Chapter Text
Arthur screamed until he ran out of breath, at which point he promptly fainted.
John pulled his hand up to his throat, pressing maybe a little too hard to feel past his own tremors. There: a pulse under his fingertips, and the rise and fall of breathing lungs under his arm. Just a faint. It was okay. Arthur was back with him, alive, and he was going to be okay. John walked his fingers from the pulse point to the side of Arthur's face, just to cup it, the closest he could manage to a comforting embrace. Warm skin. Breath brushing against his wrist. It was going to be okay, he was going to be alright…
"That remains uncertain, my King."
John hadn't realised that he was speaking aloud. Drawn by the grate of Yorick's voice and the startled clench of John's fingers, Arthur resurfaced with the harsh, gulping breath of a half-drowned man.
"What - what the fuck -"
"Arthur -"
He tried to sit up and collapsed immediately, winded by the strain in his abdomen.
"The hag killed you, master. We have killed her, and brought you back."
"What?" Arthur's head rolled about, trying to place Yorick's voice and making John nauseous. Or maybe it was Arthur's own nausea spilling over, judging by the way his breath heaved as his groping hand found his new stitches.
"Oh fuck -"
"The hag -"
"Oh god -"
"Shut up!"
The silence that fell was a little too gratifying. John chose not to think about it.
"You're badly hurt, Arthur. Don't try to move. The witch is dead, and we seem to be safe here, for now. Just - just try to breathe."
John’s fingers twisted themselves into the shoulder of Arthur's shirt. The backs of his knuckles brushed cold, damp stone.
"We need to move you. The witch's bed looked… comfortable enough. You need to rest properly, to recover."
Arthur tried to do as he was told, which did nothing to ease John’s concern. He got as far as dangling one leg off the edge of the slab, but getting any part of his body upright seemed to be beyond him.
"John? I - I don't think I can. I can't - I -"
John’s hand slid from Arthur’s shoulder as he tried to prop himself up on both elbows, but every little movement jarred his wounds and made him gasp and gag.
"I know, Arthur. It's alright. Yorick, carry Arthur to the bed."
"Yes, my King."
"Wait - what - oh god -" John's vision shifted and slid as Yorick got the witch's hands underneath their body, Arthur wriggling like a half-dead fish in protest.
"The witch is dead, Arthur. Like the prince."
"…oh."
Thankfully, it seemed that all Arthur could think to do about this news was to pass out again.
The witch's bed was a root-bound pallet of straw, piled with furs and thick-spun woollen blankets. It was dry, and surprisingly warm, and far from the worst-smelling place that Arthur had ever slept.
"No," John interrupted the shifting sounds of Yorick pulling a fur over Arthur’s legs. "No, I need to - we need to clean him up first." He sighed in frustration, foot twitching. "Yorick. Go and search for supplies. Food and water. Do you understand?"
"Yes, my King."
Yorick shambled away to the door.
"Wait!"
"Yes, my King?"
"Safe food, clean water. Nothing that could harm him. Got that?"
Stationary, the witch’s body didn’t make a single sound.
"Yes, my King."
The jaw snapped shut, the feet shuffled, the door creaked. John let out a huff and started picking at the few buttons that still held the remains of Arthur's shirt together.
It stuck to the skin as John laid it open, from blood or just sweat he couldn't tell; even if their eyes had been open, Arthur was lying too flat for John to see anything of his body. He hadn't looked, earlier, when he'd had a bird's eye view. The only clue he had to how bad things were was how it had sounded as the witch opened him up, the wet writhing noises of intruders deep in his entrails.
Any reality would be better than that memory. John crawled his hand up over Arthur's shoulder and began shoving cushions and blankets into a mound to prop his head up.
The jostling brought him round again, with something that tried to be a scream but sounded more like a choke. He tried to sit up, and John felt their entire body turn rigid with pain. Still Arthur tried to fight through it, gasping, disoriented, kicking and struggling to escape the unfamiliar bedding.
"Arthur! Arthur, stop, you need to stop, just -"
Arthur's head snapped round at his voice, as if he could somehow see him. John caught his flailing hand in his own, laced their fingers together and pulled them down to his chest.
"Arthur. Just breathe."
And for a miracle, he did. Well. A sob was close enough for now.
"J-John?" Arthur's fingers tightened on his to the point of pain, nails digging in.
"Yes, I'm here, it's alright, you're here, just calm down, calm -" John wasn't really aware of what he was saying. Under their hands, Arthur's breath came faster and faster, heart rabbiting, and then - out again, just like that.
