theotherright | come sail away IC inbox

"Most successful bluff I think I've ever pulled." Ha ha, they have fun.

"Well, no, I-- well, yes. But the baby wasn't hurt at all--" Oh. Oh he didn't mention the baby up until now. He totally could have just kept not mentioning the baby.

"Ah..."

Arthur wears the face of someone who knows they've just ripped the top clean off a can of worms.

"Baby?!" Crichton sputters like a backfiring car.

"H-ow? WHY? Why were you and your left hand driving a baby anywhere? And you DID land in a ditch? With the baby in the car?!"

There they go, worms everywhere.

"Yes, we landed in a fucking ditch," Arthur snaps, feeling suddenly cornered. "Because we drove off fast, because there was a-a-a-an insane cultist woman trying to kill us and probably the child as well! I'd like to see you handle that better!"

(The missing step in that sequence of events is the oncoming car, please don't make him talk about the oncoming car...)

Edited (it's no longer 4am) 2022-10-07 11:20 (UTC)

Okay. Fine. That's probably fair. He wasn't there to see what happened in person.

"Okay. Okay. Sorry. You did what you had to do, I guess. Just sounds like one hell of a wild time. How'd you even end up in a situation like that?"

Arthur winds himself back in, embarrassed. He didn't mean to get that heated. (When does he ever?)

"Right. Right, no, sorry."

A sharp sigh. "Another long story. But, I, all right, not so long that I can't elaborate." He would like to be a little bit less of a cagey bastard. You know, in some things. Well, towards Crichton at least.

"We saw a... a stopped car, at the side of the road, a couple of hours out of town. Doors open, blood leading into the forest. Well, o-of course we stopped. I wanted to see if we could help, you know. And uh, some way into the trees there was..." He moves his hands, trying to communicate the whole... the whole baffling, frightening mess that happened in that forest. "A cultist, a baby, a body. A monster. We- we got out as soon as possible, with the child. Got her to her mother, further on down the road."

That last part is important, to include.

Crichton crosses the room and grabs the chair from the desk to turn it around backward and straddle it. He figures this is going to be a long one, might as well get comfortable. And, as predicted, it's just as wild as he was expecting. At least there's a happy ending?

"Arthur, you must have the worst luck of any man I've ever met." Including himself, which is really saying something.

"But, I'm glad you saved that baby and got her home. Sorry I yelled at you about it."

"You're telling me," says Arthur, whose bad luck is directly worsened by an audience that wants nothing more than to put him into situations.

He sounds wry about it. Buddy, you don't even know.

"I... no, I suppose I was asking for that," he answers with a trace of humour. "I think I told that story in perhaps the worst possible way."

At least he can be self-aware!

"...But I'm glad too. I think sometimes that I..." He struggles for a moment with a way to say it. That he's a net force for bad in the world. That it would be better if- no, not every thought should be said out loud. He finishes instead with: "Well, I'm glad I could do something good for somebody."

Edited 2022-10-16 16:09 (UTC)

"Maybe start with the baby made it home safe part first next time you tell it, huh?" There's humor in that too. Water flowing under the bridge.

"Arthur..." Crichton's tone turns serious, reading between the lines of what hasn't been said. He'd be lying if he said he hasn't had similar notions cross his own mind. So many people have been hurt because of him, it feels like. An endless parade of good intentions paving the way to hell. "Sometimes bad things happen to good people, sometimes a lot of bad things. Doesn't always mean it's your fault. The universe doesn't play fair."

"Alright," Arthur agrees, "the story of how the baby made it home safe." He says it with his eyes closed, and something pulling at the corners of his mouth, like they can't decide whether to turn up or down.

Crichton, of course, picks up on what he decided not to say. Shit. Arthur nods like he's taking the advice in, but suddenly all he can wonder is what Crichton would think if he knew about the times when it was Arthur's fault. If he'd be so quick to reassure.

But he's had nearly five years to practice swallowing that fear. So he nods in agreement, thinly smiles, shrugs with his hands. Tries generally to look reassured. Thinking about her is a minefield that he's navigated before and will navigate again, and he can do it so long as no brand new fears are buried where he doesn't expect them -- thoughts like: if he's a copy, is he not the Arthur who lived his life up to the ship?

If he's a copy, did he never actually know her?

That's the thought that makes his breath sharpen, and his lungs crumple, and the corners of his mouth draw down, and his fingers tighten on themselves.

Arthur might be surprised. Will Crichton like hearing it? No. But he's got a few of his own stories to tell. They really are a matched set.

"Hey..." Crichton's voice softens. The creak of the chair he's on announces that he's getting up, and a moment later, the sofa depresses as Crichton joins Arthur on it.

"You look like you have something you need to talk about. Tell me what's up?"

Two somethings, and yet Arthur can't bring himself to voice either of them.

One has never in nearly five years stopped being an open wound, and on top of that it would invite judgement, something he richly deserves but is too cowardly to face from Crichton of all people. They're a team, but maybe that judgement ends with them not such a team any more.

The other is-- it has to be wrong. It has to be. And he can't worry Crichton with something like that if he's not sure that it's true. (But if he's so sure that it's false, why is he losing so much sleep over it?)

It's become habit by now, if Crichton sits next to him, to pat his arm or shoulder, both in greeting and to judge distance and position. (Arthur strongly prefers to have a spacial map of what's around him.) On this occasion, though, he stays rigidly in place.

In a measured tone: "I'd rather not."

Crichton's come to crave those small pats on the arm, the physical connections that are both practical and comforting. It raises further alarms when Arthur doesn't do it.

