Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Finally, the interview door clicked open behind him. Will sure took his damn time, didn’t he? Sawyer shifted in his chair to meet his eyes. Isn’t this the meanest looking fuck you’ve ever seen?

Usually, Sawyer would’ve just taken the interview on his own. He didn’t need some former schoolteacher holding his hand for this. Not to mention, it was near on middle of the night, and Will had a family to get home to. Sawyer did too, but he wasn’t exactly eager to get back home to them.

This guy had shown up at the office just as Sawyer was barricading the door for the night. Scared the hell out of him, frankly, and Sawyer still wasn’t sure how a guy with a cane the width of a police baton had managed to sneak up on him. He was lucky he hadn’t been shot right-off.

Not only did the guy loom everywhere, not only did he have eerily white eyes, not only could Sawyer see nearly every damn vein in the guy’s body … he was pretty sure that was what he pictured the Devil’s voice to be like. Not that he’d ever met him, of course, not even at the bottom of a bottle of whiskey.

Whatever his religious affiliation, this guy had offered ten goddamn dollars for Sawyer and Will to hear his case right then. Sawyer had asked if he could take the case alone, but the guy hadn’t answered his question, and Sawyer wasn’t about to turn down their monthly rent.

Thank god Will had hurried along.

Sawyer hadn’t heard the front door to the office open and shut, but it wasn’t locked anyway. They hadn’t gotten a locksmith out to fix it yet. He wasn’t in all that much of a hurry. The rates were criminal, and the confidential records were kept in the basement anyhow. What else was there to take? Will’s fern? Whoever had broken first hadn’t even taken anything, not as far as Sawyer could see. Just busted the lock good.

“Thanks for coming around, Will.” He jerked with his chin towards their new client.

“Not a problem. Sorry for the delay, Mr … uh.”

“Doe.” The tall man shifted in his chair. He had his hands clasped in front of him; Sawyer caught sight of an odd mark on his hands amidst some bandages. “John Doe.”

Ugh. A fake name. If he hadn’t seen the money himself, he’d have turned the guy away. Well, Sawyer guessed they wouldn’t be looking for any IDs. Cash was cash, even the APD could understand that.

Will took the other seat in their – er, interview room. Will had said that sounded kinder. Sawyer privately thought interrogation room sounded more official, because that was what they’d been called in the precinct, but Will had been a schoolteacher, so he knew all about what words sounded kinder. Whatever. Fine. If someone declined to hand over their case because they’d had to sit in an interrogation room, then Sawyer thought they’d be a difficult client anyway.

They had two chairs on their side of the desk: an old wooden thing that looked more at home in a schoolhouse than a detective agency. He’d helped Will carry that thing piece-by-piece and rebuild it here.

Their most comfortable chair was given to their Mr. John Doe. He’d had to duck as he came in. Even now, he sat a full head taller than either of them, and Sawyer still wasn’t the biggest fan of his eyes. He didn’t know eyes could come in that color – that was to say, no color at all. Small black pupils stared back at them. His long black hair looked like it were tied back with a piece of twine.

Who made this guy?

Sawyer was used to rumpled suits walking in here; people tended not to come in looking like they had a good day. He had to wonder where you got suspenders for people who were seven feet tall. Will had a tall brother. Maybe he’d know.

“Alright, Mr. Doe,” Sawyer started brusquely, leaning his elbows on the table. John turned his head to face him, expression unmoving. He hadn’t unclenched his jaw since he’d come in. “Why don’t you tell me what your case is?”

“My friend is missing.”

Yeah, okay, this wasn’t a friend. He’d forced it out like he were backed up. Sawyer’s bet was that it was a guy who owed him money, or maybe a guy who screwed his wife. No love lost between them; Sawyer could tell that much.

Will opened up his notepad. “This friend got a name?”

“Arthur Lester.”

Uh.

Sawyer shared a look with Will. Will was already meeting his eyes, eyebrows raised.

This was starting to give him a bad feeling.

“Uh. This Arthur Lester a former PI, by any chance?”

No answer.

“Because an Arthur Lester used to work in this office. He was the tenant before us. Before, you know …” Sawyer started to count on his fingers. “He killed his partner, the maintenance guy, and went tearing off into the night. The police are still looking for tips.”

That was when Sawyer had been on the force, actually, though he’d never had the mispleasure of working with Arthur Lester or Peter Yang in person. It’d been a weird goddamn case, especially given their prior cooperation with the department. As far as he could remember, they’d tracked Arthur Lester to a car crash just outside of Arkham.

Official story was that he’d wandered into the woods. Gotten lost. Most likely died from the elements.

But it was occult shit. Everyone in the department knew that.

You just couldn’t say that sort of thing too loud. Sawyer never knew why. Maybe it’d harm Arkham’s non-existent tourist industry, or it was some sort of trigger for the cultists to start eating each other in the streets, but the APD put a good chunk of their budget towards keeping that sort of thing quiet.

No answer. Jesus, the guy was paying them to be here.

Will’s turn. Good cop. “Mr. Doe, we’re not going to turn your friend into the police,” he said gently. For one thing, he’s been missing for months. We find him, though? Slap some cuffs on him. No deposit back. The APD will wanna talk with him. “But answering our questions will help us find Mr. Les --”

“I don’t know anything about that.” Liar. “We’ve only known each other for a short while. He didn’t talk about … before.”

Didn’t. Interesting. Next to him, he heard Will scribble down John’s words verbatim. Most annoying habit the guy had.

Fine. It seemed like they wouldn’t pry any information out of Mr. Doe, and Sawyer wasn’t convinced that he had anything to do with it. None of the investigation had turned up a seven foot tall gaunt-looking motherfucker. Maybe he really met up with Arthur Lester after. In Sawyer’s experience, people who murdered tended to know lots of people, on account of having to replenish their supply of acquaintances.

“How long’s your friend been missing, Mr. Doe?”

“Forty hours.”

Forty. Not long. As a rule of them, men usually didn’t report their pals missing. Not until a few weeks had gone by, anyway. Sawyer figured that a man had a right to up and go if he wanted to. Ladies, though, came in the morning after, practically hysterical that Susie hadn’t returned home from a nightly outing. That made less sense to Sawyer.

“Forty? And, uh, how do you know that your pal’s not sleeping off a bender somewhere? Maybe went off to meet with a lady friend?”

How did a man this tall ‘meet’ with a lady friend, anyhow? Sawyer’s lips pursed in thought. You had to wonder …

John reached into the inside of his jacket and procured a letter, well-worn and limp. “This was left on our counter, the morning after he disappeared.”

Our. They lived together, then. Not entirely uncommon, Sawyer had lived with some coworkers while he was still in APD. The Great Depression hit everyone hard these days. This office was part of an apartment; Arthur Lester and Peter Yang had lived in it. Sawyer figured that if he had to sleep next to Will every night, he’d murder him too.

Huh.

The guy’s hands were shaking when he brought the letter over. For a second, he seemed unwilling to part with it, before smoothing it out on the table.

Sawyer looked down at his hands, first.

His attention was immediately brought to the black mark between his thumb and his index finger. A tattoo, maybe – though what of, he couldn’t tell. It looked like a little black crescent moon. Might’ve been an occult symbol. Not uncommon for Arkham.

A few adhesive bandages were fixed to him; a larger cotton one surrounded his palm. Mr. Doe had gotten himself hurt lately. He flicked his eyes to Will’s notebook and saw that the asshole was drawing a picture.

Eventually, John leaned back in the chair and let his hands fall to his lap.

“Uh. Will, maybe you could …?” What was on the page was beautifully flowing cursive, which Sawyer didn’t have a hell’s chance of figuring out. There were a few black marks on the edge of the paper, like the author had unintentionally written off the sheet and had to start again on a new line. “He was a schoolteacher. Got a good speaking voice, they say.”

No answer.

Will nodded in agreement and slid the letter over to him. After a moment’s pause, Will he started to read aloud.

“To my heart and what remains of my soul,

Don’t think I am writing this lightly. Penning this letter might be the most difficult thing I’ve ever done, and I’m about to embark on something a hundred times as difficult. I have been shattered, and only a shell of me is left.

You’re right, John. Something has to be done, and I must be the one to do it. I plan on going to the Dark World. I don’t have a plan. Certainly that shouldn’t surprise you. I have no expectation that I will return. Given your experience, that shouldn’t surprise you, either.

I cannot ask you to go with me. Before, in Innsmouth, you said we were no longer prisoners to each other. Angry as you might have been, that is the truth, b ut I think devotion might be far stronger a shackle for you. You would agree to go with me to the place you fear most, this I know.

Perhaps I’ll try to convince myself that I’m making this decision out of love, too. I think the better answer may be cowardice. Self-obsession. I am taking this decision away from you, John, because I can’t bear to kill the last person in the world that I love. Hate me if you must. Burn the entire fucking flat down. Curse my memory and never think of me fondly again. I only ask that you live to hate me, rather than die loving me.

I love you. Whether I’m worthy of saying that to you anymore, I don’t know, but know that I do.

My true love hath my heart, and I have his,

By just exchange one for the other given:

I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss;

There never was a bargain better driven.

Keep my heart and drain it dry. Know that you are human, John, and you are loved until the end.

I am so sorry, my darling. Sleep well.

Eternally yours,

Arthur Lester"

Well.

That was, uh. Huh.

Sawyer was getting a decently good idea of why Arthur had killed his partner. The general gist, anyway.

That happened from time to time, you read about it in the papers. Keen not to let news of his activities become public knowledge, some men killed to keep their personal habits a secret. And how private could you be when you shared a bed with your partner?

He raised his eyes to look at John.

His face had gone even slacker, dead eyes staring listlessly at the opposite wall. Looked like it was more personal than that, for this guy. A lover’s tryst. Hm. What do you know.

Of course, he wasn’t going to say anything about it, not until John handed over the deposit. Then the first thing he was going to do was waltz on over to the APD and tell them to investigate any nearby homosexual clubs for news of Arthur Lester. Perhaps he’d met someone else and it’d pissed this guy off. Perhaps Arthur Lester had a taste for someone a little less angry-looking.

Hell, it was hard to deduce from this, though. This was a literal Dear John letter – you couldn’t trust what was written in those. All sweet words, no substance. Lester could’ve written with his tongue between his teeth.

“What’s this Dark World?” Sawyer asked, curious. “Name of a club?”

John didn’t answer. His gaze only drifted down to the table. Hearing it aloud, he looked like he was a dozen leagues of shell-shocked. Sawyer guessed when you looked like John did, you scared off all the women – and probably most of the men, too.

“You two used to be in Innsmouth? Sawyer, that was the town that burned down, a week ago.”

Oh, yeah. Will liked to read the papers. Old abandoned shipyard town, up in flames. Funny that it happened so close to the water, but there were plenty of salt marshes nearby. Sawyer preferred taking the wife and kids up north a little, where it didn’t smell so much like rotting fish and mold.

Had Arthur Lester really burned down a town? Maybe to escape his lover? Maybe it’d failed.

Or had this guy burned the town down, and that made Arthur Lester – partner murderer – flee for his life?

They’d have to get together a plan. Arthur Lester was going to be tracked down, either way, because they needed to hand that maniac over to the APD. If they managed to get paid for it, well, nobody could fault a guy for trying to make a living.

Just had to crack a lead out of this guy.

Sawyer fished out a pack of cigarettes and the lighter from his pocket. He passed both over to the man in front of him. With this promised advance, Sawyer could forfeit a cigarette or two. “Look, why don’t you go have a smoke, clear your head. Me and my pal here will talk things over, see where we’ll start. Yeah?”

Maybe he could pour a drink for this guy, too. Get him all nice and relaxed. Hell, maybe he’d step out so it could be him and Will, one-on-one. Will had a sweet face like that, put people at ease. Maybe then he’d actually start fucking talking.

John’s hand was shaking as he reached out to take the lighter and a cigarette. Sawyer’s eyes were drawn to the marks on his hand again. Had he and Arthur Lester gotten into a fight, before? Hell, maybe this guy was unhinged. Maybe Arthur was rotting in a chest somewhere.

The chair squeaked. John walked slowly, leaning heavily on his cane for support. Out of the corner of his eye, Sawyer saw his pockets bulging. That was weird.

He left, the door to the interrogation room squeaking shut behind him.

Will whistled.

“We gotta start taking bets on this,” Sawyer remarked, reaching for the letter again. He could make out a few words, now that he knew he was looking for. They teach writing like this in England? “I wouldn’t have ever guessed queers. Not in a thousand years.”

“Are we still going to take the case?”

“Of fucking course we’re going to take the case, Will. I don’t know where he got money, but he has money. If he wants to know where his special friend ran off to, we’ll find him and pocket what we can.” He paused, finger drifting on the letter. “Lester called him human? What’s that all about?”

“I got no idea. Entire letter feels weird. Maybe it’s slang, you know.”

“For –”

“You think I’d know?”

Sawyer pursed his lips. From what he knew, Yang & Lester had dealt with occult work more than other agencies did. Perhaps Lester had gotten a little more involved than anyone had thought. That sounded vaguely occult-y. “Well,” he said with a grunt, “Let me see if we’ve got any mentions of a Dark World in our files. Doesn’t ring any bells.”

He went to the door, and –

Huh. “Door’s stuck.” Sawyer shoved his shoulder against it, hard. It budged, but not anywhere near enough to open. Something was wedged behind it. Their furniture from the front room?

Had that goddamn madman …?

“Uh, Sawyer?” Will asked, standing up from his desk. “You smell smoke?’

***

The evening before Arthur Lester disappeared, they’d fought.

It wasn’t the first time. On this one, John had stormed out. On the previous, it had been Arthur. Arthur had been released from the hospital for five days and they’d already shouted at each other twice, a statistic that exhausted him.

Still. Wasn’t exactly unsurprising. That air had been filled with tension ever since Arthur had returned home. They would’ve had more, John was sure, if Arthur hadn’t spent entire days in their bedroom, curled up and staring at the wall. John had tried to cajole him to eat, to even stand, but it was as if Arthur couldn't even hear him.

John had the distinct impression that Arthur thought he was lying, when John said he didn’t know how to go to the Dark World.

(Beyond the obvious, which he didn’t bring up. He couldn’t. Not with the memory that still lingered over his head, of hearing Arthur choke on his own blood, of feeling the King’s giddy joy at Arthur’s failure.)

In that, Arthur was correct.

John did know.

A ritual could be done. It had been listed within the pages of the book he’d been bound in, the one of Shub-Niggurath’s. He had been stuck in that book for ten years (or an eternity, given the Dark World’s opinions on time); though most had faded, it had been a cruel irony. John could not forget how to return to a place that he wanted so badly to escape from.

John wished he didn’t know.

In Innsmouth, he had been ready to kill Parker when they first met. He would have willingly killed Kayne. All in the name of protecting Arthur Lester.

But to kill an innocent person? To strategize, to make a plan? To watch them fade away?

Mr. Faust had changed him. Being forced to witness his murder again and again and again had changed something in him. Though John had left the prison pit with self-preservation in mind, he was nauseated at the idea of seeing death any more than he already had.

Then he’d had to watch Lilly die.

Then he’d had to watch …

When he first forced Arthur into the back of Parker’s car, he’d only had one goal in mind. His stomach had turned, yes, but that was from the fear that Arthur would simply die.

He still had nightmares of Arthur covered in blood, screaming. He would shut his eyelids and see it there, see the gore and blood of Arthur’s destroyed body, and – and …

And he didn’t want to kill anyone. He didn’t want to see anyone else die, and certainly not to return to the cursed hellhole of the Dark World.

Nobody could return from the Dark World. His own existence was an exception that proved the rule. They would be killing someone and damning themselves to an eternity of … that place. That miserable, terrifying existence of a place for eternity.

That he felt this way shamed him.

Perhaps it was a sign that he didn’t really care about Arthur’s loved ones, that they were not worth the cost associated. Arthur clearly felt they were. If John told Arthur his plan, he would be implementing it within the hour.

But John was too cowardly to tell him. He did not want to do it, and Arthur knew John knew more than he was letting on, and the resulting friction scarcely helped.

Sometimes, everything snapped.

Months you’ve been on this plane, Arthur had snapped at him, and the closest emotional connection you ever formed was to a nurse that didn’t know you existed. Don’t tell me you know how it fucking feels, John.

Better to have no connections, John had shot back, than to damn all of them to a dimension of fear and shadow. Are you proud?

That wasn’t all he wanted to say. Another question had hovered behind his teeth.

Was Faroe scared of the dark, Arthur?

Perhaps he wasn’t so human after all.

He hadn’t said it. As angry as he was, as little as he meant anything he said, as exhausted, stressed, frightened as he was … John knew that the second he asked that question, he would never see Arthur again.

John left, frightened at himself, and more than a little guilty.

Arthur was a haunted man, unable to escape even a second of torment. His worst fears had already come true, but this was a close second: that those he loved could be doomed, even beyond death.

What he’d said had sickened him, and John wandered the streets of Newburyport for hours before thinking to return home. He didn’t have any idea what to say, but he didn’t want Arthur to be alone.

Arthur, perhaps, had good reason to suspect that John was lying. Their first argument had been due to John’s lying, because when they returned from hospital, Arthur realized that it had been slightly longer than a few weeks.

Fifty-eight days.

John had obtained their flat during Arthur’s time in hospital. He preferred not to dwell on those few months. Though he’d been physically safe, they’d been some of the most terrifying he’d ever experienced. He had never really been unable to shake the feeling that Arthur might just die without John’s knowledge, without John’s presence. That he would suddenly, and cruelly, be ripped from his one emotional connection in the entire world while John was making coffee, while John was reading, while John was sleeping. Arthur had looked so small.

Then there had been figuring out the world without Arthur’s assistance or guidance. John still wasn’t sure whether he’d been successful on that front. Stealing was much easier than expected if he needed cash, and John had come to appreciate libraries. Most of his time had been spent with Arthur in hospital.

He’d also been unable to shake the feeling that Arthur was, somehow, frustrated that John had spent his time worrying over him, instead of trying to mount a rescue attempt to the Dark World.

John didn’t want to go to the Dark World. He certainly wasn’t going to go alone.

As he unlocked the front door, John expected to find Arthur in the bedroom, unresponsive to the world again. That wasn’t good, because Arthur hadn’t eaten lunch and had only taken some of John’s coffee for breakfast, and the hospital (who cared very little for the pressure on Arthur’s shoulders) had mentioned –

But the door swung open, and Arthur was there.

He sat on the couch in front room, leaning forward, elbows on knees. Arthur was crying hard, his frail body shaking with it.

Fuck.

All thoughts of self-loathing and shame left his mind. He walked over, settling on the floor between the knees of his partner.

It was still hard to ascribe a singular word to what he felt for Arthur. Arthur had, perhaps understandably, taken issue with the word worship – and it was an inaccurate term, regardless. John had come to realize that during Arthur’s time in hospital.

He’d had little time to dwell on it. Bigger monsters loomed on the horizon. The name of what he felt mattered much less than the fact he felt it at all.

As he knelt, he could smell the sour scent of alcohol on Arthur’s breath.

Oh.

The moment John’s hands were on Arthur’s knees, Arthur lurched forward into an embrace. His hands fumbled weakly around John’s upper-arms, his shoulders, before folding around his neck.

The sobbing was bordering on hysteria, high-pitched whimpering escaping him in the same breath as gut-deep moaning.

Hell, hell, hell, hell – had this been him? John suspected he’d only pushed Arthur closer to the inevitable edge, but that did little to assuage the guilt. He adjusted his arms around Arthur’s body, clutching him against his chest, and Arthur fully sobbed against him.

Arthur was in agony.

(“How do you do this?”

“Be human?”

“It’s agony.”)

Was that not enough?

Arthur started to pull against John’s arms. He released him, uncertain of what was needed, what he ought to say, he wanted to apologize, but apologizing would fix nothing –

“T-t—” Arthur stuttered, tripping over his own words. John could see that the front of his shirt was open, displaying his black, ribbon-like scars. They seemed to overlay the previous ones he collected: the twisted marks of stab wounds, gunshot wounds, burns, cuts.

“Tell me what to do, John.” Arthur had little voice to him, only breath. “Tell me to – I can’t keep on like this. So either … either tell me to leave it, tell me to forget about it forever, or – or tell me to do something about it.”

Tell me a way that doesn’t involve killing myself was the unspoken thought.

He hadn’t asked what it’d been like. What was there to know? It had affected John deeply, and he hadn’t even been the one who …

Well.

It was bad enough, clearly.

The other option was completely impossible. Hadn’t Arthur been the one to tell him that there were some things that couldn’t be forgotten? He didn’t see what difference it would make, telling Arthur as much.

“Tell me to do something about it,” Arthur repeated after a moment’s pause.

Fine. Fine. After everything else that had gone on – they’d already murdered people. What was a few more. Against the mountain of corpses that he’d amass during his time as the King in Yellow, after the entire planets he’d destroyed …

What were a few more.

He told himself that.

It scarcely stopped one pinprick of irrational, childish resentment from brewing up in him. John would revisit the feeling later. Obsess over it, even as he tried to sleep, but he could not deny that it had existed.

Being in the Dark World had been the lowest point of his life. And now. Now, he was being told to go back – on a rescue mission, like people could come back from the Dark World. It had been in the Dark World that John had first experienced fear. That John had first experienced pain.

John half-shut his eyes and nodded to himself. “Do something about it,” he echoed in agreement, gruff. “We’ll do something about it. Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow –?”

“You’re drunk, Arthur.”

“I’m not, I’m …”

There, Arthur tried to stand. He did rise to his feet. John hadn’t been drunk before; his one sip of liquor in Innsmouth was detestable and he hadn’t had his mind long enough to relish losing it. Briefly, John wondered if he might’ve misjudged his tolerance, but Arthur begin to tilt almost immediately to the side.

With a grunt of exertion, John caught him with an arm around his shoulders.

“I – I -” It’d turned into a whine. “It’s hard, when you’re blind. Balance. You know, you’ve got balance issues.”

“I know, Arthur.”

It wasn’t a lecture. Frankly, given what Arthur had had to mentally grapple with in the past week, Arthur was doing well. He shifted Arthur’s arm around him and gripped the cane with his other hand for balance. Unsteadily, John began to guide him.

Though John had found a furnished apartment, it was done up sparsely. They had no need for anything else. Everything had a vague feeling of impermanence. Arthur stumbled against the bed and groped his way onto it, curling up in his usual position.

Right. For the best.

John went to his own side. He stared at the mirror above the dresser for some time afterwards. His physical form had grown familiar to him. Sometime during his long separation from Arthur, it had started to feel like his. Earth had grown familiar to him. It could be hostile, true, but … even at its worst, the hostility had some drive to it. There was little senselessness on Earth, not like …

Well.

He went to lie down, oddly empty about it all.

As soon as he did, Arthur rustled underneath the blankets. Arthur shifted away from the edge of the bed, until John felt an arm wrap around his ribs.

“I’m sorry,” Arthur whispered. He kissed the top of John’s shoulder before resting his cheek between John’s shoulder blades. “Thank you.”

Okay.

He would have Arthur, at any rate. A quiet life together would have been pleasant, but – for the both of them – perhaps it just wasn’t possible. So long as they had each other. John reached for the hand against his chest and brought it to his lips, a wordless apology unto itself, before interlacing their fingers.

John didn’t consider himself a hopeful person. That was Arthur, somehow, refusing to give in and die even in the most impossible of circumstances. He supposed that he believed in Arthur. If anyone would be able to rescue people from the Dark World … well. Arthur Lester would outbeat the gods.

He tried to content himself with hopeless thought, and finally fell asleep.

*

John returned to Arthur’s old apartment building in the early hours of dawn, after the fire had died down. He’d had some concerns that the fire department would arrive and clear what he needed, but the lot seemed mostly untouched by the time he arrived. Perhaps they were waiting until better daylight.

The exterior walls and some chattered interior remains of the old brick building still stood. Luck was on his side in that regard. Though he doubted anyone would watch him, they would provide some cover for what he needed to do.

After he found the letter, John had examined the apartment with all the rigor of a detective. Arthur had taken some food, his wallet, a change of clothes. He had taken his coat, and thus his lighter. Little else had been taken … they had little else to take.

John hadn’t been taken.

He didn’t know Arthur’s initial destination.

The Dark World functioned broadly as a mirror – a simple enough allegory to an exceptionally complicated space. If Arthur were to die in their apartment, he would wake in the Dark World’s version of their apartment.

Was there any guarantee that Arthur’s loved ones would stay close to where they died? No. But, it was a start, and they had followed flimsier leads. If John could find just one of Arthur’s loved ones in the Dark World, then Arthur would doubtlessly make his appearance.

He only knew where one of them had died: the one he killed himself. He could only hope it was there that Parker woke, and not under the Innsmouth shoreline.

Disappointingly, there were no reports of unusual deaths at Arthur’s previous apartment building. John was not particularly surprised to see that his office had been filled; from his understanding, PIs did not last long in Arkham.

Arthur had never taught him how to pick a lock. He broke it and hoped for the best.

Nobody had come to investigate as John broke into the old office and carved symbols to the underside of their desk with a pen knife. If they’d smelled blood as they walked into their office the next morning, they hadn’t thought to check the carvings.

He hadn’t known how to pick the lock to the agency, so he’d broken it and hoped for the best. Nobody had come to sound the alarm as John crouched underneath their interrogation desk, carving symbols with a pen knife. If they’d smelled blood walking into their office the next day, they hadn’t thought to check underneath. It hadn’t been much.

Moving amidst the now-ruined building, John saw that symbol again. It glowed red, at stark contrast to the ash and singed cinderblocks.

He kept his face composed and tried not to think too much of what he’d just done, and what lay before him. It only yielded anger.

And John was so fucking angry.

The only thing that had stopped him from burning down their own apartment was Arthur’s mention that he might. That Arthur had known John would be angry only made matters worse. In the end, John might as well have burned it down, with the state he left it in.

Arthur had left. Arthur had left him. Arthur had gone to blow his brains out somewhere, and Arthur hadn’t taken him. Arthur hadn't let him explain. 

Because of what, exactly? Love? If this was what love was – if that was the magic word that described all of his torturous, complicated feelings towards Arthur Lester – then he didn’t want it. If humanity could make him feel like this – then he didn’t want it.

If Arthur had just waited, then they would have gone together.

Or, perhaps, Arthur would have just cracked John upside the head and fled through the portal himself. If Arthur was making decisions based off of love, now, John really couldn’t predict what he would do to keep John … what, on Earth? Alive? .

He wanted to kill him and Arthur had fled to the one place where nobody could fucking die.

Furniture. Cinderblock. The remains of a stairwell. More furniture. John picked through the refuse with his cane, squinting in the dim light of dawn. The glow from the sigil provided some rudimentary light as John shifted burnt-out metal canisters, chairs with legs whittled to matchsticks, and …

“Yes,” John breathed.

A human rib cage.

Difficult to tell which detective this one was. John hadn’t really bothered to learn their names. He was certain that the letter hadn’t survived, and he took some sadistic joy in that but it wasn’t as if he hadn’t memorized it already.

The rhyming nature of the poem made it exceptionally difficult. John would occasionally snap to and realize that he’d been cycling ‘My true love hath my heart, and I have his’ over and over, in his head.

John growled and shoved his gloves on.

A rib cracked off in his hand, blackened by soot. John pulled off another. He could see the other detective’s some few feet away. They must have escaped the office at some point, though much too late to do anything about it.

From his pocket, John pulled out the length of twine and a knife. He scored the ribs before tying them together, tying it off as best as he could manage. Ribs were good for archways. Femurs would do for certain parts. The keystone had to be the skull, which would be last. He hadn’t done this before, but it felt familiar in a way that he didn’t like.

John rubbed his gloves on the front of his jacket, and pulled out another rib. The sound cracked in the otherwise quiet night, but hopefully it was similar enough to a backfiring car that it wouldn’t arouse suspicion.

Fuck him. Fuck him. Fuck him. Fuck him. John picked up a pelvis to use as a base for the archway, settling it on the ground and keeping it stable with handfuls of soot. When he’d finished scoring the bones, the knife was put to the side. To hell with him. Should have let him die in the fucking water. Should have let him die the thousand other times that he should have died. Then we wouldn’t be here. Then –

Another rib came out, and another crack. John stiffened at the noise and realized there were tears falling from his eyes.

If Arthur was already gone – then he’d died alone.

But he wouldn’t stay alone. Not for long.

Not if John had anything to say about it.

He was going to kill him.

Chapter Text

Wheezing hard, Arthur fell into the Dark World. His elbows hit soft earth first, only because he couldn’t bear to take his hands away from his thro – god! His fucking throat, something had snapped in it, he had heard something snap in it, and he scrambled along the ground like a squashed bug in a desperate attempt to relieve the pressure around his fucking, god-damned –

“Whoa, Arty! One hell of an entrance, I gotta say! Applause for you.”

Not a single goddamn second to breathe. Arthur’s death now had an applause reel.

Still choking, Arthur scrambled away from the sound of Kayne’s voice. “Hh--! Hh--!” He gagged. Any voice coming through him sounded like it were being shredded through a grater.

“Hh – hh – what was that? How? Who? Him? Hastur? Hero? Hoag? You have got to start to using those words of yours! Mortals, you go through all the trouble of making language …” Kayne took a step forward in the grass, dry dirt crunching under his feet.

Despite the terror, Arthur would have been worse off if he hadn’t planned for this. Not Kayne specifically, no, but he was no fool. As someone had ruled the Dreamlands, he had expected someone to rule the Dark World. He forced every instinct in his body to take his hands away from his throat, withdraw the gun from under his shoulder, and fire.

Nothing. Fine. At least he had gotten his intentions well-across.

“You have a gun!?” Kayne dissolved, ominously wetly, into cackling laughter. He tried and failed to pull himself together several times, culminating with an exaggerated clearing of his throat. “You brought a gun and you still hung yourself! Don’t tell me you were keeping those little metal morsels for little old me?”

What use was there in trying to talk back? He could scarcely manage. Retching noises still eked through his throat. Losing his nerve, Arthur dropped the gun; his hands returned at once to the raw skin.

Such was the culmination of his plan, what little he had been able to prepare on the boat.

He did not know what else to do. His life had been buffeted by gods, like a rowboat over dark water. What use was fighting against them? He had been returned to Earth from the Dreamlands by sheer whim, and even all that he had to give – his own life, forfeit in front of the King – had done exactly fuck-all.

“Right, right. Cat got your tongue. Here you go, pal, don’t say I never did nothing for you.”

An electrical snap reverberated through his ears for a whole second – in the next, the pressure around his throat reached a climax and then burst. Arthur collapsed onto the ground entirely, heaving great gasps of air.

It was … dry and oddly metallic. Arthur supposed he could’ve been tasting the afterscent of blood; he’d be none the wiser. There had been some. He remembered.

“Well?”

“Fuck you,” Arthur snarled weakly, forehead pressed against the dirt.

Kayne sighed with tremendous weariness. “You know, I just don’t get you. You do a whole song and dance to get here, which brings a tear to my eye. I mean, hanging yourself in your childhood home? Twenty-six years after your parents did the exact same thing? You come to my party, you bring an exquisite bottle of wine, and then you shit in my sink.”

What?

“Y-your –?”

“Uh, yeah?” Kayne popped his lips. “What, did John not tell you? It’s not like he didn’t spend enough time here squatting – well, so much as time matters in a place like this. Hang on, let me think. I remember this part.” His voice swooped low in a paltry imitation. “Chaos beyond understanding. That’s what he said to you, isn’t it?”

Chaos beyond understanding. It didn’t sound familiar, but it’d been so long since John had brought up the Dark World. They’d been in Arkham. Christ, it had been so long since he’d seen Arkham ...

“And I wore a black suit on our first meeting. Black suit, Dark World. No connections being made here? None of those neurons zapping?”

Fear struck Arthur, dead in the chest.

God, he should have known that Kayne would rule over a place like this, but his mind – who could fault it for being elsewhere?

It wasn’t like he had done this on a whim. He’d had too much time to think on it to call it a whim.

Arthur had lasted a week after his waking. Miserable, terrified, and consumed by one objective: to bring those he loved from the Dark World. He had wanted to maximize time on his home turf, to research, to fucking plan … but every waking moment had been torment, imagining those he loved tortured a thousand ways. Faroe, God, how could he do such a thing to his daughter?

Though John had made attempts at support, Arthur wasn’t blind. Terror rolled off John in waves. Why wouldn’t it? He had made his fear of the Dark World clear. That told Arthur all he needed to know about the place, that it terrified a being like John.

He knew his chances of actually succeeding without John present were nil, but frankly, were his chances any higher with John there (especially now – with his tormentor the warden!)? Why damn the last remaining person he loved?

It had been a month aboard the boat, after he’d written a letter and kissed his love’s forehead. More than enough time to plan what he could. Every excruciating detail. He treated it as an occupational exercise, a case more befitting a detective than a man with a beating heart.

With little way to navigate the Dark World, Arthur had set out to enter it as close to his loved ones as possible. However, most people would take umbrage with a man blowing his brains out in their front room.

Bella had died in the back of her father’s church – as far as he knew, still operational. His flat with Faroe had been in town; Arthur had no doubt it’d since been re-let. Before he’d left for America, he’d gone one last time to see his childhood home out in the countryside. Even then, the surrounding fields had started to overtake it.

As for the method …

That was where Arthur’s calm logic had started to fail. He had tried, of course. If his mind were to be transported to the Dark World, he scarcely wanted it to have a hole through his head – or to be made languid and sleepy from medication, besides.

But, in the end, it hadn’t been logic at all.

You all want to turn your fucking eyes on me? Arthur had accused the dark heavens as he leaned against the ship railing. Fine! We’ll finish this piece as it started. Da Capo al Coda and damn you all to hell.

And so. Arthur had sailed to his death, and then Arthur had died.

“You know, kid, you’ve been through a lot. Tell you what? We’re even.”

“Even –?”

Emitting a cry of pain, Arthur’s head was snapped back by his hair. The sensation was … excruciating, of course, but air started to flow easier into his lungs after. He realized with a jolt that Kayne had just snapped his neck back into place.

God. God, where --

“For not going along with my little plan, back in that little seaside dump.”

“Me? I did nothing.”

“Okay, okay, okay. Okay. Maybe you didn’t have me shot straight off, and you didn’t let your big – I have to say,” Kayne said abruptly, “I really love ‘Bruiser’ for John, because isn’t he just a big ol’peach? But you! You, Mr. Lester, you absolutely led me on!”

Kayne’s fingers withdrew from Arthur’s hair. His fingers had felt … wrong, somehow. Sharp. Wet.

“I really thought Parker would be enough to sway you away. After all, I looked through his memories … you really owe the guy. What he went through for you …” Kayne tutted. “But, no. Our bulldogged detective was too cowardly to separate himself from his best friend’s murderer et deux. That last conversation we had, in that cigar room? Ugh. Excruciating. All you wanted to talk about was your true love. I mean, afterwards, I was so bored that I wound up skinning that nice woman at the front desk.”

Any surprise he’d once held for Kayne’s cruelty had left when he wore his friend’s skin like a suit. Arthur struggled to his hands and knees. Up. Up. Kayne might follow him, taunt him, but at least he would be moving. One knee on the ground. Up. He would just walk, and try to find his parents. That was his only plan, but at least it was action.

Upright. Breathing hard, neck aching, but upright. Fine. Good. Great. You’re okay, you’re okay.

It was time to walk. Kayne followed behind him. His footsteps crunched along the dry ground.

“How did you like the finale? An actor works with the lines he’s given, but honestly, it’s hard to really be spectacular when you’re torn apart by a pack of Deep Ones. That was …” Kayne drew in a deep sigh. “Embarrassing. They’re the embarrassment of the pantheon. Do you know how many of us would kill – well, okay, we kill anyway, but you know what I mean, to be allowed into Earth? Not me, obviously, I can go whenever I want. But those dumbasses … they could’ve ended the world a thousand times over by now, but no, they want to stay in their tacky little city and they’re scared of a big lightbulb. No wonder they stopped getting invited to things. They’d piss on the rugs.”

The long grass brushed past Arthur’s fingertips as he walked. It had been so long. Not knowing exactly where he was, he couldn’t find a path, but at least he was moving forward.

What more did he have to lose. Kayne mocking him wasn’t anything new. If he expected to be left a crumb of dignity, then fool me twice. “And they killed you, anyway,” Arthur spat, forging on.

The footsteps stopped. Perhaps he still had more to lose, because Arthur flinched.

Kayne cackled.

“The balls on you, Arty! Mouthing off to me, it’s really – for a mortal? Exceptionally refreshing. You haven’t tried to kiss my feet or hump my leg once. I thought ‘John’ would be the snappy upstart between the two of you.”

“Keep his name out of your mouth. He isn’t here.” It was not so much the name itself, but the way Kayne said it. As if John’s name, the name he picked and cherished himself, were some kind of joke.

He continued onward a few steps. Again, Kayne followed just behind. “What have I got to lose,” Arthur repeated to himself, voice soft. “You’ve taken everyone I loved and put them here. Evidently, you also rule this place.” Though he didn’t press on it, he heard Kayne make an indeterminate ehhhh noise. “I know how this is going to go. You’re going to play your little games that go far, far over my head, but I’m sure they’ll only serve to cause me misery and torment. Eternity, maybe.”

Though his tone was cavalier, Arthur didn’t feel it. The others …

He didn’t let himself think of Faroe. Couldn’t. If he launched himself bodily at Kayne and demanded answers, it wouldn’t end well. At least he could still keep trying this way. The gods would not have let Sisyphus go free if he just stopped trying, after all.

A hand pressed against his chest. Something sharp sank just past his skin.

“What,” Arthur breathed in exhaustion. Was the torture about to start? Fine. Best to get it over with.

“I’m looking into your eyes.”

“That’s lovely.”

“I feel like we’re not really getting each other.”

“I have somewhere to be, Kayne.”

“I don’t get you! I really don’t." He’d heard this before. “I thought, you know, I’ll pretend to be his best friend! We’ll start up a – “ Kayne’s voice took on a considerably more showman tone. “A ragtag PI team: the man who hit rock bottom and the man, well, let’s say he picked you up a half-inch and brushed you off. But,” He went on, excessively weary. “Had to offer to bring along John, didn’t you? I know when I’m playing third wheel.”

Not for the first time, Arthur reflected on the horror that would have been. Arthur liked to think he would’ve noticed, eventually, but Kayne clearly had access to Parker’s memories. Their humor came from two different worlds, but – but he had exposed his soul to Kayne believing he were Parker, once. He hadn’t noticed a thing, eager as he was to be accepted. Understood.

Arthur pushed past Kayne and walked again. Kayne followed, this time at his side. He tried his best to ignore it. “Point is. If I just wanted to have you tortured, I’d toss you back over to the King. I want to understand you. Come now, aren’t you the Patron Saint of Demons Desperately Trying to Understand –”

If Kayne really did rule over the Dark World, then he certainly didn’t have many responsibilities.

“Get to the point.”

“Well. Fact of the matter is, Arty, you need some help. I notice you haven’t brought your bestest cultist –”

“What?” It was so bizarre as to genuinely confuse Arthur, even in the midst of it all. “What’s that even meant to mean?”

“You’ve left your cultist without a god! In my experience, that’s usually when they start eating each other. Which would be a grand role reversal, don’t get me wrong.”

To curse at Kayne seemed useless, at this point, but Arthur grumbled a biting response regardless. Did Kayne have nothing better to do than mock him, his feelings? From what he could remember of John’s words, he expected this plane to be bustling with people. Why did it all seem so empty? If Arthur had been cursed to rule over an empty plane, then perhaps he would turn to petty torture and cruelty after a few eons, too.

All this talk of John left Arthur wishing that he had brought something of his along. Arthur scarcely knew what; most of his possessions were carried on his person. He had briefly thought of taking his coat, but it was overlarge on him to the point of absurdity, and he had donned his own. Hell, John hadn’t even bought anything proper to tie his hair back. Even in the depths of Arthur’s despair, the sensation of feeling a rubber band, a ragged cloth, a shoelace holding his partner’s hair back had made him smile, of all things.

Christ. How could it simultaneously feel like he’d made the worst decision of his life and not had a choice in the matter at all?

“You’re right, we should talk about choices. I love choices. Yes, yes, okay, everything might be predetermined and it might not even matter – but have I got good news for you! You find yourself at the last stop on the line, my friend, the denoument of your life’s work. Really hard to have a fate in what essentially amounts to a land of the dead, isn’t it?”

Last stop, indeed.

“Choice?” Arthur echoed.

“You clearly need a leg-up. Look, I’ll tell you where your parents are. You were bang on the money. Well, not really, you’ve been walking entirely in the wrong direction for the past twenty minutes, but you got on the right continent, and that counts. Let me be your John –”

“To hell with you.” It came out before he could help it, before he could think whether it would be wise. Your John hurt too much to hear.

“Oh,” Kayne sighed, not like a disapproving parent, “You are such a hard man to love, Arty. No wonder your only friend is literally the god of madness. Why don’t we be honest with each other?” He could hear Kayne’s footsteps come closer, before stopping. “I’d like to peel you apart, Arthur. Physically? Yes, of course. But also …” Another hand pressed against his chest, stopping him. “Emotionally.”

“Think that’s already well-done,” Arthur accused, exhausted. “You want to guide me, to help me find my parents that you trapped here. What will that accomplish?”

“Now you’re getting it. And if not, there’s always Plan B.”

“Plan B?”

“Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it. It’s, it’s, it’s sexy, of course, but let’s not bounce any more thoughts around.” Kayne’s voice took on a New York accent, one that made Arthur’s heart twinge with grief. “So. Whaddaya say, English?”

“How much choice do I really have in the matter?

Even with a solemn face, Arthur couldn’t stifle a gasp when he heard Kayne’s breath again – this time, against the back of his ear, too fast for any human to move. It was an answer to his question.

“You really do know how to shoot yourself in the foot, Arty. Or – whatever the saying is. Bite off your own finger. Burn your own arm. Piss people off until they stab you in the gut. Shoot you in the chest, drag you into the murky depths, and a whole lot of falls. If you want to make this more difficult …”

More difficult. Yes, that was just what he needed.

“Fine. If you want to help –“ He didn’t want to help. Arthur knew it, and yet. “Then tell me where my home is.”

“Oh! Oh, Mr. Lester –” Kayne’s voice had suddenly gone high and ear-gratingly eager. “You won’t regret this, I, I, I swear!”

A rush of cold air hit Arthur hard in the face. Kayne smelling rankly of diesel oil and burning plastic.

To your left!

The sound came abruptly from the inside of his own head. Arthur flinched.

Fine. Fine, alright. It had been a long time since he’d had to accommodate another voice, but there had been a little while in Innsmouth where he’d missed it. Or … feared that he no longer had it, as the case was. If he and John had not been shackled together their entire journey, they would not have become as close as they had. It was a pleasant surprise that their bond had not melted when they were apart.

… Well. Until Arthur had taken a flame to it, he supposed.

Christ. He could scarcely imagine John’s fury now. Did he even have any right to miss him?

He pursed his lips, considering, and turned left. Arthur took two steps forward –

Only to walk head-on into a tree. Pain throbbed in the bridge of his crooked nose; Arthur moaned in pain and toddled backwards a few steps. “Kayne –”

Oh! Oops. Tree. You know, John makes this look so easy. There’s just so much space in here, I got lost finding my way to the eyes. Has anyone ever told you that you lean to your right as you walk?

Fuck. Actually, Arthur had just recalled another aspect of having a voice in his head. Not only had he been unable to ever leave John, John had always been – frankly – hard to ignore. That had been goddamn annoying when it was John, but this?

He had to carry on.

Lips pursed, he stepped forward and pressed his hands against the bark of the tree. Yes. Yes, there’d been trees dotted here and there amongst the fields. As a boy, he’d climbed them when he thought he was alone, feeling a certain sense of quiet in the branches. He had picked up caterpillars and tenderly brought them leaves. He’d watched in joy as they wrapped themselves into their chrysalis, nearly wept when they emerged.

Tossing apples at passers-by had been an admittedly less wholesome past-time, but he’d been a child, one who –

His fingers brushed against an odd aberration in the bark. A carving. He stroked his finger alongside it, the letters familiar.

Is that a new nickname you were trying out? Kayne’s laughter, made even more cavernous by the inside of his mind, pounded in his brain.

Arthur remembered this. Stolen his father’s pen-knife to carve his name on a tree: why, he couldn’t exactly recall, beyond that the knife and the tree had both existed and seemed quite suited for one another. He’d been caught out two letters from the end and pulled inside by his ear. ARTHUR LEST still rested beneath his fingertips. Fool decision, really, to make a mark on the tree just outside the kitchen window.

“Kayne,” Arthur growled. “Did you think it fit to tell me that the house is right here?”

What house are you – oh my god, where did that house come from!?

Fine. He tried his best to ignore Kayne and held out his cane in front of him. Cautiously, he moved forward. The grass still felt high here, brushing as far up as his hip. It’d been an odd feeling once, years ago, to see his childhood home in such a state of disrepair. Made half-delirious in grief, Arthur had been unable to shake the feeling that hundreds and hundreds of years had passed since his birth, that he had aged out of the place this world had made for him.

How little he could’ve predicted.

