Work Text:
Arthur was never a good conversationalist, not unless it were bitter arguing and sarcastic bickering — he never was a small talk guy either. If anything, he was a dangerous outlaw who strove to get straight to the point, take the money and go. Or, rather, that’s what people assumed he was.
Maybe that explains why he finds it hard to get on with the ladies.
He’s usually sputtering insults at the prissy women in the whorehouses or bantering with lady outlaws who are an entirely different breed of crazy — like Ellie “The Black Widow” Anne Swan, and her strange knack for stabbing men head over heels for her in the back — the damsel in distress act worked time and time again against men who were looking for someone to fuel their savior complex.
It was always those people who were just itching to be a prince straight from one of Mary-Beth’s fairytale books. Arthur was nowhere near that kind of man — hell, he couldn’t even pretend to be a Prince Charming if he tried. Last he checked, Prince Charming wasn’t robbing banks and incessantly on the run.
Thus, those tricks didn’t work on him — those women who fed false lies about ravishing looks here and charming eyes there, he never paid it any mind. And so, he kept his distance.
He kept a fair distance from the decent women too — he had no right dragging them into what would be an endless path of misery, death and grotesque self-mutilation (mentally and physically) — he knows that all too well considering how things played out with Mary.
So, why, he wonders. Why was he inclined to start and hold a conversation with Molly of all the folks in camp?
“Good book, Miss O’Shea?” He asks in a mellow tone, perfectly hush under the muted blue night, but loud enough to be heard over the drunken shanties Karen and Pearson sang and laughed about over the crooning of Javier’s guitar.
He could blame it on basic camp etiquette, or even claim that he’s trying to get on Molly’s good side with her being Dutch’s prized woman and all — allegedly, at least, considering how little Dutch seems to regard her these days. She’s here to stay either way, even if it means she’ll soon be sidelined as Susan was.
“Arthur,” she startles, but she barely shows it in the slightest shift on her self-claimed rock by the shore, and she was keen with staying demure and unfazed, akin to a porcelain doll. “It’s alright.” She’s as short with her words as she was dismissive, and the brunette feels an odd sense of unity with that.
In that same instance, though, he felt big and dumb and awkward, and before he knows it, he’s thinking he should go and busy himself with feeding the chickens or chopping the wood, already turning tail.
“I lied. It’s kind of a shitty read.” She sucks on her teeth after she speaks, stopping Arthur in his tracks, and when his eyes meet Molly, she hasn’t looked up from her book once. “I’m tired of all these fairy tale books. They’ve all got the same plots with the same hopeless dreams.”
If Arthur squinted hard enough, he’d mistake the sight for a painting with how the moonlight spilled onto the water and sand; its light made her hair look more of a deep purple color in the dark. He’d sit and sketch the sight right there, if he didn’t already feel like a creeper hovering around her like this.
She sat where the lake’s tide licked at the sand, but never did it creep far enough toward the runaway noblewoman, not even the water dared to disrespect her (at least, not to her face, much like everyone at camp).
One would think living the high life before becoming Dutch’s lady would earn the woman some respect around her peers, but the basket was a mix of crooks, thieves and outlaws in their own rights — Arthur included. Maybe Mary-Beth would probably call it romantically tragic if he ever brought it up to her.
“Well, I’m sorry to hear that.” He busies his hands on his belt, finding the silence between them a little more tolerable after her words, flicking his eyes to the stars above out of habit.
He recalls a night where Hosea pulled him aside to look at the stars in the sky, observe how they came together beautifully to make constellations.
As reluctant and unamused as 22-year old Arthur was at that time, he now regarded the bundle of stars fondly — Hosea first pointed him to the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper.
Hosea, ever-wise with his words, claimed staring at the stars was “the best way to pass time in those jails you keep finding yourself in, or if you wanted to impress that Mary girl you’ve got eyes for.” To which Arthur only fizzled with embarrassment.
Mary’s talked about a few herself, but he can’t remember much of them, only the constellations Perseus and Andromeda; a hero who saved a princess from jaws of a harrowing beast — he can only remember joking of its relevance among them, to which Mary sent him staggering with a playful shove to his shoulder.
He doesn’t remember much of the other constellations after that — at least, aside from the North Star Lenny pointed him to during those first nights in the south.
The North Star, according to Lenny, was how runaway slaves escaped their bondage undetected by the slave catchers on the roads. Arthur gave a curious nod, regarding their efforts as something valiant and brave, and Lenny, being Lenny, brought up a rhetorical question: “well, we’re free now, but are we really free?”
Arthur didn’t quite know how to answer that — and maybe that was Lenny’s intention — but he could only think fondly (in spite of the dark topic) of the bright future Lenny had ahead of him.
“Hey, is it true about broken mirrors bringing bad luck?”
They had been sat in silence for a while when Molly chimed in, taking Arthur’s head out of the clouds and prompting to respond when he found those green eyes — now a pale blue beneath the moonlight — staring back at him.
“What do y’mean by that?”
“I mean, I just broke my pocket mirror, and I remember me old ma telling me broken mirrors’ll bring me seven years of bad luck..” The words coming out of her mouth sounded absurd, and to any other skeptic when it came to the world’s mysterious forces, he found bad luck from breaking a manufactured item absurd to consider.
But it was clear in Molly’s eyes that she believed it in full; the book, purple on its cover with text and visuals engraved in gold, it laid flat in her lap where her refined hands fiddled with one another (a nervous habit, likely). Never did he think he’d see prim-and-proper Molly twiddling her fingers and gnawing modestly at her glossy red lips full of anxiety.
“Seven years? We won’t even see seven years out! Don’t be ridiculous… But, if I do find a pocket mirror, I’ll bring it back to you.”
“Thank you, Arthur..”
“Well, I better get on my merry way.” And he wastes no time making himself scarce, tipping his hat when he heard her faint farewells — it wasn’t like she could see him when she was faced toward the lake ahead, but he did anyway.