Arthur Lester (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
theotherright) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
come_sailaway2023-09-07 02:13 pm
theotherright) wrote in come_sailaway2023-09-07 02:13 pm
[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
Wildcard!
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
Wildcard!
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"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.
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"Arthur... why were you in a pit? What happened to you?"
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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."
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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?"
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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."
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"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."
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(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?"
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His own thoughts are racing madly on the walk down, so Arthur's question hits him broadside. "W-we... I mean. During that time when a lot of people were over on the other ship going down, Valdis, Wayne and Cass sort of... ambushed me for an intervention. They held me in place while Valdis tried to separate my soul from Harvey's. But, he fought back too hard. She couldn't do it without killing me."
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This is probably a conversation that requires tact, but he feels detached and not particularly soft at the edges, and he just asks:
"Permanently?"
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"I don't know. Maybe. Or, maybe he'd come back in control instead of me. Is that a chance you'd want to take?"
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"No. No."
It isn't. Of course it isn't. He pulls at his face, unhappy with himself for not knowing the answer more quickly.