Archive of Our Own ^beta

It takes a lot to bring Mary-Beth Gaskill into a Sheriff’s Office. 

She has to force her teeth to unclench before she steps in, as well as force herself to stand as if she is simply another wealthy woman coming to complain to the Sheriff here at Rhodes. Because yes, that is what she is… right now. 

Some fifteen years ago, after all, she was closely associated with the very group of people who are the sole reason there’s a memorial plaque outside the Sheriff’s place. She’d snorted when she’d first seen it before she stepped in—laughed at how it referred to the late members of The Grey Family as “honourable men cut down in the pursuit of the law.”

Rhodes is a place of ghosts, a place she has not come to in all these years because of that. But she’d had no other choice now and she’s spent her few hours here doing anything she could to forget how they brought Sean’s corpse back. And now she searches for anything to make her nerves fall away, anything to make her not look like a reformed criminal coming into a place she’s never been willing to go into before. But desperate times call for desperate measures, or so they say. 

The Sheriff looks up at her as she comes in, straightening as he takes her in. She hopes it is, in some part, simply because she is well dressed. But she also knows her beauty and knows how men look at her—how they have seemingly always looked at her, since they realised they could look. 

“Good morning,” she says, trying to sound pleasant. Because not only is being in here setting all the instincts of the criminal she once was alight. But also because this has been a trying morning. Because it would seem that the thing that could bring her into the Sheriff willingly was nothing more than a closed-down train station and a cancelled train. 

“Good morning Madam,” he says. “How can I help you?”

“I was wondering why The Station is closed down. I had a train to Saint Denis I was to catch today and now, a man outside tells me there are no trains coming today and the Station is closed. And he gives me no further explanation, so I figured I’d ask the man in charge,” she says. Her voice is pleasant and she gives him a kind smile that has a grin coming across his face.

He’s young, she notes absentmindedly. Perhaps a decade younger than her. And she’d have found him handsome, probably, when she was his age. But right now, she is tired and on edge from being here, because she will always be a reformed criminal, no matter her wealth or the success of her writing career. 

“I’m sorry, Madam,” he says, nodding at her with something remarkably close to genuine sympathy. But his eyes are hard in a way she knows all too well. “But the station got broken into last night, and I have heard that multiple trains got held up yesterday. This is simply a protective measure and the Station will be up and running tomorrow. My apologies for the inconvenience.”

“A shame,” she says from between clenched teeth. So what, a train was held up? She thinks to herself with a twist of dry humour. The boys used to do that all the time, back in the day. If that's even the real reason why. “Well, thank you, Sheriff.”

It is only then that she looks around the small office of the Sheriff of Rhodes. And then, far more importantly, she looks towards the cell and the man inside it, previously unregistered by her in her frustration and lingering anxieties.

For a moment, Mary-Beth thinks she has seen a ghost. The ghost of a man she last saw in Valentine, smiling at her and waving her away as she boarded her train. The ghost of a man from a life she is so far away from, a life she left behind over fifteen years ago. A life that has come back around to her, now, inescapable and undeniable. 

“Madam?” The Sheriff asks her. She turns back to him quickly, feeling her heartbeat starting to rise in her chest. “Are you alright?” He sends the sleeping man a furtive look, but she cannot bear to follow his gaze back to him because if it is him… she cannot begin to think what that means.

He was going straight. Abigail made an honest man out of him. Him and the boy…

“Yes, sorry,” she says, smoothing her skirts and forcing her breaths to even out. “That man…is he involved with what happened at the Station?” I swear to all the Gods, if John Marston is the reason I have missed my train, there is no place he will be able to hide from my fury.

“Him?” The sheriff snorts with a dismissive wave of his hand. “No, the young fool got caught trying to steal some cash. Hasn’t given his name, nor woken up since he first got here—lazy bastard. But he’ll be up when we hang him.” He pauses for a moment, eyes narrowing at her in a way that has her tensing, just a little. “Why do you ask about a fool like him, Madam?”

“He looks like someone…” she pauses for a second, thinking. If it is him, saying she’s his friend will not melt this man’s heart and help her get him out of a noose. But perhaps… “Well, for a moment, I thought he was my brother. We’re quite estranged, you see, but I miss him so furiously sometimes. But I must be mistaken.” 

She glances back at him once again, at his closed eyes and face, half-hidden by shadow. Oh, god on high, let me be wrong. She shakes her head, briefly touching her brow as if she is faint. “I’m going to go clear my head if you’ll forgive me. This whole mess with the train has got me thinking sideways.”

“Of course, Madam,” the Sheriff says. She leaves before he can take a good look between her and the fool in his cell and look at all the ways they don’t look related.   

◦─◦✧◦─◦

For a long moment, Mary-Beth just stands on the porch of the Sheriff’s office, trying to think through what she’s going to do. She cannot leave him there to face justice, but being in there for a moment longer would have sent her spilling over into a maddened frenzy. And here, in Rhodes, a town that hates criminals and wrongdoers of all kinds…too much force kills him.

She looks around the main street, her eyes fixing on The General Store. I told Tilly’s kids I would get them candy, she recalls. She had planned to get the candy in Saint Denis, before going to Tilly’s, but it may just be a perfect distraction while she tries to…tries to make this right.

She squares her shoulders and sets forth with a purpose. She is Mary-Beth Gaskill. She ran with one of the most dangerous gangs in America. She survived Colter, the breaking of the gang, and everything in between. She may not have been one of the guns of the Van der Linde gang, but she was one of them and for that reason alone, she must do this thing.

A bell rings as she opens the door to the general store, announcing her arrival. A jovial voice greets her as she steps in and something about it makes her smile, looking over to the till, to see–

For a moment, she does not recognise the man standing there. It has been so long, after all, and some part of her blames it on having just seen another member of the gang not five minutes prior and thinking about Tilly, but–

“Miss Gaskill?” Simon Pearson asks her, gaping at her as if he hardly knows what to do with himself. But she is no better, staring back at him and trying to understand this incredibly strange turn of fate she is now facing. “Is that you?”

“Mr. Pearson,” she replies, smiling with a breathless laugh. Her mind races, running through a thousand thoughts a second, not settling on any of them long enough for them to stick. “I—I did not know you were here, in Rhodes!” 

“Well, you know, I figured I could take up a store here, make an honest man out of myself,” he says with a laugh. And she laughs as well, feeling like a young girl again, wild and reckless and free to roam the endless frontier. 

He comes around the desk and wraps her up in a big hug, planting a kiss on her cheek for good measure. And she laughs, the weight of the day slipping off her with sudden joy. She has only seen Tilly in the past few years, with everyone else dead and dying or in the wind. But Pearson is here, hardly changed from how he was when she last saw him. 

Something of it all must show on her face, though. 

