Chapter 68
Previously: The Rose of Whitby – Chapter 67
Darcy bounces to her feet and throws herself at John again because he’s just the best! But then she turns back to Arthur to take his hand so they can walk back together while she starts telling him about sitting in her window sill so much while growing up. And sometimes Papa brought her plushies made from real animals and those are the best, they smell a bit like the animal and she could pretend that she had a real pet! With a blush, she admits that she talked to them and pretended they could walk around her room and that she’d need to take care of them as if they were alive.
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John has a model of Darcy’s room in the dreamscape? Well, why not, Arthur decides- actually, why is he even surprised? Darcy clearly considers it a home, so why not have it in the dreamscape? Out loud, he admits that he probably would’ve pretended that, too… Though, plushies made from real animals? Like… taxidermied ones?
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“Yes, with real fur but not all stiff! I love them so much, I’ll show you in the dreamscape. John made me really good copies, of course!” Chirping, Darcy hugs Arthur again before sending him towards his own room as she runs off to… she wanted to say hers but then she stops. She doesn’t even know where Gregory is, again, and she thinks that’s okay, and he… he didn’t rebuff the harlot and he was the one to push them together, so no! With a stomp of her foot, she veers down the corridor and instead runs into John’s room to get ready for the nap.
After cuddling up to her Daddy for sleeping, she doesn’t want to sleep alone again. No, no more. She’ll cuddle up with John as many nights as she can! He can sleep in her bed, yes, her marriage bed, tonight. She’ll be the best possible affair for him. But right now, she has to be the best-possible caring sister-in-law for Arthur first, and that’s going to be nice!
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It’s really not a usual time for Arthur to sleep, but it is getting dark out, and some rain has rolled in to patter softly against the windows, and Katharina is a black-and-white curl of dozing cat in the middle of his bed. Also, he feels exhausted and thrown off balance by the discovery in the basement and the emotions, so, actually, it’s very nice to climb into his – now his – big and warm and comfortable bed, and curl up around Katharina, and let her warmth lull him to sleep.
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Darcy greets Arthur as soon as John wakes him up in the dreamscape by holding out her favourite childhood plushie to him, already seated on her old bed, waiting for him. It’s the taxidermied hedgehog with the really nice glass eyes that she always held up against her window so they sparkled. Without even thinking about it, she starts into the Grimm fairy tale about ‘Hans my Hedgehog’, just that it’s even better because the translation reads ‘Jack my Hedgehog’. She always thought of her papa when holding it, so this plushie is very special to her! Giving Arthur a soft smile, she cradles her hedgehog close for a moment, then holds it out to him. If he wants it, he can have it.
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“Um,” Arthur says, and gingerly takes the hedgehog from the bottom, where the needles aren’t. It certainly is cute, but he gives Darcy a look for the way she cuddled it, asks: Isn’t that prickly?
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“Yes, it’s nice!” Darcy chirps at him while John, sitting at her desk, laughs. He’s long gotten used to his girl liking things rough. Serves him well, she makes him feel that the basically invisible blond stubble on his cheeks is much more pronounced with how she always rubs her face happily against it.
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Nice? Arthur doesn’t think he shares that opinion, so he hands the hedgehog back, tells her that if he’s her favourite, he wouldn’t want to take him, and also- he prefers his cuddly things a bit softer.
It is really odd to be sitting in Darcy’s room, which he’s only seen a glimpse of that day of the prison break, with her and John. Odd but fun. It’s a lot more girly than any other room he’s ever been in, but… well, it’s comfortable. Especially considering that they’re in a prison.
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After setting her hedgehog back on his spot of honour, Darcy digs into her collection of plushies and explains for each of them what they are or are meant to be. When she, very proudly, pulls out the biggest one she has, John grunts and tells Arthur to not take that one. It’s a stuffed badger and Darcy giggles at John’s grunt. She knows why he said it, but of course her manly man wouldn’t want to admit in front of Arthur that that’s his favourite. So she just nods and pretends its about how its fur isn’t all soft and how its claws are so big!