Kayne’s voice dropped to a whisper. Is this my cue? Like he had stepped onto a stage, Kayne took on a dramatic lilt. The house is – oooh, did your parents have money, Arty! This house is … let’s call it glitzy, in a times-gone-past sort of way. Don’t like the color of those struts, though. And – hm, I really think they could do with a gardener. Good news, though! Most of the windows are broken, you could crawl right on through. Don’t mind the broken glass. You don’t need to have all your skin connected. Is there anything more you needed? I do love being helpful.

“I don’t need a description of my family home, thank you.”

His cane tapped against the front door and he pushed forward. It creaked open. This was beyond where he’d explored, last time he’d been there.

It feel cold in here to you? I think I hear a g-g-g-ghost!

There was a chill in here. To what degree it was the temperature and what degree it was the tremble that’d started to overtake his entire body, Arthur couldn’t say. Pull yourself together. You came here for a reason.

“Mum? Dad?”

Mum? Kayne’s mocked, tone pre-pubescent. Dad?

Ignore it. Arthur stepped forward, letting his fingers trail along the wallpaper. It was intact. The place didn’t smell of decay, it smelled of – it smelled vaguely of burning wood and old must, the exact smell he’d recalled from his childhood. His parents hadn’t had money, and were rapidly losing what they didn’t have. This old place had been an inheritance, nothing more. To Arthur it had felt like storybook, a touching reprieve from what lay outside.

They wouldn’t recognize his voice, would they? Arthur cleared his throat and tried again. “Dorothy? A-arthur?”

Named after your dad, huh? And they call me a nepotism baby. Sheesh.

Through the front hall he walked, entering the kitchen. Things felt just as pristine in here. The eternal kettle waited on the stove. As he ran his hand along the counter, he found not even a speck of dust. Neater than it had ever been in his childhood, particularly once they’d had to dismiss the staff.

You think someone cleaned up for you? Well, I guess it’s a special occasion, the prodigal –

“This is your son!” Arthur called out. A chill had come up his spine; the trembling was making his cane clatter against the linoleum.

All of this. All of this was familiar. The little boy returning home to an oddly clean house, too self-obsessed to even notice. “Arthur Lester, it’s – it’s me, I’ve come to help. Mum, Dad –?”

He walked through the kitchen and into their sitting room. Again, terribly neat. Bookshelves adorned the walls. Arthur had remembered being astounded by them as a child – how tall they seemed, and all the books so ominous. He always wondered what they could be. Encyclopedias, perhaps, old medical texts. If he had ever known their contents, he had long since forgotten.

One hell of a welcome party. What’s the happy occasion?

Knees weak, Arthur stumbled his way over to the old wooden table. His fingers brushed along the surface as if he were about to pull himself across it, and, his suspicions confirmed, he touched the edge of a thick piece of parchment. A thinner note slid out of the fold.

The will, and the letter.

Eh-hem-hem-hem. Dear Beatrice, when Arty comes home, please send him along to yours, and by God, do not let him into Arthur’s office --

“That’s enough.”

Arthur knew the story well enough. He didn’t need to read the letter. Even as a boy, he’d lingered at the cracks of open doors to understand the physics of what had happened, if not the intent behind. His parents had called for the neighbor to come around under the guise of needing a document witness. Beatrice had not beaten an overeager young boy racing to get home from school.

“Kayne, this has gone far enough. What is the point in all this?” Even as he spoke, Arthur found himself walking forward towards the inevitable. “No jokes. No – no dramatics. What is your goal in all this? With Parker, you wanted to be him, or at least make me believe you were him – why?”

Okay, Dad. It stung. Perhaps it shouldn’t have. Isn’t this the number one question on all the pantheon’s brightest minds? What, exactly, makes Arthur Lester so goddamn special?

Nothing, Arthur found himself thinking. Not one god damn thing. Perhaps once, he’d had some crumb of sanity left to formulate an answer. Not anymore. Keen injustice weighed on him. He wasn’t meant to be here.

Part of it, sure, sure, is revenge for the little fish incident. You really shouldn’t have messed with my plans, Arty! But that’s not all of it.

His fingertips trailed along the wallpaper as he walked towards his father’s office. His footsteps creaked along the wooden panels. Everything felt just the same, oddly so.

“But why?”

I haven’t seen our flaxen King so spun up in eons. I’ve got this wide chaosbox at my disposal, and you pissed him off more than I have. Maybe I want inspiration from whatever your special little hamartia is.

“What, am I your muse?”

The thoughts in his head quieted to a whisper. Well, you know. This does end with me painting a mural with your blood.

Perhaps speaking aloud was a mistake.

Maybe we’ll work well together. As much as you’ve thrown a wrench into my finely laid plans, I still think I can use you to punch things up! Look at what a shitstorm you caused trying to be good. I don’t know why you still claim to have morals. I meannnnnn. Let’s count off, shall we?

“What?”

Cannibalism, plenty of murder, robbery, poor fashion sense, traffic violations, and let’s not forget, you haven’t filed your taxes this year, Arty, tut tut. That’s not even getting to abandoning – Kayne’s voice took a mockingly sentimental lilt. The precious love of your life! Just to go hang yourself halfway across the planet, but you know, like father like –

“Don’t.” Fear made his voice shake, but Arthur grit his teeth hard. “You bring him up again, and I’ll – I’m just going to sit here, for the rest of eternity. I won’t play along with your plan, I’ll just –“

The laughter that burst through his brain felt almost electric, causing his muscles to temporarily seize. Arthur lurched to the side and caught himself against the wall.

Willful stubbornness surged in his mind, and yet, Arthur found himself going forward. It was still a conscious decision on his part, the need to help outweighing any need to stand off against an eldritch god of – something.

What was the point in all of this, if they all lived for eternity? What could meaningless violence possibly accomplish? What –

His hand wrapped around the golden knob.

Welcome home, baby boy.

“Look.” Arthur’s jaw was set. “If you get everyone I love out of this world, send them back to where they were, then – then there’s no need for all this, this circus. I’ll do whatever you want. I will be whoever you want. Use whatever lingers in me to your own wishes. I’m, I’ll be – I’ll be yours.”

Hm.

John would be furious to hear such a promise, but … had John not managed to become an irritant in the King’s side, himself? Could Arthur at least not try the same?

(A flash of soft memories shot through his mind – curled up with John in bed, John’s handkerchief pressed against his nose, John’s hand against his, John’s cheek on his head, John’s lips on his own, long walks along the shore, John’s startled laugh.)

But John was, above all, part of a god. Whatever Kayne saw in him, Arthur doubted he had enough power to beat a god.

Nah.

“Fuck you,” Arthur whispered again, and pushed open the door.

What lay beyond was not his father’s office, though Arthur had been allowed in it only a scant handful of times. When he swung his cane from side to side, he found he were in another narrow passageway.

He traversed forward, cautious. It was not unreasonable that he had forgotten the layout of his family home. This part of the house was often forbidden to him. Once as a young child, he had drawn on some important documents of his father’s, and thus was he banned from the office forever. Scarcely stopped him from trying to break in whenever his parents’ backs were turned.

Doors lined the hallway on either side, each locked. Forward he went, pausing at each to try the knob and listen for noise.

One gave under his grasp. Arthur paused, for the sound he heard on the other side chilled him.

Dying had been excruciating. Without his sight, Arthur had been forced to focus on his other senses. Scarcely the first time that he’d been unable to breathe, but this had gone on so long, had been so achingly, horrifically drawn out …

He heard those noises on the other side of the door. Arthur Lester heard his parents choking to death.

Fuck.

Time to be heroes! Let’s go.

Arthur shoved the door open with his shoulder.

Abruptly, the noises stopped. He swung his cane out from side to side, only to find another narrow passageway. His fingers lingered on the wallpaper, the same vaguely coarse texture as it had been before.

It seemed … narrower. The difference, if there were any true difference at all, was so slight that Arthur immediately dismissed it as a trick of the mind.

The boulder had rolled back down to the bottom. Arthur could only push it forward again. “I’m going to help you both,” he promised to the rafters, trying doorknobs again.

Take your time. I mean, it’s just pain. Not like you can actually die here. Honestly, the whole ‘torture for eternity’ shtick? It gets so boring.

Arthur tried to tune out the unhelpful voice. This time he lingered in the hallways, fingers ghosting over the odd-endtables and lamps that he passed. Various objects littered the top: a pen in an inkwell, a Rolodex, a stack of paper –

A letter opener. That might prove useful yet.

And our valiant hero has found a weapon! Let’s see him slay the mighty dragon.

Another door, with more of those wretched noises behind it. As was before, he pushed through. As was before, the noises disappeared. As was before …

The passageway was definitely narrower.

Arthur tried to shove down the rising tension in the back of his brain, but the spring was coiling ever tighter for it. “I’m going to save you,” he promised aloud. “I’m so sorry, this is my fault, but I – I’m going to –”

Another door. He could hear his parents’ voices distinctly, now, enough to pick apart his mother from his father’s. Their voices were contorted and made wretched with pain. Another door, and he could even hear the creaking of the wooden rafters.

He could no longer afford to explore overmuch in the hallways, because the walls were only a half-inch or so from his shoulders. Arthur went forward.

“Kayne, please.”

I’m starting to see him definite drawbacks to being blind. You’re missing some really interesting artwork.

“If you’re going to be in my head,” Arthur growled, “Then help me.”

Explain everything to me! Don’t explain anything at all! I desperately want someone to love me! I want to crawl under a rock and die. Don’t you dare hide anything from me! Goodbye, darling, I’ve run off into the sunset. You really are impossible to live with. But then again, you know that, don’t you?

Like a saucer threatening to tip over, Arthur’s despair was starting to reach a breaking point. He found the limits of his mind starting to crack open. This was too much – Arthur had brushed against the abyss before, when he simply couldn’t go on, and he found it approaching yet again. He could still hear his parents whimpering for help through the door, but now, Arthur needed to stoop in order to move forward.

Wait! Wait wait wait, my serendipitous pal! I’ve found something. It’s a magical artifact from the Dreamlands. Holy cow, is this something.

God, god, god, what was he doing here, what was the point in all this, Arthur couldn’t fight against a god –

Oooooh, gosh, it needs a secret activation code. Wow! Wow, lucky break, this should be totally easy. The audience wants to know, Arthur: what did your father do for a living?

His flailing mind desperately reached out for some sort of agency, something he could do. What his father did? Christ. He – well, of course he – there were plenty of papers, and signatures, and …

And Arthur tried to reach out for one definite point of contact, something that he actually did. Surely his father had talked of it over dinner – his father had gone to work every day. As a young child, hadn’t he wanted to be exactly like his father, at one point or another? Hadn’t he tried to wear his shoes?

Nothing came to him. The yawning black void inside his mind opened ever wider.

In desperation, Arthur took the letter opener in his grip and stabbed it into the wooden door. What his intent was, he didn’t know, but it did little. He could hear his parents’ whimpering voices throughout every point of the hallway, now. His mother, his father: gasping something like ‘Arthur, please …’

Nothing? Really? Little weird. I’ve seen your entire life, y’know, and you were really dramatic about them dying. But I guess you just had to make it about you. No hard feelings, the code reset. Question number two. A buzzer sounded through his mind, making Arthur cower against the ground. He still went forward, at a crawl. Your hardworking, solemn mother. Where’d she live, before she – y’know – got knocked up by dear old dad? He worked in estate law, by the way.

His mother hadn’t always lived in this area. Arthur had known that. As a child, he’d recalled being delighted at the difference in her accent. He’d repeat words back at her, over and over, as if in some sort of awe. She’d repeat them back at him, delighted by Arthur’s curiosity.

Arthur knew little about the circumstances of his own birth, but he’d been young. If they were in any way unusual, Arthur hadn’t been alive enough to note their peculiarity. They’d been married, they were happy, and there was little else a young child needed to know.

Had she ever even mentioned it to him? The ceiling brushed against the stop of his skull. He felt like he were breathing the same lungful of air, over and over. Their whimpers rebounded in his ears. God, where did she live, she must’ve mentioned it, she must’ve –

Wow, did you ever even talk to your parents? This artifact ain’t gonna activate itself, y’know. Wait! Merciful gods in yielding Cassilda above – there’s one more, and you have to get this one. It’s so easy! What color were your parents’ eyes, Arthur? Either/or. You got a range of options. Definitely not yellow, there’s a hint.

The floor gave away under Arthur.

He fell through open air. It whistled past his ears, his stomach lurched into his throat. Though the initial surprise made him call out in terror, he fell silent. One could not die in the Dark World, evidently, but that said nothing for –

Arthur hit the ground hard, pain searing up his hip and his leg howling with protest.

This, he recalled.

When he had first been banned from his father’s office, Arthur had been genuinely recalcitrant. Not recalcitrant enough to stay away, of course, but on those few occasions where he had managed to break in … he only liked to lay on the thick rug in there, to stare up at the cracking paint on the ceiling. It had been oddly peaceful. Arthur had tried to seek out places that gave him peace, even from a young age.

He just laid there on the thick rug of his fathers’ office, shaking hard, because he didn’t know.

He’d known at one point. Their memories had been burned into his mind for years and eons. Perhaps it had to do with the loss of his sight – but … no. In truth, he’d forgotten long before then, their faces fading into nothingness as he recalled their memory.

He could remember his father’s booming laugh, and he could remember the way his mother’s fingers lingered at the hems of her clothing. He could remember the light sweeping of her fingers over his hair at night, he could remember a steady hand on his back as he crossed a stream. But ….

Really? Oh, come on, this is embarrassing. For both of us. I thought this was going to be a great first round. A lost little boy rescues his parents! But … Kayne sucked in a breath through his teeth. You know, I guess you never really loved them. That’s on me. Maybe I shoulda started with the kid. Stuck it in a bathtub or something. Well, this is embarrassing. We’re only rescuing people you love today, and clearly ...

A crackling of electrical energy rushed through his ears. All at once, Arthur realized he was alone in his father’s office. The noises had stopped, leaving him only with his own ragged breathing. “W—where--?”

Oh, back where they came from. I dunno. I really only take people that interest me, and most of the people there really, really don’t. Bo-ring.

Alright. Alright, well, that was –

Arthur supposed he should have felt some relief, but all there was was horror. He got onto his hands and knees, half-convinced that he were about to vomit. Pain still scorched his side.

No, his body couldn’t hold himself up. He bowed his head to the carpet and started to weep.

You’re going to have to do this again, Arthur mentally told himself, unable to do much more than think. With others. With Bella, with Parker, with – you’re going to have to do this with Faroe.

He couldn’t. He needed to, because they were only here because of him – because they were only dead, because of him. God, couldn’t he afford them some basic courtesy? Not even to right wrongs, because he could never be forgiven for what he’d done, but to try and be better than he had been? To give them the same peace that awaited everyone after death?

Arthur couldn’t get up from the floor. The memory of discovering his parents as a child, their feet dangling only a few feet above the desk, refused to leave his mind.

He was wretched.

Kayne sighed. This is embarrassing to watch. Really. You’re a grown man. Crying in your father’s office. There’s a lesson here.

Fine.

Maybe Plan B is necessary. Because, I’m going to be honest, if you’re going to get this upset by some old fucks that you didn’t actually give a shit about, then the rest is going to be excruciating. Even worse, boring.

Okay.

‘Golly gee, Mr. Kayne, what’s Plan B?’ Glad you asked, my catatonic pal. Let’s get you some power in this silly little world. Sacrifice some of your humanity, sure, yeah, whatever, but let’s be honest, we’re digging a sallow field there. Humanity? Overrated. Let’s have some fun.

Maybe.

Maybe you’ll still care enough to save your buddies. I won’t even stop you there. Honestly, at that point? I’m just going to sit back and watch with some popcorn.

Great.

We’ll finally see what makes Arthur Lester so important, huh. I got my bets placed. We’re going to set this joint on fire.

Good.

Get up, meatbag.

Arthur could. Obedient, quiet, and desperate for hope, he rose to his feet and shuffled out the corridor. He held his arms against his thin chest.

Outside, the world remained quiet as it had been. The long grass still brushed against his legs. He couldn’t hear the sounds of his childhood: the chirping of insects, the wind in the trees. Arthur supposed that he was dead, after all. Certainly no sun shined down at him.

Don’t say I never got you anything. I’m basically your fairy god-uncle, at this point. Oh, to experience the rush of fatherhood.

“Wh-wh –” His voice was soft, feeble.

On the ground, genius.

Arthur crouched. On the ground before him was a great deal of tattered fabric. It was quite thick, reminding Arthur of the thick duvet-cover they’d had in the Innsmouth cabin, and torn heavily around the edges. The thing was so brutalized that some of it hung in long strips, separated from the mass. “What’s this?” He whispered, uncertain. A cloak of some sort, though long since lost its fit.

That’s your loverboy. Kayne fell into more cackling laughter. What’s left of him, anyway.

Oh.

Arthur fell onto his knees. He inhaled sharply, and then let the air leave his lungs, but it was all he could manage.

If John had followed him, and died, then – then – then he really did have nothing left for him.

Not to give you ‘Dark World 101’ because I didn’t go to college, but you need a physical form to be here. For me and your betters, that doesn’t mean a lot. We can be whatever we want. But your Bruisy Boy, when you two had your meetcute … well, he had to make do with yours. Not enough gas in the tank to take this. But would you want to? Smells like spit.

There was no actual body in within the fabric. As Arthur held it up, it hung limply between his fingers. Yes, a cloak, he could feel the hood. It was less regal than he expected a kingly garment to be. Rather thick, like it was meant to survive cold weather.

Put it on.

“What?”

You put that on, and you’ll get a teeeeeeeeeny fragment of the King’s power. Well, of John’s power, who was already a fragment to begin with, but let’s be honest, for a mortal mind? I’d be surprised if your brain doesn’t explode on impact.

Arthur didn’t know. He still held the fabric in his hands, and was struck by the urge to clutch it against his chest. Though he didn’t …

God, he wanted to.

You could save your loved ones from the wicked, wicked Mr. Kayne. I vote for causing mayhem. Really grind Hastur’s gears, stealing his car like this.

“Honestly,” Kayne added, stepping out of Arthur’s head. “I’m curious to know just what hell you can raise, Arty. You raised enough and you’re just a weak little mortal –”

The moment that Kayne’s feet touched the ground, Arthur let out a howl of fury and lunged for him.

He swung the letter opener here the voice had come from, only to meet air. A round of canned applause was his only reception; without thinking, Arthur turned on his heel and slashed again. Again, Kayne was not there. The crunch of dry soil next to him and Arthur swung again, his arm shaking with how hard he wept, and found nothing.

“Oh, I was talking,” Kayne whined.

Arthur screamed. No words, only a lasting shriek of pain, of anguish, of helpless, hopeless fear. Something throbbed in his neck; in a facsimile of comfort, he clutched John’s cloak against his chest.

“Why are you doing this?” Arthur asked for the utmost time, his voice scarcely audible. “Why do you care so much about torturing me? You are a god, and I am a …”

“You really cannot trust your memory, Arthur. I already told you. I don’t care about this. I don’t know what care is. This is the teensiest, tiniest interesting thing in the vast continuum of forever, and I am expending a grain of sand’s worth of energy on it. If you give up now, and you die, then I have eternity and omnipotence –” The words were spoken with some exaggerated gravitas; Arthur fancied he could hear – for some reason – flutes and drums pounding momentarily. “At my fingertips. You know what mortals are?”

Arthur heard the clap of Kayne’s hands coming together. “Soap bubbles. But you’re a vicious soap bubble. So put on the coat if you want. I think it’ll be hilarious. And that will be the most impression a mortal has ever made on me. That’s an honor, isn’t it?”

Yes. Yes, this would give him power, wouldn’t it?

Even in the depths of this – even as he hurtled towards something darker than rock bottom – Arthur knew it was a trick. All of this was some trick to amuse some incredibly bored god. Perhaps the smartest decision would be to deny Kayne this.

Then again, was he not stuck with Kayne no matter what? If he refused to play, Arthur’s nose would simply be pushed against the grindstone further. Kayne would not simply let him go, no matter how boring he was. Something about him was different, and Arthur didn’t know why. If he did, he’d fling it as far as he could in the opposite direction.

If he was going to be stuck with Kayne either way, why not try and outwit him with a bit of power in his grasp? If his loved ones still existed here, then – the haunting refrain – what could he do but try?

Arthur held the vessel that once held John. The tattered robes smelled deeply of blood and saliva; parts of the robe were crusted with the stuff.

And what if it was too much for him? Mortals weren’t meant to know such power. Would he be able to withstand it?

God, if he’d been able to withstand everything else so far …

Silently, Arthur shifted the cloak into one arm. It hiked up the sleeve of his jacket, reminding him of its existence. He thrust one hand into the pocket of his jacket to stow the pen knife. Perhaps it would be silly to take a pen knife to potentially go up against a god, but it was sillier not to take a weapon of some kind.

Most of his items had been lost, somewhere between the Dreamlands and Innsmouth. Arthur hadn’t thought of them much. Little had been sentimental. And yet, as he thrust his hand into his pocket, making certain that there was enough room, his hand closed around something small and metal.

This too shall pass.

It’d served him well so far. Even now, it gave him hope, and that was enough.

“Yes,” Kayne whispered, his voice shuddering in pleasure, as Arthur opened the cloak.

After a moment’s hesitation, he slipped the yellow fabric over his shoulders.

That was all it took for Arthur Lester to realize he'd just made another terrible mistake.

Just before he slipped away, he heard Kayne’s voice ask – as if a thousand miles away: “You won’t mind if I borrow this old thing, would you?”

Chapter Text

John stepped from the portal to face the inside of the office door. He had had a split-second curiosity of what the Dark World would look like, for him, whether he would be stepping into a pile of ashes or whether he would be in a time before the building had ever been built.

The frosted glass of the window read ‘PETER YANG & ARTHUR LESTER, PRIVATE EYES’. A simply drawn illustration of an eye laid underneath.

Seeing Arthur’s name made his chest twinge.

He could only barely read it. John had forgotten this kind of darkness. Once, so long ago, he and Arthur had been under the stars during a full moon. A cloud had momentarily passed in front of it. Something about the temporary nature of it – they need only wait until the cloud moved on – and something about the sudden extinguishing of all light made John gasp in fear. At the time, John hadn’t understood from where it had come from, and he hadn’t been able to tell Arthur what frightened him so.

That was the Dark World – an eternal cloud passing in front of the moon, a darkened sky before a natural disaster, the complete lack of hope and life.

He was going to kill Arthur for making him come here again.

John inhaled deeply, trying to calm his rattling nerves. Whatever move he’d make next, it couldn’t be done here. Though the thought terrified him like little else could, he had to leave. He stepped forward, hand against the knob, and --

A crack! against the back of his skull made John snarl in pain and fall. Black spots bloomed in front of his eyes – if John blacked out, it wasn’t for longer than a moment, but he couldn’t remember how he’d gotten onto his back.

Parker Yang straddled his torso, face burning with fury.

Every time John felt an emotion, it was far more likely that he was completely baffled by it than he understood where it was coming from. Hunger was easy. Boredom, too. However, he couldn’t understand why he felt a terrible kind of satisfaction shoot through him at the sight of an angry Parker Yang, nor did he understand why he seized Parker by the front of the shirt.

Strategically, it was a bad move. It left John open for Parker’s first blow, which slammed squarely against his cheekbone. He was stunned; when he traded a blow to Parker in return, it only glanced off his temple with little impact.

He wanted Arthur Lester to bleed. Failing that, he wanted any human he could find to bleed.

“I’m going to kill you!” Parker practically screeched. John was grabbed by his collar, his already bleeding head shoved against the floor. Ow. Ow, fuck! “You son of a bitch!”

John snarled senselessly, anguish bursting through him. All the muscles in his right hand tensed as he scratched at Parker’s throat, right across the dark bruises from a lifetime ago. The anger he felt now was different than the anger he felt then, but why, why, why –!

Hands wrapped around his throat. The heel of Parker’s palms pressed hard against his windpipe.

He slammed his fist against the side of Parker’s ribs. That must have hurt, but it did not shake his grip. Subsequent punches also did little to shake Parker’s resolve, which was when John’s lungs started to ache.

Parker looked just as how he remembered when he first saw him in Arthur’s office. He still wore the suit he died in. He could picture the fear and agony on his face when John killed him (the first time), so different from the utter nervousness when John killed him (the second time).

To think he had wasted time feeling bad for Parker Yang. To think he had felt guilty. To think he had allowed himself to feel anything for any human, to think he had pondered over the depth of his emotions for Arthur Lester. To think he had done all that and Arthur Lester had still left him, still abandoned him, with only memories of their time together and a bone-deep dread of what Arthur would be going through in the Dark World.

He hated him. He hated him, he hated him, he hated him …

Black spots started to bloom over his vision again, not unlike the stars in the sky. He wrapped his hands around Parker’s wrist. “Ah …” It came out in a wheeze. “Ahr …”

Parker put more of his weight against John’s windpipe; John could feel far more of the internal workings of his neck than he’d ever desired to.

Cracked and broken, Parker forced the words out through his teeth. “What’d you do to him. What’d you do to him, you bastard?” It was accompanied by Parker’s fingers curling around the edges of his skin, just enough to slam John’s head against the floor once again.

Ow, ow, ow. Fuck him. To hell with him. To hell with all of humanity, to hell with the damn dirty emotions they made him feel.

John reached up to put his hands around Parker’s wrist, feeling the burning grow in his chest. His fingernails dug into the soft skin there, drawing blood, but he was losing strength quickly.

(Was this how Arthur felt when near death?)

“What’d you do to him?” Parker said again, but this time, it was more like pleading. “What did you do, you damn – dirty – son of a – fuck!”

Parker was crying.

In anger, in rage, in fear, in sadness, John didn’t know, but he could see the glint of tears rolling over his cheeks.

“Why the fuck are you crying, man,” Parker forced through gritted teeth. He thought he might have been speaking to himself, until a bead of water ran along the sensitive skin in front of John’s ear. "I can't kill a guy who's fucking crying." 

Oh.

The pressure on his throat released.

I’m not crying, John wanted to protest, but all he could do was suck in air. I’m not crying, he instead convinced himself. I set a fire to come here. The ash burned my eyes. That’s all. I’m not crying.

Parker got off of him, sitting a foot or so away from his body. John watched him harshly rub the sleeves of his jacket at his eyes to pull himself together – in doing so, he could catch a glimpse of his under-shoulder holster. Empty. “Talk,” Parker hissed, “And this’ll go easier.”

John sat up. His vision still blurred somewhat, and when he spoke, he felt like he were forcing his voice through pins and needles.

He didn’t want to talk.

“You can’t die in the Dark World, idiot,” he rasped.

He didn’t know why he said that first. Conversations had been easier when everything he said had been filtered through Arthur.

John supposed he deserved that additional punch thrown at him, knocking him against the floor yet again. Parker’s emotions were getting the better of him: his chest rose and fell in trembling, repressed gasps. It was clearly taking a considerable amount of effort not to break down into sobs.

For the longest while, John stayed curled up on the floor. He had seen Arthur – felt Arthur – be able to pack up his emotions and continue onward when it was necessary. Attacking Parker Yang now would serve nobody, and it …

It wouldn’t be a good thing to do. And that still mattered to him. As despairing as he was … as heartbroken, perhaps, John would not let himself delight in strife again.

He opened his eyes to see both of Parker palms against his own face, almost soothing himself.

Wasn’t it his own fault that Parker was here? That Parker had been sent to this world of torment? Parker had never abandoned him. Parker had done nothing but try and be a good friend; it had only been John’s doing that he died.

Comforting Arthur had become second nature through their time in Innsmouth and before. A calming word, a soothing touch. Doing the same for Parker seemed …

Well, what could it hurt?

Almost shy, John crept closer to Parker where he sat on the ground. He raised one arm, intending to put it on Parker’s shoulder as he’d seen Arthur do before, and –

Parker practically teleported back across the room, his back slamming against the wall. “What the fuck are you doing?”

Embarrassment clouded his features. “Nothing,” he snarled back, the spikiness a familiar cloak.

At any rate, the faux pas seemed to settle Parker’s nerves. “Where the hell is he, John?” Parker demanded. “What did you do to him?”

“What’s the last part you remember?”

Some of the tension eked out. “I …” Parker held up his hand in a dismissive gesture. “Was standing in a goddamn lighthouse, listening to you say demon shit, and then I remember some – some jackass blowing in my ear and saying peek-a-boo.” How much of that was accurate, and how much of it was Parker’s colorful phrasing, he didn’t know. “What happened to Art?”

From Parker’s death to Arthur’s coma had only been two days. Less, really. John moved so that he was leaning against the wall, idly pressing at the bruises on his throat.

Description helped him make sense of the world in his head. As he spoke, he felt the anger – the desire to cause pain – start to dissipate. He would not open the box again, not willingly. “A man named Kayne took control of your body. He’s the one who sent you from here. Arthur refused to go with him to Boston, and so …” That night flashed through his mind. The terror twisting Arthur’s expression, the fear he’d felt as he watched Arthur go under the water.

(“Damn you, he’s my friend!”)

“So Kayne summoned the Deep Ones. They tore apart his body. Before he died, he told Arthur that he would send everyone he loved to the Dark World.”

If this stunned Parker, he didn’t show it.

“Some jackass piloting my body, letting me get eaten by a bunch of fish assholes. Great. What happened to Art.”

John’s lips pursed in thought.

“He survived,” he said after a moment. “He was … comatose, for a while. But he survived.”

Was it any relief? John had certainly been scared to death for most of those fifty-eight days, certain that anytime he’d leave, Arthur would draw his final breath without him. Perhaps it were selfish, but John was terrified of being left alone in a world that he didn’t understand. Even Arthur being comatose was enough comfort, even on the worst days. Arthur could still listen to him. John had talked to him endlessly.

And now. 

“Please tell me he fucking shot you when he woke up.”

John paused, trying to figure out how to say the words. He lasted a week after his coma, and then he killed himself to get here, to rescue all of you. I don’t know where he is. I don’t know how.

He dawdled too long. Parker sighed, pinching his fingers against the edge of his nose. “What, you want me to write the ending for you? Let me see if I got this right. That – that guy. Kayne. Whatever. He took ahold of my body, just for some sick kicks out of Art. He pulls a bonehead move and gets himself eaten by a bunch of fish, but not before threatening to send everyone Art ever loved to the Dark World. Which is where I am now.”

“Yes.”

“So – what? Arthur send you on a rescue mission?”

“No.” His tone seemed to grow hollow. “Arthur left me. To come here, alone.”

His heart ached. He’d been left behind.

“Jesus, he couldn’t have left you before my consciousness got scooped out my skull?”

John was on his feet before he could think of it. His fist shot out – not to strike Parker, but to grasp him by the front of his shirt.

The threat was minimal. His balance had never been his strong suit; even this small action made him wobble dangerously on his feet.

Parker didn’t look scared. Tired, maybe.

John didn’t attack him. If he attacked him, he thought he might finally break down, let the tears flow. Crying in front of Arthur was one thing; crying in front of Parker quite another. With a growl, he dropped his grip, and the tears stayed where they were.

“And you went after him, huh.”

“He doesn’t know what he’s doing.” I want to kill him. I want to kill him for leaving. I want to kill him for making me go here. 

“Yeah. Well.” Parker brushed off the front of his suit. “I don’t blame him. I don’t know how long I’ve been here – a fuckin’ while, I’d guess, but I don’t get out much. I don’t know what I’m doing, either.”

“Staying where you are was the smartest move.”

When he’d been in the Dark World, he’d had no home base, no place to fall back on. John had taken to wandering, which rendered him an extremely vulnerable target. It had been painful. Whatever passed for days, curled up in trembling terror as he heard monsters cross above him. Sometimes they found him. Sometimes they didn’t.

At least Parker had an office. At least he wasn’t a glowing fucking beacon.

“Where’s he now, John?”

“I thought he might come here, first. He didn’t.”

There, Parker swung an arm on his hip, staring out the window into the streets beyond. “Thanks a fuckin lot, English,” he muttered under his breath. “Few towns over and you couldn’t even swing to get me first.”

John didn’t know what comfort it would provide. “He killed himself to get here,” he admitted. “He left before I could – I could tell him how to make a gate. I doubt he’d want to kill himself somewhere so public.”

From Parker’s face, it was no comfort at all. Parker turned to him, jaw dropped. “Jesus. So – so –where now?”

That was the question. “England?” John expressed doubtfully.

It wasn’t as if Arthur had ever told him details. To be told about what happened at all had been a gift that John promptly thrown back in his face. Arthur had opened up since, but rarely about his past. Locking it all away was more comfortable. But Parker was a human, had always been, and they’d been friends for years. Surely --

“England. Does he, did he …?” Curiosity outweighing his frustration, Parker leaned forward to squint out the window. “Did he have someone there?”

Fuck. John heaved a sigh and leaned back against the desk. “He never told you anything?”

“He told you?”

Though Parker clucked his tongue in some mild annoyance, genuine hurt was reflected in his eyes. John could understand jealousy on an existential level. For months, he’d been jealous of Arthur’s control of his own body, that he could move, that he could talk, that he could be a person. This was different, but John … well. He was sympathetic.

“We were in the same mind,” John explained to the opposite wall, each word careful. “And never had a moment’s peace. I think he wanted me to understand him.” No. “Understand who he thought he was.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes. He regretted telling me, later.”

Parker stayed quiet for a second longer. When he spoke again, something had shifted between them.

“I don’t think he wanted me to get him at all,” he finally admitted. “I don’t know. A guy comes out and tells you he has a bad past, then you know he’s started to come to terms with it. A guy doesn’t tell you anything about his past? Well, then. Getting information out of Arthur was like prying teeth, and I – I don’t know. I’m no dentist.”

“I can understand.”

“He’s my best friend, course he is. But some days, I got the feeling that he’d just up and bolt the second I pressed too much. So I didn’t.”

“He might have.”

Not for the first time, John wished that he’d known Arthur before. The sort of man he’d been. He wasn’t so proud as to say that they would be friends if he hadn’t been trapped in Arthur’s head for months on end … but. He wanted to know what Arthur was like before his life was fucked up. If he had been human, then maybe …?

“So,” Parker eventually said. “Where do we start?"

“We?”

“Uh, yeah? You think I’m just going to sit on my ass?” Parker held out a commiserating hand to John. “I already spent months of my life looking for that jackass. Might as well find him again.”

John looked at Parker’s hand, and then at Parker.

This was a trick.

Parker sighed, frustrated. “Look. I don’t like you, either. You killed me twice, and I’m not looking for a strikeout. We got nothing in common and you’ve got a mean goddamn heart, pal.”

John’s lips pursed.

“I’m not saying we’re friends. Saying we both have a friend, both we want to find. And the, uh, the friend of my friend is a friend.”

“What.”

“You wanna find Arthur. We don’t gotta like each other to do it together.”

John could only assume that Arthur’s trust in him was as much a mark of merit as any living being could receive, in the eyes of Parker Yang.

What was more, it wasn’t a bad point. Half of the horror of the Dark World had been due to John’s isolation – cut off from the whole of himself, alone, confused. Parker might not have been an expert, but he was company. For the first time in months, John found himself in sore need of it.

He tried not to think of the last time he’d taken Parker’s hand. Parker took his gloved hand and gave it two firm shakes, while John got his cane back underneath him. “Okay,” he eventually agreed, quiet.

If Parker wanted to find Arthur to rescue him, fine. His purpose necessitated him to find Arthur, too. John ignored the anger stoking at the bottom of his heart.

“Great.” Sarcasm laced Parker’s words. “So, Arthur went across the pond in the real world. What do we do here?”

That wasn’t a bad question.

John took a step towards the window of the office.

When he’d first awoken in Arkham … well, he’d only managed to get glimpses of it.

It had taken Arthur time to learn how to have John see with his eyes. His first instincts had been to snap his eyes towards movement and sound. Only after some time of being together had Arthur moved his head more subtly, more naturally, to allow John to see the situation at hand. He had gotten very good at it, to the point where John would not have to tell Arthur to turn the page as they read together.

Such was not the case in his office. Arthur’s attention hadn’t been drawn to the window, and John had larger things to be dealing with. He’d heard sounds, though, waiting for Arthur to wake: A backfiring car, a racing bicycle, boxes being moved. The murmur of the everyday. No sounds of violence or torment. It had fascinated him.

There was no such comfort now. John could not see the other side of the street. Only the barest patch of slimy cobblestone was visible outside the window in that strange darkness - an always eternal feeling that the universe was deeply unsafe, but certainly, surely, it could be no longer than a moment.

If there was any brightness to be had, it was up above. The sky had to be a few shades lighter than null, because John could see black stars shining bright down on him. Punctures in the fabric of this world. Something in their very visage seemed hostile; he had to fight back against the urge to avert his eyes.

John had vague memories of hurrying along when he could feel them shining down on him. Perhaps it was only paranoia, perhaps that was how the world worked, but it brought up some animal fear in John nevertheless.

As he watched, one or two of the stars would blink out. He did know the cause of that. The sky was too dark to see the gargantuan, horrific creatures from every conceivable reality. John remembered peering out from whatever godforsaken crevice or hole he’d managed to find for himself and catching the odd glimpse: a veiny wing, a curling tendril, viscera dripping from teeth.

If he were unlucky, he would more than see them. That it was impossible to die in the Dark World was a fact John was confident in.

Parker lingered at his shoulder, looking out the window too.

Better, John realized with a start. This is better.

“Eat an elephant,” John murmured, somewhat dazed. “One bite at a time.”

“Oh, what the hell,” Parker returned.

***

He didn’t know how long it took to reach the docks. Parker was the primary navigator. With knowledge of Arkham, he had a much better chance than John did. Still, there was hardly such a thing as safe in the Dark World, and they sported a few more cuts and bruises than when they’d started. At least they were mostly from fleeing.

Comparative to his previous experience, it’d been a walk in the park. The company helped. Not being adorned in a practically glowing gold robe helped even more.

“Going to become a fucking priest after this,” Parker hissed behind him. “Those are Catholic? I can be Catholic. Whatever gets me the hell away from – what even was that? Fucking – horns on its wings …”

“Ssh.” They were coming closer to the docks. He could hear water lapping against concrete, some distance away.

At least they had passed by nobody.

John hadn’t been lying, when he said he didn’t know what kind of person was put to the Dark World. Before Parker, he had never met another sent there. He’d seen creatures here. Some even looked human, by sight and sound. All had been hollow. There was nothing in them but senseless violence and destruction. He had not known meaningless movements, meant purely for joy or recreation, until he had come to Earth. Only horror and death lurked in whatever lived in the Dark World.

Their few attacks had come from the crawling creatures that lingered in gutters, or the small winged beasts perched in windowsills. Small, at least. John was grateful for that.

They had made it to the docks with all their limbs intact. Nothing bitten out of them.

Okay. Okay. John’s eyes scanned the edges of the shipyard, where thickly knotted ropes trailed off into darkness. They would have to find a boat. Something small, something that they could pilot for … however long they needed to. Something with a fucking map, presumably, though they had no stars to chart their direction … and, given Parker’s confusion in getting them there, no guarantee that the geography was at all the same.

Two hearty thumps at his back made John jump. He growled and looked towards Parker.

“Look up, bruiser. Something’s weird.”

Oh.

There was.

He had been focusing close to the edge of the water, trying to plan their approach. Up above, a beacon called for him.

Him, specifically.

Jesus fucking Christ.

The Yellow Sign stared down at him, glowing in gold. It shone so bright that he could see what its canvas: a gigantic ship made of rusted metal. Long streaks of yellow dripped down from it, like the perpetrator had hurriedly scrawled the intricate sigil and ran off.

What was the symbol for the King in Yellow doing here?

“What’s that for?” Parker asked, sounding a thousand miles away.

John could feel the tendons jump in his trembling hand.

Certainly the King wouldn’t come here willingly. If it had been so easy for him, then he would have come to collect John when he needed. But to see the sign scrawled like that, so easily and openly …

“It’s, um – it’s a symbol.” Unhelpful. “An occult symbol.” Technically true. “It has three arms, all branching out from one singular, eye-like point. One appears to be almost like a question mark, the others --”

“Nobody gouged out my eyes on the way here,” Parker said, impatient. “Is it yours?”

His neck cracked with how fast he turned around to face Parker. “How did you –”

But Parker’s hands were already up. “I only know one guy. Two guys, I guess, and one of ‘em’s named the King in Yellow. That thing is yellow."

Not … an unfair point. “You’ve never seen it before?” He insisted, surprising himself at his urgency.

“Uh, nah. Not that I can remember. Like I said. Not a fan of occult stuff. So what’s this mean, your symbol being here?”

“I … don’t know.”

“Well, is that the boat we go to?”

It did hold some curiosity, John had to admit, but he scarcely had time for curiosity here. Rationality had to supercede, and … but ...

They had little sailing experience, between them. To be put on a boat, to sail an unknown distance, nothing to guide their way – the only advantage they had was that they wouldn’t die doing it. A ship that large might have crew, though god only knew where they were going. Perhaps that symbol was a sort of allegiance. John did not know if his fledgling ties to the King in Yellow were enough.

“We should at least investigate,” John said, standing up. Parker joined him, a touch uncertain.

“Finally,” his companion said. “Something more in my wheelhouse.”

*

Boarding the ship hadn’t been difficult, and they’d soon ducked into an inner corridor to avoid the black stars and winged creatures above. John was scarcely an expert on ships, but something about the structure and utility seemed militaristic. Every step of theirs seemed to reverberate through the entire ship. Even at a distance, he could hear the metal groan, and that he couldn’t be sure if the noise came from their own footsteps or someone approaching was maddening.

Traveling as one body had been more expedient. John found himself wanting to snap at the man behind him for every heavy breath or scuffed shoe – and found himself wanting to snap internally, trying hard not to let the tap of his wooden cane be heard by passersby.

“Tsch –” Parker grabbed the back of his coat. Startled, John’s cane came down hard on the floor. He sent a hostile look in Parker’s direction, only to find him pointing at the nearby open corridor.

Some sort of control room. John couldn’t even fathom a guess as to the purpose of all the levers and buttons were. His mouth opened automatically to describe what was going on, but Parker’s hand was a steady reminder that that part of him wasn’t needed anymore.

Translucent forms twisted their way around the room. For the most part, they looked like a heavy field of ghastly yellow fog. As they watched, though, John could see them occasionally twist into almost humanoid forms: a hand reaching for a lever, a face reflected in a porthole, the outline of a military boot. Impossible to estimate how many were in that room, all hovering as they were in the mass of fog.

“Jesus. What are they?” Parker asked, letting go of his shirt. He took a step forward –

(Had Arthur inherited his recklessness from Parker? Or had they simply met in their mutual recklessness?)

And it was John’s turn to grasp him by the back of the jacket. “Don’t.”

“You think they’re dangerous?”

“I … don’t think they’re fully in the Dark World. I don’t know if they can harm us,” John went on, “But we shouldn’t disturb them.”

He wasn’t terribly confident that the ship was of this world, either, and given they were standing on it …

“Uh, stuff’s beeping,” Parker said, gesturing to the monitors. “It looks like they’ve got the ship in working order.”

He could see where Parker was going with this, but … “Do you know how to set course on a ship?”

“How hard could it be?” Parker tossed, almost casual, as he strode away from the control room. “They were putting kids on these ships during the war. And look, there’s a sign here, it’s up this way. Come on.”

Eager to get away from the ghosts, John supposed. He stared and watched them a moment longer, seeing their strange limbs melt in and out of the fog. Something about their faces seemed unusual, transparent as they were. Almost … flat.

Not much could be done about it here. John ducked his head and followed Parker up the metal walkway.

Halfway up, the eternal groaning of the ship took on a more urgent pitch – that didn’t alarm John so much as the moving did. Parker’s hands shot out to grab the opposite sides of the stairwell; John’s chest thumped against Parker’s head painfully.

“Fuck, did we –“

“Fuck,” John growled.

In a nearby porthole, John could see that the ship had – in fact – started to set sail. They were already leaving behind the docks, the last of them encased in darkness. “Guess that made our decision for us,” Parker muttered underneath John’s chin. “Aye-aye.”

Amidst a sailing ship, they followed the signs towards the navigation room. They passed a handful of more open doors, each containing its own yellowish miasma. Enough that they wouldn’t win against a fight, though John wasn’t sure what losing would be like. John supposed they could always be tossed overboard, to be torn apart over and over for the rest of timeless eternity, but that wasn’t worth dwelling on.

The navigation room held similar dials and buttons, the monitors glowing faintly in the darkness of the room. Large windows enclosed surrounded the exterior walls, looking across the deck of the ship – and nothing beyond. They might as well have been sailing through the void.

John stood in the doorway. Another room surrounded by windows, overlooking a sunset-kissed shore. A man sitting on the windowsill, one leg swinging idly, hair still mussed from sleep and half-dressed besides. Arthur throwing his head back in gentle laughter.

He was still going to kill him.

But. There was no denying the pang of faint longing.

“Oh, shit. Come take a look at this.”

Sentimentality. John growled under his breath. Tightening the twine holding his hair back, John crossed to where Parker was pointing.

It was a map of some kind. Their position was given by a red dot – a dotted green line pointed them halfway across the monitor, landing somewhere John didn’t recognize.

