「 ✦ ENIGMA ✦ 」ARTHUR MORGAN X READER

001.

Arthur Morgan was a puzzle that everyone in the county failed to put together. He was cold, calculating, and ruthless. All the bounty hunters within a hundred-mile radius were searching for him, for that big winning prize on his head. The posters that were plastered on the doors of every saloon read in big black ink: DO NOT APPROACH. Desperation made fools brave; the most needy of individuals tried but desperation didn't keep them alive. Arthur had a way of teaching lessons that no wanted poster ever could. He knew he was intimidating. He basked in it.

Yet here he sat in camp, huddled against an old wagon, knife relentless against the piece of scrap wood he had been working on all day. His face, for once, was almost peaceful. His rough hands that had burned down towns were steady now. Calloused fingers making art out of bark. You could feel his eyes repeatedly burning holes into your figure, blue and calculating. It was evident that so much thought was behind them, thousands of gears twisting and turning, yet it was impossible to infer what exactly was happening inside his head.

You had been offered a spot in the Van Der Linde gang all but a couple of days ago, and ever since then his eyes followed your every move. Even while you were bowed over your journal, sketching the crooked silhouettes of camp, you would peek up from the pages only to meet his unfaltering gaze. Never had you ever seen someone so shamelessly stare like he did. No one else had made you feel so exposed.

Everyone else was nice.. enough. Tolerable at the very least. It was odd, getting a glimpse into the life of what you knew as some of the most dangerous people in the area. Seeing them for yourself made it hard to buy the townsfolk's stories: bounties and wanted posters told one tale but the people before you said something entirely different.

When the sky was painted with hues of orange and pink, and the sun tipped down to the edge of the land, they would join each other for dinner at the fire like some sort of makeshift family. They ate stew and laughed. The glow from the flames illuminated all of Arthur's scars on his exposed forearms, skin ridged and littered with old stories. How curious that the same hands that smashed faces could cradle a coffee cup with such care and brush a mare's mane with tenderness. How could violence and gentleness live in the same skin?

Dutch Van Der Linde, the leader of the gang. Now he was a stranger of a different sort. He walked through the camp carrying an unspoken weight on his shoulders. His laugh came clipped and far too precise, his eyes drifted past you as if caught on some distant shape. The rasp of his voice was laced with intelligence. Most times, he was generous and polished, a peculiar retelling of Robin Hood, soft words wrapping up dangerous plans. When he found you trembling in the aftermath of the night that caused you to wind up here, he didn't holler for the sheriff; he saw what you were. What you could become.

You were twenty and had learned to look older. Scrappy you were, and it wasn't hard to tell why. Being left for dead at 14, especially as a young girl, had lasting effects. Your family was not the sort that kept — nor had they wanted to. Not like you needed them, you managed just fine on your own. You learned fast to take what you needed.

All good things must come to an end. That habit had a price. Pickpocketing the wrong man led to something bad in more ways than one. He had demanded repayment, and you refused. The confrontation was quick and ugly. You didn't mean to kill him but the gun was out and fear was a faster hand than reason. The recoil of the revolver, the ring in your ears, the sweat beading down your face — some things cut deeper than any blade could. You remember his face when he fell. The way your knees buckled under your weight.

Your boots might as well have been nailed into the dirt, legs stiff and refusing to move. The world around you faded, turning into a blurred mess. The shuffle of steps and jangling of spurs were lost on your ears, which were overtaken by a piercing ring. Your worn revolver felt unbearably heavy in your grip, as if it were trying to get away from you. Like it knew what you had done. With fingers that betrayed you, you cracked open the cylinder and let the spent casing tumble free, the metal hitting the floor with a faint clink. Your hands shook something fierce, but somehow the gun was fixed in between them.