Summary: You and John return to camp, where an unexpected crisis awaits.
Warnings: Strong language, canon-typical injuries/aftermath of torture, references to gun violence, arguments, toxic family dynamics (Dutch being Dutch), lots and lots of dialogue, brief overtures of Christianity
Word count: 2,128
A/N: just a quick one before we get into the whirlwind chain of events that takes the gang from clemens point to shady belle… 👀❤️🔥
Series masterlist • AO3
—
You and John drag your feet the rest of the way to camp, and still your week’s-end arrival comes too soon. Out on the open road it’s so easy to feel like you’re the only two people in the world. You catch yourself staring at him with a lovestruck look enough that it should be embarrassing. It would be, if you didn’t catch him staring back just as often.
“What?” you ask this time with that sappy smile that hasn’t left your face.
“Nothin’,” John shrugs past a matching grin, but the creases at the corners of his eyes say that he loves you.
You love him too.
Always. Forever. You haven’t talked about what that night in the storm meant - not really - but mostly because there’s no need. The only thing that was ever waiting for the two of you were twin graves; together to the very end. As far as you’re concerned that hasn’t changed, and so there’s nothing to say. You’ve always understood one another’s silences, anyhow.
A companionable one stretches between you now, nearing camp on that wide dirt road that leads to Rhodes. The sun is a vivid orange, hung low in the early evening sky. It paints the lush landscape in a warm glow and colors the rich brown dirt beneath your horse’s hooves almost red. Creeping vines hang from tree branches bathed in gold. The crickets have started their choruses, ushering in the long shadows and pigmented sunset to come. This place is beautiful, you have to admit. Too humid, still, but beautiful.
As you admire it, movement catches your eye near the turn-off for camp; a horse and rider. You shade your eyes to see better. That big painted bay can only mean it’s Arthur, but something strikes you strange. He isn’t upright in the saddle, and his horse is flagging.
“John, somethin’ ain’t right,” you say.
The carefree mood dies in an instant. He pulls out his binoculars and clicks them in to get a closer look, cursing at what he sees.
That’s all it takes for you to spur your horses on, cantering up beside Arthur’s slumped form and cursing all over again. It’s not pretty. Dressed in nothing but his longjohns and a stolen bandolier, Arthur is half-conscious and hunched over like he’s got cracked ribs. Broken, maybe. And that says nothing about the bullet holes in his leg and shoulder. His skin is sallow and fevered. Eyes bleary. Blood is crusted across his hands and clothes.
“Jesus, Morgan, what happened to you?!” John says.
Arthur only groans in response.
You spare a furtive glance toward the road - empty, thankfully - and snag his horse’s reins. John tells you he’s going to track Arthur’s trail back a ways to make sure that whoever did this didn’t follow. If he finds them, they won't be following anyone for much longer.
Without further delay you take Arthur the rest of the way to camp, wincing in sympathy with every jostle and jerk of his saddle.
“Aw, shit,” Karen says from her post on watch when she sees you pass by. Her eyes go wide and she scrambles to follow you up.
Arthur falls from his saddle when you make it to the edge of camp, boneless, and you curse and jump down to get him. “I need some goddamn help here!”
Everyone comes running.
Karen and Mary-Beth and Dutch are the first to arrive, murmuring Arthur’s name in disbelief.
“I told you it was a set-up, Dutch,” Arthur wheezes from where he lies prone, eyes blinking sightless. “They got me, but I got away.”
“Miss Grimshaw, I need help!” Dutch shouts over Pearson’s wide-eyed apologies. “Swanson!”
More bodies rush in.
“Help me get him up,” you say, hoisting him upright in spite of his protests. Dutch takes his other side and Pearson supports his back.
“Let’s get him to bed…”
“Has anyone told Abigail?”
“Clear a path!”
The crowd moves with you, ready to catch him should he fall. He limps heavy between you and Dutch, feet stumbling and breath whinging past his cracked lips.
“You are safe now, Arthur,” Dutch promises as you set him down on his cot. It’s hard to tell which of them he’s comforting. “You’re safe now.”
Arthur laughs a wheezing laugh past his broken ribs and smiles stupidly at the tent canvas above him. “That’s pretty, Dutch. That’s real pretty.”
