singillatim | Part Two: The Detective

Charles' face stays carefully still as he takes in the words, trying to steel against the cold jab they cause. Multiple times, he hears, and he thinks of dank hallways, scraping roars. Shocks of familiar hair and lanky limbs, piled unnaturally. This is about Arthur, not Edwin, but the more he tries to focus on what the man's saying, the more the images flash. Some selfish shithead he is, thinking about what he's seen when Arthur's clearly been through his own hell.

He steps ahead, leading the way faster through the snow. Where the bank shallows towards the end of the cut-through, no footprints appear in his wake.

"It's up here, around the corner."

The trees are too dense to see it at first, but as they round the bend they turn sparser. A slouching screened porch appears, then peeling, mildewed boards, and windows too clouded to see through. Out front, a rusted station wagon sits useless and long-abandoned.

He definitely notices the lack of footsteps, when Charles darts ahead.

There's an odd sense of deja vu to the path, breaking through the forest like this, but it's only when they reach the dilapidated house that Arthur pins what's bothering him about it, and a cold twist throbs in his stomach as his hand unconsciously grabs at his stomach.

The last time he was in an abandoned house in a fucking forest, he got stabbed and bled out, lucky to have had John to have dragged him to safety and gotten to hospital.

It takes conscious effort to push that feeling of trepidation back down, and follow Charles towards the house. "Charles, this is..."

Look he said he wouldn't just Charles for it, but also he's not judging Charles is he? "I'm... not sure this place is safe to live in," he says, a little diplomatically.

Charles prickles at the response, his shoulders hunching in a defensive posture he's well practiced at.

"I've been in it a month. Haven't had no problems yet, have I?"

He hears the whine in his voice, recognizing it with frustration and prickling embarrassment, but the heat behind it is too strong to tamp down. It's the part of him he tries not to look at, tries not to think about, but Arthur's perception was right: no matter how many years Charles exists, he'll never get any older. Not in the way he feels, or the way he acts, or the way his brain works. Not when he's standing here reacting like a brat towards a reasonably concerned adult who's just trying to help.

"I didn't say that," he says evenly. Charles is arcing up, heated by pride and embarrassment, so Arthur has to stay calm and even. "Charles, you are a remarkable young man. Learning how to survive alone is a difficult feat for anyone, especially after thirty years with your partner - and not a day apart. I just..."

He steps into the clearing proper, a little closer to the building rather than threaten to crowd Charles. "I think that based on where we are - it's not a failure to ask for a hand. Especially not when I know how readily you'll give it in turn."

Remarkable, Arthur calls him, and it's the kind of compliment that should make him preen, that he should tuck away in his mind and use to color his self esteem. Instead, something about it just smarts. It sparks off his hard outer shell, and rattles his anxiety further.

No one but Edwin has called him that before. And even coming from Edwin, he's not sure he's ever believed it.

"I'm not asking for a hand 'cause I don't need one," he argues back, pushing forward to stomp up the steps. "I've been eating. I've got a place to sleep. There's really nothing else I need."

The wood doesn't even creak under his feet as he pulls open the rusted screen door. It will nearly bow under Arthur's, should he follow.

"Charles-"

It's not angry it's just disappointed, that Charles was actively missing the point so hard that he was literally hiding in a half-rotted abandoned home about it.

Or - as the wood bows under his weight and a dread chill creeps up his spine, animal instinct that the floor might well collapse at any moment - perhaps more than half.

"You are still human enough to need companionship, a-a community to live in." He follows the boy inside, attention split between Charles and the boards threatening to collapse underfoot. "And unfortunately that means you can't simply haunt the oldest house you can find like a wraith until Euridyce comes and finds you."

Edited 2024-10-21 20:53 (UTC)

He doubts that heavily, but doesn't want to hear the rebuke he'd surely receive at voicing it. Thirty-five years now that he's been living in a community of two, and he can't simply replace the other half. What he needs can't be found here, or anywhere else that isn't a winding staircase in Hell.

"I don't need to live anywhere, mate." A bitter little joke, utterly humorless. "I've been haunting shit longer than you've been alive."

Whether he's human - back home, or here in Milton - is a different question altogether, and one he hasn't answered yet in all these years.

"What the hell are you trying so hard for, anyway? You've known me, like, two fucking days."

"I'm thirty-four, actually." Which was a stupid comment to make but if Charles is going to make it a bloody dick measuring contest Arthur can play.

(Also he certainly doesn't look it; with his greying temples and vicious scars, there's nearly a whole decade on his shoulders.)

"And I am trying because someone fucking has to. And don't you dare pretend you don't know what that's like, because that is your entire career."

He takes a breath, trying to cool his temper. "I am not in any way disregarding your experience, nor your independence. But you are lonely, and you are miserable."

His jaw tightens for a moment, and then he sighs. "Just like me. And when I'm like that, I know that I make poor decisions." He looks over Charles again, at the unsubtle tension. "I pick fights. Because at least if they hate me for being an ass then they don't pity me for being alone."

