Erron Black (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
erron_black) wrote2021-06-28 06:35 pm
erron_black) wrote2021-06-28 06:35 pm
thread starter for arthur morgan
Erron had a problem.
It was clear to him now sprawled out on the bed ever so welcomingly provided him by the proprietor of the Old Light Saloon, threadbare sheets itching him where he swung his arm out to flick the ashes from his cigarette onto the rotted out wood floor. His bright idea to travel further north in search of lucrative opportunities had been scuppered by ice and snow unabated by neither time nor patience — and he only possessed one of those things in spades. He told himself it was for the best to turn back while he was still ahead; cut his losses before they had the chance to cut into him instead. It was bad enough the man with the bear living in him could have been the end of the line.
An ignominious final destination for the likes of Erron Black — chewed up and shit out by a man eating grizzly bear in the ass end of nowhere. Unloved and unmourned; forgotten by time in the frozen wastes.
That's not what happened, but it could have. He'd not never been the brightest star in the night sky, but he could take a hint from lady luck better than most. There was a time to press and another to finesse. So it was that he'd sauntered back south to insinuate himself back into another robber baron's cortege; easy work, that, mean mugging on their dime after seeing just how much damage he could do. Easy, and dreadfully boring between bouts of baronial infighting. It wasn't long before he succumbed to wanderlust for the filth and the squalor of the streets of Saint Denis and, rather more importantly, the cutthroat zeal inherent to the gangs that carved out a living there instead.
Where the robber barons sat at their desks scratching out letters of great import while everyone else did their work for them, up to and including himself, the city gangs were vibrant vipers nests of volatility and they always had dirty work to be done they couldn't be seen doing. Erron didn't care much for either of their political machinations, but neither of them thought he was smart enough to understand on account of his country upbringing anyhow. They were wrong, of course, but that was fine by him if it kept them from their campaigning and he could surreptitiously read everything they left lying around. Everything was going well until it wasn't.
There weren't many things Erron wouldn't do for money. He refused on principle to waste his time on anything less than large sums, preferably upfront and all at once, but he'd settle for cumulative on pain of death if his employer got any funny ideas. It was just good business sense. He wasn't without his quirks, though. Namely, his aversion to women not cut out for him and children. It wasn't that he was too high and mighty for it — he could claim no kind of moral high ground.
It was that they made him think things he didn't want to think; feel things he didn't want to feel.
Erron had been smack dab in the middle of rousting a business owner into compliance when he caught sight of tiny, slender feet at the staircase landing leading up to the man’s living quarters. He wasn’t so naive as to believe none of the people he terrorized didn’t have families, didn’t have nobody what cared about them, but he was careful, he was precise. And that’s why the only cracked teeth in his knuckles that night had been his employer’s — with many more to follow as the rage in him burnt white hot and inconsolable. He bid Saint Denis adieu at the bottom of a bottle with a pair of stinging, split knuckles and a vicious disposition. All the colors of his recollection from there running together misery red, flush with time and luck and money and not a whole hell of a lot else. He gambled and drank and caroused with other ne’er-do-wells in Van Horn; fought bare-fisted down in the mud for entertainment and money with the miners of Annesburg.
He wondered, as his traitor mind was wont to do in the quiet moments, whether the man with the bear living in him ever made it to that cabin by the lake.
It became ridiculous after a point — pacing along the river like a caged animal. He didn’t know quite why, but thoughts of Arthur had become ever more ubiquitous and alluring since the incident. Even now, his eyes drifted closed and his nostrils flared at the fragments of memories he treasured most, held so close to his chest not even the very man in question might suspect. Erron fished out the gold pocket watch he’d collected at the end of a grueling card game the night before and cracked his eyes to inspect the time; the ornate hands rapidly closing in on three-thirty ’o’ clock in the morning. He could reach the lake by sunrise.
So it was decided.
Erron hauled his aching body astride his beloved blood bay thoroughbred mare with an affectionate scratch of her dark mane, her saddlebags loaded down with all his winnings and worldly possessions which weren’t cached, and set about the lake in the dead of night. The number of souls out there with him were few and wary, clutching the grips of their firearms tighter at the sight of a lone stranger on the road that late at night and so very close to Van Horn. He was clean shaven and well dressed at the very least albeit a bit bruised and disheveled in a charcoal grey vest over top a black button up with matching trousers.
