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There are two warring facts that cannot exist at the same time and yet have the audacity to tear apart his reality with the simple finality of their presence.
It wasn't supposed to end like this.
It was always going to end like this.
It's not fair. It's not fair. Not much in their time together had been, but this is far too cruel a joke, a final line that is too much to bear. They were so close, so close to finally having something go right.
He should have known better. This version of himself, the one who has known this infuriating, wonderful human for less than a year, (for thousands of years, a single moment, an entire lifetime) simply cannot seem to accept the lesson that the universe beats into him over and over again.
There is no justice.
The light within Yorrick’s mouth burns bright against his eyes-
“You never stole my eyes, John.”
It hurts, it burns, it’s too bright-
“I gifted them to you.”
John blinks and blinks and blinks but his gift remains blurred under the force of burning tears. His gift continues to sting against the light, against the pain clawing its way up this throat at the agonizing, wonderful sensation of becoming physical once again. Every nerve alights with electricity, sharp and bright as he feels himself returning to the body of Hastur. Hands, feet, lungs, heart. All of them waking with the heaviness and static of limbs long spent asleep.
There is a pressure at his side. Sharp, boney, scarred and warm. A body that feels far too slight and frail to host the indomitable soul within it. With every passing moment, the pillar of strength holding him up weakens and fades away. With every passing moment, the edges of the man he loves breaks away into golden motes of light.
John tears his gift away from the light of the world before him. He looks down, looks to the one carrying the body quickly waking up.
Arthur. A man not to be fucked with. He continues to walk forward, his head held high even as his body trembles under the growing weight of John’s body and his own dissolving form. He smiles, even as his face crumbles against the force of terrified tears.
Soon, (too soon, it’s too soon, please, please give them more time, just a moment more-!) Arthur’s body gives, kneels buckling as the edges of his feet break away to light. John’s arms are already shifting to carry what remains of Arthur. To hold him up in return for as long as he can.
Arthur clings to him. His long fingers, made to create music, to cradle Faroe, to hold John’s hand, tremble as they clutch at the silken sleeve of his robe. The yellow fabric bunched under his hand is stained dark red; it only makes the pale white of his skin appear all the more skeletal.
Arthur makes a noise then. A fleeting echo of a word caught in a throat. It’s too quiet to make out.
“Arthur?” It’s a hoarse croak of a voice left unused for too long.
Arthur doesn’t respond. John isn’t sure that he can anymore. Over half his body is gone now, including most of his throat and a third of his face. Peeling his grip away from John’s robe is enough to break apart the edges of his hand. Still, with the fingers that remain, he reaches up, seeking John’s face.
John tilts his head down, letting the wet surface of his cheek meet Arthur’s fingers. He is afraid. He is so terribly, terribly afraid. “Please…please, Arthur.”
Please keep going. Please stay by my side. Please don’t make me do this alone.
The trembling smile on Arthur’s face finally falls away. A soundless sob opens his mouth, he shoves his face into John’s chest in the same moment that John feels a weight placed into his hand-
Then Arthur is gone.
And the body of Hastur, born of the Dark World, covered in the blood of thousands who did not deserve their fate, stumbles into the sunlight for the very first time.
The sensations should be overwhelming. They are, he supposes, but in a strangely distant way. Grass beneath bare feet who had never stood upon anything softer than the foul remains of bloody corpses ground into pulp. A breeze that carries the scent of something sweet, tickling against a nose that only knew the scent of metal and copper. The kiss of gentle warmth against dark skin that the light above him offers where he has only known ice and the heat of his own rage burning from within.
Yes, yes he should be overwhelmed, shouldn’t he?
Instead, he feels rather like he is…floating.
He did that a lot before. As the King. In fact, he cannot remember if his body ever truly touched ground when he was a god. There was nothing to hold him to the earth, and no reason to want such restrictions. Why would he, when he was made to fly? To drift in the dreams of humankind, to float on the rivers born of their madness and agony? When he had legions to hold him up in worship, why would he even consider dirtying his feet in the muck that was reality?
Arthur was a chain that brought him down. A hook that snared him, ripped him away from his weightless freedom and brought him down to the earth. To plummet down into the mud, where the beasts and the vermin and the bugs squirmed in filth.
Arthur was the tether that showed him that the most beautiful sights lived down below, where before he was too far away to see them. Humanity, life, living. It is worth a bit of dirt on unblemished feet. It is worth the thorns in soft skin for the sweet fragrance of flowers. It is worth the effort to walk himself, simply for the chance to walk side by side with another. It is worth the loss of untied freedom for the warmth of an embrace and human connection.
That tether is gone now. Dissolved into golden dust.
The vast, uncaring universe beckons to him. Promises that distant floating paradise once again. Distance from the pain and the suffering. To be above it all. No longer part of the mess. An observer once again.
But he can’t go back. Even if the entirety of all realities did not rest on his shoulders, even if it meant a release from the terrible, clawing void sitting inside his chest, he would not want to. The pain means that it was real. He had experienced life for himself. He could not return to that distant, lonely place.
Arthur gave him more than just his eyes. He gave him a true tie to the earth and every possibility within it. Good, bad, wonderful and terrible. All of it is before him, but only if he keeps himself grounded to this place.
So with the sensation of tearing off a limb, of biting the tip of a pinky finger, of grasping the side of an icy building, of cupping a tear stricken face, of holding the one he loved for the last time, John drops to his knees. Fingers stained red dig into the earth. Dirt turns to mud under the force of the tears that roll down his face and fall off the tip of his nose. He shoves his hands deeper, desperate to find something to hold on to, to keep himself from floating up, up, up into the cold darkness of space.
It is then that he becomes aware of something solid pressed against his palm. Too smooth to be a rock, a solid source of warmth against the cold mud seeping through his fingers. With a wet squelch, he pulls his hand free and turns it palm up.
The lighter. Covered in muck, barely visible through the mess he made. He numbly swipes his thumb over the surface, succeeding in smearing the mess just enough to clear the words engraved on the surface.
This too shall pass.
It sits heavy in his hand. A solid, grounding weight. John curls his fingers around it as once again, the gift Arthur gave him goes blurry with tears. Shoulders hitching, a strange sort of whimpering sound that is too wet to be called a laugh but too loud to be simple crying hiccups from his throat. He presses the lighter against his chest, against the hole left behind when his tether was ripped away.
It’s not fair.
Kneeling there in the mud and the filth and the solid ground of a world lit by sunshine, John clings to the last strand of his anchor and weeps for a very, very long time.