He probably should have supposed that this was something more than just feeling poorly or losing one's appetite.
"Arthur," he says carefully, softly, "it's alright. I can ask Giles to leave if you'd like, if you want to talk about... this. But you don't have to, either. Can you take a deep breath for me, please?"
Oh no. He's being patient and understanding, Arthur's own personal kryptonite.
He obliges with a deep, slow breath, and then blows it gradually out again, and he wonders how on earth he went from zero to coming apart at the seams so quickly. He can feel himself starting to tremble. He had shaking hands when Parker talked to him like that as well, though not for the same reason.
"I-is Giles here now?" Arthur would very much like to know who he's having a normal one in front of. "I'm sorry, I... christ, you- you didn't ask for this."
"Not in the room, no. It's quite alright. Here- let's get you over to the couch."
And while Arthur is setting himself down, Ossie will dig through his pocket for his Blackbird Bishop brooch. You know, again. It's fine, two is hardly indicative of a habit. Right?
"Another couple of deep breaths, if you wouldn't mind?"
Another room is all right, Arthur tells himself, as he lowers himself slowly onto the couch. He can keep his voice down*. He's not going to ask the man to leave his own home just so that Arthur can have a breakdown in it.
Where does Giles actually get his ingredients from? he wonders suddenly, and not without urgency. Where does Ossie get his little biscuits and crustless sandwiches? Where do they get their cups of tea? From their personal cottage somehow, or from the ship? He's been trying very, very hard not to think of the ship as having dwindling supplies -- there's food in the buffet, there's drinks in the bars, he's been told the lights are on -- but when meals are skipped in the restaurants and the dining hall, it's hard not to see it as the visible hairline crack of a deep and foundational splitting. And he doesn't know if that's paranoia. He doesn't know. It must be: everyone else seems to eat and drink without worry, as far as he can tell. But he often thinks about the ship becoming its own shrinking, gasping pit, and the stories of sailors lost at sea without anything to eat, and the gnawing that makes you think you'll lose your mind.
He only manages to nod, this time, and his breath makes sounds in his throat as he breathes in. and out. and in. and out.
*down here is a space for you all to put your Doubt emojis.
"At your leisure, whenever you feel sufficiently prepared for it... Can you tell me what the matter is?" he asks, slowly and gently and cautiously.
He clears his throat in the specific manner that Giles used to when one of his Aunts was in and on the war path. It doesn't specifically mean 'go out the window', but that was often how Ossie (usually hungover or half-asleep) interpreted it.
"Just preoccupied," Arthur says with half a breath. The lie is automatic, and against his wishes, and doesn't even have the decency to be convincing. He shakes his head, performs the arduous task of breathing in, and then on the out-breath corrects himself: "No, no nonono. No. Fuck."
It is, per usual, taking a hot minute to get from 'making the decision to say' to 'saying', and even now Arthur feels the urge to hedge, to find safety in secrecy. He's done it before. He's built a whole relationship on it before. But that was a worse and more buried secret than perhaps even the worst moments of the pit.
He takes a few more seconds and another breath to gather himself.
"I never- I don't think I ever told you about the- the King in Yellow. No, I- I'm sure I didn't."
There's no particular inflection on the name, but his hands are more expressive, the right (his other right) pushing down into the couch seat, the left (wooden finger and all) curling into a shaky sort of fist.
There are altogether too many capital letters in that sentence for Ossie's taste. A few other thing there too that give him pause- the deflection, then the distressed backpedalling. One thing at a time.
"Arthur," he says gently, never feeling the weight of these feathers more than this moment, "wherever you think you still are... you're here. In my cottage. And I promise you, it is as safe as anywhere can be. Anything you need to prove to yourself that you're not there, I will provide it. It's alright."
Ossie could have reacted to this shit in so many ways. He could have been annoyed, he could have been impatient, he could have stepped back from the interaction and rejoined it whenever Arthur was ready to be fun as promised. Instead he's helping, acting like Arthur is worth his time and attention and energy even when Arthur has little to offer in return.
And he's seen that in people, he believes in it, he's done his own poor imitation of it. But it's always a little overwhelming to have it pointed at him.
This is probably how religious people feel whenever they see Jesus in a piece of toast.
