somethin’ inside a person that makes ‘em who they are,” he said when you’d finally started to wear yourself out. “Somethin’ that nobody can change or take away. Not even death takes it away, I think. Like with Sean and Hosea and all them we’ve lost - we still know who they are, an’ we still know that they were good. Does that make sense?”
You nodded, trying to get yourself to settle, and his voice was a slow, steady current washing over your little eddying breaths.
“No matter what they did to you, they can’t ruin you. Scars on the outside, bein’ afraid and angry on the inside - that still don’t touch that part of you. The part that’s kind and smart and brave; the part that made you go into the cave and find Jack, the part that told you to make friends with Sadie, the part that made you leave your daddy’s house and give some dumb ol’ cowboy like me a try.”
He cupped your cheek in his big hand and brushed your tears away with his thumb.
“The part that makes you a mama,” he said gently, “fightin’ not just for you but for somebody you ain’t even met yet. That’s you, and nothin’ and nobody could ruin that even if they tried.”
You buried your face in the crook of his neck, breathing in his smell of rain and woodsmoke and castile soap.
“I’m sorry they hurt you,” he said, his voice hoarse with pain for love of you. “I’m sorry I didn’t get there quicker. I’m sorry I don’t know how to fix it, lady.”
Your breath hitched pitifully. “Oh, Arthur.” Only time and tenderness would fix it, if it could ever be fixed, and Arthur would give both for as long as you needed.
He rested his cheek against your hair. “I’ll apologize to John in the mornin’. You’re right that it wasn’t his fault, and he shot his fair share of the bastards when we got there. He’s real worried about you. Everybody is.”
The idea of all of those as loved you being worried for you was equally comforting and overwhelming. You couldn’t think of it now, couldn’t face the thought of pity and sympathy and the slow, painful process of knitting yourself back together in more ways than one. Just for tonight, you’d pretend that there was no one else but you and Arthur; and in the soft light and the steady drum of rain with his warmth and steadiness all around you, you could almost imagine it was true.
granted, i don't know the entire lore of the whole franchise. i played 2, 3, and 4 before i got into 9, and i've heard bits and pieces from the other games. so maybe there's some piece of the puzzle i'm missing, but i still don't think that the "good" canon ending of 9 makes sense for leon's character.
his WHOLE arc, from what i've seen, is to make sure racoon city/bioweapons/umbrella never happens again. that it never hurts anyone else. because they've proven over and over that they're untrustworthy, greedy, destructive, and inconsiderate of human life. so my first impulse at the end of re9 was to destroy elpis even if it killed him. because that's what he wanted. because that's what would stop them once and for all. because, most importantly, he and grace had no way of knowing elpis wasn't another bioweapon.
it's absolutely insane to me to think for a moment that spencer actually regretted his lifelong choices of human experimentation, capitalistic greed, bombing cities, killing people left and right, creating nemesis and tyrants and whatever the hell else. to me, the average player, there's absolutely no indication that spencer's old age regret was remotely trustworthy. and the fact that grace - off of two little videos she found in the bioweapon lab after escaping the torture factory, after seeing the legacy of spencer's work in emily and chloe and victor, after seeing the t-virus almost kill leon right in front of her - the fact that she trusts that spencer's regret is real is mind boggling.
maybe if they'd put in a line where she said "i didn't know for sure, but i chose to hope it was true" that would have made more sense and really cemented her as the key to undoing everything. but she doesn't seem to doubt. she just takes the word of some old guy in a video after knowing firsthand what kind of horrors he's been creating his whole life.
the natural choice to me was to destroy it, because umbrella/spencer is UNTRUSTWORTHY. isn't that the whole point of the series? isn't that leon's whole motivation? that they've time and again killed and experimented on innocent people and he wants to stop it? why in the WORLD would the ending of the whole story be that the last thirty years of military-industrial greed and black magic and science was just magically abandoned and reversed out of uncharacteristic regret one day out of the clear blue sky?
to me, the best possible ending would have been for grace to destroy elpis because that was leon's dying wish, because she had mountains of evidence that spencer couldn't be trusted, because she didn't want to give it to zeno and victor even if it meant leon would die. because she'd be ending it once and for all like she said she wanted to. and then leon would get a cure some other way - maybe destroying ARK would automatically release an anti-viral so that if it had to go down, all of spencer's life's work would go down too and no one could make money off of it after he's dead.
i just don't see how after so many games and so much evidence that spencer/umbrella is bioweapon hitler that she could just.... trust him. that makes no sense to me at all. it would have made much more sense and been much more satisfying if they'd destroyed it on principal and it had accidentally, serendipitously resulted in a cure. because leon and grace would have done what they came to do and still gotten to live, but even if they hadn't, they would have stuck by their guns to avenge racoon city and end umbrella for good.
edit: after watching the bad ending, even though it's sad that leon dies, it feels much more like it fits tonally with the game/series. there's just something about leon ending it with a fight (admittedly it would have been nice for him to get in a few punches) and saying "at least i could save you" - that feels much more true to leon's character.
wait i just found out you can be nice to people and be their friend i thought we had to kill them all cause i was raised in a lab to be a living weapon
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