[221] Persistence (Red Dead Redemption)

[tildytwo]

Theme Prompt: #221 Persistence
Title: Persistence
Fandom: Red Dead Redemption
Rating/Warnings: G, minor spoilers
Bonus: yes
Word Count: 454
Summary: Dutch van der Linde, still going on after all these years.

Is this all there is?

You ask yourself this some nights. Is this really all that's left for you? All your schemes and dreams, and all that's left is the freezing heights of Cochinay and a handful of natives you barely even know. No one from the old guard—no one but John, and he's turned into the government's pawn. By the time he realizes the noose he's putting his neck in, it'll be too late.

Sometimes you wonder if there's any real reason to go on. Not that you'd kill yourself—where there's life there's hope—but the future you meant to build vanished like so much smoke in the thin mountain air. You talk big to the natives, but the truth is you don't expect things to change, not for the better.

Every night you struggle with sleep, and when it comes it brings dreams of death. Annabelle lies motionless in your arms, Hosea dies in the street like a dog, and Arthur...

Is it any wonder you can't sleep?

And yet you persist. It's like you're a mechanical toy, wound too tight, and once you're set to marching you can't stop until it's over. You plan jobs, you joke with your men, you play-act like someone much more complacent than you are. Where's it all leading? To John? To death or capture? It's unthinkable until you remember that look in his eye that day in the bank. Governmental errand boy or not, he's set his mind on something that ends with one or both of you dead.

No one questions you, not the way they did more than a decade ago. You're able to keep on keeping on without their lack of faith dragging you down. Hassun and Dakota bring news from the more civilized places ("civilized" is a strong word, but you're too tired to care), and the more John gets around the more your men say they're ready for him. But they aren't. You taught John practically everything he knows. He's cleverer than that.

Still you press on. If John follows you out here, then whatever happens is on his hands, not yours. It's not your fault. Not really.

He asked you why, at the hotel. Why were you so dead set on killing him and his friends? You told him, sport, I guess. But the truth is, you just have to. If you want to go on living—and you do want to go on living—John has to die. Maybe that's what will happen. Maybe you'll die, too, just like Annabelle and Hosea and... Maybe there's a lesson here for you to learn, something you've been dancing around for decades, and maybe you'll finally see that this is all there is.

Well. Better late than never.

Comments

[badly_knitted]

Totally unknown fandom, but this is so well written, and so fatalistic, I wish I knew whether he does kill John, or whether John kills him.

[tildytwo]

Surprisingly, neither. When cornered on a mountain by John and the government, Dutch ("you") chooses to fling himself off said mountain rather than face death or capture at the hands of the government.

[badly_knitted]

Oh, sad, but at least he got to make the choice for himself.