Arthur lifts his right hand towards Ossie, fingers open, a clear gesture to take it. But he can't stop and focus on it. He can't stop telling this story for long, or else he won't start again. He goes on rapidly, muttering.
"A god who was trying to enter my world. He- it's a very long story, but he ended up dragging me into his instead. Couldn't bring me to heel, so he decided I would be softer i-if I was hungry. So he made-- he made sure I was hungry. Thirsty. Scattered. And every so often I think that I am once again healthy, before I remember that I was never so tired, and that my face never got such reactions."
And that's the shallow end of it. That's only what's immediately relevant.
"You understand." He's not begging, mind. But it's a faintly desperate question.
A moment's confusion passes across Arthur's eyes as Ossie takes his hand. He just can't place the fabric -- it must be fabric, if only because it's not skin. But that's not important right now. Arthur clings to that hand like a boat clings to an anchor in a storm.
If only he could take Ossie's sympathy as if it's deserved. But he realises, now, that he can't leave the story only half-told, not when it makes him look in some way innocent. It curdles in him, the same way it curdled whenever anyone -- with the mistaken impression that he had no hand in his own suffering, or hers -- said they were sorry about what happened to Faroe.
Of course there's the fear that Ossie will repeat this. But there's also the recklessness of self-destruction, of the feeling that Arthur would deserve that anyway.
"That's not all," he says. The words stick in his throat, and pull out heavy tears with them.
Arthur's hand trembles around the tissues, and he jabs them roughly at his face as he shakes his head. The rest of him is trembling too.
"Please, I-I have to." His voice rasps. "Ossie, I hurt people there."
Faust, most obviously. John, most unforgivably.
"For a month we survived on odd bits, a leg of something or a hoof of something else, or- or whatever they saw fit to throw us. I was-- I-I had a friend there, but not... physically there, and... and not always friendly." God this needs so much context. "For a month we were on our own. Then one day they threw in another man. A-an older man, with nothing except the clothes on his back and a braided cord that was always in his hand. He said they'd caught him trying to escape. And I thought- I-I wanted to believe that the world ran on some sort of rules. Maybe they had to dig him a deeper pit and we would be cell-mates till then, o-or something. Until a few days later, when I realised they had stopped feeding us."
He has to stop momentarily, remembering at last to breathe.
There's more and worse to tell, but Ossie's own confession effectively derails Arthur's. He remembers, yes. But he didn't suspect it meant that.
One of the worst things about the pit is knowing that John went through it too, albeit in different ways. You can do a lot to Arthur, and he'll be mad about it at the time, but at the end of the day, he probably deserves it. Other people are different. Ossie is different. That he's gone through something like this too is horrible.
And Arthur didn't suspect at all. Either he's managed to recover, something that seems an impossible chance, or he's very good at hiding it.
"God," Arthur says with miserable horror. Then: "Fuck," with the kind of thank-god-someone-gets-it feeling that makes you immediately guilty for wishing this shit on another person. Then: "I'm so sorry," as his hand tightens round Ossie's and his stomach folds in on itself.
"Whatever you have done, I can assure you, I did the same and worse. On purpose. Deliberately, with other options available to me. Perhaps this taints your respect of me. I can't say that it wouldn't bother me if that was the case, but... I'm not ashamed of what I have done. I am here because I made those choices, much the same as I expect you are. It's alright. I'm sorry, too."
Worse? Maybe, maybe not. Arthur hasn't shared his own worst, yet. But the fire of Catholic confession has burnt down to embers, and he's left...
...Conflicted. He's in his friend's corner here, because nobody has ever accused him of being unbiased. Other options available could mean anything: hell, dying is technically another option available, but that doesn't make it a realistic one.
He's having trouble with the lack of shame, but then, isn't his own shame bound up less in what he did to Faust than in everything surrounding it? The vicious thrill of finally having a little control over his own fate, however false that control really was, and of hurting somebody who deserved it. The lie he told John, that John then had to pay for.
"What could you have possibly done that was worse." His voice is hoarse and choked. "I broke. After only a month. I broke. I lost."
"I didn't break," Ossie says softly, matter of factly.