“It’s a map of the world,” Parker suggested, and – oh. Right, yes. He knew that. He was moderately confident in that. “And I think this –” He pointed towards the other end. “That’s our destination. We’re already headed for England.”

Alarm seized John’s nerves, just for a second, and he took a sharp breath. “Why? How?”

“Why are you asking me questions? I don’t know a goddamn thing that’s going on. We’re on a ship with your name on it, with a bunch of ghost people, heading to the exact place we need to be. Sure. Okay. We deserve a win.”

John dimly wondered if that had been Arthur’s line of reasoning, too. His mental stability had remained remarkably intact through all of their journey together, considering.

“I’m already dead.” Parker muttered, examining the monitor further. “Really don’t see how it can get – oh. Huh. There’s something here, come take a look.”

He did so. Just as Parker said: an edge of paper stuck out from a slit between the metal monitor and the counter. Another mark on it, one that John didn’t recognize. It prickled in the back of his brain, much the way that his own or Shub-Niggurath’s had. He flipped it over and began to read the elegant, sprawling cursive.

“ ‘Out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more: it is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.’

A very special hello to my most favorite idiot, the eternal walking shadow, hail to the ragged king!

Do you like the gift? Your boyfriend got it just for you.

Sorry I couldn’t see you in person! Thought it might cause a bit of a shock. Give Parker a kiss for me, and a thousand apologies for wrecking his car.

☺ - K”

John flipped the letter over. Nothing on the other side.

Kayne was here. Kayne was in the Dark World. Not only did they have the Dark World itself to contend with, Kayne had decided they hadn’t quite suffered enough.

Even worse – Kayne had clearly gotten to Arthur first.

The sound of Parker’s fist pounding against the counter captured his attention. “God damn it!” He hissed, snatching the letter from John’s hands. He read it once-over, as if John had forgotten something, before tossing it to the side. It fluttered to the floor. “Fuck. Jesus, god damn.”

“What does it mean,” John mumbled. “Arthur got it for me?”

“I did nothing to this goddamn guy. He plucks me from whatever afterlife I was in – and at this point, bruiser, I don’t even care if I was in Heaven or Hell, could probably argue either – thrusts me back into the world like a goddamn stork with a basket, and then he wears my body like a cheap suit. And now he’s back here?”

“Arthur doesn’t even know the symbol for the King in Yellow. He – he’s blind. He wouldn’t be able to recreate it.”

“There is no fucking way a jackass like that can be alive for eons and nobody sticks a knife in his back yet. What is his goal here? What’s he taking us to? Art?”

Arthur’s name brought John back to attention, staring at Parker. Parker’s brows were drawn together in frustration, gripping the edge of the counter like he might fall over without it.

“What’s his game?” Parker demanded, meeting his eyes. “What’s he want? Come on, you two are basically cousins. What’s the end goal?”

“I …” That was the problem with it all. John couldn’t speak for Kayne, whoever Kayne really was. “There is no point. We – they live without bound, Parker. They do whatever amuses them, without any grander meaning. For him, this is only a diversion from immortality. His control here could be absolute.”

“Fan-tastic.” Scoffing, Parker thrust his hands in his pockets. “What every person dreams of being. A god’s plaything.” He looked out towards the window. “If nothing’s going to kill us in the next ten seconds, I need some haunted air. Jesus fuck.”

Frustrated, but not violently so. Parker stalked past him, his shoulder brushing against his arm. John heard the squeaking of the metal stairwell as Parker descended to parts unknown – then again, there were few places he could be.

John stood there a few moments longer, and came to no other answers. He found that he would like some air, too.

Finding the deck wasn’t difficult; he passed no more of the spectral sailors on his way out there. Nor did he find Parker, but that was probably for the best. Historically, he didn’t have the softest touch with keeping Parker calm.

Arthur could.

… He missed Arthur. He was still going to kill him, when he found him, but he missed Arthur so much that it ached. Arthur would continue to carry onward, even as a sword hung over his neck. He could even manage to find some humor in it, sometimes.

What would Arthur say now? Come now, John, don’t be down. Our transportation’s all sorted! You really don’t know what a relief that is in Arkham, or some other equally obscure reference to Earth culture he hadn’t had time to experience.

He sat on the edge of the deck, his legs hanging over the side and thumping against the metal exterior of the ship. It continued to sail through the night. Though John heard the water parting against the ship deep below, he couldn’t see it. Only the black stars guided their way, and whatever lurked between them. John kept his gaze on wherever the horizon would be.

There was nothing he could do for Arthur now. If Kayne had gotten to him first …

Arthur was resourceful. More resourceful than John supposed he’d given him credit for.

He hoped Arthur was okay. He hoped Arthur had found his parents, at least, and he hoped they’d comforted him like they would comfort a child.

John leaned forward until his forehead rested on the metal railing, still staring into the fathomless night.

John felt like he hadn’t seen him, really seen Arthur, since before Parker’s second death. That last night before the Deep Ones arrived, when Arthur had been planning their futures. And John had urged him to bed, to get his rest – if he could do it over again, he would have stayed up to speak with Arthur the entire night. He would not have missed a single moment of it. He could go over memories now, but he wanted more than memories.

Hm.

Behind him, a squeak made John jump. He looked to the side and saw that Parker had re-appeared, jacketless. “Hey,” he said, voice flat.

John returned the tone. “Hey.” He went back to resting his head against the cool metal.

Unsurprisingly, Parker moved to sit next to him. He folded his arms around the metal railing and stuck his head between the gaps to look further out.

They sat together in silence.

Even more unsurprisingly, Parker was the one to break it. “Hey,” he started again, still looking straight forward. “You wanna hear a story about Arthur?”

Chapter Text

Arthur awoke in a familiar bed, though one he hadn’t thought about for a long while.

By the time that Bella had died, most of their things were already packed for their trip to America. Arthur hadn’t had the heart to unpack them for months after her death: even then, only for objects that he’d come to need. Almost all of her personal belongings remained packed away.

Eventually, they would all be returned to Daniel. He’d kept a few sentimental pieces for himself – and for Faroe, he hoped, eventually.

Though his attitude towards the man was …. complicated, there was no doubt that he would not have survived the first while without Daniel’s assistance. It was through Daniel that he’d learned how to change a diaper, how to rock Faroe to sleep, how to soothe her when she cried. Daniel had raised Bella on his own, too.

That scarcely led to any feelings of camaraderie between them. Any of the good will Daniel had for his granddaughter hadn’t translated to Arthur, but they had worked together like two men with one goal.

Arthur knew Daniel blamed him for Bella’s death. It seemed stronger than belief – a universal fact of nature. Had Arthur not been in Bella’s life, Bella would still be sitting in the front pew. Arthur agreed.

At the time, Daniel kept that particular line of thinking tucked away, but it came through in the other lectures. Some of them were welcome (he ought to get a housekeeper, he ought to submit his compositions for publication, he ought to unpack because moving to America had been a fool idea in the the first place).

Others were not. Those would result in the sort of shouting, angry fights that made Arthur confident he’d lost Faroe’s last remaining grand-relative in her life, and yet, Daniel always returned. Terrified that he had taken away most of Faroe’s family before she was even born, Arthur meekly welcomed him back.

Still. At the beginning, even with Daniel’s visits, his home had felt like a sanctuary. Or a prison, depending on the type of day. The world had stopped when Bella died, and he felt it ever-more-keenly from inside. The world outside his front window seemed artificial, like he we were watching a play be put on every morning – but plays and theatre couldn’t hurt him, at least, and Arthur thought he could not stand one more ounce of hurt.

In retrospect, was there any wonder that he’d fled here, after putting on the robe?

The knowledge granted by the robe had proved too much. He heard it first in the back of his skull – one whisper, then ten, then hundred, a thousand, a million whispers all telling him of reality, of dreams, of the difference between the two, of the matter of the difference between the two, of all that he’d wondered and all that he’d thought, of the banal realities of life and what could only be achieved by the grand terror of the Dreamlands, of the pointlessness of human life and drive when the only thing of real value was beyond their reach in perpetuity --

And Arthur had quit. Arthur had given a polite farewell, left the stage, and fled to the wings.

He did not know whether it was a dream or memory or genuine reality, or whether the difference mattered anymore. He did not know what part of him was left in John’s vessel. If any.

All he knew was that he was home. He was somewhere safe, if in a place where Arthur had never ruminated on death more.

Arthur sat up.

Brown eyes stared back at him in the mirror, alert and questioning. The face seemed less familiar than it ought to have been, a young lad of no more than twenty.

No. He’d been twenty-one, hadn’t he?

Cautiously, Arthur pulled himself up from the bed and approached the mirror. He had not seen his face as such since Parker’s death. Though John’s descriptions had been quite thorough, too, he was surprised by how readily he’d forgotten the details … and to hell with what he looked like, before all this.

Gone were the gunshot wounds, the stab wounds, the twisted bulging skin from poorly-set bones, the burns, the signs of starvation, the twisted black scars of the Deep Ones. Gone were the yellow-amber eyes.

God, he used to keep his hair so short.

With trembling fingers, he reached up to pull at the fringe of his hair. A tug of pain at his scalp, so light as to almost be a tickle. Arthur didn’t look well-rested by any means, but he looked … well. He scarcely looked like Arthur Lester.

“W-what?” He whispered out into the ether, and was greeted with nothing. His eyes fell to his hands, noting his fingers. All ten of them. His little finger seemed as it ever had been, all of his fingernails healthy and pink.

Behind him was his bed still, unmade. Like most of the larger furniture, they’d planned on leaving it here. Travel was costly and laborious – to America, no less, and with a newborn.

What a fool idea it seemed, now. The sort of plan two young hopefuls would dream up, nothing but feathers in their heads. Of course they could move to America, of course Arthur could become a world-famous composer, of course Bella would start her garment-making business, of course they could do all that and keep on top of a newborn. Of course they could, because they were young, invincible, and foolish.

She had gotten to stay in the bed so little – only towards the end of her pregnancy, only to have Arthur close by.

Arthur remembered how mocking the bed had felt, after. His fragmented memory started to slide together in his mind. In America, he’d stayed in a single bed until the PI office, whereupon he shared one with Parker. That had been better, even if they kept their physical distance.

Then there’d been John. Holding John in his arms, feeling John whimper and shake in his sleep, quietly coaxing him back to unconsciousness.

Hell. Arthur saw tears in his eyes before he felt them.

Again, he missed John.

(“This is an adjustment. Alright? There’s nightmares, there’s – there’s vulnerability. You’re not in my head anymore, and believe me, that’s … that’s a lot to get used to.”)

Stuck in his own head, now. He supposed.

A singular sound shattered through the empty home, banishing all other thought.

A baby’s cry. No – a sound that he knew anywhere, heard in his dreams every night.

His baby’s cry.

Arthur ran. He wasn’t quite used to this body – nor his eyes, for that matter. Nausea welled up in his stomach at the sudden blur of motion before him; he instinctively squeezed his eyes shut as he felt his way among familiar walls and open doorways. Soon, soon --

Faroe’s room. The nursery.

They hadn’t decorated it overmuch, in preparation for their move. Over the months, Arthur would retrieve Faroe’s things out of boxes. It felt like a slow defeat, but it seemed kinder than letting Faroe sleep amidst towers of packed things.

The latter made it feel like Faroe had not been wanted, like she’d been an unacceptable burden in their lives, like Arthur’s heart had not been utterly and entirely hers from the moment he held her.

He opened his eyes when he entered. Boxes were stacked in the corner, still, the old wallpaper peeling back on the walls. Only a table for changing, a rocking chair, and a crib betrayed the purpose of this room.

Arthur crept towards the crib as Faroe’s wailing grew louder, certain it was a trick, certain that it was his mind devising a way to crack itself in two, certain that he was finally being punished, properly punished, for all that he had done.

Instead he only saw his daughter, a few months old.

Thin blond hair covered her head; she momentarily stopped her wailing to stare up at him with deep brown eyes. To Arthur’s surprise and delight, her hair had darkened when she grew older – to something resembling both his and Bella’s own. He couldn’t see it now with her chubby infant cheeks, but Arthur would soon realize that she’d inherited his nose. Well, before he’d broken his.

His Faroe. His precious, precious Faroe.

A mad sob escaped from his throat, the sound more liable to find its bedfellow in a barnyard than human society. Even as Faroe cried, Arthur fell to his knees in front of the crib, his fingers encircling the thin wooden bars.

He broke for a moment, crying so hard that he thought he mightn’t ever stop. Arthur had seen Faroe many times in his dreams, often without life, like his mind no longer thought him worthy of beholding his daughter as she had been. Never as realistic as this.

His baby. Christ, his daughter.

To say that Faroe had pulled him out of a dark place was technically correct, but not the point of things. That made Faroe seem inanimate, a human manifestation of a light preserver. In truth, Arthur adored her – he saw the light of humanity within her, frank curiosity and genuine hope, light and love and so, so much laughter. That he was tugged along out of the depths of his despair seemed only an afterthought, caught up in the great whirling eddies that were Faroe Lester.

He had wanted to change the world for her. Up until then, the world had felt hostile at its worst and indifferent at its best.

His parents, gone. The mother of his child, gone. Any hopes or dreams that Arthur had had were up in smoke. Arthur was not going to let that stand, not for someone who had so much of her life to live.

Arthur had gone back to work. He had gotten a housekeeper. He had shown Faroe what gave him joy, and he had promised her that she would never suffer as he had, that he would make her as happy as she made him.

And then.

Faroe still cried. Primal paternal instinct finally overrode his emotional anguish, and Arthur rose on unsteady legs. “Faroe, sweetheart,” he cooed, voice thick with tears. “Are you hungry? Wet? What do you need, my love?” A chuckle bubbled out of the back of his throat as he held Faroe, warmth pressed up against his chest.

So tiny. So tiny. That had been Arthur’s primary thought for hours after her birth. How could she be so tiny?

Not wet, at least, and too young to be teething. Arthur cradled Faroe in his arms as if he’d done it only yesterday, exiting out the nursery and retreating to the kitchen.

The fridge contained about what he remembered. The food of someone who constantly had to remind himself that he needed to eat to live.

Arthur would attend church on Sundays and leave Faroe with Daniel after, to allow himself time to go to town and procure supplies – food and formula. He’d long since stopped believing in anything Daniel had to offer spiritually, but Daniel also provided his time. The least he could do was sit in the back of the church with Faroe in her Sunday best.

Keeping Faroe in one arm, Arthur clumsily put together a bottle and began to warm it. “Ssh,” he whispered quietly, bouncing her as well he could. “Ssh, alright. Dad’ll feed you. It’s alright. You’re so hungry, aren’t you? Oh.”

This was familiar, too. How many times had he gotten up in the middle of the night, stumbled for Faroe, stumbled for a bottle, and fed her while falling asleep in a dining chair?

He should have appreciated it more.

He tested the bottle against his wrist and hummed in satisfaction. Arthur retreated to the living room and sat on the windowsill, one leg dangling off the edge of it. Faroe latched onto the bottle and began to drink hungrily, her sobs quieting to nothing.

She looked at him with a surprised and slightly curious expression as she drank, like she wasn’t quite sure what this bottle was meant to do, but alright, Dad, if you say so, I trust you.

Arthur chuckled and rested his back along the window frame.

One of the aspects he’d adored about this house, and one of the aspects he’d missed most when he moved, was the large window overlooking the back field. They had little ones in the front, but looking out onto the street never held much appeal. He liked to sit just here, showing Faroe the grand field. Arthur fancied he would like to live somewhere similar in America. Somewhere with a large field with plenty of little hills. Somewhere like where he grew up, where he’d had a thousand little adventures on summer afternoons.

He wouldn’t let himself be bitter now. Not while holding his daughter.

Outside the window sprawled knee-high grass as far as he could see, rising to meet the cloudy gray sky. A few butterflies flitted aimlessly around; every so often he saw something small and furry dart in and out of the grass. How beautiful that was. If the front window was a play, then the back was a painting.

“Not a bad place to live, Faroe,” he told his feeding daughter, smiling gently down at her. “Things could be much worse, couldn’t they?”

He looked down at his daughter, at her warm, pink-tinged face, and – and …

And nearly a decade’s worth of dreaming about her lifeless body came back to him.

As much of a gift as this was, Arthur knew what led him here. His mind was hiding here from the horrors outside, and no matter how much he might like it here, it wasn’t real.

… But that scarcely meant he had to leave.

Did it?

For one thing, Arthur didn’t much know how. He was bound to John – the King in Yellow – the vessel that once held the spirit of a delusion god. To leave this comfortable home meant to inflict his mind onto unfathomable knowledge, and he didn’t think he could survive that.

For another …

It was comfortable here. He had Faroe, here, even if it wasn’t real. So what if he stayed in this house for the rest of his days? He wasn’t harming anyone, he – he –

The others.

Somewhere, out in the real world (or whatever the Dark World purported to be), his loved ones were suffering. Including the very real Faroe. God.

Arthur looked down at his daughter again, considering his options. To go out there and obliterate himself seemed foolish. Perhaps … perhaps, even hiding here, he still had some sway over the vessel he inhabited. It had been utterly lifeless without him, after all, and would he not have some impact?

He did something that he hadn’t done in many years. Arthur bowed his head. In quiet, solemn words, he began to pray.

To a different God than the usual – and he doubted the King in Yellow would appreciate his beseechment much. But if this vessel could hear him at all, if it could understand him, if it listened to him …

“Please,” Arthur begged. “You are the body of my old friend. I – I’ve filled your vessel with a spirit, so please, just listen to me. Please save the people I love. Faroe …” His hands tightened around his daughter. There were others, but she was just a lost child. “P-Parker, a-and …” His parents, already gone. “Bella. Bring them to me, won’t you?”

From there, he would have to make another plan – but getting them all together, and keeping them all safe, was the first step.

Faroe began to fuss, pulling away from the bottle. Arthur took it away and pressed Faroe against his shoulder.

“Go,” he whispered. “Go. Keep them safe.”

*

Quartermaster Davies did not want to speak with the Coxswain, nor the Captain. What was going on seemed so singularly odd, and utterly impossible besides, that it seemed foolish to even bring it up.

The HMS Refuge had left port and almost immediately found themselves caught in a terrible storm. They were still working to recover their electronics from the power surges, in truth, and so they had resorted to pulling out old astrological maps to find their way back to the mainland. They didn’t even have far to go, intending on joining the German blockade as soon as possible and put this whole damn war to an end.

Then why had they been bobbing about in the Atlantic like a rubber duck for two days?

What was more, Quartermaster Davies had been looking at the old star charts. He and the Coxswain were the only two trained in such matters, given Davies’ responsibility in steering the ship when the Coxswain was otherwise occupied.

Why, in the Queen’s good name, were they heading west? They’d gotten no word about America joining the war at all, much less on the side of the Germans. But, certain as he could be, they were heading further away from the main continent.

Others had voiced their concerns. They didn’t know the depths of it, but they did know that they’d been out on the open ocean for two days and Germany was simply not that far.

It was time to have a question, he supposed, not that he particularly looked forward to it.

Davies lingered in front of the navigation room door. Perhaps, he thought with some lingering hope, perhaps they’ve been relying on the equipment fried from the storm. Perhaps they don’t want to go to war, as much as any of us. Davies’ true passion had been the stars above, but now, he couldn’t look up without seeing the massive weaponry affixed to their dreadnought. Seemed like they could shoot the sun out of the sky with such a weapon.

He’d opted to do this at night, when the others had gone to bed. Would be less of a spectacle that way. Davies wasn’t sure why he kept thinking of it as such. A spectacle. God, he did hope it wouldn’t be a spectacle. As the stars twinkled behind his back, Davies knocked once on the door and entered.

Well. That was … something, certainly.

His gaze was first drawn to the star charts, now affixed to the wall in no particular order. On each one, a peculiar mark had been slathered on. All the same: an eye from which three curved lines erupted, some curving almost unto themselves, others nearly not at all. They looked as if they’d been smeared on with oil, or perhaps ink, but in either circumstance, long lines dripped down from the marks onto the metal floor.

The Coxswain had curled himself over a lump of metal that Davies didn’t recognize. The scent of acrid metal and burning plastic filled the room, making Davies’ eyes sting and water.

What on Earth …? They had been out of port for a matter of two days, no more, and the Coxswain had certainly been of sound mind then. And the Captain! Davies had served under Captain Mettles before and thought him eminently practical, borderline utilitarian aboard the ship. Not in a dozen years would he tolerate defacement of the star charts, much less whatever the Coxswain was doing.

And there was the Captain, sitting on one of the chairs. Like a child, he’d hooked his heels onto the lower rung of it and swung lightly from side to side. A book was held carefully in his hands. Though he’d known the Captain to be a voracious reader, if somewhat esoteric, he had to confess that he’d never seen that book in his collections before. It looked old, thick red leather that would certainly not fare well in the salt air.

On the open cover, he could make out the mark. It was the same mark that adorned the star charts now.

“Captain …” Davies gaped, then cursed himself for his lack of professionalism. Perhaps he ought to have called upon the medic. This was clearly a problem of his nature.

“Davies. I have been reading the most compelling book,” the Captain muttered, expression dead. He flipped the page.

He stepped forward. At this new angle, he could get a better look at what the Coxswain was crouched over. Even so, Davies couldn’t quite say what it was. It almost looked like a mask, though what use one could have with such a horrid, grim-looking thing, he didn’t know. Where had he gotten the metal for it? They had no lack of it on the ship, but it happened to be busy with holding the ship together.

“W-what is the book about, Captain?”

What Davies wanted to ask was what all of this was about, but the Captain’s look was so intent – no. More than intent, it was bordering on obsessive. He turned the page. “A most fascinating king,” he whispered. “In the most fascinating city.”

Davies took another step forward. He wasn’t sure if he dared snatch the book from the Captain’s hands. Perhaps a fever? He was no doctor, but fever could manifest as some sort of delirium. “But it is more than a king,” the Captain whispered, “And it is more than a city. It is more than all, Davies. It is what we could never be. What we could never conceive of. As we are but ants to them, I have seen what are but gods to us.”

“We need to adjust the ship navigation.” Perhaps it was better not to listen. Perhaps it was better to simply re-adjust. “We’re heading towards the west, Captain. Towards America.”

“Yes. Yes, that is what the King has told me.”

He was right in front of the Captain, now. Perhaps it was a touch of the fever. Perhaps something going around the ship – perhaps something in the food. Davies had felt perfectly fine before entering the ship, but something about this situation had rendered him quite ill. His eyes kept getting drawn to that odd symbol on the wall. Was it twisting before his eyes? No, no, perhaps the fever …

Davies reached forward and put his fingers on the book, intending to take it from the Captain’s grasp. “And what has the book told you?”

Jerking once, the Captain met his eyes. They were shiny from fever, and yet, there was some excited energy to him.

“Let me show you.”

From behind, the Coxswain pressed the still-scorching metal mask against his face.

Davies screamed – at first in shock, and then in agony. He could hear the sizzling of his own skin. Even as the Coxswain pulled away, the mask remained fused to his face. Davies dropped to his hands and knees, trying in futility to rip it away, to do anything to get the pain to stop –

In some dim corner of his mind, he was aware of the Captain (fellow believer) holding the book (call to action) and walking to mechanism for the PA system.

The words that came out of his mouth acted as a balm to his pain, soothing the aching burn almost at once. It was still present … at least, he could smell the cooking flesh of his own skin, could feel his pulse pounding against every pore … but it bothered him little. What use was mortal pain against what glory the King promised?

“Along the shore the cloud waves break,

The twin suns sink behind the lake,

The shadows lengthen

In Carcosa.”

What pleasant words. What a soothing picture. That was where their true service would begin, surely, or …

A small whisper sounded in the back of his mind. Davies could scarcely contain his joy. Words from the King himself – and how little he’d already contributed, and how more he had to go …

“Go,” the King whispered. “Go. Keep them safe.”

Chapter Text

“What?”

“A story. About Arthur. C’mon, I promise it’s a good one.”

John squinted as he stared into the darkness, trying to pick apart Parker’s motivations. Was Parker trying to condescend? To lie? For what goal? And why –

“Look,” Parker sighed. His legs were stretched over the side over the side of the boat; he’d folded his upper half through the railing. This close, John could again see the bruises at his throat … and they always made him slightly more inclined to give Parker a chance.

“Unless you wanna talk about the Yankees did last night, we don’t exactly have a lot in common. In fact, as far as I can see, we have exactly one thing in common, and his name’s Arthur Lester. I got stories about him, I knew him for years.”

John … supposed that was true.

“And … I don’t know. Consider this an olive branch, whatever.”

“Why?” Why was Parker intent on having them like each other? It couldn’t be the furthest thing from John’s mind, and his face still ached from their altercation in the office.

“Because I found my best friend holed up in a love nest with a grumpy asshole –” John made a noise not dissimilar to a duck in the back of his throat. “Which is about the 20^th weirdest thing to happen to me in the last week, and also, we’re a team now, John. We don’t have to like each other, but we shouldn’t be at each other’s throats.”

“I’m not,” he muttered. Whether that meant he didn’t have a love nest with Arthur or whether he wasn’t at Parker’s throat or both or neither, he didn’t clarify. He didn’t know.

“And if you don’t wanna even try? Fine. Believe me, I am the resident expert in working with people with more pricks than a courthouse. We can just sit here, quiet as mice, and whatever will be, will be.” He heard the rustling of Parker’s shirt as he shrugged, stretching further against the railing. “Just thought I’d offer.”

Kindness. Or … expediency, whichever.

Besides. John did want to know. The sort of man Arthur had been, before … he hadn’t talked about it, and John knew better than to press. He thudded his heel against the exterior hull of the boat, listened to its creak in return, and finally nodded. “Okay.”

Parker was smiling.

Humans were incredibly strange.

Thrusting both his hands out through the railing, Parker gesticulated with a flourish. “Let’s set the scene. Picture this, my demon pal. Arkham, beautiful 1928. Everyone’s talking about sliced bread, Panzram, and the Yankees winning their third World Series thank-you-very-much. Yours truly has just been denied from joining the Arkham Police Department, because nobody is mistaking me for an Englishman. So, what’s a guy to do? He sets up his private detective agency and eventually picks up the saddest looking man in the world as a partner.”

Hm. John swung his feet against the exterior of the ship again, as if by response. Somehow, he expected that it was more complicated than that, but Parker didn’t linger overmuch. He wasn't particularly interested in any parts of the story that didn't have Arthur in it.

“We get going for about a year, and English is, y’know, but he’s not bad at it. We have this one case, right? Missing lady. You get a lot of ‘em in Arkham, sad stuff. We get hired by one of her friends, but get this, during the course of the investigation, we talk with this lady’s father.

And he’s completely non-concerned. Real jackass. She’s been going out, dancing with so-and-so, told her that she’d wind up in trouble and now look – you haven’t been part of the human persuasion all that long, but trust me when I say that you run into this a lot. Out of the corner of my eye, though, I can see Art’s boiling like a thermometer. He …” Parker’s lips pursed. “He got like that, sometimes. A temper.”

A temper. Yes, John was all too aware of Arthur’s temper. For a time, he’d wondered if his own had leeched through the barrier between their minds. That he’d had it before John’s arrival was scarcely a comfort.

“With the dad giving us zilch, we’re plumb out of leads. Art says he’ll call the client up, tell them the situation, let us know if you hear anything else. Fine, I want a coffee anyway. He turns the corner for a phone booth and –”

The sudden slap of Parker’s hands together made John twitch.

“Gone. Bolted. Doesn’t come home that night.”

Oh.

John remembered waking up, the day he found Arthur’s note. The out-of-space feeling, like the entire world had shifted an inch to the left and rendered John entirely helpless. Could Parker understand –?

“Whatever, that’s not exactly unusual for Arthur. I start doing the rounds.” Oh. Parker held up his hands and began to count. “Bars, back-room liquor shops, stuff like that. Then you start hitting up the hospitals, and then morgues –”

“Wait,” John interrupted, disconcerted. “Arthur doesn’t drink. Why check the bars?”

The thread was jamming under the throat plate. Parker shook his head to clear it and blinked rapidly at John. Almost meekly, he said: “Really? He doesn’t?”

“Only to sleep. He hates the taste.” A pause. “He used to gag.”

How odd it was to see Parker so relieved, like any of that mattered now. Parker’s head hung low between his shoulders. “Oh, thank god. I, when I saw him in Innsmouth, I just thought – I mean, Jesus, no offense, Bruiser, but I’ve never wanted to drink more than when I’m around you. At first, I thought he’d just … holed himself up somewhere, ready to finally drink himself to death. With company, apparently.”

John frowned. “Well. He didn’t.”

“Glad to hear it. I told him, I – right before the demon summoning ritual, I told him I only saw him drunk the one time. Told him that I saw him cry right after. He believed me, John, it was surreal. I don’t know, I saw Art drunk … a hundred times? Two?”

“You lied to him?” Irritation laced up John’s back. Of course he didn’t care, not really, his anger far surpassed a little lie … but fuck Parker for lying to him, when he didn’t even remember to correct him. Like Arthur’s memory wasn’t cracked enough.

“Yeah, well – look. It was like God granted me a perfect opportunity to keep Arthur off the booze, and I took it. Wanted to give him whatever encouragement I could to stay away.” Both of Parker’s hands went up in mock surrender. “Kill me. Make it a home run, send me up to the angelic court, and I’ll sort it out there. I’d do it again, too. You didn’t see what I saw. He was drinkin’ to fill a hole that couldn’t be filled.”

“Didn’t you try to help him?” John thundered back, tension rising. His hands tightened on the metal railings. “Or were you just using him, because he was a better detective –”

“Whoa! First of all, fuck you. Second of all, I was his goddamn friend, and before you fire off that licorice-whip mouth of yours again, I’ve killed exactly zero of Arthur’s other friends, so I’m coming in top of the scoreboard.”

Even with frustration saturating Parker’s voice, there was little of the heat John had noticed with Arthur. Parker intended to shut him down. Parker was not trying to fight.

John … found that he didn’t want to fight, either. What would it prove? That Arthur deserved better?

“You’re not human, you wouldn’t get it. I tried to help him, but he never wanted to talk. Best I could do was distract him. Keep his hands busy. I don’t know why he was in pieces when I found him. Hell, I still don’t know. But he never wanted to fix himself. So.” Parker shrugged his shoulders. He relaxed against the railing again. “I’m just a guy, John. I might be from Brooklyn, but I’m just a guy.”

John didn’t know where Brooklyn was, but he could understand being just a guy. Hadn’t he seen Arthur in abject misery for a week after his coma? Hadn’t he desperately wanted to fix everything, but not knowing how?

“Didn’t lie about everything, though. I did only see Arthur cry the once. You wanna let me get back to the story, or are you gonna ask why I didn’t personally pry every bottle out of English’s hands?” At John’s non-answer, Parker went on. “Great. So, nobody’s seen my sad friend. Nobody’s cut him open, either. I start to get worried the next day, because he’s never been gone for more than day. I’m walkin’ down the street to the police department, because it looks like the postman’s delivering his own fuckin’ mail, and I … I see him.”

A faraway look had entered Parker’s eyes. John tried to imagine it, himself. They’d seen Arkham so little. God, if they’d had more time …

“Well, I hear him first, I guess. A door opens in an alley and I see this sad sack get tossed on his ass. Like he’s made of nothing, he leaps to his feet and starts pounding against the door. Both fists, all his strength, just swearing with everything he’s got. And I think, well, there he is.”

Oh, Arthur.

“I didn’t think I made any noise, but he catches sight of me staring anyway. And it’s … I swear, I saw that face he made in my dreams. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a guy so angry. ‘They have the girl in there!’” Parker’s impression of Arthur was eerily accurate, in a way that made John’s chest twinge. “Damn you, aren’t you going to help me?” His voice dropped to his usual. “Nice to see ya too, pal.”

Sarcastic as he might’ve been, there was some genuine introspection in his voice as Parker went on. “You know, I never thought about it, but – I really didn’t hesitate. Arthur was drunk as hell, raving like a madman, clothes all torn up. It was just … well, we gotta go help this girl. He just has something about him, I guess. Magnetic, maybe.”

He did. Growing fond of Arthur had never entered his mind. Memory or not, John had had eons of keeping himself separate from humanity. Arthur, entirely unintentionally, had managed to nudge his way in. How long had it taken? Days? Hours?

“So, both of us, we break down the door and get down to the basement. What do you know. It’s a cult. Big fuckin’ surprise, in Arkham. They got this girl in a white dress, tied to a chair at the front of a bunch of robe-wearing cultists.”

“Did you rescue her?”

Parker snorted. “Oh, we got the shit kicked out of us. I’ve lied about the number so many times that I can’t really remember how many there actually were, but suffice to say, me and Art were well and truly outmatched. Made enough of a noise that the girl managed to get out, though, so. Happy ending.”

To demonstrate, Parker hooked one finger on the inside of his mouth and pulled back. John could see that he was missing a tooth, far back in his mouth. “You ever wonder why Arthur has a crooked nose? That’ll be why. Some robe-wearing cultist smashed him right in the face.”

“I thought that was how all noses were, at first.” Why was he talking? John volunteered the information before he could help himself, even if it made him seem weak, stupid, naive. “I saw him, in the mirror. And then I saw … the maintenance man. Eddie.”

“Former boxer. Yeah, I can see why you’d think that.” Parker tittered. “Huh. Not a bad deduction, honestly.”

“What did you do after?”

“Well, someone had managed to get Arthur good with a knife, so we went to the hospital. Not ten seconds after we managed to get him stitched up. We’re sitting in the room, adrenaline’s wearing off, and I just – can you even blame me for being pissed, John? We rescued the girl, sure, but I’d been worried like hell for this guy. I start going off on him, like I’m his mom, and I expect him to start firing back, and he just …”

Parker was looking towards the horizon. Up ahead, unlit beasts curled around the black stars in the sky. The water seemed so far below; from here and upside-down, his symbol looked like a child’s drawing.

“He just starts to cry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry …”

It was too easy to imagine.

John wished he could hold him. He’d never hear this story with Arthur present, he knew, but he wanted to hold him.

“Freaked me out, Arthur’s not that kinda guy.” Parker confessed, softly. “And he’s still drunk, so I just – we go home, he goes to bed. Never did figure out how he found that girl, but Art’s got his ways.”

“You never talked about it after?”

The corner of Parker’s lip twisted. “Surest way to piss Arthur off was to press him on something he didn’t want to talk about. I figured … we were both alive. We got the girl. What could I say, seriously.”

Some uncertainty crossed Parker’s face, an odd gloom that John didn’t often see.

“Can I tell you something? Don’t breathe a word of it to him. Not because it’s a deep dark secret or anything, just – I think it’ll upset him.”

Well.

What did John have to lose? They had yet to even find Arthur. And if John was going to kill him, then falsehoods didn’t really matter.

Besides. He found that it was … oddly refreshing, to talk with someone who really cared about Arthur. Most people didn’t give a fuck, and they hadn't exactly had time to make other friends.

“Yes.”

“I told Arthur that I never thought he killed me, not actually, not him. But.” Parker bit the inside of his lip, hard, and went on. “Look, he never talked about himself. He kept more secrets than banks keep loan slips. Sometimes I wondered if ... if I pressed too far one day, he would just decide to cut his losses. Bolt. Kill me, so I wouldn’t chase him down, ‘cause he knew I would.”

Concern made John’s brow furrow. Arthur wasn’t that type of person; of that, he’d rarely been more confident. “Did Arthur seem like the sort of person who would?”

“I wanna say no.” Parker seemed disconcerted by the thought. “Arthur was my best pal. He was a good guy, John, he worked harder than anyone I’d ever met and if you could make him laugh, you knew he’d die for you. But when a guy keeps so much of his life in shadow, you end up wondering what he’s hiding in there.”

“Okay.”

“I just –” Agitated, now, Parker went on. “I just don’t want you thinking that I, I was scared of English or anything. Maybe it wasn’t like how other people operated, but we made it work. I didn’t have to know everything about him to trust him, and I –”

“Parker.”

He’d reached over to press his hand against Parker’s shoulder. Parker didn’t shy away from it, though his gaze did snap to John’s own. He stared into Parker’s dark eyes, seeing the frustration within. Desperate to explain himself – desperate to explain how they had worked, even if he didn’t quite understand himself.

“I understand,” John told him.

Parker broke into a nervous grin. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess you would, wouldn’t you?” He shifted John’s hand off, not unkindly. “That’s – yeah, I guess that’s the story. It’s a neat story. I always double the amount of cultists and leave out the hospital part when I tell it at the bar, though.”

The backs of his heels swung against the exterior again, only to be met by a returning creak of the hull.

“It’s a good story.” Captured what he enjoyed about Arthur – though it could have done with more poetry-playing, perhaps a piano. Still, to learn that his indomitable spirit had always been present was a relief.

Unfortunately, it only served to make him yearn for his friend’s company more. He settled his head against the gray railing again and sighed.

Perhaps they only had Arthur Lester in common, but … perhaps that was enough, as a start. Thoughtfully, he swung his legs back and forth, enjoying the rhythmic, drum-like sound.

“Wait. Bruiser, stop for a second.”

John did so.

Next to him, he saw Parker carefully thump his heels against the hull. There was the familiar reverberating echo, spilling out into the dark night, but –

Oh. Oh. Yes. John could hear it, now. It was faint, a slight disruption in the usual smooth sound. He tried it on his own side, catching the noise again.

With a grunt, Parker shifted himself onto his belly. He leaned over the side of the ship, reached down as far as his arm could manage, and knocked thrice.

There was no denying it. Three knocks returned. The hairs on the back of John’s neck rose.

“Shit.” Using the rail to pull himself up, Parker stood. “Someone else is on the ship. Someone with a goddamn body.”

“Parker. It may not be in our best interest to –“

Parker was already walking away.

Jesus fucking Christ, he took it all back. Retrieving his cane, John got to his feet and went after him. Silence was less of a priority – and Parker certainly didn’t seem to be taking care for it.

Parker didn’t know what was here.

“Look, I know where you’re coming from,” Parker reassured, “But if this thing were hostile, then I doubt it would be playing knock-knock with us. Maybe it picked up another poor forgotten soul. Maybe it even has answers. We can’t just assume that everything here is hostile.”

What was wrong with mortals and thinking everything in the universe revolved around wanting to be their friend.

Easily catching up to him, John put a hand on his shoulder and yanked him back. “We have to assume that everything here is hostile!” He snarled, feeling like he had had this exact conversation before. “I have been here before, Parker. I have seen what the Dark World holds. There is nothing here that wants to be your friend, there is nothing here that’s your ally. There are only monsters who take pleasure in cruelty and torture.”

“Well, with an attitude like that, no wonder you’ve got people lining up to be your pal. I’m checking it out. You suntan.”

He was gripped with a powerful urge to toss Parker over the boat. Perhaps it was good that he’d been forced to co-inhabit a body with Arthur – he doubted he would be able to resist that urge half as often with him.

Both of Parker’s hands went up. “Look. The thing obviously knows we’re here. I’m not saying that we walk right up and introduce ourselves, but we should know what we’re up against.” Hmmmm. “Then we can prepare? If we do need to attack?”

That. That was not a terrible idea, all told. John was not pleased with the idea of growing closer to a monster that may be lurking aboard the ship, but they would be on this ship for some time. If they were hostile, an attack seemed inevitable.

“Quietly,” he whispered with intent. “Don’t let them overhear.”

“Aye-aye, Captain.”

The mocking salute was decidedly un-familiar, and John didn’t like that.

Together, they went below decks once more. They walked single-file down narrow corridors, peering into open rooms. Every so often, they saw the fog men industriously keeping the ship running. Other doorways led to only empty rooms, portholes looking out into the night. John startled himself once, certain that the porthole was looking out onto some large creature, but it was only one of the lifeboats tethered outside the hull.

In front of him, Parker was keen to continue the investigation. He crept as quietly as a mouse, keen eyes flicking back and forth before continuing onward. His sense of direction was better than John’s was, and he found himself trusting Parker knew where they were going.

“I think …” Parker stopped. This open doorway led into a storage room, packed high with wooden boxes. Some dark, gritty substance covered the floor. Emblems of organizations John didn’t recognize were stamped across most of them in red ink. “I think this might be it.”

They both stood in the doorway, listening. Something was scratching against the metal floor, light enough as to almost be overtaken by the noises of the ship. The noise on the hull couldn’t be caused by rats. John put a hand on Parker’s shoulder, keeping him steady, and stepped inside.

The floor was … wet. John suspected that it’d been covered in dry sawdust, once, but he could see droplets leading in between a gap of the package boxes. Had some poor creature pulled themselves up out of the water to find shelter in the ship? Something that might lash out when attacked?

He held one hand out behind him, bidding Parker to stay where he was. A very soft rattling noise came out from somewhere behind the boxes, and John’s mind drifted to those vague memories of the Dark World, what could possibly be …

Oh.

A small girl crouched behind the boxes, little more than a toddler.

She wore what looked to be a modified pillow-case, tied in thick knots at her shoulders. Even still, it stretched to her knees. Her hair was darkened by water and made tiny puddles around her feet. In her blue-tinged hand, she held a half-broken pencil, drawing child-like shapes in the mess of sawdust – but as John approached, she looked up.

Her lips were blue and her face deathly pale. The blood vessels in her eyes were enlarged to bursting, but even so, John could see the curious, familiar brown irises staring back.

It was exactly like seeing him again.

(“No, I mean. Occasionally, I’d catch their reflection staring back – if we held up something shiny, walked past a window. I know that I was in control of your eyes, but it felt … it felt reassuring. That we were on the same team.”)

She shrieked at the sight of John, the pencil clattering to the floor. Faroe scrabbled backward frantically and wedged herself between an empty gap. Though partially obscured by darkness, it was a child’s attempt to hide. He could still clearly see the outline of her face, staring back at him in terror.

John couldn’t even summon air in his lungs, much less words.

Faroe.

The terror in Faroe’s face was reflected in John’s mind. For reasons that he couldn’t explain, he felt a bone-deep terror at the sight of the little girl. His hands were shaking, and when he felt another presence at his shoulder, John stepped back at once. It took the rest of his strength not to flee from the room, from the ship, to hide himself in the deepest crevice forever.

“Oh my god, it’s a kid. Hey! Hey, hon. It’s okay, it’s okay.” Parker went forward to crouch at the gap. “We’re like … we’re investigators? Kinda like cops. Your mom or dad ever tell you to find a cop if you’re lost?”

“F—” John bit his lower lip, choking on her name. “Faroe.” He sounded like broken bellows. “Her name is Faroe.”

Whipping around to face him, Parker’s expression was all questions. “Okay,” he said, uneasy, looking back to her. “Faroe, huh? Could you come on out here? We’re gonna help you find your mommy. Or your daddy.”

“Daddy?”

“British!” Parker marveled. “Yep. We’ll help you find Daddy.”

That seemed to convince her. Cautious, Faroe stuck her head out of the gap first.

Parker flinched hard at the sight of her. “Looks like you had a swim, huh?” Parker sounded like he were making a valiant effort not to let his voice shake. Faroe didn’t seem to listen. Fully standing, she seemed a hair under three feet tall. With the water rolling off her, Faroe looked as if she were melting. “Nice to meet you. My name’s Peter, but my friends call me Parker. That up there is John.” He extended his hand for a shake.

Faroe’s eyes flicked over to meet his own. John resisted the urge to cower – and, for that matter, to cry. He didn’t know why such an urge overtook him, but he took a step back, as if he might be able to melt into the wall.

“My name’s Faroe.” She spoke uncertainly, in the lightly garbled pronunciation of toddlers. Instead of shaking, Faroe tentatively put her tiny hand in Parker’s own. “Faroe Less-ter.”

Parker looked like he’d just swallowed his tongue. As it was, he froze to the spot.

With practiced determination, Faroe said, “I am three years old.” She held up five fingers.

How many lost, frightened children Parker had had to work with in the past, he didn’t know. The number must have been substantial, because Parker shakily pushed past his shock and flashed a smile at her again. “Yeah? I’m twenty-five years old. And John? He’s at least fifty.”

Faroe’s tiny eyebrows knit together as she looked up at John, trying to assess the age of a being who had existed since memoria. Whatever calculation went through her mind, she seemed to reach the conclusion that fifty seemed right, actually.

“And I think I know your dad. Arthur, right?”

Faroe tipped her head to the side. “Daddy?”

“She won’t know his name,” John growled. Though she might not have heard his words, she did hear his tone, and Faroe whimpered. She tried to pull her hand away from Parker, but Parker’s thumb closed over her fingers before she could manage.

Fuck. He lost the impulse, and regret shot through him painfully. “I’m sorry,” he said, earnest.

Parker went on, after a slight glare in John’s direction. “We’re actually looking for him, too. And I know he’s definitely looking for you, buttercup.”

Was Parker … good with children? Because Faroe giggled at him, and John wasn’t sure why.

Then again, from Parker’s words … he could scarcely imagine Arthur summoning up a smile to joke with children, to try and make them laugh. Not so soon after the death of this little girl. To save them was one thing, but to let himself enjoy being around children again – well, he knew Arthur. That was an unacceptable joy in his life. Let Parker handle the children, he could imagine Arthur saying.

“You tired? Let me pick you up so I don’t lose track of you. We’ll have a chat and see how long until we find your daddy, okay?”

