Chapter Text
It only dawned on Arthur as he approached the cave mouth that dread should have been writhing in his guts and pricking at his spine.
He thought of all the stuttered excuses to teachers, explaining away missing homework. He thought of that time he had hidden in his uncle’s garage overnight when his mother had found a dime bag in his coat pocket and sent him a furious text message demanding he come home and explain himself immediately. He thought of double shifts at his old job, his Grandmother’s funeral, parties where he didn’t know anyone. The annual flu shot he always seemed to have some adverse reaction to, his aunt asking if he’d like to hold his newborn baby cousin (oh God, what if he dropped her?).
This didn’t feel like any of those times. He was distantly aware of the break in Vivi’s voice and that look on her face that would be burned into his mind for as long as he still had one. But more importantly, there was a sense of duty, of inevitability. Of course, it was somewhat misplaced; after all, he had no idea what he was going to do beyond “try to find Lewis and apologise”. Not that apologies could do anything, “Hey you, haven't seen you since you chased me around a mansion in hope of killing me, couldn't help but feel partially responsible since I pushed you to your death and all, wanna talk it out?” Apologies wouldn't piece anyone's lives back together, least of all Lewis'.
It occurred to him that he was most likely walking to his own execution. He paused, considering the enormity of this, what he would be leaving behind. The idea seemed too large, too smooth to fully grasp. Something about his parents. He wondered who, if anyone, would tell them. Vivi, well, she despised him now. He should have invited her along, who better to have front row seats for an act of retribution? A pang of guilt as he remembered Galaham. Vivi would feed him, he hoped. Or at least find a good home for him. Regardless of his former owner's actions, he couldn't imagine her letting any harm come to the tiny creature, or anyone for that matter.
She would have been strong enough. She would have destroyed that thing before her body could take a single step towards Lewis' turned back.
He was going to miss her. Probably. He wasn't sure what would happen to his soul. Would he come back, like Lewis and countless others, plagued by their regrets and anger, or would he move on? What did that even entail? Even Vivi didn't seem to know what happened once a spirit was released from this realm.
“From what I gather,” she had told him one night, “it's strictly a one-way ticket, the whole crossing over deal. Ghosts are weighted to this world by something they didn't do, or something they never came to terms with. Ever wonder why so many of them are people who turned out to have died unexpectedly? That man in the mountains, for example.”
“I liked him. He was cool. Told him he was dead, and he was all like “Huh, how about that” and then he was... gone.”
“Yeah, probably one of the more chill ghosts we've met. Literally all that was holding him back was not realising he was dead.”
“That's so crazy though, like... how can you not know? Are people really that full of denial? Like, “Well, guess I can walk through walls and people either don't notice me any more or shit their pants when I'm around, that's new”, or-”
Vivi shrugged. “Death's an enormous thing. It's hard enough for us to truly grasp when we're alive, and the longer ghosts spend not being aware of being... well, ghosts, the more disconnected they get from human concepts like mortality. They get stuck in routines and just retrace their steps. They get hostile. Sometimes, they forget what it is to be human, that's how you get the formless, shadowy ones.”
“So it's ignorance and regret that keeps them here?”
“Yeah. That, and some just don't feel like it yet.”
“Like that old racist guy?”
“Yeah. God, he was a dick. Not much we can do about those ones, we can make it so they can't haunt a certain location, but we can't make them cross over.”
“Shame.” Arthur reached for his packet of cigarettes. “We could do with a portal or something, we'd just be flinging ghosts through it like “Walk into the light already you jerkass ghost”.”
“Nah. We're not exterminators, we help ghosts.” Vivi plucked the cigarette from his fingers. “And you're going to get a first hand experience of being a ghost if you don't cut down.”
*
The cave was cold, and the damp seemed to reach Arthur's core. He arrived at the fork where they had split up on that night, that same sickly green light hanging in the air, as though it had been waiting for him. It had not been waiting alone, he realised, just knowing that he had found who he was looking for.
