sometimes i think about arthur morgan laying on that mountain in his final minutes and wonder what he saw beyond the sunrise.
not the cliff. not the blood. not the pain.
i think he saw isaac. a little boy with dark hair and curious eyes running through tall grass somewhere untouched by grief. laughing. alive in the way memories allow people to stay alive.
i think he saw eliza too. because for all the years that passed, for all the things arthur lost and buried beneath anger and regret, there had once been a woman he had built something with. a simple life. a future.
i think he saw hosea sitting beside a campfire, smiling that tired smile like he’d known all along arthur would find his way back to himself.
maybe mary was there. maybe she wasn’t angry anymore. he lost mary emotionally. maybe she wasn’t crying. she was just smiling. no more tear-stained letters. not saying goodbye at train station. just mary. mary who laughed softly at something he’d said. reaching for his hand. looking at him the way she did before the world got in the way.
i think he saw the gang before the cracks. before the deaths. before dutch lost himself. lenny laughing too loud. sean causing trouble. kieran sitting awkwardly at the edge of camp. susan calling everyone to supper, pearson stirring something over the fire. karen’s laughter carrying across camp. tilly reading beneath a tree. mary-beth with a book in her lap. sadie becoming stronger after grief hollowed her out. charles sitting quietly at the edge of camp, carving at a piece of wood while everyone else talked. steady and loyal. everything arthur wished the world had more of.
all of them frozen in those ordinary moments nobody thinks to treasure until they’re gone. a camp untouched by grief. a family before it became a memory.
and somewhere beyond all of that, john and abigail. alive and together. jack growing up with two parents who loved him. the life arthur never got to have, but the one he spent his final days fighting to protect.
because that’s the thing that gets me. arthur died knowing he couldn’t save himself. but he saved them. and that was enough for him. maybe, as the sun climbed over the mountains, he looked out at the world one last time and saw not everything he’d lost. but everything he’d managed to leave behind, a boy who would have a father. a family that would get another chance.
maybe he saw his mother too. not as the faded photograph tucked away among his things. not as a memory worn thin by time. but as she was. warm hands. kind eyes. a voice he hadn’t heard in years. and maybe, for a moment, she looked at him and saw not the outlaw, not the gunslinger, not the man carrying a lifetime of regret, just her son.
maybe he even thought about dutch. because some losses aren’t deaths. sometimes they’re watching someone you love become a stranger.
sunlight spilling across its back, just as something guiding him home. because after years of running, fighting, surviving, hurting, losing, maybe arthur’s final vision wasn’t death at all.
maybe it was every person he loved waiting on the other side of the sunrise. and somewhere, beyond the sunrise, a little boy and his mother waiting for him to come home. ☀️🤍
“Be loyal to what matters.”
and in the end, what mattered was never the money. never the gang. it was them. always them. 🦌
apologise for this 🙂- credits x & x
