[OPEN] the labour and the wounds are vain

[theotherright]

Who: Arthur Lester and YOU
What: The walk of shame after rafting with two other idiots off the edge of the world
Where: Around the ship
When: The day after the beach party
Warnings: The normal Arthur stuff. Traumatised man hours. Death happened. Sad about blind. Also, the thread with Bash eventually contains a couple references to 1930s homophobia, plus displays of ignorance about queer people.


Mistakes were made. Big ones. For those sensitive to that kind of thing, an invisible death counter has ticked up in Arthur from zero to one.


i. scoops

It's a big ship, but unless you count Tommy Bahamas, it's not infinitely big. Why the hell can't he find Smith or Steve? Particularly Steve-- you know, the teenager he just helped kill?

In truth, Steve is hiding in his cabin and he happens to keep missing 6, but Arthur's brain is pleased to conjure some more unpleasant scenarios, and the effort of talking it down is exhausting. Looking for people while fucking blind only compounds his frustrations, and he's already feeling a few SAN points down after the whole 'fell into the fucking void' fiasco, and he's currently searching on the promenade which is already fucking overwhelming, and so his reaction when he collides with a fucking stool that's sitting outside of Scoops is, as soon as he's regained his balance, to pick it up and toss it as hard as he fucking can across the fucking ground.

"Fuck!"


ii. tauva

...not long after that, Arthur realises that he needs to calm the hell down.

He forces himself to stop pacing and pacing and pacing and pacing. And once he stops, it's like the energy leeches right out of him, both physically and mentally. Part of his mind is still just spiralling down that invisible void, screaming.

The whole raft thing is a part of it, but it's far from the whole. He's so far out of his depth and he doesn't even know which way up is, and he's been holding his breath for as long as he can, focused on the possibility of escape, but now escape has put him right back on the ship and it feels like he tried to take a breath and instead filled his lungs with salt water.

He ends up in Tauva. It's not consciously planned. But he has been thinking about someone else who frequents the place: someone to whom he once again owes an apology.

Arthur's slumped back in one of the leather armchairs, his useless eyes closed. Until now he's perched on the edges of chairs, sat with his feet beneath him, ready to move if he needed to. This time he's just... folded into it. Head tilted down. As still as if he was asleep, or even more so, because even sleeping people murmur or turn over once in a while. The only parts of him stirring are his lips, which move as if silently singing to himself, and his hands, whose long fingers bat restlessly against one another and against the soft arms of the chair.

He is not super okay.

Comments

[theotherright]

Arthur feels uncharacteristically willing to accept the change of topic. The last time he invited someone to give him ominous-sounding information, it was less than an hour ago, and he found out that he is a copy of a man who's now living his own life without him. He's sort of tapped out on getting information right now.

There's a return to the forehead-in-hand pose, and he doesn't ask April to elaborate.

Then, fuck it, he drops his hand, and raises his head a little, feeling like a bit of a miserable git. "Sure, I'd show up. You know how to hold a party." He says this perfectly normally, which is what happens when the cope is at maximum. "Any ideas?"

There's the vague sense that he should be asking if landfall tends to follow a pattern, and where it tends to happen: things that are actually useful. But there's a much greater sense of just being existentially fucking tired.

[tempingainteasy]

"It's tempting to do another round of 'Never Have I Ever', but it might be too soon for anything interesting," April says, like questions of murder and death and love were just fun little icebreakers, "So maybe I'll just dig deep into my repressed memories for team building exercises."

There's a moment for this to sit, and for April to genuinely think about it, and then they say with an audible smirk: "I'll track down some darts, and you're not staying out of it - there's some guys I'd like to see stuck with 'em and you have plausible deniability."

It's funny but also not a joke.

[theotherright]

Arthur hmms, pretending to think about it. "Depends: would there be a 'never have I ever taken someone's eye out with a dart' waiting for me in my future? Because that might be a dealbreaker."

This is also funny! Hahaha because he's trapped indefinitely in a pocket universe and he might be blind forever that wouldn't be the part you'd expect someone to worry about! Like the old saying goes: comedy is just tragedy plus a reckless use of darts.

[tempingainteasy]

"Only if I want to see how many people have claimed an eye or two in their life." April says with an implied grin.

But, alright, fine, they know when someone is on edge and they had sort of committed to Arthur not being a personal project, so fine. They ease back in their chair, give it a breath, and turn towards the elephant in the room.

"Do you want to talk about what happened?" they ask with a level, more serious tone.

[theotherright]

Arthur breathes out, and then begins a low, slow laugh, one discrete sound at a time, without opening his mouth. It's a laugh with the staccato beat of hiccups.

"We could be here all day," he warns them. But that isn't completely a no.

[tempingainteasy]

April simply says "We have nothing but time."

[theotherright]

That's exactly the wrong, or maybe exactly the right, thing for her to say.

"Well," he says hollowly, "where do I start? I bit my tongue, planned and stayed quiet for a week, hoping to remain unscrutinised and slip away when this ship finally made land. Myself and two others attempted to escape the island, and died as a result. And then I found myself back here. Seemingly alive, on the same ship, at the power of the same man, among the people I'd decided to abandon. Someone from a world with immeasurably superior medical technology to mine told me that my sight was most likely lost forever, and I learned... other uncomfortable things." Crichton's secret, though, is not his to share. "And only then was one of the men who died with me kind enough to share that the entire endeavour was in vain, that I am apparently a... a second printing of a man who is now moving without me through my life, that every choice I made at home was as pre-determined as it seemed, and that to return to my world would be to punch my own ticket. It is not the worst day I have ever had, but it has been fucking trying."

