Summary: A high stakes bank robbery forces you and John to confront exactly how close - and how far - you are from one another anymore.
Warnings: Canon-typical GUN VIOLENCE AND GORE, strong language, hostage situation, stand-off/shootout, arguments, horrible people doing horrible things, the most fucked up declaration(s) of love you’ve ever seen
Word count: 2,918
A/N: Why did the gang have to flee the West so dramatically and why did the law chase them so furiously?? Read to find out the ghost story version 🥰 (better notes on AO3 but i don’t want to spoil everything up here!!)
Series masterlist • AO3
—
“Ghost, kindly relieve these people of their valuables,” Dutch orders from behind the black bandana pulled snugly beneath his glittering eyes.
Your own bandana hides a wild grin, all adrenaline and greed. Something savage in your eyes and the way that you move makes these smalltown folk afraid. The little of your face they do see is enough to have them emptying their pockets in short order.
You like it.
Never do you feel more powerful than when pulling big jobs like this, ones even Dutch is in on. This bank will be emptied before the law can scramble together enough men to try you. You’ll all be gone, smoke on the wind, making off like the bandits you are.
“Mr. M, take care of these vaults for us,” Dutch says to Arthur while holding the quaking teller at gunpoint, then jerks his head to direct John to the back entrance. The Callanders have the front of the building covered between them.
You continue to work the cowering crowd. Sun streams in from high windows and paints them all in unforgiving noontime light. It glints off of their valuables. A woman in splotchy rouge clutches heirloom pearls to her throat for a wide-eyed, gaping moment before handing them over. A man in faded tweed tosses you his antique watch. Gold inlay. Initials etched on the inside. An older gentleman relinquishes silver cufflinks embossed with some sort of crest, faded from where they’ve been rubbed for luck over the years.
One by one you take their treasures, stuff them in your pockets ‘til they’re fit to bust, and then keep stuffing. You have no idea exactly how much it’s all worth; give you some good horseflesh and you can list off prices all day long, but this sort of work has never been your specialty. At a guess, it’s at least a hundred bucks. At the devastated, teary-eyed looks on the faces before you, you’d think it was their whole world.
But what do these people know of the world? Of survival?
One of the women glares up at you. She’s staunch and sturdy, middle-aged and measured. Furious in a suffering sort of way.
“This is a hanging town,” she says. “When the sheriff gets his hands on you we’ll all watch you swing.”
You lean in, close and sudden, and kiss the barrel of your gun to the skin just beneath her dimpled chin. Her sharp inhale is barely audible over the commotion of Arthur blowing his way into the vaults in the next room.
“If you’re not careful, you won’t live to see much anything, Miss.”
Your grin grows wider for every inch she shrinks back in fear. Then, because you can’t resist, you call out to the boys on perimeter in your smuggest Van der Linde voice, asking if anyone’s seen hide or hair of this sheriff you’ve heard so much about.
The Callanders jeer their not here’s mean enough that you remember to pause and be grateful they’re on your side. You wait for a smart remark from John, raspy and rude, but none comes.
You try not to let it get to you - he’s been strange towards you ever since his return. Some days it’s like he never left, and others like there’s this vast, unknowable distance between you. This is the first big job you’ve worked together in almost two years now, and it’s not even because he wanted to; Dutch asked.
Just as you let out a deprecating sigh and move to your next victim, the back door bursts open with a bang.
The whole of smalltown law marches in with John at gunpoint. The look in his eyes is equal parts fury and shame, and it burns when he meets the wild, cornered-animal look in yours. This isn’t supposed to happen. They aren’t supposed to even know you were here yet, let alone spring traps. Without thinking you snatch up the nearest person. Gun to their head, body covering yours, they are both hostage and shield.
“Put the woman down,” the sheriff says, “and have everyone step out with their hands on their head.”
His voice is thick with authority, but the light catches on beaded sweat dripping down his brow. His revolver is white-knuckled at John’s throat.
“You first,” you sneer. “I promise, one hair on his head comes to harm and I’ll kill everyone here, starting with this bitch.”
They all shift uncomfortably, trigger fingers itching to take the shot. They must know they’ll never beat you on the draw, and surely they can tell you mean every word. Only one man can break the stalemate, and he doesn’t leave you waiting long.
“Well, gentleman,” Dutch interrupts smoothly, causing every head to snap in his direction, “looks like we’re at an impasse here.”
He steps out from behind the counter with a casual sort of grace, but his pistols are pointed, ready to fire. Over the ringing in your ears you can hear Arthur bagging the last of the money, and the sound of the Callanders coming in behind you with their own guns raised.
“My friends and I are not unreasonable,” Dutch continues. He steps slowly and deliberately backwards toward the front doors, until he’s safely behind you. Arthur follows soon after. “If you let our man go, we let your people live. Simple as that.”
