Work Text:
The cold air stung deep into the old drunk’s skin, but he did not care. He was too busy drinking his sorrows away, mourning the loss at the wealth that could have been. When he had heard the stories of all the gold to be mined out west, he rushed out to an area that was right at the border of Texas.
But all the gold was gone.
Already mined off and sold.
To make matters even worse, the townspeople laughed at him, saying that he was half a century too late. The old drunk was furious, but even more so he was devastated. He had sold off everything he had owned for the supplies and travel to this barren wasteland, and now he had nothing to show for it.
The old man laid on his back, staring into the starry sky. He had to admit, at least there was a better view here at night than back in Savannah. N/o buildings or tree obstructed the dancing constellations in the sky, their dazzling brilliance almost as overwhelming as their numbers. He had even seen a few shooting stars, wishing desperately on each one for wealth to come his way.
The sound of hooves pounding against the dirt about pulled the man away from his stargazing, but he ignored it.
It was probably some wild stallions, or a ranger looking for some bandit hideouts.
But when gunshots erupted from the darkness, the old man shot up, terrified.
He fumbled for his gun, pulling it out from under his small pillow. He shakily loaded some bullets into the chamber, watching in fear as the gunshots lit up the night, growing closer and closer.
Suddenly, a large horse galloped into the fire light, its rider’s face obscured by a leather cowboy hat and a bandana. He appeared to be some sort of outlaw, and the old man could’ve sworn he had red eyes. The horse whinnied, and the outlaw looked down at the old man.
“Run. Death awaits you if you remain here.” He said in a deep, gruff voice.
“I ain’t goin nowhere! You ain’t the boss of me, mister!” The old man slurred out, the alcohol impairing his speech.
The outlaw lowered his bandana, revealing coarse facial hair and a prominent nose. He appeared to have some native in him, his skin a tad darker than the old man’s.
“Mordecai Burr. Fought for the entire duration of the Civil War for the Confederates. Most notable achievement, where you fought bravely at the Battle of Fort Fisher in North Carolina. Your actions prevented an increase in casualties on both sides. If you wish to continue living, please evacuate the area. You would make for an easy target for Death.” The outlaw warned.
The old man fell back, horrified that this stranger knew so much about him. But then a strange calmness fell over him.
“Yer talking about me dying, aren’t ya?” The old man asked softly.
“Yes.” Came the outlaw’s simple reply.
The old man smiled, and closed his eyes. “If it’s my time, it’s my time. I’m ready to go.”
The outlaw studied the man. “Do you not fear Death?” He asked.
“Of course I do. Ain’t nothin I can do about, though. I’m ready to meet my wife up in heaven.” The old drunk responded. The outlaw looked like he wanted to say something, but the sound of three horses approaching cut him off.
“I still recommend you run. It is not your time.” He said, spurring his horse forward.
“You can’t run from death, boy. Sooner or later, it will come for you.” The old man replied.
“Like War.” The outlaw whispered.
“Yeah, I guess death is kinda like war. Both are inevitable for us people.” The old man said, but the outlaw had already darted off, heading towards the town.
The old man stood at the edge of his camp, squinting his eyes to see if he could catch a glimpse of the man.
Then the blade of a sword pierced through his chest.
The old man fell to the ground as his attacker removed the sword from his body, and he looked up to see a pale man in a set of pale white samurai armor. The man squatted and placed a hand on the old man’s wound.
“Mordecai Burr. Born on October 1st, 1841 and died on May 30th, 1895. Served as a soldier in the Confederate States of America. Spawned three children, and wife died 15 years ago. Rest easy, old man.” The pale man whispered, and suddenly the old man could see his entire life before his eyes. He saw his birth, his first time catching a fish, his first kiss and his first time making love. He saw himself going to battle with the Union on the shores of North Carolina, and the birth of his children. He saw his wife’s last moments as she died sickly in his arms, and then the subsequent years he spent as a good for nothing drunk. He finally saw the final moments he spent with that strange outlaw, and then his vision returned, only for it to begin fading again.
The last thing he saw was the oriental man get up on his horse and join two other riders, and he watched them gallop away, chasing after the outlaw.
Mordecai Burr pulled out his flask and went to drink, only to see the sword had went through it and emptied out all the liquor. He laughed, and looked up into the stars, closing his eyes.
I’m coming, sweetheart. He thought as his body shut down.
Death had finally taken him.