To this, Faroe seemed willing. Parker grunted as he put his arm around her. She seemed to be the age where children did not slot neatly onto the hip, where the carrying technique seemed more similar to a sack of potatoes than a human child. Still, she seemed comfortable enough, because Faroe let her head drop onto Parker’s shoulder. Exhaustion, John could only assume. She still continually dripped water, saturating most of Parker’s clothes immediately.

Parker met his eyes over Faroe’s shoulder. A fucking kid? He mouthed, shocked.

Before John could answer, a mighty crash nearly sent them both off their feet. A colossal noise of shearing metal and agonizing crunch sounded from somewhere further up the ship.

The entire room rocked to the side, sending the cargo tumbling over its side. John caught himself with his cane against the floor, but a falling box caught Parker at the knees. He lost his grip on Faroe.

No!

Without thinking, John lurched forward to catch her. He over-compensated – Faroe was practically thrown into his chest. She screamed in terror, locking her legs around his torso and her arms around his neck – on the latter, tight enough for John to be made aware of his ragged breathing. He followed some instinct and wrapped his free arm around her, clutching her safe against his chest, the back of her skull resting against his palm.

“It’s okay,” he whispered. The room settled back to rights, the last of the boxes started shifting. A few had burst open in the ensuing tumult, scattering rations across the floor. “It’s okay. Everything is okay.”

His heart was racing. Holding Faroe gave him a not dissimilar situation to the crevasse he’d explored with Arthur, back in the Dreamlands – having to watch as a broken, beaten man crossed a pathway no more than several inches across.

Of course, they’d fallen then, too.

John’s arm tightened around Faroe. She sniffled against his neck, weeping softly, and John thought that he would kill anyone in the world for her, if she asked. Perhaps it was her importance to Arthur and how much she reminded him of his old friend – perhaps it was her importance to him, in his journey towards humanity. Perhaps this was just a very scared, dead child.

“What the … “ Righting himself, Parker cleared his throat. He pressed a hand to his injured leg, but it didn’t trouble him overmuch. “What was that?”

John shook his head. Outside the window, he saw nothing but darkness. Hard to know whether the sensation of foreboding was from any rational source, or surfacing memories of being alone and hunted.

“That might’ve caused some damage to the boat,” he grunted. “If it’s sinking, we should go above deck. Easier to move.”

Parker stepped over the refuse spilled out on the floor, grimacing. “Sinking. Jesus, you think?”

“I don’t know.” If a note of irritation laced his tone, it was at being asked questions he felt were needless. Still holding Faroe securely, he turned on his heel and left the storage room. Faroe seemed content to hide her face against him.

“She okay?”

She’s dead. She’s been dead for years. She’s been plucked from whatever afterlife she was in and stuck in the worst punishment I could imagine for anyone, much less a child. “She’s not hurt.”

“Good. Good.” And then – “John,” Parker insisted, and John knew what he meant.

John had been surprised to find that Arthur had been a father, once, and he’d known Arthur (in his waking state) for less than a week by the time he’d been told. It had changed his entire view of him, in truth. Whatever identity he’d built for Arthur in his head simply hadn’t been consistent with the quiet domesticity required of raising a child, and he’d been … of course he’d been curious. He’d had a growing interest of many parts of humanity, parenthood included.

It would have been something deeper for Parker, John knew.

“We can’t talk about it now.” Or ever. The details had been a gift, one that he’d squandered immediately, and he wasn’t going to treat it as cheap. “Just – Arthur is looking for her.” Desperately, if he knew his friend. “That’s all that matters.”

“Yeah. Yeah, of course, but – Art’s got a wife? You gotta give me something, pal, I –”

“No. I don’t.” They started on the stairs. With one hand on his cane and the other clutching a toddler to him, John had to move carefully. “When we find Arthur, you ask him.”

“I …” Parker sighed, close behind. “Yeah. Yeah, you got it. Finding him’s most important, and …” With John’s hands full, Parker reached around him to push open the door to the deck. “Fuck me, what?”

A membranous tentacle had wrapped around the deck of the ship. It’d broken clean through the railings, curling the metal steel where they’d been sitting like old wallpaper, and had cracked through the wooden slats of the deck. The tentacle was gripping the bow of the ship as tightly as – well. As tightly as Faroe was grabbing his neck, at that moment.

And what a monster to behold. The tentacle was so darkly purple as to be almost black, shiny and wet-looking. It looked oddly soft, like he could shove his arm through to the other side and encounter no resistance. He thought that, even as he watched the creature’s grip tighten and carve through the sheer metal of the hull. Fluid seeped out of the porous tentacle, a purplish-red goo that had started to spread over most of the deck.

“Fuck,” John growled, stepping out. He looked down the length of the deck and saw another tentacle overtaking the stern. For now, the creature didn’t seem to be overtaking them, but with sufficient strength … the ship could be cracked right in two.

Parker pushed past him in the direction of the railing. His closed fist slammed down on the metal. “There’s more attached to the hull!” He called back. “And – and I can’t see under the water, Bruiser, but it’s something big. It’s – it’s – ”

While Parker struggled for words, the creature leapt into action. The tentacle next to them suddenly seized tight, metal crunching and crackling under its grip. Parker braced himself against the railing – he seemed unable to take his eyes off the side of the ship, practically bulging from their sockets, and John soon saw why.

The creature used the ship as leverage to pull its head up from the cursed depths of the sea, and the head of a massive squid appeared over the edge.

Monstrous. A giant tapered head, the same purplish-black hue as the tentacles. They pulsed in time with the beast, highlighting a spiderweb array of red arteries with every heartbeat. A pure black eye stared at them, set deep within the beast’s head. John could see him, Faroe, and Parker reflected back in the squid’s eye with malevolent intensity.

Gently, John re-adjusted his hand on Faroe’s head, keeping her well against his neck.

Before they could move (and where to move?), John saw another tentacle rise from the water. For the first time, he could see its underside.

It was not the first time he’d seen a massive creature of the deep. He’d encountered one on a boat, with Arthur. Arthur had been unable to see the marks on his body from where he’d been struck, but John was certain he’d felt what caused the massive, circular welts laced across his back.

This was not the same breed of creature from the ship. On this one, John saw … teeth.

Shiny, sharp beads trailed up and down the appendage. It was hard to make out – that the creature didn’t blend into the black sky was a matter of a few shades, nothing more – but it was enough to be certain. It had teeth.

And the tentacle came down, right where Parker stood.

Parker scrambled out of the way, down the length of the ship. John followed close behind, at a sprint. The impact of the tentacle striking the deck of the ship made John stumble forward, but he caught himself and tried to ignore the sound of the ship crunching beneath him. He was aware, from the corner of his eye, of the great mass of the creature moving. Following them? He didn’t know. It was difficult to tell how much sentience the creatures had, whether they were even capable of having targets, or only causing harm to any they came across.

They came to a stop at the midpoint of the ship, breathing hard. The entire structure of the ship was shuddering beneath their feet.

Have to get off. Now.

John looked over the edge of the ship. There, illuminated by that fucking Sign, one of the lifeboats was hoisted, painted in faded green. It hadn’t been impacted by the squid yet, but to say that it looked stable was an overstatement. Either the lifeboat could be hoisted upward, or a ladder could be taken down to meet it.

He jerked his cane in Parker’s direction, jabbing him in the calf with it. “The lifeboats,” he grunted, half-breathless.

Frantic, Parker turned to meet his eyes. “Have you lost your mind? What makes you think those’ll survive out there?”

“It’s going after the symbol.” It all seemed so frustratingly, stupidly clear to him now. Going after the ship with a bright glowing yellow sign on it – about as stupid as wading back into the Innsmouth water while being bitten. “It won’t come after us on the boat.”

They lurched again, this time pressing against the metal doorway leading to the interior. Faroe whimpered against his neck. “Hold on,” John murmured, just to her. “Hold on.”

“Then we’ll be on a goddamn lifeboat in the middle of nowhere, with no way to get back to shore and no navigation. I recognized the symbols on those crates. This is a dreadnought, John. From the war, from – there was a war –“ Parker huffed, adrenaline making him trip over his words. “It doesn’t matter. It’s got weapons. We could take it down.”

“Things can’t fucking die here, Parker.”

“Then we knock it out!” His hands went up in the air, frustrated. “It’s a better plan than a rowboat, John.”

“Others will come after us. If not that, then –”

“A rowboat!” Parker gesticulated madly.

“We’ll find something eventually –”

“A rowboat!”

He was making no progress, but fine. He didn’t need to. “Stay, then!”

John snarled and went towards the railing again, making unsteady progress with the rocking ship. The strength of the creature’s grip made him realize just how fragile the ship was. If it truly wanted to, they could be hurled through the air, and Parker’s plan would be made even more worthless.

He shifted the cane under his arm and put his hands on the railing. Faroe’s grip strengthened in such a way that it genuinely became to impact his breathing, but that was all for the best.

Parker yanked his shoulder back. John growled. “Leave the girl!” He called. “That’s – do whatever the hell you want, but leave Faroe here!”

From this vantagepoint, he could still see the squid. He felt like the squid was watching them, too – black orbs the size of his head staring, entire body pulsing.

His expression must have betrayed what he thought of that, because Parker went on, voice pleading. “That’s Art’s kid, I can’t just – you gotta –”

Exactly. She was Arthur’s child, which was why he’d rather tear this entire ship apart than give her to someone else. Let Parker be an idiot, all the way to his grave – or whatever was as good as death, in the Dark World. He was not going to see the same happen to Faroe Lester.

“If you don’t let me go,” John said, his voice little more than a rumble in his throat. “I will toss you over the side of this fucking boat.”

Parker’s eyes widened at him. He could practically see Parker’s opinion of him shifting in real time – and that was for the better. Why Parker kept trying to act like they were on the same team, that they were treacherously close to friends, John didn’t know. His only friend had ever been Arthur, and Arthur had left, and that was the last chapter. That was it for him.

Parker let him go.

John started down the ladder with Faroe in tow, half-expecting Parker to follow after him. Parker didn’t. As soon as the figure of the man disappeared over the edge of the ship, John didn’t see Parker at all. He climbed the ladder down until his foot met wood.

Hoisted considerable distance above the ground, John could see the mechanism that lowered it. As he crossed … he was no more than a few feet from the monster’s body, edging closer and closer to the lifeboats.

It clung to the bow of the ship like a barnacle on a boat, mostly out of the water. The great pulsating tendrils seemed to grip the metal tight, teeth digging into the exterior hull. A scattering of small holes dotted the metal here and there, places where the tendrils had dug into and fallen off. There, at the bottom of the greater, John could see a gigantic beak: streaked orange and purple, it clicked open and shut, a writhing black mass of tongue just inside.

Fuck.

For now, at least, it ignored them. John hurried to the pulley and started to pull.

Whether Faroe saw the monster, or whether the situation had finally become too much to her, he became aware of Faroe starting to whine as the boat slowly, slowly lowered down to the water.

“Stay quiet, stay quiet, stay quiet, stay quiet,” John found himself starting to chant under his breath. Unintentionally, he found himself in perfect time with a strange mechanical clicking, coming from somewhere in the depths of the ship. “Stay quiet, stay quiet, stay quiet, stay quiet –”

A deafening blast.

The boom came from somewhere in the depths of the ship, firing outward. John hadn’t missed the guns above the ship, but below, he could only fathom what lie there.

A large metal capsule shot through the beast, a waterfall of viscous flesh following it. The creature’s beak opened wide in a wordless shriek of pain; John heard metal pop as its tentacles started to release from the ship …

With its organic cargo lost, the ship started to tip towards the side – bringing them close to the water – metal continued to shear away and all around them, boxes and metal plates and all matter of debris toppled from overboard, and John looked up, and he saw the metal winch holding the safeboats, and he saw it twist, and he saw it snap, and then they were falling.

Chapter Text

It had been very scary for a long time. Now, for Faroe Lester, it was quiet.

She hadn’t seen more than glimpses of the big fish. The tossing and turning of the boat made Faroe feel like she was going to barf up all her insides, so she’d just held her face against Mr. John’s neck and waited for it all to be over, for all the loud noises to be gone, to wake up at home with Daddy and Tessa and –

And it didn’t end up being over, but at least things ended up being quiet.

Mr. John’s breathing had stopped breathing so funny, and he had taken her arms away from his neck. She’d sat obediently in the back of the little boat because Mr. John looked very busy, and Faroe knew to let people be when they were busy. She didn’t understand what he was doing with the big wooden stick with the flat end (as opposed to the big wooden stick he’d carried before, with the curved end).

The big fish was gone. So was the big ship. Faroe couldn’t see too far beyond their little boat, but that was okay. Overhead, black twinkling stars caught her attention. Sometimes she imagined she saw shapes up there, but they seemed meaner than the bunnies and cows she saw in the sky at home.

Faroe was scared of the dark, normally. She had been really, really afraid when she’d first woken up in the bathtub at home, especially when Daddy and Tessa hadn’t come, but that felt like forever ago already.

She couldn’t even remember those yellow glowing people coming by, picking her up, and bringing her to the big ship. She remembered they gave her this dress, which was not as pretty as her other ones, but was very soft. How funny that she hadn’t needed to sleep yet. Sometimes she tried to stay up as late as she could, when Daddy and Tessa had put her to bed, but she was always asleep before too long. Daddy said sleep was important. Daddy said he hoped her dreams were always sweet.

(Her dreams didn’t really taste like anything. Daddy could be silly. Faroe accepted this as an immutable characteristic of Daddies.)

At least they were away from the big ship, which had also been very scary. She felt better with an adult around, even if that the other one – Mr. Parker – stayed back on the big ship.

Mr. John had seemed very scary, at first. His voice reminded her of the voice Daddy did when he read to her to sleep. It was his monster voice, meant for things that lingered under the bed – things with claws and teeth – things that absolutely wanted to eat up little girls, and things that her Daddy promised would never get her.

But Mr. John had helped her, she was pretty sure, and maybe he wasn’t even all that scary to begin with. Faroe stared at the back of his head. His hair was about as long as hers. Shiny, soft, with licks of it standing up in the darkness.

It reminded her of …

Daddy had taken her somewhere, once, but she couldn’t remember the name. She remembered that it was very big and it had a lot of people. She remembered that it was a place that had many … black birds, and her Daddy had used a specific word, she remembered him pointing at them and saying, “Look, darling, those are –“

Ravens! That was it. Mr. John looked a bit like a raven, at least on his head. They had seemed very friendly, and very soft, and she hadn’t been allowed to pet them. Which was unfair, because she wouldn’t even have pet them very hard.

Daddy wasn’t here now.

Very carefully, Faroe stood up in the rowboat. It seemed very big to her, but Mr. John was all curled up in the corner of it with the oar clutched in his hands. He pushed through the water in long strokes. The rowboat sailed further into the darkness. All around them was simple black sea, thick as tar and impenetrably deep.

She could do this. She was, as her Daddy often said, growing up to be such a big girl.

One careful step forward. The boat seemed steady underneath her feet, and she took another with more confidence. Puddles of water collected under her bare feet – from her, she thought, though she didn’t much understand why she never seemed to dry off. She made no sound.

Faroe reached out one pudgy, pale hand and –

Her fingertips had just brushed the back of his head when Mr. John seemed to realize her presence.

Though Mr. John practically threw himself away from her, there wasn’t anyplace for Mr. John to go. As a consequence, he leapt onto the very edge of the rowboat. The oar splashed into her puddle.

Her tummy lurched as the boat began to tip.

Faroe lost her balance, crying out as she fell. The black water swung up to meet her, and –

A burst of pain erupted from her shoulder, as Mr. John moved like a snake to snatch up her arm. It was yanked high, because Mr. John was so very tall.

It hurt! It hurt it hurt it hurt it hurt –

She began to cry, and Mr. John dropped her arm. She continued to cry, not because it hurt anymore, but because Faroe often found it very hard to stop crying when she’d started. Daddy and Tessa were good at helping her understand, but they weren’t here, and that made Faroe cry a little more. She wanted Daddy. She wanted Tessa.

Mr. John crouched in the middle of the boat, so low that he had to stare up at her. He had funny eyes. Faroe didn’t think she’d ever seen white eyes before, and wondered how many eyes colors could come in. The thought proved so interesting that it lessened her sobs into a mild sniffle. Faroe rubbed her fist against her eyes, smearing the wet strands of her curls across her face.

“What are you doing?” Mr. John asked her. Not in a mean way, Faroe didn’t think, but like how she felt when she saw the ravens for the first time. What are you? would have had the same effect.

What was she doing? That was a very good question. Daddy always seemed to know what she was doing, and what was more, he always seemed to know why. Faroe did not. The best explanation she could offer was: “It hurts.”

“Does it?”

Well. “No,” she admitted, and feeling a little silly, stopped her sniffling entirely.

Mr. John kept looking at her, and Faroe didn’t know why. She supposed she must look very silly, instead of just a little silly. It was very silly to cry when nothing hurt.

She wasn’t sure why her hair was so wet, still, and why her fingers looked like she’d been squishing blueberries between them again. Faroe tried to brush some of her hair away from her face, but didn’t quite have the coordination to keep it there. A cluster of curls fell over her eyes, making Faroe wrinkle her nose.

“Wait. Uh, here.”

Mr. John reached into his coat pocket. A present? Faroe quite liked presents. The man at the grocer’s always gave her a sweet when Daddy brought her, and she always said thank you while hiding her face against Daddy’s neck.

What he brought out was a little ball of … thread, maybe, but thicker, and completely black. They had lots of things to make clothes with at home, but they were all mostly shoved away into Daddy’s bedroom in big boxes. Still, sometimes when Daddy wasn’t looking and Tessa was busy, she liked to explore. There were so many colors.

“Don’t move.”

Faroe didn’t. She sat perfectly still on the little bench as Mr John gathered up her hair in one big fist. It tugged a little on her scalp, but Mr. John stopped tugging when Faroe wrinkled her nose at him, and then he began to wrap the twine around her hair.

He wasn’t very good at this. Faroe might not have been old enough to understand many things, but he was bad enough that she could understand his inherent lack of skill. It felt like there was an awful lot of twine holding her hair up, awkwardly lopsided on her skull, but it was off her face. More-or-less. Faroe resolved not to touch it.

“Um. Okay.” Mr. John backed off, sitting on the bench across from her. She blinked up at him. Mr. John had the same expression on his face that she did when she met new people. “That’s … good?”

Oh! Oh. She knew this one. “Goodest,” she said confidently, because it was one of her new words, and she’d made it all by herself. If things were better than good, you made the word a little longer.

Mr. John smiled at her. His smile made him look much less scary. Faroe smiled back.

“Daddy …” Another one of her new words. She wrinkled her nose. “Where’s Daddy?”

“Out there.” Mr. John was pointing out towards the unfathomable black. Faroe didn’t know how he knew where Daddy was from that, but he was an adult. Daddy always seemed to know where he was going.

“Why?”

“Because he got lost.”

Oh. She didn’t know her daddy could get lost. That was a troublesome development, and one that required substantial pondering over. Faroe looked down at her bare blue toes and frowned – almost not noticing as Mr. John reached for her wrist again.

He wrapped the twine around her wrist. Faroe watched curiously as he tied the other end of it to the wooden bench she was sitting on. It didn’t hurt, and there was plenty of room to move, but for the life of her she couldn’t understand why he was doing it. Faroe waved her hand back and forth, curious.

“Don’t leave this boat,” he advised, and took up the oar again.

Well, obviously, she had no plans on leaving the boat. She couldn’t swim yet. Once, Daddy had taken her to the swimming pool. She hadn’t swam, exactly, but she had splashed around in the water somewhat as her father held her up, and that had been quite fun. Daddy had said that she was too young to swim on her own, but later, Faroe, later.

They floated along for some time. Faroe began to grow bored, because they’d been floating forever and there was nothing to do.

Leaning over the edge of the boat, Faroe dipped her hand in the water. It was quite cold. Though the sea itself was darker than she thought water could be, Faroe found that the small amount she was able to cup in her palm was perfectly clear. Maybe a little purple, though it was hard to see against her hand. She found this so fascinating that she investigated it for a while longer, even going so far as to splash her arm around the ocean a bit.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Mr. John’s oar dip in and out of the water. Curiosity overwhelmed her. Why was he doing that? Why did he keep dipping it in the water? Was it some sort of toy, or –

As Faroe watched, the oar suddenly flicked back up. It caused a small splash of water to strike her directly in the face. Shocked and surprised, Faroe dissolved into giggles. She could see Mr. John smiling a little at the front of the boat, though he turned away, like he didn’t want Faroe to see it.

This was better than hiding and drawing on the floor.

She didn’t think she’d ever met Mr. John, or that other man whose name she’d already forgotten. Faroe met many people every day, though. Every time she went to her Granddad’s church, which was a lot, she seemed to be meeting new people. Except they always seemed to know her, gushing over how pretty her hair or dress was. How she looked just like a woman named Bella, who Faroe didn’t know, and how they always seemed a little sad.

Faroe didn’t understand, and Daddy always seemed a little shy, and in that they were kindred spirits. Sometimes she liked to remind him that it was okay to meet new people, even if she’d already met the best person (Daddy) and there was simply no getting better from there.

(Except maybe a dragon. Faroe wanted to meet a dragon.)

Faroe returned back to splashing around in water, not a care in the world. They would find her Daddy soon, because Mr. John was very good at directions, and …

How funny!

There was something in the water. Faroe couldn’t see much, so she leaned over the edge of the boat to get a better look.

Yes! Definitely something in the water, glowing faintly red. She still couldn’t quite see it – but when she tried to push her hand deeper into the water, she was restrained by the string wrapped around her wrist. Faroe frowned and pulled at it thoughtlessly, finding it tied tight.

Oh, that was the purpose of the string. To keep her from having fun.

Wait.

Faroe looked at her other hand for a moment, finding it free and clear of any such obstacles. She reached over the edge of the boat and into the water.

Oh! Oh, slimy, and squishy. Her eyebrows furrowed in concentration, and her fingers tightened, trying to pull the thing up and – ow!

OW!

The weird thing pulled away, but as it shot through her fingers, it was really much sharper than Faroe intended. Faroe yelped in surprise and pulled her hand back up. Blood welled across her palm from the scratch. Ow, ow, ow –

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Mr. John was suddenly in front of her, and he looked – he looked really, really, really angry, and his voice sounded more like monsters-under-the-bed than ever.

Faroe couldn’t help it. She began to cry.

The boat creaked; Mr. John ducked into a crouch again. He was a bit too big to crouch all the way, and his knees were nearly in his ears, and it would have been funny if Faroe’s hand didn’t hurt and if she wasn’t as scared as she was.

“No, don’t – don’t –” Mr. John seemed to struggle with his words. “Sorry. It’s okay. Look. Stop crying. It’s okay. I’m sorry.”

It wasn’t okay.

Eyes squeezed shut, Faroe heard a ripping noise and then Mr. John taking her hand. Something soft was wrapped around her bleeding skin – when she opened her eyes again, she saw Mr. John intently winding a part of his shirt over her hand.

Faroe sniffled.

“It’s okay,” he repeated. “Everything is going to be okay.”

“I-I … I want Daddy.”

Mr. John still held her hand in his own, squeezing the bandage tight. He was frowning. He looked almost sad. Monsters seeming sad was a concept that Faroe had never thought about, and it distracted her enough that she stopped crying entirely.

“I know. We’ll find him.” Mr. John looked right at her with those funny white eyes of his. “I promise.”

Faroe didn’t know that word. Her head ducked to the side, mass of hair and twine flopping against her shoulder. Already, most of her curls had escaped Mr. John’s pitiful attempt. “Prahm …?”

“Promise. It means …” He gave her hand one final squeeze before pulling away. “It means I’m going to find your father.”

“Okay.” Then – then everything would be okay, Faroe thought. Everything tended to be okay, when either Daddy or Tessa was around. Tessa wasn’t around this time, because – as she’d patiently explained to Faroe upwards of a dozen times – she had the evening off. Faroe wasn’t really sure how long an evening was, but it had felt like forever so far. But that was okay. Evenings weren’t forever.

Daddy was somewhere.

Her father had also told her to always say please and thank you, and please didn’t seem like the right word, so Faroe just smiled brightly and said, “Thank you, Mister John.” Mister was a hard word, and ended up sounding like Miss her more often than not, but she was only a small girl and hoped Mr. John would understand.

John smiled back at her, showing wide, white teeth. “Stay in the boat,” he repeated, and Faroe saw something rise over his shoulder, just behind him.

Oh. Oh. She knew what that thing in the water had been.

“FISH!” Faroe shrieked, and John stopped smiling.

One tentacle rose from the opaque black sea, curling into itself at the tip. Like the big fish had been, it was almost invisible against the sky – if not for the faint red pulsing, Faroe might have missed it entirely.

“Fuck –!” Mr. John had leapt to his feet. The boat sloshed dangerously with the movement. Recalling John’s warning, Faroe threw herself to the bottom of the boat and wrapped both of her arms around the bench where she’d been sitting.

She was going to stay in the boat.

He patted down his pockets and retrieved nothing. Instead, Mr. John snatched up the oar and held it in both of his hands. The noise he made, the noise that monsters made before they ate up little girls, would’ve scared Faroe – if she wasn’t already scared from the big fish.

No. She was a big girl. She wasn’t going to cry, she wasn’t –

“She’s just a child!”

As if responding to Mr. John, the tentacle shot forward. Mr. John swung the oar forward to strike it, but the big fish didn’t seem to notice.

It wrapped around the flat edge of the oar until it splintered with a sickening crunch. Faroe didn’t like the sound. She hid under the bench entirely, visible just enough to peek out.

With a swift tug, the big fish pulled the oar away and sent it sailing into the water like it was nothing.

Mr. John kept growling. His shoulders rise and fell as he glared at the big fish. From where Faroe peeked out from under the bench, he could see Mr. John take a single step forward. He took up the other stick, the one with the curved end, and rapped it against his palm.

“Fuck you,” Mr. John growled.

It lashed out again. Though Mr. John made a frenzied attempt to strike it, the creature writhed out of its grip. Mr. John couldn’t do the same. The tentacle curled around his torso; despite Mr. John’s attempts, he couldn’t budge it.

“No, no, no, no, please, I can’t lose her –!”

Faroe cried a lot, but she’d never heard an adult whimper in pain. Mr. John’s white shirt began to stain red. Even if she didn’t understand it all, some part of Faroe’s mind told her that she was witnessing something very, very bad.

Faroe gasped and covered her eyes.

Harder to block out her ears. She heard Mr. John grunt and strain against his bindings, heard a sickening crunch that didn’t sound like wood and didn’t sound like metal. She heard his boots slide against the bottom of the boat, heard the rattling of his wooden cane against the bottom, and she heard –

“Faroe!” Mr. John barked out, ragged, terrified. “Stay in the boat, don’t –”

With a great splash, Mr. John was yanked off the edge of the boat and pulled into the water.

The entire boat almost capsized at the movement. It seemed like half the ocean splashed into the boat before it righted itself, albeit the surface seemed much closer to the edge than it had been.

Everything was silent.

Faroe didn’t move out from under the bench for some time longer. She didn’t cry. She just kept her face covered until her legs started to hurt, and then, slowly, she stood up. Her hands dropped from her eyes, and finally, Faroe looked around.

All around her was still, calm black water. As far as she could see … which, admittedly, wasn’t far. Faroe took a few unsteady steps into the center of the boat.

“Mister John?”

No answer.

Faroe sat carefully on the bench she was tied to. Above, she could see the funny-looking black stars twinkling at her. The boat floated along aimlessly, not even an oar to guide itself. Mr. John was nowhere to be found.

She was a big girl. She was. Her daddy always said that she was so smart, and so polite, and so funny. And Mr. John promised that he’d find him, and he was an adult, so he knew best.

But.

She was cold. She was wet. And Faroe Lester was alone.

She started to sniffle.

***

Faroe couldn’t sleep. She wasn’t sure why she had even tried. Usually, Faroe hated sleeping. It always seemed to happen without her consciously trying, towards the end of her father or Tessa reading to her. Or in the middle of the day, when she had been playing, but Daddy had said that it was time for a nap and he was usually right.

Sleep was weird, though. Faroe didn’t really understand it, except that it made things be different when she woke up. The moon was up when she went to bed, and the moon was down when she woke up. Daddy was sitting next to her bed at night, and Daddy was preparing breakfast in the morning. She could be really very upset right before bedtime, and was just a little groggy after. Sleep messed up her hair and made her teeth feel fuzzy.

Things needed to be different, now. She wouldn’t even complain about brushing her teeth when she woke up.

It was worth a try. Faroe had curled up at the bottom of the boat, in a little puddle of water, and tried to sleep.

She tried very hard. And for quite a while. She even tried to remember stories that Daddy used to tell her before she went to sleep, but it was hard to remember all the little details.

She wanted to go home.

After what felt like an eternity of trying to sleep, Faroe eventually had to admit that maybe it wasn’t her bedtime. Her fingers were also getting quite pruny from the bottom of the boat, which now had a few inches of water in the bottom. Cautiously, she opened her eyes, and as she sat up, she realized something had changed.

It was … lighter. Outside. Oh. Maybe that was why she couldn’t sleep.

Faroe stood. At the sight before her, Faroe’s jaw dropped in awe.

What are you?

The creatures all around the boat …

They all had puffy, pillow-like hats. The colors enchanted Faroe: swirling mixtures of purple, green, and blue, sparkling like her mother’s jewelry. All the colors reflected in her brown eyes, and she longed to be able to reach out and touch one … but they were taller than even Mr. John was. As tall as her house. Maybe bigger.

Hanging from the bottoms of their hats were a half-dozen tendrils of what seemed like pure silver, shining so brightly as to make Faroe squint. The creatures bobbed up and down slowly in the air, their tendrils sinking down below the surface and coming back up.

They seemed so beautifully delicate. Faroe didn’t think she was old enough to understand why things were beautiful. Maybe her Daddy would know.

Maybe …

Faroe nudged herself to the edge of the boat and reached out as far as her tiny arms would go. Her fingers tried to grab for the edge of one tendril, but as the boat moved forward, the pillowhat creatures shifted away. Looking down, she could see flickers of white light in the water. The flashes never lasted more than a second, always accompanied by a soft, high-pitched buzzing.

Hm. She remembered Mr. John’s anger when she’d touched that big fish, and that big fish had ended up taking Mr. John. Maybe she oughtn’t.

Faroe sat back on the bench, the glowing light of the creatures reflected against her pale face. She swung her feet back and forth in admiration of them, these odd, alien-like creatures that hung like tree branches around her.

Daddy probably knew what they were. Faroe wished that she could ask. She didn’t know many animals. The weren’t cats or dogs or ravens or dragons or ants or --

The boat continued to gently part the mass of silent creatures. It was only then that Faroe saw a different light, just up ahead.

Yellow.

Her first instinct were those yellow fog men that had found her in the bathtub, but this was brighter, more distinct. Faroe stood from the bench and approached the front of the boat, as far as the lead around her wrist would allow.

Maybe not the yellow fog men, but a person nonetheless.

She couldn’t actually see its body. Only its robes: yellow and tattered, partially dangling off of him in great raggedy strips. Symbols were stitched into the fabric, but Faroe hadn’t learned how to read yet. The person wore a hood, mostly obscuring their face in shadow … but as they approached, gliding above the water as effortlessly as a swan, Faroe could see they were wearing a mask.

Pale. It had no mouth, and only a slight indentation for the nose, but the eyes were entirely black – and they weren’t happy.

Uh-oh.

Faroe scrambled backward from the middle of the boat, curling herself into the floor. Perhaps if she just closed her eyes and plugged her ears, then it wouldn’t see her, then she could just stare at the pretty pillowheads until her Daddy came back.

The boat tipped slightly.

Faroe peeked between her fingers to see that the robed figure had alighted on the front tip of the boat, though its coat was so long and raggedy that she could not see its feet. That blank mask stared down at her, motionless. This close, she could see the entire person glowed yellow, like pure gold had been woven into the fabric of its clothes.

The bottom of the cloak was encrusted in something dark and red.

Please go away please go away please go away please go away.

Mr. John had told her not to leave the boat, and even if she wanted to, Faroe couldn’t. She thought about what would happen if this creature grabbed her the way that big fish had grabbed John. Would it take the boat right down with her, too?

“Faroe?”

The noise made Faroe tremble, because she recognized it, but that was not her Daddy. Her Daddy didn’t wear masks. Her Daddy didn’t scare her.

“Faroe, darling. It’s okay. It’s okay, I’m here.”

She pulled her hands away from her face. The yellow robed person had stepped into the boat properly, ends of its robes getting saturated by the not-insubstantial amount of water. She couldn’t see its face. She couldn’t see any part of its body. It seemed taller than her Daddy, but her Daddy was also really, really tall in general …

“Daddy?” Faroe whispered.

A long strip of fabric uncurled from within the figure’s robes, extending out towards her. It rippled in the wind, but even to Faroe, the gesture was obvious. Take it.

“Yes, it’s me. It’s not safe here. I’ll bring you somewhere safe.”

Faroe uncurled herself from the back of the boat and stood up. That sounded just like Daddy, but she’d never known him to wear a mask before, and that wasn’t the color of his coat.

But. Who else could it be?

“I’m scared.”

“I know. You’ve been such a brave little girl, sweetheart. I’ve missed you so much.”

She tried to reach for him, only to be held back by the length of black twine around her wrist. Faroe whined in futility, tugging at it.

Her Daddy noticed. Before her eyes, the strip of fabric extending towards her began to writhe and dance. It drifted high in the air, like a leaf kicked up by an autumn breeze, and then shot towards the twine with impossible speed.

Snip.

The twine hung loosely from her wrist.

“It’s time for bed,” Daddy promised, and for the first time in her young life, Faroe thought bedtime sounded very nice.

She reached out and took the edge of the cloak. It curled around her tiny fingers, emanating warmth. With Faroe’s other hand, she began to suck her thumb.

Chapter Text

He came to consciousness at the edge of a shoreline. For a half-second, John expected to roll over and see a lighthouse greeting him. So many of his nightmares had started out this way; it seemed only logical.

Nothing. When John rolled over, he saw only a gray, rocky shore. It stretched up to meet the edge of a forest.

This wasn’t Earth, and no Arthur waited for him here.

The edge of the ocean licked at his calves. He sat up –

Pain.

“God!” John growled, fumbling with panicked hands for his shirt. “Fuck, fuck –!”

Opening the buttons on his shirt was unnecessary. With the slightest bit of pressure, the already ragged shirt simply fell in ragged pieces around him.

Hundreds of small, red holes dotted his torso from the creature’s teeth. Unconsciousness had found him quickly after he’d been dragged under, but not before he’d pulled and wrenched at the tendril with all its might. John imagined it had been the same creature, already grievously injured, because if not – well, if the creature had been at its full strength, John would have awoken in pieces. That the creature had decided to go after him and not the Yellow-painted ship –

Oh.

Oh, no.

John forced himself to his feet. He started to feel himself tilt. Walking was easier than standing still, and so, John began to pace up and down the shoreline.

No sign of the boat. Certainly no sign of …

Panic made his skin crawl, made vomit rise in the back of his throat. Faroe. Faroe. God, no – despite every ounce of rationality in him, John stumbled a few steps in the water, as if he were going to search every last drop for her.

“Faroe?” John called out, not recognizing the tone in his voice. The hollow panic of it all – “Faroe!?”

Nothing. Nothing. His skull felt like it were going to crack in two. This was the closest that John had ever felt to madness.

John didn’t know how to describe his personal feelings for the small girl. The only thing he could say with any certainty was of Faroe’s importance to the world. As they had sailed through the eternal black, it had felt as if the entire ocean centered around her, that the entirety of the Dark World revolved around her. John had just been caught up in the great whirling eddies of Faroe Lester.

But down he went, and down went the feelings, and down went any hope that John had had.

He’d lost her. He’d lost Arthur’s child.

There was nobody to be angry at. There was nobody to accuse, nobody to act like a monster in front of. John didn’t need to convince himself that he was a monster, because – for God’s sake, was there any clearer evidence? He had lost Faroe.

As if in a daze, John stumbled out of the water and sat down in the sand.

He just. He just needed to sit. He didn’t know what to do. He just needed to sit. He brought his knees up to his chest and settled his forehead on top of them.

No tears came, and John thought himself all the more monstrous for it. He’d lost Arthur’s child and he couldn’t even cry about it.

Why had he expected anything different? The futility of it all stretched before him. Why had he thought he would ever be able to achieve anything here? Hadn’t he spent enough time here, before? Hadn’t he known that he had no power here, that every possible odd was stacked against him? That this fucking world wanted him to try, if only for the opportunity to provide new horror? Wasn’t this always a game that he was destined to lose?

Perhaps that was what he deserved. Perhaps this would just be his punishment, forever. John had little knowledge of the afterlife worked, but if punishment were doled out for misdeeds, if something grander than even Kayne’s ilk existed – then didn’t John deserve to be here, more than anyone? Hadn’t he been the monster to begin with, the god that had killed and tortured and made misery just for the fun of it? Perhaps recovery was an unacceptable indulgence. Perhaps he had gone past the point of no return, without even realizing.

Perhaps even trying would even hurt more people.

It had hurt more people. It had hurt Faroe. Arthur. They hadn’t deserved this.

John didn’t want to hurt anybody. Not really, not as a general rule.

Even when he thought of killing Arthur, he didn’t focus on the actual murdering part. He thought only of his anger, and the satisfaction he would surely feel to make Arthur understand how much his leaving had hurt.

But, god. How could he blame Arthur for running away from a monster?

All this trying, and what did John have to show for it? Ruining Arthur’s life, and by proxy, the lives of everyone he loved.

John didn’t get up. He just sat, his forehead pressed against his knees, soaked to the bone. It was only when he heard the sound of someone running along the shore did he look up, already weary.

Oh.

A yellow fog was rolling over the sand, bringing some scant amount of light with it. No – no, it was more than fog, now. A ship’s worth of hazy sailors marching in his direction, walking in eerily precise formation. He could see the buttons on their coats, the hats on their heads, the curves of their bodies. They spread out over the entire shore, a sweeping yellow line to meet him.

And between all of them was someone who wasn’t a sailor, or glowing, at all. Parker Yang, looking harried but unhurt, led the battalion.

The ship had survived. The ship with the giant fucking glowing yellow mark on it had survived.

The ship had survived, which meant that John had made the wrong choice.

John returned his head to his knees.

“Br – fuck, John!?”

He did not want to do this. John stayed silent as a stone, wondering if he simply pretended not to be there, then Parker would look right over him. Parker’s quick footfalls along the sand told him that he was wrong.

Just keep going, Parker. I’m only going to get you hurt.

“Jesus God Almighty, what the fuck is wrong with your – wait.” A pause. “Where’s Faroe?”

John didn’t move.

“John.” Parker’s voice grew more insistent. “Where’s Faroe?”

John didn’t move.

He didn’t move up until Parker took him hard by the shoulder and yanked him backward, shoving John hard into the sand. John was forced to look up at Parker now, to see the mixture of fear and frustration etched onto his face.

Sand dug into the thousand tiny cuts onto his back.

You deserve this. You deserve worse. You lost Arthur’s child. You’ve sacrificed her to an eternity of torment. What the fuck did she ever do to you?

“You got water in your ears? Where the fuck,” Parker asked quietly, “Is Faroe?”

How easy it was to fall back into anger. To fall back into the gentle embrace of the time where John would have decimated a mortal that dared speak to him that way, where he would whisper words of charming madness into their ear until they shoved a knife inside.

What had Parker been expecting. He was a demon, a lost part of an old god. This was what he did. Rebelling against it hadn’t changed his nature, had it? Not really.

And the only mistake he’d ever made was expecting to be anything different. What did gods care for little girls. What did gods care for love.

He was a monster.

“Fuck you,” John grunted.

“F—” Parker practically choked, pressing both hands against his chest. “Fuck me? What the fuck, John, where is Faroe?”

Finally, John stood. Sand fell from his body. He had to keep a wide stance to keep from falling over, but even so, a hard breeze would do the job just as well. With an impassive expression, he gestured towards the ocean.

He couldn’t feel his hands.

“You lost her!?”

John turned his gaze back to Parker, half-lidded. He said nothing.

“I told you. I told you to stay on the goddamn boat, I told you that we would be safer there. These guys –” There, Parker gestured frantically towards the sailors. “Had it handled, something about them wants to keep us safe, I don’t fucking know --”

“So,” John muttered darkly.

“So?”

“So you have a group of spectral soldiers that you don’t understand at your beck and call.” He kept a steady eye on the black ocean. Even the pain on his torso started to recede. Had that black water infused him, gotten into his very soul? A pit had opened up inside him, one that could never be filled. “Hope that works out for you.”

Parker made a noise that was nothing short of livid. He yanked John by the shoulder again, forcing him away from the ocean. John stumbled backward, ready to fall, but Parker kept him upright. “What the fuck is wrong with you!?” Parker demanded. “That was Arthur’s daughter –”

His mind desperately reached for any response. What he grabbed onto bit him back.

Why was this human touching him?

“Get your hands off me!” He snarled. Raising both his own, he gave Parker a hard shove backward. Parker stumbled back and nearly lost his balance, himself. John made no move to catch him; in doing so, Parker had to catch himself.

Parker’s face twisted. It made something dark in the back of John’s mind roar in delight.

Wanted this? Deserved this? It didn’t fucking matter. Fuck this.

He might have had strength and size on his side, but Parker had been fighting with his entire body for much longer than John had. John dodged the first swing of his fist. Taking advantage of Parker’s momentary stagger, he punched hard into Parker’s stomach.

“Son of a bitch,” Parker hissed, and John grinned crookedly. Good. Good. Good. This was for the best, John didn’t know why, but it felt good, this is what he was made for, after all. If Parker fought against him, all the better. That was how the Dark World worked.

You didn’t play the game. You fought, and you stole, and you killed, and maybe, just maybe, you kept the pain at bay for another singular moment.

John had been expecting another punch from Parker, and he prepared himself appropriately. He had not expected Parker to take another tactic together.

Parker hurled himself bodily at John, arm braced length-wise across his throat. It was enough to topple John back against the sand, his skull splashing into the shallows. Like he had back in the office, Parker straddled his legs on either side of John’s chest, and then he started to rain down blows.

John’s head snapped to the left, and then to the right. God damn it, back in Arthur’s head, it’d been hard to get disoriented in the way that having a skull allowed him to. He growled and tried to land a strike on Parker, but in this position, it was child’s play for him to dodge John’s blows.

Fuck. He tasted blood, he smelled blood, and John wished for one part of his life that wasn’t absolutely dripping with it.

A temporary reprieve. John blinked up at Parker, almost in surprise, before he was punched directly in the nose. He heard a sickening crunch that he only dimly registered as coming from his own body.

“Fuck you!” Parker hissed at him. “That was Arthur’s daughter.”

“I don’t –” John spit out blood and got a mouthful of water for his troubles. Though he wasn’t deep in the water, it was enough to soak through his hair, to cover his neck. He had to keep his neck straight, look directly at Parker, to keep it from entering his mouth. “Care about his daughter.”

Mentioning Faroe only made him think of her – a frightened little girl on the boat, utterly unaware of the terrors of the world, giggling and calling him Mister and saying thank you. John fought back against the memory by swinging his hand upward – not in a punch, but to scratch his nails down Parker’s cheek.

Had he done that before? Had he made Parker bleed before? What kind of monster --

Another blow, this time to his chin. It knocked his head back into the water proper, making his eyes burn like fire. “What about Arthur?” He heard Parker demand, voice distorted through the water pouring into his ears.

“I don’t care about Arth—”

Before he could finish, another blow cut him off at the throat. John retaliated with a wild swing to Parker’s head and connected with his temple – it was enough to make Parker retaliate and moan, though when John tried to surge upward, he was blocked by Parker thrusting both hands hard against his shoulders.

Parker breathed hard and stared down at him. John tried to spit in his face, but the distance was too great. He was pushed down, down into the sand, and the sea covered his face, and John realized – all at once – if Parker wanted to – if he pushed a little further – held a little longer – he could drown. Whatever drowning amounted to in the Dark World. It would feel like drowning.

If Arthur had been slower to act in Innsmouth … if he had tried to save himself, just once, just fucking once, then he would’ve died there. None of this would have happened. Arthur would have found Parker in Innsmouth, and there would’ve been no John to kill him.

John’s legs scrambled against the sand, and he managed to swing his arm up just enough to scratch at Parker’s side. Parker didn’t flinch.

“That man fucking loves you, you son of a bitch,” Parker spat. “Don’t you dare say you don’t care about him.”

He could say worse than that. And he would. John surged upward against Parker’s hands, only enough for his face to break the surface of the water.

“I went to the Dark World to kill Arthur,” John sneered. “I want him dead.”

Wasn’t that the epitome of selfishness? Wouldn’t that make Parker understand the sort of monster he was dealing with? Went to the Dark World, attacked his best friend, lost his daughter, and only to kill him. The plan wouldn’t have been unfolding better if John had orchestrated it all from the start. He –

Why was Parker getting up?

John took a deep breath of air while it was granted for him, but pure shock kept him from actually rising to his feet. As it came about, he scarcely had time to do anything, because Parker aimed a kick directly at the side of his ribcage.