“I think we both know this ain’t simple,” the sheriff says. “The West is civilized, now. If you put down your weapons and hand over the woman I’ll see to it you all get a fair trial.”
You snort a disbelieving laugh. “Way I hear, it’ll be a mighty quick one. Your little lady friend tells me the gallows ‘round these parts stay busy.”
His gaze hardens when you mention his take on justice, and you realize this isn’t going to be an easy out. Goddamnit.
“You boys get on out of here,” you tell Dutch. Your voice is quiet, but you could hear a pin drop in this bank right now. He opens his mouth to protest, but you shake your head to cut him off. “Trust me.”
The sheriff tells them to stop, while they still can, while he’s willing to let them live, but occupied with John he’s helpless to raise his own gun, and his men can’t make one move for fear you’ll dispatch your hostage. She quakes in your arms but makes no sound.
With a firm clasp of your shoulder in thanks, Dutch, Arthur, Mac, and Davey back their way out the front doors the sheriff was cocky enough to leave unguarded. Chalk it up to too much faith in a backdoor plan and a failure to understand just who exactly he’s dealing with; The Van der Linde Gang might have started small, but Dutch has dreams bigger than this wild, uncharted West. Bigger even than the fluttering pulse point that beats against the barrel of your gun.
The sound of hoofbeats galloping away lets you know the boys have made their escape, and you know that now, as ever, you’ll do anything to save John. Anything. And damn the consequences. The sheriff must see it in your eyes, or the way you hold your prisoner of war, because something snaps in his demeanor. Scaffold screams open, rope swings taut, snaps.
“I’m going to count to three,” he threatens, digging the barrel of his gun into John’s skin until he flinches, “and if that woman ain’t freed your friend here dies.”
One…
A split second of understanding is all you need. Please let him understand.
Two…
John’s grey eyes are flint sharp. You try to memorize the color just in case this goes wrong. If you didn’t know better you’d say he was doing the same.
Three.
At the same time you squeeze the trigger, John stomps down hard on the sheriff’s foot. His wiry body twists away in time to miss the bullet, but the woman in your arms is less lucky. It’s a baptism of blood and brains. Your eardrum bursts with the gunshot. If you listen carefully, somewhere between the muted screams and pitched ringing might even be the voice of God, but you wouldn’t know the difference.
In a blink, John’s shoved himself off the sheriff and tackled you to the ground. The rest of the men to open fire. The sheriff roars for them to take you alive as you scramble to help one another to your feet and run. You stumble over yourself and the rest of the bank-goers still frozen on the ground in fear, but still you almost make it out.
Then, just as you reach the doors, blinding pain blossoms in your thigh. You fall forward on your knees and cry out in pain, a sound that stops John in his tracks. He tries to double back and half-carry you to the horses, but one moment of weakness is all it takes for the law to catch up with you. Kicking and screaming, they tackle and separate you both. Someone must hit you over the head with the butt of their gun, because all you remember is the scratchy, warped sound of John screaming your name and a world gone dark.
—
You wake to a dull, throbbing pain in your leg. Blinking past crusted eyes and dried blood, you try to piece together the events that led to being dumped on the hard wooden floors of a one-room jailhouse. More importantly, you try to figure out where John is. It comes slower than you’d like.
“Good,” an unfamiliar voice says, “you’re awake.”
You look up to find the sheriff lording over the cells from behind his desk. The dim lantern and late evening light cast strange shadows over the pockmarks in his face. His ginger sideburns and mustache, though impressive, do little to hide the redness of his face, burnt to a crisp from harsh living under a harsher sun. You chance a glance over to John, but his grim expression doesn’t do much to reassure you.
“I didn’t realize we had such celebrities in our midst.” He whistles lowly. “Mean Johnny Marston and the Van der Linde Ghost, formerly of New Austin. There’s quite a price on the two of you.”
“Make your point,” John says.
He flashes his teeth in a double-edged smile. “When I got to this town it was lawless - open murder in the streets, people acting like savages. A disgrace. I’ve brought order here and I intend to keep it. The only reason the two of you are alive right now is because you’re worth more that way. Once I wire the capitol, we’re all gonna watch you swing for what you’ve done.”
John opens his mouth to say something nasty, but you warn him off with a glare. In your experience, there’s nothing more immovable - or dangerous - than a principled man.
It takes only an hour more for the sun to finish setting. You sit in painful silence up until the moment the sheriff closes the jailhouse door behind him and locks it, promising he’ll be back at first light with news of your impending execution. You doubt he’s even made it down the steps before John starts in on you. Faster than you can respond he starts firing accusations like what the hell was all that, and were you trying to get killed back there, and can’t believe they shot you, and can’t believe we’re still alive, and then, finally, can’t believe you killed that woman like that.
