come_sailaway | [OPEN and one CLOSED] I shall not forget how his laugh rang out.

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[OPEN and one CLOSED] I shall not forget how his laugh rang out.

Whomst: Arthur and you!
Whenst: September
Wherest: About
Whatst: Canon update, fraying at the edges, a rescue mission that's doomed before it begins, and also some flowers
Warningst'dve: Starvation/imprisonment, man going through it, more as they come up.
Visual Note: Arthur's come off a canon update where he sustained some injuries and was starved for a while, so he looks Bad. For the sake of brevity, I didn't describe him in full in every prompt, but there are details in the first one should you need them.

[CLOSED to Crichton] it was just as the light was beginning to fail

At 6am, in cabin 127, several things happen:

The record player, which hasn't been wound in some time, lets out the last of the tension in its spring with a noise that's more 'old music used in a horror movie' than 'cosy crackling gramophone'.

Arthur turns — or has turned, perhaps, sometime in the night — from a miserable but healthy man into a guy who looks like his last square meal happened before the first world war. He slept without a shirt, and so there's nothing to hide the prominence of his ribs — the livid blotches that might be bruising — the plethora of new scars. There's a nasty circle on his belly that must be what the bite Tendi healed would've eventually curdled into. There's a zigzag of electrical scars, scrapes as if he lost a fight with sandpaper, a pale and pitted chunk out of his throat, and one finger reduced to what looks like blackened bone. There's a good inch of dark, brittle beard flavour-saving dust and blood on the bottom half of his face.

Arthur wakes up, lets out a breath like he's suddenly in a lot less pain than he was a moment ago, lets out another breath like he's confused, and says aloud, accusing, afraid: "Wait— what did you do? Where the hell did you send me?"

And then, and only then, he realises that he knows the answer — that he knows, that he remembers, more, so very many more, people and places and events than he did when he was talking to Kayne just a moment ago.

[OPEN, deck zero] that I suddenly heard all I needed to hear

Ya boy has a mission. It's one he has no clear idea of how he's going to achieve, but what's new?

Arthur looks absolutely fucking godawful: see the prompt above, though he has, thank goodness, shaved since then. Nevertheless, he's energetic, borderline frantic, running both hands over the bulkhead door that seals the crew quarters, muttering to himself. They all came out this way once. There must be a way back in.

Anyone hovering nearby may catch key words such as 'drill', 'shapeshift', and 'explosives'.

[OPEN, around the ship] it has lasted me many and many a year.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane?

No, it's Arthur: floating unmoored across the deck a few feet in the air, clutching a half-blown dandelion like it's the only sane thing in an insane world.

He's located a wall with his cane and is trying to find some way of hooking himself closer, but tragically, all he manages is to push himself further in the other direction. "No, oh no nono come back-- ah, damn it."

If there's a very subtle note of hysteria behind his voice, it's because there's something weirdly funny about -- about going through everything he has, and then having to deal with floating. Not imprisonment, not almost dying every five minutes, but drifting on the breeze like a bubble. Not torturous, but ridiculous. He's almost tempted to remember how to have fun, just for the occasion.

[WILDCARD] wildcard

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Arthur pushes out a breath and then drags it back in. His hands move unconsciously, thumbs curling in, then fingers.

"For eighty-five days we were trapped in a pit by the King." His voice is slow, and ragged like a sawblade is ragged. "He had tried... ev- everything else, I suppose, and it was meant to... to soften me up. Dirt walls, dirt floor, dirt air, dirt water, dirt... Sixty paces around in a circle, nineteen across, not even twenty. Not even- even twenty." Not that a twentieth pace would have made any difference, but it's amazing what you start to fixate on when you're stuck in a hole for three months.

"And we got out." He stops meandering abruptly, and snarls that, his point. Focus. "This morning, the eighty-fifth morning, the eighty... fourth morning, the morning had already passed the first day we were thrown in ... we got out. Do you understand that? We got out. Without John I would still be down there rotting, convincing myself I was holding out, talking to bones. Without John I wouldn't have survived even half of the things that have been thrown at us."

And in return, Arthur failed him. He swore not to let the King win, and the King made him a liar: not only in their confrontation, but long before it, in the bottom of that awful hungry pit.

"And the King took him. To break him." Arthur's breathing is harsh. He has to struggle to pull in air. But he carries on aggressively.

"You constantly think of him as Harvey, and- and that's partly my fault. But he is so much more than he was when he began! He cares, and he cries for others' pain, and he- he loves, and he has struggled and sacrificed every single day for that progress. Yes, I fucking tried to get him back, because he is my friend, because-- because I love him, and if-- if making unforgivable mistakes means he deserves to be taken and tormented by the King, then for god's sake, Crichton, apply the same standard to both of us!"

