If Arthur ever saw Dutch again, he was going to kill him.

Lucky for Dutch, then, it didn't look like Arthur would see another day.

He'd long stopped sweating, and he no longer felt even the slightest relief from the cooling of sweat on his skin. It had all evaporated a long time ago, stolen away by the sun that burned high overhead. his hair was a matted mess, and he wanted nothing more than to wipe it out of his eyes—the sweat had dried, and the salt burned, but his hands were bound behind him, needles keeping him from trying to get them free. He had tried, twice, and learned his lesson quickly.

He was going to die here, wasn't he?

Arthur heaved, his vision warping, the landscape of naught more than tans and browns dancing before him. Anything that had been in his stomach, though, was in the brambles, on his shirt, and so all he managed to bring up was a tiny drop of foamy bile. His stomach churned, cramping and screaming desperately for water. He licked his lips, cracked and split and bleeding from blows and dehydration both, tongue as dry as the sand he knelt on doing nothing to wet them.

He had thought they were being cruel to the O'Driscoll. Tying him up to the tree, not letting him off to piss or shit, making him wear clothes thick with his own excretions. Not giving him food, and only the smallest sips of water to keep him alive, for well over a week and a half.

Now though… the man grinned, bitterly, lip splitting and oozing blood down his face, dribbling to the ground and almost immediately vanishing, consumed entirely by the thirsty sands. Would have laughed, but the sound rasped painfully in his throat, set him to coughing and fighting for air, bending double as much as he was able. Agony tore through his back, through his arms and his hands, sharp, stabbing pains that writhed around with each jolt of his body, had him struggling, desperately, to still. Fighting the urge to cough in hopes of stemming the pain, the constant pain driving him to twist, to try and push away, only to make it worse.

A hiss sounded near his foot, and he froze.

It would be just his luck, wouldn't it? Being strung up and left to die, only to be bitten by a snake and die of its bite.

He stilled, as best he could, unable to control the convulsions of his cramping muscles, the bobbing of his lolling head. But it wasn't a snake that slithered from the dry brush, but one of those ugly, big lizards. A Gila Monster, Hosea had called them once, and told him to stay well away. Even in his dazed state, wherein the sky was brown and the sand was blue, it was impossible for Arthur to miss its strange tail, and its yellow scales.

Arthur's foot jerked, and the Gila Monster flicked its tongue out, standing still as it stared him down. 'Go away,' he thought, knowing better than to try and voice it,

The Gila Monster stepped towards him once, twice, and its nose bumped into his leg. His jeans crinkled, and its tongue darted out again, tasting the salt of past blood and sweat.

'Get gone,' he narrowed his eyes, stomach churning again, fighting down the urge to retch again.

It dug its claws into his jeans, beginning to clamber onto him, and perched there, staring at him. The reptile darted its tongue out again, hissing lowly at the taste of blood in the air, able to sense a heartbeat nearby, the blood flowing beneath its feet.

And Arthur continued to twitch, unable to control the movements of his muscles as he wilted beneath the sun.