If he listened hard enough in the gloom, he could just about hear their sighs of relief when they passed him on by without incident. Soon, he was the only soul cutting through the dark.
He must have dozed in the saddle a good while because, with a sharp breath through his nose, he looked up and suddenly became aware of the sun having begun to rise above the horizon. Sugarlips flicked a curious ear in his direction as he stretched and adjusted himself in the saddle, but otherwise continued on down the road looping around the lake at her leisure. A thin plume of grey smoke rose from the chimney of the cabin situated at the edge of the water ahead. Erron leaned back in the saddle with a minute squeeze of his thighs to halt his mare’s stride a good distance away, the hand not on the reins dangling deceptively casually nearby his holstered revolver in case the occupant wasn’t who he was expecting it to be, and let out an ear splitting whistle.
Sugarlips held steady at the sound, familiar enough to hold her ground until he indicated otherwise, but chomped noisily at the bit beneath him nonetheless at the prospect of anticipatory flight.
It was clear to him now sprawled out on the bed ever so welcomingly provided him by the proprietor of the Old Light Saloon, threadbare sheets itching him where he swung his arm out to flick the ashes from his cigarette onto the rotted out wood floor. His bright idea to travel further north in search of lucrative opportunities had been scuppered by ice and snow unabated by neither time nor patience — and he only possessed one of those things in spades. He told himself it was for the best to turn back while he was still ahead; cut his losses before they had the chance to cut into him instead. It was bad enough the man with the bear living in him could have been the end of the line.
An ignominious final destination for the likes of Erron Black — chewed up and shit out by a man eating grizzly bear in the ass end of nowhere. Unloved and unmourned; forgotten by time in the frozen wastes.
That's not what happened, but it could have. He'd not never been the brightest star in the night sky, but he could take a hint from lady luck better than most. There was a time to press and another to finesse. So it was that he'd sauntered back south to insinuate himself back into another robber baron's cortege; easy work, that, mean mugging on their dime after seeing just how much damage he could do. Easy, and dreadfully boring between bouts of baronial infighting. It wasn't long before he succumbed to wanderlust for the filth and the squalor of the streets of Saint Denis and, rather more importantly, the cutthroat zeal inherent to the gangs that carved out a living there instead.
Where the robber barons sat at their desks scratching out letters of great import while everyone else did their work for them, up to and including himself, the city gangs were vibrant vipers nests of volatility and they always had dirty work to be done they couldn't be seen doing. Erron didn't care much for either of their political machinations, but neither of them thought he was smart enough to understand on account of his country upbringing anyhow. They were wrong, of course, but that was fine by him if it kept them from their campaigning and he could surreptitiously read everything they left lying around. Everything was going well until it wasn't.
There weren't many things Erron wouldn't do for money. He refused on principle to waste his time on anything less than large sums, preferably upfront and all at once, but he'd settle for cumulative on pain of death if his employer got any funny ideas. It was just good business sense. He wasn't without his quirks, though. Namely, his aversion to women not cut out for him and children. It wasn't that he was too high and mighty for it — he could claim no kind of moral high ground.
It was that they made him think things he didn't want to think; feel things he didn't want to feel.
Erron had been smack dab in the middle of rousting a business owner into compliance when he caught sight of tiny, slender feet at the staircase landing leading up to the man’s living quarters. He wasn’t so naive as to believe none of the people he terrorized didn’t have families, didn’t have nobody what cared about them, but he was careful, he was precise. And that’s why the only cracked teeth in his knuckles that night had been his employer’s — with many more to follow as the rage in him burnt white hot and inconsolable. He bid Saint Denis adieu at the bottom of a bottle with a pair of stinging, split knuckles and a vicious disposition. All the colors of his recollection from there running together misery red, flush with time and luck and money and not a whole hell of a lot else. He gambled and drank and caroused with other ne’er-do-wells in Van Horn; fought bare-fisted down in the mud for entertainment and money with the miners of Annesburg.
He wondered, as his traitor mind was wont to do in the quiet moments, whether the man with the bear living in him ever made it to that cabin by the lake.