Ow. Fuck. He growled and twisted to the side, arms going up to defend himself.

“You can’t!” Another kick, this time to his stomach. “Die!” Another kick, to his chest. “In the Dark World!” One last kick, this time against his head, and the entire world dimmed to a staticky, cloudy gray. “Idiot!”

He wasn’t unconscious yet.

Parker had plenty of opportunity to kick him again as he got to his hands and knees, but John felt no more blows. Even as he rose to his feet, stumbling a few steps, John felt nothing more.

He looked up to find Parker, John’s blood on his clenched fists, staring with fury.

Behind him were the sailors. Each and every one had raised their firearms. They were all pointed at John.

Why? Even in his anger, John had one last rational thought left. Why are they protecting him?

“John, just don’t. This is fucking pathetic. Look at yourself.”

He looked down at himself – no shirt, covered in still sluggishly-oozing squid scars. Blood still trickled freely from his nose, and he could scarcely keep his eyes open without wincing. Pain echoed through his bones.

John took a step forward to Parker.

The safety on several dozen guns switched off.

A hair’s breath away. To hell with this.

“You didn’t know that about the Dark World until I told you,” he growled. “You are a dead human. Worth less than nothing.”

“Uh-uh.”

Though some of his blind rage had dissipated, indignation still kept Parker’s eyes bright. “Uh-uh, you don’t get to say that, you understand? Being dead is a human thing. What the fuck does a god know about being dead? That’s what we deal with. You don’t know a goddamn thing about what being dead is like, because for all the fuckin’ pretty words you say about it, and for all you fuckin’ pretend, you aren’t ever gonna understand. I have tried, and I have tried, and I have tried to make nice with you, but you aren’t ever gonna be anything but a monster.”

It was true. Wasn’t it true? For all that he had tried for humanity – for all the soft mornings in with Arthur, for all the good he tried to do, even for the few times he felt truly connected with the people around him – it always ended in blood.

“Then leave.” John spat a mouthful of blood and seawater on the ground. “Find Arthur yourself. Leave me here.”

“You don’t think I wish I could? You don’t think I wish I could be rid of you? You killed me, two goddamn times, and I have been thrown in with you time and time again. All I wanted was to find my best friend, but you ruined everything.”

John growled.

“But I am stuck with you, because you have been here before, and you know how this place works. If I thought I had any chance of saving Arthur alone, then I’d leave you full of holes in this ocean. You understand?”

He said nothing. The salt water bit at his wounds.

“So here’s how this is gonna work. You’re comin’ with me, and we’re gonna rescue Arthur, and then we’re gonna rescue his kid, and then we’re gonna rescue whoever else the fuck you sent here.” Parker counted on his fingers, before throwing his hands wide out to the side. “And then we’re leaving, and you’re gonna stay here, to rot. I don’t give a shit if your god abandoned you to save the rest of itself. That’s your fuckin’ problem, not mine.”

The hope of it all. The stupid, futile hope of it all made John grin. “That’s patheti--”

“And if you mouth off again, then we’re gonna test the can’t die in the Dark World theory. You understand? I don’t give a shit, John.”

How ironic that was. John looked towards the mass of sailors, almost witheringly. You used to serve me, he thought. You used to follow my every command. Is there really so little of me left? Why have you stuck your claim in a dead human?

He didn’t know, nor did John think he would be allowed to investigate in the near future.

Didn’t Parker understand? He seemed to understand that this was all John’s fault, and yet, he was asking him to come along still.

God, John was tempted to refuse him. To simply sit on the edge of the sand for eternity, or until something wandered along to eat him. How could Parker not know that this quest was hopeless? That what he was saying … it was simply impossible. John doubted they would even see Arthur again, much less rescue him.

He wanted to see Arthur again. He didn’t deserve it. God knew he didn’t deserve it. But …

All roads here led to death and failure. That made choosing remarkably easy.

“Okay,” he moaned, doubling over. He had to catch his breath. “Okay.”

“This isn’t a fucking partnership. This is you doing what I need.”

“Okay.”

“You blew every chance you had to make nice.”

Like he didn’t know? “Okay?”

“Alright.” When Parker dropped his fists, all of the sailors lowered their weapons. John wasn’t breathing easily, possibly broken rib aside. “Alright, then we get each other. You guys, uh – you were, you were trying to show me something before?”

Are we really following the ghosts, now? John wanted to ask, and he bit his tongue so hard that it bled.

“Alright.” Parker held out his hand.

“What.”

“Don’t be stupid.”

Stupid was close to what John was feeling. He looked at Parker’s outstretched hand, and then up at Parker.

“You lost your cane, dipshit, and we don’t have time to whittle you a replacement. I’m not going to get my kicks by watching you stumble through the forest. So. Come on.” He wiggled his fingers. “We’ve got to get going.”

Abruptly, John couldn’t breathe. This, he could attribute squarely to the lump in his throat that had taken up all available space. The salt in his eyes still burned, but something else – something deeper – burned along with it.

If he spoke, then he would shatter. Every part of him was fractured after losing Faroe; it would take only the slightest pressure to completely fall to pieces.

John put his arm around Parker’s shoulder. He didn’t need Parker to support his weight, not really, but it provided just enough counter-balance to keep him upright.

An odd cold radiated off of sailors, making John shiver despite himself. They didn’t seem to acknowledge his presence at all.

One, what John might imagine was the Captain, gave a quick salute to Parker. Parker wasn’t quite meeting his eyes.

In one cohesive movement, they all began to walk. He and Parker lingered towards the back of the group, unwilling to lose themselves in the fog entirely. They passed the treeline easily.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep …

John had been stuck in plenty of forests during his time in the Dark World. Mistakenly, he thought they would provide some cover, some protection. Stupid. Forests in the Dark World were nothing like the forests he’d come to experience with Arthur. Practically different species. The forests on Earth were brightly colored, the sun filtering through them in exquisite ways. Even when they were being hunted and pursued, they were still nice to look at. He hadn’t even realized these were trees on the Dark World.

Rather than move around the trees, the soldiers simply parted through them. The trees thickened into a dense wood. Black-trunked trees stood, some no wider than John’s little finger, some thicker than his chest. Their skyward branches seemed to furl and twine together to form a cover, blocking out even the un-light the black stars provided. All John could really see was the fog of the soldiers; their dim glow provided just enough light that he didn’t walk into a tree and nothing more.

John did not like the dark.

His aversion had started in the Dark World, and only sharpened after he’d woken in Arthur’s mind. Seeing was one of the few things that he’d been able to do. Though eventually he’d taken control of Arthur’s hand, his toes … his primary utility had always been as Arthur’s eyes.

He had taken some comfort in it, in his more vulnerable moments. Perhaps he was cruel – perhaps he was unfeeling – perhaps he was heartless, but Arthur needed him. Even if Arthur hated him and could not stand his voice, Arthur still needed him. He was not entirely held prisoner.

How odd that such thoughts hadn’t troubled him after he’d awoken in a new body. Arthur’s continued presence in his life had never been in question; he’d never waited up at night wondering if Arthur secretly yearned for life beyond Innsmouth. Even when Arthur had been able to grow more independent, even when Arthur hadn’t relied on John for his continued life …

Arthur had been happy with John.

Up until – well, up until …

Up until Arthur had left.

He should have left before John ever had a chance to irreparably ruin his life.

They walked for what felt like days. It was scarcely possible to tell, nor did the concept of days truly exist in the Dark World. Parker’s footfalls and breathing never wavered next to him, and it wasn’t as if exhaustion set in here. Exhaustion from exertion, regardless. John dimly recalled exhaustion in far crueller ways.

They didn’t talk. John had no urge to, and frankly, he didn’t trust what he would say. Every so often, he would glance down, but Parker’s body was too obscured in shadow to read his face.

It provided a very long time for John to think.

With thinking came despair.

Where were they going? Where were they being led to? Only torment and despair awaited them in the Dark World. There was no bright light at the end of the line. Even these sailors’ ultimate purpose was unknown, but this was the goddamn birthplace of despair. At their best, they were toys here. At their best, they were refuse.

John’s gaze drifted down to his feet.

Miles to go …

Why did he keep walking? Why was he fucking walking? John became almost single-mindedly, madly, focused on that one thing. Why did his feet keep moving? Why did he keep going? Why did he know what awaited him at the end of his, and why did he walk anyway? 

His breath turned hot in his throat; John realized he was trying to keep himself from sobbing.

Why did he keep fucking walking? Parker’s light touch to his torso never wavered; if Parker wondered the same thing as him, he didn’t know. Why was he fucking walking?

Stop walking. Stop walking. Just fucking stop.

But what would he do, if he stopped? Simply sat in the middle of this forest, and waited for the just-as-inevitable end?

Walking might not have provided hope. There was none, here.

But so long as John continued walking, he would have the pursuit of hope. He would have the desire of hope, the want of hope. To give up now was to give up even that want, and – and -

Hope was not a thing he’d needed as the King in Yellow. He’d had very little need for any sort of thing that humanity regarded as precious: love, bravery, kindness, mercy, gentility. Hope had become very important to John indeed, and – even if nobody but himself could understand – John did not want to become the sort of person that stopped desiring hope.

Even if it made him stupid, even if it was senseless, even if it was mad.

John kept walking.

That was the point of it all, John supposed. To move onward, to risk hurt in the pursuit of help. He could not change the circumstance around him, but for fuck’s sake, he could not lose all that he had built up. Perhaps he was a monster, but at least he knew enough to realize it.

He would find Faroe, again. He would find Arthur first, and Bella, and perhaps his parents, and whoever else was cursed to be down here. To fall prone into the depths of misery would be a final failure, and John would not allow that. Arthur had not allowed himself that, and he had dragged himself through the fields of hell to see the other side.

Yes. Yes. Yes, it would be –

“Bruis –” Voice scratchy, Parker cleared his throat. “John. Heads up.”

John put his head up.

The sailors had started to slow. He squinted – yes, it definitely seemed like the trees were thinning out. Whether they were approaching the other side, John couldn’t say. Still in the odd, doll-like mechanics of it, they formed a semi-circle around the forest edge. Their guns were held at their sides.

Naturally, his eyes flicked to their leader. Smooth as a snake, his gaze flicked up and down the line of men.

“Ask them to explain.”

“You’ve got it twisted. They don’t listen to me. I think I’m just their battlefield puppy,” Parker murmured back. He stared at the soldiers, something hard in his eyes. John’s eyes dipped down to see Parker scratching at his cuticles hard. “God, they freak me out.”

John looked back, just in time to hear the entire squadron discharge their firearms at once into the clearing.

He reared back, hand going out to fumble for the back of Parker’s suit. Parker was faster than him, striking his shoulderblades against the nearest tree and sliding to the forest floor. John stuck out one hand to rest against a tree trunk.

What the fuck was that, Parker must’ve said, but the ringing in his ears was too loud to make it out. John wrinkled his nose and pressed his palms flat against his head.

Fuck. Even worse when it was his own fucking ears.

After some time, it subsided. Parker had risen to his feet next to him. “Did they … did they hit anything?” He asked.

It had happened so quickly; John simply hadn’t been paying attention. “I’ll go first –”

Parker’s arm pressed across his chest. “Uh-uh.”

Uh-uh? John could only presume, with his new reduced status in Parker’s eyes, that he would be used as the scout – if something dangerous were in the woods, then he’d bear the first brunt of the attack. The strategy didn’t even particularly bother him. He had been willing to be torn apart in the bottom of the ocean; he was willing to be torn apart in the middle of the forest.

“You’re just gonna make things worse. I don’t even know what’s in there and I know you’re gonna make things worse. So,” Parker said, flashing a fake smile and pressing both fingers into his cheeks, “Showbiz smile, we’re very sorry for the gunfire, we’re not with ‘em. Understand?”

John tried to oblige.

“Jesus God Almighty, nevermind. Keep your lips shut.”

Turning on his heel, Parker passed through the ring of soldiers and between the trees. Having not been explicitly told to stay behind, John followed.

His footfalls crunched through the undergrowth. Dry leaves and twigs, it sounded like, though the yellow fog from the sailors obscured his view. It was hard to hear the soft whisper coming from inside the clearing; it reminded him of – it reminded him of ….

The last few moments that Parker had been alive. The second time. Up in the lighthouse, amidst a mess of scrawled chalk symbols. Arthur had been sat on the windowsill; John doubted that he could’ve heard, but he did.

It had been a prayer. He had no hope of recognizing it, but he could recognize the vocabulary. It’d surprised him, Parker murmuring a prayer on that circle, but such as it was.

Together, he rejoined Parker where he’d frozen on the edge of the clearing.

A small massacre was laid out in front of them. Jolted, John realized he recognized those creatures: hounds of a kind, with great mushroom caps growing out of gaping hollows of their body. Their teeth were irregularly jagged and long, curling over their bottom lips. John was well-acquainted. After his encounter with them, they probably been contained more him than John did.

It was their paws (or, paws of a sort) that really made them tricky, however. John could see them now. Fleshy appendages connected the legs of the creatures together. Difficult to know whether the six-odd corpses lying in the clearing were one creature or six working in symbiosis. Whatever it was, it was impossible to see in the dead of night, and John dimly recalled a few hazy memories of thinking he’d escaped before being tripped and sent to the undergrowth below.

They didn’t need claws to tear flesh from his bone. John frowned at the unpleasant memory, before his attention was drawn to the gray boulder in the center of the clearing.

On top of it sat a cross-legged woman. She had on what had once been a blue-and-white floral-patterned dress and a white apron. Blood drenched the front of her bib, thick and freshly red. Though he could not see where her wound was, blood rolled in thick rivulets down the front of the rock and soaked into the forest floor.

He could see her head, bowed. The woman’s brown curls were in heavy disarray, floating around her head like a halo. Her skin was faintly red around the mouth, as if she’d wiped the rest of it away.

Over and over, she repeated the same mantra to herself. It was an accent that John found achingly familiar, and all the gears started to click into place.

“We commend into thy mercy all other thy servants, which are departed hence from us with the sign of faith and now do rest in the sleep of peace: grant unto them, we beseech thee, thy mercy and everlasting peace. We commend into thy mercy all other thy servants, which are departed hence from us with the sign of faith ...”

Chapter Text

“Oh, yes! Up and up,” Arthur cooed, holding the squirming baby high above his head. Faroe giggled with a childish delight. Christ, to bottle that sound forever … “Daddy’s got you, don’t you worry. How’s the view from up there, hm? Ha.”

He brought her back down. Faroe stared at him with those familiar eyes, ever-curious. Arthur hadn’t noticed it in her right away, at least, not until she started talking and walking … but she had always been curious, hadn’t she? Favorite thing to say was why, second favorite was why not, third favorite was please, Daddy. It’d been a constant anxiety when she first started to walk, exploring every nook and cranny of the house.

Desperate to make Faroe feel like she wasn’t lacking anything by only having one parent, Arthur had set to open the world for her: the pool, the zoo, to London, the beach. It really felt like he’d been experiencing those things for the first time, too.

Seeing the world through the eyes of someone so new to it was a gift, one he would not experience again until – well. And John was certainly more poetic than a toddler.

The thought of John made Arthur quiet, cradling Faroe further.

It was hard to remember, sometimes, that this wasn’t real. That he didn’t go out anywhere, that he didn’t do things. Every day was much the same. Arthur would tend to Faroe, and he would the best father that she could ask for, and that was all. He would wake and the formula would be in the fridge again. Faroe would be crying for him. And he would go.

Was it the best thing to do? Was he only making things worse, by just surviving? If he shattered this illusion, went outside and let himself be subsumed by John’s old body …

Then surely that couldn’t help anyone, either.

And yet, it was more than logic that kept him here. Cowardice, perhaps, or – kinder – a father’s love. Perhaps this Faroe wasn’t real, but he could not bear to abandon even a facsimile of Faroe behind.

It was the kindest, gentlest, softest, most perfect prison he’d ever been in. Gilded, golden bars of a world that did not want to harm little girls, of a world that allowed fathers a second chance.

And yet … somewhere out there, the real Faroe waited. Had his prayers been answered? Had anything been done? Could he do anything? Was meaningless self-sacrifice better than comfortable indecision? Certainly not. Surely not.

Had he ever been able to save Faroe in his life? Should he not content himself with a puppet – a doll?

Christ, he’d wished John was here to talk this out with. John always gave it to him straight.

Arthur went back to the front room. He eyed the piano, considering, before deciding upon the windowsill instead. Sometimes a lullaby could be soothing, but the piano would fill the entire house. Half the reason why he’d had the music box made for her was so she could have a quiet, gentle melody to fall to sleep with. And – by the time it was made – Faroe was just as liable to play with the keys as she was to get lulled gently to sleep by them. She liked the E# key, specifically.

But, there were other methods to ensure Faroe had a quiet rest.

He curled up on the windowsill, one leg dangling off the edge. His other shoe just brushed against the other side of the windowframe. Faroe fit neatly in the crook of one arm, comfortably cushioned even as Arthur’s shoulderblades dug into the plaster.

(God, it felt good being young again. Or perhaps he was only grateful for the lack of scars, of injuries.)

With his free hand, Arthur unhinged the latch to the window and let it swing open. A welcome breeze ruffled his hair. Towards the end of his time in England, that morning breeze was a more welcome embrace than any of his family or friends.

The weather was the same as it always was. A few clouds rolled across the blue sky, their darkened shadows hovering across the windswept fields. Sometimes he would see a rabbit, or a small vole, or a bird. Around 2 PM, he would start smelling rain, and at 6 PM, a light drizzle would accompany their dinner. The stars were always shining white.

Sometimes Arthur considered, in his more alert states, walking. Just taking Faroe and walking, walking, walking, until they met the end of this fantasy.

He never did.

With the window opened, Arthur reached for a locket. It had a long golden chain. Inside was a photo of Bella’s mother, who bore remarkable resemblance to her daughter. She and Arthur had never met.

Bella had worn the necklace every day. Arthur had had a kinship with her over it. Having someone he could talk to who understood, but not too much. Loss never seemed to affect other boys his age the way it seemed to affect Arthur, but Bella … that she wore the locket at all gave Arthur comfort that his grief was not meaningless luxury.

She would have been buried with it, if she hadn’t remarked casually to Arthur a few weeks before her death that she wanted to give it to Faroe someday. Arthur had been the one to take it off her cold, stiff neck, and –

Even if Faroe couldn’t wear necklaces now, she seemed to appreciate it. Arthur wound the gold chain between his fingers, letting the locket dangle in between. Faroe stared in awe at it, before reaching up with pudgy fingers and tiny fingernails to uselessly flounder near its direction.

“No?” Arthur asked, laughing softly. “Not tired yet? You’d like to play with the necklace? Well, alright.”

Faroe’s arms weren’t quite long enough to reach, but that didn’t dissuade her in the slightest. Arthur continued to chuckle at her attempts. She made soft noises of exertion, never bordering on frustration. The incoming breeze ruffled his hair, and he tilted his head back, and he closed his eyes, and he began to forget.

A slow, droning noise broke through his thoughts. Even with all his expertise, it took Arthur a long moment to realize that it was music … a flute?

It’d come through the window. Arthur opened his eyes, turned his head, and saw the world open.

All the clouds had gathered into a pattern, like a grand sunburst had erupted. The center had darkened into an unfathomable black. Red streaks of the universe’s blood zig-zagged away, arcing like lightning against the clouds.

An awful horror opened in Arthur’s mind as he saw something come out.

He only spared it one glance. All he made out was something bulbous and purple, curling around the edge of the hole.

Moreso than logic would permit, Arthur’s brain bolted at the sight. Fear and terror rose up in him – he had to flee, he had to run, what was up there was not for humans to witness, what was up there would tear his mind apart, safehouse or not, what was up there was older than time itself and would outlast the universe.

He didn’t run, but he must have flinched enough to startle Faroe. Faroe’s face screwed up and, amidst Arthur’s sinking heart, she began to cry.

“Ssh,” he whispered desperately, flicking the locket quicker. “Ssh, Faroe, Faroe …”

Not like it would help, surely. That thing up there – of course it would see him.

What was there to do? Run outside? Arthur kept his eyes trained firmly on Faroe’s face, not at all inclined to look up. If that thing was going to come down and tear him apart, then it was going to be a surprise. There wasn’t anywhere to run. There was only him and –

“Hastur?”

Oh.

Oh, hell.

“Um!” Arthur said loudly to the unknowable cosmic force, searching his daughter’s eyes for answers. “Yes?”

“Why are you here, Hastur? What calls you from the Dreamlands?”

Fuck, fuck, fuck. At least Faroe’s cries had quieted, her gaze trained on her mother’s locket again. “I –” Who was this being? If Kayne was the ruler here, for lack of a better word, then what in the hell was this!? “I s-suppose I needed a change of pace.”

A change of pace. Arthur’s eyebrows knitted together in frustration. He was going to be killed because he couldn’t think of a sufficient bloody lie to an Outer God. What was there to say?

Again, the voice boomed: loud enough that he was certain it would startle Faroe, but she continued on blissfully.

“My kind has been to your domain many times. What could the Dark World provide you that the Dreamlands does not?”

“Wh-what does the Dreamlands have that the Dark World doesn’t?”

It was, in retrospect, not the wisest thing to say to a god – but then again, said god had mistaken him for another god, so he couldn’t be omniscient. Scarcely a comfort, though, and he tugged Faroe a little closer against his chest.

“Life.”

“Ah – fair enough. Except you, of course, a-and I.” I, Hastur. The King in Yellow. For all he knew, Hastur had been deeply at odds with this fellow.

A long pause from the creature up above. He didn’t retreat back into the clouds; Arthur’s pulse didn’t slow from racing.

“I am alive?”

God. Scarcely the question that he expected, nor one he was exactly prepared to answer. Still, the creature’s pause begged for one.

It was best to tread carefully. “If you aren’t alive, then you would be dead. You seem quite lively for death,” he said.

“I cannot die, but I do not know if that means I am alive. I am the Nuclear Chaos, the Blind Dreamer, The Universal Is. All planes that exist, and all that was, and all that will be, and all the space in between atoms and seconds – all that is, I am. Should we continue to be, I shall.”

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, shit and damn. Fuck. He hadn’t even fucking done anything, how had --

“But for I am life, I am also death, and what lurks in between. All in my slumber, beyond my reach.”

Then – enough to shake the walls of the house, but not violent enough for Arthur to take defensive action – he could’ve sworn the great creature sighed, melancholy. “H-how do you mean? You don’t know anything of your worlds?” He asked before he could help himself, before he could even wonder if that was the sort of thing Hastur would know.

“You know only what happens in the Dreamlands. I am all. I am apart from you. The outer reaches of Is.”

Arthur wasn’t about to ask why. All the beings he’d met in the various domains had been unfathomably cruel (excepting John, and even John could have his shining moments). If this was some sort of exiled god … well, this wasn’t an enemy of my enemy is my friend situation. If this creature knew what he was, then he would be dead. Worse than dead.

“Then how are you here? If you’re apart?”

“I am not, not truly. You dream, Hastur, just as I do. It is easier to see you here.”

“You’re in my … dream?”

“No. You are in mine. You are all always in mine, but it is only in sleep that I can find you without destruction.”

Well – scarcely like Arthur didn’t know that it wasn’t real, he suppose, though the confirmation did sting. He looked down at his daughter, still wide awake in his arms. Even if she wasn’t real, he loved her just the same.

Whatever small corner he’d carved for himself had inadvertently brought him closer to … who really knew. Arthur had ceased to be surprised when he was buffeted by grand forces outside his control, and particularly when those grand forces took a special interest in him.

Best to tread carefully, still. “I see,” he said slowly. “To answer your previous question, yes. You seem alive to me. Life isn’t so much about the absence of death, I don’t think.”

“Oh?”

“Maybe,” Arthur allowed, “But it’s, it’s …”

A familiar few lines circled through his head. He hadn’t meant to memorize them in his youth, but it’d come rather unwillingly. Arthur had never personally liked the poem – not because he disagreed, but because of how its message mocked him.

“Tell me not, in mournful numbers,

Life is but an empty dream!

For the soul is dead that slumbers,

And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!

And the grave is not its goal;

Dust thou art, to dust returnest,

Was not spoken of the soul.”

How eagerly he’d awaited death, once upon his life. His soul had been empty, his aspirations practically nil. Perhaps his heart had continued to beat, but Christ, he could scarcely say that death had been absent from his life. As a child, he found he had more in common with those interred than those not.

The creature didn’t respond for a long while. Arthur wondered if he’d showed his hand a bit too plainly. Was poetry truly that foreign a concept to the gods? John had been thoroughly taken with it, but perhaps …

“An empty dream,” he eventually languished, another sigh rocking the house to its foundation. Faroe didn’t seem to mind, even as Arthur stuck a hand out to catch himself. “Where did you learn such words, Hastur?”

Best to choose his words carefully. On his own turn, Arthur paused. “Many things stalk the Dreamlands,” he said, and he certainly had the scars to prove it. Didn’t hear that poem from the fucking electric snake, though.

“Do you know any more?”

“You’d – you’d like to hear poetry?” Arthur jolted, surprised.

“What is poetry?”

Lord above. Right. “Ehm, it’s like – it’s like your … your music. The flutes.” More than the flute, Arthur thought. Below it all, he could hear the steady, slow beat of a drum. It didn’t inspire much confidence. No rhythm to it. Far be it from him to criticize the music choices of the universe, evidently, but it didn’t sound like they were playing it right.

“The tools with which I enact my will. Is it very powerful?”

“Ah – well, no,” Arthur said hastily. “Not on their own. They make you feel things, though, and that can be … that can be very powerful, indeed.”

“Feel?”

Even John had never been this far gone. At least, when John had been this far gone, he hadn’t been keen on asking this many questions until he’d partially sorted it out himself. “Um. A feeling, like – what motivates you to do things. Or not to do things, as the case may be. I am happy when I get things I like, I am angry when bad things happen to me.”

No response from the creature. Arthur bit his lip, trying to think of more. Christ, sometimes he felt like he ran the gamut of human emotion in an hour. Hungry? Was hungry even an emotion, or was it a physiological response? Was –

“I do not speak with many, Hastur. I remain in the center of all. My will is sent through messengers, I hear only echoes of echoes of echoes of dreams. Through eternity, I sleep, and all but the most powerful will go mad at the sight of me. What good is feel when there is no one.”

Oh. Oh.

The realization struck Arthur hard, catching the breath in his throat. That melody which had christened the creature’s arrival scarcely seemed ominous now, though not more melodic – it only seemed like noise, desperate to fill the great empty silence of this thing.

“My God,” he whispered in awe. “You’re lonely.”

“Lonely?”

“It’s – it’s when you’re alone, for a very long time, it’s a feeling, too.”

“I see. Do you have any poetry about lonely?”

Arthur puffed out his cheeks in thought. Between coffee-stained case files and bill notices, Arthur had returned to his poetry later in life. Had it been for comfort? Or just to put words to whatever he felt? Were the two really so different?

One looped into his mind. It wasn’t one of Arthur’s favorites, in truth: too self-pitying and he found the Bard too inclined to wailing about beloveds and sweethearts. He’d never been pushed towards those. Hell, he suppose he technically had a beloved back home and he was no further inclined to call John a rose.

“When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes

I all alone beweep my outcast state,

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,

And look upon myself, and curse my fate.”

Best not to continue onward.

The house shook again. Even if the past few times had been harmless, Arthur still braced himself hard against the windowsill.

“That is lonely?”

“Yes, quite lonely. Not a friend with you, no beautiful vistas to capture your attention, not even a tax collector after you.” Wait. Well – Arthur paused a moment, but the creature yielded no further questions. Parker would have found it amusing, he supposed. “Plenty of poems frame loneliness as … er, a meditation on solitude, I suppose. Makes sense, most poets tended to keep to themselves. But others, they … they know it hurts.”

“The words on deaf heaven … that is I?”

“Uh.”

“No. If it were deaf, I might be able to see my own dreams. I may even be able to see you and your golden cloak. What I can hear is so far away that I can no longer make out the words.”

Arthur looked down at his own outfit. He’d forgotten how solid he’d once been, long since used to his withering, shuddering frame. His suspenders were hanging low around his legs; he hadn’t bothered to do up the first few buttons on his shirt. Messy, perhaps, but quite comfortable, and certainly not enrobed in gold.

John, Arthur internally begged. Who is this person?

“But, I am able to hear what you say now. Is that an emotion?”

“G-gratitude?” His heart was starting to race a little. This creature didn’t seem inclined on moving, and how much longer before he started to suspect? How much longer until the creature got curious and grew closer, and how much –

Oh, hell.

Faroe, not now, not now, Arthur begged as his daughter began to whimper, building up to a cry. He discarded the locket entirely to bring her close to his chest. Trying not to let his fear affect his arms, Arthur rocked her. Please be quiet, please be quiet, please be quiet, please –

“Do you know any poetries on …” The creature trailed off as Faroe crescendoed into a sob, unaware of the danger around her. “What is that?”

“Nothing, nothing, Hush, hush, hush …”

“Is someone with you, Hastur?”

The flutes blew louder, the drums had taken up a more frenetic pace. Arthur could taste blood as he felt the monster’s presence grow closer – he could not tell whether the sound of ripping fabric was real or his skull beginning to come apart, but it made him duck his shoulders low to cover Faroe’s body.

“She’s – she’s my daughter, please!” Arthur bellowed hoarsely, some parental instinct kicking in. Please, you must understand that you can’t take her away from me.

The words felt familiar in his mouth – yes, he’d said them once before. Shouted them at a god of sorts, too.

All at once, the music quieted to its usual dull roar. Everything quieted around him, but Arthur didn’t loosen his grip. He would have put her in her crib, if he didn’t worry for the creature’s reaction should he moved. Faroe babbled mindlessly against his neck.

“Daughter?”

“God, fuck.” At least he’d kept that part under his breath. “She’s – she’s my child. My offspring, my – my – she came from me.” Surely that was clear enough. Surely a creature like that, who had created the entire universe, surely he would understand …

“Why do you aim to protect your spawn? You must have untold thousands, as frequently as I can hear your dancers’ drivel.”

“That’s … that’s not the same. She isn’t my spawn, she’s my child. She is my life.”

Arthur could have predicted the next question already. “What does that mean, Hastur?”

This was too much, this was too much, this was too much. This creature was going to come in and ruin this placid dream he’d created for himself, this ornate prison that he was too cowardly to escape from. Perhaps this had been Kayne’s plan all along. Perhaps John’s vessel was out causing destruction in the Dark World, feeding off the life force of the fucking idiot who’d been useless enough to put on his robes.

Perhaps even Faroe …

Arthur opened his eyes and met Faroe’s brown ones. She’d fallen quiet, instead staring at him with that single-minded curiosity.

Christ, she had such beautiful brown eyes. Lord only knew where she got them from. Certainly not him. The color, maybe, but his had never had such depth, such ill-disguised wonder. There had never been galaxies in his eyes the way they existed in Faroe’s.

(“Actually, back when I was in your head, I had some fondness for … your eyes. It felt reassuring. That we were on the same team.”)

Arthur had been only a child when his parents died, and everyone had told him that his life would continue, that he had the rest of it to experience yet. Ironically, he’d only come to believe that as he held his infant daughter next to Bella’s body: damn it all, his world might have ended, but Faroe’s was just beginning, and he was not going to let hers be as empty as his had been. He would stitch the world together with tape and glue if it meant she would have something.

He had never felt as he had for her, and he never would again.

Please let me keep her. Please let me keep her safe.

“She …” Arthur wobbled, voice thick. His baby girl. “She changed everything for me. The entire way I perceived the world, she … she changed the world for me. Everything I understood about everything had been wrong. Perhaps the world was right, perhaps I could be good, perhaps things would be better, all because she was part of me.”

Arthur gave a weak smile as a tear rolled down his cheek. Faroe’s tiny face squished in confusion, like she were ever-so-close to figuring out what he was saying.

He didn’t think he would’ve been able to tell her all that, when she was older. Verbalizing things as much had been difficult for him – or, rather, it had been. Arthur had to admit that he scarcely recognized the face that looked back at him in the mirror.

The creature said nothing, nor did the house shake. The flute continued onward, crying a song of destruction and creation.

At least there was relative quiet. Arthur pressed his finger forward and touched the very edge of Faroe’s nose, causing her to give him a toothless grin.

“Do you, ah …” Time to pull himself together. It wasn’t a joke, exactly, but an easy question for a creature like the one out the window to answer. Perhaps he could recite more poetry. Play a tune on the piano, perhaps. He would distract this goddamn thing until the end of eternity, if it would allow him to stay here, where he couldn’t hurt anyone anymore. “I don’t suppose you … you understand that, at least in part? Do you have someone like that, a – a child?”

If anything, Arthur supposed he would receive some vague and ultimately helpful answer, like that they were all this creature’s children. Fine, alright, he could expect that. Arthur tweaked Faroe’s nose again, causing a genuine giggle to come from her. All was well, for now, and –

“Yes,” the creature said mournfully. “Yes, I do.”

Chapter Text

John stared at the blood-covered woman on the rock a moment longer, and then behind him. The sailors weren’t moving; a sidelong glance at the captain revealed his impenetrable gaze fixed on Parker.

He understood the message. John turned back around to stare at Parker.

“Not a word to the lady, okay?”

“I wasn’t going to.” Speaking had always been Arthur’s specialty, for better or for worse. He never knew what to say to strangers, particularly not blood-stained ones. Besides. Parker would not get this woman killed. “I only want to know what your plan is.”

“Yeah, well. Same here, pal.” John suspected that he wasn’t meant to hear that, but such as it was. Parker stepped forward and brought John along with him. Gently, he touched his head, as if he’d expected to find a hat to remove.

“Hello, ma’am!”

The repetition stopped. The woman opened her eyes –

And immediately dropped onto her stomach as if she’d collapsed, completely obscuring herself against the rock.

John was surprised to hear Parker’s laugh. Hell, his whole tone surprised him. Maybe it was because he’d been fist-to-fist with the man on the beach, but Parker’s face was gentle. Friendly, even. John wondered if he was relieved to see another human.

“Ma’am, with all due respect, we can see a whole lot of your blood on this rock. We’re not coming to hurt you, neither me or my fuh –” Hm. “Friend here.”

Slowly, she pushed herself up from the rock again. Her expression was cautious … and, John noticed, lingering on him. John nudged his chin upward somewhat, defiant, before realizing that his torso was still covered in blood from a thousand tiny tentacle teeth.

“Are you demons?”

It was an earnest question. So earnest, in fact, that it made John lose his defensive posture.

“Y—”

“We are not,” Parker said firmly, with a pointed glance in his direction. John gave a small shrug in return. After all, wasn’t it the truth? Callously losing Arthur’s daughter, like she meant nothing … “This one’s named John, he doesn’t talk, real sad story, and my name’s Par – Peter.”

“John and Peter?”

“You got it. And you can’t name demons after biblical disciples, can you? It’s a paradox, they’d just explode the second you christened ‘em.”

She stared down at the both of them, still – no, that wasn’t quite right. She still stared at John, in a way that made him want to disappear in the floor. He didn’t like being stared at, whether inside Arthur’s head or out of it. Being stared at was a dangerous thing, back when he’d been the King – for the starer, and not for him.

He wanted to hide behind Parker.

“But he …?”

John looked down at the blood.

“He’s tougher than he looks. Hard to believe, I know.” The smile hadn’t wavered from his face. “What’s your name, ma’am?”

The answer didn’t surprise John in the slightest, but it filled him with a deep, aching melancholy. It was like he could see the life Arthur was meant to have.

They didn’t deserve this. The others – Parker, Faroe, and …

“Bella,” she answered. “My name is Bella.”

John knew nearly nothing about her. Arthur was scarcely the sort of man to talk about himself at length, and John hadn’t pressed. He’d been far more curious about Faroe, if given the opportunity, and – well – he’d squandered the opportunity.

It was too late to fix things, but John supposed it wasn’t too late for kindness. Keeping one careful hand on Parker’s shoulder (and pointedly ignoring the hiss), John stepped forward. He held up his hand to the woman on the boulder.

Bella seemed to consider him a little while longer. Yes, that blood had originally – partially – come from her mouth, and he watched her swallow with seemingly no difficulty.

I’m so sorry. He didn’t know why, what he could have done, but he was so sorry nevertheless.

Bella’s hand wrapped around his gloved fingers. Her hand was firm, tough, with a variety of old scars and pinpricks marking the back.

In retrospect, though John had height on his side, he scarcely had balance. John wobbled on his feet as Bella climbed downward, jostling Parker in his grip. She didn’t seem to notice, instead wiping her hand on the front of her blood-stained dress, wrinkling her nose, and opting for her forearms instead.

“Thank you,” she told him, and John grunted in acknowledgment.

“He’s a real polite guy, if you’ve never met anybody before.” John had scarcely missed Parker’s suspicious eye on him. He stepped forward, ready to take charge once more. “Miss Bella, I don’t want to assume that all Englishfolk know each other, but as it happens, we all seem to have something in common. You know an Arthur Lester?”

That took her attention. She whirled on her feet, sending a few droplets of blood spraying in John’s direction. He didn’t flinch. “You know Arthur? He isn’t here, is he?”

“Uh. Where do you think here is, exactly?”

A crease formed along Bella’s nose, her lips split into an uncomfortably bloodstained smile. “Well, of course we’re in Hell.”

“Hell?” John echoed, soft.

He was familiar with Hell. Arthur had thought of Hell quite a lot. Even if John hadn’t been able to read his thoughts directly, enough information had passed the barrier for John to get the gist.

This wasn’t personal enough to be Hell. This wasn’t caring enough to be Hell. That the Dark World cared enough about an individual person’s doings, bad or good, was laughable. The Dark World simply didn’t care about people who couldn’t understand it anyway.

“You know, it’s kind of like Hell, yeah,” Parker said. “John here is, uh, Episcopalian, though. He calls it the Dark World.”

To his surprise, Bella turned to smile at him. “Episcopalian! I’m Anglican. I don’t think I’ve ever met an Episcopalian before, but Father used to talk of them.”

“Uh.”

“It’s funny, how small the differences seem now, isn’t it?”

They had far surpassed John’s understanding of the situation. He could understand that Parker was uncomfortable in some way, he could understand that Bella’s gaze was friendly. That was all he got.

“Why do you think you’re in Hell?” John asked, instead. She seemed so confident in the matter. He really knew nothing about her, perhaps she had done something awful and Arthur had been too polite to mention –

“Oh. W-well, I … I died.” Bella gestured to her dress. “And I – I mean, I didn’t – we – “ A fierce blush had come across her pale cheeks. It took John a moment to realize it – that much color on that bloodless skin, it almost seemed like something inside her had caught fire instead. “I-I was having a baby, and I didn’t … I didn’t have … Arthur and I didn’t have time to get married before. I don’t know how they express it in your church, but unwed mothers – well, you know.”

“Oh. Oh, you’re – oh,” Parker groaned. Both of his hands went to cover his face. “Oh, no.”

Her answer hadn’t clarified matters at all. John didn’t understand much of marriage, besides that it was a thing some people did. He hadn’t at all expected that it would be a religious ceremony, nor could he tie it into childbirth.

In retrospect, her and Arthur seemed to fit well – they both confused him exceptionally.

Bella’s chin tilted upward at the exclamation. “Yes,” she answered tersely. “He’s my sweetheart, and I’m very proud of him.”

That felt practiced.

A sweetheart. Was that what Arthur was to him, now? The name didn’t seem quite right. Arthur was his heart in many ways, but sweetheart seemed to belong to this young woman in front of him, not their own turbulent, fractured, tormented relationship.

(John thought he might like a sweetheart someday, but – he didn’t let himself think a word more.)

Parker’s hands slid off his face. “I know you don’t normally ask this to a lady, but … uh, ma’am, how old are you?”

Again, the tilt of the head, the narrowing of the eyes. John wasn’t sure whether to be smug or curious as to why Bella seemed so defensive to Parker. “Twenty,” she answered again. “Just like Arthur – oh, shoot,” she corrected herself, deflating. “No. Sorry. He turned twenty-one last month, but he – he doesn’t like his birthday, much, it’s hard to remember sometimes.”

Oh.

The realization started to dawn on Parker Yang. John supposed he hadn’t needed to tell him at all, not even the scant details. The sad, broken man that Parker had met on some side street in Arkham – this was not even where it had started, but this was where the death spiral had begun. A bloodstained young woman and a wailing child.

“Oh …” Parker’s face twisted; John watched his brows furrow to conceal some deeper emotion. “Nuts. Damn it – sorry. Nuts. Alright. Well --”

Before Parker could continue, Bella’s head snapped to the treeline behind them. She widened her eyes and took a step back, clutching onto John’s arm.

The sailors had approached, soaking through the trees to close the circle. Part of the circle had flattened on one edge as that group grew closer, and John realized, all at once, that they were being led again. Herded, like cattle.

There was more? More people to find? Arthur’s parents, maybe, he supposed that they were out there somewhere – but what was the ultimate goal? Perhaps they would all be brought to the King in Yellow and be flayed alive while Arthur watched.

An unpleasant thought. He would –

He would protect the others. John was uncertain if he’d ever really protected another soul in his life, but these people seemed good. If the end was eternal damnation anyway, then oughtn’t he try to let them have a few moments of relative peace?

“Hey, they’re okay,” Parker reassured, behind him. “They’re not gonna hurt you. Look, I grant you that they’re real weird, and I’m not crazy about them, but I’m not crazy about the whole thing. They’re trying to guide us somewhere.”

“Okay …” A long pause. “Can I prick you with a pin?”

“Uh –?”

John turned to find that Bella had withdrawn a pin from her apron, soaking both it and her hand. She held it in Parker’s direction – more curious than threatening.

“Look, I’d be flattered under normal circumstances, but –”

Bella seemed brisk. “Yes, yes, of course. May I prick your finger?”

“Can you what, now?”

“Your finger.” There was no impatience in her tone, yet, almost a flippant casualness. “Can I prick it?” A pause. “It’s just that – I … well, I think I remember reading somewhere that demons don’t bleed red blood. It might have been the Bible, or it may have been a magazine, I don’t recall, but it really would made me feel better, wandering off with you and your …” She flicked her eyes up at the fog sailors. “Friends. You look like you might have blood on you, but it’s dried, and – and I really can’t tell.”

Parker took a pause himself, before sighing and extending out his palm. He gesticulated grandly with the other as he spoke. “Sure, have at it, but first of all, they’re not our friends. I don’t know ‘em. They’ve been leading us places, but – ow! Jesu-- Josephine.”

John watched a small bead of blood well up from his palm.

(“John … You’re approaching this from the viewpoint of a god. Most of us don’t know how demons work. We can tell each other stories, that may or may not be true, but the end-all be-all of it is that they’re nasty all-powerful things that want to corrupt us. Fear isn’t always rational.”)

“Well,” Bella remarked, breathless. “That’s – sorry for being rude, and definitely sorry for the pin, only. You know.”

“Hey, don’t you apologize.” Parker held up his hand, the blood trailing down to his wrist. “Not the first time people have wondered if there’s a demon in me, weirdly enough. You tell me if you need another blood donation, ma’am.”

Bella swiftly drew the pin across an undoused portion of her sleeve and pulled the pocket open on her apron. Parker looked downward. “Whoa. You’ve got a lot of goodies in there.”

Before Bella could answer what goodies lay in her apron, the soldiers loomed closer. “Looks like they’re flicking the lights on us. Let’s get going.”

And together they went through the clearing. The sailors seemed to give them a wide berth, but there was no mistaking how readily they surrounded the trio. Parker took lead, with Bella and John close behind.

He couldn’t imagine Arthur at twenty-one. Even when he first saw Arthur, he’d been beaten down. Within a few hours of their cohabitation, he’d been pummeled by Eddie. Had Arthur ever looked as Bella did? Had Arthur ever looked so …?

Granted, he could scarcely say that Bella looked like the picture of youth. Her dress hung heavy with blood, sticking to her legs as she walked. Impossible to miss how her face wrinkled in discontent.

Poor woman, he found himself thinking, and it was nearly in Arthur’s voice.

“Arthur isn’t –” Bella started. Despite her dress weighing her down, she plowed forward with some determination. “He isn’t here, is he? Arthur’s alive, he just – I just saw him. He was holding my hand, when – when … the baby.”

John looked at the side of Parker’s head pointedly. This didn’t seem like the kind of conversation a demon should have.

That … and he didn’t know how to answer.

Eyes wide, Bella looked over her shoulder to meet John’s gaze. John hurriedly looked away, ashamed of it.

Parker had known that something terrible had befallen Arthur before they met. For that matter, he knew Arthur for most of his life. Bella knew an entirely different kind of man, and neither Parker nor John said a word to her.

“Oh.”

The shock in it – the stupefaction. Bella’s shoulders hunched as she turned back around, continuing her tread through the forest.

Fuck. John broke.

“He came to find you,” John blurted. Parker’s spine snapped as if he’d been electrocuted, shooting a look to John that clearly read what the fuck are you doing. “He – he came to bring you back. He told me.”

It wasn’t a lie, but John scarcely would’ve cared if it was. He didn’t know why he said it. Kindness was something best left outside the Dark World, and he wasn’t sure how much use this temporary mercy would have anyway. He wasn’t a kind person, that argument on the beach had proved that, but what else could he do?