"I know, but that's not what I was asking. I think you need to. Come on, Arthur. You know you can trust me?"

No, says the faintest whisper in his ear, though that doesn't change his answer.

"I'm saying, nicely, that I'd rather not talk about it."

If it suddenly sounds like he's talking to a stranger, that's... not unreasonable, but also not really true. He could snap quickly and cruelly, and has in the past with people he liked less, but Crichton deserves better than that.

Despite his best effort, there is some hurt in Crichton's voice when he responds. "Okay. Sorry."

He gets back up and goes to the desk to lay his set of glasses down there for later. After that, he's not so sure what to do. Feels like the temperature in the room just dropped. He finds himself just standing there in awkward silence at a loss for anything else to say.

Now that Crichton has backed off, Arthur escapes that strange tense zone of too-close-for-comfort to find himself feeling like a real piece of shit.

"I trust you," he says, though his voice is still somewhat dead. "I-I don't want you to think it's about not trusting you."

It's about... shame. Cowardice. The almost physical pain of remembering what he did. God, never start a nice conversation with Arthur, because he's damn skilled at ruining it.

Edited (spelling) 2022-11-05 17:30 (UTC)

"I know. And I trust you too. I shouldn't push."

He paces the room once, sighs, then comes back and sits beside Arthur again.

"Do you know that you talk in your sleep?"

No, you shouldn't, Arthur thinks viciously but doesn't say.

The question puts him on alert again. How can it not, coming as it does on the heels of the topic that he still has constant nightmares about?

"I know," he says, guarded, and he pulls another corner off of the half-shredded banknote, which has found its way back into his hands. "Why do you bring it up?"

"Because they don't sound like happy dreams, Arthur." Obvious, yes, but worth stating anyway.

"It sounds like you re-living hell every damn night, man. How can I listen to that and not be concerned for you?"

Arthur is silent for a moment. Honestly, that answer could have been worse: Arthur was half-afraid Crichton would reveal that he'd been sharing specific names and details in his sleep. (But if he did that, then Parker would have said something... right?)

"You don't have to be concerned," he says, not harshly, but flatly. He almost says I brought it on myself, only he's sure Crichton wouldn't take his word for it.

"What have I said, anyway?"

"How could I not be? You telling me you wouldn't be in my shoes?" Because he thinks you would be, Arthur.

"Most nights you sound like you're fighting with someone. Or, you're crying, saying 'no' over and over. It breaks my heart to hear you like that."

He hesitates, then very quietly asks, "Who's Faroe?"

As Crichton talks, Arthur turns his face away, trying to hide his expression. Even though he asked, and even though he knows he sleep-talks, it makes him tense up inside like a threatened animal to hear what an open book he's been. And to hear that he and his problems have been making somebody else suffer, again. Reliable as clockwork.

He feared hearing her name. And at the same time, on some level, he expects to hear it everywhere he goes. When Crichton says Faroe to him, it feels almost inevitable. He gave himself away to Crichton, he gave himself away to John, and Parker... god. Christ. Maybe Parker was waiting for him to talk about her himself. Parker didn't push.

Arthur has gone quite still, his hands no longer moving on the ripped banknote, his breathing quiet. He's almost calm, in a weird way; now that it's been asked, it's so easy to know how to answer the question. There's only one answer he can possibly give. He may do a lot of things, he may be a dozen kinds of monster, but he won't lie about Faroe and he won't pretend not to know her name.

In a level voice, he says: "My daughter."

"You have a daughter?" He blurts out, before really thinking that through.

No. Oh... no. The stillness now in Arthur tightens Crichton's chest with a primal fear. The way the man cries in the night when he calls her name, the way he berates himself too... Say it's not true. Please.

"Oh, Arthur. Is she...?"

"Yes, she's dead."

Arthur's voice is still even, and his face is still turned away. He's holding himself together, but only because he's not telling the whole story.

The whole story burns the inside of his throat.

"Please don't... I don't want to be fussed over." Because he knows it's coming. He's heard so much 'sorry for your loss' over the course of his life that it just sounds like syllables now. And the irony of Crichton comforting him over this, when it's Arthur's fault, would be too sickening to stand.

He has to bite back those very words just as Arthur says that. But, he can see it. He gets it. This isn't the same but, when his mother passed, Crichton got sick of hearing those same words really fast.

"Okay. Okay, I won't. But, thank you for telling me. I just... wish there was something I could help with. I am here for you, if you ever do need to talk about it."

Arthur nods, and in the same moment, realises that nobody in this world... knows Faroe. At all. Back in their world she still had a grandfather, and distant relatives who'd remember her, but here? If something happened to Arthur that he didn't come back from, any memory of her would be gone.

The realisation somehow terrifies him. His hands grip and tighten on the sofa seat, and a long moment drags itself by.

"She was four and a half."

His voice is low, but steadier than you might expect.

"She was so clever. Sweet and gentle, and as pretty as her mother. Could walk before she was one; ran me and my housekeeper ragged. She loved to be read to. She loved The Owl and the Pussy-Cat, a-and ah, and The Hunting of the Snark. She would bring her dolls to the dinner-table and tell me all about them and what they liked to eat. Sometimes if I, I was taking dinner in my office, she would come and hand me a doll with this- this very serious look on her face, and if I put it down she'd put it back into my hands again, as if- as if she'd decided I needed company." Now his voice is coming thicker, and he stops and takes a heavy breath, in and out, his face drawn.

He wishes he could see Crichton's expression. See whether his fumbling description is even scratching the surface of what it's like to have known her.

"This past eleventh of March would have been her ninth birthday."

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