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"I was thinking we had to get somewhere, some- some way away, a-a-and I had a car!"

The maths! The maths adds up!

"One of us could see! It is not as bad as you're making out."

The maths, Crichton!

"One of us..." Oh no. No, he doesn't mean...?

"You were letting the thing that stole your eyeballs from you tell you where to turn? And that seemed like a good idea?"

You suck at math, Arthur.

You know those moments when you should quit while you're behind and stop talking? Well,

"Well, no, i-it only takes one hand on the wheel to steer, so I, I was- I was just working the stick and pedals..."

Now Crichton remembers what Arthur said about his left hand. And his own slowly drags over his face, disrupting the aviators on its way down.

"Arthur... do you know how insane that sounds?"

"It was a means to an end, all right? I don't think you quite understand how few options I had."

Now Arthur is definitely not going to tell him that they also totally crashed the car.

"So, why don't you tell me the whole story, Bullseye?"

He can guess how it ends. He is 80% sure a crash is how this ends.

"Bulls--" Oh my god. "I-- alright, alright, I deserve that."

The story definitely doesn't end anywhere good, because Arthur's tell for 'things that went badly' tends to be fiddling with his left hand, and just now there's nothing quite so grabbable and move-about-able as his left hand.

"The whole story's a bit-- long, really. W-we ended up where we were trying to go." A month and change later.

"You really had me going, you know that?" Crichton chuckles. So funny, being held at gunpoint. Happy memories.

Happier than the ones that seem to come with this story. Crichton's been living with the guy long enough now that he can tell what it means when his hand starts doing the Jitterbug.

"So, you didn't end up with the car in a ditch?"

"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?"

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