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TEST DRIVE MEME #10
a. that's where we both belong
[you wake up.
it doesn't matter where you were before. going to bed? dying? opening the door to face a great evil? same result. you wake up in a soft bed with starched sheets in a cool, darkened room, sunlight peeking out from behind thick curtains. maybe you're alone; maybe you aren't. maybe you immediately notice the folded paper on the bedside table near your head. if you don't, you better fix that real quick: you won't be able to even open the door before you read it.
the note itself is written in a neat hand on white card stock; there is a stylized logo of a ship with the words SERENA ETERNA printed underneath. the note reads as follows:
Dear Passenger(s),
As your cruise director, it is my great honor to welcome you aboard the Serena Eterna, your destination for fun and adventure! We know you could have chosen any cruise line for your vacation, and we're very grateful you chose ours! On behalf of the Captain, I would like to assure each and every passenger that will we do whatever it takes to fulfill all your needs and desires during your journey with us.
At your earliest possible convenience, please attend the mandatory lifeboat drill by the end of the day. I'm sure everyone is very eager to get started on all the fun and sun, but safety always comes first! You can find your life jacket in your cabin's closet; carry it to your assigned muster station on deck one, where I will take you through the drill. If you can't find me in the crowd, just look for the gal with the winning smile!
See You Real Soon!
Sincerely,
Gal Friday
you walk to deck one. you have no other choice: every time you try to step in a direction some unseen being considers "not towards deck one," you find your legs no longer move, staying stock still, frozen. whether compelled quickly by curiosity, or delayed by pure stubbornness, the result is the same, and you are left milling around with other similarly curious or stubborn people.
you see someone in uniform near the front of the crowd. she seems to be a gal, but is missing the winning smile, along with most of her other features. she seems to see you, though, rushing to your side and placing a lei around your neck with great formality. a voice, cheery but artificial, sees to come from nowhere and everywhere.]
Welcome aboard! I'm so happy you could join us!
[you touch the lei. rooster feathers, lotus seeds, and a carved circle of something white and hard, linked onto a silk string.
after the drill is completed, you are seemingly free to go. or, well, your legs work, now. and maybe that's as good as it's gonna get.]
b. and there's plenty of that down by the sea
[it’s strange to think about, isn’t it? how all those new passengers, the ones grumbling or shouting their way through the forced muster drill, have absolutely no idea what happened just last month. no idea about the labyrinth. no concept of why anyone around them would be a bit more hesitant around shadows.
they’ll learn.
sometimes a shadow is darker than it’s supposed to be. very rarely does anything come of that; just a vague sense that someone is watching you, and little more. sometimes, though, the shadows move. sometimes they grab at your ankles as you walk. sometimes they give you a shove as you go down the stairs. sometimes they pull your hair, or pinch your arm.
sometimes you feel something sharp cut into your lower leg.
that’s not a shadow, though. that’s a fiddler crab. you see the crab, sometimes. the cut isn’t from its claws, which don’t look very intimating; it’s not a very large crab. the cut is from the large kitchen knife crudely taped onto its back. it’s probably fine. it's not chasing you. there isn't evil in its heart. probably.]
c. think I'll go back to the Keys
[one day, in the atrium, two pedestals suddenly appear. on each is a large button: one green, and one blue. pressing the blue button gives you a little treat, popping out of thin air next to you. pressing the green button sends a small electric shock through your body. weird, but, hey, pretty avoidable, right?
except, it seems to be spreading. to every other button on board.
in the elevator. on the soda machine. the arcade. your phone. the bell on Friday’s desk.]
no subject
"Well if I had known you were going to visit, I would have asked the lion to help me find a suit," mutters Arthur, while he wonders which of the epidemic of ship deaths and resurrections broke his sense of normality enough that he's able to keep his voice light despite the freakout that's trying to escape.
Shining a light on it is a bad idea. Something convulses in his throat and chest, and he has to breathe oddly to recover, tense again. He wants Parker to see him composed, somewhat on top of things, not... not a mess.
He shakes his head decisively at that last comment. "It's all real, Parker. Impossible, absurd, and unfair, but it's true. Though believe me, when first I awoke here I favoured other explanations."
no subject
"You mind showing me where you did wake up, so we can have a bit of privacy for this one?" There's a grin in his voice, faux awkwardness to let Arthur save face. "'cos frankly, Les, I don't know how much more I can take of this place 'fore I start having my fair share of hysterics over it all."
no subject
It's only a cabin. There's no good reason not to go there, and Parker won't know everything that's happened there just by stepping inside, excellent detective or not.
"Don't mind if I, ah," he says, like someone announcing that they're about to pull out a cigarette or help themselves to a chair, and he sets the ball of his cane on the ground and pushes it out in front of him. It rattles along, knocking gently on the gaps between floorboards and vibrating informatively in his hand as it does.