Your own chest constricts. This fever has him bad. You’ve seen folk die from less.
Dutch asks Ms. Grimshaw to sit with him while Reverend Swanson administers the morphine. Mary-Beth fetches Jack away so Abigail can stay by his side. Her eyes shine glassy with tears. You ask if they need you to hold him down while they cut away the bad flesh from his leg and shoulder, but they usher you away.
“What the hell happened?” you ask Dutch. He paces in front of his tent. “John and I been gone barely two weeks.”
“Where is he?” he asks instead.
“Scouting. Wanted to make sure Arthur wasn’t followed by whoever did this to him. What did he mean about a set-up?”
Dutch explains Pearson’s lead and his meeting with Colm and his boys. How Arthur was supposed to meet him and Micah back at the crossroads when things went south, but he never showed and they couldn’t stick around.
“And you never thought to look when he didn’t show up a few days later?” Having to run you can understand, but leaving one of your own behind? That’s never been the Van der Linde way. If it was, so many of you would be rotting in jailhouses right now.
“We might’ve,” Dutch says with a pointed stare, “if we weren’t missing two of our best guns. I got mouths to feed here, Ghost. Folk to protect. You should know that.”
“You think I don’t? John and I were out makin’ sure you could feed them!” you say. “I got us hundreds more on those horses than that fence would’ve. How was I s’posed to know you and Micah were back here trying to get Arthur killed in the meantime?”
Dutch stops his pacing all at once. His voice gets low and velvet-soft and dangerous. “Everything I do, I do to keep us all alive. Do you understand me?”
His change in demeanor alone is usually enough to have you begging his forgiveness, but nothing about this is usual. Arthur might die - your brother might die - because no one bothered to look for him. Family first, you’ve always been told. No one helps us but we damn well help each other. Dutch taught you that from the time you first joined up, some lost kid without a cause. He made you who you are, gave you that cause and that purpose you lacked in the family he collected over years and hardships, and now he throws it all back in your face.
“Sure,” you say venomously. “Sure. You’d better take this.”
You shove the camp’s share of cash into his chest and walk away. If he calls after you, you can’t hear it over the rush of blood and anger in your ears.
—
By the time John rides back into camp night has fully fallen. The stars shine in a blue-black sky, and the moon gazes, sly and wane, on your camp full of criminals. He slips silently past the flap of your tent and starts kicking his boots off.
“How is he?” he asks.
“Alive,” you say, seated on the edge of your cot. “At least for now. You find anyone?”
“Not a soul. He say who it was?”
“Colm.”
John’s brows lift in surprise. “Colm?”
You fill him in on the details while he strips down to his underthings and joins you on the cot, sitting close enough that his shoulders brush against yours. You lean into the contact and let your voice break when you explain your confrontation with Dutch. He reaches an arm around you to pull you close. The steady beat of his heart soothes the fresh ache in your chest.
“He didn’t mean all that,” he tells you. “Arthur’s like a son to him. He was just… lashin’ out. Tough to be that scared.”
“Okay,” you say, because that’s what you want to believe. “Okay.”
You hold him tighter.
—
That first week is rough, but Arthur recovers. The whole of camp - with very few exceptions - take turns at his bedside. On your watches you try to cheer him up any way that you can. You even break out your impression of John, which has been a sure way to get Arthur going since you were kids. He cusses you out for making him laugh with his ribs, but the smile on his face is infectious.
You send up a prayer to a silent God when you learn his wounds aren’t.
—
The girls tell you what you missed at camp while you were away. Javier sang. Grimshaw yelled. Dutch made pretty speeches. Bill made a fool of himself. Nothing much. They smile coyly when you insist that nothing much happened on your trip, either. John blushes as he passes by and they laugh.
Sean fills you in on what happened leading up to the O’Driscoll incident, gap-toothed grinning while he reminisces about the smell of burning tobacco fields. Them Grays never knew what hit ‘em, he tells you, preening. Even made off with their payroll. You have to hand it to the kid, he’s got spunk. Nevermind the fact that Hosea says he had to step on his toes in warning more than once during his game of cribbage with the Braithwaites.