“You came back.” Lewis' voice seemed to bypass his ears altogether, not existing as vibrations in the air so much as something that just existed in his head. Arthur swallowed hard, realising that, despite his distracted state, he had been shaking, with cold, with fear, with the immeasurable nature of what he was doing. He turned to face Lewis, bracing himself for the impact of seeing him reduced to dust and bones.
Surprisingly, he looked almost exactly as he had seconds before death. Something was off; the colours were muted, although it was unclear how much of that was down to the dim, green light. But mostly, it was the eyes. In life, they had been dark, but they shone like onyx, full of a thousand memories and thoughts and jokes. And now they spoke of shadows and void. Arthur tried to scrape together the pieces of his insufficient apology, form a sentence, anything-
“How long has it been?”
Lewis' question caught him off guard. “Uh... just over a year.”
“And you were going to apologise.”
Arthur nodded.
“I've spent over a year in this fucking cave, reliving my own death, and you want to apologise.”
“I-”
“Come on, what can you possibly say now? Here, I'll help you. Explain to me exactly what I did to deserve that. Explain why I had to look Vivi in the eye while I died. Explain why my parents and brothers and sisters had to lose me too. I'm fucking waiting.”
Lewis seemed to glow brighter, which only made the darkness in his eyes more unsettling.
“I was weak.”
Silence and fog hung in the damp air. A voice hissed in the darkness.
“Pathetic.”
Arthur jumped, glancing around, arms folded tightly across his chest. He had to continue. There was nothing, he reminded himself, that could possibly go wrong this time. Lewis was already dead. Lewis would almost certainly make sure that he was dead too by the time this was over. All he could do was bleat out his explanation, face his own ending. Maybe Lewis could move on. Maybe he would spend eternity trapped in a cave with the righteous anger of a beautiful boy who died at his hands. Maybe that was what he'd misinterpreted as Hell.
“That thing's right. Pathetic. I was scared, and fucked up, and that made it easier for it to creep in- Lewis, I'm not going to say it wasn't my fault. It was. I should have been able to fight it. Vivi would have. You would have. I didn't know what to do, and it happened so fast, and that's why I'm here.”
There was a low, rumbling noise echoing through the cavern, a cold laugh seeping into every crack and thickening the air. That voice spoke up again.
“The dead only provide so much sustenance, boy.”
Arthur whipped his head around, trying to locate the source of the noise.
“What are you talking about?” Lewis shook his head. “Fucking sustenance. You don't need it, you've got this entire shitty cave to yourself. And now he's here, you haven't shut up about him in over a year, leave us alone.”
“You are an ignorant child.” The cave flickered. “Do you see what a perfect vessel I have been given? I was weaker the last time we met, and he was still so easy to claim.”
Lewis froze. “No.”
“Yes. I fed on all the fear in his wretched little heart, and the hatred in what used to be yours. I am strong now. Strong enough to leave this place, within the proper vessel. To grow, and feed, and rise-”
The fog grew thicker around Arthur. He could almost smell the decay, choke on it. And then, his body was no longer his own. Sparks flew behind eyes he had no control over, he could feel what were, in theory, his feet pounding on the slippery rocks, his body clumsily launching forward, the anguished screech of something denied its freedom, his breath, but not truly his, pumping in and out of struggling lungs.
Vivi had been right about cutting down on cigarettes.
But mostly, he saw himself. He saw himself lying on the floor with Mystery stretched out across his lap, fixing the van, beaming brightly at Vivi as she slung a pizza box his way with a look of distaste (“Here, I ordered you this gross thing since you apparently can't eat normal pizza like a normal person”), running a shaking hand through his hair and squeezing his eyes shut tight after yet another terrible phone conversation with his parents, shifting in his sleep, looking up at the stars while smoking, exchanging jokes with his uncle, falling far, far away with a green tinge to his skin.
He felt what was undoubtedly Lewis exploring every recess of his mind, every unspoken thought, dark nights, darker days, instances in which he woke up feeling pleasantly surprised at his light mood, only for it to dispel when he remembered why it was so rare. Panicking, he instinctively rebelled against the intrusion, feeling something in his head shift. Combined with the unnatural feeling of having his body run without him willing it to, he was almost deaf (could he be deaf to a voice that didn’t even need to travel through his ears?) to the protests.