Crichton sits there, silent and numb. It's the only way he can survive the verbal razor wire Arthur's laying out in front of him. It's so difficult to divorce his hatred for Harvey from this. He can't... he can't picture himself ever feeling for Harvey what Arthur has come to feel for John. Friendship? Love? He could never. But it's Arthur's truth, not his.

Harvey has saved his life plenty of times, but only because that's what Scorpius commands. But, if there's no one commanding John...?

...if making unforgivable mistakes means he deserves to be taken and tormented by the King, then for god's sake, Crichton, apply the same standard to both of us!

He huffs out a long breath, sagging in place with it. He had it all wrong from the start. John was never the equivalent of Harvey. John was... Aeryn--a being born to cruelty who, with the right mentor, is learning to be a person. He could put his face in his hands and weep. What comes out instead is a crackle of insane laughter.

"I'm sorry. You're right. He doesn't deserve that. Neither of you do. I'm sorry that you're here again now when you should be there to save him. I'm working on a way to get out of here. I have to get Harvey out of the picture, first. But after that... I'll try as hard as I can to get you home. So you can get him back and screw that King."

Arthur didn't give himself time to wonder how Crichton would take all of that, but he's ready for it to be bad. For a moment it sounds like that's exactly how it's going to be, and he shivers at that laugh, bracing himself to...

Fuck. He doesn't know. He doesn't know. Maybe nothing at all. Everything he had left, he just poured out of his mouth. John's not here. Maybe whatever happens, happens.

What Crichton actually goes on to say... christ, it breaks him down. He didn't expect to have Crichton on his side in this -- maybe not in anything ever again, and especially not in this. Perhaps getting home to help John is a futile promise. The fact that Crichton is even making it means more than Arthur is able to say with tears starting to waterfall down his face like this.

"I- th- Thank you."

That promise is pretty much the only thing keeping him from sinking to the floor. He wraps his skinny arms around himself, cold and overwhelmed and exhausted, part of his soul stretched to breaking across the universes between himself and John.

The breath catches in his windpipe, makes him cough.

Don't thank me, he thinks. Not for doing what anyone who isn't a selfish, subhuman piece of shit should do. This shouldn't be that high of a bar to clear...

"You're going to make it through this," he tells Arthur. "I'm going to help you." Because that's the right thing to do and, God help him, he can't let himself slip any further into the mud. He loves Arthur, he's not going to let his friend suffer alone.

Crichton turns in sudden alarm at that coughing. "Hey, hey are you choking on something?"

Arthur wants to ask how, how he's supposed to get through this, how he's supposed to keep walking when every time something rips away someone he loves, it seems to take his heart and a couple of limbs with it.

He can't say it. Not for emotional reasons, but because something really is catching in his windpipe, like the grit that would collect whenever the bucket remained unfilled for several days.

"I just need," he begins, and then coughs about fifteen times more, and then wheezes "drink," starting to move a little frantically in what he thinks might be the direction of the bathroom. (It's not.)

"Sit back down. I'll get it," Crichton commands, with the same tone of a voice a nurse might use on an overly excitable patient.

He doesn't give Arthur any time to argue (as if he could right now) he just hops up and charges into the bathroom to fill a glass from the sink.

"Right here," he says, moving the glass into the path of Arthur's hand seconds later."

He doesn't sit, and has actually lost track of the direction of the bed, but he also doesn't have time to wander too much before Crichton is back. (If he hadn't already been crying then the sound of the tap might do it, along with the cool glass in his hand that he got just by asking.)

He holds the glass like a precious treasure, and drinks the water like it's the bar of chocolate Crichton gave him back on the day when they first met. And then...

And then it comes right up again in a racking cough, accompanied by some very wet purple-black petals.

Arthur says "shit!" in a panic, and drops into a prostrate position as if about to lower his mouth to the wet ground -- and then he makes himself freeze, trembling, not coughing but quietly muttering: "no, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay." There's more, it's okay.

Crichton's glad right about now that Arthur can't see the string of horrified expressions that cross his face, first at how precious that glass is held in Arthur's hand, then the coughing, the panic at spilling, and then... the flowers. His heart is beating so manically it feels like it wants to gallop off in two different directions at once.

Okay. Okay. Calm down. One problem at a time.

"Arthur! Frell!" He drops down on his knees beside Arthur, one hand laid protectively against his back. "Shit. You're... coughing up flower petals."

The sudden touch to his back makes him start, but then he holds himself still again, trying, like Crichton, to take the world one thing at a time.

It's been a long few months, and Arthur has completely forgotten about the flower stuff that was happening last time he set foot in this world. So it's with absolute confusion that he says: "I'm... what?"

His voice rasps, but doesn't catch, so getting those petals out does seem at least to have helped. For now.

Edited 2023-09-20 10:29 (UTC)

Crichton starts too, nearly pulls his hand away, but thinks better of that and leaves it gently laid against Arthur's back. Touch is important. Well... to Crichton, it is.