Having played both families against the other, this feud business is little more than a waiting game now. Gold is about the only reason you can think to stick around, and Hosea says he’s close. He’s always had a nose for these things.
So you wait.
You busy yourself with chores around camp, careful to be present and helpful after your argument with Dutch. Neither of you apologizes, but when he nods at you chopping wood just a few days later you know things are alright. They always are, in the end.
You only ask Arthur about what happened with him and the O’Driscoll boys after he takes his first weak, wobbling steps to one of the logs along the shoreline. He sits down unassisted - just barely - and sighs. Tells you it’s a long story. Squints his eyes up at the gulls flying overhead and the shimmer of the early morning water. Sunrise reflected in blue-grey-greens.
You tell him you’ve got all day.
“Pearson called it peace,” he says after a long pause, “and Dutch, he kept goin’ on about Annabelle and his daddy and some kind of payback.”
“And you told them you’re not in the revenge business.”
He snorts his affirmation. “Whole lotta good that did. You know it really did seem like Colm was gonna stand down ‘til he brought her up again? Turns out he was after me, anyway, so peace weren’t much of an option all along. Still…”
He lets the unfinished thought hang between you.
“I’m convinced he loves them more now than he ever did when they were alive,” you say softly, shaking your head. “It’s easier, sometimes, when they’re gone. Death has made a lot of normal people into saints or martyrs - somethin’ more, now that they’re past all the annoying and betraying and disappointing us alive folk can’t seem to help.”
When your parents were alive you must have fought with them sometimes, but the few memories left to you are of golden summertimes learning to swim, grooming horses, wrapped in a loving embrace. Alive, Jenny must have annoyed you some. Dead you can’t help but miss her endless talking, always something clever to say. And the Callander boys. A meaner pair of bastards never walked this earth, but what wouldn’t you give to see their faces ‘round the fire one last time? A laughing, smiling bunch of killers.
People say only the good die young, but after seeing so much of death you’re convinced it’s about the only way people can be good.
“You might be right,” Arthur runs a hand down his face. “But either way it ain’t an excuse to keep this useless fight up. The law is after us all just the same. Dutch should know that as much as anyone.”
You shrug, and sigh. “Dutch ain’t the kind of man you can change. Some people lead and other people follow, and I reckon you and I will follow him to the very end.”
Whatever that end may be.
Arthur frowns, but he doesn’t disagree. The rest of the morning passes in thoughtful silence.
"don't eat them, okay?" genuinely love how little trust Asirpa has in Sugimoto to not eat poop. and how she'll continue to show him poop throughout the series and how they always get excited and a little sentimental over it.
» pairing: shigaraki tomura x fem!reader
» story summary: working as a waitress in a villain bar means you meet all sorts of shady people. But when a random encounter piques your interest in a nameless stranger, a casual hookup turns into more than you bargained for.
» chapter word count: 5.1k
» chapter warnings: none.
» read the full chapter on ao3
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[ Excerpt ]
For the first several seconds after Tomura abandons you with the rest of the League, you only stare at the spot where the warp gate disappeared, grinding your teeth in disbelief. You might not be new to keeping company with villains, but you'd think even Tomura would realize there's a difference between hooking up with one or serving them at the bar, and having them outnumber you in your own home.
Then again, the last ten minutes have made it painfully obvious that Tomura isn't thinking entirely rationally right now. Not that you can blame him.
That thought is enough to dampen some, though nowhere near all, of your irritation, and you let out a long sigh as you try to think. Your first and most selfish inclination is to simply follow Tomura's lead and leave entirely—there's no reason you couldn't check yourself into a hotel until he and the rest of them have cleared the fuck out of your place—but that doesn't feel like a real solution, especially not if you want any hope of preventing more scorch marks on your ceiling. You really have no idea what Tomura would let them get away with in your absence, and you really don't trust Dabi not to fuck with your shit given how clearly bitter he still is.
Your next thought is of the bottle of vodka in your freezer—you could sure use a drink and you're probably not the only one—but you discard that idea almost immediately too. The only thing worse than an apartment full of strange villains is probably an apartment full of strange drunk villains.
Reluctantly, you give up on the idea of escaping this unexpected hell, physically or mentally, and turn back around to face your guests.
