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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"Yes, I've-- christ, I thought I'd gotten past everybody I spoke to wanting to call Watson."
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Cannot stress enough that she's describing Hastur like you'd describe your annoying uncle who won't shut the fuck up about Bitcoin.
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Her apology, still sounding so young, makes him almost sorry for snapping until she actually starts to describe the god in question. Then he
(hears the whispers, and the laughter of the dancers, and feels the world move around him like the dancers, and hears the whispers, and)
says nothing, but breathes out sharply, and in shallowly, and his face moves as if he doesn't have quite enough air. His feet are still a few inches above the deck, and he wishes suddenly they were back on solid ground, but he's forgotten, for a moment, how to get them there.
What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck does he say to that what the
"Of your village's lake," he says, and if his throat would work right he's sure he would sound quite normal. "Is that right."
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~A deep mountain lake, old and cold. The villagers would bring him the living - livestock, foreigners - in exchange for his granting their wishes, and in this way the vermin-god remained asleep, as was his wish. But...one year the lives stopped flowing, and a false god was raised unwillingly in his place. When the yellow god woke from his sleep his wrath was great. Later...I...I do not remember how much time later, but later he would find his own sacrifices, as a hunter of the living, though sleep was still denied him.~
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His fear is acute, but irrational: Grace seems to have no love for the King. She's not a dancer, or a cultist, or a creature enslaved by his voice in their ear. She's not - she's - he doesn't know what she is. Is she from the Dreamlands, or did this happen in an older time, in an even more distant place? Is this story one of the things John would later seek penance for in pain? Is-
"Is that what you called him? The Yellow King?"
No, that's not a name she's said so much as a paraphrase of her words, but it's what Arthur heard.
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The Feaster. That wasn't one of the titles Kayne gave the King, but Kayne also never implied that he was using an exhaustive list. Or...
Or maybe this was a part of the King, one that chose its name just as John chose his. One stuck, like they are, in a place with no permanent death and no escape. He wonders how long Grace has been here, if she knows yet that she's gone from one frying pan into another, equally frustrating frying pan. He wonders what are the fucking odds. He wonders what, excuse him, what the fuck he's supposed to do with the concept of the King as a sort of pushy live-in coworker...
...
Actually, he might have a conceptual starting-point for that one.
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~...I forget myself, gentleman skeleton. You may call me Grace.~
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What are the odds--, well, he's who knows how old, and spans worlds, so maybe not that low at all. He doesn't share a name--, well, nor does John, and yet.
Arthur closes his eyes for a moment, suppressing a shiver at the rush of water. He's out and about, but that doesn't mean he's forgotten the sinking ship. Tayrey was right. Volunteering to die was a stupid goddamn move. Everything he does, everything he tries to do, every way he attempted to fight the King, was a stupid goddamn move. He made them to get into the pit, he made them in the pit, and he's probably making another one right now that he'll only recognise later on. And it's -
It's freeing, in a strange and sour way, to realise just how little power you have, and just how wrong of a thing you can do.
Instead of returning the niceties, he presses harder. "Employed in what?"
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A.
Long.
Pause.
~The hunting of the living, gentleman skeleton. The Baron that was lord of that place orchestrated a game of terror and death. Four of the living, one hunter; two deaths is a tie, three is victory for the hunter, and one or less is victory for the living. But there was no escape, not even in death. One must face one's teammates and victims after. Again. And again. And again. And again.~
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Arthur -
Arthur thinks of the people who were possessed last Halloween, and Skulduggery still walking about after Christmas, and that woman who's supposed to be from a previous voyage, and waking up in a cabin with Crichton, and Crichton waking up in a cabin with him. He thinks of being placed in a ring and told, without words but with absolute clarity, that one of you will kill the other.
"Jesus," he says, in a voice that sounds strange to his ears. He doesn't think he feels sorry for her, and he isn't sure if he should. He's not... sure what he's feeling. What she's describing is objectively horrible, of course.
He's sort of forgotten to keep trying to get back to the ground.
"You didn't enjoy that part, I take it."
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A hook, quite small and blunt, gathers the back of Arthur's shirt and pulls him to the ground.
~Now...pardon me for my boldness, but your cane sir - you are blind?~
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"I would rather-- god"
It's a good thing that he held still despite the protest, because yep, there he is getting nabbed by something hard at his back, and there he is on the ground again a moment later. Not tied up this time, but still disoriented, lifting his hands in half balance and half defence.