"You're coughing up flower petals..." Oh boy. Arthur said he experienced months back in his home world, the flowers are probably long forgotten by now, huh.

"We're having a plague of flowers and plants on the ship right now. Try to think back. Touching them does all kinds of bad things to people. And if you start coughing up petals, it means you're... headed for a bad end if you don't figure out what to do about it. I'm not a botanist. I can't tell you what these are. Best I can do is describe them."

Even though he jumped, he's glad that Crichton's hand stays where it is. It feels shockingly warm against his bloodless skin, and softer than anything he's felt in months. The desert was never really soft. The pit wasn't soft. The city where they met Kayne certainly wasn't. Gritty, grimy, hard, harsh, sharp, dull, but never soft.

He--

Was distracted. He touches his throat, dredging up a vague memory and not particularly pleased about it.

"Go ahead, though I don't... unless it's some- something very specific from the midlands of England, I probably won't..."

He walks his knees up as he mutters, going from prostrate to hunched, and finally to sitting cross-legged, back bent and arms hugged loosely together for warmth. Of course there are killer flowers growing inside him. Why not. Welcome fucking back.

"I'll tell you anyway. Maybe you'll run into someone else who knows better." Someone else who might be more help, someone else to rely on instead.

"Not that there's much to tell. They're a really dark purple, almost black. Petals are smooth and broad, like the Spade symbol on a deck of cards. I've never seen anything like it."

He watches Arthur fold his knees up and doesn't know what to do. He wants to pull the man closer, try to warm up his cold, cold skin. But he doesn't. He stays on his knees, but he doesn't move.

"Can I get you anything else? Something to eat? A blanket?"

Arthur is shocked, shocked, to find that in the face of all this Everything it's really hard to concentrate on identifying flowers.

"A spade? I don't... I don't know."

Food, though, that's something he can concentrate on. Fuck, he spent so much time and effort trying to concentrate on anything else that now, now that he's a couple of floors away from endless food, he's - he - jesus, he -

"Jesus, something to eat." He practically groans it, and unfolds his arms to press both hands to the wet carpet, bracing to lift himself. "Yes. Show me to the buffet. And... and find me a jumper." He remembers himself a moment later: "Please. I, jesus, I..."

There probably are words, but he doesn't find them right now. Instead his sentence scatters into a reedy, desperate laugh. "The buffet!" Really, a buffet: they're -- he's a short walk away from all the food he could want! That's insane.

Edited 2023-09-21 22:16 (UTC)

Oh boy. He realizes his mistake when Arthur perks up at the mention of food. He cannot let Arthur go to that buffet unsupervised. He's going to hurt himself and he doesn't even realize it.

"I'll get a sweater out for you, but... Arthur, I know you aren't going to like hearing this, but you can't eat too much right away. You can't eat much at all. It might literally kill you. You're so malnourished I don't even know where to begin... I think I should be taking you to a doctor instead."

"What? How- how does that work out?"

Tell us you predate the recognition of refeeding syndrome without telling us you predate the recognition of refeeding syndrome.

"All right, so I'll pace myself. I- believe me, I can pace myself." Mr Faust shared his prison for quite a while, after all, even after... after. Arthur didn't know when they'd send food down again. Or what that food would be. He doesn't intend his rather nasty grin, but he grins it anyway. At least the blood at the corners of his gums is his own.

"I don't actually feel hungry." Which is true, but doesn't seem to mean much when he straight away starts chattering to himself: "A real steak, something I can say for sure was once part of a cow, served with... eggs, over easy, shit, I could..." He lifts his hands and cups them, as if actually holding an egg, brown and warm, a little feather still gummed to the side. "Make a hole, suck it out through the shell... christ."

That grin changes Arthur's face in a way that sends a chill rolling down his spine. His breath catches in his throat, and for a very long stretch of seconds, all he can do is stare in horror. The horror only deepens as Arthur begins to chatter about food. What the hell did they do to you, Arthur?

"It's not about pacing yourself. It's about the fact that you... you'll essentially overdose on the level of nutrition in that food. Your body isn't used to it anymore. A steak or egg might as well be poison to you."

It takes a second for Arthur to process that, and then he lowers his hands and says "What?" again, with an expression of horror and betrayal that would make you think Crichton just slapped him. He's finally within walking distance of a solid meal and he can't actually eat it? Are we absolutely sure this isn't the King doing psychological torture again?

God, he really hates being the messenger. Arthur looks heartbroken. "I'm sorry. I wouldn't bullshit you about something like this. I hope you know that. If you go in there and eat all that rich food without working up to it, you're going to earn yourself another three-day nap."

