Arthur Morgan

Arthur doesn't go to Saint Denis often. A man raised his whole life on dirt roads with the stars for his only ceiling never quite gets used to the constant rush of a city with buildings taller than most trees he's ever laid eyes on.

It ain't that he's shy, exactly—Arthur being a son from the wrong side of the tracks, from the low road of life. But there's something in the way people look at him when he passes by. Those glances that remind him of his status as a stranger, an outsider; looks that do nothing but add to his already bitter temper.

Arthur doesn't go to Saint Denis often. He emphasizes the point over and over in his head, as if reminding himself of the thousand reasons why that place feels more like hell than a metropolis or a monument to humanity could convince him not to return.

But he always does. Always for her.

S.E. Hellar Floral Artist wasn't a place that had initially caught Arthur's eye. The only reason he'd even become aware of the flower shop's existence wasn't out of pleasure or any particular need. It was mere dumb chance on a rainy day when, catching a glimpse of himself in one of the puddles outside the post office, he realized his hair had grown longer than he was willing to allow.

And since he was so far from Valentine and that barber tucked away in the farthest corner of the Smithfield's Saloon—the one Arthur had grown accustomed to—he decided to give the only barbershop he knew in Saint Denis a chance.

The price wasn't bad. The barber, whose name he never asked, was at least competent, and the street wad generally quiet. Arthur remembers specifically scowling up at the sky as he stepped out, a grey cloud threatening to unleash a downpour that would do nothing but sink his horse's hooves deep into the mud.

And then he saw her.

That woman, in a blue dress with her hair tied back, seemed to have also glimpsed the possibility of an unforgiving downpour. The first time his eyes landed on her, she was a frantic vision, gathering potted plants and bouquets from the carts outside to shelter them inside the shop. Arthur would love to say he remembers what he thought when he saw her cradle a bundle of carnations against her chest, but in truth, he couldn't think of anything at all.

It was as if his brain had forgotten everything that made Arthur himself. As if the only thing that mattered in the whole world was her, even if all he could see were mere glimpses of her face, worried for the safety of her flowers. And as quickly as she had appeared, the woman vanished behind the green door of S.E. Hellar Floral Artist.

Arthur told himself it didn't matter. That he was, at the end of the day, just a man. That it was in his nature to find beauty in the women he crossed paths with, that the way his heart hammered a few beats too fast meant nothing. And more than anything, he tried to remind himself that men like him don't deserve pretty things—least of all a woman from a flower shop. He truly, truly meant to let it go.

But sometimes a man's heart is a bigger fool than he is, and a hell of a lot stronger, too.

Before he knew it, Arthur had stopped shaving at camp. He was drinking hair tonics like they were water, telling himself he just wasn't satisfied with the haircut he'd gotten, whatever the hell it had been. And again and again, every so often, Arthur found himself back at Holdern Barber, his eyes constantly drifting across the street.

He doesn't even know her, and already Arthur is sacrificing his own comfort for the slim chance of catching a glimpse of her passing by that big front window.

Truth be told, he doesn't mind watching from a distance. Of course, if you asked him, he'd love to measure her waist with his hands, to tangle his callused fingers—rough from years of hard riding and gunpowder that lingers and stings the eyes—in the hair that falls down her back. But Arthur Morgan is no fool, and he knows with the certainty of a lifetime of tragedy that he can't, that he shouldn't, even dare to harbor hope for such ideas. So he watches from afar, from the barbershop window and from under the brim of his hat as he leaves, following the skirts of that woman whose name he still doesn't know.

But one day, as if finding a coin on a train car, some teenager—street urchin, the kind that haunts the alleys and sees nothing but escape routes, just as Arthur did before he met Dutch—comes tearing past. The kid knocks over a small stand brimming with roses in his haste to flee from a pursuing lawman.

Arthur reacts on pure instinct, bending down to gather the fallen flowers when a pair of hands joins his... and there she is, saying something to him that he doesn't quite catch, too lost in those eyes of hers that seem to glow in the afternoon light.

"Huh? Ah... 'scuse me," he mumbles, suddenly at a complete loss for words and feeling like a perfect idiot. He decides to let his hands do the talking, lifting the stand upright for her and trying to avoid looking directly at her again. "Don't... it don't look broke. Here, lemme get that for ya."