"I was the wheel that broke others. The House I was taken to offered me a bargain, that I would have to hurt others to keep myself safe. I didn't just take that bargain, Arthur, I exceeded it. I enjoyed it. Had all of these party tricks to make people break composure, so they wouldn't be a threat to me any longer. I didn't just eat people, Arthur, I complimented the chef on his cooking and asked for seconds. I am... tired, of hiding all I have done."
If he hasn't pulled that hand away yet, Ossie will squeeze a little tighter.
"We do the best we can. Us, now, I mean. We can make that choice, to not repeat our mistakes."
"Jesus," Arthur mutters, shaken, as he tries to take that in. He doesn't pull his hand away, but it is loose in Ossie's grip.
He wants to say how dare you, with the fury of the person on the wheel. But it's never been as simple as that. He has been on the wheel, and he has been the wheel, and the net effect of his life has always been harm, no matter what world he's in. Those were some of the only true words that the King ever spoke.
John has been the wheel as well, for the joy of it, far longer and far worse than either of them. And while forgiveness is the wrong word for how Arthur feels about that, he still misses him horribly. He wouldn't have grown close enough to miss him like this if John didn't regret, and if he didn't constantly demonstrate his effort to change.
God. Here Arthur thought his own and Ossie's similarities were only superficial. Ossie has done a good job of hiding this.
He's silent for a while. Then he asks, quietly: "How many people?"
He wants, badly, to know that they weren't faceless and forgettable to Ossie.
"I can't know. I was there for a hundred years at least, and probably more."
...
This was a mistake. This was a very, very large mistake and it is only that now he has blackmail in reverse that he doesn't just. Well. He doesn't even really know. It's not like he can trap Arthur in the cottage after what he just admitted. Can't involve anyone else in it.
At least Giles still loves him.
"I can't- I can't know. I lost count," maybe if he tried harder, kept a tally, "I don't... I don't know."
He could've picked a number. Fudged one. Maybe that would've been better, soothed Arthur that he cared right, that he was a good victim of his circumstances, that he still cared the right amount.
A hundred years. Yes, Ossie's said that he was gone for a number of decades before, too, hasn't he? Arthur dreads to think how little would've been left of him after one year; he can't imagine how Ossie kept even the outline of himself together for over a hundred.
It hits him that maybe Ossie didn't. He doesn't know the man that went in, only the one that came out. Perhaps they bear no resemblance to one another at all.
John, too, didn't know how many people he'd... killed, tortured, whatever metric you want to put on it. Arthur knows, but he's-- he doesn't have the number immediately, but he knows it's there if asked for. Now. After a hundred and more years, though?
God, he remembers Ossie's reaction to Arthur's muttered comments about Erin's sins, months and months ago. He'd thought that was about manners.
"Jesus," he says again, without inflection, into his hands. He has, he realises, put his face in his hands, which means he's slipped his hand out of Ossie's, which is not what he meant to do, but--
"Let-- let me take that in."
The pit is still fresh in his mind, along with the unseen guards who dropped a man in to his death. Along with the lock of hair placed - like a gun in Arthur's hand - as if to incite him. Along with the whispers and hallucinations of his daughter before it. Countless people. Placing Ossie as part of the wheel is a nasty thing to digest.
If Arthur had slipped into the right memory crack, he could've met the little scamp. Sweet, charming in an uncharismatic way, funny. A different person entirely.
"I'm sorry," Ossie's voice has a veneer on it not dissimilar to a well-polished piece of furniture, "I meant only to sympathize. To- to express my solidarity, that you aren't... alone."
"Yes, thank you, I feel wonderfully related-to," says Arthur ungently. It's really something to have a guy tell you about his century spent breaking people's backs, in order to make you feel less alone. It's really something to know that, yep, that's basically the comparison you deserve.
He shouldn't have said it. But Arthur feels overwhelmed: he dragged his crimes and torments in the Dreamlands to the surface, and now he stands with one foot in that sucking mire, and another in the revelation of Ossie as a tormentor, and another in not fucking up what's suddenly a delicate conversation where Ossie has made himself vulnerable, and he doesn't have enough feet for this.
He looks with his hands; Ossie isn't where he was. He has, as promised, gone, whether to get tea or just to be far away from this shitshow. Feeling suddenly very alone in the cottage, Arthur stands and gropes for his cane beside the couch.