The outlaw continued to push his horse through the dark night, silently ordering it to turn left or right whenever an obstacle was in his way. The beast of burden followed its master’s orders without protest, despite the fact that it had been running for far longer than any normal horse was physically capable of.
But this was no ordinary horse, and its master was no ordinary man.
The outlaw dared a glance back, wondering if he could still see the campsite of the old drunk behind him, but he saw nothing. Either he was already too far away, or his pursuers had found the old man and dealt with him accordingly.
He was betting on the latter.
As the outlaw continued to ride through the night, his mind wandered about the old man. The ones who chased him did not take kindly to interacting with humans, unless it was ordered so by The Plan.
The outlaw shuddered, not from the cold of the desert, but from the idea of this “Plan”. It was the whole reason why he was on the run, and if he was caught, it was not just his life at stake, but the lives of literally millions of humans. In fact, the outlaw cared more for their lives than he did his own, since he had already died once before.
There were not many memories left to him from his previous life, but his final ones are the memories that seared with a clarity that sometimes made him wish he could forget.
He had been a bounty hunter in life, hunting down targets for the rewards on their heads so he could provide for his family. The outlaw had been the son of a white man and a native woman, something that was heavily frowned upon in his area and time, to say the least. The outlaw had two younger siblings, neither of which had seen their second decade and were in that stage of life where they couldn’t be called children anymore, but still weren’t adults. The outlaw did everything he could to care for his family, to put food on the table, and to protect them from the harsh treatment of the time they lived in.
But he couldn’t protect them from everything.
That cruel truth made itself apparent that fateful night when fire had consumed everything from him. The outlaw had just finished collecting a bounty and was on his way back to the farm when he noticed the orange glow of flames peering over the hill. The faint light appeared more like a blinding spectacle as the realization cooled his blood like a winter breeze ices a lake. He pressed his stallion forward as fast as it would go, nearly killing the animal with overexertion by the time he arrived.
But it was too late.
The burning inferno had engulfed the entire house, the screams of his family still audible through the roaring laughter of the throng of racists circling it. The outlaw roared in anguish through his tears and grief, and opened fire on the nearly twenty men who killed his family.
The first six bullets each hit their marks dead on, splattering the blood and brain matter of each man on the ground. The survivors all looked back in utter shock and horror at the precision marksmanship displayed by the outlaw, and he was able to dispatch two more before they began firing back. Bullets whizzed by his body, but he made no effort to avoid them. One bullet hit his gut, another his shoulder, and then finally one struck his stallion square in the head, killing it instantly. The horse’s body tumbled to ground, forcing the outlaw to duck and roll off the saddle. Almost immediately he was back, and he had pulled his lever action rifle out and began unloading a volley of bullets onto the racists. Soon only three remained, shocked that their numbers had been shortened so quickly. The outlaw soon stood before them, his rifle smoking slightly at the end of the barrel, his rage burning more intensely than the flaming house behind the three men.
They knew they could not beat his draw, so they had set their guns down and the one in the middle went to speak, only for the outlaw to put a bullet between his eyes. The man joined the well over a dozen corpses that littered the ground, and his two surviving companions immediately sprinted off in opposite directions. The outlaw shot the man to his left in the back, who staggered for a moment, wheezing, before finally collapsing to the ground. The outlaw turned to fire a shot into the back of the final survivor, but the lack of a gunshot and repeated clicking of the trigger signaled that he was out of ammo. He growled, the blood loss starting to catch up with him, but he was determined to exterminate all of those who stole his family away. The outlaw unsheathed a large hunting knife, and sprinted after the lone survivor. It did not take him long to find the man, or more accurately, boy. The kid could not have been older than the outlaw’s brother, and had likely just got roped into committing the abominable act by his peers. The outlaw had found him sitting at the base of a large oak in a nearby forest, shaking with fear. The sour stench of urine soaked breeches filled the air, indicating the boy had pissed himself from fright. He began sobbing when he saw the outlaw, clawing at his feet and begging for mercy.
But the outlaw had none.
He tortured the boy, his own wails of anguish nearly covering the screams of pain that followed each time his knife did its job. When the gruesome deed was done, all that remained of the boy was a bloody mess. The outlaw stumbled back, collapsing against a tree parallel to the one the boy had been sitting at. The outlaw looked down in horror at his blood soaked hands, but before he could say or do anything, the sound of a screaming woman caused him to jolt his gaze up.
It wasn’t a woman; it was a mountain lion, drawn to the outlaw by the scent of blood.