It became ridiculous after a point — pacing along the river like a caged animal. He didn’t know quite why, but thoughts of Arthur had become ever more ubiquitous and alluring since the incident. Even now, his eyes drifted closed and his nostrils flared at the fragments of memories he treasured most, held so close to his chest not even the very man in question might suspect. Erron fished out the gold pocket watch he’d collected at the end of a grueling card game the night before and cracked his eyes to inspect the time; the ornate hands rapidly closing in on three-thirty ’o’ clock in the morning. He could reach the lake by sunrise.
So it was decided.
Erron hauled his aching body astride his beloved blood bay thoroughbred mare with an affectionate scratch of her dark mane, her saddlebags loaded down with all his winnings and worldly possessions which weren’t cached, and set about the lake in the dead of night. The number of souls out there with him were few and wary, clutching the grips of their firearms tighter at the sight of a lone stranger on the road that late at night and so very close to Van Horn. He was clean shaven and well dressed at the very least albeit a bit bruised and disheveled in a charcoal grey vest over top a black button up with matching trousers.
If he listened hard enough in the gloom, he could just about hear their sighs of relief when they passed him on by without incident. Soon, he was the only soul cutting through the dark.
He must have dozed in the saddle a good while because, with a sharp breath through his nose, he looked up and suddenly became aware of the sun having begun to rise above the horizon. Sugarlips flicked a curious ear in his direction as he stretched and adjusted himself in the saddle, but otherwise continued on down the road looping around the lake at her leisure. A thin plume of grey smoke rose from the chimney of the cabin situated at the edge of the water ahead. Erron leaned back in the saddle with a minute squeeze of his thighs to halt his mare’s stride a good distance away, the hand not on the reins dangling deceptively casually nearby his holstered revolver in case the occupant wasn’t who he was expecting it to be, and let out an ear splitting whistle.
Sugarlips held steady at the sound, familiar enough to hold her ground until he indicated otherwise, but chomped noisily at the bit beneath him nonetheless at the prospect of anticipatory flight.
lmao you know marston would have done that
It was no Tahiti, but maybe arguably better.
He wasn't sure if he'd remain long term. He still dreamed of returning further west, seeing the ocean and the land where he'd spent his time as a kid. But as he understood it, it was getting mighty busy out there and wouldn't be much different than this place.
While he wasn't sure he was immortal to the same scale as Erron, he knew this curse of the bear had given him longer life. He hadn't aged since he was bit, though he probably wouldn't know for sure the extent of the curse was for another fifty.
Arthur watched the other man walk around, pants pulled up but still unfastened, giving a hint of dark hair and skin. Another benefit of living out here, no one could judge folk like him, openly or not.
At the statement he chuckled and nodded, "Yea, almost." he scratched the back of his neck. "Was willing to leave it all behind, the gang, thievery, and everything in between for Mary. But her daddy wouldn't give me half a chance, in the end he said no, and she wouldn't go against him."
shattered dreams, shattered dreams for *erryone* :{
That, and how best to kill a man.
"The nerve on you, tryin' to make off with a lady above yer station." Erron teased, but the lopsided slope of his grin was sly with admiration. He leaned down to fish around in his saddlebag for his cigarettes and matchsticks, had to slip his fingers down multiple interior pockets before he found what he was looking for — and then some.
"You ever think 'bout what it'd be like to have a daughter?" An odd question, and an even odder thought. Maybe it was all that heat and tension bleeding out of him for the first time in months, or the question of his unnaturally long life and mortality that had gotten into him all the sudden. Erron plucked out a cigarette and put it between his lips, scraped the match head against the floorboards and then pitched it into the fireplace once he'd finished with it.
"I thought about it," his voice was strained as he hauled himself across the bed to lean his back up against the wall, reached across to offer Arthur a drag off his smoke. In his other hand, he thumbed a yellowed photograph creased ten times over and fraying around the edges. "'bout settlin' down and havin' myself a little devil of a baby with a face like an angel just like her mama," he murmured. "Small enough to fit in my own two hands."
no subject
He declined the cigarette and instead got up and fetched a pipe and some tobacco from the mantel. More of Hamish's old stuff but he'd come to enjoy it too.
As he packed his pipe, Arthur paused at the sudden question, eyes resting on the photograph which must have been as old as photographs were.