Only to startle immediately and take a reflexive step back when you find a smiling face less than six inches from your own.
It's the blonde girl, you realize when your heart finally drops back down from your throat—the one who had Tomura looking so shifty after she'd called you his girlfriend. She either doesn't notice or doesn't care that she's very much in your personal space either, because the moment you recoil she only leans in again, grinning more widely. Now that she's so close, you can see that her incisors are pointed. Glinting, too, and it's an immense relief when she finally pulls away.
"I'm Toga, Toga Himiko!" she chirps, giving a spin before bowing low, and it's only thanks to that whirl of motion that you notice what she's wearing—a knotted scarf and pleated skirt that are clearly part of a high school uniform. Her cheeks have the roundness of someone who hasn't quite lost their baby face, too, and those obvious markers of youth have you feeling a new kind of uneasy as you're uncomfortably reminded of your own precarious teenage years.
You don't get any time to dwell on that thought, though. Toga's already continuing. "It's really nice to meet you, Omi-chan! Thanks for helping us out!"
"Yeah, I guess you're wel—" you start to mutter, and then pause. Blink in confusion as the first part of what she said belatedly registers. "Omi-chan?"
"Your name's Omikuji, right? That's what Dabi told us when you were talking to Tomura-kun!" She hides a giggle behind her hand when you grimace at the sound of your retired and all-too-cringey alias. "Don't worry, I don't believe everything he said."
You don't bother to tell her that she's misunderstood the reason for your look of distaste. If you'd had another couple seconds to think about it, you probably would be wincing at the thought of what Dabi might've had time to say.
And as it turns out, the opportunity for that hasn't passed. Toga's next question abruptly reminds you that you have bigger problems than regrettably nicknaming yourself after fortune slips.
"Hey, are you really psychic?" She leans back in to peer at you again, cocking her head curiously. "Dabi said you can tell the future!"
"No," Dabi growls, clearly having no intention of following Tomura's order to shut the hell up, "I said she's a bullshit scam artist who pretends she can tell the future."
You grind your teeth, using every ounce of your willpower not to advertise just what a sore spot this subject is, to Dabi or the strangers still crowded on your sofa. It's easier said than done when you're sensitive about your Quirk even on good days, and when you know full well you'd been meticulous about describing how it worked to Dabi during your first encounter. And then he'd still had the nerve to show up a few weeks later, accusing you not just of ripping him off but also selling him out somehow.
"I can't tell the future," you tell Toga before fixing Dabi with a flat look. "And if he'd listened the first three times I explained my Quirk, he'd have known that."
Dabi narrows his eyes in response, and you can't help your gaze from flicking nervously towards your charred ceiling as you think about the damage he'd wrought at the bar, a memory that's still clear in your mind even though it was more than a year ago that you last saw him. If it hadn't been for Intuition serving as a warning system, and Shigeo's own Quirk—a sort of touch-based charm effect that goes a long way in getting people to be compliant—you probably would've wound up burnt to a crisp like several of the vinyl booths.
And apparently now it's not too late for that. Perfect.
If Toga notices the tension this topic has brewing, though, she isn't concerned by it. She only presses her lips into a thoughtful pout. "So what is your Quirk, then?"
The words don't worry about it hover on your lips, and then you swear under your breath instead. As much as you hate that question, explaining Intuition yourself seems like a better alternative than letting Dabi give everyone the wrong idea. And the more doubt you can cast on whatever he's told them so far, the better.
Your shoulders slump in resignation, and then you're glancing around at the rest of the group again, letting out a weary sigh.
"I don't suppose any of you have a deck of cards?"
Even with the main threat dealt with, Breach still has problems to deal with, and he plans to. One at a time.
~100 word excerpt below
When his eyes blinked open, the mountain of fur on his chest was shifting around, keeping them open. Breach was surprised that the empty feeling from yesterday persisted. It was odd and uncomfortable, that was for sure. Some part of it made sense though. These were the feelings he had been repressing since he left Sweden mixing with the feelings he had pushed away in order to end things with Sova. It was the lack of sleep. It was his empty stomach. It was the stress of everything that had happened before that kept him from feeling like himself and now it had grown out of his control.