(Did you see him when he was brought in? I thought he was already gone.) (Well, he’s still here. Which makes it our job to see that he stays that way.)
John lingered over Arthur’s heart until he was certain that it was still beating, before disentangling himself and returning to the laborious task of raising their head to a useful position.
That just left the business of the eyelids.
Arthur still didn't know that he could do this, and it had been a while since he'd slept for long enough at once for John to even try. Not since Marie's, when John's absolute inability to get Arthur's sleeping eyes open had been the first sign that something was badly wrong.
Arthur's eyelids were disputed territory, like his elbow and his ankle. Once, John had thought of them as almost his. Nowadays, he thought of them as theirs. When Arthur was unconscious, asleep or otherwise not in control, John could coil his way in like smoke under a door. If he had the time and focus to build up enough pressure, he could even make the door open, just a little bit.
It would probably have been easier if he wasn't so nervous, now, of accidentally blowing it right off of its hinges.
Arthur's - John's - their eyelids flickered, fluttered, and finally slid open.
The open doorway let in barely enough light to see by, yellow and flickering from the torches in the outer room. Dancing shadows licked at the blood smeared across Arthur's body, scattering rubies into the pitch. Above his sternum was mostly smudges from John's own fingers and the glitter of sweat; below the ribcage was nothing less than a ruin. Harsh lines of fresh stitches and the ridges of old scars defined the map of him, filling in what should have been smooth planes between sharp bones. Though he was no longer bleeding, blood had collected in his dips and valleys: the worst was where the witch's knife had torn through his navel. The stitches had pulled the remains of it off-centre, and the red-black-red pool hid any hint of what it might look like once it healed.
Nothing like it should, John was sure. Just like the rest of him.
"Oh, Arthur…"
John trailed his fingers mournfully along the new scar. For the moment, there was simply nothing else to say.
Arthur surfaced again after only a minute or so, with a gasp and a jerk as though catching himself from a fall.
"John-!"
His hand latched onto John's, where he'd left it on his chest to keep track of his heartbeat. John couldn't tell which of them he'd been looking for.
"I'm here, Arthur." His pulse had kicked up, and so had his breathing, but less wildly so than last time. John gripped his hand, carefully, and was gripped back. "Are you… back?"
Arthur let out a wheeze, dropping his head back onto the heaped cushions. Beyond his control again, John's vision tracked the ceiling haphazardly, fading in and out of focus.
"I - I suppose? Was I gone? I feel -"
"Don't."
John locked their hands in place, pressing firmly onto Arthur's chest as he tried to sit up again and feel for his wounds. Thankfully, even the brief attempt seemed to hurt enough to dissuade him. Words came one at a time, gritted out between shaky breaths.
"I feel. Just. Fuck. Jesus fucking Christ. My stomach, it -"
"Don't think about it too much. You've been… in and out, a bit. Thinking about it seems to make it worse."
"Hm." That sounded like agreement. "What's. Happening now?"
"We moved you to the witch's bed. Yorick is fetching supplies. We need to clean your wounds, and you should eat something if you can manage it."
"Eat? I don't - Yorick is - what?"
Arthur's eyes were starting to dart about in a panic, breath coming in bursts. John kept pressing on his chest, trying desperately to think of any other comfort he could possibly give. It wasn't something he was particularly built for.
"I'm here to help," he found himself saying. "We're going to take this one step at a time. You're going to get better."
(Sometimes I really don’t know where you find all that optimism.) (I prefer to think of it as trust.)
Maybe it was the words, maybe it was just hearing a familiar voice. The panic didn't exactly ease, but it didn’t swamp him again. Arthur took a deep breath, and tried to let it out slowly. John watched his diaphragm struggle to keep control of the exhale.
"Okay. One step. The witch?"
Fair enough. That was a fairly important step.
"She's dead."
"Sure?"
"Yes. We're safe here, for now."
The repetition made John ache, a gnawing fear that Arthur wouldn't remember this time, either. (He might not be able to tell us anything. There may be brain damage.) (We'll just have to wait and see.) One step at a time.
"She's dead. We're safe." It couldn't hurt to say it again, just to be sure.
"Okay."
John caught a shuffling sound from beyond the room, the creak of a door. Ah. One more important step.
"Yorick is using her body."
"What?"
"One of us needed to be able to walk," John snapped. Arthur's body was reacting to the approaching sounds of what had been the witch with fine, spasmodic tremors, eyes rolling.
"It is indeed convenient, my King."
The witch's jaw made a different sound to the prince's as Yorick snapped it shut. Wetter. Misaligned on one side where the bullet had torn through the flesh. It made Arthur flinch and gag.