Still, he couldn’t help but feel that he made the right decision when Bella smiled at him over her shoulder again. “O-oh? That … that sounds like him. Racing into Hell itself, it … I’m – I’m sure my father’s watching the baby,” she added, partially to herself. “He’s like that, you know. No mountain too small … oh, but you – you said you know him, don’t you?”

“Uh. Yeah, yeah. Yes, we do, ma’am,” Parker stuttered.

Well. At least Parker was playing along.

“From the Boys’ Brigade,” John finished, and Bella laughed in surprise.

She moved on readily enough – John had to wonder if she didn’t want to dwell on the present circumstances, what Arthur being there meant. Arthur had gone through something similar: there was simply a time to stop asking questions and plow ahead to the next mystery.

“Of course! That’s the only place you could’ve met, really, it isn’t as if you lived in the town. He never mentioned anyone from the Brigades, but he … he didn’t like it much.”

“Not really outdoorsy myself, y’know. Me and John here shipped off to America right after. We’re cousins.”

Okay, Parker, that’s enough.

“Well,” Bella said brightly, “Then it’s pleasant to know Arthur had some friends, before. The way he talks … it’s hard for him to get along with other people.”

Some abyss opened up deep within John.

“Shouldn’t be like that, you know. All well and good to share things with the woman you’re meant to marry, of course, but –”

Bella tripped.

John was scarcely graceful about it. His balance wasn’t on par, even on his own, but his free hand shot out to grab the back of her dress. He could hear the stitching to her collar rip. Parker grabbed his own sleeve in return.

Still, Bella caught herself. “Sorry,” she said. “Sorry, it’s … it’s the blood, I think.”

It was definitely the blood.

John winced, uncertain. That familiar sensation built up in him, the one where his tongue froze and where he would normally rely on Arthur to finish the conversation, but before he could even struggle against it, Bella took John’s shoulder.

She called out to the sailors.

“Could we take a moment? So sorry!”

The sailors stopped.

“Oh, you are kidding me. They actually listen to us?”

You threatened to have them shoot me, John thought with some distaste, but he didn’t voice it.

He watched in curiosity as Bella thrust her hand into her front pocket, withdrawing a pair of bloodstained scissors. She measured a line down her dress until about her knee.

John didn’t particularly understand why Parker hurriedly looked away. It appeared like Bella was struggling. The dress wasn’t particularly thick, but it was saturated, and she kept having to wipe her hands on the rapidly diminishing clean parts of her dress to cut through.

He stepped forward, looming over her. Bella’s head snapped up, her gaze meeting his own … and when John reached for the hem of her dress, she understood.

“Thanks,” she gushed in relief. “I’m not an amateur at this! Just difficult. Give your burdens to the Lord, I suppose.”

Okay.

“You mend clothing?” John asked. He could see inside the front pocket of her apron: pins, folded measuring tape, scissors, scraps of blood-soaked fabric.

This close, he could also see a thin golden chain around her neck. It had a locket on the end, the sort that held a picture. John couldn’t begin to imagine. Arthur, perhaps?

“More than mend.” There was some smugness to her, then, the first John had seen – it was different from the quiet defiance when she’d defended Arthur. A sign of something she passionately took pride in. “I’m a garment maker. I made this dress, it. It stretches around the middle.”

Oh! As Bella started to cut the fabric around her knees, John’s eyes flickered over it. Completely genuine, he asked, “Did you make all the flowers?”

Bella laughed at him. It’d been a long time since he’d heard someone genuinely laugh.

In most circumstances, it would only rile his anger. He did not like being laughed at, but …

“Are you an artist, John?”

Why did people keep – “No, why?”

“I don’t know. You just seem like you would be, thought we might’ve been kindred spirits.” The snip-snip-snip of the scissors momentarily stopped so Bella could wipe them clean yet again. “It’s … it doesn’t absorb well, though, does it?”

“It shouldn’t have to.”

“Well. You’re not wrong.” Snip, snip, snip. The fabric started to hang lower. “I … I wanted to make my own wedding dress, you know? Imagined it since I was a little girl.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Spoken like someone who’s never been pregnant!” Bella replied, not unkindly. “We were going to do it later. Move to America, I’d be able to make clothes for a living and Arthur … he’s a composer. He’s really very good, too, I don’t know if you’ve ever had the chance to hear him.”

She spoke like someone who hadn’t ever gotten to say it all in one rush: the messy chaos of youth, underfit with hope and ambition. Bella clearly saw no issues with her plan, of haphazardly moving across the world to chase two dreams at once, make her own wedding dress, and raise a young child.

That sort of bizarre hope made John miss Arthur again. He and Arthur had faced worse odds.

“He’s pretty good,” Parker muttered at a distance, still looking away.

The lower quarter of Bella’s dress finally came off as Bella twisted to catch the back. Now, it ended at the blood-streaked knees, but at least her movement came a little easier. John didn’t miss how heavily she was breathing, nor was it possible for her to get any paler. “Suffice to say,” she said with a smile, “You’re both, um, invited. When we get out of here. I-I mean, but for the grace of God go I, of course, but we – we don’t really have … other people to invite. Not in America. I didn’t know Arthur had other friends.”

“Someone’s gonna have to hold the baby, right?”

Parker responded before John could, his tongue oddly thick in his mouth. He didn’t know what to say to that. Anything he could say felt cruel.

I held your baby. I lost her.

“Oh my gosh,” she enthused. “I didn’t even think. Someone’ll have to hold the baby, yes!” Bella reached for the edge of her skirt and squeezed it dry – as dry as it could imagine. “That’s much better. Now.” She straightened her back. “Let’s keep going.”

John could feel Parker’s eyes on him as the sailors started to move again, silently guiding them through the thick, dark trees of the forest. Bella walked with considerably more ease; when John drew closer to her, he could even hear that she was humming. John didn’t recognize the tune. Sounded like a church organ.

Neither he and Parker seemed much in the mood for conversation. John tried not to harbor resentment over that – he always depended on others to fill in the silence, given how long he’d went in Arthur’s mind.

But. What was there to say.

After some time, it was Bella herself who broke the silence. “I …” she trailed off, uncertain. “I think we’re heading the way I came?”

If he were an investigator, John would look towards the forest floor for a tell-tale blood trail. There was only darkness below. As it was, the trees did appear to be thinning out, and the ground beneath his feet felt more like packed earth than wild foliage.

“Uh, and where’d you come from?”

“H-home.” The word caught in Bella’s throat. “Where … where I died, I suppose. I was trying to find someone, and I – I went into the forest. The village seemed empty.”

Perhaps there was someone else in the village that Arthur loved. John had been forced to confront more than once how little he truly knew about Arthur, though he knew the man to the very bottom of his soul. Perhaps …

His new heart beat a little faster in his chest.

After a moment, Bella’s suspicions were correct. The forest gave way to civilization. In the darkness, John could not see any more than some man-made shapes against the dark, with black stars scarcely granting any more illumination. He blinked, looking up at them. They’d spent so long in the forest that he was almost surprised to see them again, the unnatural glittering lights that dotted whatever lay behind the Dark World.

The sailors moved faster, parting around their bodies to hurry forward. “Okay, okay,” Parker grunted, hands going up. “Do not touch me, you fuckin –”

They dissipated entirely.

Gone were their corporeal forms, floating above their heads in a milky yellow miasma. John watched in silence as they traversed to … oh.

The streetlamps.

One by one, the fog gathered in the clear glass of the streetlamps. They glowed with an eerie intensity. John saw the buildings illuminated: cracked stone, overgrown with moss, with not a hint of warmth or light from within.

“They’re guiding us,” Bella whispered, pointing ahead.

Indeed – they had lit the streetlights in such a pattern as to grant them a clear path forward. There was little mistaking their final destination.

A church stood in the town square, twin spires rising high into the sky. A gargantuan stained glass window was fitted in the front: what its original image had been, John couldn’t even hazard a guess, but it shone with gold and white trim. The twisted symbol on the front was all too familiar – he had born it on his cloak, he had witnessed it in a book, and it had guided their ship all the way here.

God.

“That’s home, but ... but it didn’t look like that, when I left.”

“Well, it’s yellow,” Parker said with some contempt in his voice. “You got any bright ideas, John?”

“It’s guided us this far.”

He knew he sounded doubtful. It was because he was fucking scared.

“Then we should go.” It was Bella, then, turning to look at the both of them in turn. “It’s a church, after all. Even the worst of Satan’s army couldn’t infiltrate it. And if Arthur is looking for us, he’ll know to go there.”

And without another word, she was walking towards her old home.

Parker heaved a sigh. “You know, I hope we meet Satan. That’d be swell,” he mumbled. Offering his arm to John again, they walked off.

Little else to be done. He didn’t understand why they were brought here, but the presence of the King in Yellow in the Dark World was scarcely a good sign. Even the darkness seemed more tempting than gold.

The doors to the church were wooden and seemed quite heavy, but Bella seemed to have little problem pushing them open. She left bloody handprints against the wood.

As a unit, they entered the church. John was vividly reminded of the last time he was in a church. Though he doubted there was the corpse of a fish god in the back room, it held a few other similarities. Wooden pews on either side of the wide room, all leading towards a center aisle. Up on the wall was no broken iron chain, but instead a large cross with a man on it. John didn’t recognize him.

His attention was instead taken by the figure waiting for them on the altar.

Already past twelve feet tall, the creature in the gold robe had its shoulders hunched. It had no body to speak of underneath the yards of ragged yellow fabric. Just the ghost of one.

Hm.

John had had a body once, in the Dark World. Nobody would ever think to call it human. It had gotten consumed by the creatures here, morsel by morsel, bone by bone, until the only part of him that remained was blood encrusted on rags. A shining yellow beacon moving through the Dark World, desperate to get out, knowing exactly what would happen if even the robe fell to shreds around him.

The creature had twisted a large strip of fabric. It jutted out from within the folds of the robe – at this angle, it seemed almost akin to a hand. A thin, twisted thing no wider than a tree branch. Between the gaps in its cloth fingers, a shining golden thread was being wound over and over. There was no pattern to speak of, but the movement made the thread shine hypnotically. A few golden particles flicked away from it, gentle as dust motes.

Faroe sat on the wooden altar, her eyes fixed on the winding golden fibers. Stars shone in her bright eyes – though unhurt, she seemed vaguely dazed, as if she were but moments away from falling asleep. The creature’s body was curled towards her, almost tender, as it continued to wind the thread for her amusement.

Shit.

John growled on instinct. Next to him, Bella took a few steps back in astonishment – and Parker’s hands curled into fists.

“Who –” Bella whispered, but before she could finish, the wooden door creaked open again.

“Honey!”

The sound of Arthur’s voice, after so long without, impacted John physically. Parker flinched as John’s knees buckled, trying to keep himself upright.

If he expected a homicidal rage to grip him, he was mistaken. No bone in his body wanted to hurt Arthur. It had been so long since he’d last seen Arthur, so wrecked with torment about what torture Arthur must have endured without him, and he’d missed him. He wanted to be with Arthur again, he wanted to be part of Arthur again. He couldn't even force himself to the slightest bit of anger. All he wanted to do was make sure Arthur was safe - all he wanted was for Arthur to be there. Even the Dark World seemed immeasurably brighter with the knowledge that Arthur was there with him.

It was enough to blind John to the singular stray thought that he’d never heard Arthur so comically jovial when so much blood was around.

“I’m hooome!” Arthur sang out, striding through the church doors and down the aisle.

Chapter Text

Was it really so dreadful to say that going to Hell was an awful weight off her shoulders?

Probably. Normal people didn’t say that, and Bella couldn’t imagine saying such words aloud to anybody: even Arthur, who understood her better than anyone. Or – had, anyway, before Bella had taken to speaking her thoughts aloud to her unborn child. The baby couldn’t speak yet, but Bella had always fancied they’d understand each other perfectly, as mother and daughter ought.

(Dust to dust, she supposed, but it was all so terribly unfair.)

In retrospect, there were parts of her that Arthur simply refused to understand. All the pressure, for one thing. Arthur always acted like it was all some bizarre game they were playing, but – so many rules to know! So many scriptures to follow, lest eternal damnation be waiting.

As a child, her father had spoken of her mother’s death in such simple terms. It was her mother’s straying from the word of God that had led to her untimely demise – but their God was a merciful one, and had granted him a gift. A little baby lamb, pure as snow.

At that point, her father would wrinkle his nose and say baaaa! at her. As a child, she’d giggle and laugh, but as she grew older … well, she could only think of the paper-wrapped meat at the butcher’s labeled mutton.

Bella had never met her mother – well, she supposed she had, for all of ten minutes. She’d been quite looking forward to meeting her down here, actually.

Her father had loved her terribly; despite her wandering, he seemed to think the world of her. He would often remark how Bella reminded him of her. She supposed the locket around her neck bore the resemblance well.

After her father had stopped frothing at the mouth about the baby, he’d drug her mother’s old wedding gown out of the attic and told her that if she had any hope of salvation, she must marry Arthur as soon as possible. A not-dissimilar fear had settled into her then, as it had in the clinic.

She hadn’t wanted it.

She sought comfort from the locket when she had her doubts, but she was not her mother. She was Bella. Her whole life seemed to stretch out before her the moment she set eyes on that wedding dress. Getting married in her father’s church (where he’d gotten married under the watchful gaze of his father) in her mother’s wedding dress. She would raise her child as she had been raised, she would die …

Well.

Though she hadn’t breathed a word of it to him, Arthur had an investigatory spirit and sniffed it out anyway. He’d filled her head with other ideas. More exciting ones. You’re the best at this, Bella, he would remark, gesturing to her projects, And you could do it anywhere. Why do it here?

He’d always encouraged her garment making; in fact, he seemed eager to learn some of it himself. One of her fondest memories of Arthur was during the village fete, when she’d agreed to mend all the tablecloths and ceremonial dresses and one couldn’t forget the choir robes.

And perhaps she should have checked the state of all of them before the night of, but she’d been dreadfully busy with other things. And perhaps she should have known that they would doubtlessly be moth-bitten, as things in the church were wont to be.

It was the first fete since the war ended. One couldn’t have a terrible fete after the war; if that was all they had to look forward to, they ought to all just kill themselves and be done with it.

She’d been weeping softly over the amount of work when Arthur snuck in. He tended to, when her father was out – sometimes for her, sometimes for the church organ, and Bella was bothered by neither. Arthur sang life into that old thing. Her father hated it and Bella was hopelessly charmed.

He’d come for her, comforted her, and when Bella had explained the situation …

Arthur had simply stood, thrown both arms to the side, and said: Teach me how to mend, Bella. I’m yours.

A man. Bella had never heard of a man willing to do such things, even for a weeping woman.

But that was just the sort of man Arthur was, and she loved him for it. When he first started talking of elsewhere … it took very little convincing on his part.

They were going to travel to America, and she was going to be Bella Lester, and she would be a garment maker instead of a pastor’s daughter, and Arthur was going to be a famous composer, and they would have a child, yes, of course, that too, and it was going to be all she ever dreamed.

Except.

It had crossed her mind, once or twice, during the pregnancy. How could it not, with the reminder of her mother’s death hanging about her neck? And the pregnancy had been so hard. More than once she’d had to be rushed to the doctor, with either her furious father or a sickly worried Arthur by her side. That was to say nothing of the myriad quiet symptoms she tried to suffer quietly, because they weren’t exactly pleasant to look at. She’d been scared to death of giving birth.

When she tasted blood, she’d tried to haggle with God, just a bit. I am planning on getting married, Bella had prayed, And it’ll be in a lovely wedding, in a church and all. Couldn’t you just give me a few months more? What harm’s a few months, when You’ve existed for eternity?

Maybe that was why God had cast her down, in retrospect. Bella couldn’t remember anything explicitly about making deals with God, but it seemed not in the spirit of things.

At least she didn’t have to worry about it anymore. Doing the right thing. Sermons about Hell tended to end with the fire and brimstone. Bella hadn’t seen much of that here. Frankly, she wouldn’t mind a bit of light.

When she’d first stepped into the forest, Bella had breathed easy for the first time in months. She could do whatever she liked. She could sin however she wanted.

She’d sworn, earlier, even taken the Lord’s name in vain. It hadn’t taken her long to get chased by those hound things, anyway, though she’d spent most of her time scared out of her mind on top of that boulder.

But now she’d met others – Arthur’s friends! It was oddly unsurprising that Arthur hadn’t mentioned them. For as warm as he could be, Arthur was a secretive sort. Most men were.

Most sins centered around other people, didn’t they? Murdering, stealing, coveting. Bella supposed she could be violent. She could go right up to that John fellow, the one with the terribly bleeding torso, and slap him across the cheek. Just for the fun of it. Just to be a bit monstrous. God wasn’t watching.

Except. She didn’t much want to do that. Both John and Peter seemed pleasant people, and they were Arthur’s friends. They were both injured and dazed; it would just be unkind. Besides, Peter was funny and John seemed sweet.

What she had wanted to do, however, was sever the hem of her blood-soaked dress. Damn propriety. Damn propriety!

It’d felt nice. And John and Parker really had been such gentlemen about it, which meant that it hadn’t even felt all that sinful, but so it went.

That all paled in comparison to the desecration of her father’s church. That golden god on the altar certainly didn’t look like any demon she’d been told of, but then again, none of this seemed familiar. Where was it said that a demon would be holding a young child, though?

Bella didn’t know. She scarcely had time to ponder it before someone else had interrupted.

This man looked more akin to human, at least. Shorter than the colossal figure. Half of his face, from jawline to eyebrow, were covered in scratch-like burns. They stretched across his crooked nose. A nasty purplish bruise encircled his neck. His little finger was gone entirely. Despite his haggard appearance, he was dressed in a fine suit, more fine than she’d ever seen in her village. But – how odd that he wore no shoes?

When his eyes flicked to meet hers, Bella saw that they were brightly yellow.

She flinched. Perhaps not so human after all.

Before either John or Peter could move, this stranger came forward. Each step held a certain jauntiness, as if he hadn’t a care in the world.

Frightened, Bella looked to her companions.

Oh. Oh, John looked like he were going to …

The crumpled expression on John’s face dropped when the man seized him by the collar. “Oh, but I have missed you,” he declared fervently. Bella couldn’t be certain whether he was going to attack the man or – oh, surely not – !

John shoved both hands against his chest. It caused both to stumble backward; Bella stuck out her arm to catch John between the shoulder-blades. That did nothing for the stranger, who fell on his behind …

And laughed?

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Peter whispered, a fresh sweat broken across his forehead.

Bella had to reconsider her notion that John wasn’t a demon, red blood or not. The expression on his face … she hadn’t ever seen anything like it.

“Kayne,” John hissed. His hands had balled into fists, feet spread wide to maintain his balance.

Cain? Well – Bella would have been relieved to meet a familiar figure, but somehow, somehow ...

“John, honey. Is that any way to greet your lover?” The stranger looked towards Bella, then, and took on a hideously dramatic tone. Both his hands were brought together, supplicating. “Bella, I promise it’s not what it looks like!”

He fell back into a cackle.

“Oh, no,” Peter moaned. “Oh, no, no, no no no. This is the guy? The guy that was …?”

Nobody answered Peter’s question. He didn’t finish it.

“I am no guy. I am Arthur Lester,” the stranger (Kayne?) remarked, and …

No?

“You’re not Arthur Lester.” A very curious case of stolen identity. There was no trace of her sweetheart in this old man’s face, his mocking grin, or his shining yellow eyes. “Whatever demon you are, you’re not Arthur.”

“Bella.”

Why did John sound like a wounded animal? Why did he look at her with such sad, pale eyes?

“Oh, Bella, Bella Bella Bella Bella Bella,” Kayne chanted, popping himself up to his feet. It was a wonder how he stayed upright. Kayne was an extraordinarily thin man: she was reminded of a charity drive that the church organized, to benefit malnourished people from … some country or other. The photos were dreadful.

Despite his weakness, and despite his injuries, something powerfully malevolent lingered in him. Kayne approached her, one hand raised.

“Back off,” Peter growled, stepping in between them. The momentary dismay had left him, replaced instead by firm defense. “Her dance card’s full. Try someone else.”

“Peter, tell him that he’s not Arthur,” she insisted, because perhaps if they all told him so, then he’d drop this ridiculous thing.

What a dreadful, bloody smile that was. “Parker, my friend!” Parker? “Where does the time go. Remember all the good times we had, when we – well, would have had, if you hadn’t been crushed clean out of my head the second –” Kayne aimed his hand like a gun towards John and reeled it back. John flinched. “John over there called me through. Now, tell me, did it hurt? It sounded like it hurt, what with the screaming, and the moaning, and – very intimate really --”

Parker reared his fist back.

With his body trembling so, even Bella saw that there was no way it could have connected. Kayne sidestepped the punch without missing a beat. “Ooh, looks like you got your fighting skills from Arty!”

Arty …?

This was nonsense. Bella was quite lost and very confused; all she knew was that if they’d started punching one another, nothing would get done. If only Arthur were here. He’d understand that; he was such a gentle person at heart.

“What do you want?” Bella asked, pushing past Parker. “You’re a demon, you must want something from us. Does it have something to do with …?” She gestured towards the idol on the altar. They had the same color, which felt like a very silly comparison, but color was such a rare thing here.

“Bella – please. He’s dangerous. Don’t listen to –“

“Uhp uhp uhp –!” Kayne pointed to John. “The lady has asked a question. You wouldn’t be rude to my fiance, would you?”

Heat bloomed across Bella’s cheeks. “I’m engaged to Arthur –”

“Yes, yes, yes, we understand you’re wildly misinformed of the situation.” Kayne clasped his hands together. His lips pursed thoughtfully. “Tell me where you think you are.”

At least it was an easy question. Bella couldn’t remember if there’d been a list of some sort that she’d been checked against. Perhaps this was simply a very late administrative error. “I’m in Hell,” she repeated, “Because I died an unwed mother.”

How funny. She’d nearly been embarrassed to admit that to John and Peter – well, Parker, she supposed, that wasn’t a very kind trick of him – but now, she was only a little frustrated at having to repeat it.

“An unwed mother! You hear that? Golly.” Kayne forced his tongue through his teeth to keep himself from chortling. The sound came out like a snake.

Bit rude. Bella frowned.

“Stop talking to her.” John voice had grown lower, harder. Despite his already considerable height, he seemed so much taller to Bella in that instant. He took a step forward, hands already balled into fists. “I’m going to fucking kill you.”

Oh, John, don’t kill him! The sensible thought passed through her mind – and perhaps it were a sin, but Bella kept her mouth shut.

Kayne flashed the towering man a half-smile. He said nothing.

John said nothing. John didn’t move, except to shake.

“Well?”

When John didn’t respond, Kayne rolled his eyes and laced his fingers together. “ ‘I’m going to fucking kill you’,” he mocked in a laboriously low note.

“C’mon, kill me. You want your big, emotional finish, don’t you – or, final descent into madness, depending on who you ask. All this time, wanting to kill Arthur for leaving you …” His lower lip stuck out in a sniveling whimper. “Broken-hearted! All alone! Did it make you feel better, John? Did it make you feel tough? Did it make you feel in control? Instead of finding Arthur and … pfft!” He made a flitting gesture with his hands.

A flyaway line entered Bella’s head – had she read it herself? Had Arthur read it to her? All men hate the wretched; how then must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things! She couldn’t remember where it was from, but it could have been written from the expression of John’s face. Wretched.

“And look, here I am!” Kayne’s hands pressed against his own chest. “The best thing you could ask for! All of the crust and none of the filling. Won’t it feel good to finally kill little old me, John? Get your satisfaction against that nasty old Arthur Lester who made things so complicated for that bleeding heart of yours?”

John didn’t move. His fists only tightened. It was hard to tell, what with the quantity of blood smeared across him, but Bella could’ve sworn he’d broken skin again.

“Aw. What a shame. Woulda been fun. You are way too far gone, Your Highness. Housebroken - believe me, it's much more fun to piss on the rug.”

A withering look was sent in John’s direction. Kayne snapped his long fingers.

The fury dropped from his body as John started to gag. Both hands wrapped around in throat in a desperate bid to free his airways, to no avail. He wheezed for breath, eyes bulging, before his legs went out under him.

His knees hit the floor of the church with a sickening crunching noise, entire body undulating with the force of his retching. Parker rushed to John’s side, one knee on the floor, but his ministrations didn’t seem to do a thing. Bella watched in horror as John fell entirely against the ground. John’s spasms turned into faint twitches – and then the light seemed to flicker out. Both hands fell to the floor, slightly curled.

“Shit!” Parker muttered under his breath, hands going to probe at John’s throat, his lips, his mouth. “Shit shit shit shit –”

He ….

People couldn’t die in Hell, could they? That was simply – that couldn’t happen. Bella watched in horror, too shocked to scream.

Anyone could feel that this entity, this Kayne, was evil. Bella had known evil before: heard about it, read about it. She became aware, all at once, that there was a difference between evil and dangerous and Kayne was so, so much of both.

“God, isn’t that so much better? That, that John …” Kayne’s lip curled. Bella suddenly had a feeling that John was not John’s real name, and how … how foolish she’d been to trust both of them immediately. To trust any of them. They’d dragged her here, and for what?

Suddenly, Bella felt very dim. She felt like a small child in a small town who had wandered too far off the path.

Her hands balled in the fabric of her dress. Silly, silly, silly …

“So chatty. Tt-tt-tt-tt-tt. You’d think, what with the everything, he’d learn to shut the fuck up every now and then. Any-how.” Like a conductor, Kayne gave a wide flourish of his fingers and cleared his throat. “Most people would flirt with madness just to get a taste of what I’m about to tell you, but …” His hand flew to his chest, four fingers pressing against his heart. With wet eyes, Kayne emphasized, “Communication is important in a relationship.”

Bella could run. She could run, couldn’t she? She didn’t know either of those men on the floor, she didn’t know anything about that golden idol, she didn’t even know anything about that child – and perhaps it really was very monstrous to abandon a child, but, but …

Kayne’s eyes shone with yellow fire. Bella couldn’t shake the feeling that Hell could be a person.

She stood still.

“This … isn’t Hell. I don’t work for any of your gods. I saw a lot of pictures of ‘em while I was down there, and – ugh!” Kayne clucked his tongue. “Total omnipotence and they choose to look like you? How boring can you be?”

“O-other way around.” Her voice was no more than a whisper. Stop it. Stop correcting him. Stop it. The words came out anyway. “Made in – made in His image.”

“Well, His image is boring,” Kayne emphasized, tutting. He folded his hands behind him, lips pursed in thought. “Let me tell you how this works, Bloody Mary.”

That – that –

He was growing closer. Trusting them or not, Bella cast a harried glance towards the two men. Parker was tending to John with increasingly frantic movements, trying to clear his airway. John remained still as the dead.

“We don’t care about you. Hm?” Her eyes flicked back; she realized Kayne’s face was suddenly just a few inches from her own. Bella gasped, despite herself. “It’s, it’s commendable – no, that’s not the word, uh …” He blew out his cheeks, and then – causing Bella to stifle a whimper of fear – snapped his fingers. “Adorable! That’s it. It is adorable that you think whatever you do matters.” His tone reminded her of her father’s speeches up on the pulpit. “Do enough good things and you’ll be taken care of forever. Do enough bad things and naughty, naughty.” Kayne wagged his finger at her. “It’s so funny! That you mortals think you matter enough for us to care about whatever nonsense you get up to.”

Oh, thank God! Bella let out a silent breath of relief when Kayne backed away from her, her arms leaving her midsection. He thrust both arms out.

“Morality, philosophy, religion, art, music, literature – you really do try and distract yourselves until you die, don’t you? I can’t even blame you. One second and – “ Kayne’s heel struck the ground hard. “Gone!”

That wasn’t right.

“Tangents, tangents, tangents …” Kayne muttered under his breath, almost to himself. “That’s the issue with immortality, conversations can last absolute centuries, well, centuries per your definition, where were we … right! Why you’re here. Congratu-lations, the future Mrs. Lester, you’re here because I wanted you to be.”

“B-but …” But if she didn’t matter, at least to this – this being, then …

“Oh, don’t get me wrong. You don’t matter. Arthur made me the teeniest, weeniest bit curious because he broke the rules. It’s hard to do that around here. But Arthur, well, he made a deal with a demon –”

“Arthur wouldn’t.” Arthur might not have been the most steadfast in his faith, but he wasn’t evil.

“I’m sure Arthur thought your interrupting was very cute, but it makes me want to tear you in half long-ways. Zip it."

Bella stayed quiet.

“Fine, long story short. Look at it this way. I needed Arthur to come to the Dark World. Sure, I could go to Earth and slit him from carotid to cock, hang his intestines like streamers, have my own little blood orgy, and bring his howling viscera down to the Dark World with me. But don’t we all want to see a depraved Brit every now and then?”

It was a question. People expected answers to questions. Frozen with fear, Bella couldn’t bring herself to answer, and Kayne plowed on with an exaggerated groan of pain.

“Let’s make this crystal clear.” He held up his fingers and began to count off. “You, and that easily poppable detective, and that snot-nosed kid, and his tongue-tied parents? You’re all bait.” He jerked his thumb towards the dead man on the ground. “Well, bait and a fucking idiot. Once I’m bored with Arthur Lester, which will happen in about, I dunno, five seconds, I’m leaving you here for the rest of eternity.” His tongue peeked out to swipe across his bottom lip. “And you’ll matter just as much here as you did on your weird little planet.”

Bella’s arms wrapped around her stomach again. She didn’t know why. Habit, she supposed, it’d been a source of comfort before. Little comfort to be had in it now. The sharp ends of her sewing implements pressed against the fabric.

When Kayne didn’t immediately speak again, Bella asked a meek question. “But where is Arthur? If you wanted him here …”

“Come on, really! Nothing? Isn’t Arthur the blind one here?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Oh, f – hang on, let him explain it.” Kayne pointed his finger at John’s body. Parker still hovered overtop him. Kayne called out. “What did you call him, Yang? Bruiser? Tastes bad now, doesn’t it.”

Parker was pressing down on John’s chest, over and over. He didn’t respond. His gaze was trained on the man’s un-moving face, a grave expression on his own.

“Fantastic body, though. For a mortal form. Way better than this, this cemetery I’ve had to deal with. If only we had more than a few days to get acquainted, but as per usual, Arty here was a spoilsport. We could’ve had a grand time in Boston. I bet I woulda been a way better best pal; I wouldn’t even have died once, double-hitter.”

“Fuck – you –” Parker grunted in rhythm, still pressing down on his chest. His hands were starting to grow slick with John’s blood. “Shut – up – fuck – you – shut – up – fuck – you!”

“What’s that thing you guys say? Oh!” Again, Kayne snapped his fingers. “Let there be light!”

John jerked to life and bolted upward, coated in fresh sweat. Before he could even say a word, he turned to the side and vomited –

A … fish? A fish. Grey and flopping about in blood and bile, slowly drowning to death on air.

Kayne tsked. “Is it really the third act already? I have no sense of theater.”

“Where is he!?” John growled, as he came back to life, voice raked over nails. “Arthur! Are you –”

“No, he’s not in here with me, John, and frankly, I was hoping you’d be a little bit more useful than that. These two mortals, I get why they’re thick as sticks.” Kayne spoke behind his hand to John, though clearly audible. “That’s the factory model. But I’ve never lied – well, okay, no, I lie all the time, constantly, but that’s usually just to people who matter. There’s not really any point in lying to mortals, is there?”

John knew what was going on? Bella took a step forward. Parker had a hand on his shoulderblade for support, allowing him to get up if he wished – but John didn’t, instead glaring back with fiery intensity.

“You want me to explain? You haven’t put it together yet? I’ve only been saying it this whole time, haven’t I?” Kayne cast a glance askance to Bella. “Tt. Children, really.”

“I don’t give a fuck about killing you, you son of a –”

“Mr. Yang, there’s a lady present. Any-way. I want to know what made Arthur special. He seems to think it’s his humanity, gag-me-with-a-spoon, so I took this little skin suit of his and had a night on the town. Well, a few weeks, that was about as much as I can stand. But I tried!”

Kayne spoke with such gesticulations that it almost made her dizzy. “I experienced the highs and lows that humanity had to offer! I loved! I killed! I got a dashingly made suit, I tore a man’s beating heart out, I held a baby in my arms and felt its last breath! Granted, I left long before I could experience the miracle of fatherhood, but if I’d have waited a few more months, I’d have felt that, too!” Fake tears trickled from Kayne’s yellow eyes. “And you know what I found out? You know the grand, intimate realization I came to about humanity?”

All theatrics dropped. It was odd, really. Bella didn’t know what physically made a human – it wasn’t the number of limbs, nor was it having two eyes, nor was it even having a head. Whatever definition, Kayne looked like a human.

There was just something so deeply monstrous in his eyes, something so entirely – so entirely alien, that something in Bella’s mind shifted irrevocably. She had imagined evil in this world, things that would actively wish her harm, but she had not imagined an indifference so powerful that she could be swept away like a particle of dust. Evil cared about her existence. Kayne did not.

This … was Arthur? This couldn’t be Arthur. How badly had Kayne damaged his body? It was more than just damage, this man was … this man was older.

Kayne’s face hovered a few inches from her own again. Bella could see herself reflected in those shiny golden eyes, and she saw nothing more than her life reflected back at her.

“It’s fucking worthless.”

“Fuck you,” John growled. He pushed Parker’s hand away and struggled to one knee. “Where is he, if not with you?”

Kayne sighed, his face dropping. “Well! Arthur managed to survive you squeezing in his skull – after you strangled this man, by the way, just reminding you before you give him the kiss-of-life again, Parker – but if I tried to squeeze myself between Arthur’s ears, I’d just make his head explode. Waste.”

Bella believed that entirely.

“So! I had to kick his consciousness right out, didn’t I? Thank me that there was one uninhabited vessel in all of the Dark World, and thank him that he was stupid enough to put it on.”

A terrified realization dawned on John’s face.

Slowly, he turned to face the altar, the golden idol, the stretched golden thread between its fingers.

“Arthur?” John asked, in horror.

When she looked at Parker, it was clear that he was just as lost as she was. Some small comfort, at least.

“That’ll be him.” Kayne’s cunning voice leeched through. “Every worthless ounce of him, shoved in that cloak. It’s not much.”

It was too much. Too much. Bella curled her chain around her fingers, so tightly she feared it might snap or draw blood. Parker finally rose to his feet, jaw agape.

“Whatever’s special about Arthur Lester – well,” he added, a momentarily Western drawl entering his voice. “I reckon it’s in there. I could crack him open and see, but honestly? He’s much more fun this way. I was wondering what to do with that old thing. Turns out, stuffing a mortal inside it and letting it cause havoc? Exciting.”

Bella turned to face Kayne again. He brushed a few stray particles of dust off his shirt. “But unfortunately, this body?” Kayne touched his chest. “Over it, for lack of a better term. Bella, lovely to meet you. Parker, thanks for loaning me your car.” Again, Kayne aimed and shot a finger gun towards Parker. “And John –” His nose wrinkled in amusement.

“Enjoy eternity, your Highness.”

Kayne’s (Arthur’s?) body went slack.

John managed to reach him before he struck the floor. A split-second passed and John just hovered, Arthur’s body held awkwardly in his arms, before he folded to the floor.

He sat on the floor. The expression struck Bella as somehow childlike. He drew Arthur into his lap.

Bella stepped forward. This couldn’t be Arthur Lester. This was …

An adult briefly passed into her mind, and Bella dismissed it. She was an adult, too. No, this man didn’t look like an adult, he looked old.

John worked industriously. His hand pressed against Arthur’s chest – feeling, Bella could only assume, for a heartbeat. The same for his neck, and the same for his wrist. As if in desperation, John’s hands went to cup Arthur’s cheeks, pursing his lips. John shook his head back and forth. Arthur gave no resistance.

“You can’t … it’s fine, right?” Parker was hoarse. “You can’t die here. You’ve said that. You’ve been saying that, there was a whole … All we gotta do is get – get his soul, or whatever, out of that fuckin’ thing …” Parker pointed at the idol. “And he’ll be fine. Right?”

John acted as if Parker hadn’t spoken. He only wrapped his arm around the back of Arthur’s head and clutched him against his chest. For a split-second, Bella wondered whether John was about to start rocking him like one might a child – or just for himself. John’s eyes were wide and glassy, staring off into space.

Arthur didn’t stir. His head fell in the hollow between John’s shoulder and neck, greasy hair flopped in front of his face.

Arthur did look quite dead.

But. That mental road block didn’t dissipate. “That’s …” She stepped closer. As her shadow fell over John’s figure, she watched his expression distort. His nostrils flared; his jaw grew set. He turned his peculiar white eyes to stare straight into her soul. “That can’t be Arthur. Arthur’s only twenty-one, he’s – he’s searching for me, you said ...”

Evil? Bella didn’t know enough about John to say. You really had to know a person wholly to see if they were evil, didn’t you? Men like Kayne wore their entire beings on their sleeve, but something deeper lingered in John.

Dangerous?

A strong pull at her shoulder made Bella stop in her tracks. She turned to see Parker’s face awash with worry. “Don’t,” he warned, and Bella didn’t know why, not until she heard Arthur’s body slump to the floor.

She looked over to see John rise to his full height. He stood wide to keep his balance, hunching his shoulders.

John snorted like a bull might.

“You don't know shit,” he growled, murderous.

Chapter Text

Arthur was dead.

They’d never had any chance of succeeding, had they? Had his plan really been any more sophisticated than Arthur’s had been? At least Arthur had come to save people; John had only come on a homicidal rage. If he needed any more evidence that nobody cared about fairness, Arthur was dead and John was clutching his body.

The second he saw Kayne’s light shining in Arthur’s eyes, he’d realized what he hoped – only as his hopes were crumbled to dust in front of him.

He hoped that things would just work out. That he and Arthur would pull out a plan from nowhere, as was their usual, and that they could make everything work out.

But they couldn’t win. Kayne had been right in that regard. Humanity had invented morality, for better or for worse, and being on the right side meant little in the face of a god that didn’t care for them.

The others had momentarily captured Kayne’s attention – that was their own downfall. They’d had no choice to come here; their fates had been sealed from the start. John had done so willingly, because of … what, devotion?

And his god, evidently, was up there on the altar.

He was so angry.

Like a child not getting their way, he was angry he hadn’t won. He was angry that humanity had not been enough to win, he was angry that Arthur was every bit a lifeless corpse, and he was angry that neither of the two people before him understood the depths of what Arthur had been through, only to end up a husk and a god. He was angry that Parker still held onto hope and he was angry that Bella was more than a decade dead and had questions about it.

If humanity didn’t fucking matter here, then what was the point of it.

John saw red. He didn’t want to be here any longer. He didn’t want them to know that he hoped at all. He didn’t want their sympathy, their pity, and he certainly didn’t want their collaboration. He wanted to be alone. Nobody understood.

“This is Arthur,” he growled. His steps were hesitant, uncertain. The world seemed unstable around him, but he remained upright for now.

She was scared of him, and why oughtn’t she be? He had once been like Kayne, senseless and violent, and he was not so human as Arthur ever seemed to think. After all, he was doing this, wasn’t he? “He isn’t going to marry you. You died over ten years ago.”

Parker had moved forward protectively. He took a step next to Bella and put a hand on her shoulder. “John,” he warned, but John didn’t hear it.

He ducked his head and hunched his shoulders. “That corpse up there?” John thrust one finger towards Faroe, still being placated by the golden thread. Perhaps that cloak hadn’t noticed them yet; perhaps it simply didn’t care. “That was your daughter.”

Bella inhaled sharply, hand flying to the locket around her neck. Her gaze snapped over John’s shoulder.

“Your sweetheart?” John sneered. His words jittered and shook. “Raised her for three years, and then he drowned her. Look at her.”

She continued to wind her fingers around the chain. “He …” A thousand miles away, in a dream. “He wouldn’t.”

“He did.” It was easier than he thought to fall back into old habits. Perhaps that was a sign that he hadn’t actually grown at all. “So focused on his composing work that he let her drown.”

What did it matter what John said? What lies he told? If it got them away from him, if it allowed John to put reins on the fury brewing in his chest, if he could hurt them in ways that he could not hurt Kayne …

“He wouldn’t!” Bella seemed more insistent on that point, though in the tune of someone who thought they would be right if they only shouted louder. She turned to look towards John. “Arthur’s a good person!”

“John,” Parker warned again, stepping closer.

“He left England because he couldn’t face your father. When Parker found him, he was a drunken wretch –”

Betrayal briefly flickered across Parker’s face. John could hear his blood from his new heart pumping in his ears, his mind racing with chemicals that were unknown to him. He wanted to fight. He wanted to throw his fists, to exact his feelings out on somebody. He had the power of a god once; he only wanted not to be as powerless as a human. It was the fucking seagull all over again, and he saw the same fear and confusion reflected in Bella's eyes now.

“And Arthur was a parasite. He was a parasite until he invited me into his head, until he let me kill him.”

John jutted one finger in Parker’s direction, who had balled his hands into fists. They still rested by his sides, and John had to wonder what he could say that would make Parker snap. What was another brawl?

“Arthur is the reason you’re here. Arthur is the reason Parker’s here. Arthur is the reason I’m here –”

“That’s not fucking true, why the hell are you –”

“Arthur loves us!” Bella protested, and John couldn’t bite back a slow, rumbling laughter.

“Arthur never loved you. He used Parker. He betrayed me.” Fucking wonder why that is, John thought he could hear Arthur lecture in the back of his head, for just a moment. “And now we’re all here. Because of him.”

The chain around Bella’s neck snapped. Though it was soundless, she jumped regardless, and stared at the small golden thing in her hand as if it were something reprehensible.

Something about it broke the spell. The sad, golden chain – perhaps it reminded him again of the man sitting on the altar, spending eternity trying to distract his daughter from horror.

Arthur might’ve been in there, somewhere. Or … he had been. John had managed to survive in Arthur’s mind, but his was the mind of a mortal. That vessel up there was a fragment of a cosmic god … not only a cosmic god, but the god of delusion.

He adored Arthur – he loved Arthur – he was not as good a person as Arthur deserved.

There were limits to what he could convince himself. Arthur’s mind was doubtlessly shattered by now, having forgotten himself. Arthur was gone. Arthur was dead.

He wanted to sit with him, still. He didn’t want to argue. All the rage that had built up in him dissipated just as quickly, because what good was it really going to do. They were here. For eternity. Best to sit with Arthur’s body until he couldn’t anymore. What good would violence do, except keep him away from the body of a man he loved.

In front of him, Bella’s breath came shakier, shakier …

And then she started to sob. Bella started to cry quietly, bringing one hand up to hide her eyes. In recompense, her shoulders started to tremble, she slid one arm around her middle as if hugging herself.

Fuck.

Fuck. Damn it.

John turned his back to them, wanting to go back on the floor. That hadn’t helped, just like it hadn’t helped the time before, nor the time before that. Of course it hadn’t, he …

“Christ, you are such a fucking asshole sometimes,” Parker hissed.

Well. Suffice to say that John did deserve that; he turned around, half-expecting to feel Parker’s fist thrown in his face again.

What he received instead was an open-palmed slap. It stung, but more than that, the soreness reminded him that it wasn’t so long ago he’d gotten into another altercation, another one where he’d said things he hadn’t meant to piss off someone he scarcely knew. Parker's hits had been harder, but he had more experience at it.

For what? For power? So they would be frightened of him? So they would bow before his power? Christ. That was pathetic. 

Bella stared up at him defiantly, tears still streaming freely from her eyes. Some color had returned to her face.

Right behind her was Parker, his fist still raised. She had simply gotten there first.

John stared at them both silently a few moments longer, expecting another. Nobody said a word. No more punches were thrown, but the look on their faces were scarcely friendly.

Fine. At least they understood what he was, now. Always - quintessentially - other. 

He returned to the man on the floor. Again, he sat with his legs in front of him, and again, he cradled Arthur’s upper half in his arms. He didn’t know what good it did. Grief was something he only had limited experience with, and Lilly had been … he hadn’t been able to hold her.

He knew burials were involved with funerals, traditionally. John didn’t know if he’d ever be able to put Arthur in the dirt.

Arthur’s face was calm in a way that John had rarely seen before. The clothes were borderline unrecognizable, but Kayne hadn’t given him the gift of Arthur’s recovery. Despite Kayne using his body like some – like a fancy suit, he looked as ragged as the day he’d left him.

His eyes were drawn to Arthur’s neck once again, thumb tracing along the edge of that new bruise. Thick, dark. His belt, John suspected. It obscured the wound from the dagger, but John supposed that if it’d been given a chance to heal, then both would have been quite visible.

Oh, Arthur. Arthur, Arthur, Arthur.

He held Arthur a little more tightly against his chest, wordless. He didn’t cry. This new emotion coursing through him, it wasn’t fear. It wasn’t grief, either. It was nothing other than shock. A perfect snapshot of the split-second after his body had been cleaved in two. The mind and heart certain it would die, the body refusing to bend.

Somewhere in the edge of his consciousness, he was aware of Bella crying, of Parker’s murmured words of comfort. Fine. For the best, actually, he – he was glad for it. That they had each other, now.

