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He doesn’t know if this choice is the right one, but to a man who feels as if everything has already been determined for him - perhaps it’s the only one. Arthur is so tired of being a pawn in someone else’s game.
So he runs. They both do, back into the Dreamlands and away from the King. There’s a knife in one hand and a music box in the other. There’s a moment where he almost looks back, almost goes right, but then -
“No, we’ve made our choice. There’s no turning back now.” John isn’t even resentful when he says it, merely certain. “You’ve already managed to talk me into this, you won’t be talking me out.”
Everything always feels so final with John. All or nothing. Arthur never knows when to commit and when to back down. But sometimes he’ll take comfort in the fact that John does; other times, it infuriates him.
He still doesn’t understand him. He still wants his body back. He still resents having him here at all. And yet…
John is still the only person unable to leave him.
Is that worth Parker’s life?
How could Faroe’s death be worth his?
And he hates himself, he hates not having an answer. He hears the refrain of the melody he made for her echo, the sound of her laughter, and he thinks it would have been easier to kill himself. Who is left to mourn him, after all?
But when has Arthur Lester ever taken the painless way out? No, he has to suffer. He deserves to, for murdering her. For being friends with the same man who murdered his former partner.
He’s a coward not afraid of dying but of facing her. Facing Bella and what she would say to him for failing their daughter.
Unworthy, unfit, undeserving.
Lilly’s blood on their hands, they run. Two killers fleeing the authority that would rule over them and judge them as guilty.
“Where are we going?” He asks, heart pounding, eyes still wet.
“I don’t know! Just, just keep running straight, we’re nearly past the gates.”
“And then?”
When silence was the only thing that came from his question, Arthur took a deep breath. “Alright. Alright, alright.”
It was an assurance meant for the both of them.
The ghost of the city they ran through clung to them with corpses, the squelching and cracking when he tripped or stumbled over them the only noise there aside from his breathing. The air was so still as to not exist at all.
The red footprints they left behind would be a trail that abruptly disappeared as soon as the boundary was passed between what was and what wasn’t.
The King watched them from his place on high and decided to give them the dream they so badly wanted.
He could be patient.
(What does it mean, for a King to look at a prisoner and let them go?
Who would look at a thief and wonder what he would steal next, if given the chance?
What kind of creature looks at his demise and wants it?)
“I’ve never tried fishing before, John, I don’t think…” Arthur coughed as he looked down at the old wooden rod in his hands.
“Well, it’s not like we have much choice. You need to eat,” John grumbled.
“Right. Well then!” Arthur gathered up some sort of small thing that could be a worm or could be an unimaginable horror - you really never knew in the Dreamlands - and pierced it on the hook, watching it squirm.
Wasn’t that encouraging?
He cast it out into the water and sat down on a nearby log. The water was a greenish blue vaguely reminiscent of a lake he’d seen as a boy before he’d come to America. Aside from the trees that were a bit too sharp and a sky that was washed in shades of an ominous red, he had to admit that it was rather peaceful here.
They’d somehow found an abandoned cottage at some point. He honestly couldn’t remember much of the journey it took to make it here, just flashes of adrenaline and terror as they kept running. It had been about three weeks as far as he could tell, and they’d gotten quite good at foraging, a mean feat when none of the flora was any kind of recognizable.
Arthur dreaded what kind of monstrosity passed for fish in the Dreamlands.
“How long is this going to take?” John impatiently growled after just a few minutes.
“I'm not sure, maybe an hour?”
John was aghast. “An hour? Arthur.”
He had to smile at how incredulous the other man sounded. “Well, we could always pass the time talking.”
“About what?”
“Anything, really. Anything at all.”
John hesitated for a while, but Arthur just kept staring out at the water where his line laid still.
“Do you really think this… is sustainable? A life in the Dreamlands, just hoping he won’t find us?”
“What other choice do we have? You heard Kayne. Neither of us get to go home.”
“You were like this at the hotel too. When you looked at a paper with every choice we’d made and you called it fate.”
