So I’m almost finished with my first play through of rdr2 (no spoilers pls)
I’ve seen a lot of people in the fandom headcanon Dutch with BPD or bipolar disorder (which I agree with) however I do also want to tack on that in my humble opinion Dutch 10000% also had early-on-set dementia
hiii here's another installment of me beating up my boy <3 hope you enjoy it!
It’s one of those exceedingly rare days where he’s been given a task to do that takes him out of Slough House.
Granted, he’s taking the bus one stop, picking up an envelope from an acquaintance of Lamb’s, and returning, but still. Gets him out.
Honestly, he’d bet money that there’s nothing of any value in the envelope—quite possibly, there’s nothing in it at all, and Lamb just wants to send him on a particularly stupid errand.
Not that there’s any other kind of errand where Lamb is concerned.
So River’s on the bus, for all of two minutes, and then he’s on the pavement, and it’s just his luck that a car drives past and splashes him with muddy rainwater as he’s waiting to cross the road.
Just great, he thinks bitterly, stomping across the crosswalk. He can already see Lamb’s acquaintance waiting for him beneath the faded awning of what appears to be an Italian restaurant. The man looks vaguely amused, which does nothing to improve River’s mood.
They don’t so much as exchange a word. The man hands him the envelope, which does at least look as if it’s got something in it, though maybe it’s just a takeout menu for this place. That done, the other man nods, then turns around and enters the restaurant behind him.
For a second, River thinks about following. It’s near enough to lunchtime, and this would keep him out of the office for longer.
Except that the glimpse of the restaurant he’d gotten through the open door hadn’t seemed terribly inviting or terribly on par with basic standards of cleanliness. He’d rather not end up with food poisoning, even if it would mean a day or two off work.
And so he heads for the bus stop, instead.
It seems that he’s only just missed his bus. He could walk and make it back to Slough House before the next one arrives, but there’s no point hastening the inevitable. He finds a space for himself inside the shelter and stares at the traffic passing by.
A few more people join him, seeking cover from the rain as they wait. The bus shelter crowds up quickly, and River finds himself wishing he hadn’t bothered with it.
He catches a glimpse of his bus approaching and begins pushing his way out of the crowd. And then someone grabs the hood of his jacket and tugs.
“Hey!” he yelps, struggling to break free. “What the fuck?”
Whoever’s got a hold of him is strong, and River finds himself being pulled backwards against his will. And then, just like that, he’s released, but he doesn’t manage to take so much as a step before he’s being shoved forwards from behind.
His head collides with the glass wall of the bus shelter hard enough to make him taste blood, but not hard enough to shatter the glass. For a second, he’s stunned, can’t do anything amidst the sounds of people gasping and shouting, and then the world more or less resumes its normal dimensions.
The bus stop has cleared out, and only a few people remain—it seems he’s missed his bus again. Those still there are alternately avoiding looking at him and outright staring.
“Are you alright?” one of them, an old woman, asks.
“I’m fine,” River replies stiffly. He starts walking away, giving up on the bus in favor of the pavement. He hopes he’s not bleeding. Doesn’t feel like explaining to anyone, “Yeah, someone threw me into the wall of a bus shelter. No, I didn’t see who. No, I don’t know why.”
A quick pat-down of his pockets reveals the continued presence of his phone and wallet, as well as the envelope. Better be bloody worth it, he thinks, though he knows it won’t be.
As he wanders down the pavement, heedless of the rain, River becomes more and more aware of the fact that his head fucking hurts.
Which is not exactly a surprise. What had he expected, after getting slammed into a glass wall?
It’s annoying, though. But he reminds himself that it’s only a matter of time before he gets back to Slough House, where at least a bottle of paracetamol awaits him. He’ll be fine.
He shakes his head slightly, like he can physically brush away the ache.
This accomplishes the exact opposite thing, and his head spins. His vision doubles for a few seconds, and he stops dead still in the middle of the pavement.
He’s treated to a few seconds of verbal abuse from his fellow pedestrians before he makes his feet start moving again.
Fuck, that had been a stupid idea.
He makes it the rest of the way back to Slough House without any further issue, unless you count the gradual increase in the intensity of his headache with every passing second spent amidst the clamor and lights of a busy London afternoon.
He’ll just take a few painkillers, and it’ll be fine.
Back in Slough House, he makes a pit stop at his desk for said painkillers, dry-swallows the maximum dose (which is another stupid idea, and just adds a pain in his throat to the pain in his head). That done, he makes his way to Lamb’s office as slowly as humanly possible.
Lamb doesn’t so much as glance up from his task when River arrives. He stands on the threshold and waits, rocking back and forth on his heels, until Lamb has finished scratching between his toes with a novelty, Christmas-themed pen.