"Listen, I don't - I don't think you're bullshitting me." Arthur wants that known. "But I can eat -- listen, they threw food down, sometimes. Meat. It didn't kill me." Sometimes it made him feel sick. Sometimes his chest hurt. He didn't have much weight to lose in the first place... But, thinking about it, shouldn't he have come from the ship well-fed and healthy, instead of gaunt and injured? In the desert he still felt the weight of his coma, and of the month of liquids finally broken by... jesus, was it really only one good hot square meal? In his mind's eye he can still smell the friers. He...

"Christ," he snaps at himself, and starts to get up to snap himself out of it. Talking about food is a mistake he hasn't made in a while, for good reason. "There has to be something I'm missing. If I could focus for a moment."

To go to a cultural touchstone that they now share, there's something Gollumlike about the way Arthur rearranges himself to his feet. Bending his back, distributing his weight. Both hands remain flat on the floor until his feet are under him, wasted flesh making his long fingers seem longer, body all limbs and bones and knobbly joints.

He adjusted the way he lifts himself unconsciously, over time, while his strength leaked away and he couldn't spring up quite as readily as before. When, eventually, if he did spring up, dizziness tried to pull him right back down again. He's been far weaker, at times, than he is right now, but the strength-preserving movement of his limbs has stayed the same.

The more he sees and hears, the more he wants to vomit. The image of Gollum really is fresh in his mind, after watching those movies again recently with Erin. He's so scared to ask, but he has to. He has to know.

"Arthur... why were you in a pit? What happened to you?"

"The King in Yellow," Arthur mutters. "I know you know that name."

Now that he's standing, he rubs his hands together, hooking his wooden fingertip distractedly and pulling at it, realising that John never mentioned the pain after that first moment. Penance, he said. Leave it to a fragment of a god to re-invent religion from first principles.

He knows he hasn't really answered Crichton's question. "He wants... he wanted John," he says heavily. "The why... doesn't matter here and now."

Crichton has only just accepted that John isn't Harvey; telling him that John is a piece shaved from a deity of madness seems counterproductive. That's John's secret to tell, if - when - if he gets the chance to choose to.

"What's relevant is that I was supposed to be his host. John's host. All of me. And neither of us liked that idea particularly much, so the King tried to force the issue. He tried to... hollow me out, to, to weaken my grasp on myself, to prise my fingers one by one off of who I was." He makes fists of his hands as he says it, as if still holding on. "He used whispers at first, posing as a, a, a friend, but when it came to it, I..."

He lets out his air in a breathy laugh, and releases his hands. "I didn't take the carrot. So I got the stick."

Edited 2023-10-03 18:17 (UTC)

Crichton is silent for a long stretch of time, the only sound coming from him is the hard swallow sticking in his throat.

Finally, "Jesus... So... the reason John was in your mind was because he was supposed to take it all the way. But he didn't. He helped you instead. The King didn't like that so he...oh, Arthur..." Wait, but that doesn't quite add up with... "But how did John end up getting taken out of your mind then? Why would the King do that if he was supposed to steal your body?"

"His plan changed."

It's a vague answer, but Arthur is tired of explaining. He's exhausted, body and soul, still half-wondering if any moment he'll snap out of it and be back in that snow-beaten cabin. There's no voice in his head that remembers him when he was human.

"God. God damn it, I. I..."

He failed John. He wasn't strong enough, fast enough, decisive enough. He left too much of himself behind in the pit.

He can't tell Crichton about that. Not how they stayed alive, not who John is. There's the fear that if he does, it'll be all over the ship in a few months' time. Unfair, perhaps, but no. Arthur has already said plenty.

"God damn it," he says again, unhappily, and then, pivoting: "Is there really nothing I can eat? Christ, I'll eat what I had down there if I have to. I'm going to the buffet; come with me, or don't."

Crichton decides not to push it for now. Does it really matter? No, not when there are more immediate concerns.

"Maybe start with some broth, something neutral. I... okay, okay, I'll go with you. Hold on. Let me at least put some pants on." He's not going down there in just his tighty whities!

"Do you want to shave first or... never mind."

Arthur holds on, if only because he, too, wants to put on some clothes. He's cold. Also modest, we assume, but mostly cold.

(There's a moment when Arthur tries briefly to search his pockets for a tie, only to remember that he has neither tie nor pockets. He takes it, as far as he lets on, in stride. "Ridiculous thought," is his muted comment. "Never mind. It wasn't really mine anyway.")

He even takes the time to splash his face, and drink, and hork up water and petals again. That's, uh, not promising. It's deeply worrying, even. But it's a bridge he'll cross more intelligently on a full stomach.

Their walk to deck six is too long, with too much silence, and too many thoughts. "You said Valdis tried to- to suck Harvey out," he says, with exactly zero warning. "What went wrong?"

[OPEN and one CLOSED] I shall not forget how his laugh rang out.

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cw: cannibalism mention

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