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The badger is definitely cool, but the one Arthur is most intrigued by is what Darcy calls a genet that Dr Seward brought her from France. It’s like a long, short-limbed cat, a bit, except with a big fluffy tail and a pointier face and rounded ears. It has black spots, and Darcy says they are originally from Africa and were brought to France by the Saracens. It’s not quite like anything Arthur’s ever seen before.
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Noticing the way he’s looking at it, Darcy chirps and insists he take it! She’ll make sure to bring it over to his room outside, too. Once she has handed the genet over, she runs to her bookshelf but John coughs and reminds her that the books aren’t perfect here, so how about he lets them wake up and then Arthur can read up on his new friend in the library over tea? Turning to him, he adds, gentler than normal, that they can keep him company if he still wants it.
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Arthur blushes a bit at the offer, but nods, agrees that having tea together sounds nice? Plus some research that isn’t about how and when who gets to decide where a field ends and another one begins…
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Darcy and John stay with him through tea and the rest of the afternoon. Not always quietly, as John prefers to read his books with some action. Normally that meant he’d build them in his dreamscape, but when Darcy is involved, she always ends up playing things out right there. With Arthur around John’ll be damned if he does the full voices as he normally does, but he still plays along, just a little bit more reserved. But really, how is he supposed to completely say no to his girl, ever?
Having been reminded of her old childhood habits, John finds himself reading fairy tales and fables with Darcy as she grabs her different plushies to have the protagonists ready… Okay, fine, maybe he is making a bit of a rumbly voice for her for the bears and badgers.
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Arthur finds himself happily curled up in the library, smiling at how John and Darcy are clearly having fun with those fairy tales- maybe acting them out with the plushies is silly? But if it is, he decides he doesn’t care- it’s almost like a bit of a play, and it makes things lively without being overwhelming.
He has friends, he realizes, and that feels great.
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Arthur jerks out of sleep the next morning and finds something fuzzy wrapped around him- what? His questing fingers brush the length of fur around his waist, and the round ears, and, right, Darcy’s stuffed genet… and then he realizes what woke him: scratching on his door, and urgent whining, and it sounds like… Darcy? Wolf Darcy?
He disentangles himself from the stuffed animal and blankets, flicks a spark at his candle and staggers over to his door, still blinking the sleep from his eyes. It must be really early, it’s still dark. It’s way too early for Darcy, but when he opens the door, there she is, dancing on her paws, eyes wide and ears tipped back- scared, she looks scared.
“Wha…? What is it?”
Is she stuck as a wolf again? But that didn’t upset her last time…
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Has to help, Darcy has to help, and she can’t do anything. She has to get a doctor! Papa isn’t here! Arthur! Arthur can help! She puts her teeth on his sleeve and begins to drag him. He has to come! Now, right now!
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Getting the hint, Arthur starts jogging, then running in the direction she’s leading him- whatever it is, it’s obviously urgent, and he can ask her why she’s a wolf once he knows what the crisis is.
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Oh thank the night! As Darcy drags Arthur into her room she sees that John woke up after all. He was screaming in his sleep before. And she suddenly got kicked out of his dreamscape, that’s worse. And then she couldn’t shake him awake, that’s worst. Now he’s sitting up but he smells all wrong. Her John is scared. He’s never scared! Jumping up on the bed and turning human again she makes sure not to hug him, he hates that, but his arms are right around her and there’s a tremble to his hands.
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John tries to tell Arthur… well, that he’s fine, but that would be a fucking lie! And he’s not really comfortable having Arthur there, he… he’s just about ready to hide his face in Darcy’s hair and maybe allow himself to let his girl see some of that emotion. He’s shaken and she’s his girl, so her seeing it would maybe, just maybe, be okay. But she got Arthur so he can’t, he has to stay strong. Still, the words don’t want to come and he can tell that he’s shaking, too. Fuck. Fuck, that wasn’t a dream. He knows dreams. Dreams are his world, his strength, his refuge. That was not even a nightmare, that felt like a fucking vision and if it was, he doesn’t have a future after all. At least not one he wants to live!