“Are you alright, Mary-Beth?” he asks her as he releases her from his hug. She swallows with an audible click as she stares up at the taller man, trying to figure out how to formulate the words that need speaking. Because…because they have one of their own and they’ll probably hang him. “You look faint. Here, come on, sit down.”

He guides her to a small back room, helping her sit down on a rickety stool. And it is there she feels her composure slip away, burying her head in her hands as her shoulders tremble violently. She tries multiple times to make herself speak, but all that comes out are agonised noises. 

Pearson rests a large hand on her back, crouching next to her and looking at her kindly. “What’s wrong?” He asks, for he was a criminal once and he knows that look in her eyes. She is not simply overwhelmed by seeing an old ally of hers. And they both know it.

“The Sheriff,” she says, finally willing her tongue to work. “He has John. John Marston.”

Pearson reels back as if he’s been shot. The blood drains from his face as he glances between her and the door, with the wide-eyed look of a startled deer. But, to his credit, steel comes back into him only a few moments later. He moves his hand so it rests on her shoulder, meets her eyes and says, “What do you need from me?”

◦─◦✧◦─◦

Ten minutes later, Mary-Beth returns to the Sheriff’s office in tears, escorted by a wide-eyed Pearson.

The Sheriff stands up so quickly upon seeing them that he knocks a pen from his desk. But he doesn’t even glance at it, eyes focused on the sight before them. At the hysterical woman and the owner of the town’s general store…an odd pairing, doubtless. 

“Mister, can I please see him,” she says, hysterical and blubbering. 

The Sheriff looks between the two of them, uncomfortable. But there’s an edge to his voice as he says, “Madam, he’s quite dangerous, please, he’s not your time–”

“He’s my brother! I thought I was imagining things, but oh, it is him! John!”

She doesn’t even wait for his confirmation before she rushes over to the cell door. “Madam–” the sheriff tries to say, but he’s quickly persuaded by Pearson—speaking to him in a gruff tone she doesn’t think she’s ever heard from the criminal-cook-turned-general-store-owner.

The sheriff unlocks the door slowly, a dark look in his eyes, and Mary-Beth flies to the bedside of the man within, desperately reaching out to hold his face and feel him breathing. Just to make this strange impossibility feel real. 

She cannot quite make out his features in the low light of the corner they’ve shoved him into. But she smiles as she plants her fingers on his cheek, searching for the gouges that she knows are…the gouges that aren’t there anymore. Because this isn’t…because he never had his daddy’s scars, but he had his looks, did he not? So much so she could be mistaken at a glance, at a brief look in bad lighting. 

Oh, please no, she thinks, desperately trying to find the scars that she knows should be there, the scars she helped clean and tend to when John Marston was brought back to Colter. But they’re not there. Because, no matter how much she wills it otherwise, this is not John Marston. No. No. NO!

“Pearson…” she whispers, brushing her fingers over the smooth skin on the man… the boy’s cheek. Oh, what happened to that sweet little boy? Whatever it was…it is more than enough to make her fear the story he must have to tell. “It’s not John.”

She hears Pearson’s sharp intake of breath as he realises what she has. Her eyes snap to him on instinct, mutual horror dawning in their eyes as they realise who is sleeping on this Sheriff’s bed. She looks again to the Sheriff, who watches them from the doorway of the cell with a curious expression, arms crossed and brows furrowed.

“Is this not who you thought it was? Not your brother?” He asks, perhaps a little too eagerly. Eager to hang a boy, are we? Well, not today.  

“No, but I do know him,” she says. And, aligned with the lie she’d told him when she’d returned, she began to spin her tale, using all the skills that made her both a criminal and an author. “This is my nephew, Sheriff. I don’t know how the young fool got himself here and as I mentioned, my brother and I are quite estranged but…I simply cannot let you hang him. How much was the bounty for this idiot, again?”

The Sheriff blinks at her, but when Pearson forks over a wad of cash, he just steps aside, after a moment of hesitation. She looks down at Jack, brushing a sweaty lock of hair away from his face in a tender move. His breathing is shallow, barely brushing across her hand as she holds the side of his face in her hand. 

God, he’s John’s image, she thinks. A thousand thoughts press at her mind, a hundred worries about what his presence here means. Because she knows that Abigail would never have let her boy turn to this, not while she was alive. Which must mean…

Mary-Beth pushes those thoughts away forcefully. She can grieve later. Now, she must get her fellow Child-of-Dutch’s son out of here and away from the lawmen who want to hang him. She looks to Pearson and sees a firm resolve in the man’s eyes, a certainty she’s never seen in him before. But Jack is like that, always able to bring them all together for them.

◦─◦✧◦─◦

Simon Pearson remembers Jack Marston well. But only as a little boy.

The man that he ends up depositing on his kitchen table is far from that little boy who would always peer into his stew and ask what was in it with a level of curiosity that only a child can have. He is unconscious and still, breathing in shallow, raspy cycles that make Pearson worry. And, judging by the look he exchanges with Mary-Beth, she is just as worried.

He goes off to find his wife, who must have heard him come in. Ethel looks on at him with a set expression as he explains everything— and he means everything. For all his faults, he could not imagine lying to Ethel about the truth of the family he once had, or leading her to believe she married a different man than the one he is.

And Ethel stayed, did she not? So it is no surprise that when she hears that her husband has brought the son of one of the men he used to run with inside their home, having saved him from hanging, she squares her jaw, rolls up her sleeves, and thunders into the kitchen like a storm. She and Mary-Beth make their introductions and then set to cleaning up little Jack—who is, painfully, not so little anymore.

“He’s got a temperature,” Ethel mutters. Mary-Beth nods, already setting to unbutton his shirt. She’d thought she’d seen something near his collarbone—a hint of blood, maybe—as they’d carried the young man over. And Pearson had felt the temperature himself when he picked the boy up. But even then, he’d been worried about how skinny the kid was. “Simon says the Sheriff was aiming to hang him?”

“Yes,” Mary-Beth says. Her words are curt but not unkind. She is simply focused on tending to the boy in front of her. Pearson busies himself by gathering his medical supplies, just in case they need them. And judging by the way Mary-Beth starts swearing a few seconds later, he’d been right to do so.

When he turns around and sees the mess the boy has made of himself, though…he almost feels like upchucking.

The worst of it is a hastily stitched-up wound on his shoulder that’s starting to bleed and pus up, rivulets of blood running down his chest. But when paired with the number of ribs that Pearson can count and the blooming bruises against his pale skin…Pearson wishes he’d found this boy ages ago.

“Jack Marston,” Mary-Beth mutters from between clenched teeth as she gets to work on cleaning his wound, “You better be praying when you wake up again because when you do, I am going to make you regret whatever made you get these wounds.”

Despite the threat, Pearson can hear the worry in her voice. And he cannot blame her. Tonight will be long.

