Time skip...…
The snow hadn't stopped in days.
It swallowed the world whole, falling in thick, wind-whipped sheets that turned men to ghosts and horses to stumbling shadows. The Van der Linde gang was half-starved, bloodied, and still burning from Blackwater. Spirits were low. Tempers shorter. No one trusted what tomorrow would bring.
Not even Dutch.
They'd lost too much.
Money. People.
Hope.
So when Dutch and Micah returned from their ride and claimed they saw someone else up on the ridge above the trail, no one believed them.
"Could've been a trick of the wind," Arthur muttered, throwing another log on the weak fire.
"No trick," Micah said, his voice a little too eager. "Felt like something was watching us. Not a bear either. Man had eyes."
Dutch rubbed his jaw. "Then we pay him a visit tomorrow. Could be help, could be trouble. Either way, we don't leave questions walking above us."
The next morning, they set out.
Arthur, Dutch, Javier, and Hosea, moving through the blizzard with their collars high and their hands on their rifles. They followed Micah's lead up a narrow slope of brittle ice and snow-blinded pines.
Eventually, they saw it.
Smoke. Thin and blue, curling from a half-buried cabin that barely looked lived in. A shelter built into the cliffside, as if the world had forgotten it.
They approached slow, careful.
The closer they got, the more it felt… off.
Tracks circled the place — not boot prints, but hooves. Massive hooves. And a second set of tracks that didn't match any man. Bare feet. In the snow.
Dutch raised a hand to signal stop.
Then the door creaked open.
And a man stepped out.
He was wrapped in furs and leather so worn it was nearly falling apart. Long, snow-flecked hair hung around his face in tangled strands. A wide-brimmed hat shadowed his eyes, and a massive revolver — black steel etched in ancient symbols — hung low on his right hip. The other mirrored it on the left.
Arthur's breath caught in his throat.
"…No way."
Hosea took a step forward, stunned. "Wyatt?"
The man's eyes lifted.
Red.
Wild.
But still him.
"…Howdy," Wyatt said, voice hoarse from years of disuse.
Dutch said nothing.
And Hosea looked like he'd seen a ghost.
The last time they saw him, he was barely fourteen.
He was older now but not as old as he should be.
"Thought you were dead," Arthur said finally.
"I was," Wyatt said simply.
Dutch frowned, as if waiting for more.
He didn't get it.
"Why'd you never come back?" Arthur asked. "We buried ash in the wind for you. Hosea—he—he—"
"I couldn't," Wyatt said, his voice dry as cracked wood. "Not after what happened."
Dutch stared at him across the white silence, snowflakes melting in the space between his fur-lined coat and the revolver holstered at his side.
"…What did happen, son?"
Wyatt didn't answer right away.
His breath curled in the cold. His hair, long and dark now, fluttered with the wind. He looked like something the mountain spat out — hollowed by years, sharpened by fire, and stitched together with silence.
Dutch took a step forward.
"You disappeared," he said. "After the fire, after Betsy—God damn it, boy, we looked for you. We buried what was left and mourned you like family."
"I was gone," Wyatt said.
"Gone where?"
Wyatt's eyes flicked up to Dutch's. They glowed faintly — not with light, but with something deeper. Stranger.
"Someplace worse than hell," he murmured. "And I didn't come back. Not for a long time."
Javier shifted in the snow beside Arthur, eyes narrowing.
"Who the hell is this guy?"
Arthur didn't answer. He was staring at Wyatt like a man seeing a ghost still wearing the same face he remembered — just stretched by time and grief.
Micah stepped forward, hand resting near his holster. "This is the man you've been talkin' about, huh? The ghost boy? Thought you said he was dead."
Wyatt looked at him. Just looked. No threat, no posture.
Micah faltered and took a step back.
"I was," Wyatt said flatly.
The snow fell harder around them, blanketing the silence. Dutch breathed in slow, trying to steady something in his chest.
"You were just a boy when we lost you," he said. "Fourteen. Me, Hosea, Arthur — we tried to make peace with it, but—"
"I didn't want peace," Wyatt cut in. "I wanted blood."
His fingers brushed the grip of one of the revolvers on his hip — black, etched in silver. Its twin mirrored it on the other side, both resting unnaturally quiet like sleeping serpents.
Bill squinted at them. "Those guns ain't standard issue."
"Nothing about him is," Hosea muttered.
Dutch folded his arms, trying to process what stood in front of him. The snow clung to Wyatt like it belonged to him. Like the mountain had made him part of it.
"I buried a boy," Dutch said. "But you ain't a boy anymore."
"I'm not anything anymore," Wyatt replied, voice tired. "Not really."
He stepped past them then, slow and calm. No one moved. Not even Micah. He walked to Arthur and stopped just a few feet away.
"You've grown up," Wyatt said, a dry hint of a smile tugging at his lips.
Arthur stared at him like he was trying to look through him.
"So have you," he said. "But you look the same."
Wyatt didn't deny it. He just gave a small nod.
"Time doesn't hit me like it used to."
That sent a ripple of unease through the gang. They didn't speak it out loud, but you could feel it. The suspicion. The superstition.
"You… haven't aged," Charles said carefully.
Wyatt's red eyes met his, unreadable. "Everything started with the fire."
"What fire?" Lenny asked.
No answer.
Just the wind.
They rode back to camp slow.
Wyatt didn't talk much. The others didn't know what to say. He rode slightly behind the group, eyes always scanning the trees, the cliffs, the horizon. As if the world still had knives waiting for him.
Arthur kept glancing back, remembering a time when Wyatt had been smaller than him. Quieter. Smiling. That kid with blood on his face and dreams in his chest. He wasn't there anymore.
The man behind him now didn't smile. Didn't dream.
When they got to camp, the reactions were mixed.
Swanson crossed himself.
Pearson asked where the hell this guy had come from and got no answer.
The girls whispered, eyes wide as they passed him food he didn't touch.
And Dutch? Dutch just watched him from the tent flap, arms crossed, thinking.
Later, around the fire, Arthur sat with Hosea and Wyatt while the others kept their distance.
"Why now?" Arthur asked.
"I didn't know where you were," Wyatt replied. "Didn't even know if you were alive. I stayed in the mountain because it was better than being out here, pretending I was still the same."
"You ain't the same," Hosea said softly. "But you're still one of ours."
Wyatt looked at him, and for the first time since he came down from the ridge, something flickered across his face — guilt, maybe. Or the echo of something that used to be peace.
"I don't know if I belong here," he said.
Dutch's voice came from the shadows. "None of us do. That's why we ride together. Come with us son"
But Wyatt shook his head.
"I can't. Not yet."
Then he stood and walked back into the dark.
They left the mountain three days later.
The sun peeked out weakly through the clouds as the horses trudged through melting drifts. Spirits were still low, but there was movement now. A reason to press forward.
As they reached the base of the ridge, the group pulled up short.
Because there, leaning against a snow-frosted pine, stood Wyatt Boone.
He wore a long coat now. His guns slung low. The wind tugged at the hat brim shadowing his strange, red eyes.
He didn't say a word.
Just whistled.
The great gray horse emerged from behind the trees.
Arthur broke into a crooked smile.
Dutch laughed.
"Figured the ghost wasn't finished haunting us yet."
Wyatt mounted up slow. Still didn't speak.
But when he turned his horse to ride with them, it was clear enough.
He was home.
Even if he didn't believe it yet.