The petulant, teenage part of Charles wants to bite back about his age, tell Arthur that he's been walking the Earth as a ghost longer than the man has been alive. That he's existed for half a century now, and doesn't need anyone looking out for him.

No one cared about us, Edwin's voice says in his head, and he pinches his eyes closed against it.

"Everyone here's miserable." He steps into the dim, dusty entryway, shoulders still steeled against Arthur's gaze. "You gonna help all of 'em, too?"

The first room is ostensibly a kitchen. Though some of the chipped, floral dinnerware remains tidy and stacked in the shelves, the majority of the room is in disarray. It's as though time came to a stop in the middle of the previous owner's puttering, and then got tilted on its side, shaking the evidence across every surface. Here and there, a faded piece of the woman's life is obvious: a cursive cake recipe pinned to a decaying corkboard; a plastic pill organizer, half-filled.

Charles hasn't found her ghost, but he's been hesitant to touch the items anyway.

The whole place smells like mildew and rot, and Arthur has to press his mouth tight and swallow to press down the immediate instinct to gag, if not worse.

"Whoever will let me. Yes." There's a quiet sigh as he steps inside with Charles, ignoring the ominous, damp splintering noises beneath his feet. "You cannot defeat it, but you don't have to let it win." He intones it, an obvious quote. "If we let ourselves be miserable, if we don't kick and scream and make ourselves heard, if we go gentle into that good fucking night - then we might as well just go looking for the Darkwalker to finish the job."

He stares down Charles with the merciless intensity of a hunter's sniper. "So why haven't you?"

It's like the confrontation flicks a switch. Hunched shoulders steel, sunken chest tightens, and he turns on his silent heel. There's something different in his face now, almost imperceptible; his lips are too pale, the skin beneath his eyes too dark.

"I'm fucking useless!" They aren't the words he means to say, but once they start to spill out, there's no stopping them. "I wasn't ever good for a bloody thing 'cept getting kicked around, not 'til I was dead. I was stronger, then. I had magic, and- and I had-"

He had Edwin.

"Without all that-" He turns away, wiping a hand down his now-hidden face. "Without all that I'm just a- a victim again. I'm just the stupid kid who couldn't fight back. How's anyone else supposed to rely on me for shit?"

Arthur's breath catches in his throat when Charles whips around and he's changed, just a little, just enough that Arthur can immediately notice the difference. With what limited information he'd gleaned from Charles he'd thought it was an accident - an abused child, perhaps, but a victim of circumstance.

This terrified outburst painted a slightly different picture.

"Because you're trying," he says, and his voice is painfully empathetic. "Because you know what it's like to be the victim, and you don't want to leave anyone else alone to feel like that ever again. And you fight with every fibre of your being to be someone those people can rely on."

And he does, doesn't he? That's the whole thing. Dependable Charles, supportive Charles. Charles, who will shove down his own pain to see someone else smile, who will put himself on the line without a moment's thought. That's who he is, who he's tried to be for the last three decades.

Except, he can only lie down once, here.

He steps into the cramped, cluttered kitchen, back turning fully towards Arthur now, and trudges coldly across the room. The next space was clearly a sitting room. Wallpaper peels behind shelves lined with knick-knacks - most of them angels or cats - and beneath a cracked picture window, a striped sofa bears signs that it's been slept on.

"It ain't much," he mutters, an echo of a phrase he's heard in American films, "but it's home."

"Charles, you deserve to have someone else to lean on," Arthur says, undeterred by the literal cold shoulder Charles is giving him.

Not to mention that this is a miserable place to live alone. He sees a few dime novels that haven't finished rotting, an abundance of cat-shaped urns and ash trays: clearly a perfectly comfortable home for its former owner, may she rest in peace, but hardly fitting for its current tenant. Just abject piles of misery depicting the life of someone he could in no way whatsoever have saved.

"Someone who- who sees you for who you are, anger and pain and all. And you've done a damn rotten job of hiding any of that from me," he points out with soft humour. "You deserve to live somewhere that doesn't make you miserable just to exist, and I--"

And he stops, abrupty, interrupted by his own movements and the harrowing creak of a board underfoot that he recognises all too well. Long enough for the shock of realisation to hit him - not long enough to escape, and the floor cracks, collapsing beneath him and taking him down with it.

He's done a damn rotten job of hiding it from anyone, ever since he got to Port Townsend - ever since he walked through the Devlins' front door. Why can't anyone understand that that's why he has to keep to himself? Why he doesn't deserve anything? The words Edwin said to him all those nights ago, outside the shop, were like a bandage at the time, but coming here - being torn away from the only person who's ever made him feel like he's worth something - ripped it right back off.

I have someone to lean on, he wants to say. I have someone, and I wasn't good enough to keep them.

Except - all at once - the floor splinters.