◦─◦✧◦─◦

Jack exists only in a world that does not make sense. 

His body feels like it is alight with a hundred little pin-pricks of pain. The world is moving around him strangely. When he manages to open his eyes, all he sees are vague shapes and colours, none of which he can make out. He closes them shortly after because the swimming shapes make him feel like throwing up. There’s a low whining in his ears that will not abate, drowning out any other noise. 

Slowly, he becomes aware of a hand running through his hair and a feeling like…he thinks his head is in someone’s lap. But when he tries to open his eyes again, he cannot make anything out. And after a moment, that hand leaves his hair and brushes his eyes closed. 

Jack’s eyes close. He falls back into unconsciousness. 

◦─◦✧◦─◦

Of course, Tilly Jackson had worried when Mary-Beth didn’t show up on time.

There are some habits in life that are hard to shake once they’ve settled in. And paranoia and worry is one that Tilly has found is never going to truly leave her, not after so long spent running with criminals and from the law. And with all the stories in the papers these days—stories about war in Europe and dead Pinkertons and national turmoil…she thinks her worry is more than reasonable.

The morning after Mary-Beth was to arrive, there is a knock at the door. She glances up, already on her feet before she calls to anyone who is inclined to listen that she’ll get the door. She’d been waiting for it, anyhow, sitting in the room closest to the door, sipping nervously at her tea.

And she’s glad she does because the sight that greets her when she opens the door is not one she’d want any of their servants to see.

Mary-Beth stands in her doorway. At her side is a man who Tilly recognises as Simon Pearson, after a moment. She glimpses a woman beyond, in the walkway, speaking to a carriage driver. But Tilly is more focused on the young man who is barely being held aloft by Mary-Beth and Pearson.

“Mary-Beth, what–” she starts to say, but her friend is already pushing forward, face set.

“It’s Jack. Jack Marston,” the woman says as they haul him in. Tilly feels her jaw fall open as she does a double take at the young man and…well I’ll be damned. Mary-Beth continues on, sounding breathless and worried and hurried at the same moment, “He’s injured. I’m sorry to thrust this upon you but he was in Rhodes, just barely saved from the noose, and I didn’t want him there any longer than he needed to be.”

“Oh, my god,” Tilly whispers before shouting for her husband.

Her husband—who is lovely and so very understanding—barely bats an eye when he rushes into their entry hall and sees Mary-Beth and two strangers (the woman from the carriage has come in), plus an unconscious man who is barely being carried through.

There is a rush of movement after that. Her husband and Simon—their head servant—are the ones who take Jack from Mary-Beth and Pearson. The old cook hurriedly introduces Tilly to his wife Ethel before rushing off to sit down and catch his breath. Tilly nods at the woman, gathers her skirts, and rushes up the stairs after Mary-Beth and Jack, wincing as the boy’s feet hit the stairs on his way up. He’s taller than both men, after all.

She directs them to deposit the boy on the bed of the nearest guest room. Her children, doubtless drawn by the commotion and the sound of Mary-Beth’s familiar voice are quickly ushered away by the men who brought little Jack in, leaving the three women to it.

“What…” Tilly starts to say, words dying in her throat as she takes a good look at the boy on the bed. He’s dirty and tired-looking, half his clothes caked in mud and dust (enough that she’s already regretting not placing down a blanket before putting him down, but alas) and…he’s John’s twin.

It’s been so long since she’s seen John Marston. But if she squints, it’s like he’s sitting right there, dying in Colter, lit by firelight, smiling at her on the street. But when she leans over him and takes a better look at his face, she sees the hints of Abigail and all the ways he is so clearly not John himself, she feels a twinge of pain in her heart.

She looks at Mary-Beth, finding her voice again. “You said he was injured?”

◦─◦✧◦─◦

Tilly is worrying. Because it has been three days—three days of fever, of spoon-fed meals, of the best medicine, of even a trusted doctor visiting—and Jack Marston is still dead to the world. 

What few moments of consciousness he’s had have been intermittent, with the boy confused in the thralls of his fever. Tilly, Mary-Beth, and Ethel had all taken turns sitting with the boy, alone or together, speaking in low tones about what little information they had. Neither Tilly nor Mary-Beth had kept in contact with the Marstons. But the way Jack looks…it tells its own story. 

The wound is clean and stitched up, having been checked over and tended to by a professional. But the man had warned that the infection had likely set in even before Mary-Beth found him rotting in that cell in Rhodes and that it would be an uphill battle for the boy. And Tilly had thought of John and wolves as he said that, holding his boy’s hand in hers. And then she’d pressed a kiss to his red knuckles and prayed.

She thinks of John, as she sits at Jack’s side. Thinks of the man who was the closest thing she ever had to an older brother, who would laugh with her and play with her and ride out with her, the wind in his hair. And then she’ll look at Jack and think of the little boy she left with, Arthur’s words as her goodbye, the past behind her and the unknown ahead.

They’re a long way from then. Even still, the memories remain.

At some point during the third night, Tilly finds herself kicked out by Mary-Beth and told to pursue some food. Ethel (who Tilly has taken too quickly, reminded of Grimshaw in all the best ways) had done the same to them both last night and Tilly had done that the first day. So she supposes it’s Mary-Beth’s turn to command the troops.

She makes herself some coffee and ends up sitting on the main staircase, trying to take comfort in the silence of the house. It’s less suffocating than the silence of Jack’s room, undercut with the occasional whimper or breathless word from the boy, which is always quickly soothed away by whoever is at his bedside at that moment.

It is because she is there that she hears the heavy pounding on the door. She pauses, glancing around. She’s only got a small lamp for light because it is well past midnight and…

Tilly is not a woman who is quick to fear. So, she stands slowly, sets her coffee aside and goes to the hutch and grabs the pistol she knows is hidden there, leaving the lamp on the stairwell. The pounding continues as she does, but she blocks it out as she checks the gun is loaded and goes to her front door. Whoever is calling at this hour can be nothing but trouble.

She opens the door slowly, glaring out ferociously.

“Now listen here–” a voice starts to say, but cuts off as the door opens and reveals Tilly. It takes her a moment to register why.

Two people are standing on her doorstep. The first is a woman with long blond hair and a rifle in hand. The other is a tall man with black hair that has been bound back into a braid. He too has a rifle, but his is slung across his shoulder. And the strangest thing is, Tilly knows both of them.

“Tilly?” Sadie Adler says, laughing in disbelief as she takes a half step back. “This is your place?”

“Yes it is, Miss Adler,” Tilly says, not attempting to disguise the edge in her voice. But Sadie just smiles at the sight and Tilly looks between her and Charles (Charles! her mind thinks, wild and so surprised by the sight of these two before her) for a moment. Then she opens the door all the way so she can lean in the doorway, not bothering to hide the pistol in her hand. “May I ask the reason for this house call?”

