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Why anyone would build a cabin out here was beyond Arthur. It was truly the middle of nowhere, a location seemingly chosen to avoid human contact. Which… he couldn’t be too surprised about, given what kind of person its owner probably was… but surely even mad sorcerers or what-have-you suffered from the cold.
And by god, was it cold out here. The snow had been growing ever thicker since they ditched their car, as they made their way slowly down the gradual slope of the earth. To Arthur’s animal hindbrain, it felt unpleasantly like walking right into a wolf’s waiting maw.
They hadn’t realized that there were things more dangerous than wolves, out here. And this far from the roads, weaponless and shivering and stumbling through the thick snowfall… a lone human made for very easy prey.
And that was how Arthur found himself running through the woods like a madman, sweat beading on his face and extremities freezing, intermittently tripping over obstacles invisible through the blanket of snow, in a futile attempt to escape a monster that was built for this environment. He doesn’t even know precisely what it is—John hasn’t been able to get a good look at the details, on account of, you know, the running—but the few close brushes they’ve had so far have been more than enough to impress upon him its size and its speed.
Perhaps one of them had been tamed as some kind of demented guard dog, or perhaps it had simply learned that this was a place where prey could be reliably found. Either was enough of an explanation for why it had been skulking around the cabin they’d been after. As soon as they’d started approaching it, excited to finally have reached their destination, it had pounced—and there was no way to safely approach and make it through the door with it so hot on their heels as it was now.
“Dammit, we can’t lose this thing in its own backyard, where can we go?!” Arthur grits out, more a yell of frustration than a genuine question.
He skids to a stop, trying to listen for the creature’s return. For a moment, all he can hear is his own heaving breaths. And then–
“In the snow.”
“What?” He lifts his head, brow creasing, like that’ll help make sense of John’s directive.
“We have to dig ourselves into the snow. It’ll muffle our scent and we’ll be out of sight. Do it now. Hurry.”
“Fuck, fuck, fuck–“ he has a hundred other things to say. That this is its own kind of risk, that all this running might have left him warm enough to melt the ice, that he can already barely feel his hand and foot—but John’s right; they don’t have time to debate it. And he doesn’t have time to look for an alternative, on his own, with no sight.
So he drops to his knees, and digs.
The snow is soft, thankfully, so it’s not difficult, even with mostly-numb fingers. They carve out enough of a little dip that he can drop into it, curled onto his side, and John is shoveling snow back over him before he’s even really gotten situated. He returns the favor, burying John’s arm in turn, and then… and then there’s nothing to do but wait.
“O-oh god, oh god, it’s s-s-so cold—“
“Quiet,” John growls at him, and he presses his lips shut as best he can.
He feels wrong. Now that he’s not moving, there’s nothing to distract him from it. His body is throwing out an entirely new kind of panic signal, warning him that he needs to get warm. This goes so far beyond a winter’s day of fort-building and snowball fights, beyond a long night of drinking in Arkham’s freezing fog—it feels like he can hardly breathe through the shivering, the violent spasms of his chest.
A soft crunching comes from somewhere near his feet. It feels like he gives up entirely on trying to breathe, thinking of nothing but the footsteps and the snuffling that herald their pursuer. It’s hard to tell how long they’re forced to wait, as it paces around not far from their hiding spot. All he knows is that he aches, his head spins, he can hardly feel his body—
What could be an eternity later, the footsteps retreat again, back into the thick of the woods.
“Okay. It’s gone. We’re fine,” John murmurs, and then, “…Arthur?”
He’s frozen to the spot.
“Arthur. It’s time to move.”
His limbs won’t work for him anymore.
“Arthur, say something! What the fuck is going on?”
The edge of panic in John’s voice is the shock to his system that he needs. He jolts back to awareness with a gasp, and sits up, shedding the carpet of snow all around them. The next step is to stagger upright. Though his legs lock and nearly send him toppling over again, he somehow manages to pull together enough strength to stay upright.
“O-oh, oh, fuck,” he gasps, hardly coherent, “okay, fuck, okay.”
“Oh, Arthur… it seems the snow around us must have melted from your body heat. Your clothes are soaked through.”
Yeah, no fucking shit, he might have said, but his teeth are too busy chattering and anyway he’s long since used to John pointing out the obvious.
“Th-th-the house,” he fumbles out instead, nearly biting off his tongue, “where?”
“Just ahead, through the trees. Come on, let’s get out of the wind before that thing comes back.”
They stagger into the entryway, dripping snowmelt on the floor. The door falls shut behind them with a bang that’s sure to alert anyone home—and the lack of obvious reaction proves their assumption that nobody is. Logically it must be at least a little warmer in here than it was out there. Right now, to Arthur, though, it feels exactly the same. He reaches up to tug at the bottom of the jacket, struggling to work the buttons.
“You—want to take the jacket off? Arthur, you need to stay warm.”
“E-exactly,” he grits out. “Y-you’re right, my clothes are too wet, th-they’re not helping. I’ll be better off w-without them.”
“Okay. Okay, here, it’ll be easier to just pull it over your head–“ and John finally reaches up to help him. The shirt comes with it, all stuck together by the water, and there’s an unpleasantly squishy noise when they hit the ground. Then the boots and socks, which are more of a struggle, and–
“Oh, fuck.”
