Chapter Text
~1 year later~
Arthur rode toward home, old boy hauling the wagon of supplies easily. He was excited because John had promised to cook Arthur’s favorite mean that night in celebration of Arthur and him settling down, it was a good idea.
He also picked up some of those candies that John liked as a surprise, but as he grew closer to the ranch, he started to see smoke in the distance.
What he thought had just been a campfire growing worryingly larger as he got closer, the smell of it thick on the air, until he found the first body.
He whipped old boy faster, wanting to return home, to make sure it wasn’t what he thought, and when the trees pulled away he saw his worse fear come back to life.
The house was smoldering, flames still crackling on parts of it and making old boy shy. Bodies covered the ground, ones he didn’t recognize, and he couldn’t see any sign of John.
Leaping from the wagon and pulling out his revolver, he looked around, searching for something, anything, to tell him where John had gone. It was only a sudden gunshot that had him turning toward the barn, running for the doors and stepping over the body of the hands that they had hired to help with the farm work.
John sat in the barn, leaned back against a stall.
His hair had grown longer in the past year, closer to what it had been, and it was matted with blood from a wound Arthur couldn’t see, he was staring at the opposite stall, ignoring the fresh body that laid beside him and Arthur rushed toward him.
“John” he dropped to his knees in front of the man, holstering his gun out of habit alone and reached forward to cradle the man's face “shit, what happened? Are you alright, darlin? Fuck” he pulled the other closer.
Holding him and calming his own racing heart until the other man inhaled slowly “Arthur” the younger said, voice steady and yet also sounding so strange, the youngers hand settling on his chest and then pushing him away.
Arthur looked down at the man in confusion, brows furrowing as the man's chocolate eyes looked up at him in a way he hadn’t seen for a long time.
“I remember”