It took a long time for peace to come, but it did.
You lived on your family's land, making your way back to them after the disaster with the Van der Linde gang fell to pieces. Your family wasn't entirely thrilled to see you come back, pregnant from a man who you had never married, but you're still welcomed back with open arms. Despite the hardships you'd been through, despite the constant fear for your life, you felt like things would be okay. You felt like you could raise a child on these lands, raise them to be a good person who did good things in the world, to make up for all the bad you sat back and watched happen (or even participated in).
You had Noah, a son, and you'd never been happier. He was the most beautiful baby you laid eyes on, taking his good looks from his father, who you refused to even talk about now. It was too painful to do so, to talk about a life left behind, and you were attempting to lay low. You weren't sure if the agents would still attempt to seek you out but you refused to tempt fate, even insisting to your family to act as if you've died. They had a fake funeral to keep up appearances, and gave you a fake name, referring to you as a cousin when others were in earshot. It was a lot of steps to take to have a normal life for yourself, but it was your own fault you ended up arriving at this conclusion.
You missed Dutch, and you hated yourself for it.
He had loved you deeply, and you knew it, even if in the end he hadn't shown you the same side of himself. You have many memories that flood in at night, when you're laying in bed, Noah snuggled beside you. You can remember the way he danced with you, hands on your hips, spinning you around, smiling and laughing. It was like a rush of colors, of the light that had shined down on your life until those last moments at Beaver Hollow, where the whole world seemed to darken. You could no longer ignore how naïve you acted, as though things would turn out fine no matter what, and you can't help but wonder what might have been if you could reel Dutch in.
What could've happened if Micah had never joined the gang? What could have happened had Hosea not died in that bank robbery in Saint Denis? They're questions that would plague you if you gave them the time of day, as there was nothing left for you to do but accept the reality that came to be. Those things did happen, and there was no point wasting energy in thinking of the 'what if's'.
Your house was a ways from the main house where the rest of your family lived, with you occasionally making your way up there to help with household chores in there and do whatever it is they needed so they'd continue to let you live among them. They gave you food and clothes so long as you helped, so there wasn't a need for you to go into town to earn money, which was safer for everyone. You loved to spend the days with your son, reading to him and teaching him how to do the basic things around the house, while knowing that eventually, you'd have to teach him yourself how to be a man. He didn't have a father around to teach him.
After tucking Noah into bed and reading him a short poem, a bedtime routine he refused to let go of, insisting he would never be too old for you to read to him before he slept, you sit yourself on your couch with your own book in hand. You had always been attracted to the books that promised a happy ending, perhaps holding out that you'd have your own. You should be happy, because you had a wonderful son, but you didn't get to be with his father. You didn't know where Dutch even was, if he was still alive. Just more questions to keep you up at night, wondering, worrying, if he'd ever come after you.
That night, you discover, he is indeed alive and well.
You jump as your door flings open, hoping, praying, that it was just the wind but knowing fate had ways of catching up with you. You whip your head around, more fearful of seeing Micah or some of his lot, but are shocked to see an extremely unkempt Dutch walk through your door. He doesn't seem like he's seen a moment of peace since you last saw him, and you wouldn't be surprised if he'd been endlessly on the run from the law. You run up a bounty like his, and the punishment for it is lifelong.
"What the hell are you doing here?" All you can think about is Noah, if he heard, and what he'd do if he thought an intruder was in the house. You hope with all that you'd taught him and talked about he'd know to hide, to run away, perhaps to go to the main house and warn them that something bad was happening.
"I should kill you." He growls out, his gun pulled out in an instant. It seems the years did nothing to help his impulsivity and violence, though this is the first time you ever found yourself at this end of the barrel. "I should shoot you where you stand for what you did to me!"
"What I did to you? Are you fucking kiddin' me?!" You might not have a gun, and you might have plenty of reasons you should keep your mouth shut, but this was too much. To flee a man and find peace, only for him to come back and ruin it? A man you had loved so dearly and supported until he'd proven he'd flown off the deep end? "Don't you threaten me, Dutch van der Linde, don't you come into my home wavin' that gun around when the reason I left had everything to do with you changin'!"