Ossie listened to him, opened up himself about his regrets, and in return... Arthur did basically what he's always afraid other people will do. Yeah, he doesn't feel great about what he's been told, but Ossie sure didn't seem to feel great telling it, either.
"Ossie," he calls woodenly, "come back. I-I'm an unbelievable prick."
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2023-10-29 09:48 pm (UTC)He probably should have supposed that this was something more than just feeling poorly or losing one's appetite.
"Arthur," he says carefully, softly, "it's alright. I can ask Giles to leave if you'd like, if you want to talk about... this. But you don't have to, either. Can you take a deep breath for me, please?"
no subject
Date: 2023-10-29 10:08 pm (UTC)He obliges with a deep, slow breath, and then blows it gradually out again, and he wonders how on earth he went from zero to coming apart at the seams so quickly. He can feel himself starting to tremble. He had shaking hands when Parker talked to him like that as well, though not for the same reason.
"I-is Giles here now?" Arthur would very much like to know who he's having a normal one in front of. "I'm sorry, I... christ, you- you didn't ask for this."
no subject
Date: 2023-10-29 10:44 pm (UTC)And while Arthur is setting himself down, Ossie will dig through his pocket for his Blackbird Bishop brooch. You know, again. It's fine, two is hardly indicative of a habit. Right?
"Another couple of deep breaths, if you wouldn't mind?"
no subject
Date: 2023-10-29 11:19 pm (UTC)Where does Giles actually get his ingredients from? he wonders suddenly, and not without urgency. Where does Ossie get his little biscuits and crustless sandwiches? Where do they get their cups of tea? From their personal cottage somehow, or from the ship? He's been trying very, very hard not to think of the ship as having dwindling supplies -- there's food in the buffet, there's drinks in the bars, he's been told the lights are on -- but when meals are skipped in the restaurants and the dining hall, it's hard not to see it as the visible hairline crack of a deep and foundational splitting. And he doesn't know if that's paranoia. He doesn't know. It must be: everyone else seems to eat and drink without worry, as far as he can tell. But he often thinks about the ship becoming its own shrinking, gasping pit, and the stories of sailors lost at sea without anything to eat, and the gnawing that makes you think you'll lose your mind.
He only manages to nod, this time, and his breath makes sounds in his throat as he breathes in. and out. and in. and out.
*down here is a space for you all to put your Doubt emojis.
no subject
Date: 2023-10-29 11:53 pm (UTC)He clears his throat in the specific manner that Giles used to when one of his Aunts was in and on the war path. It doesn't specifically mean 'go out the window', but that was often how Ossie (usually hungover or half-asleep) interpreted it.
no subject
Date: 2023-10-30 07:49 am (UTC)It is, per usual, taking a hot minute to get from 'making the decision to say' to 'saying', and even now Arthur feels the urge to hedge, to find safety in secrecy. He's done it before. He's built a whole relationship on it before. But that was a worse and more buried secret than perhaps even the worst moments of the pit.
He takes a few more seconds and another breath to gather himself.
"I never- I don't think I ever told you about the- the King in Yellow. No, I- I'm sure I didn't."
There's no particular inflection on the name, but his hands are more expressive, the right (his other right) pushing down into the couch seat, the left (wooden finger and all) curling into a shaky sort of fist.
no subject
Date: 2023-10-30 11:16 am (UTC)"Arthur," he says gently, never feeling the weight of these feathers more than this moment, "wherever you think you still are... you're here. In my cottage. And I promise you, it is as safe as anywhere can be. Anything you need to prove to yourself that you're not there, I will provide it. It's alright."
no subject
Date: 2023-10-30 12:47 pm (UTC)And he's seen that in people, he believes in it, he's done his own poor imitation of it. But it's always a little overwhelming to have it pointed at him.
This is probably how religious people feel whenever they see Jesus in a piece of toast.
Arthur lifts his right hand towards Ossie, fingers open, a clear gesture to take it. But he can't stop and focus on it. He can't stop telling this story for long, or else he won't start again. He goes on rapidly, muttering.
"A god who was trying to enter my world. He- it's a very long story, but he ended up dragging me into his instead. Couldn't bring me to heel, so he decided I would be softer i-if I was hungry. So he made-- he made sure I was hungry. Thirsty. Scattered. And every so often I think that I am once again healthy, before I remember that I was never so tired, and that my face never got such reactions."