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Arthur does find himself blushing when it’s her room Darcy drags him to, and it’s obvious John spent the night there. But she just jumps on the bed- while in her night clothes, and so is John. But all of that isn’t really important. Important is that John looks upset, and so does Darcy, and clearly, she wasn’t stuck in wolf form, she must’ve been in it to run faster or something…
Arthur hovers by the door, and asks her what happened, what’s wrong?
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Darcy can see that John is trying to speak and can’t. Her John, too shaken to speak. It makes her whimper but she waves Arthur in. “Can you please see if he needs healing? I couldn’t wake him, couldn’t wake him at all, and he was screaming and then he went so pale and hardly breathed!”
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“Um… d’you mind?” Arthur asks John, because he doesn’t feel quite right entering the room fully and doing as Darcy asks without confirmation from him. But that does sound… worrying? Especially the part where she couldn’t wake him and he barely breathed.
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John manages a nod at Arthur, but can’t stop trembling. He hates that. He doesn’t want to be weak. Seeming weak scares him at least as much as not having control over that fucking vision. But his girl needs him to deal with this. And he wants to be the guy doing something about shit going badly. So even with his knuckles white from how hard he’s holding Darcy, he nods again and tries to calm his breathing and finally presses out. “Some magic fuckery. Vision kind of thing. Sorry, culver, not fucking dying on you.”
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Arthur scoots just close enough that he can rest his fingertips on John’s shoulder, concentrates, casts his healing spell… and feels it collapse right away. So he steps back again and shakes his head. “Nothing to heal there. So whatever it was, it’s not physical.” He processes John’s words. “What makes you think it was magic? And has anything like that ever happened to you before?”
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Shaking his head, John presses his eyes shut and grinds his teeth. He doesn’t fucking want to talk about it! But he has to. His girl is whimpering with worry for him and part of him loves to see that, but the vision haunts him. Still, Arthur’s the guy in the household who might have any idea what’s going on.
And didn’t they just learn that Arthur’s father is a real piece of shit? Maybe the fucker cursed the household and he just got the short end of the stick and was the first to get hit? Fuck, Darcy might be cursed, too. He got to protect his girl and that means talking, so he tells Arthur that he definitely would know if it was just a nightmare. Dreams are his domain, he’s never had a dream he couldn’t change. He couldn’t do a fucking thing about this one though. “I tried. I tried to morph that worst scenario vision, but it wouldn’t budge and that tells me it’s not from me. Maybe your father had some curse on the house and we set it off?”
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Arthur feels his eyes widen as he considers that. “A nightmare curse? It could be possible… I’ll go…” he grimaces, “I’ll go check through my father’s books, if he put something like that on the house, it might be in one of them.” He can see that John is uncomfortable, so he gives him a nod and turns to the door, so John can compose himself in peace.
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Now Darcy is torn. John clearly needs her, but Arthur having to look through his father’s books alone? No, she can’t do that! She can’t let him do that! So she calls after him to bring the books right back here so they can protect each other if it’s a curse! The stories taught her that splitting up is a bad idea!
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Arthur turns at the door at Darcy’s words, looks to John for confirmation- Darcy has a point, but John seems so uncomfortable, maybe he wants to get up and move this somewhere else?
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That Arthur would look to him so obviously has John find a grin. He’s the man of the house! He can make decisions. Even if they’re cursed, they need to keep their strength up, so he tells Darcy to go with Arthur, help him carry the books. He’ll get into some actual clothes and meet them in the library for war planning and breakfast.
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Arthur nods to that- they’ll have more room in the library, and he’ll be a lot more comfortable there than in Darcy’s room, too, so he’s all in favour.
He hurries off towards the library and the door to the house- which would be very convenient, if it wasn’t maybe the cause of whatever happened to John, and might still be happening. Behind him, he can hear Darcy’s steps, thumping on the stairs and the floors. He focuses on that, on having Darcy at his back, having her company, rather than on the thought of his father’s study and all the bad, bad things a curse from his father might do while they cross the mezzanine- and then he stands in his father’s study.