The animal eyed him hungrily, seeming to note that he was already injured. The outlaw almost laughed at his karma. He had tortured that young boy, and now it was his fate to be eaten by a mountain lion. He grimaced as he sat into a better position, clutching his knife for a final fight.
The animal tilted its head, wary, but pounced nonetheless.
The last thing the outlaw remembered was stabbing the cat in the brain as it tore out his throat, and as he lay sprawled out on the ground, a blinding light began flashing in succession, followed by a commanding, androgynous voice. The words it spoke he could never repeat, but it was then that he became something above human, lost most of his human memories and his name, and when he became aware of the accursed “Plan”.
From then on he was simply known as War, one of the Four Horsemen.
War shook his head, blinking as he readjusted to his surroundings. He had been so lost in his memories, he did not even realize he lead his horse straight to the side of a massive plateau, with no short way around it.
He had trapped himself.
Before he even turned around, War knew they were there. The other three Horsemen did not take kindly to his abandonment of his job, and were ready to punish him. War drew both of his revolvers, knowing that they would do little against the immortal beings before him.
As always, Death was in the lead. He stood proudly betweenly Pestilence and Famine, an oriental man, his pale Katchu armor gleaming in the moonlight. Famine stood to his right, a fat british businessman with a thick moustache and an even thicker gut. Despite his somewhat comical appearance, War knew he was not to be trifled with. He personified gluttony, his mere existence robbed the lower classes from their food and water, all being deposited into his gut in an attempt to satisfy his never ending hunger. Pestilence had the appearance of a Spaniard, a Spanish conquistador to be exact. In life he had been a man responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of inhabitants of the New World due to the diseases he and his men continued to bring over. At first he had no clue, but soon realized he could utilize said diseases more effectively than any sword or gun. There were many civilizations lost due to his cruel ignorance, never to be known to the rest of the world.
Each Horseman was a force to be reckoned with, but none more so than Death. This grim reaper was no skeleton under a cloth, but a proud samurai warrior in a horrendous set of pale armor with the power to make even the mightiest beast fall dead with a mere glance.
“War. Enough running. Let’s end this now.” Death calmly stated, drawing his sword as Pestilence drew his officer’s rapier and flintlock. Famine pulled out his own small pistol along with a blade hidden within his cane, and the trio of immortal beings eyed War, almost as if to urge him to make the first move.
“You know I can’t give in. That I won’t go through with this.I saw what happens in the next fifty years, and will have no part in it.” He responded, pulling the hammers back on his revolvers.
“You have no choice. As the Horseman of War, it is your duty.” Death retorted.
“I will always have a choice.” War growled. “I saw everything. Carnage and warfare never before seen by man, mass genocide, all of it. I will not bow to the whims of that accursed Plan.”
Death was upon him before he could even blink, the cold metal of his sword’s edge digging into War’s throat. His eyes were frozen with a cold fury, as if billions of damned souls were hidden behind his glare.
“There is no choice, there is no free will. There was none in life for you, and there is none in death. You were chosen to be the Horseman of War. Why, I do not know. But it was all according to The Plan. Now, you can come quietly and DO YOUR DUTY, or I can forcibly reeducate you. You wanted to be able to choose, so there you go.” Death spat out.
War glared at him, but lowered his weapons. Death was right.
There was nothing he could do.
The other three horsemen escorted him away, his head hung in defeat. But before they were able to leave the mortal plane, an idea occurred to him.
The weapons of a Horseman could harm other Horsemen, but could not kill them.
With the possible exception of one.
As a golden light began to envelope the the Four Horsemen to transport them away, War lunged at Death, grabbing his sword. The Horseman was too stunned to react in time, and instinctively prepared to be killed. However, instead of being impaled by his own blade, Death watched with Famine and Pestilence as War stabbed himself through the gut. The golden light enveloping them faltered, and shot them into the night sky as if they were shooting stars.
The sword disappeared from War’s gut, and images began rapidly firing through his mind. He saw men in trenches, dying from wounds and diseases. He saw strange flying vehicles raining bullets from the sky. He saw an angry man giving a passionate speech, with thousands of red armband wearing soldiers saluting him. The image of sickly people being herded like animals to the slaughter stuck with him the most, and then finally, he saw the rapidly approaching ground.
War pondered if he was dying, if this was it. He had tried to hit his vital organs, but it happened so quickly there was no guarantee. As the earth began to rapidly approach, he had only wished for one thing.
To remember what his name had been.
Suddenly, the image of his family flashed before him, all smiling and happy, and he remembered.
My name was Clinton.