"The prince's supplies, Master," Yorick continued, advancing to lay a bundle beside their left arm. "The water is stale, but it is clean. The food was intended to keep for a long journey."
John felt his way through the bundle. There was a skin full of water, and some cloth-wrapped parcels that presumably contained food, gathered together with a large quantity of rags. The remnants of the prince's clothing, he knew without having to ask.
He wrapped his fingers around the neck of the water skin, and dragged it up onto Arthur's chest.
"You should drink. Yorick, is this all the water we have?"
"The room opposite this one was the hag's garden. There is a small amount of fresh water that runs in from above. There is also the stagnant pool outside, but I do not think this would qualify as ‘clean’."
"A garden?" John pulled himself away from the side-track. "Good. If we don't have to ration this, Arthur, you ought to drink as much as you can. I can't… I'll need you to hold this so I can get the cork out."
"I can assist, my King."
"No! No," John tried to keep control of his voice as his vision started to grey out. "I think you should go to this… garden, Yorick. Fill as many containers - clean ones - with water as you can. And get yourself cleaned up. The smell of blood seems to be making things worse."
It wasn't even a lie. The thick smell of congealing blood and - yes, that was brain matter, how could he forget - wasn't helping John’s concentration, and he didn't have a digestive tract to protest about it. Arthur was breathing too fast and too shallow, through his mouth, and definitely not getting enough air.
"Yes, my King."
And he was gone again. Arthur took a deep breath and swallowed thickly; John's vision stabilised a little.
"Thanks, John."
"Hm." John found Arthur's hand and dragged it over to support the water skin. "Help me with this. You need water."
Arthur managed a couple of mouthfuls, although just as much ran down his chin as down his throat. He coughed and grimaced at the taste while John got the skin settled into the crook of his arm, so that all Arthur would have to do was squeeze slightly with his elbow when John needed more water.
And then: the slow, slow process of cleaning him up.
John had never had to do it himself before. At the hospital it had been the nurses' job, while he pretended not to exist (almost done now, Mr Doe, let me just move this arm…). After Addison they had simply thrown a stolen overcoat over the mess and fled, and by the time they were far enough away to consider stopping to clean up, Arthur had been well enough to insist on finding a motel with decent showers and taking charge of the situation himself. Now the most he could manage was steadying the water skin, and letting the movements of his left elbow and shoulder follow wherever John's hand led them.
He didn't even ask about the state of his wounds, although John couldn't tell if that was from a lack of energy or a deliberate preference not to know. After a while, he gave up telling Arthur off for letting their eyes drift closed while he worked. He could tell the difference between body-warm, half-dried blood and cool water well enough by touch anyway.
Slowly, the water won out over the mess, and John's fingertips found more goosebumps than blood smears. Arthur's breathing evened out, aside from the odd sharp inhale when John found a raw spot. He memorised each one carefully, re-learning their body once again.
(It'll be a bad scar, I'm afraid. There's nothing much to be done about it.) (It would be a miracle otherwise. I'm sure he'll make his peace with it. If he lives.)
"John?"
It was the first word Arthur had said in too long, and it made him start. Arthur gasped as John's fingers caught suddenly against a scrape.
"Will you… tell me what happened?"
Cold dread filtered through John's mind.
"I did. The witch killed you. I killed her. Yorick and I used her talisman to bring you back."
"No, I - I remember that. Well. Maybe not about the talisman but. Makes sense."
Arthur paused for breath. John tried to slow his own, relieved that he did remember and worried that his own concern was somehow making things more difficult for their body. His hand was clenched tight around the cleaning rag; he forced it to relax, and hoped he was imagining that Arthur breathed a little easier for it. Christ, if he started down that rabbit hole he'd never come out.
"I want… to know how. It's… so much, I don't…"
He trailed off again. John continued cleaning him, slow, careful circles of the damp rag around one of his new stab wounds.
"What do you remember?"
"Running. In the labyrinth. She… appeared. S-stabbed me. I remember… pain. Maybe, um. Being dragged? I don't…"
"If I tell you, you might not remember. I don't want to go through it all twice if you're not all here."
"I'm here!" Arthur snapped, with a force that made him cough. John left the rag on his stomach to help him take a drink. "I am, just. Talking, it…"
"Talking hurts," John finished for him, skimming his thumb over the place where the largest of the witch-wounds crossed his diaphragm. "Breathing hurts?"
"If I… too deeply, yes."
John wondered if there was anything that didn't hurt.
"Don't interrupt, then, unless you absolutely have to."
Arthur snorted derisively. That didn't seem to be too painful, anyway. He settled his head back into the heap of cushions and let his eyes slide closed again as John began.