"How selfish can you be?! You see a man, going through a hard time, and you leave him? All of our hopes, our dreams-"
"They were your hopes and dreams, Dutch, not mine. And you could damn well fulfill them without me, and you knew that!" You crossed your arms. "That's why it took you three years to come find me, because it didn't kill you to live without me. But it killed me to live without you! I missed you every goddamn day, regardless of the fact I know what you've become! Turning on your own people, the ones you raised yourself, for some lunatic with an itchy trigger finger?"
"Micah- It wasn't like that."
"It's exactly what it was like, and I'm not sure why you never saw through that rat. You're not stupid, Dutch, I know that, so why? What's the point of any of this?" You glance back towards the bedroom, timid, worried your son might rise. It was a stupid thing to do with Dutch so on edge, and he quickly follows where your eyes had been.
"Is there someone else here?" He hisses out, clearly unhappy; he probably thought it was another man, no doubt, but you'd rather him think that than know the truth. He starts to storm towards the door, probably to make a point, to show 'if he can't have you, no one can' but you block him to the best of your ability.
"Please, just go, Dutch."
"Not until I see the bastard you left me for!"
"It's not like that, you fool! I never laid with another man while we were together!" He easily pushes past you as, despite his disheveled looks, he was still quite strong. You stumble against the wall but gain your footing back quickly, darting after him as he kicks the door open hard, causing the crack of the wood to reverberate against the walls of the house. You can see your son bolt upright in his head, cowering in the furthest corner of it he could reach as the strange man entered his room.
"What-?" Dutch looks bewildered, and you take the opportunity to rush past him to your sons side, pulling him into your arms and trying to soothe him.
"It's okay, Noah, it's okay. You don't got nothin' to worry about, mama is gonna handle this, okay? Just, lay back down and close your eyes and when this man has left mama's gonna come back, okay?" He nods wordlessly but still seems helplessly frightened, and you couldn't blame him for that. To be woken up in such a way, to a man who had a gun, must have been the worst experience he ever had.
"You're..."
"Let's talk outside." Dutch let's you approach him, the hand holding his gun fallen to his side, finger no longer on the trigger. "Please."
Dutch listens to you for once in your entire relationship and leaves the room without another peep, letting you shut it behind you as you reassured your son once more that everything would be okay. You inhale deeply before turning to look at the broken man before you, looking more tired than he'd ever looked in his life.
"A child?" He whispers out, "How old? H-How old is he?"
"He's yours, if that's what you wanna know." Your arms are crossed again, staring hard at him. "I never told him about you, neither. And I think you've done enough damage to him now, Dutch. If you even have one last shit to give about me or him, you need to go! You need to go, and never come back!"
Dutch once again surprises you, whipping around to face away from you, rubbing at his temples as if he has a terrible migraine. You can feel the tension fading, being replaced with pity for this man who was only a shell of his former self. To see him again was not the great relief you'd thought it might be for your heart, instead, it just tore it to shreds even more. You wished things could have been better, you wished you could just have some silly little mango farm in Tahiti with the love of your life, but life hardly turned out the way anyone wanted it to.
Accepting reality had been the first step to moving on from Dutch, and this, this was closure.
"The world is changing." Dutch states simply, taking steps towards the door and stopping in the doorway to look at you one last time. "There ain't a place for me in it anymore."
He walks through, closing the door behind him and getting on his horse. You watch carefully from the window, worried he might come back with more firepower, or maybe he had plans to bring more men to really send a message to you and your family. But you couldn't think so poorly of him, even now, because he had loved you once. Perhaps some of that love still remained, which prevented him from putting a bullet in your head the minute he saw you again. Maybe seeing his own son, terrified as he looked upon him, with no idea of who he truly was, finally knocked some sense into him.
You return to your son's room once Dutch has disappeared over the horizon, sitting on the bed and holding him close. Your heart clenched in your chest, every beat of it rife with pain.
"I-is that man coming back, mama?"
You hold your son close, squeezing him, urging the tears that are flowing to stop.
"No, baby, I don't think he will."