He continued his work. "No, but I had a son once." he answered at last before striking a match and lighting the pipe.
no subject
All Erron hung onto was his hat, his mare, his lucky silver dollar, and the pictures of the sharp little stiletto with the jeweled grip that cut into his heart every now and again. Ain't nothing was forever, though; not even him.
Erron's eyes drifted shut on a long drag off his smoke, let the past tense of the answer creep through the air between them and sink into him a while before exhaling it from flared nostrils. "With yer Mary?"
no subject
He took a few puffs from his pipe, still getting used to the thing.
"I met a waitress, Eliza. We talked, got intimate, and she got pregnant. She knew the life I led, I weren't the settlin' sort, and so expected little of me. Still, did what I could for her and the boy, Isaac. Returned to her often as I could with money and toys later on. Spent time with her but mostly the boy, even taught him to fish." he smiled, exhaling smoke "He was a good kid."
Arthur shifted to sit more comfortably beside Erron, "I came back one day, saw two crosses outside the house, learned from a neighbor that they'd been killed in a robbery."
my god, these two fools
He wondered what it might've been like to have been that boy, wanted and beloved, his passing mourned.
It was an unsettling thought that stirred the sediment of brackish water that’d lived within him since the incident; rippled outward like alligator spines breaching the surface. Erron pulled sharply off his smoke, the smoldering red ember crackling bright before he pulled it free of his lips to idly thumb the tobacco flakes at the other end of it. "Job went wrong down south," he announced, his jaw flexing with resurgent tension. "Kid wasn’t supposed to be there. I look up and sure as shit there she is, whiter than a sheet, watchin’ me beat her daddy fer some reprobate in a suit’s protection money. I wasn’t there to kill 'im — just knock him around some, give him somethin’ to think about, somethin’ to fear next time. Easy money.”
“She didn’t know that. She didn’t know nothin’ but her daddy’s blood on my hands,” Erron licked his teeth like a snarling wolf, his breath the hiss of a sidewinder between them as he recalled the rage that’d filled him up and wouldn’t let him go. “So I turned tail and knocked that lyin’ sonuvabitch’s teeth out instead and then I just kept punchin’ from Saint Denis all the way to Annesburg.”
“Ain’t no hands like that fit fer touchin’ babies,” his head lolled lazily along the wall to look at Arthur sidelong, the fight in him exorcised like a curl of cigarette smoke between his lips. “But at least I can go to my pine box knowin’ I ain’t that kind of monster.”
no subject
“We both been through some hell ain’t we?” He smiled wryly.
He smoked for a few moments before leaning in and kissing the other man, pulling back after a brief meeting of their lips he said, “But when I’m with you, I get a little slice of heaven” he grinned then chuckled, knowing how stupid and cliche it was but...
It was true. Having a kindred soul who enjoyed his company and didn’t care about his past was rare. Charles had been close but, he couldn’t think of any other.
"hahahaha we're all going to hell," casually chortled every outlaw in the history of ever.
From inside the coach crept the pale, delicate arm of a bejeweled lady whose fingers lighted upon the young man’s shoulder peculiarly talonlike for all their elegance. The cherubic face which peeked out left little to the imagination. A face out of time and place in the new world, through which the old world yet seemed to speak, remind them of all of that wickedness they’d left behind. Erron couldn’t read the flowery, foreign script of her name written on the back of it, but emblazoned along the broadside of the coach in large block lettering was, simply, “Marshall.”
Of the two, his recognition faltered to only passing familiarity of the young man who stared out at him from both the photo and his own reflection, but the woman…
Szkarłat Marszałek. Skarlet Marshall.
Erron leaned into the kiss with relish, eager for the distraction from memories best let alone, left to dust where they belonged. “Closest thing I reckon folk like us come anyhow,” he huffed a self-effacing chuckle right along with Arthur. “Ain’t gonna be no chorus of angels and trumpets heraldin’ my arrival, that’s fer damn sure. Figure I already done my one good deed besides in sparin’ the world the sorta thing to come of a bobcat like her and a monster like me. It’s all fire over yonder and damnation in the holler from here on out, really.”
no subject
Arthur shook his head. "I try not to think too much about it all though, hurts to dig that deep."
He snuffed out his cigarette and lay down on the bed, staring at the ceiling a minute before beckoning Erron over to join him. "C'mere already, I gotta nap before tonight's change or tomorrow I'm gonna be dead on my feet."