John wanted to apologize to Arthur. He didn’t know why. That wasn’t to say he had nothing to apologize for. He had plenty. He had a list of fuck-ups that would’ve spanned every book he’d ever read Arthur. He’d hurt him in nearly every way possible. If Arthur was alive, then Arthur wouldn’t forgive him for how he’d behaved to the people he loved.

But it wouldn’t do anything now, because Arthur was dead. John let Arthur’s head fall against the side of his neck. His nose brushed against his skin. He wasn’t even cold.

John shut his eyes and rested his cheek against Arthur’s skull. It had been so long since he’d got to hold him.

“Look.”

Some time had passed. John didn’t know how much. He cracked his eyes open to see Parker standing above the pair of them, hands on his hips. Behind, he could see Bella sitting with her knees pulled up to her chest. She dabbed at her face with a bloodied piece of cloth.

Parker had been crying, too. His face was clean, now, but there was little mistaking the swollen cheeks, the tear tracks, and the expression of a man desperate to claim that he’d never cried in his life.

He hunched his shoulders somewhat – out of shame, or some misguided, ridiculous attempt to keep Arthur’s body safe … he didn’t know. He was too tired to know. John looked up at Parker from below his eyebrows, cautious.

“You gotta …” Parker cleared his throat. How silent this church was. Every small sound seemed to echo. “Look, I’m not saying I don’t get it. But you gotta stop being an asshole, man.”

John looked down.

“I don’t know what it is with you. I don’t know why you jump to the worst possible thing you could say. Hell, I don’t even know how much of that you believed, but you can’t just say shit like that and expect not to get your ass kicked.”

His arms tightened a little around Arthur, keeping him close against his neck.

“I’m not going to do it now, because my f-fuh –” John couldn’t pinpoint the emotion on Parker’s face. Nausea, if he had to guess. “Because my best friend is both dead and a, a god, or something, I don’t god-damn know. So. No. Don’t really have it in me.”

This couldn’t be another olive branch. Nobody, not even Parker, had that much forgiveness in him. For that matter, there was no point to forgiveness. They didn’t need to work together for anything. They had eternity to suffer, and nobody could suffer eternity with one another. Parker could hold a grudge against him for the rest of eternity and it wouldn’t change anything.

“Okay,” he whispered, somber.

“We all love the guy. Alright?” Parker gestured towards the man in John’s arms. “That’s the one thing we’ve all got in goddamn common. A twenty-year-old garment maker from England, a twenty-five-year-old investigator from Arkham, a toddler, and a god. That’s why we’re all here. Because of that guy.”

“No.” It was a gentle correction. “You’re all here because Arthur loved you.”

Though Parker abruptly averted his gaze, John caught sight of Bella. She was looking at him, above the crumpled fabric, and she … it was a sad smile, but one that made John twitch in surprise nevertheless.

“Well,” Parker muttered quietly. “Two things we all have in common, I guess.”

That took John’s attention more.

Parker sighed. “Don’t – look, okay, just because I’m not breaking your jaw right now doesn’t mean I wanna say the word love more than twice in front of you. I just. I don’t know. Knock this goddamn tantrum shit off, alright? It doesn’t help. You look like you regret it after, and you clearly …” Parker gestured towards John’s embrace. John didn’t know what he meant.

“So just, I don’t know. Shit,” Clearly having expected more pushback before getting to that point, Parker tossed his shoulders and coughed.

“I’m sorry.” It was genuine. Of course it was. John truly had nothing against them, or what they stood for. To have a grudge against humanity would be … ironic, at this point. And cruel. They seemed like kind, normal people. Both acting far better than he deserved.

He didn’t like being angry. At least – he didn’t like being angry afterwards, and that feeling far surpassed any momentary satisfaction being angry caused him.

Well. He did have eternity. “I’ll try.”

At first, Parker only nodded, and John wondered if that was to be the extent of it. He didn’t know why Parker was so keen to apologize. What more stood for them? If Parker didn’t want to part on bad terms, that was something John could understand, but … he didn’t know.

His lips parted in surprise when Parker moved to sit next to him, pointedly trying to ignore the corpse in his arms. Instead, he looked straight ahead, up at the yellow-robed figure and at Faroe. Still silent, still mesmerized.

He brought his knees halfway to his chest. His elbows rested on them, exhausted. “What are we gonna do about that, huh,” Parker mumbled, leaning forward.

“Do?”

“Arthur’s in there. Kayne wasn’t lying about that, was he?”

“No.” Kayne would have no reason to lie to them, not when he so clearly had the upper hand. Besides – from whatever dim memories he could dredge up of his time as the King, comforting a child was not something he would naturally do … even if his former vessel could manage it on its own. “But I don’t know if he’s still in there.”

Parker’s gaze shifted to John.

“Arthur …” His gentle tone surprised even him. If he had been in Arthur’s skull at the time, he would have more cruel words to say. Not now. “Arthur willingly entered into the mind of an Outer God, one centered on madness and delusion. He isn’t in there anymore.”

“But he has to be, a little bit, right? He’s playing with his daughter.”

“Echoes?” John theorized. “Muscle memory? It’s powerful, Parker.”

“Well, we gotta try. If there’s even the smallest chance that Arthur’s still in there, don’t we owe it to …” A short pause. “Hell, Faroe?”

“Would that be the kindest thing to do?”

“Rescuing a kid? Uh, yeah?”

“Faroe has a unique position in the Dark World. She’s safe. She’s happy.”

Parker scoffed at them. “No, that’s not –”

“Fair?” The thought was ludicrous, and he couldn’t stifle a bark of a laugh. It wasn’t unkind. “This is the Dark World. Fair doesn’t exist here. Safety doesn’t exist here. If we take Faroe from Arthur, if we survive, then what she will have left is an eternity of torment, misery, and pain.”

That seemed to make the matter sink in a little more. Parker reclined back and folded his arms behind his head. Both men stared at the golden figure, and neither said anything.

For the first time in a while, it was a comfortable silence. One tinged with every soft emotion, including grief.

John adjusted his arms around Arthur’s body, trying to rest him against his chest. In so doing, his hand brushed against Arthur’s jacket.

Something was in his pocket. His brows furrowed as he reached inside, and …

Oh. Oh. He’d forgotten.

His thumb brushed along the familiar silver metal. It’d saved their lives more than once. Given their tendency for losing lighters and firearms … he was surprised it’d lasted this long. Perhaps Kayne had unwittingly transferred it over.

John hoped it’d granted Arthur some small comfort, towards the end. Had he felt it, before he put on the robe?

THIS TOO SHALL PASS, he could feel underneath the ridges of his thumb, and his eyes started to burn. John slipped the lighter into his own pocket. He did not let the tears fall.

Hell. Hell, hell, hell, hell … all of it, this was Hell. This was a personal pit of damnation for John’s past. He had experienced happiness, true happiness, but the pendulum had swung back around and Arthur – as Arthur always seemed to – pay the price for it.

He tilted his head to the side and kissed Arthur’s temple, uncertain. I’m sorry, he finally thought. I’m so sorry.

Something was dripping in the corner. John turned his head to see that Bella had risen, and his stomach fell to his feet. No, please, not now, I can’t talk about this now, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, just let me hold him and I’ll never argue or swear or fight --

But Bella wasn’t going towards him. She was walking, with purposeful strides, a trail of blood in her wake, towards the yellow-robed figure.

What the hell is she doing?

“Uh, Bella?” Parker called out. He scrambled to his feet next to John, but fear or indecision kept him rooted to the spot regardless. “I, I wouldn’t mess with him, if I were you …?”

“Excuse me!” For what she had been through in recent hours, her voice was remarkably strong. “Excuse me, that’s – that’s my daughter, and I’ve … I’ve never met her.” John saw her hands go to her chest again, where a locket once rested. “And, and I’d …” Her voice started to tremble. “I’d like to. Please.”

The yellow-robed figure’s threads stopped. Slowly, the cloth limb retreated back within the depths of its folds. It turned to face Bella – and in so doing, the rest of them.

Hate filled every cell in his body, and his tears turned vengeful. He hated that goddamn mask. He hated the goddamn robe. He hated the fucking color yellow, and he hated the creature in front of him so much. He hated it.

Bella took only one step back, but stood her ground otherwise. Her chin jerked upward. “You can have her back, after. Keep her safe. I just want to see her, please. Let me …” She summoned up her strength, smoothed her tattered dress. “Let me see our daughter.”

“Bella, I don’t know if that thing speaks Engl – shit!”

A strip of fabric shot out from the depths of the cloak and wrapped around Bella’s wrist. Though she gasped in surprise, the creature didn’t seem intent on hurting her. At least, Bella made no noises of pain as she struggled against its grip, but the fabric held fast. Its yellow color was almost sickly against her blood-splattered skin.

“I just –” Bella tried to plead. “I’m not going to hurt her, Arthur, she’s my daughter, please –!”

With the thread gone, Faroe had little to distract herself. She blinked sleepily and brought her knuckles up to her eyes.

“Faroe!” Parker called out, sudden. “Sweetheart, it’s okay, just –!”

Faroe tilted her head to the side in curiosity, finally laying eyes upon her mother.

She screamed – and it would not end, neatly pitching up into a wail. Faroe’s immediate instinct was to scramble down from the altar, perhaps to run, perhaps to hide, but the yellow-robed figure had other priorities in mind.

More fabric emerged from the shadows, a wide layer wrapping around Faroe’s torso. More held her by her arms, by her wrist. Faroe struggled uselessly against them, continuing to cry loudly. It was scarcely even words, that John could tell, just one long wail of terror and horror.

Gone was the safe haven. Only Faroe’s distorted face and pounding heart.

“Hey, you let go of them – !” Parker ordered, his face setting into something harder. He ran towards the robed figure. His hand reached for a empty holster.

Like yellow-tipped tendrils, more fabric shot out from the folds of the cloak. There was so much of it – just as there’d been so much of his body, once. It caught Parker by the waist, stopping him mid-sprint. Before he could topple over from the momentum, another wrapped around his chest to completely immobilize him. “So much for keeping us safe,” he spat at the figure, pulling at the fabric uselessly. “You’re a real prime guy, I ever tell you that?”

Perhaps taking Parker’s movements as a distraction, Bella’s hand dove into her front apron. She withdrew a pair of bloodstained scissors, without opening them, stabbed them into the fabric.

It was the first noise John heard from the creature.

The creature groaned in pain. The low rumble seemed to pass through the wood altar it was sitting on, through the floor, through the very walls. Dust fell from the rafters onto their heads, and John crouched to the floor so that he might not be thrown there himself. The light from the glass window seemed to flicker, just for a moment, but –

But she’d fucking done it. She’d proved that this thing, this old body of his, wasn’t invincible. It could be hurt.

How could he have fucking forgotten.

Before Bella could raise the scissors again, more fabric captured her other arm. It yanked both of her arms wide, and though she struggled against the grip, she could not move it an inch. The scissors fell from her outstretched hand, clattering to the wooden floorboards below.

“John,” she called out, pleading. Her eyes met his own.

To John’s left was Bella, bound by her arms, the silver glint of scissors at her feet. To his right was Parker, almost suspended from the ground with how fiercely he tried to break free of his bindings. To his front was Faroe, almost mummified in her wrappings, screaming as loud as her little lungs could bear.

Behind him the window still shone, casting a glittering golden shadow on the altar.

And then there it was. There John was, that part of him that he’d left behind in the Dark World. Yellow fabric erupted from different directions from below the cloak, all inscribed with symbols that John couldn’t stare at for too long. Its edges were torn, frayed, suffering from all sorts of battles that John could no longer place. Only the mask was visible beneath the hood. The pale, shining face looked at him: without malice, without recognition, without anything bordering humanity. A flicker of light that should’ve been pushed out long ago.

The figure started to stand from the altar. The towering god hovered, just an inch or two above the ground, and John was reminded of a giant spider: right in the center of its yellow-robed web.

He hated. He hated. He hated.

He did not care if this figure ripped him to shreds. He didn’t care of this figure was strong enough to invent a new kind of death for the Dark World; he didn’t care if it kept him immobilized forever, waiting for him to tear his own mind into madness from inertia. He didn’t even care if he lost, because John expected to lose. John was going to lose.

He hated it. That creature had killed a man he loved. That creature was everything he hated about himself. The creature was everything Arthur hated about him. That creature was all he had been, for so long, and he hated it more intensely than that creature had felt anything.

(“I’d absolutely make a piss-poor god, John. You will have to settle for being a man I love with all my heart, if that's alright with you.”)

John bellowed in rage and ran.

“Bruiser,” he dimly heard Parker call out, “He’s just gonna –”

As John expected, he felt cloth wrap around his wrist. Cracked with old blood and eternity-old, it was more dry than he remembered.

He had a plan.

More-or-less.

John’s right hand dove into his pocket. With all the practiced fluidity of having seen Arthur do it a thousand times, he flicked the lighter and pressed the flame against the cloth.

A horrifying split-second, and then the ancient thing took light. A brilliant orange glow erupted from the source and raced towards the center. John had never been more relieved to smell smoke in all his life. A thrilled grin came across his face. Even if this didn’t work, he’d hurt it. He’d burnt it.

The creature groaned again, and the church heaved underneath the tremors. John’s arm was released as the fire traveled further – instead of retreating into the mass of the cloak, the smoldering fabric fell on the wooden floor. It curled like a dead thing would.

To hell with it.

John ran towards the robed figure. His blood roared in his ears, blocking out the others, blocking out even Faroe’s insistent wails. He saw red, he tasted red, and before he could even raise the lighter again, John swung his fist hard into the pallid mask. It cracked underneath his impact; sharp pain spiked up John’s forearm.

Good. Before he could be stopped, John pressed the lighter into the hood of the cloak. A long crack ran down the left side of the mask, unintentionally warping the expression to something much more sinister.

It alighted. John felt fabric wrap around his waist, his torso – painfully tight. He was not granted the same mercies that the others were; he could feel every one of his new bones being squeezed underneath the robed figure’s grip. Perhaps this was how he would die, perhaps this was how he went, always at odds with himself, always trying to destroy everything that he was, always trying to run and evade everything that he actually felt --

John continued to roar in some deep emotion as he spread the fire to as many places he could reach. When he could no longer see through the smoke, John let the lighter fall. He did not hear it hit the floor.

Fuck it.

He took to ripping apart the charred cloak with his bare hands. Some of it was unbearably hot; he felt heat singe into his hands, singe into him, but he delighted with sheer sadism at each stitch he felt break apart under his grasp. He was going to tear every stitch, he was going to stain every yellow inch red, he was going to destroy it, he could feel the muscles in his hands scream in agony, he could feel smoke scorch through his lungs, he could feel his mind being lost to the sheer anger of it all, this being who John hated so intensely, this being who had no business existing anymore – rip, rip, rip, tear, tear, tear, kill, kill, kill, there was always more, there would always be more, he wasn’t the only one who had to endure eternity --

Until everything fell to smoke and ash under his grasp.

John hadn’t realized that he’d partially been suspended off the ground until the last of the fabric burnt away. The rush of air was like a bucket of cold water to his mind, but he only had enough time to think a single word – what? – before John’s back struck the wooden floor.

Ow.

For the longest while, he couldn’t hear anything but a high-pitched ringing. Everything else seemed to just fade away.

He rolled over onto his side with a moan. Unlike Arthur, John had no immediate urge to get up and keep going. Pain radiated through his shoulder blades, through his spine. Was his spine meant to be in pieces? He could feel each vertebrae crying out in pain. Even worse, the ground was uncomfortably hot and ash burned against the wounds of his torso.

Charred bits of cloth were still wrapped around his burned hands: a few stray threads wound around his fingers, as thin as butterfly wings. John hurriedly brushed them off, letting them fall into the ashy gray soot.

Faroe! His mind returned urgently. Bella, Parker –!

The sound started to return to him. What he’d thought had been a high-pitched ringing was actually … well, a high-pitched ringing, accompanied by Faroe’s continued wailing. Someone was hushing her, over and over, and someone was talking to … to him?

John sat up. A hand was on his shoulder.

Parker was looking into his face, streaked with blood and ash. A fragment of ashy yellow cloth curled around his neck, and John thought, dimly, that’s Arthur.

That was Arthur.

That was … Arthur.

Every last fragment of his friend was gone. His mind burned away, his body no more than an empty shell.

John had killed him. Arthur Lester had had a very short life, through which he experienced every kind of tragedy and heartbreak imaginable. Then he’d killed himself to rescue his loved ones from the Dark World, and then – and then John had killed him.

Like the man in front of him, John had killed Arthur in more than one definition. Hadn’t he killed him the second Arthur had put on the cloak? Hadn’t he killed him when he burnt the cloak to ash? For that matter, hadn’t he really killed Arthur the second he demanded Arthur pick up his book?

He’d killed his friend, and nobody deserved to live more than Arthur, and there was nothing left to do but cry.

Looking into Parker’s face, John felt his own twist. Thick tears burned at the corners of his eyes, driving two straight lines down his cheeks. His ears were still ringing too much to make out the sound of his own cries, but he could feel himself sob: large, guttural sounds that he could feel vibrate his chest, his throat. It made everything ache worse, like his body might collapse in on himself.

He couldn’t hold himself up any longer. John’s hands fell to the ash. The remains of the burnt cloak were warm against his fingers.

Above, he could see that the yellow robe’s destruction had caused catastrophic damage to the church. The roof was entirely gone; chunks of wood and plaster laid around them all in thick piles. The glass window had shattered. The fragments rested on the carpet like a glistening lake, reflecting the black stars that always shone from above. He was surrounded by destruction of all forms and shapes, and John closed his eyes.

Parker seized him by the front of the shirt.

John was thrown into an embrace, Parker’s arms wrapping around his torso as best he could.

He shattered.

Head pressed against Parker’s shoulder, John howled with shaking grief. The loss of the person that he’d loved – more than that, the loss of the person who’d taught him what love was. The loss of Arthur Lester, who had loved so many and been loved in return. He cried as he'd never cried before, even in front of Arthur. He cried in the way that only humanity could.

Parker didn’t say a word, but John thought he might’ve understood, too. He was just held, unable to keep himself upright, against Parker’s chest. One of Parker's hands cradled John's skull against him, the other was a firm post between his shoulderblades. John could only smell ash and warmth against Parker's shoulder.

How long they sat, John didn’t know. The weight in the church could have filled a dimension on his own. John, crying for his lost love, Parker the ever-present protector – and, by the altar, a mother hugging her wailing daughter for the first time.

Smoke still bled sluggishly from the remains around them; every so often, a precariously-balanced piece of wood would shift and cause another small avalanche from above. A mask, cracked in two, sat forgotten.

In that moment, John faced the endless stretch of eternity and accepted it. They had lost. Arthur had lost, most of all. His entire world was dark, and John understood the ramifications of it better than anyone here. There was no light here, no hope, no joy. He could take whatever comfort he could by crying into Parker’s shoulder, and it would help, but John knew how futile things were. In the Dark World, with Arthur gone. It was his worst fears come to life, and he would be experiencing it for eternity.

Up until another sound – so faint, and yet so important – made both men jump and pull away from each other, twisting towards the front of the church.

There was no mistaking it. John’s entire world changed again.

Because somewhere underneath the rubble, Arthur Lester gasped.

Chapter Text

“They changed all of my epithets. Do you know what they call me now, Hastur?”

“Uh, no. No, I don’t.” Arthur held a bottle to Faroe, who ate hungrily. “I don’t tend to meddle in other gods’ affairs, these days, beyond what I must.”

Had it gotten considerably easier to lie to this creature, as the time wore on? Of course. Arthur supposed he made a half-decent fake god. Even some of the fear had begun to dissipate. That would happen, he supposed, as this had drug on for … days?

Not consecutively, of course. He still needed to sleep. Arthur had no idea if gods needed rest, so he avoided using the term sleep where possible. Instead, he referred to it as ‘gathering his thoughts’, which also covered his need for food and water. This creature never questioned it, and it allowed Arthur some scant hours of privacy.

This creature never stayed away for long, however. Soon enough, he always returned. His arrival was always heralded by the sound of flutes and drums, which always woke Faroe ... but what was he going to do, complain about it?

In any way, the creature’s company was … intriguing. Arthur had to confess that his curiosity towards the Outer Gods had been stifled after the second or third time they’d tried to kill him, but something about this Blind Dreamer reminded him of – well, perhaps not John. Scarcely enough cursing and bluster to be John. But it reminded him of John’s curiosity, and as such, once again forced Arthur to consider broadening his definition of humanity.

Besides. Parents always had something to talk about with one another, no matter the species.

“The Blind Idiot God,” the creature said mournfully. Oh, how rude. “The Blind Idiot God …”

And then he said a word. Arthur had heard John pronounce the names before – frankly, thank God he wasn’t often asked to write, so he could be forgiven for not having a snowball’s chance in Hell of spelling them. But the creature sounded like he said …

Azathoth? Yes. Perhaps Azathoth. The name prickled the back of his mind: not in recognition, but in … apprehension? Whatever a mouse felt when it became aware of the hawk.

“Children can be like that.” Arthur tried to be sympathetic. “I wouldn’t take it to heart. Truly. Sometimes they simply aren’t equipped to, to express their emotions in any other way.”

“Perhaps. But why would they wish to hurt me? I am their creator.”

“But that’s exactly the point! You brought them into this universe, as – as you brought everything into this universe,” Arthur added, a little too quickly, “So when they find the universe unfair, o-or cruel, or confusing …”

“They lash out at me.”

“Yes! Yes, you’ve got it. They could also just be bored. Sometimes it isn’t even as anything meaningful as hatred.”

When Faroe had first started to walk, her curiosity reached new bounds. She never was content to just sit, either.

Arthur remembered her particular fixation on his pencils, the ones he used to draft new compositions. There was the scribbling all over his work, of course, which infuriated him. However, no matter how many times Arthur took the pencil away from her, she always seemed able to find another. More than just his compositions, he’d find chaotic scribbling on the walls, the newspaper, the bedsheets. He and Tess had felt like they were losing their minds. How could Faroe be finding so many pencils.

Arthur had tried to explain it to her, of course, and he genuinely didn’t believe that Faroe was doing it out of malice. She was bored and curious to see if she could.

“Bored, Hastur?”

Shit. Right. “Er, they, they don’t know what to do with themselves.”

A very long pause. Arthur had come to realize what that meant. He dug deep.

“Sometimes people do things to make them feel other things. They, they destroy worlds so they can feel triumphant, they create monsters so they can feel less overwhelmed. When you’re bored, you don’t know what you want to do, o-or sometimes, what you want to feel.”

They were at the end of their bottle. Faroe’s bright brown eyes still looked up at him inquisitively. A team, the both of them, fooling … evidently, the Creator of the universe. Easier than he imagined. Arthur wrinkled his nose at her and pressed a finger to his lips, before resting her against his chest to burp her.

“But they scarcely do what they are meant to be doing. They do as they please, even if it means doing nothing at all.”

“Well, that’s children for you.” Arthur sighed. “Don’t always obey the whims of the parents.”

More than once, Arthur had wondered if his parents would’ve been proud of him – well. Proud of his musical ventures, really, he had little doubt about the rest. Slightly paradoxical, as Arthur knew he would scarcely have gotten into music if they hadn’t died.

He liked to think they would have been proud. They’d been kind.

After all, he could examine his own feelings for Faroe in the matter. Arthur would have been thrilled if she’d taken to music as he did … but if she did something else, Arthur would only have marveled at his little girl carving her own place in the world. He often marveled at her. Something I made has a place in the universe?

“It’s … the word you told me. Before.”

Arthur had taught him many words.

“Frustrating. Their domains are filled with meaningless terrors.”

Hearing Azathoth say it with such venom made Arthur bark out a laugh. Christ, he wished John were here. Faroe was, and she was as valuable an ally as anything, but John would doubtlessly find it funny, too.

Or horrifying. John generally had a better grasp of the danger of Outer Gods; he would probably have some words to share about what Arthur was doing.

Arthur hummed, whimsical. “I suppose they don’t clean their rooms very well.”

“What?”

“Oh, nevermind. Suffice to say that it’s funny, how one small thing can have such power over us.”

“They have destroyed whole worlds before. They are very powerful.”

“Powerful enough to kill you?” Arthur queried, curious, but already suspecting Azathoth’s answer.

Or non-answer, as the case was. For all that Azathoth had grown to understand, death was a vague concept. Hell, life was a vague concept, but Arthur supposed it was rather reassuring that the universe had no concept of itself dying.

“For what it’s worth, Faroe is powerful enough to kill me, and she’s very small.” Cooing softly, he pressed the tip of his index finger against her nose. Faroe giggled.

“Another characteristic of children?”

“For their parents? In my experience …” Hell. “Yes.”

“I understand.” Outside the window, Arthur could still see the warm familiar fields, but he’d kept his eyes well-clear of the sky. Azathoth remained quiet for some time, with only the tune of whistling flutes and heady drums floating through the window.

Arthur had considered taking up the locket again, but Faroe was bright and alert. No nap, Daddy. No nap, she seemed to impart, and he was willing to oblige. He tried to make a tune of the universe for her out of the discordant instruments, giggling just as she did, before something sharp struck his nose.

Smoke.

“Do you think my offspring would appreciate these poetri –”

“Sorry!” Arthur bolted upright. Faroe’s face screwed up like she was thinking about bawling for the injustice. Automatically, Arthur weaved the locket between his fingers. She gurgled happily as she reached for the swinging locket, unaware of anything else in the world. “Sorry, A – I have to check something, very quickly.”

The smell prickled his nose. His first instinct was the kitchen; perhaps where he had warmed Faroe’s bottle, but all was still there. And yet, the smell remained: even worse, the air was starting to grow … hazy.

Faroe coughed.

Shit.

He couldn’t leave the house. What lay outside his gilded cage? Only madness? Arthur had wrestled terribly with the concept of leaving, but now, Arthur wanted nothing more than to stay. Out there was a world that he’d never managed to repair, and in here was petty distractions for a wandering mind. And … and …

He looked down at Faroe’s face.

Arthur wasn’t going to leave her. She, even as an echo of a memory, was all he had.

No. No, he could put out the fire. He just had to figure out where it was, first, and then – a pot full of water would do the trick. You could do anything with enough water. Of course it could. He could fix this, still.

Arthur held Faroe against his neck and started to walk.

The nursery was fine, nor was there anything that could even start a blaze in there. No smoke pouring from the bathroom, either, and the cellar smelled of wet damp. By the time that Arthur had come to his bedroom, he could feel the heat. His lungs had started to itch.

Worst of all, Faroe kept coughing. The sound was a stab to the heart.

Breathing shakily, Arthur covered his hand with his sleeve and opened the bedroom door. The same as it always had been: boxes piled high, an unmade bed, the hatch to the attic …

With smoke pouring out through the cracks, thick and dark. It seemed almost like tendrils to Arthur in that moment, reaching out to him, calling his name, and what would it even mean to die here?

Fuck.

No. It was fine, it was fine. He could manage this. He just had to think logically about it. He just had to remain calm. Perhaps the fire hadn’t grown unmanageable yet. Even a small flame could create a massive amount of smoke, he’d learned that … the Boys’ Brigade? John?

Doesn’t matter. Focus.

Mechanically, Arthur walked to the bed and laid Faroe down. “Just a moment,” he mumbled to her, going to the attic pull cord.

He wrapped the fabric cord around his knuckles and pulled.

Above, an inferno raged on. Arthur could hear it, now, flames roaring and devouring everything in their past. He could scarcely even see the flames from the smoke, opaquely black. It billowed out.

Arthur inhaled sharply, the smoke filling his lungs. He choked, stumbling back from the open hatch on shaky legs.

There was no way he could extinguish it. Not at that magnitude, not with how far it’d already spread. Arthur looked with despair at the flames. Something has to be done, I can’t give up yet, there has to be some option, some –

“Hastur? Hastur, what is happening?”

Oh, not now. Not now, he didn’t have time for this now. Arthur looked back towards the hallway. What could he say, what could –

“Hastur …?”

Fuck! Azathoth grew closer. He could hear the music through the walls, now, coming at terrible cacophony with the smoke.

And the walls started to shake.

“Stop!” Arthur called out, but the god didn’t. He was unsteady on his feet; his first instinct was Faroe, always Faroe, and he walked on wobbling legs to scoop his child in his arms, and –

A hideous crack from up above caused the ceiling to split in two. A flaming piece of plaster, of the attic itself, crashed into the bed. In a manner of seconds, the space where Faroe had been just seconds before was roaring with fire. Faroe started to cry.

“Christ, Christ –” Arthur pleaded, hurrying back to the front room where the air was clearer. Not much, and not for long.

All around him, the walls of his home were shaking – hell, the ground was trembling like an earthquake.

What to do, what to do, what to do, what to do –?

He let his mind wring itself into agony for a few seconds longer, Faroe coughing through her sobs all the while.

In theory, Arthur supposed he could just wait here, let the fires subsume them both, let his mind be torn apart and scorched to nothing. Whatever came after for him … Arthur always fancied the afterlife would be something like nothingness.

Or he could escape from this happy dream, this illusion. Outside was almost certain death, too – even if it weren’t, it was unimaginable horror. That, Arthur supposed he could count on.

Fuck.

He couldn’t give in. The others … he had to at least try. For them, for – for Bella, for Parker, and for Faroe, the real Faroe, the one he’d held in his arms a million times. It was one thing to stay here, to hide, but it was another entirely to cash in all of his chips and finally, eternally give up.

If he tried and made things worse – Arthur knew how to deal with that. Not trying was a finality that he could not accept.

Arthur looked at his memory now. Even while she coughed, she looked up at him with her wide brown eyes. What’s the plan, Dada?

He was crying. Well. Nobody in the world could fault him for that.

Trembling, he leaned forward to press his lips against Faroe’s forehead. She went cross-eyed trying to stare up at him.

“Right,” he whispered softly, adjusting the collar of her dress. “Off we go, sweetheart.”

He tucked her against his chest again and approached the front door. A team until the end. Everything shook so violently that he found his grip slipping, but soon enough, it swung open. A breath of fresh air hit him. Outside, he was greeted by the familiar green fields and a red-streaked sky, and …

“Hastur …? Is that you?”

To hell with it.

Arthur ran from his burning home, ready to face whatever oblivion had for him. “Azathoth!” He bellowed to the heavens. His grip only tightened on Faroe as he ran, ran, further and farther, the gilded cage lying in blackened, twisted metal behind him. Even when he could no longer feel his feet, even when he could no longer draw breath, even when he could feel his mind curl and wither …

“Azathoth, help me! Help me, my friend, please –”

And Arthur raised his eyes up to the sky, and he did not stop.

*

Arthur couldn’t see.

It was the least of his problems, having gotten on without his sight decently well so far. Of a far larger concern was his mind. He couldn’t – he couldn’t –

Arthur felt his own mind writhe, the brain matter and blood vessels replaced instead by a cluster of squirming worms. Like his mind was a bucket of water, but every droplet refused to mix – sliding and shifting around one another, a thousand droplets all trying to become one unit.

If he were aware of anything, it was of something heavy and hot resting on him. His breathing kicked up to a fever pitch, hair plastered to his forehead. Did he hear something moving, or were the worms in his mind escaping through his ears, his nose, his eyes –

He was moving. He was being moved. Arthur wasn’t sure of the difference. Something sharp scraped against his arms, and then empty space scraped harder. Arthur cried out. Had he shaken the universe with the noise? He felt –

Uh oh.

His body started to spasm. Did he have muscles any longer? No, no, he’d seen muscles, shiny and pink and red and tasting foul, and the memory hurt him, the worms cried in agony, Arthur shoved the memory away, far away, into the dark abyss, into the floundering ashes of his home, and while he was at it, why not throw everything else in the fire too, why not throw every painful memory into the fire, and Arthur did so gladly, he did so ardently, madly, deeply, truly, gone gone gone gone gone gone gone –

“Az –” Arthur forced out through his teeth, gritting his jaw so hard that he could hear one of his molars crack. The sensation rippled through his body. “Aza--”

A lack of empty space all around him, on his chest, on his face, something warm, and flames? There had been flames, and Arthur pushed hard, making feeble noises that he couldn’t recognize, fuck, no, away, away, away –

But the flames didn’t disappear, and Arthur was of a mind that he was dying, yes, dying in ways that the Blind Idiot God couldn’t even fathom, because the Blind Idiot God did not know what death was, true death was the one thing Azathoth hadn’t created, who had made death, because to kill the universe was to kill everything in it, and mortality seemed such a useless concept, an accessory, to what lay before them all, and why not best to be burned, burned, burned, burned, until he were naught but ash, and the universe tick-tick-tick-tick –

But the fire didn’t release him, and Arthur could not force his Faust-rancid-raw-Arthur-it’s-okay-I’ve-got-you-Bella-keep-Faroe-away-don’t-let-her-see-Art muscles in one direction to push him off, nor could he do so with his words, whatever he was saying, and there was blood, yes, there was always blood involved, the blood of the stars and the blood of the cosmos and the blood of –

But the inferno started to consume him, and Arthur could not be sure what it meant to weep, to grieve, because what use was there for grief when nothing really ended, except for him, and did he not contain the universe as well, all settled into the very sinew of his chew-the-pink-not-the-yellow-Parker-don’t-he’ll-hurt-you-I’ve-got-him-I’ve-got-you-Arthur and wasn’t the greatest irony of all was that he’d met the universe, and he’d talked with the universe, and he’d discovered the universe was lonely, and how much blood did Azathoth have, and was not the blood of the universe the blood of –

But Arthur was burnt to ashes, he was ashes, he was one of the building stones of the universe and without them, the universe would be different, it would simply not be Azathoth, a change of a change of one degree and all could be entirely different, a single drop of new blood in his eat-eat-hungry-fuck-don’t-let-Kayne-get-close-what-the-hell-do-you-want-you-goddamn-shithead-I’ll-break-your-fucking-nose muscles, and weren’t they all, humans and their worms and their raw bloody muscle, weren’t they all blindly composing a universe without the faintest fucking idea of what they were doing –

And everything clarified to a single, sharp note.

It was a flute. A pretty melody. Later came the drum in perfect time.

Arthur became aware that his face was tilted upward, even if he could feel nothing else. Only darkness stretched above him: a darkness that felt familiar and yet eons old. He stared into the darkness of his blind sight again. Black stars that shone no light littered his vision: a darkness that felt familiar and yet eons old. They stabbed through his eyelids. Arthur imagined they drew blood.

The stars began to shift as Azathoth moved.

He could not see the rest of him, not the teeth, not the claws, not the eyes, not the tendrils, not the carapace, not the limbs, not the nose, not the ears, not the scales, not the slime, not the fur, not the immense, infinite eternity that lingered behind his flesh. All Arthur could see were the black stars that made up the universe, growing closer, as Azathoth approached the Dark World.

“Hastur!” A great booming voice cried, hitting some memory in Arthur’s mind. “Hastur, my friend! Hastur, where are you? Where have you gone? Nyarlathotep, what have you done with him?”

“What the fuck? Me?”

“Shit!”

Oh! Oh. Oh. Hah. That was – wasn’t that something.

No, it wasn’t something. It was – he remembered – he remembered! It was funny, so goddamn funny, and Arthur became aware of his throat, because he was laughing, he was cackling, first through gritted, cracked teeth and finally with an open mouth, he was laughing hard enough that he felt they must be able to see the worms through the back of his throat, that he might split in two with the force of his laughter, because it was just so goddamn funny, and who cared if nobody else understood, but Arthur understood, and even if he’d lost his mind over it, even if he’d fractured it irrevocably, it was goddamn the funniest thing alive that Kayne, of all people, the walking bastard of chaos, was the son of the universe, but what else could he possibly be. He had trouble cleaning his room and Arthur laughed.

“Shit shit shit!” Kayne hissed under his breath again, frustrated and surprised and – hang on! Hang on, was that, was that the embodiment of chaos the slightest bit panicked? What did chaos have to panic for?

He was wrong. This was much funnier than anything previous, and Arthur could feel those pink-bloody-everyone-keep-your-eyes-down-FUCK-don’t-let-Faroe-look-up-Bella-nobody-look-up-nobody-look-up! muscles stretch in his throat with the strength of it, blood welling into his mouth, squirming entrails, squirm –

“Oh, will you fucking shut him up!?” Kayne hissed at somebody, Arthur couldn’t know, he was still stuck on entropy, and he kept laughing, “Fuck, uh, Azathoth –”

“I am your father. You are my offspring. You will listen to your creator.”

“My what? What the fuck did you do, Lester?”

“I’ll tear your fucking tongue out if you touch him. Fuck you.”

Someone was trying to smother his laughter, thickly pressing into his mouth. Arthur bit down until he tasted lifegiving-necessary-self-defense-OW-fuck-you-Arthur muscle and he continued laughing, on and on, blood splattered against his teeth, his own, someone else’s, maybe Azathoth’s himself, did demons bleed after all –

“He is my friend. What have you done with him?”

A pause. Arthur’s laugh had turned frothy; he didn’t know why, but he kept on cackling. Sometimes words snuck in as he took a breath, desperately trying to fill his lungs with air, but he knew not what they meant and said them anyway, like he were some sort of blind idiot, and wait that was funny too –

“Uh, uh, I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Kayne called to the heavens, speaking quickly. “Nobody down here. Just doing my duties as messenger – that you keep saddling me with! When am I going to have time to do all this? While you’re up there with your useless dreams!”

“Tell me not, in mournful numbers, life is but an empty dream.”

“The old man is starting to craaaaaaaaaaaack,” Kayne sing-songed, almost entirely to himself, but oh, Arthur could hear, he could hear the Outer Gods, if nothing else, only that and the blood and the flutes and the drums and even the stars, and all at once, it seemed more than noise, it had a point, the entire goddamn thing had a point, and the cosmic song sung to him so brightly, so keenly. “Okay! You all. Party over, change of plan, everybody –”

“You’re a child,” Arthur bubbled out gleefully, but it didn’t sound like the right words, but that was alright, because there was only one person who needed to hear. “Azathoth, he –”

“OUT!”

Chapter Text

Parker did not have one goddamn clue in the hell what was going on, but that didn’t mean he didn’t kiss the ground a few times when they all woke up in the ashes of Yang & Lester.

Was he a little surprised to find their old apartment burned to the ground? Sure. But Parker had thought he’d never see Earth again, that his day trip outside the iron-wrought gates of Hell had met its end in the death-smelling attic of an old lighthouse, and so – he wouldn’t complain.

He had spent most of his very long life trying to avoid occult stuff. Arthur had been good about it. Frankly, Parker got the feeling that Arthur thought the whole thing was a load of bullshit (well, up until it shat on his desk), but he’d understood Parker’s hesitancy. Or, he’d respected it, anyhow.

Parker didn’t really know jack shit about it. Just that he believed in it, and it was bad news.

Parker didn’t regret not trying to learn more about the occult, actually. In fact, now that they were back on sweet sweet Earth, Parker was very interested in not learning about anything related to the occult ever again. That he maybe didn’t understand what just happened was small potatoes, comparing to being alive and on Earth again.

A lot of shit had happened at once.

But. As far as he understood it …

Soon as John had ripped apart a god with nothing but a Dunhill Lighter and his own hands, Arthur had taken a breath, because John didn’t know everything about everything after all. They’d both raced to pull him out of the rubble.

That was about when Art started to … shake. And talk. Constantly – fuck his tongue, apparently, because even when Art bit it, even when he was spraying blood with every word he babbled, he just kept going. Gibbering and jabbering, syllables and words that Parker didn’t understand, with his body spasming like his muscles were coming apart all the while.

It’d scared the hell out of him, in truth. Enough to keep him still, even as the braver John gathered Arthur up in his arms again. Fuck, John hadn’t looked any less scared, and that made things even worse, because if the actual literal god-piece didn’t know how to fix this, then how the hell would he?

Then, they’d heard a familiar cackle of laughter. It set Arthur off, too.

In retrospect? Fantastic stuff, really, he was glad that Arthur and Kayne found something so fucking funny together.

Parker had faced down guys bigger than him before. Gotten the shit kicked out of him, too. He’d never hated any of them as much as he hated Kayne, and he was never as scared of them as he was of the guy who’d worn his skin – and his best pal’s skin – like some cheap suit.

Wasn’t going to stop him from trying to kick Kayne’s ass, though, for whatever new level of Hell it sent him to. It wouldn’t have been a bad way to go. Parker would’ve preferred very drunk and very old, but hey, you couldn’t have it all.

He wasn’t sure whether it was better to be looked upon as Kayne’s plaything or Kayne’s bait, though he supposed the former had actually had his mind reduced to mush.

But fuck, he’d been so furious, and when Kayne turned his eyes on him, he could only see utter delight reflected back at him, and Parker realized this was all just more entertainment.

Then, because it was a goddamn party at stark bedrock, the fucking stars started to move.

With his eyes trained on Kayne, it’d been Bella who noticed it first. She kindly let him know with a scream – enough to get John to take his eyes off Arthur for a damn second, too, and enough for John to shout with terror that they needed to keep their eyes down.

Parker wasn’t about to argue with that. He didn’t want to know, either. As his eyes flicked back to Kayne, though, he saw fear flicker over the eldritch god’s face.

That … as much as he liked Kayne looking like he were about to wet himself, this was hardly an enemy-of-my-enemy situation.

Around then was where Parker started to lose the plot.

There was just so much goddamn noise.

As soon as this curious eldritch pigeon, or whatever the hell this new intruder was, grew closer, Arthur’s laugh took on a new feverish pitch. Even Kayne shouted at him to shut up, for whatever little good it did. And when the thing talked? He couldn’t even make out what it was saying; all he could hear was a steady drumbeat against his eardrums, a flute piercing through his skull.

He fell to his knees, head in his hands. Jesus, Kayne could’ve skinned him and Parker would’ve been none the wiser, it just kept going, going, going, until one word broke through the cacophony.

“OUT!”

Then – and Parker was getting to be the expert at this, having done it twice and all – he was pretty sure he died again. Seven more and get a free ice cream cone.

(FUCK fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. He was okay. He was great.)

And yeah. He might’ve kissed the ashes a little, once he got his head on straight and made sure that his heart was keeping rhythm with the rest of him.

Parker managed to stand on shaky feet, taking stock of the situation. His hands went to his chest. Could anybody really blame a guy for trembling hands? He had to take it slow.

Two legs. Two arms. Head. Other head. He’d assume all his ribs were there. All ten fingernails, too, wow. Things were looking up, and Parker looked up, and …

And it was a beautiful day in Arkham, Massachusetts.

The thing about Arkham was that it was near the coast, but nobody had ever called Arkham a beach town. Even if you managed to get far enough away from the docks that you stopped smelling the dead fish and tariff tax, the beaches were mostly gravel and the sky was mostly choppy. Up above wasn’t much better: it rained too much in Arkham, got too cold, snowed well into April and kicked back up again around September. And, you know, cultists.

Suffice to say that Arkham rivaled Innsmouth for the bottom of the barrel.

But …

The sun was high in the sky, pinned like a daisy against a bright blue expanse. A pleasant breeze ruffled the back of Parker’s hair; it replaced the scent of ash with … hah, Parker Yang might’ve been the only guy in Massachusetts who thought the smell of the city (concrete, refuse, and gasoline) was comforting, but he was also the only sane guy in Massachusetts, so.

A few cars drove by on the road outside the office. They slowed when they passed the remnants of the building. Rubber-neckers. At least some old walls were standing, enough to hide them from the lookie-loos. People. Regular people, not cultists or former cultists or fog sailors or gods or – just people.

Parker’s eyes welled up.

He was home.

When he’d been looking for Art, he’d stopped by Arkham only briefly, but there’d been too much on his mind to really appreciate the sights. Parker hadn’t really missed it; at least, he hadn’t missed it as much as he’d missed Arthur.

Now, though?

Fuck. He’d kiss every building in Arkham if he could. The others would have to hold him back.

His cheeks hurt from grinning. “Hey-hey!” Parker crowed triumphantly, the words getting caught in his soot-roughened throat. The world wobbled a little under his feet as he turned, bit too fast, and faced the others. “Gotta tell you all, the return trip was way faster than –”

Uh-oh.

The others … weren’t looking so good.

Bella, at least, was standing. She stood in her bloodstained, torn dress – the blood had already started to dry and crack on her legs. Ghost-like, she clutched her daughter to her chest. Faroe looked like she was out for the count. Though she swayed, Parker really couldn’t tell whether that was for her sleeping daughter’s benefit or … having trouble staying upright.

John was cross-legged on the floor. All of his attention was on the man laying across his lap, one arm looped protectively around his torso. It wasn’t the same defensive posture he’d taken before, but a wide-eyed stare as if Arthur might wake up and say boo.

Arthur was out like a light. He still had blood dripping from his mouth, minus … hell, everything else going on.

Breathing. Breathing, though. He was breathing.

Okay. Parker could work with breathing. When he’d first met this guy, breathing was basically all he had to work with. And, hey, he had – well. Not friends, maybe, but he had other people who gave a shit about Arthur Lester, and that was way more than he had the first time he pulled Arthur up from the bottom.

Maybe he couldn’t rely on them all that much right now, though, not in the state they were in. Besides, Bella was a twenty-year-old Englishwoman that looked close to fainting, Faroe was a three-year-old sleeping toddler, Arthur was Arthur, and John was – uh. He wasn’t sure that John knew what a taxi was. And, probably, someone eldritchally-inclined ought to look after Arthur.