"damn it," he continues, to what he's pretty sure is a big dangerous fish monster, "would you stop fucking dragging me around?"
This does not answer her question, though the direction he's snapping at (a hookwards direction!) might, depending on where Grace is relative to it.
Damn canon characters and their one liners
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From this side of the death game explanation, the fact that Grace sounds so much like a child is disturbing. That's fucked up. That's so fucked up. That's--
"Or a fucking skeleton. I'm Arthur Lester. And--"
And the entity which put that fact in doubt is, in some form, in some world and some time, being made to run something like his own maze. Arthur could never make it happen, but someone can, and you know what, Arthur likes that fact.
He grins, as his internal monologue experiences whiplash. "And it happens that we have, unfortunately, met the same god."
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A motion. Grace is closer now.
~I am holding out a plush frog. He is skilled in the relief of distress.~
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For a moment, Arthur's expression could kill. He doesn't want a plush fucking frog! He wants -- he wants Grace to say 'yes, the King or some limb of him is suffering just as you did'. He wants details. He wants to tear that cruel desire out of his own heart. He wants to never be followed by or reminded of the King again, however indirectly.
He doesn't want a plush fucking frog. But, with the feeling of a rope around his neck, he's reminded of Faroe, and of her... her sometimes sweet, sometimes annoying insistence that he should have one of her dolls to sit up with him when he was working on his own too long. He can't imagine, nowadays, how he ever found it even the least bit annoying. He doesn't want to remember her at the same time that he's wishing for revenge.
Grace said she had to do something close to what he did, only on a greater scale, and again, and again, and again. She implied that she never knew freedom. She... she doesn't seem all that old.
"I," Arthur says again, with less ire, more uncertainty, and just as little conclusion.
He reaches slowly forward for the plush fucking frog.
"How old are you?" His voice is quieter, and not wholly steady. "I mean, if you... I, I don't know how your, your species would measure relative age, but I..." Yeah, that sentence can't go anywhere but to trail off.
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...
....
~If I had been raised as a girl rather than a false god, I would be a woman by now. As it is...I don't know what I am. The god of the lake never understood this, vermin that he is.~
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She was a human. She was a living girl. No, no, no, no, no.
No-one should ever have to say that they died at nineteen.
Arthur catches himself before he starts swearing about it.
"You were the god they raised, whose raising provoked the wrath of the god of the lake," he says, pulling threads together, his tone quietly horrified. Then: "But I thought you said he made you... People did this to you?"
It's not that that surprises him. He's seen human sacrifice. He's been a human sacrifice. But there's always a part of him that wants to believe someone wouldn't be as cruel as they can possibly be, and it always takes that hit when he's wrong. It's been much quieter lately, for better and for worse.
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Light pressure on the frog; Grace has reached out to touch its head. ~When famine came again they cried, the false idol deceives us! To earn the love of the god of the lake again they made sacrifice of me; they broke me, and tied me to an anchor, and threw me into the Depths. My last wish was for vengeance, and the vermin god was stupid enough to grant it. Now I am this, and the village is gone, and done, and never more. No thing living remains.~
~...So you see. The god of the lake never should have granted wishes to begin with.~
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The idea of the King granting wishes jostles oddly against Arthur's idea of him, but that's really not the part he's focused on.
He remembers to draw a breath.
"I, I'm so sorry," he says. The words feel hollow and small next to what they did to her. "You deserved so much better from all of them. So much better than any of it."
Feeling the slight weight on the plush frog, he loosens his arms around it. Not pushing it back on her, but: "You're, um. Sure you don't need this more than me?"
It's an awkward attempt at comfort. The frog is better at it than he is.
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She hums, briefly. ~You seem less confident in your perception than radiant Helena. Is there anything I might do to help you be aware of where I am?~
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He lets out a long breath and hugs the frog closer again, feeling strangely okay with just cuddling a toy for the rest of the conversation. "Thank you," he says, the way he would've used to, and: "Well met, gentleman Jack," he tells it quietly.
"You know Helena." Not really a question, just noting it. "Well. I have gotten rather good at going by footsteps, since most people seem to think that's sufficient, but I..." He's realising something. "I don't think I've heard you walk. Have you been flying as well?"
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