Arthur sighed. “It had all the choices we hadn’t made too, John.”
“That doesn’t mean they were right, or that we couldn’t change them. I thought running away was you finally making a choice for yourself, so why are you back to being like… like this!? Didn’t we escape the prison pits? Didn’t we help Lorick escape? Are you saying that all of that, that it didn’t matter because someone else wrote it down where you couldn’t even fucking see it!?”
Arthur threw down his fishing rod, turned and grabbed the fabric of John’s cloak, pulling until they were staring at each other face to face. Glaring, he said, “No! Damn you, I’m saying that if fate exists, there’s nothing I can do! I’m just a man, John. What do you expect me to do when faced with gods and monsters, and, and worlds like this?” He swept his free hand out at the Dreamlands in emphasis.
“Fuck fate!” John snarled, claws digging into Arthur’s arm. “I expect you to fucking stand up and fight, not fold and let everyone walk all over you!”
Seething, Arthur roughly pushed John’s arm away. “It’s so easy for you to say that when you’re not the one who’s constantly in the line of fire. Look at me, John. I am ruined because of you. I am starved and scarred and a shell of a man. And you want me to give you more? Fuck you.”
John's voice rose in a roar. “I’m not the one who opened the book! You’re the one who did this to yourself, Arthur. Your choice; if you can’t handle the consequences, then stop pretending you’re anything other than a coward.”
“What?” Breathless, Arthur could only stare at him. It felt as if he’d been suddenly gut punched.
John looked at him like he was a stranger. “You told me to own it. I am. But you never stop running, Arthur. Do you even remember the person you used to be?”
Arthur bared his teeth, refusing to compromise. “I’ve never forgotten, John.”
How could he, when his regrets weighed so much? How could John ever think he could?
John just scoffed and turned away. “Right.” The pause between his words lingered in the air, hanging like some heavy heaving animal bearing down on them. “I don’t understand you, Arthur.”
And he walked away, the jaws snapping shut around them both.
He laid in his nest of shredded, soft fabric that night and wondered whether he would come back. If maybe this time Arthur would be left to die alone.
In his dreams, John’s voice asked him why.
He had no answer.
“Just like that, yes, good!” Arthur smiled as the melody followed after the one he’d played.
“I can do the rest!” From her place in his lap, Faroe exclaimed excitedly, eyes intent on the keys. His heart swelled with pride.
Sitting beside him on the bench, John chuckled as he laid his head on his shoulder. “Can you even reach the ends?”
She stuck out her tongue. “I can play better than you!”
Arthur laughed as John opened his mouth to argue, cutting in before either of them could start bickering. “Alright, you’re both still learning. There’s no need to compare yourselves when everyone makes mistakes. Right?”
John grumbled while Faroe nodded.
He smiled fondly. “Here’s an idea. Why don’t the both of you try playing it together? I’d love to hear how much progress the both of you have made.”
“Okay, but John has to play the left!”
“Why the left?”
Faroe straightened up, head held high. “Because the right is my side!”
Arthur chuckled. “Then the left will be John’s. Are you both ready?”
John’s hands scrunched over to the left while Faroe leaned precariously over towards the right, grinning. He held her securely so she wouldn’t fall. “Begin!”
It was honestly complete chaos, what with Faroe barely following the sheet music and John pressing too hard whenever he tried to play, and then with the out of sync sound that came with both of them trying to play half of a song by themselves.
It was awful, and he adored the very sound of it.
“How did we do, daddy?” Faroe turned wide eyes up at him. John leaned on him.
Arthur tapped her little button nose and said, “Marvelous, of course! I’m very proud of you both.” Then he kissed her head. She reached up to put a hand somewhere along the side of his face. “Mwah!”
Then she demanded, “Now John gets a kiss!”
Arthur’s eyes crinkled. “Oh, of course. How could I forget? Will you forgive me, John?”
His friend pretended to think about it. “Only if you promise to remember next time.”
Arthur kissed his cheek. “I promise.”