Which, no, what? He wasn’t there yet, and… and there’s his father. In front of him. And Gregory’s demon form is looming behind him, so tall and broad.
And his father is looking at him. And smiling.
It’s a dark smile, and pleased, but… but it’s… approving?
“Thank you for the demon,” he says. And: “Well done, son.”
Fear curdles in Arthur’s stomach, makes his breath choppy. But also… but also this is all wrong? Son? His father never calls him ‘son’. It’s ‘boy’ or ‘you’, or his name, rarely. And he doesn’t ever tell him ‘well done’. No matter how hard Arthur tries.
There’s a churn of emotion inside of him, besides the fear- that feeling like he’s five years old again, and reading out loud, and making sure he minds all his words and pronounces them properly, all those long Latin words, and he doesn’t stutter once the whole paragraph and he looks up at his father, and he thinks, he thinks this time he got it right, he did, didn’t he? And maybe his father will tell him so; maybe he’ll be pleased that Arthur tried so hard.
And his father looks at him with his cold eyes and tells him to keep going; he didn’t tell him to stop. Until Arthur stumbles across a sentence in the next paragraph, he didn’t practise that one as much, he didn’t know he was supposed to, and his father sneers at him and gets up and leaves without another word.
And Arthur knows he’s just not good enough.
No, his father never tells him that he did anything well, Arthur never manages to do anything well enough, but also… but also, didn’t he stop wanting to?
And he shouldn’t give his father a demon, his father can’t have Gregory, this is bad, this is so very bad! Who knows what he’ll do to Gregory? Who knows what he’ll do with Gregory?
But also… but also, his father is supposed to be taller? He’s supposed to loom over Arthur, but instead, he’s the same height as Arthur.
Arthur looks down at himself, and the floor is a lot further away than he’s used to. And the hands sticking out of his sleeves are large, and older. He’s older? …Bigger?
The room… the room he’s in, yes, it’s his father’s study, but it’s not the study he knows, he realizes. The desk is the same, the heavy, dark wood, but there are more bookshelves along the walls, there are more windows, the red carpet is larger. There’s a seating arrangement of armchairs and a couch in front of the fireplace that would’ve taken up most of the floor space left in his father’s actual study, but here, there’s still plenty of room left. Yes, this room is at least two, if not three times the size. It’s because Arthur is bigger that he didn’t realize right away.
And it’s cleaner than the house was, but not as clean as it is now.
The house, right, the study- he was on his way to that. This isn’t it.
This is richer, more like the castle is, with carvings on furniture and thick curtains and all.
He was on his way to the study to get the books because of a vision John said he had. Is this a vision like that, he wonders?
And if it is- he hopes it is! – how does he get out of it?
He takes a step back, and his father raises an eyebrow.
“This isn’t real!” Arthur says. The voice that comes out is still his, but deeper. A man’s voice, not a boy’s. “You’re not real!”
His father looks quizzical, but not upset. Not angry. “Are you feeling alright, son?”
His father? Asking about how he’s feeling?
Wrong! he reminds himself. This is all wrong, and it’s not real, it’s just a vision, a scary vision. John was clearly shaken by his as well- it’s a nightmare of some sort, maybe a curse.
In either case, that is not his actual father, and he isn’t really here, wherever ‘here’ is. He’s in the library. With Darcy.
And even if it were real- he said he didn’t care about his father’s approval anymore, didn’t he? No, he doesn’t! He’s not five years old anymore, and his father… his father is terrifying, and all around a bad person, and he shouldn’t even want someone like that to think well of him- whatever his father considers ‘well done’ is definitely something Arthur shouldn’t do. He looks again at the demon standing behind his father’s shoulder, silent and hulking, and sets his jaw- he won’t ever do that! He won’t help his father like that!
A moment later, he finds himself standing in the library again, dizzy and weak-kneed, with his breath going fast and his heart pounding madly.