"The witch caught us in the labyrinth. She had a long, thin sword, like a rapier, and she stabbed you in the gut." John drew Arthur's fingers to that wound, letting him feel it out but wander no further just yet. "You collapsed, but you weren't dead. She dragged you back, and laid you out on the stone slab we'd seen before. You were… still breathing.
"She and Yorick spoke to each other, as if… she called him her prince. He called her his queen. No-!" John caught Arthur's shoulder and pushed him back down as he tried to sit up, hissing. "No, it -”
“That fucking -”
“Arthur! He saved your life. I couldn’t have - we needed him! Look, I’ll get to it, but - he could have saved her. He chose us. He chose us!”
Never mind how close that choice might have been, how easily it might have gone the other way. No point making this more complicated than it already was. John waited, his hand pressed to Arthur's heart, until he was sure that they were both calm enough to continue. No sound filtered in from outside: no hint of whether Yorick was listening.
"Yorick told her about me. She did… something, I didn't see what - which allowed her to hear me. She was curious, wanted to know what I was, and I… I introduced myself as Hastur. I thought I could… impress her, intimidate her, demand her service. To save you."
John paused, poking at that memory like a bruise. The sickly familiarity of claiming the name, the baffling flash of genuine affront when she had refused to be cowed by it. That was what had failed him, he was sure, it would have worked if he hadn't stumbled over himself like that. It had felt like being split from himself all over again, adrift and powerless, alone…
"Did it work?"
John reminded himself that Arthur, when not actually unconscious, was absolutely terrible at silences.
"No. Don't interrupt."
Arthur huffed at him, a fond little sound.
"She told me who she was. What she was. She was human, to begin with, but…" John hesitated, unsure what to say. "She was treated very badly. She was abandoned by people who should have cared for her, and taken in by an entity that she called Mother Darkness."
"Mother Darkness."
Arthur repeated the name slowly, digesting it. His eyes flicked open to stare blindly at the ceiling, the way they always did when some new, important thought pulled at him.
"She spoke of her as her true mother. The one who made her… what she became."
The flickering light from the doorway made strange shadows on the root-bound ceiling. As close as the air already was in here, John suddenly wished that he'd asked Yorick to light the candles. Maybe then the chandelier would look less like a huge, dark, grasping hand.
"We've made a new enemy."
"I think so. A powerful one."
Arthur let out a long, slow breath, and nodded slightly. "Of course. Add her to the list, I sup-suppose." His wheeze turned into a flurry of coughs, each one pulling hard at his insides to trigger the next.
"Drink more," John told him, guiding the water skin upwards. "Eat something, if you can."
Arthur nodded shakily, eyes watering, and together they navigated unwrapping the bundle of dried fruit and bringing it piece by piece to his mouth. He chewed slowly, pausing for deep breaths after every swallow. After barely a handful, his eyelids began to droop.
"Keep… keep talking?"
"You're falling asleep, Arthur."
"I didn't even… die yet…"
John set the food aside to drag a handful of blankets and furs over Arthur’s body. He startled at the new texture on his bare, damp skin, but couldn’t help relaxing into the warmth as John spread them into place.
“We need to… I...”
“You need to rest, Arthur. I’ll tell you the rest of it tomorrow.”
Not that that really meant anything down here. John had no idea what time it was, or how long it had been since the windmill. It felt like one long fall down a flight of stairs, as though here, now, with Arthur finally warm and safe, was the first chance John had had to breathe since leaving New York.
Arthur was making pained little noises in the back of his throat, shifting about and trying to get comfortable under the blankets. John bundled them all the way up to his chin, hunkering down underneath like an animal in a burrow. Arthur was still all goosebumps; he didn’t even object to John rubbing some warmth into his chest, a safe distance from the stitches.
“I’ll just… I can rest and listen, I can...”
John’s vision drifted in and out as Arthur fought stubbornly to stay awake. It was irritating, but better, infinitely better, than his earlier haphazard bouts of unconsciousness. Their body had arrived at a distance from death that at least felt familiar. Manageable. Survivable. His little space under the blankets grew warm; he slowed his movements over Arthur’s chest to find his heartbeat again.
“It’s alright, Arthur.” (It’s alright, Mr Doe.) “Rest.” (You just rest. I’ll be here.) “I’ll be here.”
There was only so much Arthur could do to resist his own exhaustion. He couldn’t curl in on himself to sleep as he normally did, but made do with tucking his chin and rolling his shoulders over to face the wall. As their eyelids finally slid closed, John caught himself scanning the packed earth for tally marks.