And as he put his daughter to bed later that evening, he tucked her in and whispered, “Sleep well, my lambkin.” A thumb stroked tenderly over her forehead as she softly inhaled and exhaled.
John was waiting in their bedroom, reading a book of poems by the light of the bedside lamp. Curling up next to him, Arthur felt safe enough to tell him, “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
He closed his eyes. “We argued, didn’t we? Earlier. I’m sorry, John. For hurting you.”
The sound of a sigh. Then, firm arms wrapping around him as John lays beside him. “I’m sorry too,” he says. “I wasn’t being fair.”
Arthur mirthlessly barks a sharp laugh. “I don’t think we’ve had a fair go of anything, you and I.”
His friend hums soothingly, holding him tighter. “True. But we have each other, don’t we?”
Warm in his arms, Arthur realizes… “I would never have chosen anything else.”
It isn’t possible for him to regret this choice, because it means that his friend is still here. And maybe it’s selfish, but he’d rather have John trapped inside of his body than being someone else entirely. He’d take all of the bad again just to be able to know him.
He refuses to let go.
And he doesn’t know if he deserves it, but he wants to live.
He still wants to learn who John Doe is.
“Arthur,” John murmurs, hands finding scars to trace over. And for once, they’re not something done to him but part of him.
For once, he feels wanted, and all he can do is say, “I know. I know, John,” clinging to him just as tightly.
Tomorrow, they’ll go play in the park with Faroe, and John will make them a picnic to take with, and Arthur will be happy because all he’s ever wanted is right here. With no fear of loss overshadowing him, the ache of grief a little easier to bear.
He wonders if his parents are proud of the man he’s become, of their granddaughter who already shines like the sun.
He hopes Bella knows she’s not forgotten by her daughter, and how much of her that Faroe carries with her every day. He looks at his little lamb’s face sometimes and is struck by her cheekbones, her moles, her hair. Even the way she plays piano.
He’s so grateful for this life, despite everything. Thankful for the grief he used to curse - because these memories are loved, and it doesn’t matter that he never got enough time in the face of getting any at all. Brief as the years may have been, Arthur’s love has not diminished at all.
In John’s arms, he does not dream.
(Who looks at the other half of his soul and does not recognize it?
What kind of god looks at an ant and finds meaning?
Who should question him but himself?)
A king draped in yellow once understood what it meant to be nothing. Born from the dust of dead stars and the last dying dregs of their consciousness, he was singular in his purpose.
He was powerful above all, something they held up as their god. And he took from them too; he took it all.
The music that comes from a broken mind is almost beautiful. It’s his.
Like the dancers who orbit around him. Like Carcosa. Like all the lost souls who cry to him for inspiration.
The King in Yellow once had a name of his own.
(Did he discard it, or did he become something else?)
He has everything.
(What kind of king goes to a world where there is nothing for him?)
He has everything he could ever want.
(What kind of king finds himself torn in two?)
Everything, except…
(He is alone.)
“Just tell me whe-” Abruptly, Arthur feels the shock of something tearing his side open, the hot burst of blood as the hound starts digging into his insides, tearing him open.
“John,” he chokes, crying out from the pain as it starts dragging him further from the incinerator. “John.”
A tooth drags against bone, and he screams. Someone must be hearing this, right? This is a hospital. A nurse will come, or a doctor, or...
He struggles, he fights, he manages to dig his fingers into what feels like the thing’s eyes as it howls, the sound making his ears ring. But the pain just makes it angrier, and Arthur finds what little breath he had left knocked loose when it throws him into a wall. His head hits something hard, and he vomits even as he desperately tries to crawl away.
“John…” It’s the only thing he can say as he’s eaten alive.
He does not die slowly.
“Arthur, wake up.”
He opens his eyes to darkness. “John?” He asks, heart still rabbiting. His left hand finds his right, and he grips it like a lifeline.
“Just a bad dream,” his friend assures him. “You’re awake now.”
“I am?” He nervously asks, still uncertain of the when, the where, the how.