“Took your time, didn’t you?” Lamb observes, tossing the pen into a dark corner. Its light-up red nose briefly illuminates a takeout container that might qualify as toxic waste before blinking out.
River doesn’t answer, momentarily transfixed by the pen’s flight across the room. By the time he realizes Lamb is still saying something to him, it’s too late.
He spends what feels like an eternity being verbally berated for nothing in particular—a Lamb specialty—before he can take no more.
He pulls the envelope, slightly damp, out of his pocket, tosses it onto Lamb’s desk, and leaves.
He makes it about halfway down the stairs before he has to stop and brace himself against the wall. His vision has started to double up again and there’s a nauseous feeling slowly creeping up the back of his throat.
So he’s fucking concussed. Great.
He makes it down the rest of the stairs with all the speed and grace of a senior citizen, and collapsing into his desk chair feels like some kind of salvation.
For far too long, he just sits there, eyes closed, breathing slowly, and generally trying very hard not to either throw up or pass out.
This works moderately well, at least, it does until there’s a horrible crash right outside his door, followed by an exasperated, though rather polite, “Fuck!”
River flinches, then groans.
“Sorry, River!” Catherine calls out, and even this is far too loud. The following noise of her tidying up the shards of glass is somehow worse, but he can hardly do anything about it.
He puts his head down onto his desk and tries to block out everything.
This doesn’t really work, and the next thing he knows Catherine’s voice is a good deal closer than it had been before.
“Are you alright?” she asks, and he nearly jumps out of his chair. He hadn’t realized she’d moved closer, that she’d stopped cleaning. He feels like he can still hear the shards of glass bouncing off of each other.
He slowly turns to look at her. There’s sort of one-and-a-half of her, and the faces overlap, but he’s pretty sure she looks worried.
“What’s happened?” she asks, and she sounds worried, too.
“Nothing,” River says thickly, because he doesn’t want to explain.
“River.”
To his horror, he feels tears pricking at his eyes and an uncomfortable sensation in his throat. It’s fucking stupid. He went out on a stupid errand for his stupid boss, and some fucking idiot slammed him into a fucking bus shelter, and now his head hurts so fucking much, and he just wants to not be here, for the painkillers to start working, and he wants to be at home and he wants it all to stop.
“It’s fine,” he snaps, and the words echo through his head and make everything worse.
“You’re not well,” Catherine replies, apparently undeterred. “Are you ill?”
He shakes his head a bit too violently and immediately casts doubts upon this answer by throwing up, narrowly missing his own shoes.
Things get a bit fuzzier, then. The pain in his head gets even worse, pounding and consuming his thoughts, and things triple and blur, and the next thing he knows Lamb, of all people, is shining a flashlight into his eyes, which fucking hurts, is he trying to kill him?
“He’s concussed,” he hears Lamb say. River gets the sense this isn’t directed at him, but the question that follows definitely is. “What the fuck happened?”
“Got pushed…in a bus shelter,” is what River manages to say. He doesn’t think this is his best explanation, but he lacks the words to make it better.
Lamb mutters something else, which River fails to understand, and then someone is pulling him to his feet. For a second his vision whites out, and when it returns, he finds himself being manhandled out of Slough House and into a car he vaguely recognizes as Louisa’s.
“Where we going?” he manages to ask, not sure whether he’s addressing the driver—surely Louisa herself—or the person beside him, who he thinks might be Catherine.
It’s Louisa that responds. “A&E.” Her voice is clipped and if River felt slightly less awful, he’d wonder about that.
As it is, he just hums in acknowledgement and lets his eyes drift closed, trying to distract himself from the unpleasant feeling of movement.
This doesn’t work terribly well, and he vaguely hears himself make a rather pathetic and completely involuntary noise as they go over some kind of bump.
“It’ll be alright,” comes Catherine’s voice from beside him. “You’ll be alright, River.”
He believes her—what else can he do? He lets that thought, that he’ll be alright, wash over him, and it distracts him, just for a moment, from the pain.
thanks for reading!! fun fact i am giving my boy river a concussion on the six month anniversary of me getting one myself :P love to see it lmao. hope you enjoyed, love you all etc etc amen <3
NOTE: By "knocked out", I am referring to as a result of an injury to the head from hitting, kicking, or other physical human contact. Going under general anaesthesia does not count.
Have you ever been knocked out by someone? (see note above)
Yes, it was intentional (e.g. you were having a fist fight)
Yes, it was accidental (e.g. you were playing contact sports)
Kind of - I was knocked out by an object thrown/kicked by someone