“Arthur. Stop it.”
(picket fences, no, razor wire, no, large walls, granite with metal spikes)
“I mean it. You’re going to hurt yourself.”
The words found their way to the memory of Lewis’ death, of the cave and its foul rot and cold voice. There had been so much blood. He became aware of the ground feeling softer against what were usually his feet. Arthur focused, managing to look through what were usually his eyes, but as though he were peering up from the bottom of a deep pit. Clouds rolled overhead. They’d made it out of the cave.
His body seemed to be slowing, the memory surrounded by Lewis and his white hot, seething fury. Not fury. More so. Conflict.
(pour water on it put it out please please-)
Uncertainty weighed down. The pressure was unbearable.
(do what you like, just get out get out get out)
“I don’t know how this works.” Lewis flickered in frustration behind Arthur’s eyelids. “Look, I’ll try, just- calm down, OK?”
Tearing, pulling, a burning light increasing, bright enough to consume everything in its path. And then, a blinding flash, and, finally, there was darkness again.
*
The murmur of voices dispersed, and became more coherent. Arthur wasn’t sure how much time had passed. He hadn’t even attempted to move yet. He simply lay there, confirmed he was still breathing, and listened to the dull thud of his heartbeat, how it was slightly out of synch with the angry throbbing in his head. Something damp was pressed under his nose and his eyes blinked open of their own accord. That something was wiping at his face gently.
“Arthur?” Vivi blurred into view, albeit as a blue shape, given how close she was. “Hey. Can you squeeze my hand if you can hear me?” A hand was placed in his. To his relief, his hand appeared to be under his control again.
“How’d you get here?” he managed to mumble into the cloth.
“I assumed you came here on some idiotic mission, so I borrowed my Dad’s car.”
A thought from before echoed in his mind. “Front row seats.”
“Huh?”
“Nothin’. He experimented with shifting his heavy, aching limbs, and forced himself into a sitting position, his aching head screaming at him in the process. Something trickled from his nose and he noticed the dark stains on his shirt.
“Here.” Vivi handed him the sanitary wipe she had been using. “Your nose was gushing blood when I got here.”
“What happened?”
Vivi nodded towards a figure lurking by the van, blending in with the darkness. “From what he tells me, Lewis decided to hitch a ride with you, partly to get out of the cave, but also to stop the foggy green giant asshole from doing the same. Combination of him having never possessed anyone and you freaking out meant that it didn't go smoothly for you. How are you feeling?”
“Tired. Everything hurts. Also, my vest is ruined. Lewis?”
Lewis walked over, footfalls making no impact on the grass.
“Hi.”
And, for a moment, it was so easy to forget what happened, to imagine that it was a stupid fight, that neither and both of them wanted to admit to being wrong, that they just wanted to forget it, and-
“I'm sorry. That's why I came here.”
Lewis dug his hands into his pockets. “Yeah, I know. I shared your... headspace? Yeah, that.”
There was a period of silence. Vivi broke it.
“Arthur, do you think you can get up?”
He nodded, holding out his hand, his real hand, to her, and finding himself tugged to his feet. The world tilted slightly, and he found himself staggering backwards into Lewis, apparently determined to hide in the background.
To his credit, Lewis not only remained solid, but ensured he was standing before letting go. Arthur rubbed at a clump of dried blood in his goatee. He felt woozy, and so tired, and, ordinarily, he'd just want to go home and sleep for a week, but this was too important. He turned around to face Lewis.
“I'm sorry.”
“I know.”
“So you definitely know I'm sorry.”
“I've literally been in your head. So yes. I know you're sorry.”
“And-”
“And it wasn't really your fault.” His voice still seemed so distant, not even because of his current state. Arthur's knees started to buckle, and Vivi gently lowered him to the ground.
“I'm taking him home.”
Lewis nodded.
“You too. My Dad and Miriam won't be back for another three days. I can get their car once Arthur's OK to drive.”
The last thing Arthur remembered was a pair of strong hands roughly hauling him into the van, followed by a warm creature stretching across his lap.