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Arthur is jostled back to consciousness by pain pulsing down the side of his head and two voices shouting in his ear.
He flinches away from them – or tries to. His limbs won’t cooperate. He can’t really feel his limbs, for that matter, their sensation swallowed up by a tingling numbness. This must be how John felt after the Dreamlands, absorbed by the horrible nothingness of his other half, Arthur muses, and then there are firm hands gripping his forearms, preventing him from falling back into– the snow, it was snowing last night, he remembers blurrily– and he’s being lifted.
Arthur panics. There’s something he’s not remembering– he needs to remember, this is all wrong and he needs to get away –
Calm down, Arthur, someone says, quieter than they had been before. Take a deep breath. He’s just trying to help you up. Everything’s okay.
It washes over him like a balm. Arthur gasps out a ragged breath, and then another, and lucidity returns to him enough that he can separate the two voices: John’s, and the thick New York accent presumably belonging to the man holding him upright.
“Christ, man. Could’ve sworn you were a corpse till I got close enough to see you breathing. Gave me a real scare. You alright?”
He’s wearing a Central Park groundskeeper’s uniform. Probably just came in to work – the sun has barely risen. Harmless, I think.
Central Park. Right. Last night comes back to him in fits and starts– the suspect who’d cut and run, the chase through Central Park in the dead of night. The crowbar the man had procured from under his coat, taking a sudden swing at them– an all-encompassing bloom of agony, and then nothing. Arthur wrests his hand free from the groundskeeper’s grip and prods experimentally at the side of their head. The wound is sticky and ugly; his hair is wet, clumped with crystals of frost.
“Yeah, it’s a pretty nasty gash, that. My station’s just down the path– do I need to call you an ambulance?” the groundskeeper asks.
“No! No, we’re quite alright,” Arthur reassures. “Appreciate the help, but we’ll– I’ll– just be on my way.” He brushes the snow off their dress shirt and slacks– where the hell has their coat gone?– and attempts to orient himself.
He’s eyeing us warily, but looks as though he’ll let us go without incident, John says. The path to the south exit is to your left. No, your other left– there.
Wherever their coat has gotten off to, their wallet has disappeared with it; a shame, but a paltry loss compared to their life. Although they don’t have enough money on them for a taxicab, the spare change in their pocket just barely covers subway fare. They’re in a railcar heading back to their shabby little apartment off Steinway when Arthur realizes how cold he is.
Of course you’re fucking cold, John admonishes when he complains. We just spent the night bleeding out in the snow. Frankly, I’m surprised you’re not dead. But there’s less bite to it than usual. He sounds– far away, almost.
Back home, John disinfects and bandages the wound on their head with a steady hand that Arthur couldn’t quite manage. Arthur collapses in a too-long hot shower, bundles himself in every blanket they own, and when he wakes again the sun is already setting.
John is quiet beyond a few necessary words of guidance as they stumble out to the kitchen, still wrapped in a blanket, and scarf down coffee and toast. Arthur hears him rifle through yesterday’s paper while they sit. Normal for him– eating is an annoyance for John, Arthur knows, and he prefers to find distraction from it– but today there’s an odd urgency to his page-flipping.
It was seven degrees, John says, after a long silence.
“What?”
Last night, while you were out there unconscious. The weather forecast says the low temperature was seven degrees Fahrenheit, John clarifies. And you were losing blood. How long should a human be able to survive, like that?
“I don’t know much about medicine,” Arthur says, “but I’m sure it’s well within the realm of possibility. I mean, I’ve been through similar situations before, and I’m still kicking. Two broken legs in a snowstorm– well, you wouldn’t remember, would you, but still.”
Even so. You practically walked it off like it was nothing. Is that… is that normal?
“I don’t think normal people would have survived this long,” Arthur says, and takes another bite of toast. It’s intended as a joke, but it makes him think. They’ve fallen down mineshafts, been stabbed clean through, fought off a menagerie of incomprehensible horrors. He can’t even count on two hands the injuries they’ve sustained that should have put them in the ground. Why have they survived this long?
Arthur begins to keep track of their almost-deaths. The list grows with each passing week.
Their lifestyle isn’t safe by any means – since they’ve settled down in Queens, they’ve amassed a reputation of sorts for taking the dangerous, occult cases most other PIs refuse to touch – but it is rather ludicrous, really, how often they flirt with death. Equally ludicrous is how easily they avoid it. Two weeks after Central Park, a fire escape gives way and they fall three stories onto a parked car; they’re gone, bruised but otherwise uninjured, well before its owner comes out to check on the triggered alarm. They find themselves caught up in a shootout, bullets flying between two rival gangs, and they escape with a single graze that John doesn’t even have to sew up. Arthur comes down with a stomach bug after attending a flashy gala for a client – only for them to find out from the next day’s headlines that the poison in his shrimp cocktail should’ve killed him.
“I think you were right,” Arthur says one day as they’re limping home from their latest escapade. “This isn’t normal.”
What do you mean? That was incredible. You were incredible.
Arthur scoffs. “And that’s exactly my point. When someone pushes you onto the subway tracks, and there’s a train coming, and you lay down on the fucking tracks, you know what’s supposed to happen? You die. It runs you over. Splat.”
But it worked in–
“Yes, I know it worked for the assassin in Rulers of Destiny. I know you only suggested it because you saw it in that god damn movie.” They’re at their apartment, and Arthur struggles with their ring of keys before John hands the right one out to him. “But I’m not some film character. This is real life. And I’m beginning to think the universe is fucking with me.”
Well. Hasn’t it always been? John sounds like he’s biting back a laugh; Arthur can’t really argue with that.
Inside, Arthur nudges the door shut with his hip and moves to put their keys back in his bag. His hand catches on something small and sharp. The vanguard’s tooth. An idea comes to him.
Arthur holds the tooth out, ignoring John’s hitch of breath. “I think we should ask it why.”
No. Absolutely not. We’ve been over this.
“Just hear me out. You have to also think that this, our survival in the face of all these impossible odds, it’s– unnatural. Something’s wrong here.”
I admit it has made me… curious, John concedes. But you don’t want to fuck with the kind of power that thing holds. Every question entangles you further with a being that has one foot in the Dark World. Is that the kind of price you're prepared to pay?
“John, I get what you’re saying, but we’re entangled with every occult force on Earth, at this point,” Arthur says. “Name a god. It probably knows about us and wants to kill us. Wouldn’t it be helpful to know if we had some way of protecting ourselves?”
...Fine. But don't say I didn't warn you.
Arthur doesn’t quite forget about the vanguard, but as their caseload picks up and they’re quickly engaged by more pressing matters, the question he’s asked it moves to the back of his mind.
When their answer comes, weeks later, the vanguard’s telltale hiss nearly startles Arthur out of his skin. “Excuse me for a moment,” he stutters out, and leaves his client sitting at the table as he locks himself in the adjoining bathroom.
YOU ARE NOT YOU, the vanguard says, voice like a wisp of smoke.
YOU ARE YOU AND SOMETHING MUCH GREATER THAN YOURSELF. IT IS BOUND TO YOU. IT GUIDES YOU. AND IT WILL NOT LET YOU COME TO HARM.
Then it falls silent, an ordinary tooth once more.
Well? John asks, impatient. What is it saying?
“...It’s you, I think,” Arthur breathes. He takes John's hand, warm and calloused in his. “It’s always been you. You’re my guardian angel, I suppose.”