“We’ve been trailing John’s son, Jack,” Charles speaks up then. His voice is the same as ever and Tilly cannot help but smile. “We followed his trail to Rhodes and they said a woman had taken him to Saint Denis, so we followed that trail until we ended up…well, here.”

Tilly pauses for a moment, forcing herself to take a breath. She looks more carefully at Charles and Sadie and sees all the years that have come upon them, these two who she has not seen since the day she left. But there is something left between them, is there not? Fellowship and camaraderie and loyalty? 

“He’s here,” she says, not missing how both of them noticeably sag with relief. “Mary-Beth found him in Rhodes, about to be strung up. Somehow found Pearson as well and they hauled his sorry ass to me. He’s hurt though, real bad, and he’s been fighting an infection. Come on, come in, I’ll show you to him.”

They follow her without complaint. She glances back once, not missing how they look around at the house she has made for herself. When she meets Sadie’s eyes, though, the woman just gives her a genuine smile. And Tilly can do nothing but smile back and lead them the rest of the way to where John’s boy slumbers on. 

Mary-Beth looks up in surprise when the door opens, her mouth dropping open as she sees who is following Tilly in. But then a wide, bright smile stretches across her face, a laugh ripping out of her as she says, “Look out, Tilly, you’ve got a pair of vagabonds in your house.”

“Ha, ha, real funny Gaskill,” Sadie says, coming around to sit in one of the other chairs at Jack’s bedside. Her brows furrow as she takes him in—and Tilly knows it is a sorry sight. He’s shirtless and pale, hair stuck to his face from sweat. And the clothes he does have on are dirty and old, carrying the weight of the world.

“Oh, I am going to kill that fool boy,” Sadie says, but there’s no anger in her voice. Tilly would almost say that the woman sounds sad.

“Not before I give him a piece of my mind,” Mary-Beth replies and Sadie smiles and it’s like they’re all young again.

Tilly looks to Charles as he gently touches her elbow. There’s a look in his eyes, a look that has her smile fading and makes it so she does not so much as make a peep as he guides her to sit in the final chair at Jack’s bedside. He does not sit, but rather braces himself against the footboard of the bed, hanging his head with an audible sigh.

And then he begins to tell his tale.

“John died four years ago,” he says softly. Even though Tilly had started to guess at that, the confirmation of it still feels like a punch to the gut. Mary-Beth makes a choked noise, her hand coming up to cover her mouth. “And Abigail…well, she died about a year ago.”

Mary-Beth makes a choked noise. Tilly is frozen in place. Sadie has scooted closer and though she seems uncertain of what she’s exactly doing, she grabs Mary-Beth’s hand and lets her squeeze it tight.

“Jack wrote to me and Sadie both, informing us of that,” Charles continues. His voice is soft and sad, the grief bright in his eyes. “But he also told us what else he’d done. Namely, he is the one who killed that old bastard Agent Ross. Said that Ross used John to take out the rest of the gang…then turned on him and shot him dead in his own front yard.”

Tilly barely registers the news of Ross and his unknown murderer. She’d heard about it and dismissed it as karmic justice and another Pinkerton dead. But she hadn’t thought, hadn’t considered that…that their Jack…

There’s anger in Charles’s voice now, anger like Tilly has never heard from the man. But there are tears in his eyes, too, bitter regret growing in his words as he presses on. “Sadie and I both rushed to Beecher’s Hope, but we were too late. Three graves–Uncle is gone too–and no Jack. So we set off to find him, trying to get him to not kill himself as well.”

He says no more after that. His eyes are on Jack, feverish and silent on the bed. He’s the image of John, the image of his old and dead father. 

Tilly looks around at these people. The last of the Van der Linde gang—save Pearson, who isn’t that far, anyway. All of them brought back together because of Jack Marston, the littlest of them all.

Perhaps it is some ill-begotten and twisted loyalty to his old man. Remembrance for a man who they all remember fondly but have not seen in so long. Penance for mistakes made years ago, forgiveness for how it all ended. Or maybe just some love for the little boy they all knew. 

Whatever it is, Tilly knows, in that moment, that the Van der Linde gang did not die with Dutch, three years ago. Not entirely, at least. It lives on, in some part, in this room. In these people who sit in silence around the bedside of one of their own, praying into the dark and the silence of the night, waiting out for a miracle. 

◦─◦✧◦─◦

“Ma…” little Jack whimpers, his back arching as he reaches out blindly. From where she’s sat beside him, Sadie looks up from her lap in silence, meeting the eyes of the man who sits opposite her. 

She and Charles had spent months trying to find Jack, trying to dig him out of the dark before they lost him too. She liked his parents, she really did. And she’d hate to see the boy go, hate to see him die to a bullet or a rope. But she’s not sure Jack shares that opinion.

Charles reaches a hand out towards the boy and feels his forehead. He shakes his head and Sadie does not even have to ask. The fever is still there, raging and hot even now. Poor Jackie boy, she thinks as she looks at him. He seems small, laid out like this. Small and thin and like a boy who wearing boots that are far too big for him.

Charles is holding one of Jack’s hands in his. Sadie hardly wants to touch the boy, half-afraid he’ll turn into mist if she does. He seems half a ghost already, really, so thin and pale and sickly looking. The wound on his shoulder is red and ugly and she glares at it fiercely, wishing that was enough to mend it.

When you wake up, she thinks, And after Mary-Beth and I have taught you a lesson, courtesy of your Momma, you better tell me who gave you that, boy, so them and I can have a little chat.

The door creaks open. Sadie looks up to see Ethel—the woman who’d married Pearson. Sadie’s opinions of the cook aside, she’ll admit that the woman is fine enough. And that cup of coffee in her hand is certainly helping opinions in that regard.

Sadie takes it with a murmured thanks. Charles, characteristically, had refused a drink when the woman had offered, causing the woman to frown worriedly. But she’d said nothing, probably for the better. Of all of them, Charles seems the most wrung out by all of this.

Sadie glances down to the foot of the bed. Someone had hung little Jack’s hat and satchel off of it. The sight of that hat brings up memories of its own, memories of two men who are long gone. And who knows, maybe its current wearer is simply doomed to follow in the footsteps of his father and uncle.

“I’ve heard stories of his father,” Ethel says softly. Most times, Sadie would punch a woman for starting down this path, but today she’s too tired to do anything but look at the woman flatly. Her eyes are on Jack alone, though. “Simon has a photo of you all, you know? He’s told me probably every story he has to tell. Some of this young man’s father.”

It is only then that she meets Sadie’s eyes, “I don’t know him nor his pa, not really. But I know enough to know that if young Mister Marston is even a little bit like his Pa, he’s not going anywhere.”