“Really?” you say, and the bitterness in your voice surprises even you. Your wound aches. You want to scratch your skin off. You stare at him like none of this is true. “You want to go down this road?”
“Matter fact, I do.” Mean Johnny Marston bares his teeth, hackles raised and ready for a fight. “Since when do we kill innocent people in cold blood? Ain’t we s’posed to be better than that?”
You laugh. It’s a harsh, terrible sound. “We’re all killers, or have you forgotten?”
“My memory’s just fine. But Jesus, Ghost, she was unarmed!”
“That sheriff sure weren’t! In fact, I recall his gun was held right at your empty head after you let yourself get caught!” you volley back, and his face shutters closed. “Sure I killed her. I’d kill her all over again. You look me in the eye and tell me you wouldn’t, if I was the one he’d got. Tell me you’d spare a stranger to watch me die.”
“Fuck you.” There’s a savage kind of hate in his eyes and his voice as he says it.
Your chest heaves with emotions too wild and strong to restrain. “Fuck you, Marston.”
After everything, how could he think you’d let him die like that? Right and wrong are pretty ideas, but you’ve always known that the moment John’s life is in jeopardy you’ll dig your own way to Hell and drag everyone down with you. No amount of distance, time, or estrangement will change that. Not ever.
The two of you sit in that charged, vicious silence for what could be minutes or hours. You should be sleeping, or at least resting, but you just sit on opposite ends of your cells and glare at each other.
“How’s the leg?” John finally asks.
You look away. “Not infected yet.”
“...Good.”
—
The second day in that jail is infinitely worse than the first. The sheriff comes swanning in before the first fragile rays of light make it through the lone window of the building. He doesn’t have his telegraph yet, but the second he does you’re dead, he cheerfully reminds you.
Time scrapes by at an excruciating pace between the lack of food and water and the parade of townspeople that come through to stare at the spectacle of two infamous gunslingers caught in their smalltown cells. Your head splits with a headache that only worsens as they leer and jeer and spit on you from the other side of cast iron bars. Your leg is worse today, too. It’s hard to mask while the sheriff and his deputies circle like vultures, but you don’t dare show weakness.
Neither you nor John opens your mouth to speak until night once more has fallen, and you’re alone in the moonlit dark.
“You sure that thing ain’t infected?” he asks.
You peek under the dirty strips of torn clothing you’ve used as a makeshift bandage and grimace. “It ain’t infected, but it sure ain’t pretty. Could use Ms. Grimshaw right about now.”
“I’m sure Arthur ‘n Dutch will bust us out soon.” He doesn’t sound sure. “But Ghost, listen, if they can’t get us out, I want you to know—”
“It’s fine,” you cut him off with a wave of your hand. “You don’t have to understand why I did it, just know I’ve got your back. Always.”
“Sure,” his voice cracks on the word. “And I’ve got yours.”
You let out a wistful sigh, ignoring the uncomfortable, embarrassed flush crawling up his collar. “Us together used to be easy as breathing. Feels like all we do now is fight or pretend there’s nothin’ to fight about.”
“I don’t like fightin’ you,” he says. “I think we’re just…”
“Just what?”
“Scared. ‘Least I am,” he finally admits. “I don’t think things will ever be the same as they used to. Different could be good, though. Maybe. If you wanted to try.”
“Yeah?”
He shrugs, trying and failing to act casual.
Your answering smile is a fragile, hopeful thing. “I think I’d like that.”
In a tiny cell in a little town in the newly settled American West you shrug the weight of lost time off your shoulders and meet John Marston all over again. He tells you what he got up to during that missing year. You share the same - minus the letters, of course. He tells tall tales of all the jobs he’s been on since his return, ones he wanted to ask you on but never could. You reenact your most recent experience selling stolen horses with Sean, complete with accents, and laugh until your sides are sore.
It finally feels like you’re friends again. It feels like coming home.
—
You wake from a nap the next afternoon to strangled cries and the thud of bodies hitting floorboards.
“Word on the street is you two are meant for the hangman’s noose,” Dutch says. There’s a warning and a thank you in his dark eyes when they meet yours.
“Pair of fools, pullin’ a stunt like that,” Arthur gripes from behind his bandana.
Dutch crouches and snags the keys off the sheriff’s belt before tossing them to him. Both cells are open in moments.
You limp over the sheriff’s fallen body towards the back door where Dutch waits with the horses. John pauses. Arthur tells him to hurry but John shakes his head, crouches low to pick up the sheriff’s holstered gun, and shoots the unconscious man point-blank with it.
“What the hell, Marston!” Arthur seethes. “You want the whole damn town to kill us?”
John ignores him completely, joining you at the door and then helping you onto your horse like he hadn’t just done the very thing he damned you for earlier. His face is freckled with blood. The revolver in his hand reflects red. Even the slate grey of his eyes hold a bloodstained promise:
