Chapter Text
“…Lewis?”
It was not a push; not even a motion forward. His hand just opened.
And he let go. No struggle, no desperate grasp. Not anymore. With only one whisper, Arthur let his only hand open too, release the fearful hold it had on his arm.
The fall was all the same nonetheless. The same rush of air, the same spikes down below waiting to rip flesh… the same horror in those eyes. Now he knew how he himself had looked as he plummeted to his death.
Somehow, for reasons he could not grasp, he felt doubt. Doubt, as his murderer descended to the same fate he had cast him to. His ghostly eyes lost the rage he had shown seconds ago, his skeletal body shivered at the memory of his own flesh being torn. Seeing himself in his enemy, his heart locket seemed to crack again, loudly and painfully.
His hand even moved; it rose halfway, in contemplation. The spikes below seemed to struggle to keep their form. In fact, they barely did.
However, he took too much time contemplating his own actions… and there was no one to stop him. No one halted the ghost in his blind pursuit of justice.
No, as a loud rip and thud echoed, even Lewis knew it was not justice. He shivered like if a shotgun had pierced through his chest behind him, like if he was again down below bleeding to death; because that was what was happening, just to another person, not himself.
Arthur hanged motionless, with the very same expression with which he had fallen. But the seconds passed, and so came the pain. Slowly, he blinked; struggling, he stopped staring up above at that ghostly figure, to look down instead.
At first, he thought he saw green, perhaps a remnant of a memory buried in the deepest corners of his mind. But no, that spike was not green, but purple, like the very eyes he had looked into moments before. However, as he began to tremble, he could not mistake the red color on its point.
It had stopped his fall, after all.
With what little strength he had at the moment, he glanced upwards again. He could feel the spike crack below his weight, its ghostly form weak. But he could not think about how they were dissipating, not even about the one through the right side of his chest; there was a fact that hurt much more, more urgent if possible.
He’s… dead?
A yell echoed to him from above, a familiar gruff voice, but he could not register it. There was the sound of a shotgun; the ghost seemed to turn in shock, finally stopping watching frozen from above. The cave around him dissolved.
What had been sharp edges turned into simple loading boxes, which barely held his weight as their surroundings changed. The blood still poured all the same, managing to flow away from where his body was slightly concealed. A truck, the one in which that wraith had chased him, now his soon to be grave.
As he finally breathed in a raspy intake of air, he heard multiple shots. He heard the ghost move, a gasp from his uncle. And all he could do, even at the thought of the ghost hurting Lance too, was think who that ghost was.
He had not known Lewis was dead. All he had been doing was looking for him, desperately, haunted by the memory of an accident. An accident in a cave that made Lewis vanish, Vivi suffer memory loss, and him…
His prosthetic managed to move at last. The pain in his fake limb was different from the one his body was feeling, just a phantom. His eyes fixed on the blurs in front of him, purple, red and… gray.
A little reach, a weak grasp. But he managed to take the small locket on the ground.
Just a small distance away, the ghost shivered; his hold on the fainted man was gone in an instant. Lewis felt the touch on his metaphorical heart. He turned instantly, knowing who had touched it.
But as he saw, he could not care about his shattered heart. He had torn another one.
Arthur wheezed, sitting weakly against the boxes. He could be holding the wound on his chest, yet he was only focusing on keeping something in his hand. His eyes stared blankly at the picture; Lewis and Vivi first, and then what had really been.
When Arthur looked up to him with horrified eyes, Lewis felt something black gather in his sockets, something that looked nothing like the tears he was seeing.
“W-why would you…?”
Dead, while I am alive.
The answer was there in his thoughts. The picture had been of only Vivi and Lewis at first, surely what he most wanted. There had not been any third wheel in the picture, and Lewis must have not endured the thought of becoming one in death. The chase, the fire, the crash; it all clicked together. The murderous intent was there.
Arthur could understand revenge. He could. If he only knew or could remember that night in the caves clearly, he would understand the real emotions in Lewis. But with no clear memory… he could only see a petty murderer.
“Y-you-“ A cough of blood; Lewis would have stepped closer. He would. But he found himself frozen. “You idiot.”