◦─◦✧◦─◦

The last remnants of The Van der Linde gang gather in the kitchen around a stew. For old time’s sake, Pearson had explained, not wanting to tell them all how much he needed something familiar while being with them all. It is strange to be around any of them after so much time. At least the stew isn’t consigned to four ingredients, anymore.

They all eat in silence. Ethel—his lovely, beautiful Ethel who has taken this all in stride, being the first to insist that both of them go to Saint Denis and that the store could survive in the hands of his attendant for a week or two—is watching over Jack right now. That is the only reason they’re all here—Tilly and Charles and Mary-Beth and Pearson and Sadie. The last of them all.

“It’s been a week,” Mary-Beth says softly. “And nothing is helping!”

Her cheeks are still wet from tears shed only a few minutes ago. They’ve all cried. They all knew Jack as a little boy, after all. And though that boy may be long gone, that does not spell the ruin of their memories or the pain of seeing him like this. Pearson had only lasted in there until Jack started crying out for Abigail and then he’d excused himself to cry.

Charles rests a hand on her back, rubbing it comfortingly. The man has been as silent as ever, but Pearson has not missed the shadowed look in his eyes. And just last night, they’d smoked together on Tilly’s porch, looking at one another in a mutual understanding of one another. They both know what their roles will be if Jack don’t make it.

“He’s strong,” Tilly says firmly. She’s older now, far from the wide-eyed girl Pearson first knew her as. A mother, too. And maybe that’s the reason she’s holding so firmly onto the belief that Jack will pull through; because to lose him would be like losing one of her babies. Jack, after all, was the first kid any of them ever really knew.

Hell, he, Mary-Beth, and Tilly saw the boy be born. Mary-Beth had been younger than Jack is now, yes, but she’d been all over the camp baby all the same, playing with him when he needed it. And Tilly—who had known John and Arthur longer than any of them—had slotted right in as well, filling in just like Arthur used to do. And Pearson…well, he’s quite good at making baby food, he’s more than proud to say.

Sadie takes a long swig of her drink. Silence falls over the kitchen. 

◦─◦✧◦─◦

Tilly and Mary-Beth join Sadie as she smokes on the back porch, both of them lighting up beside her. They’d left the boys inside, in the stifling silence of the kitchen. Even the familiar (and strangely nostalgic) taste of Pearson’s stew had done nothing for Sadie, who feels awfully out of control of any of this.

She thinks back to that hat, again. All of them got out of the gang before it all went to shit, all of them helped by Arthur Morgan. Arthur, who went back to John. Arthur, who is buried on a mountainside. John, who is buried on his own ranch, in the land that was supposed to be his second chance. But the world would not let it be so.

“Jack killed Ross,” she says. Tilly and Mary-Beth glance at her, but she stares out at the lights of Saint Denis before her. She’d been so shocked to realise this was Tilly Jackson’s place, but she’d never say she’s not happy for the woman. She’s done well. She deserves this. “The Government won’t soon forget that. I mean, they killed John after making him do their dirty work.”

Mary-Beth spits a curse out, one Sadie never would have expected of her, once a time. Certainly, not one she’d expected of a woman who writes romances. But Sadie knows, well enough, that there is steel under all of them. They were all children of Dutch Van der Linde’s once, were they not? 

“Abby never wanted Jack to be an outlaw,” Tilly says sadly. She takes a long drag of his cigarette. “Just another reason John was a fool to think the boy wasn’t his. Twins, they sometimes are–in appearance and personality.”

Sadie hums in agreement. She’s not sure Tilly even knows the half of it. “Well, at least he waited till his Ma was in the ground. Even sick as she was, I know Abigail Marston would have given that boy a whopping to last the ages if she’d been alive to see the tomfoolery he’s been getting himself into.”

They all laugh at that, remembering Abigail and John’s arguments enough. Sadie can hardly recall the number of times she’d watch John sheepishly slink away from a furious Abigail, or how many times she’d hear the woman call out John Marston! from across the camp and she’d look over to see the man doing his best to hightail it out of there.

“Heh,” she laughs, suddenly remembering something. “Remember that time back at The Overlook where Abigail started yelling at John and he ran to his horse and booked it out of there?”

“And how she took one look at Bill and forced him on after him?” Mary-Beth agrees, laughing brightly. “Oh, yes. Bill seemed to enjoy dragging the fool back by his collar. She all had us doing her dirty work, didn’t she?”

“No more than Grimshaw,” Tilly says and they all snort at that, thinking of how they’d be sent after one of the boys to round up and send her way for beratement. Tilly’s eyes are bright and joyous as she adds, “Oh, I was with Arthur when Bill dragged John in. He started laughing so hard he nearly choked!”

They all laugh again, the sound bright in the quiet summer air of Saint Denis. And for a moment, Sadie feels lighter. 

◦─◦✧◦─◦

When Jack Marston opens his eyes, he does not know where he is. He’s not even that sure of what plane of reality he’s on. 

He groans, his body aching and numb, soreness creeping over every bit of him. There’s a faint ringing in his ears and he groans again as registers it, clenching his jaw and lifting his arms in an attempt to cover his ears. But he barely manages to raise his arms off whatever he’s lying on before his shoulder erupts in pain.

“Mother fucker– ” he tries his best to say, cutting off as he feels a gentle hand brush back his hair. Startled, he stops moving, his brain only further refusing to start working as he feels a cool cloth resting against his brow. He makes a noise of confusion, but this time he can actually hear something. It’s someone shushing him, but it’s like music to his ears.

He peels his eyes open again, vision swimming into focus as he looks at whoever is at his bedside. It’s a…woman? 

She’s pretty, with brown hair that’s pulled back into a bun, with a few ringlets hanging loose. Her eyes are green and kind, crinkled at the edge as she gives him a gentle smile when she sees him looking. “Hiya, sweetheart. You waking up?”

“Who’re…” he slurs, eyes flickering around in this strange, opulent room he’s in. “Where?”

“My name’s Mary-Beth,” she says. Her voice is pretty, too. And that name…“Now, you may not remember me, but I certainly remember little Jack Marston. And I sure as hell remember his daddy and his momma, because they were both friends of mine. Now lay still. Charles is getting the doctor.”

“Charles?” He asks. He winces as he hears his voice, scratchy and awful. 

She nods at him and keeps dabbing at his head with that cool cloth—which feels like heaven, he may add. “Yeah, Charles. You gave us all a fright. Though I thought you were your pa when I saw you asleep in that Sheriff’s office in Rhodes. Though you may not recall that…”

She looks at him questioningly. He just stares back in silence and confusion, his brain still trying to catch up. He remembers something about a sheriff and a train and maybe getting shot–

“I ‘member you,” he finally says, smiling dopily as he does. “Not much, but I do.”