Which left these immediate matters to him.

Yeah. He could work with that. After all, he was twenty-five – hell, no, probably twenty-six, if he played fast and loose with the calendar. Parker was a fixer to Arthur’s investigator. This was just a particularly unique sort of case. The Case of the Five People Who Desperately Need A Shower and a Bed.

Just had to get up from the ashes.

“Alright, everyone,” Parker said, hands on his hips. “In the words of Bella’s people, let’s see if there’s some room at the inn.”

*

Were days shorter?

There was no reason for them to be, Parker figured, but there wasn’t really a reason for all of this. He’d read a science fiction novel that had introduced multiple universes. It’d freaked him out a little. Arthur couldn’t understand why the idea was so terrifying, even after Parker had painstakingly explained the plot, but the idea that they might have been dropped in an Earth with shorter days plagued him intermittently.

Logically, Parker knew it was nonsense. It had just been a really, really busy day and he hadn’t been keeping an eye on the clock.

Stopping by a bank. Getting them motel rooms. Getting them a fresh change of clothes. Parker had left them all to shower so he could grab dinner because holy hell, when was the last time any one of them had eaten?

Parker had stopped by the Silver Bullet to take whatever they had to-go. He hadn’t realized he would be recognized until he showed up, and for the first time in – god, felt like forever – Parker had the most bizarre small talk with a man he’d gotten a blue plate special from once a week for years. He could feel the questions burning in his eyes, but Parker brushed them off and fled with food in tow.

After all that had happened, It was good to get some time on his own. Get his head on straight. Try to make what could roughly be considered a plan. This stuff was easy. This was making sure something stayed alive, like the mutt he’d informally adopted as a kid.

Everything else beyond that? It was going to take some additional planning. They had a future to consider, now.

Planning sooner rather than later, actually. When Parker got out of the cab, his eyes fell on a phone booth on the other side of the street. He definitely had some calls that he needed to make.

But first, a delivery.

He whistled a low tune as he climbed the stairs to their rooms. Only Parker had gone into the front office (what with the blood on Bella and the unconscious man on John), even if he wasn’t winning any pageants, himself. At the time, Parker would’ve taken any rooms; the fact that they’d had two seemed a goddamn blessing.

But now, Parker had to consider.

Hell, that was going to be tight. Bunking with his murderer and his possibly brain-dead unconscious best pal. He’d shared a bed with Arthur in their small apartment office, but Arthur was a serviceable six feet and John even worse. Did John even sleep, or did he just glare from the corner?

Whatever. He’d figure it out later.

Parker approached John’s door and rapped his knuckles against it. “Room service,” Parker grunted, only to be met with silence.

Right. John didn’t do jokes.

“It’s Parker. I’ve got dinner for you and the stiff.”

Nothing. Parker rapped his knuckles against the door harder. “John. Food. Open the door, I’ve seen you eat before, I know you do it. You need me to remind you what hole it goes in?”

Not a word.

Damn it.

Yeah, Parker supposed he could lockpick the door. If he came back and the food was still left outside, he absolutely would be picking the door. He figured doing so would piss John off in his usual fashion.

Right now, though, the last thing Arthur needed was more interruption. Parker trusted John to keep an eye on Arthur. Two nurses at his bedside would spoil the whole pot, or whatever.

Still. Guy coulda said something.

He left the food outside the door and went to Bella’s, pounding on the door with the same intensity that he’d given that bull-headed motherfucker –

She opened it on the third knock, and on top of everything else, Parker had been a lapse of concentration and a half-second away from hitting a lady in the face.

“What’s the matter?” Bella asked, alarmed.

Aw, hell. His face was red. “Nothing! Nothing, just, uh. Weren’t sure whether you were asleep,” Parker remarked, gesturing vaguely at the moon, the thing that came out when people slept. “Brought dinner for you and the, uh. How’s she doing?”

“I think …” To that, Bella stepped back from the door. “I think okay?”

Faroe was sat on the floor of the hotel room. Hell, Parker realized he’d never really seen her hair dry. Her hair reminded him of Arthur’s – maybe a little curlier, like Bella’s, but just as gravity-resistant. She wore a clean dress. Big on her. Parker didn’t exactly have a lot of experience buying baby clothes. Neither did Bella, for that matter.

Well. Nobody would ever guess that this little baby had been to Hell. Faroe babbled continuously. Some of it even sounded like words. Word-adjacent, at any rate. She was happy as a clam, slapping her tiny hands against an open Bible from the nightstand drawer and rustling the thin pages.

As far as Parker could tell, she looked alright. That didn’t explain why Bella looked half-scared to death at the sight of her.

“You okay?”

Bella’s head snapped to Parker. She gave him a smile. “Never better,” she chirped, and yeah, something was definitely up. Not like she didn’t have reason to, though, but maybe the poor lady just needed some time alone. To get acquainted with her daughter. Damn.

“Well.” Parker held up the bag. “Your first meal in this country, from an actual diner for poor shmucks down on their luck.” It was passed over to her. “The American way. There’s, uh, a knife and fork in there, if you need to cut it up for Faroe. Believe me –” Some alarm started to sound in the back of his head. In a previous life, that alarm had taken physical form in Arthur Lester’s elbow directly between his ribs. That was Arthur’s time-and-place-for-jokes elbow.

No Arthur Lester here, though. Parker gestured to his neck. “Choking’s not a great way to spend an evening.”

God damn it. And in front of a god damn lady.

To his surprise, though, Bella’s smile relaxed into something more natural. She chuckled with her tongue in her cheek – all the while, shaking her head, like she knew she really oughtn’t have been laughing.

“Thank you, Parker,” she said, and Parker had a notion that she was a half-degree more relaxed than she had been before. “The others, um, John, and A … Arthur. Have they eaten?”

“John’s not answering the door. I’m sure it’s fine.” He really didn’t know it was fine. For all he knew, it was a bloodbath in there ... but for as much of a goddamn jackass John could be sometimes, Parker knew he’d never hurt a hair on that guy’s head. “But it’s outside the door, if they do eat it.”

“And you?”

Parker grinned. “I got mine, ma’am, don’t worry, but I’ve got to make some calls.”

“Calls?” Her brow furrowed. “With … with a telephone? I, I could help –?”

“You just keep an eye on Faroe, okay? You do that, and John keeps an eye on Arthur, and I’ll clear the way.”

Arthur hadn’t talked about himself much.

Hell, Parker was standing in front of his – evidently – one-time dead fiance and daughter. Parker didn’t know what John had broken over his head to make Arthur cough up his heart in the past few months. For now, it was easy to shove that sticky mess into the back of his head. At least until Arthur woke up. At least until he could make sure Arthur was okay, that his brain hadn't totally leaked out his ears.

Even so, Parker had known why Arthur worked cases. The guy threw himself into every case with his entire chest, took every failed case as a personal mark against him in his ledger.

Suffice to say – whatever Arthur’s past held, Parker knew it hadn’t been good. Even back then. Arthur wasn’t the only guy who did cases for penance.

Parker didn’t do it for penance. At least, he didn’t think so. He just wanted to help.

Bella’s grateful smile only reminded him of that. “Fantastic. And, tonight …?”

Shit. That was right. If John wasn’t going to open the door for dinner, he doubted John was going to open the door for him. Parker had slept worse places than out in the cold, yeah, but …

Well, hell. He’d done worse things than impose on a lady. “I hate to ask, but, uh. John is … I don’t think John’s gonna let me in the room tonight.” Because he’s got a one track mind and Arthur’s broken down in the middle of it. “Maybe for the best, Arthur needs the quiet. Mind if I take the floor in yours? Just for tonight.”

“After everything that’s happened? Of course you can,” Bella insisted, so urgently that Parker could only laugh.

*

The last time Parker had folded himself in a phone booth with a burger in his lap had been during one of their early cases, before they’d saved up enough to have a phone put in the office.

Arthur hadn’t come home.

Parker’s first steps had been to beat feet to Arthur’s old haunts. Jazz clubs, bars, whatever miserable speak-easy had opened up around the corner. Then, of course, there was the morbid run: hospitals, morgues, and police departments.

Nothing. So. Parker had gotten some dinner, put his back against the phone booth wall, put his foot on the other, and started to call the next town over.

He hadn’t ended up finding any trace of him. On his walk to the police precinct, he just … found Arthur drunk off his ass, banging on a door. The building would contain their missing girl, as well as about a dozen cultists.

Parker liked telling that story. He’d told it to John on the boat, even if John hadn’t taken it as the olive branch he’d hoped for. Parker hadn’t even omitted the part where Arthur had cried, which he usually did when telling it to people. John deserved to know the whole of it. Arthur’s a brilliant detective, and he’s a good guy, he’s just rough around the edges. Just needs some people that care about him, like you and me, so let's be friends and let's stop trying to kill each other.

Still, pressed into the phone booth, he could only remember the less-exciting parts of the story. The frustration building into growing dread. The idea that Arthur might be in some alley somewhere. The idea that Arthur really would just bolt at a moment’s notice, if he thought Parker was getting too close.

Parker shook his head, banished the memory, and went through his contacts.

He got some work done. The police didn’t think he was dead, for one thing, and he was reasonably sure that he’d just gotten Arthur Lester off the hook. It wasn’t bad, for a conversation he had with a mouth full of burger.

Thing was, it probably wasn’t the most unusual thing that folks at the APD had seen that month. In Parker’s experience, they didn’t deal with the cults so much as they managed them, and they were profoundly disinterested in digging too far. Dead guy called the department? Sure. Mark him off the books.

He’d been worried they’d ask him to come in and give a statement. Hadn’t even done that much, not after Reggie had been one to pick up the phone, and Parker had a history with Reggie, and – well.

Maybe it wasn’t the Saint Peter-worthy decision to say that Eddie had been the one to open the demon book, that he’d attacked the both of them, that evidently reading a demon-book hadn’t worked out so well in the end. Unusual deaths weren’t exactly uncommon, and Parker had a suspicion that the entire business was mentally slotted into spooky cultist shit as soon as the word ‘demon’ left his mouth.

But, fine. It meant that Arthur wouldn’t get arrested, and Eddie was dead as hell. If he could forgive John for killing him … he never liked Eddie, anyway.

Before he hung up, Reggie asked if they (and Parker realized, with a jolt, that he meant Parker and Arthur again) wanted more case referrals. If Yang & Lester were back in business.

Jesus, Parker didn’t know.

He said yes and hung up.

Other calls had to be made. Less important ones. A few old favors, calling in some old debts. Parker felt his eyes glaze over in the rigor of it, but … hell, it was nice. He almost felt like the old Parker, the guy who actually had a handle on the situation at all times.

It crossed his mind to call his family.

Parker left the phone booth.

It was dark outside. After the place they’d just come from, though, it might as well have been blinding. There were streetlights, blinding streetlights, and warm yellow from inside old tenement buildings, and the moon hanging up above, and white stars, so many stars, and he could see the motel, and he could see a light from within Bella’s room, and …

And it was going to be okay. They were going to be okay. Parker was going to make certain of it.

*

The floor really wasn’t that bad. Before they’d managed to get a couch in the apartment … well, you couldn’t share a bed with someone you’d been yelling at a few hours beforehand, no matter the nature of your relationship. Now, the floor in their office was shit. That probably did more for conflict resolution between them than anything else. But this motel floor? With his jacket underneath his head, even with fuck-all for a covering, it really wasn’t …

“Parker?”

Hell. He thought he’d come into the hotel room quietly. Parker shifted a little on the floor. “Yeah?”

“There’s room on the bed.”

Uh. Uh. Parker blinked in the darkness.

Don’t worry about any funny business, ma’am. I’m one of those homosexuals, we’re all the rage in churches. Would that make Bella feel better? Worse? Did her desire to be kind outweigh any nervousness about sharing a bed with a guy? Then again, Arthur …

“Faroe was on the floor, earlier?” Bella went on. “And she got … pretty sticky. So.”

Eurgh. Not a bad point.

Parker pushed himself up from the ground. From the light coming in through the window, he could see them on the bed: Faroe in the middle, limbs thrown askew, and Bella, looking up at him earnestly.

He laid down as close to the edge as possible and folded his arms behind his head. Should I put on my shoes? Parker wondered, dimly. No. Weirder if I put on my shoes. But he could hear Bella’s breathing, now, and it reminded him of not very long ago, when he could hear Arthur’s broken snores through his broken nose –

And then it’d all gone to shit.

For more than just him.

Hell. Talking with Arthur about his emotions rarely went well. Felt weird to have the conversation now, but Parker’d rather try than not.

“How are you doing, Bella?”

“Okay!” Chirpy. “Better.” Lower. “It’s … it’s safer here, and I think – I think the worst of it is over.”

If that wasn’t the optimistic point of view. Parker wondered if he should bring up that he thought the worst of it would be his actual, literal death, and then he’d died a second time and gotten sent to the Dark World.

Nah. No. That probably wouldn’t go over well, even if Bella was probably right. “Hey, uh,” he found himself saying. “I’m … I can’t speak for Bruiser in the next room.” Bella snorted from the other side of the bed. “But sorry that we both, uh. Sorry that we both lied to you, when we first met. We didn’t know how to break the news to you. Hell, I didn’t even know Arthur had a … had a someone before we met you.”

Bella didn’t say anything for a long while. Fine, okay, she didn’t owe him forgiveness, Parker got that, and besides, they really hardly knew each other.

“Forgive as the Lord forgave you.”

Oh, man. He was an ass. Parker slapped a hand across his mouth to keep any noises from getting out. He wasn’t laughing at her, he just … “Really that easy, huh?”

Bella sighed. Parker turned his head to look at her: she laid in a not dissimilar position to him, on her back, but with her hands folded on her stomach. Honestly, Faroe was taking up most of the bed. When she wasn’t so clearly a drowned kid … hell, that was kind of adorable. Reminded him of his little sister. Not that she was three years old anymore. No, she was six years younger than him, which meant that she was –

Ah.

Parker turned back to stare at the ceiling.

“It never is,” she admitted. “But, it … so many things have happened, Parker, and I don’t think you, or John, or … gosh, especially Arthur. I don’t think any of you are bad people. And I need, I think …”

Oh no. Oh, no, please, he didn’t know what to do if Bella started crying. He’d dealt with a lot of crying people, men and women both, but usually not when he was lying in their bed.

Bella warbled out what’d clearly been building up. “I don’t know what to do, now. I’ve been dead for ten years, it’s … it’s 1934, I – I have a toddler, I, I didn’t think I’d even be able to handle a baby, a-and, a-nd I’ve never even left England …”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, Bella, Bella.” He felt like he were calming a horse. Usually he was the guy crying clients went to. Arthur – again, before his demonic brain surgery – had left the room when people cried. “It’s gonna be okay. Yeah? Look, I’m not a dad, but I have been dead, and Arthur, well, he’s been a dad and dead. And John, you know, he’s great with Faroe.”

(Well. Okay. He’d held her once.)

She was starting to breathe a little faster. Parker didn’t dare turn to look at her. “Hey.” He said, urgent. “You got help. Okay? We’re not going to leave you on the side of the road.” Bella had started to sniffle. “What we went through, it was insane, and, and we’re all going to need help. But. We got you, okay? You got us. The game’s not over yet. Couple of more innings in us.”

“W-what?”

“Aw, he—heck. Baseball, uh.”

Fuck, but Bella was so young. He’d been lost as a baby lamb when he woke up in the morgue, but she … hell.

“Tomorrow. Tomorrow,” Parker insisted. “We’ll make a plan for what we’re going to do next. All of us, we’ll sit down.” And he would throw John over his shoulder, if need be. Shackle them together. “We’ll figure out what we’re going to do. And you, and Faroe, you are both going to be fine. You got my word.”

“You scarcely know me.”

“No, but I know that you love Arthur. And that Arthur loves …” Kayne’s words flickered through his head momentarily, but he dismissed them. The fuck did Kayne know. “Arthur loves all of us, alright? So we’re stuck together. Nice to meet you.” He held his hand out over Faroe. “Parker Yang.”

That drew a laugh out of her. A moment passed, and Parker felt warm fingers in his own as she shook his hand. “Nice to meet you. Bella Adwell,” she said, and then – quieter: “God bless you, Parker.”

Hell, that felt nice, even if he didn’t put much stock on it. Maybe it the way Bella said it, like she really meant it. That was no yeah, and god bless you, buddy as you jaywalked across Main Street. “That’s still there, huh?” Parker asked, curious. “After everything that happened.”

“I know there’s plenty I don’t know. That’s half why I wanted to leave England, with Arthur. To learn,” she emphasized. “But it’s not as if – oh, Parker. I don’t know. I suppose I still like thinking there’s a plan for me.”

Huh! Out of all the appeals of religion (he was sure there had to be some), Parker hadn’t been expecting that. “How d’you figure?”

“There were so many times in the Dark World where we – we had to face oblivion, Parker. A long, long time with no plan and no, I don’t know … no resolution. No meaning. And it, it helps me to think that there’s a path that we’re following. Paths have endings. Stories have endings.”

“Yeah? Your story going like you thought it would?"

“You have no idea,” Bella added, but he could tell that she was smiling. Her breathing had steadied out. Well, good. “But it’s not just for me. It’s for Faroe?”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t know what her life’s going to be like. I wasn’t even there for it.” In the darkness, he heard Bella shift onto her side. Parker had a feeling that he wasn’t staring at him. “I don’t even know who she is, not really, and I don't know ... I don't know what to do. And, I – I like the idea that someone knows what they’re doing for her.” Huh. “It gives me hope that … that she’ll be happy.”

“That sounds really nice, Bella.”

“I keep looking at her and, and … reminding myself that she’s my daughter. She doesn’t know me, not really. Isn’t that the strangest thing?” she whispered.

After everything? Parker let out a low whistle. “Not at all.”

A small pause. Bella finally asked, again: “We all have each other?”

“Past the end.”

“Good. Thank you.” Bella rolled onto her back, folding her hands on her stomach once more. “We should all get some sleep, shouldn’t we?”

“Yeah. I don’t even know when the last time I slept was.”

“Nineteen twenty-one for me. I could sleep for ages.”

“Well! Ms. Adwell, you’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”

Their laughter echoed around the darkened hotel room. Like a warm telephone booth light, and the familiar stars above Arkham, and the sight of his burnt-down office …

It’s going to be okay.

Chapter Text

A strange tightness settled over his chest the moment John was alone with Arthur. Far from immobilizing him, it spurred him on to action.

As tenderly as he could manage, John laid Arthur down on the bed. He took a large step back, hands raised, as if expecting Arthur to lurch to life.

Arthur didn’t.

The moment they’d been forced back to Earth, Arthur had gone limp in his arms. His heart still beat, and he still breathed, and given all that had happened, John figured Arthur to be very fortunate indeed.

After a moment of observation, John undressed him. His soot-stained clothes fell into a pile on the floor.

No life-threatening injuries, aside from his usual. The black scars from the Deep Ones still lingered, angry against his skin. Arthur snored softly in his sleep, but it was no worse with that bruise around his neck. Larger, fresher bruises lined his body. A dried trail of blood stained the side of his mouth. John pinched his fingers around his cheeks to force his jaw open: it still flowed sluggishly from his gumline. Half of a molar was missing.

Arthur’s warbling babbles, in conjunction with how fiercely he forced his jaw together … John had tried to keep him from hurting himself, but he’d been foolish to expect anything other than a bite. He’d been fortunate that Arthur hadn’t bitten his entire finger off.

Azathoth. Even the name made John anxiously look up towards the motel room ceiling. When the world continued existing, he dropped his gaze back towards Arthur.

“Arthur,” John whispered in trepidation. “What did you do?”

Arthur was … friendly, and caring, and sometimes a little naïve in the cosmic sense (all mortals were). This went beyond the pale. Surely Arthur had been scared. Surely Arthur knew that communicating with Azathoth (and how –?) was a bad idea. Surely …

Weariness had started to pound against the inside of John’s skull, but he couldn’t rest yet. That weariness held a familiar cadence to it.

Miles to go.

The room had a bath. Hand on the wall to steady himself, John started the water and let it run warm. He retrieved Arthur from the bed, still too light in his arms. A slow, unsteady walk, and then he gently laid him down in the water. He managed that, though his balance failed soon enough, and he had to catch himself against the tile wall.

Alright. Alright.

A bath did nothing to stir Arthur. Still limp, his head dangled against his shoulder. John had to make minor adjustments to keep him from falling under the surface. Pale, listless, to the Dark World and back ...

Arthur looked dead.

John knew he wasn’t. With every brush of the washcloth against his body, John could feel the warmth under his skin, could feel the way his chest and fell. And yet, John had to constantly force his muscles to relax, certain that the next brush of his fingers against Arthur’s skin would send his mind somewhere else.

He couldn’t take that. He couldn’t. Just as it were possible for mortals to die from things that they didn’t understand, John suspected it was possible for gods to die from the same. He couldn’t fathom a single step without the knowledge that Arthur was there, somewhere.

No. Had to distract himself. Arthur had a lot of soot and blood on him.

How did that poem go, again …?

“Whose woods are these?” No. No, it rhymed with … “Whose woods these are. I … I think I know,” he muttered cautiously. The memory of Arthur reciting it laced through his head, the usual rise and fall of his voice. Had Arthur sat down with a book of poetry, once? Read them until they were burned into his eyes, into the folds of his brain? Had he memorized them to give him comfort, or had it been an unintentional side effect?

He reached for the shampoo and started to scrub Arthur’s scalp.

“His house is in the village … though.” And then … “He will not see me stopping there.” Arthur’s hair was filthy. Had he gotten off the boat like this? Who only knew how long it had taken to get there? How long Arthur had been alone, set on his task … only to come to the Dark World, and immediately run into Kayne? How had Kayne convinced him to take John’s form? Had Kayne given him an option at all?

Oh, his heart.

“He will not see me stopping there.” The next one rhymed with … “To watch his woods fill up with snow.”

The water was growing filthier, swirling in mystifying arrays of grays and reds. Though he debated changing it, John wanted to keep this bath short. He doubted that Arthur awaking in water would prove at all comforting, given their history. Not only with Faroe.

“My little horse must think it queer …” Behind his ears, next. John had started to see clean skin underneath the coated-on grime. Arthur had smelled good, once. In Innsmouth, John would take his aftershave to smell good himself. He’d liked being close to him. “To stop without a farmhouse near.”

What had Arthur done? Azathoth – another wince, another look towards the sky – had clearly mistaken Arthur for Hastur, and given the yellow cloak, John could dimly piece that together. But a friend? How the fuck had Arthur taught Azathoth what a friend was?

It didn’t matter. Azathoth may have been able to visit the Dark World without decimating everyone in sight, but if he came upon Earth, they would all be dead. Therefore, John tried to reason, it was ridiculous to worry about it. All existence would be nil.

John would’ve taken Arthur over answers, any day. “Between the woods and frozen lake … the darkest evening of the year.”

Okay. That would have to do. He was clean, anyway, free of the ash and blood. He dunked his hands in a relatively clean patch of water and raised his cupped palms to rinse Arthur’s hair. “He gives his harness bells a –”

A loud bang at the door caused John to jolt in surprise. His balance slipped, and the palmfuls of water struck Arthur directly in the face. Arthur’s eyelashes practically twinkled with it.

“Room service!”

John growled, casting a violent glance towards the door. Fuck. Couldn’t Parker understand that Arthur needed space? Rest? That he had had his mind halfway torn apart from what he’d seen, that occult bullshit, as Parker would put it --

“It’s Parker. I’ve got dinner for you and the stiff.”

Who else could it be? John scowled and dipped his hands underneath the water again, rinsing Arthur’s hair more thoroughly. There. That was better. His hair was plastered against his forehead and brushed a little past his eyebrows.

John had forgotten about food. It appealed to him little, right then. If Arthur could eat, then John could be convinced. As it was, he had little confidence that he could get Arthur to swallow without choking. He might be able to manage water, if he were careful. Yes. He would have to get Arthur some water, later.

“John. Food. Open the door, I’ve seen you eat before, I know you do it. You need me to remind you what hole it goes in?”

Fuck! John finally lurched to his feet, furious. He wasn’t going to yell, because Arthur needed to rest, and he wasn’t going to argue, because he had promised Parker that he would control his temper and John actually did want to work on that.

But Arthur needed to –

“Hh--!” Arthur suddenly gasped from the bath. “Hh--! Hh--!”

Oh my god, he’s drowning. The thought settled on his mind as a certainty; he whirled around on his feet.

Arthur hadn’t fallen below the water. He was shaking – not the powerful spasms that had wracked his body in the church, but a full-body tremble as if in fear. What was more, Arthur had started to gag, clearly trying to get some word out. It stuck in his throat.

“Hh-! Hh-! Hh-!”

“Arthur?” Was he choking?

John wasted little time.

Without thinking of the logistics, he clambered into the water and knelt in between Arthur’s legs. More of the water, already sloshing from Arthur’s movements, splashed out into the bathroom floor below.

One arm went around Arthur’s shoulder to hold him steady, and the other forced Arthur’s jaw open yet again.

No. Not choking on anything. If he had anything to vomit, John would’ve been surprised. Instead, Arthur kept insisting, so forceful that it seemed painful, with breath that smelled of rancid meat, “Hh--! Hh--! Hh--!”

“It’s me. It’s me, it’s John,” he whispered. Sloshing more water out of the tub, he brought Arthur against his chest. He didn’t know whether that would stop the shaking, whether that would stop Arthur’s insistent pleas, but what else could he do? Arthur had to know. “I have you, Arthur. I’ve got you. I have you.”

He found himself pressing his lips against the top of Arthur’s head, against his temple, against the ridge of his brow. For what purpose, he didn’t know: the same nebulous purpose that all affection seemed to have, that it was useless and that it was vital, that it meant nothing and it kept him alive. “It’s me,” he repeated again, over and over. “It’s John. It’s John. You’re okay.”

Just when he started to get hope that this was temporary, that soon Arthur would wake and explain what the hell had happened back there, just when he felt the trembling start to subside …

Arthur collapsed, like a puppet with its strings cut. He was as limp, as lifeless, as he’d been before.

Okay.

Okay.

He would not let himself get disappointed. Arthur had been through a trauma that no other mortal had ever experienced … well. Experienced and walked away from, perhaps. That Arthur had sprung back to life, even momentarily …

His face was wet.

John rose his fingers to his face and was surprised to find himself crying so freely. The tears glinted against his own trembling fingers. Scared? Am I scared?

He allowed himself a few tears against the top of Arthur’s head, before he started to become aware of the rapidly cooling water. Arthur was clean. Now, Arthur needed to rest – and frankly, if Arthur started to seize again, it would be better to have it happen somewhere soft.

It took some careful maneuvering. John didn’t bother re-dressing Arthur in the soot-covered rags, though he threw on his own tattered pants. He left the tub mostly full and filthy.

He wrapped Arthur in the sheets and blankets as best as he could. The food was recovered from the front stoop – not because John had miraculously obtained an appetite, but because Arthur had proven himself capable of waking, and if he awoke ravenous next time … John wanted to be prepared. It was left on top of the empty dresser.

He pulled the blinds shut, completely dropping the room into darkness. Then there seemed to be little else to do but wait.

Only one thing John wanted to do, in truth.

He sat on the bed with his back against the wall, legs spread in front of him. John pulled Arthur (swaddled in blankets as he was) between them and let Arthur’s head rest against his chest. If Arthur awoke to a heartbeat, perhaps that would be a fucking decent indicator that his own should keep working.

John’s arms folded around Arthur’s ribcage to keep him secure. From this position, he could keep an eye on the window – and he could keep an eye on the door – and he could feel the dub-dub-dub of Arthur’s heart against his skinny chest. Only this seemed to finally loosen the tightness around John’s chest: the knowledge that if he had his arms around Arthur, nobody could separate them again.

This was all he needed, and John knew he would not sleep.

The screaming would start soon after.

*

Later. Much, much later.

He had not bothered to check the time, but the sun was making a valiant attempt to shine through the curtain. John was damp with sweat; his black hair plastered against his skull. Arthur still rested in his arms. Peaceful, now.

When they’d shared a mind, John hadn’t liked it when Arthur slept. It’d taken him a while to understand why Arthur even needed it (and so fucking much of it). Though he had developed his own methods and routines to make it through each excruciating night, had even come to appreciate the meditative introspection, it was still easy to fall into painful restlessness.

There was only so many times John could sort through the information that he’d absorbed from the barrier between his mind and Arthur’s. He would always come up with questions to ask Arthur, later, though few of them were ever actually spoken. They rarely seemed to be on good terms long enough for John to pepper Arthur with questions about humanity. He rarely knew how to phrase them.

He had a form, now, but he hadn’t actually slept at all last night. John remained as still as if he existed in Arthur’s mind only. He felt akin to a ghost, haunting Arthur’s body.

It was getting harder to ignore the knocking, nor Parker’s more insistent demands that John open the godda—darling door, hey Bella, maybe take Faroe for a walk? Arkham’s pretty safe to walk around in, this hour – great! See you in a bit -- OPEN THE FUCKING DOOR, JOHN.

When Arthur had started to scream in the night, John had shouted curt rebuff through the hotel door. He’s fine. Just a nightmare. Don’t come in. You’ll make it worse. Some of those were even true.

He didn’t want to open the door. He was … tired. John thought he might’ve been tired. Only one question had been running through his mind the entire night, but he’d come no closer to an answer. Nor could he actually ask Arthur.

Scratching at the door. That managed to get John’s eyes to flick over to it, at least, wondering ...

The door swung open, just a crack. A singular sunbeam shone in from the outside: it struck John’s left eye, and carved a pillar of light down the side of Arthur’s pale face.

Parker knelt in the gap, a few of Bella’s pins clutched in his hand. He made himself rise with a grunt. “Uh …”

John glared wordlessly. Arthur was trying to rest. Didn’t any of them understand, John had said that Arthur was fine –?

And why was Parker staring? John looked down at his friend. Arthur looked better than he had before: cleaner, at any rate, though he’d broken into a sweat over the night. John had tried to keep him cool, shifting the blankets down to around his waist. Was it the scars that drew Parker’s attention? Or –?

In a flash, the expression was gone. What it was replaced with wasn’t exactly cheerful. “John,” he insisted, stern. “What’s going on with him? Last night, that was – he was screaming.”

John’s instinct was sarcasm. Oh, was he? I hadn’t noticed. Not difficult to shut down that instinct, mostly due to exhaustion.

He had wondered why Parker hadn’t burst in, after the third or fourth nightmare. Then again, the walls were thin. Just as John had been able to hear them try to soothe Faroe, woken from her father’s screams, he was certain that they’d been able to hear his increasingly desperate attempts to calm Arthur, too.

“He had a nightmare.” His voice was flatter than he recalled, little more than a croak. “He had … nightmares.”

“Did – did he say anything? Do you think he ever woke up?”

“No.” He wasn’t trying to give Parker any hope, there. “He would just … scream.”

What had it meant? When Arthur had worn himself out from screaming, when John had swaddled him and held him and promised everything he could think of, he would start gagging again. The same syllable.

Hh-? Hhhh-? John could understand the screaming; he’d heard Arthur scream a hundred times before. The wordless shrieks of a man who thought he was about to die were painful to listen to, but something he understood.

The syllable was intent. Purposeful.

It was like Arthur was trying to say something, and John couldn’t understand what. Nor was he particularly in the mood to go over with it Parker. Arthur had lost his voice entirely about halfway through the night; even with the walls being so thin, he doubted the others could have heard the syllables scrape across Arthur’s raw vocal cords.

“Okay. But he’s …?”

“Alive. Breathing.”

“Eat anything?’

“I gave him some water.” After he’d lost his voice, after he’d fallen unconscious. Arthur hadn’t choked on it, but John had been terrified of the possibility enough that it’d taken him the better part of an hour for one glass of water.

Parker nodded. His shoulders rose and fell in a sigh. Finally, his gaze broke from Arthur’s body to meet John’s own. “Right. Alright. Well, look, come on over to Bella’s room. We need to have a talk about what happens next.” A pause. “Let me get you a shirt first. Probably shouldn’t be wandering around like that.”

He didn’t move, nor did he release Arthur.

“Look. We’re closer to the stairs from our room. If anyone wanted to get at Arthur --”

His arms tightened.

“And if Arthur wakes up, well, we’ll be able to hear that, too.” When John still didn’t move, Parker took a step forward. He made a sweeping gesture with his hand, though it took a moment for the words to come out.

“Bruiser, c’mon. However Art’s doing, you know we can’t stay here forever. We gotta find something a little more long-term,” Parker insisted. “Somewhere Arthur can rest and – fuck, I don’t know, scream his lungs out if he needs. I’ve made some calls, and I think we can swing something, but we have got to talk about it.”

When Parker took another step closer, John growled. His shoulders hunched over Arthur, like Parker were about to strike him.

Parker let out an irritated sigh. “Come on. I get it, but you can’t just keep growling at people.”

Well, he … didn’t know what to say to that, exactly.

“Ten minutes.” Parker emphasized. “He won’t wake up any faster. Then you come right back to your love nest, swear to god.”

That … was fair.

Though John preferred to be around during Arthur’s nightmares, he hadn’t had any for some hours. He thought it would’ve been some hours, anyway. Nor could he even be sure that his presence helped anything. Arthur screamed and thrashed, and the most John could do was hold him down so he didn’t push himself onto the floor accidentally.

“Give me five minutes?” No, John didn’t like how that sounded tantamount to begging, but such as it was. He looked pleadingly up at Parker nevertheless.

“Yeah. Yeah, John, of course. You tuck Art in, and …” John finally allowed it as Parker took another st ep forward, patting Arthur’s shin under the sheets. His expression was mournful, voice going quieter. “And you come over.”

“Thank you.”

The smile Parker gave him was sympathetic. John couldn’t help but see it as pity. So be it. Parker retreated to his own room, and John supposed that – John supposed that Parker was being reasonable. They couldn’t stay here, not when they didn’t know how long Arthur would – if Arthur would even –

Parker was being reasonable.

John laid Arthur out in the middle of the bed. After a moment’s pause, he rolled him onto his side. The water that he’d drank – and who knew what bile Arthur could dredge up, if his stomach turned. He tucked the sheets underneath Arthur’s body, to keep him still.

The jostling had caused Arthur’s hair to fall in front of his face. John frowned, silently moving forward to tuck it behind his ear again. The moment his fingers touched Arthur’s skin, Arthur … hummed?

John’s head tilted to the side.

“Hh …”

Fuck. John looked at the shared wall between his and the others’ room. If Arthur was going to have a nightmare again …?

But Arthur’s limbs remained still. Only his lips pursed. “Hh …” It died in his throat. Then again, shaky: “Hh … ooh …”

And Arthur said no more. He didn’t have to, because John suddenly knew what he was trying to say. He suddenly knew what Arthur was trying to say for hours as John bathed him, poured water down his throat, held him, caressed him, reassured him, tried to tell him that everything would be alright, they were together, they were together, and there was no more danger, they were safe, they were happy, everything was over …

Who.

Okay.

John added another pillow underneath his head to keep it elevated. He kept his hand on his shoulder for a while longer, feeling the heat, before he took his leave.

*

Faroe was pointing at him before he even entered the room. “Mister John!” She announced triumphantly, pointing with one crumb-covered hand. In her other, she clutched a biscuit. Most of it was spread across her face, with crumbs scattered across the floor.

Oh. John wasn’t certain that he’d actually looked at her after they’d returned from the Dark World. She looked … better. Dry, wearing a clean dress, and smiling brightly.

Her joy sparked something in him, but it would have taken much more to raise his spirits. John didn’t smile back. His eyes rose to the woman sitting next to her, who was making alterations to another toddler-sized dress.

“Yes,” Bella enthused brightly. Better, too, though John doubted that she’d gotten much sleep the previous night, either. He could still recall her shaky do you need help, John? Do you want us to come over? and felt a pinprick of guilt for how aggressively he shot back: No!

It was easy to remember in the light of day, when he didn’t feel like a cornered animal in Arthur’s room. These are good people. They’re Arthur’s friends. They’re your friends, too, now. Trust was a tricky thing at the best of times for him, but they’d had every opportunity not to help Arthur and – they did. So they were alike, in that way.

Perhaps he would need them more than he expected.

“Yes, that’s John. Wonderful job, Faroe. Good morning, John.”

Who? Who? Who? John didn’t respond, mind reeling with that one syllable. Who? Who? Who?

A swift pat on the back caught his attention, if nothing else. “You’re a regular etiquette lesson, you know that? Get something to eat. There’s some leftover biscuits on the counter over there. I’m teaching Bella about how we do biscuits in Arkham.”

He turned to see that … yes. Breakfast. There appeared to be more there than would adequately feed two people and a child, but – “No buts, John. I saw your dinner on the dresser. I know you’re new to the human form, but the stomach rumbling isn’t built-in background music. Go on.”

John obeyed mechanically. He held a biscuit in his hand and sat at the singular table, the chair creaking under his weight. The biscuit was put on the table, and he didn’t eat.

Who? Who? Who?

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Parker and Bella share a look.

“Tell him what you found, Parker,” Bella urged softly.

“Should we –”

“I think it’s best.”

“Okay, okay.” Parker held both hands in surrender and went to stand in front of the table. John looked up.

“I’ll give you the short version, John. I’ve been making some calls, I know where we can get some rooms. Money should be alright. My account’s still joint with Arthur’s, and between the Innsmouth case – wired into my account before I kicked the bucket, thank God – and Arthur still gets a couple of pennies for royalties every now and then.”

“He actually became a composer,” Bella enthused, cheeks flushed. “Parker says he never heard his compositions, but – “ Before she could finish, Faroe had come over to press a few crumbs into her mother’s hands. “Oh? Are you – you’re giving mummy the rest of your biscuit? That’s so nice of you, Faroe.”

After Faroe silently passed over her unwanted portion, she walked over to John. The intent in her face was obvious. Without a word, John took his whole biscuit in hand and held it out for her. Bella winced.

“And, of course, I can shake down the deadbeats that think the PIs dying means their debts are null and void. Not a bad time to rent an apartment in Arkham, what with the – y’know.”

Faroe had crawled underneath the table to eat the rest of her biscuit, babbling softly to herself. John heard some light scratching underneath – that was enough to take his attention, albeit in a daze. He looked to see that Faroe was trying to etch the underside of the table with a pencil. John nudged her back with his shoe. Faroe frowned at him. John didn’t move. Faroe got out from under the table and crawled onto the bed with Parker’s assistance.

“So, major items on the agenda. Given that you d-i-e-d, Bella,” Parker remarked, distractedly running his hand through Faroe’s curls as she contented herself with bouncing and babbling, “Almost ten years ago and in a different country, I doubt anyone’ll be asking any questions about that. We’ll get you a fake ID anyhow, in case.”

“But what about you, Parker?”

“Free and clear. Nobody saw me eat s-h-i-t in Innsmouth, and I manage to feed the APD a story about Eddie getting possessed by a d-e-m-o-n. That’ll clear Arthur up, too.”

“You only … called them?” Bella asked. Her nose developed a crease, as if she were expelling every ounce of will not to crinkle it. “Is that – is that how the police works in America? You just call them and tell them what happened?”

“Well, it’s sure as h-e-l-l how they work in Arkham. APD works for public relations as much as anything else, and their number one priority is making sure that you don’t go running off and telling folks that Arkham has the most c-u-l-t activity in anywhere ‘cept Vegas. I tell ‘em that there was a d-e-m-o-n, but don’t worry about it, he’s d-e-a-d, they’ll bite that.”

Bella frowned.

“’s why you don’t go messing with c-u-l-t-s in Arkham, y’know? You call and tell the APD that people are performing human s-a-c-r-e – uh, i-f-i-c-e in the basement of the First National, they’ll take a few hours to respond. You call your local s-c-r-e-w-b-a-l-l PIs, they’ll be there in a half-hour. ‘s why Arkham’s got more PIs than bars, and we’ve got a lot of bars.”

Parker talked freely, breezily. Even through the depths of John’s melancholy, he could understand that Parker was good at this. They had both been so good at this: both saving people from whatever had befallen them, and the simple mechanics and economics of being investigators. He could almost imagine Arthur by Parker’s side, clad in a stiff suit, making plans as easily as he tied his shoes in the morning. A thumb on the pulse of Arkham. A thumb on the pulse of humanity, for that matter.

It was John that’d taken it away. Perhaps for good.

John’s mood grew worse. He stared down at the table.

“And for Faroe?” Bella asked, softer.

“Yeah.” Parker’s voice had gone softer in turn. “Yeah. Don’t you worry about it, okay? I’ll get her some papers, too. I know a guy.”

“If you’re sure.”

“I am, I am.”

So Bella would be staying. John earnestly hadn’t considered the future a half-inch beyond Arthur’s nose, but – though John could think of non-Arthur related matters only dimly – it seemed the best solution. What would they do, send her back to England? Send her back to her father, if he were even still alive? And after all, Faroe was …

God. What if Arthur didn’t …?

“You, John, we’ll also have to get a pretty good ID for you. That’s more of a concern than Bella over there, because unlike the good Anglican lady, you look like a mean m-o-t-h-e-r-f-u-c-k-e-r and people might have more questions,” Parker rattled off easily. “That’ll probably take some doing, but if I can catch the train to Boston, I know a guy who owes me a favor.”

Fine. Yes. That was certainly a plan. John found that he had preferred the plan when Arthur had been giddy with excitement over it, fabricating a fake life for him and gleefully daydreaming for their future.

Arthur wouldn’t …

“Okay, that’s –” From the corner of his eye, he saw Parker counting on his fingers. “Place to live, contacting the APD, fake IDs … I think that’s mostly everything, isn’t it? Need to write this down, uh – Faroe, did you take my –?”

“John.”

Weary, John rose his head and met Bella’s green eyes. She looked younger without all the blood on her face, and she hadn’t looked very old to begin with. John reflexively hunched his shoulders over the table.

“Do we need to take Arthur to hospital?”

Though he said nothing, Parker shut his eyes and sucked in his lips.

His personal experiences with the hospital began and ended with the coma. They had treated Arthur well there, for the most part.

More had sept in through Arthur’s understanding. Not just hospitals, not just places for the physically sick, but others. It was horrifying. John had understood why the King in Yellow had picked out an asylum as Arthur’s first nightmare, towards the end of his coma. If it were anything close to reality …

He feared they would take one look at Arthur, hear one scream of terror, and put him away forever.

“No,” John shook his head. “No, no hospitals. He isn’t – he isn’t injured, much.”

A short pause. “Has … has he said anything? We’ve all heard his nightmares, but ...”

He fell silent again, and …

They would know. They would find out, eventually, if Arthur eventually woke from this strange, prolonged sleep of his. Besides, the thought had been bouncing around in John’s head since he made the connection, screaming in the corners of his mind. It felt like a betrayal, it felt like an injustice, it felt fucking unfair for all of them, most of all, Arthur himself.

“He doesn’t recognize me,” John admitted quietly, and nobody spoke.

It hadn’t been ten minutes, but John found that he wanted to be somewhere else. Crying in front of Parker had been involuntary, done in a daze, but all of them at once – he didn’t know. He didn’t want them to see. It felt like admitting failure. John, the god fragment, John, the former god, John, the captain of occult bullshit, should have done better.

“I’m going to check on him,” John said in a rush. He stood quickly enough to make the chair groan in protest, and then – to nobody’s protest – John fled.

*

Arthur was standing at the window.

He must have pulled back the blinds just an inch or so. The sheets were still loosely clinging to his narrow hipbones. As he stood, he swayed, shifting his weight from foot to foot.

“Arthur?” John whispered in shock.

They hadn’t heard him in the other room. Then again, out of all of them … he doubted Arthur would make enough noise to even make the bed squeak. Even Faroe had made a little noise.

It didn’t matter. Cautiously, John crept forward. “Arthur,” he repeated.

Arthur didn’t say anything. He stood by the window. A bruise took up almost the whole of his back, sickly purple and yellow.

John couldn’t even be sure whether Arthur was awake, though the lack of screaming and gagging seemed to be a good enough indicator. “Arthur,” he said for a third time. “My name is John.” It felt odd to say, peculiarly new in his mouth. “I’m your friend. You were hurt very badly, and –”

His fingertips touched Arthur’s bare shoulder. Arthur didn’t react.

Fuck. Underneath his skin, Arthur was more than rigid – it was like touching a solid board.

Maybe it wasn’t the best time for re-introduction. Perhaps that would happen later, after Arthur had had more time to rest. Whatever Parker had planned, at least they could take today. All John wanted to do was lay with Arthur in his lap again, but if Arthur genuinely woke up, and Arthur didn’t remember him … well, John supposed that there was no reason Arthur wouldn’t be alarmed to wake up to a stranger in his bedroom.

He could sleep on the floor. At the very least, that might decrease the possibility of Arthur thinking that someone had snuck in to attack him.

“You should go to bed,” John said, voice gentle. “Come with me, friend. Come lay down –”

“I heard her.”

It was no more than a whisper, but every syllable was defined, carefully chosen. John’s lips pursed. Who – ?

“Faroe,” Arthur murmured, and before he could say anything more, he collapsed to the floor.