I know the general fanon/canon consensus is that charles found arthur where he took his last breath and gets to him before the pinkertons do, but I do find it deliciously painful to consider a scenario where he just…. Doesn’t get there first and has to make the decision to go in alone and recover his body from custody.

Maybe he has to sneak his way in and out of Annesburg in the dead of night, knowing that his only option if he’s caught is to join his Best Friend (and honestly, maybe that doesn’t even seem so bad anymore…) and against all odds he finds him, broken and battered and slowly returning to nature, but still in one piece and for now that’s something to find solace in except. Oh god… Arthur’s not alone. And despite his mission only being to retrieve one man, he can’t bear to leave ms grimshaw to contend with this absolute hell alone and now he has the impossible task of sneaking TWO bodies out of town but for the first time in a long time, somehow he manages it without a problem. Somehow he gets the three of them out of town.

He can’t make it far with two bodies, so he stops at the first sheltered hilltop to do the best he can for her. It doesn’t seem like much and he doesn’t even have time to make a proper marker for her but he leaves her cameo necklace on the cross just to prove to the world who rests there, and he hopes it’s enough to bring her peace. (In that moment he makes a vow to return and do better someday, but in the end he never returns to roanoke ridge - there are simply too many ghosts).

Once it’s just him and arthur, together again at long last, Charles finds himself never wanting to stop, despite how arduous the journey has been. As long as he doesn’t stop he can pretend it’s just like any of their other trips away from camp, that the silence is a companionable one and not the forced conclusion of life’s finality. Wrapped in the shroud of a pup tent barely concealing his form, Arthur amiably follows charles’ every step, and it’s almost as if he isn’t dead as long as charles never looks back. No burial ground is good enough, but as they near the peak on the well-worn mountain path they had crossed time and time again he knew no earthly place would be better suited for his companion.

The rocky soil is by far the most punishing grave charles ever had to dig, and he accepts it as his punishment for not being there sooner. For choosing to leave arthur when he knew this was the inevitable outcome. For choosing to live, when he knew arthur could no longer make that choice. He would have dug to the core of the earth as penance if he could, but six feet down would have to do.