She smiles softly at him and keeps pressing the cloth to his head. He inhales shakily, eyes closing as he revels in the strange sensation, doing what he can to ignore the aches and pains in his body and focus on that cool relief. 

“There you are!” Mary-Beth says as the door creaks open. She stands up, taking the cloth with her as she goes. This makes Jack whine in protest at the loss of the cool relief, his eyes opening so he can follow after her. Doing this means that he sees the exact moment that Charles Smith comes in behind a man who must be a doctor.

Jack goes through the doctor’s checkup in a hazy state of disassociation, blinking owlishly half the time, struggling to keep pace with everything. Eventually, the doctor sighs and looks at Mary-Beth and Charles. And then he tells them—as if Jack isn’t there—“He’s still a little concussed. And the fever has disoriented him. But it has broken and he is on the mend.”

“Hey, doc, I’m here too,” he protests, but the words are like cotton in his mouth. Again, Mary-Beth shushes him with a gentle smile that reminds him of his Ma. And that makes him want to cry so he closes his eyes and does his darndest to fall back asleep.

But it seems like it’s no more than his wishful dream. An arm wraps around him, between his shoulder blades and the bed and braced by his arms. And while he tries his best to shove whoever the arm belongs to away, his coordination is seemingly as shot as his brain, right now. He ends up managing to just lightly slap a shoulder before he’s slowly being hoisted up and settled against a plethora of pillows that he thinks feel like clouds.

He cracks his eyes open again, startling to find the population of his room has doubled in the few moments he had his eyes closed. He recognises only Sadie—who gives him a look that has him hurriedly glancing away—with the other newcomer being an unfamiliar woman. But judging by how she smiles at him, she knows him.

And indeed she does. She introduces herself as Tilly Jackson, an old friend of his father’s. He tilts his head at her as she says that, suddenly recalling her just as suddenly as he recalled Mary-Beth. The memories are a little less scattered and fragmented, though. So, all he can do is just gape at her and stammer out something that barely resembles what he’d been wanting to say— You rode away with me, you saved my life, you…

“Oh, Pearson is here with food!” She says, clapping her hands together and stopping Jack’s misbehaving tongue. He looks to the door again and sees a man come in, holding a bowl of stew in hand, followed by a kindly looking woman who brightens the second she sees him.

The bowl is shoved into his hands as the adults begin to talk to him. The story of Pearson—the former cook of The Van der Linde gang—is given to him by the man as the rest of the fools standing around him stare him down like hawks, making sure he’s diligently shovelling food into his mouth. Multiple times he tries to interject, only to be told to Eat your dinner, Jack by one of them.

He glares into the bowl as he scoops up the dredges of it. The low chatter around him dies out, leaving the room in a sudden and stifling silence. His grip on the spoon tightens, just a bit, his brain still feeling scrambled and his body still aching all over. 

The bed dips as someone sits on it. He glances up to see Charles, looking intently at him. And in his hand is his hat.

Jack makes a motion for it. Charles shakes his head and then bypasses him entirely to shove the hat on Jack’s head and grab the bowl from him as he finds himself straightening it out. When Jack looks back at him, feeling suddenly emboldened by the hat on his head, his pride is quickly overshadowed by the looming spectre of Sadie Adler’s disapproving gaze. Even Charles has arched a brow at him.

“So,” Sadie says, “Care to explain why you made your poor Aunt Mary-Beth and Old Man Pearson drag you through Rhodes, made your Aunt Tilly dirty her sheets, and why Charles and I had to chase you through three states, young man?”

“Uh,” he says, trying to remember what the hell he was doing before he woke up here. He remembers being in Rhodes, remembers the moonlight and the open road, and the sound of voices–

“I was–I was riding into Rhodes, and I remember that I saw these guys at the station,” Jack says, massaging the bridge of his nose as his memory slowly returns. “I remember thinking it was strange because I swore one of them had a badge on them. At any rate, they was doing something and clearly, they didn’t like that I’d seen them doin’ it.” 

Mary-Beth is frowning, glancing between Pearson and Tilly, who both look similarly intrigued by Jack’s tale. Sadie and Charles are both intently waiting for him to continue, so he does. “I remember…I think one of the bastards shot me. I stumbled into the woods and patched myself up and went on my way, but a little before sunrise, The Sheriff caught up with me.”

Mary-Beth murmurs something then, but Jack’s mouth has outpaced his mind now and he’s not soon to stop. “He gets off his horse and tells me I’d been reported robbing some of the good folk of Rhodes. I told him was a lying bastard and he could go to hell. He gave me a pretty rifle to the back of my head for that and that’s the last I remember.”

They’re all silent for a moment. Then Mary-Beth speaks up, her voice strained and her eyes narrowed, “Well, I may just go pay that man a piece of my mind. He told me that there’d been a robbery at the station and a few trains had been held up and that was why I couldn’t get on my train to Saint Denis. But no, he was just covering up his dirty secrets,” 

“Of course he would,” Jack says with an eye roll. He gets a little more comfortable in the bed (that feels like heaven, really), smiling sharply as he adds, “The fucking bastard.”

The response of “Language!” from both Mary-Beth and Tilly leaves him gaping, before spluttering in protest.

“Hey, I’m no baby,” he says, scowling as the women break into snickers and Pearson coughs to cover a bright laugh, “I’m almost twenty.”

“You hear that, Charles, he’s almost twenty !” Sadie asks with a laugh, coming around to stand at the side of the bed. She lifts his hat to ruffle his hair, smiling sharply down at him as she says, “Well, your silver tongue has saved your hide today, boy. But if you make me go on a goose chase like this again, I may just string you up myself. You hear me?”

“Yes,” he says, pulling the edges of his hat down and dipping his head. “Yeah, of course. ‘M sorry.”

There’s a moment of silence before Charles silently helps him lie back in bed. Jack takes the hat off then, clutching it to his chest as if it is some sort of protection from the adults who are exchanging charged looks between them. He suddenly feels like an animal caught between larger predators or in the snares of a trap, about to be moved around without his input.

“Y’know, Tilly, I think we’d be doing Abigail wrong if we let her boy run around looking like he’d been crawling through the marshes for a week,” Mary-Beth says in a bright tone. Jack stills as both Tilly and Sadie laugh at Mary-Beth’s pointed comment, looking to Charles for aid. But the man just looks at him with an expression that tells Jack he’ll be no help. 

“Hey, don’t be mean to the man in bed,” Jack says, pulling the hat over his face to hide how he scowls. And to hide the expression that rises at the mention of his Ma. “‘Specially after being so nice. Tha’s dishonest…”

“Alrighty, John Marston Junior,” Tilly says, patting his shoulder in a way that feels more condescending than anything else. He rolls his eyes at the nickname but does nothing to deny it. “You can plead your case later. For now, though, you’re going to get yourself washed and then you’re going to sleep off the last of that sickness of yours.”