He doesn't really think, until it's already well out of his mouth, about whether the things Smith told him are news to April.

[tempingainteasy]

As it turns out, some of this is news to April. How interesting! It'll be fun to unpack that later, the strange negative feeling about the thought of themselves still back in the bunker (yet relief and also maybe something else? That they can still be around Flan, and the librarian and maybe even the pest problem, and other features that are clearly missed for being part of a routine and nothing more), but overall the information isn't too crushing for April. Identity is impermanent as it is, and existence is a matter of perspective.

Honestly, humans are so damn self-centered sometimes, and it causes nothing but problems for them.

April gives it a few beats out of a sense of tact, and then they say, "Whoof, that is a lot."

Their tone isn't as casual as the word choice implies; there's still a reasonable amount of gravitas there to validate Arthur's no good very bad day. They breathe in, like they're mulling this over.

"Do you want the good news, or do you have more volatility to get out?"

It's an offer that would sound passive-aggressive coming from most other voices with no visible source, but April's tone remains even enough to be a genuine offer.

[theotherright]

A sharp exhalation, and Arthur says darkly: "Let's not plumb that well. Yes, I think I would like some good news."

[tempingainteasy]

"Alright." April says. Leather creaks, like they're sitting upright and moving their arms, perhaps to begin counting off their points.

"One: Trying to get away at an island that, from what I've heard, is more real than where the ship usually stops was a good plan. It didn't work, but the reasoning was there, and now you know for certain that simply running away isn't an option. Maybe that can tell us how the Captain has a grip on us, where the root of that is if it's not based on our realities."

April shrugs, though, since that's not really the avenue they're pursuing for themselves.

"Two: If you had unfinished business wherever you were from, it's being seen to, so there's no urgency in that end to get back. Two-point-five, if you're in a terrible position wherever you're from, then you'll never have to go back to that again."

That one might be more personal, who's to say?

"Three: If you believe in the pre-determination part enough for it to bother you, then congratulations! You're free from that railroad now, because if you can't go back home then whatever the hell was 'writing your story' out there sure can't reach you here. You're a free man now, sort of."

It's the 'sort of' he's probably going to be mad about still, but whatever. They're down to their last point now, and they at least sound mildly apologetic.

"Fourth, and I know this is a hard sell, but you're not the first person who's had to make peace with losing one of their senses, so you'll manage eventually. I'm not going to tell you you're better off without sight, but in a world with weird magic bullshit surrounding us, there are some things a lack of sight can make you immune to."

April successfully delivers this with a straight voice.

[theotherright]

Point one gets a shrug of Arthur's hands, for the sake of at least acknowledging it, while he tries not to be completely like teflon to positive reviews. Point two and its sub-point get a movement of his head to the side in thought, and a slight grimace that isn't disagreeing, because, well, both of those are true, strictly speaking. The only person he has to go back to is John, and if Arthur is hot and cold on John, then just now he's an industrial freezer.

Point three... well. That gets a smirk. The notion of predestination is one he grew up with, and he's really not sure if it bothers him or not to think it might be true-- he's mostly mad that John was right, and wishes he could throw those 'puppet' comments right back in his face.

Point four is, indeed, a hard sell.

"I didn't just lose it," he snaps, "someone fucking blinded me."

Which isn't April's problem, and isn't what he meant to say. Though, christ, when has that ever stopped him--

"But- I know that-" He struggles with it, rubs a hand over his face, and gets his tone back to a point where it's... still frustrated, still unhappy, but not jumping down April's throat about it. He doesn't want to take this out on people who had nothing to do with it! He is trying not to! "I know that I'm not... unique... in that fact. Christ, there are... there are men who lost all their limbs in the War and still carry it with more good grace than I do my blindness. But it's... it's hard. To think I'll never..."

His voice gets lower, thick with emotion, coming out almost against his will. "I'll never see you, or Crichton. Or the turtles on the beach, or the sunrise on the water. I'll never read an ordinary book-- I, I took it for granted, you know? I used to play cards, I used to sight-read music. I'd-- I'd know when to stop when pouring a fucking glass of water. I--"

He has to stop, because there's a hot, sharp pressure behind his face and his useless eyes.

[tempingainteasy]

Ah, geez. April should have really seen this coming, but here they are, sitting there while Arthur tries not to cry.

Plus, he has excellent, excellent points. And, ugh, to give him more credit, he is (relatively) young and while humans have the incredible ability to change and adapt, they're more constrained physically than the crowd April is used to, and yadda yadda yadda.

Flan was better with this shit. What would Flan do?

"That does," fuck, when did 'suck' hit common use? ahhhh, "sound hard. Is hard, and then you have all the bullshit the ship brings with it on top of it."

There, agreement and validation, that's how Flan does it, right? April can't get the tone right, but their voice doesn't sound like it's dead inside and faking this so April will take that as a win anyway.

[theotherright]

Arthur takes in a long, shuddery breath, and lets it out. He's not keen to lose it again today, especially not when April already sounds uncomfortable. He shrugs with both hands and forces a smile.

"It is what it is."

He keeps his tone normal, though the tightness of his throat means he's not fooling anyone. Still, what exactly can he do about it? Fuck all is what.