“Wh-what? What is it?”
“The skin on our hands and feet is discolored,” he admits, either reluctant or wary. “It’s almost gray, darker than it should be.”
“A-ah, oh,” he sways, fighting the urge to sit, “tha’s not good.”
“What can we do?”
“Um,” he dredges his mind for the information. Everything is starting to feel strangely slow. “Water. Warm water. Su… submerge them in it. Not hot, i's, ah, dangerous, for… a-an’, you know, blankets, dry, clothes…” he shivers and loses the thread of whatever he was saying.
“Arthur, are you… feeling okay? You sound…”
“F-fine, fine, jus’. Tired.”
A careful pause, and then, “Right. Well, currently we’re standing in the main room of the house. It’s small, but cozy. It looks lived-in. It’s clear the owner only vacated recently. There’s a fireplace on the wall to our left, and a basin that looks like it holds clean water…” more description, but Arthur’s attention wanders, lulled by the smooth cadence of his voice.
“…should we start?”
“Hmm?”
“I asked where we should start.” His voice is clipped, now, maybe irritated.
“Mm, w’can…” he flounders, for a moment. His mind feels like it got lost somewhere back in John’s descriptions, and can’t figure out how to catch up, so the rest of him has to work on autopilot. Can’t let on that something’s wrong. They’re doing something? Well—he turns.
“No, that’s back towards the front door.”
Yes, he remembers that. He knows his way around, he doesn’t need…
“Arthur!”
The yell stops him short. “Wh-what?”
“This way is outside. You said we needed to warm up, what the fuck is wrong with you?” He’s growling, now, frustrated, and Arthur can only blink in fuzzy confusion.
“I don’t… I don’t know, I…?” He trails off into another shudder, train of thought vanishing like smoke in the wind. Where is he, what was he just doing…? He feels adrift. Without being able to see, his surroundings are a vast nothingness, no landmarks to orient himself by. A sense of tetherless dread rises up where his thoughts ought to be. He lifts a hand, fumbling for anything solid he can hold onto.
Another hand reaches up to take his instead. It’s awkward, stiff fingers hardly closing around each other, but it gets the point across.
“…Turn this way a bit,” John says, nudging their joined hands. “There, that’s good. There’s a pile of firewood in this corner. How about… we get a fire going, and warm up some of the water in that basin?”
Arthur wavers a bit, not quite able to hold in his mind all of the implications of that directive. But he gets the basic gist of it, so he walks forward until he trips on something (and John snaps at him about that, but the noise sort of fades into the background.)
More minutes pass in the same way, largely automatic responses to John’s directions. The fireplace heats the room, and bowls of warm water thaw their hands and feet, a mug of it (finding tea would have been too much of a luxury, of course) warms his core, and blankets piled in his lap slowly melts the ice encasing the rest of him. There are moments where he thinks he drifts off to sleep, or something like it, but John always pulls him back to reality soon enough. Checking to make sure he’s still responsive, trying as best he can to make sure they do everything needed for healing.
It’s probably a slow process of coming back to himself, but from the inside, it feels more like a lightswitch being flipped. Between one blink and the next, he simply finds himself… awake. Still chilled, but leagues warmer than he was earlier.
He flexes his fingers, in and out, and John must be doing the same, because he hears a poorly-restrained groan of pain from him. It does hurt, white-hot pinpricks as feeling slowly works its way back down the frozen joints, but he barely registers that through the similar feeling blanketing his mind.
“How are they looking?” he asks, and his voice comes out softer than he expected, thin with tiredness. At least he’s not slurring his speech anymore, though.
“The skin is still darker than normal, and blisters have started to form on our fingers and toes. Should we… be concerned?”
No more so than we should be about any other injury we’ve sustained and not been able to treat, he opts not to say. Instead, “…I honestly don’t know. I’m not sure what we would do about it either way, so… I think the fact that we’re able to move them again is a good sign. Speaking of… that’s probably more than enough time in the water.”
“Right, right.” They move in sync to push the bowls aside and dry their extremities. It’s another moment before John says, “How are you feeling? You seemed… a little out of it, when we first came inside, but you sound better now.”
“Yes, I… I think the mind can get, confused, when body temperature drops that low. If I’d thought to expect it, I would have warned you.”
“Well… now I know for next time.” He still sounds uneasy, but lets it go. “Do you think you’re up for a more thorough search of the cabin now?”
“I…” yes, he knows that’s the sensible thing to do, but… “I don’t know, John. I know I’ve just been sitting here resting, but I am still… very tired. We could spare a bit more time, I think. To at least give our fingers a bit more time to recover. And I… I’d like to… perhaps look for something to eat, if it’s possible.”
He falters over the last part, expecting resistance, but gets none. John only says, “Yes. Yes, you’re right. Let’s rest, and get our strength back, while we have the chance. No need to rush into any more encounters just yet.”
So they proceed with a cursory search of the boxes around the fireplace, that turns up some old dried and canned food, and sit by the hearth to enjoy their discoveries. And once Arthur is ready to take a closer look at the more esoteric collections in the back room… if they’re a bit more methodical than usual, drawing out the process like they’re reluctant to leave the safety of this place… well, neither of them are bringing it up. Not the close call they had outside, nor the lingering anxiety of the aftermath.
They both understand already, after all. No need to dwell on it.