◦─◦✧◦─◦

Charles had known that Jack would come looking for him as soon as he was freed of Tilly and Mary-Beths clutches, hounded as he truly is by the two of them (who are, of course, being encouraged on by Sadie who seems to enjoy watching the boy squirm). So, when he hears the back door to the porch creak open, followed by shuffling footsteps, he just smiles to himself. 

Jack sits down with a grunt, hat planted firmly onto his head and his eyes downcast. When Charles lights a cigarette and hands it to him, he takes it with nothing more than a murmured thank you, his eyes fixed on the lights of Saint Denis around them.

“I hear you killed Ross,” Charles says, uncharacteristically choosing to break the silence. 

Jack flinches—and violently. Then he sighs, hanging his head and hiding his face in his hand as he takes a few more shuddery deep breaths, each of them making his body tremble. In the light of the moon and the lantern hung by the door, he looks as small as he did on that bed, especially given he’d forgone his jacket in response to the warm summer air.

“Well, don’t go telling the Government that,” Jack mutters. “I did it in Mexico, technically. But they still don’t got leads and probably no real proof that it was me, even if they were to suspect me. And I don’t even know if they do. I’ve been off the map since…since Ma…”

Another shuddery inhale. Jack turns his eyes to him and Charles pauses as he sees the tears welling in the corner of the boy’s eyes. ‘Cept he’s not a boy anymore, is he? At least not a boy in the way they all remember him as. He’s hard and he’s sharp and he’s his father’s image, grown into the very man his mother never wanted him to be. 

But Charles thinks Jack knows that. He thinks that’s the very thing that makes him look at Charles like he might have all the secrets of the universe, or like he’s the last buoy left in troubled waters. And because of that—and because of all his lingering respect for Jack’s father—Charles reaches out and squeezes his shoulder.

“You’re alright, Jack,” he says. “No one here’s mad at you for it. I promise you that.”

“I was supposed to be better,” Jack says softly, pulling away from Charles to hold his head in his hands. Charles can only watch as his shoulders begin to shake from the force of the held-back sobs that are making Jack’s voice sound like it’s been through the shredder. “I was…all she wanted was for me to be better. But I wasn’t. And now I’m gonna spend the rest of my life carrying that with me.”

There’s a genuine pain and remorse in the boy’s voice, a grief that makes Charles scoot a little closer and rest a hand on Jack’s back. The boy tenses under him but does not push him away and so Charles feels brave enough to do something he has so seldom done at length; Charles begins to talk.

“Sure, you will. But all of us carry things. I know you don’t remember Tilly, Pearson, or Mary-Beth well, but I can promise you they have their own shadows. But now, you’re one of theirs all over again.” He always has been, even when he was far away, Charles privately thinks, but he doesn’t voice that. “And we’re all on your side, Jack. You don’t have to go wanderin’ off alone.”

I’m not sure the girls would let him, Charles muses. Even Ethel is growing fond of the fool. 

There’s something to it, to the fact that these remaining ties have come back and proven to be as strong as ever with just a little push. Fifteen years and change was not enough to make their loyalties fade into dust and ashes, to make the girls turn away from little Jack Marston, bleeding and dying and hurt and sick. Wasn’t enough to stop Charles or Sadie from running after him, no matter how much she ragged him for it. 

Because all that was left, really, in the wake of the end of The Van der Linde gang, was memories. And it is those memories that guide them all, bring them together, binding them in a solidarity and loyalty that runs deeper than any other ties. And it is in their habit and interest to protect their own, isn’t there? Born in blood and violence, returned here for a boy they all knew. 

“Thank you, Charles,” Jack says softly. 

◦─◦✧◦─◦

Charles is doing his damndest to stifle his laugh as he watches Jack Marston be hounded by the combined force of Mary-Beth Gaskill and Tilly Jackson, who seem to be doing their best impressions of Mrs. Grimshaw. At his side, Sadie is already gone, laughing into her hands. Tilly’s children chatter on as if nothing is amiss, asking their Momma questions about the strange man at their dinner table.

Their questions had been earlier fielded by Tilly’s husband, but he’d been called away for a client earlier, leaving no one to stop the questions, given Tilly’s attention on seemingly hounding Jack into submission. Questions that range from Are you homeless, sir to Why do you look like that? (That one had gotten a quick reprimand out of Tilly, but Charles had heard the laughter in her voice, all the same.)

“Feel like they should know better,” Charles whispers to Pearson, leaning over to mutter in the man’s ears. He snorts a laugh, barely hidden by a cough when Jack turns his eyes onto the two of them with a momentary glare of suspicion. “Ain’t no quelling Marston idiocy. Even Abigail couldn’t do it.”

“I can hear you,” Jack says, right after he’d shoved food into his mouth.

“Jack Marston, you better chew with your mouth closed,” Mary-Beth says, not a moment later. He glares at him and she raises a brow at him, giving him a look that chills Charles to the bone. Because the last time he saw that look, it was on the face of Susan Grimshaw. “I don’t know about your fool father, but I know that your mother raised you with manners.”

“She taught him manners too, she said,” Jack says with a shrug. That gets a round of laughter from that—with no one laughing more than Sadie, who seems to find this whole affair to be a delight. Even Charles has to admit that it’s funny to watch Jack get more and more flustered by the omnipresent force that is Tilly and Mary-Beth invoking the will of Abigail Marston and the presence of Susan Grimshaw.

“And you?” Pearson asks, a wide smile on his face.

“I wish your wife stayed instead, old man,” Jack mutters, which sets the table off again. Jack glowers and continues to shovel the food in his mouth, having already lost the argument against his apparent lack of hunger. Even Charles had been prepared to back the girls back up on that one and Jack had realised that before it was too late, that’s for sure. 

“Someone has to run the shop,” Pearson says with a wave of his hand. But even he looks a little sad at the absence of his wife, which is quite reasonable; Jack simply misses her because she was the only one who took his side. What he doesn’t know is that she’d told the rest of them that her allyship was more out of pity than actual agreement with his choices. 

But hey. As long as someone is indulging him, Charles doesn’t think that Mary-Beth and Tilly feel as bad about hounding him, attempting to do right by his mother and make him into a man with some respectability to him. Only some, of course. He is still John Marston’s son, after all. 

◦─◦✧◦─◦

As has become a strange habit of the temporary residents of Tilly Jackson’s house, Jack goes out onto her back porch in the evening and smokes. Most nights, he is beat out there by someone else—Sadie and Charles, most of the time, but Tilly had been there the first time he’d limped out and they’d spoken a little about his father and she’d made him laugh and smile. 

Tonight he is alone. 