Arthur had been dying; and yet, his next move should have not been possible. In an unnatural motion, his arms slammed on the ground of the truck, pushing up from behind. In a slow jolt, he stood upright, snarling instead of wheezing. In the dim light of the truck, his body seemed to pulsate, much more than what dying breaths would cause. And where had been a literal broken heart, a mass of flesh grew where the spike had torn him open. From that wound, the skin seemed to blacken, and not due to death or dried blood. His neck seemed to crack, as Arthur gave Lewis a shadowed glance, with a smug fanged smile that should not be there at all.
“What the-“
Lewis could not finish.
There was a huge burst, a green rush that seemed to blast out of his victim, both from the wound on his chest and his fake arm, which had suddenly collapsed into itself. Not only green mist engulfed them, but blinding sparks and electricity, perhaps energy.
And as Lewis crumbled back out of the truck with the force, a voice called, mocking, guttural and unlike the one of his enemy.
“You may not have eyes in those sockets, but this is just ridiculous.”
“Arth-?”
“Arthur’s not listening now, numskull. Better just let him think he’s dead right now, murdered. It’s not like… he’s going to wake up again.”
As the figure advanced out of the truck, Lewis finally saw that was not Arthur. Two enlarged eyes glinted into the light of the moon outside, just slightly bigger to reach the feeling of uncanny valley. With a green glimmer at first, they gained more demonic fleshy colors as he leaned out, his right arm slamming on the frame of the opening in which he threw him minutes ago. Somehow, that grasp bent the metallic frame; his hand did not look human anymore, clawed and green. It contrasted with the color the rest of his skin had, black as night; right above his wrist there was no green tonality, but a hue that looked like blood dried ages ago. As he took the last step out into the moonlight, his left arm swung from behind him, like a scythe. It could not be called an arm anymore; that blast had torn the metal from the inside, its shards now seemingly floating around its former shape, pulsing and twisting around what could only be described as a long wave of electricity. But it was no electricity, or those malfunctioning sparks that had been tormenting him for days. Right from where his real limb had been torn, his flesh seemed to pulse, open, releasing a wild multicolored stream of raging strikes of light. The two most chaotic ones were of violet hues, their twists and turns towards the ghost apparently more intent. He had not grown much in size… but he did, with sickly cracks as he took an aggressive stance. The last nail in the coffin, what grew out of the mass that had closed his wound: a huge fleshy eye opened, glancing blindly around until it stopped, to rest over what had become his enemy: a crying mess of a ghost.
Arthur, or what had been him, smiled wide, seemingly taking an intake of fresh nightly air. Then, he looked downwards with his three eyes, at the figure that was fainted by the truck.
“Ah, this lazy fucker.” Lewis’ sockets widened in fear, as that metallic bundle of sparks and sharp shards swung to take drive over Lance. “Couldn’t grab that shotgun any sooner, could ya?!”
Like a long whip, that stream rose and descended. But it did not strike Lance. Arthur’s already abused body trembled more when two fists slammed on his arms. Past black tears, Lewis’ eyes glared into those three eyes, clarity seeming to sink in. Inside the truck, a locket seemed to shatter even more, as Arthur let out a chuckle.
“Is he still the one you hate the most, little ghost?” Lewis shivered, as Arthur’s mouth opened again, lined with rows of sharp teeth, letting out a whisper that shook his entire being. “Maybe he will be, when I’m done.”
Those eyes twitched sideways, the sparks letting out another burst that scorched his suit. But he did not let go. Arthur was looking past them both, at a scene that had escaped the ghost. Mystery was on the ground, a pool of blood under him. Meanwhile, Vivi herself was near him, a cut on her side. Her bat seemed to smoke coldly, near a weed-like carcass.
“Ahh, I could have waited just a little more… that hurt in his eyes is as horrible and torturous.” The thing shrugged under his hold, finally reclaiming his horrified attention. “But this will do.”
Next thing Lewis knew, Arthur’s hand had slammed onto his chest, right where a spike had pierced him and where his locket should be. There was a blinding light again; those streams pierced into his skeletal body, flowing through him like venomous snakes.
Arthur grinned sickly; he was pleased to see the ghost tumble a few feet away, as unmoving as that weed Vivi had dried with a swing.
That finally took her attention. She looked up from Mystery’s bloody fur with a gasp, her eyes widening as she noticed the ghost shudder nearby. Then, she heard footsteps, strong yet almost silent. A shadow loomed over them, even if there were so many hues tangling with it.
Both Lewis and Vivi shivered, looking up at him. And he only answered with a mocking whisper.
“Hi, Viv.”