“Here, why don’t we get up and have something to eat? That should settle you.” One of his feet swings over the bedside and he flails as he tries to quickly balance on it.
“Ah, be careful!”
“You’d think you’d be used to falling by now.” John dryly remarks, making him roll his eyes as he cautiously lets himself relax.
“Oh, laugh it up. At least I know how to tie a tie.”
They bicker lightheartedly as they sit down to have breakfast. Some fruit and oatmeal; not the most filling meal, but more than enough for someone who’s been starved.
“Ahhh, that’s good,” he sighs as he bites into an apple. The crisp tartness bursts apart on his tongue and he revels in it.
“Try the orange next.”
He laughs and lets John direct him on what order to eat his food in. “I thought you didn’t enjoy it. The act of eating.”
“Maybe I changed my mind. Why wouldn’t I enjoy the flavor and the pleasure that comes naturally from making something mine?”
He paused. “Well, I just… in the pits.”
John sighed. “Ah, Mr. Faust. That’s right.” His voice deepened. “And how did he taste, Arthur? Good?”
Taken aback, he sat there in silence.
“When you were eating me, did I become a part of you? Or did you become part of me? Did you feel powerful, Arthur, in control? You devoured a god every night, Arthur, little by little until you were glutted on him. And now you don’t know the taste of anything else.”
John laughed a moment later. “Finish your oatmeal.”
Arthur set down his spoon and leaned back in his chair. “He didn’t taste like anything. And I’m not sorry for surviving, but I am sorry for what I put you through. We saw the worst of each other there, didn’t we?” He smiled, a small one, slightly crooked. “It’s alright, John. We made it out. We held onto each other; we didn’t lose ourselves. We’re still human.”
“What makes someone human?”
Arthur laughed lightly. “I don’t know. I’ve never been very good at it. Maybe it’s a question everyone has a different answer to.”
“Tell me yours.”
He hummed, head in his hand. “I am the captain of my soul,” he murmured, with the strangest sense of deja vu.
“What?”
“Oh, it’s… well, it’s from a poem. Invictus. I suppose it’s one I’ve held close for… most of my life.”
“Read it!” John demanded. Arthur smiled fondly.
“Have patience, will you?”
“Read me your poem, Arthur.”
And so he did, and he told it gladly. It came freely from his mouth, unburdened and without any stones to drag his body down.
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the night from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
Arthur recited it so clearly and so surely that the king for the first time in many, many long years… found himself moved.
How could this speck of dust, this meaningless pinprick of existence be something other than itself? How could Arthur Lester have a god in his head and move it to change?
How could a king hate a man for wronging him and yet stay his execution? How could he hate that other part of himself that loved this man, who loved that fragment himself?
What kind of man did it take to have a god go to war with himself?
“Another,” he demanded.
He was not ready for this dream to end.
“John?” Arthur mumbled groggily, wiping grit from his eyes as he moved to sit up. “Where… where are we?” He put a hand to his head, grimacing at the ache.
He felt like he’d been asleep for a week.
“We’re… in a garden, one teeming with wildflowers. Ones from Earth. Clover, daisies, sunflowers… and a lake in the distance. Arthur, this garden must be enormous.”
A chill went down his spine. He got up warily. “Do you see anything else?”
“No.”
“Alright. Alright.”
They made their way towards the lake, eerie silence blanketing them. There was no birdsong, no chirping of insects. Just the rustle of the grass as they moved.
“Oh. There’s a fishing rod by your feet, propped up against a boulder.”
Arthur held it in his hands, the weight of the wood oddly familiar. “Well, I’ve never gone fishing before, so this is rather useless.”
John hesitated. “Arthur. We’ve been here before. I think we…”
“What? John?”
“Are we dreaming?”
Arthur’s hand held John’s without him even noticing, so used to the motion. “We were arguing… weren’t we?”
How long had it been since they’d run back into the Dreamlands?
“No, we apologized, we forgave each other for… for…” Distressed, John’s words started to trip over each other. “We played piano together, I played with you, and, and we went to the park! And I made -” he suddenly stopped.