He watches the smoke dissipate into the air and wonders how he found himself here. Only a few weeks ago, he was a man on the run from himself and his guilt. Now…he’s in a fine home in a big city, surrounded by people who knew him as a boy and are clearly doing what they can to help out the man that boy has grown into. Despite all his complaints, it does make something in him heat up.

Longing and loneliness have been his only companions since he buried his Ma in her grave and laid the stones over top of it. And upon the empty road, the weight of his father’s gun and the shadows of memories in the corner of his mind keep him awake, keep him pressing on ahead, with nowhere left to go. His old life is gone. His world ended when he broke his Momma’s heart from beyond the grave.

But then he’d been found by a woman who thought he was his Pa, at first. A woman who sat by his bedside and pressed a cloth to his head and consoled him as he woke up, confused and scared and disoriented. A woman whose care and perfect timing have brought the last of a family that he used to know back together…all of them drawn together for him. Because they all love him, in one way or another.

The door creaks open. He glances aside, startling when he sees Mary-Beth coming outside, the only one he’s yet to see out here. He’d even chatted with Pearson, one night, the man helping him dredge up some distant memories of camps and a family that they all thought broke apart long ago.

But it’s not all gone, he thinks as he sees Mary-Beth smile. As she sits next to him with all the poise of a highfalutin lady, but with a set to her shoulders that reminds him, painfully, of his Ma. She’d told him, a few days back, that she was Leslie Dupont—the writer of the book that saw him to bed for so long. She’d given his father that book, the last time they saw one another. 

He startles as she procures a cigarette, nodding silently towards his own cigarette. He obliges her and lights hers with his and for a few moments, they both just sit there, puffing at their cigarettes in silence, letting the sounds of Saint Denis fill in the world for them. 

“When I realised it was you they was looking to hang, Jack,” she suddenly says, her voice distant and far away, her eyes on the horizon, “I thought I felt my heart stop. I’d spun this whole story about how I thought the man in my cell was my estranged brother but then I realised it was you and said I’d been wrong. And that sheriff–that conniving son of a bitch–asked if I was wrong, all eager like. He was itching to hang you and itching for me to be gone so he could do so.”

“Thank you for getting me out of there, Miss Gaskill,” he says softly. 

Her eyes flicker over him sadly, a wane smile crossing her mouth. “You used to call me Aunt Mary-Beth. I’d tell you stories and you’d give me flowers.”

Jack forces himself to take a deep breath. He can feel the tears that prick at the corners of his eyes, feel the weight of his wishing that he remembered like they all do. That he could conjure up more of them, keep pace with them for longer than a few moments. But he can’t. Because the lives they all had together ended fifteen years ago and only came crashing together again when he got into trouble.

“Sadie referred to you like that,” he says softly. Sadly, even.

Mary-Beth laughs softly. “She was yanking your chain. We were both fixing to give you a good talkin’ to, one that would’a made your Momma proud. But then there you were, all sad and tiny, with that hat on your head–” 

She trails off laughing softly as she sees his scowl and rising blush. He tries to keep scowling but it all just fades away into a sad smile, his eyes fixed on the ground as his mind turns back to his Momma. They all tiptoe around her, especially, less than they do with his Pa. But maybe the latter’s just because every time they look at him, they stare at the echo of John Marston. It’d be hard to push him away, in that scenario.

“She’d be proud of you, Jack,” Mary-Beth says softly. And slowly, gently, she reaches out to take his hand in hers and squeeze it gently. He shakes her head but she shushes him again, her voice earnest and kind as she presses on. “She would. Because you have always been her darling boy and nothing you have done could be enough to make her stay mad or hurt with you forever. Hell, she took your father back how many times? And you’re not even half the fool he was.”

Jack laughs hoarsely at that, as he always does when one of them makes a fond jab at his father. It makes it all ache less, to hear them grouse at old John Marston, terror of The Van der Linde Gang. Hell, the stories Tilly had told him about his Pa and Uncle Arthur had him in tears, at a point. 

Even still, the melancholy comes back to him quickly. “I just…I did the one thing she never wanted me to do. I took a man’s life and condemned myself to the rope if I’m ever found out.”

For a long moment, Mary-Beth is silent. When Jack glances up at her, he sees that she is looking out at the sky with a distant look in her eyes, her mouth pressed into a thin line and tears in the corners of her eyes. When she looks back at him, her grip on his hands tightens and she slowly, slowly comes to crouch before him, his hands clasped in hers.

“Your Uncle Arthur used to say that revenge is a fool’s game. These words…those were his beliefs and I cannot blame him for it,” she says. “That don’t mean they were the bible. Your father certainly never believed the same as Arthur did. And maybe you don’t have to believe either of them. You killed Ross—and I say good for you. What he did to your Pa would have had me clawing at his face if I could have.”

There’s a ferocity in her voice, coupled with a startling amount of anger. And for a moment, Jack understands how Leslie Dupont, the romance writer who made his bedtime stories, could also be Mary-Beth Gaskill, a former member of the most famous gang of their time. He sees, clear as day, how a woman who is so kind can also be someone hard enough to survive what she has.

“I loved your Ma. Your father…well, he was the biggest fool I think I’ve ever known, but I loved him too. They were my family, Jack, and that means you are too,” she says. “And as I see it, Jack, you did what all of us have done at one point or another. Done what it takes to keep our family safe. To honour them. To make everything they did worth it.”

“She gave everything for me to be good,” he says, miserable and so consumed with grief over her that he can hardly breathe. “And I threw it all away. They fought tooth and nail for a life I threw away with a single bullet.”

“That life is not gone, yet,” Mary-Beth promises, her eyes bright and her honesty clear as day. “I know it seems like it is, Jack. But if you take just a moment, you’ll see nothing is set in stone. And we’re here for you now. I’m not letting all of you run off again, not that I’ve remembered what it was like to have a family that would lay it all down for me. If you want that life back, we will help you get it back.”

He thinks of Charles and Sadie’s stories about helping his parents find their footing in the aftermath of the world. He thinks of Pearson handing him a stew and taking a fading picture out of his bag, showing it to Jack with a careful reverence. He remembers the faces in that picture, the faces of the people who he called aunt and uncle and family. He thinks about how Tilly took his hand and told him that he was his Pa’s image, sure, but he had his Momma’s voice and her kindness.

For a moment, Jack can say nothing. He looks at Mary-Beth Gaskill…his Aunt Mary-Beth and looks at the earnest look in her eyes and the soft and gentle love that exudes from her. She pulled him from death, nursed him through a fever, and helped him get back on his feet. She’s not his mother, no…but she’s still his family.

“Yes,” he says, voice thick with tears that will soon fall. “Yes, please.”

Her smile is like a thousand stars. Her expression softens as the first tear falls and before he can stop the tears, she’s bundled him into his arms, pressed a kiss to his brow, and promised him that it’s alright. 

And Jack believes her.