And that's the shallow end of it. That's only what's immediately relevant.
"You understand." He's not begging, mind. But it's a faintly desperate question.
no subject
Date: 2023-11-02 03:59 am (UTC)"I do," he confirms, "I understand, Arthur- that's-" he finds himself at a loss for words.
"I'm so sorry."
no subject
Date: 2023-11-02 09:56 am (UTC)If only he could take Ossie's sympathy as if it's deserved. But he realises, now, that he can't leave the story only half-told, not when it makes him look in some way innocent. It curdles in him, the same way it curdled whenever anyone -- with the mistaken impression that he had no hand in his own suffering, or hers -- said they were sorry about what happened to Faroe.
Of course there's the fear that Ossie will repeat this. But there's also the recklessness of self-destruction, of the feeling that Arthur would deserve that anyway.
"That's not all," he says. The words stick in his throat, and pull out heavy tears with them.
no subject
Date: 2023-11-02 10:34 am (UTC)And the house miraculously produces a box of tissues that he offers Arthur, pressing a couple into his hand.
no subject
Date: 2023-11-02 02:07 pm (UTC)"Please, I-I have to." His voice rasps. "Ossie, I hurt people there."
Faust, most obviously. John, most unforgivably.
"For a month we survived on odd bits, a leg of something or a hoof of something else, or- or whatever they saw fit to throw us. I was-- I-I had a friend there, but not... physically there, and... and not always friendly." God this needs so much context. "For a month we were on our own. Then one day they threw in another man. A-an older man, with nothing except the clothes on his back and a braided cord that was always in his hand. He said they'd caught him trying to escape. And I thought- I-I wanted to believe that the world ran on some sort of rules. Maybe they had to dig him a deeper pit and we would be cell-mates till then, o-or something. Until a few days later, when I realised they had stopped feeding us."
He has to stop momentarily, remembering at last to breathe.
no subject
Date: 2023-11-05 07:24 am (UTC)"Arthur," he says, carefully.
"You recall me mentioning my darling little Rip Van Winkle moment?"
Ossie takes his own deep breath.
"I experienced similar. In broad strokes. Not- not quite the same. But I did- me as well, Arthur. I know. It's alright."
no subject
Date: 2023-11-05 09:32 am (UTC)One of the worst things about the pit is knowing that John went through it too, albeit in different ways. You can do a lot to Arthur, and he'll be mad about it at the time, but at the end of the day, he probably deserves it. Other people are different. Ossie is different. That he's gone through something like this too is horrible.
And Arthur didn't suspect at all. Either he's managed to recover, something that seems an impossible chance, or he's very good at hiding it.
"God," Arthur says with miserable horror. Then: "Fuck," with the kind of thank-god-someone-gets-it feeling that makes you immediately guilty for wishing this shit on another person. Then: "I'm so sorry," as his hand tightens round Ossie's and his stomach folds in on itself.
no subject
Date: 2023-11-10 07:54 am (UTC)"Whatever you have done, I can assure you, I did the same and worse. On purpose. Deliberately, with other options available to me. Perhaps this taints your respect of me. I can't say that it wouldn't bother me if that was the case, but... I'm not ashamed of what I have done. I am here because I made those choices, much the same as I expect you are. It's alright. I'm sorry, too."
no subject
Date: 2023-11-10 11:15 am (UTC)...Conflicted. He's in his friend's corner here, because nobody has ever accused him of being unbiased. Other options available could mean anything: hell, dying is technically another option available, but that doesn't make it a realistic one.
He's having trouble with the lack of shame, but then, isn't his own shame bound up less in what he did to Faust than in everything surrounding it? The vicious thrill of finally having a little control over his own fate, however false that control really was, and of hurting somebody who deserved it. The lie he told John, that John then had to pay for.
"What could you have possibly done that was worse." His voice is hoarse and choked. "I broke. After only a month. I broke. I lost."
no subject
Date: 2023-11-10 12:43 pm (UTC)"I was the wheel that broke others. The House I was taken to offered me a bargain, that I would have to hurt others to keep myself safe. I didn't just take that bargain, Arthur, I exceeded it. I enjoyed it. Had all of these party tricks to make people break composure, so they wouldn't be a threat to me any longer. I didn't just eat people, Arthur, I complimented the chef on his cooking and asked for seconds. I am... tired, of hiding all I have done."