“I don’t have a body.”
Arthur’s blood froze. He looked down at their hands and couldn’t remember when they’d started the habit of holding hands. “John,” he whispered. “John.”
How could the terror and grief of not knowing whether your reality is real ever be put into words?
How could you know for certain?
Though shaking, through the fear, Arthur squeezed John’s hand and said, “Hey.”
Behind his eyes, he felt his friend press so close as to be one, and when he blinked, his lashes came away wet.
“I’m here,” Arthur told him. It was something a scared little boy who was missing his parents would have desperately wanted to hear. Anything, anything so long as he didn’t have to be alone.
“Arthur,” John said, “I don’t - I can’t!” His nails dug into Arthur’s skin, and he swallowed the ache in his throat.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he promised, feeling his way back over to the flowers. He felt the petals and then pressed one to John’s fingers. “Feel that. It’s alive. It’s alive, and so are we.” His words were fierce.
“Arthur,” John repeated, sounding so small.
“What does it look like, John?”
“It… it’s a rose. White.”
Arthur soothed his thumb over the back of John’s hand. “It’s alright. We’re okay.”
“No, it’s not! I have no idea what’s going on, or what’s happening, or if we’re even still in the Dreamlands! Don’t lie to me, Arthur!”
For the first time, he realized how much of John’s anger was meant to mask his fear. And he thought how terrifying it must be to have even more blanks in your memories when already there’s so much of yourself you don’t remember.
“You’re my friend,” he says. “And I know you, John. I may not understand your way of thinking, but I do know you.”
At the echo of his own words being said back to him, John took in a shocked breath.
Arthur nearly smiled.
“Yes,” John quietly said, calmer now. “Yes, I suppose you do.”
They took a moment before looking out yet again over the garden. “Are you ready to pull on another string?”
John breathed out, and then he was. “Let’s go.”
As they left the King’s garden, he watched and waited in his palace for them to arrive. These foreigners from afar, these mutable and transformable entities.
He did not know what he would do once all three of them met face to face. Would his anger overpower his reason, or would his curiosity win out in the end?
Could millenia of apathy be beaten by the dreams of one mortal man?
And what of the rest of him? What of John Doe’s dreams?
King of Dreams, King of Lost Things. A forgotten god for those who themselves cannot remember.
King of Madness. What is madness but memory repeating? Time immemorial? Death unfelt?
A name, unsaid.
Out of reach.
Empty space.
A king dressed in yellow. A king, a thing, a title. But never a name.
What is it like to be afraid?
What does it mean to want to be?
He cups the head of one of his dancers in his hand, letting the others twirl and shimmer and kick through the air. A splendid show, but one he has seen before and before and before and before and before and before and
Her head crushes between his claws like a melon being popped. Her blood drifts away, and his dancers do not stop.
Nothing changes.
(Is it possible for a god to change?)
What does a god become, when faced with the sheer boredom of his own existence? Is he better or worse than before?
“I have to hope that any creature can be redeemed…”
Was it pain that made him long for it, the suffering of the Dark World? Or was it the same empty space he feels now, that missing piece that makes them both unwhole?
Were they made this way, or were they shaped, their souls designed for a purpose?
(A king is just like any other man. He doubts, he fails, he forgets himself. The only difference is that he who is king must never admit to this.)
Do gods dream? Or will they never know what it means to feel this unsteadiness, this sense of otherness?
Isolated and alone in the dark corner of his own little world, he begins to understand what it means to lose.
In Arthur’s bag is a knife bearing a fanged smile, stained red with blood. There is a music box containing his daughter’s song. And there is a lighter, used to being forgotten.
In Lost Carcosa, it will finally find its light again.
Arthur does not run. He sees the confrontation looming ahead but he keeps walking towards it. He chooses to face it, and it is a choice he’s prepared for. He decides if fate is real, then so is he. And he has always been stubborn enough to sink his teeth in, to not let go when given every opportunity.
There’s a lot to be said for a man who knows how to keep going.
What is a god to a nonbeliever?