Parker hasn't asked. But that doesn't mean he hasn't noticed. He might be giving Arthur time to tell him if he chooses, just like old times. Just like with the history that Arthur never gave up, until he did, not to solid and discreet Parker but to fucking Crichton.
"I had a bit of an accident," he hedges. Then, when that makes him feel like a heel: "The entity from the book took my eyesight with it. I won't have any trouble leading the way, though." Hey man no-one said you would.
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"Hey, you never seemed to have trouble getting home when you got this way from the drink," he comments wryly instead. "But... shit, Lester. The fucker that strung me up left you blind - you've been out here for months like that?"
Not doubting his capacity, but concerned for the fact he'd had to develop it at all.
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Arthur doesn't comment on the aforementioned fucker, because, while he fully intends to warn John about this, he has no idea how to square the same circle for Parker. There's a lot to understand about John before it would make any sense for Parker to not try to give him his own three-day timeout. And Arthur doesn't want to pollute this reunion with attempts to explain why he's on first name terms with Parker's murderer. To convince the both of them that it's not a betrayal.
"Don't worry. I'm as adaptable as a puddle poured into a new ditch." It's... flat. The statement is basically true, but he can't put much life into it.
no subject
"Come on, Les, you know that ain't what I'm asking." He knows their lines, how far he can tease and cajol, and he's relying on this being that same old stooge that he first bought a Blood and Sand back in the day to push back. "What the hell did you do for a month and change without me?"
no subject
The percussion of their footsteps will come out slower than it used to. But Arthur always ploughed ahead at a good nick when he had somewhere to be, and a little thing like having a vision cone a few feet long and a few inches above the floor can't change that very much. The cane sways noisily back and forth in front of him, working with his momentum rather than against it, and he makes little adjustments in its wake. The smell of foreign cheeses on one side, or the hum of ice-cream freezers on another, lets him know he's headed the right way. He clearly has a lot of practice walking the decks of this ship.
(The dropped sushi is clean out of his brain, entirely forgotten, quite literally out of sight out of mind. Sorry, Friday.)
Arthur's head is bowed again, and his face tense. His voice isn't thick with drink this time, but it has the same old stooge's dismissive self-loathing at least. The good old pre-emptive defensiveness is back too. But the left hand flexing unconsciously -- that's a new tic. "Honestly? Nothing but make things worse and worse. And don't act like you're surprised. If you wanted to know someone with an ounce of-- of fucking sense, you shouldn't have pulled him out from under a barstool. I-I--"
He killed a man recently. He, himself, and it wasn't possession, and it wasn't self-defence. And that's not half of the sins he's racked up in less than a year. Parker once again has no idea what kind of man he's looking at. How badly his trust is misplaced.
"I... Shout when you see the stairs," Arthur finishes, muttering, like a coward.
no subject
And it's only because he knows that Arthur, genuinely, was happier when he'd last seen him, before... well. That. That he can believe so readily that it wasn't actually Arthur that killed him. Just something that wore his skin like a suit, stole his eyes and kicked him halfway back to bedrock.
"If I had an ounce of fucking sense, pal, I wouldn't have. But that guy needed a fucking friend. And I ain't gonna let him drown again."
And as a casual aside, like he doesn't just drop bombshells on Arthur on a regular basis, "Stairs are ten paces and counting. Railing's gonna be two feet to your left."
no subject
He feels pathetic. As if Parker found a stray cat and nursed it back to health, only to turn around and find it even more mangy and flea-bitten than before, even more of a mind to claw and bite. But Parker is still holding out his hand to it.
"I think you just love feeling like Sisyphus." And the cat can still give him shit for it.
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"You wanna talk to me about stubborn idiots being cursed on account of their hubris? Really, Art?"
His pace falls out of step with Arthur's on the stairs, only because he doesn't need to limp along the railing as he walks, but it stays firmly beside him, stair by stair.
"We both know you're a fucking heel, alright, you can stop trying to sell me on that. But you're-- man, you fuckin' killed me and I still wanna call you my best friend, so what kinda fancy Greek idiot does that really make me?" Then a grin that's practically audible as he adds, "Who's got the biggest brass on 'em?"
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Surely?
"All right, all right," he huffs at that first line, a pantomime of offense that wouldn't convince anyone and isn't meant to. It's as if the months, nearly a year, between now and the last time he and Parker talked, are vanishing: collapsing in on themselves like something that never was and never should have been. If this turned out to be the ship's dreamland again, it would be a struggle to want to go.
"Dionysus, but he would never cut a man off at the bar." You wanted a real answer from a nerd about this right? Because you're getting a real answer from a nerd. "If I say Zeus then I fear the Erda will hear me and, and decide you need to be turned into a swan."
no subject
It was... it was good, hearing Arthur relax, or at least start to. Get him back to normal levels before they started on the difficult shit, make sure he didn't get any other drinks in him until Parker got a fuller picture.
"Could even be your seeing eye ugly duckling," he adds brightly. "One honk for yes, two for no and I'll tug on your coattails to steer you."