If he hasn't pulled that hand away yet, Ossie will squeeze a little tighter.
"We do the best we can. Us, now, I mean. We can make that choice, to not repeat our mistakes."
no subject
Date: 2023-11-10 02:24 pm (UTC)He wants to say how dare you, with the fury of the person on the wheel. But it's never been as simple as that. He has been on the wheel, and he has been the wheel, and the net effect of his life has always been harm, no matter what world he's in. Those were some of the only true words that the King ever spoke.
John has been the wheel as well, for the joy of it, far longer and far worse than either of them. And while forgiveness is the wrong word for how Arthur feels about that, he still misses him horribly. He wouldn't have grown close enough to miss him like this if John didn't regret, and if he didn't constantly demonstrate his effort to change.
God. Here Arthur thought his own and Ossie's similarities were only superficial. Ossie has done a good job of hiding this.
He's silent for a while. Then he asks, quietly: "How many people?"
He wants, badly, to know that they weren't faceless and forgettable to Ossie.
no subject
Date: 2023-11-12 08:32 am (UTC)...
This was a mistake. This was a very, very large mistake and it is only that now he has blackmail in reverse that he doesn't just. Well. He doesn't even really know. It's not like he can trap Arthur in the cottage after what he just admitted. Can't involve anyone else in it.
At least Giles still loves him.
"I can't- I can't know. I lost count," maybe if he tried harder, kept a tally, "I don't... I don't know."
He could've picked a number. Fudged one. Maybe that would've been better, soothed Arthur that he cared right, that he was a good victim of his circumstances, that he still cared the right amount.
no subject
Date: 2023-11-12 09:16 am (UTC)It hits him that maybe Ossie didn't. He doesn't know the man that went in, only the one that came out. Perhaps they bear no resemblance to one another at all.
John, too, didn't know how many people he'd... killed, tortured, whatever metric you want to put on it. Arthur knows, but he's-- he doesn't have the number immediately, but he knows it's there if asked for. Now. After a hundred and more years, though?
God, he remembers Ossie's reaction to Arthur's muttered comments about Erin's sins, months and months ago. He'd thought that was about manners.
"Jesus," he says again, without inflection, into his hands. He has, he realises, put his face in his hands, which means he's slipped his hand out of Ossie's, which is not what he meant to do, but--
"Let-- let me take that in."
The pit is still fresh in his mind, along with the unseen guards who dropped a man in to his death. Along with the lock of hair placed - like a gun in Arthur's hand - as if to incite him. Along with the whispers and hallucinations of his daughter before it. Countless people. Placing Ossie as part of the wheel is a nasty thing to digest.
no subject
Date: 2023-11-12 10:50 pm (UTC)"I'm sorry," Ossie's voice has a veneer on it not dissimilar to a well-polished piece of furniture, "I meant only to sympathize. To- to express my solidarity, that you aren't... alone."
...
"I should go get some tea."
no subject
Date: 2023-11-12 11:32 pm (UTC)He shouldn't have said it. But Arthur feels overwhelmed: he dragged his crimes and torments in the Dreamlands to the surface, and now he stands with one foot in that sucking mire, and another in the revelation of Ossie as a tormentor, and another in not fucking up what's suddenly a delicate conversation where Ossie has made himself vulnerable, and he doesn't have enough feet for this.
no subject
Date: 2023-11-12 11:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-11-13 12:09 am (UTC)"Fuck."
He looks with his hands; Ossie isn't where he was. He has, as promised, gone, whether to get tea or just to be far away from this shitshow. Feeling suddenly very alone in the cottage, Arthur stands and gropes for his cane beside the couch.
Ossie listened to him, opened up himself about his regrets, and in return... Arthur did basically what he's always afraid other people will do. Yeah, he doesn't feel great about what he's been told, but Ossie sure didn't seem to feel great telling it, either.
"Ossie," he calls woodenly, "come back. I-I'm an unbelievable prick."
no subject
Date: 2023-11-13 04:38 am (UTC)"It's quite alright. You have my apologies, I said far too much. There's a few jam biscuits just a bit to the left of your cup on the tray."
And now they are not talking because they are Having Tea.
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