An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Before she was Cloud Lee, there were two women.
One was born in modern Guangdong, China.
One was born in 1872 and learned how to survive the American West.
Neither of them knew the other existed.
Both were already walking toward the same snow.
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Yep... A Silent Oath has finally reached one of the chapters I’ve been waiting a very long time to share: Interlude: Past Lives, Present Life.
This chapter is a little different from everything before it. For once, Arthur steps away from the center of the story. Instead, we go back to the two lives that existed before the person everyone now knows as Cloud Lee.
Li Ruyun, a woman from modern China.
Li Yun, a Chinese woman whose life began more than a century earlier, and who spent ten years surviving alone in the American West.
Two different women. Two different lives. Two different kinds of loneliness.
And somewhere between them... Cloud Lee begins.
If you’ve been following A Silent Oath and wondering why Cloud sometimes seems to know too much, why her body remembers things her mind does not, where the name Cloud Lee really came from, or why her story keeps circling back to memory, identity, survival, debt, and snow... this is the chapter where many of those pieces finally begin to come together.
And yes, this one is huge. 🤣
More than 24,000 words, originally written as six parts, now posted together as one complete interlude.
I considered separating them, but in the end I felt that Past Lives, Present Life needed to be read as one whole story. These are not simply six pieces of backstory. They are two lives slowly moving toward the same point, until something new is born between them.
This also means Arthur is not the main focus for most of this chapter. But I think this interlude matters deeply to everything that comes after it, because before the story can move forward with Arthur and Cloud...
we first have to understand who Cloud actually is.
I’m especially curious how this chapter will feel to readers who have already followed her all the way from the snow of Colter to Saint Denis.
Maybe you’ll understand some of her choices differently afterward.
Maybe some older scenes will suddenly mean something else.
Or maybe you’ll simply come away feeling that Cloud Lee has been carrying more than one lifetime with her all along. 🥹
“Two lives came before Cloud Lee. Both of them were already walking toward the same snow.”
Red Dead Redemption 2: A Silent Oath | Interlude: Past Lives, Present Life. Now available on AO3. 🤠
As always, comments, theories, favorite little details, emotional damage, and screaming at me are all very welcome. ❤️
Thank you so much to everyone who has been reading this ridiculously long story with me.
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Chapters: 43/94 Fandom: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games) Rating: Mature Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death Relationships: Arthur Morgan/Original Female Character(s), Arthur Morgan/Cloud Lee Additional Tags: Slow Burn, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Red Dead Redemption 2 Spoilers, Hurt/Comfort, Redemption, Arthur Morgan Does Not Have Tuberculosis, cross-cultural relationship, Chinese Original Character, English Is Not the Author's First Language, Canon-Typical Characterization, disguised female character, Bittersweet, High Honor Arthur Morgan, modern character in 1899, Angst, Arthur Morgan Lives, Protective Arthur Morgan, longfic, Character Study, Canon Rewrite, Plot Heavy, Symbolism, Introspection, Historical References, Secret Identity, Not Just a Canon Retelling, No Smut, No Explicit Sexual Content, Eventual Romance, Emotional Intimacy, Mutual Pining, Developing Relationship Summary:
This is another tale of redemption, one that still belongs to Arthur Morgan. But within that brutal history, it is also a solemn elegy for the Chinese people who lived through it.
She knew how Arthur Morgan’s story was supposed to end. She had played it. Remembered it. Grieved it. Then she woke in 1899, half-frozen in the mountains of Ambarino, wearing the name Cloud Lee and carrying a past that did not entirely belong to her. Disguised as a young Chinese man, hunted by enemies from Saint Denis, and taken in by the Van der Linde gang, Cloud Lee tries to survive in a world that was never meant to have her in it. But the closer she gets to Arthur, the harder it becomes to stay silent. And some oaths are made long before anyone has the courage to speak them aloud.