"Shit-" He knows instantly what's happened, and whirls around, sinking through the floor in the same motion; the floorboards cut him off at the waist as he scrambles over, instincts too frayed to remain solid. "Bloody hell! You alright?"

Two emotions flood through him at once: urgent concern, and poisonous guilt. He focuses on the first, scanning Arthur for injuries. The crawlspace beneath is blessedly shallow, but still doesn't make for a comfortable drop.

On the plus side, he can immediately identify that he's not bleeding. And his layers definitely softened the fall when the abrupt shift in gravity threw his torso into the floor as well.

On the downside, there's definitely something wrong with his ankle from the fall and he's still winded from his breastplate slamming against his chest and splintering more wood, but when he coughs it doesn't have the expected sting of a fractured rib.

"'m alright," he wheezes, but he's moving slowly as he pushes himself up a little, just to stand upright - partly so he doesn't break any more floor, but also because that fucking hurt. "Floor was- rotted through, must've... there must have been a leaking pipe, waterlogged the place. Not- uncommon, out here, or so I've heard."

Charles' face pinches as the guilt floods in. Fucking stupid, he hadn't even known. Traipsing around in here less-than-alive, haunting his own house, never thinking about the danger it could pose to a living visitor.

Not that he ever expected to have any of those.

"Sorry, I didn't-" He flinches with his full body every time he looks down at the mess, and seems torn between offering a hand to help Arthur up, and pulling out his own hair. "It- it looked safe enough to me. I'm sorry."

He finally settles on sticking out his hand.

"I can- I'll fix it. There's some boards out back."

"Don't--" It's through gritted teeth - trying to kick some wood off his ankle jarred it badly, he's trying not to swear about it - but he forces a breath through his nose, and tries to be gentle. "Don't be sorry, Charles. You couldn't have known, and I- w-well, I didn't notice sooner. That's on me, that's all."

He slumps to rest both elbows on the remaining floor to breathe for a moment, and even with that light pressure he gets to see more of it splinter threateningly, and his mouth presses lightly.

"This is- i-it's a crawlspace, isn't it? A proper one." Alright, that's - that's something. "Do you know where the exit for it is? It might be safer for me to go under the house, rather than push up here and risk more floor collapsing."

"Um-" His eyes dart around, as though he might find the answer somewhere in this room. When the task quickly proves futile, he looks back at Arthur, brow furrowed. "I don't know? I haven't-"

What would that even look like? He's not sure he's seen a crawlspace before. Just dank cellars, and the basement he spent his teenage years in. Nervous energy thrums through him, and he bounces on his heels.

"Probably under the porch. That way." He shoves a finger out towards the way they came in, and steps back up onto the flimsy boards.

"See if you can't find the hatch, it- probably it'll only be about two feet across," he points out. "It- it might be buried under the snow, otherwise I can probably come out through the porch steps."

This feels ridiculous, having to scoot himself back into the dark, moldy underside of the haunted cabin. But at least it's true to form, and if he focuses on that then it's easier to not focus on the knot of claustrophobia trying to tighten like a noose.

Charles nods, then disappears from the splintered opening. There are no footsteps to trace his path back through the house, but after a moment the front door swings back open with a rusty creak. His voice filters through shortly after, coming from the direction of the porch.

"Found it!"

Another scuffle of noise, and dim light filters in, patterned by the trellis that lines the porch's underside. Charles, crouched on hands and knees, scoots back to give Arthur the needed room. A cobweb is caught in his hair, and even in the shadows beneath the porch, it's clear that his face has regained its color. The distraction of Arthur's fall seems to have broken whatever had dragged him into an echo of his death.

Honestly he's just glad that a plan of action was enough to snap Charles out of it, at least a little. Something to get his head back in the game.

It turns out army crawling is difficult with a fucked ankle and a breastplate, but he manages to half-crawl his way out through the frozen mud and crystallised spider webs (and possibly the body of a small animal he steadfastly refuses to identify) to the exit with a grateful smile at Charles.

"There we are, then! Right as-" and he cuts himself off with a hiss as he tries to stand up. "Fuck- w-well, alright, at least."

"Need a hand there, old man?"

He sticks a cold hand out to help Arthur. There's a forced lightheartedness in his demeanor, but no longer a layer of hurt simmering through the cracks; it's been buried down too deep, leaving only a discomfort that's been shoved to the side. Arthur may be able to see through him now, but there's no denying that Charles is practiced at this game. After all, this a boy who managed to hide his worst pain from his closest friend for more than thirty years.

Edited 2024-11-07 15:16 (UTC)

He gives Charles a raised eyebrow, but it only lasts a moment before he chuckles and claps his dusty glove into Charles's hand.

"Ah, you break your legs enough times, they never forgive you," he comments dryly, accepting the help enough to get himself up on his good ankle, and gingerly test the other. "Hurt my ankle during the fall, that's all. I'll be fine."

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afterdrop - 2024-11-11 14:12 (UTC) - Expand

Part Two: The Detective

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