greatoldjohn | Open RP

"Both of you shut up a minute." His voice is clipped: he's tired, he's sore, he's freezing, and the giant hole in his stomach is bleeding gently into his shirt, so the sooner they move the better.

Willa gets both coats draped over her shoulders. "Keep this on or you'll catch fucking pneumonia." As he opens the car door for her: "Mind the bindle."

And as soon as she's in, he's all but slamming the car door and making his way back to the driver's seat - though as he goes, Willa might notice the massive dark stain across his lower back, and the way the hair on the back of his neck is completely dark with blood.

But he gets into the driver's seat readily, only a soft grunt to mark his discomfort as he sinks into the leather chair. "Right. Let's go. John?"

John will take the time to describe to him the set up of the front area of the house and the path to the road out. His arm will take the steering wheel on the other side as his foot presses the gas. They coordinate between them to back out and start leaving.

[She's scared, Arthur. And... you took some of the bread. Maybe she's hungry too?]

"I'm not scared," Willa insists quietly. Yeah, she's still shaking, but that's got nothing to do with the fear okay. She pulls the layers of coats tighter around herself, her skin grossly clammy along with the chill. "You eat it, I'm fine, I had something earlier. Thank you. Though."

And that is so much blood. "Wh..."

Who, what, where--?

"Willa. My name. Willa Givens."

Edited 2023-10-07 21:23 (UTC)

Arthur gives a dissatisfied hum, but neither face nor eyed turn towards her. "Arthur Lester. And John Doe, of course."

He rubs down his jaw, grimacing at the stubble but too tired to care. "Look, I'm sorry, but- the fact you know my name already is suspicious enough, but being able to hear John is... what did you mean, before, a ring?"

John is focused on the driving, since the vast majority of it falls to him and it's not as if the country road is easy to manage. But all the same-

[You're not from this time, are you?]

He's going to keep his eye on the road especially if she says yes.

"Yeah, duh, I already know your names. Kind of thought that was obvious." She's the same kind of clipped Arthur was when he told them to shut up. A prolonged shiver interrupts her, but after a second, she adds, "I don't think I am but I don't even know what this t-time is."

She reaches out of her coat cocoon to fiddle with the sparse but unfamiliar controls on the dash, briefly and accidentally turning on the radio before she finds the heat. She turns it up full bore, then holds up her hand and wriggles her fingers, showing the black ring around her middle one. "Glance at me so John can see it. The ring."

It's dull, looks metallic, and Willa is very careful not to look at the symbols carved across it. They're not the King in Yellow's mark, exactly, but they're incomplete versions, inlaid with purplish-black sand that seems to shift like mist. It gives off an inescapable feeling of a place John knows, knows but hasn't seen in lifetimes. Not as himself, anyway.

Edited 2023-10-07 21:53 (UTC)

The sudden burst of static makes Arthur flinch, and automatically he goes to slap his hand to the controls to slap Willa away. Though he can't complain when he misses and she manages to turn the heat on. He hadn't even realised the car had any: Larson really was fucking rich.

(Still no seatbelts, but that's a Willa concern.)

"Well right now it's 1934. I-I think," he adds, quiet in his uncertainty. "Maybe '35, b-but still."

But he supposes he can spare a quick glance in her direction for their sake. "John?"

He almost yells, but Arthur just got startled by the static and he doesn't want the car going off the road. So he grumbles a little-

[Keep your eyes on the road, please. This isn't an easy drive.]

And after a few moments, he'll admit-

[She has a ring on with... that has things I don't know how she'd obtain. She doesn't-

I don't think she's working with the King. There's... almost like a haze around such people. She doesn't have it.]

"Of course I'm not working for the King." The absolute indignation in her feathery voice, how dare. She wants so much to swat back at Arthur's hand but experience and worry curb the impulse.

God, what the fuck is going on. She's in 1935, they don't know who she is, Arthur is covered in blood, and John is out a body again. If she weren't a bit in shock she would be freaking out more profoundly, but as it is, the numbness is working in her favor.

Willa pulls her hand back into the coats and draws them up higher until they're over her head like a hood. "W-we were all working for this... person, being, whatever who just called himself the Admiral. Themself. I don't know. We were on this--Jesus if you don't remember I'm going to sound absolutely insane."

"Right, yes," is the idle murnur John gets as Arthur turns his eyes back to the road. He keeps his right hand on the wheel, but John's steering. It's mostly just comfort, so he can feel where the car is turning.

He listens to Willa with as much patience as he has the capacity for, but honestly it's not much.

"Miss Willa, if you're aware of who we are, then I'm sure you must know at least some of what's happened to us. Your being from the future is..." He flexes his fingers with a shrug. "Unusual, certainly. But it can't be as mad as some of the stuff we've told you."

Edited 2023-10-08 00:26 (UTC)

"It's not Miss Willa," she says softly, pulling the coats even tighter. She shudders, wishing it would hurry up and get warmer in the car. "It's just Willa."

God, her brain feels like it's been left in a freezer, which maybe it kind of has. "I don't think I'm from your future. I mean, I'm from the future. Not... I think I'm from your past? The Barge is kind of outside of time and... stuff." The world is doing that sideways tilt thing again. She closes her eyes to try and focus, only half-noticing the shivers any more.

"Dad," it's plaintive, and she muzzily corrects herself. "Uncle Arthur. ...What was I saying?"

Right. "We were on the Barge, that's the only name it has that I know, a living ship, where people-- There's wardens and inmates and we were wardens."

Arthur flinches again. John was fine, Uncle John was... insane, but Dad--

It's lucky he's not actually steering or they definitely would have slid off the road.

John is driving and thankfully is a little more even-keeled when Arthur is a wreck (aka the last day or so). He keeps his hand steady and he keeps his voice soft inside Arthur's mind.

[Arthur, do you think she might be sick from the cold? The things she's saying...]

"I'm okay." It's more rote and less confident at the moment. She can't pull the coats any tighter. Her fingers and face feel like they're starting to burn in the warm air from the heater. She's fine. It's fine. She's going to be okay, and she's going to get these two back to the Barge somehow, and they'll be fine too.

That answer isn't particularly reassuring, and Arthur lifts his hand to find her; gently groping blindly for her shoulder, and when he finds it pushing her beanie back a little so he can press the back of his hand to Willa's forehead; though with it comes the lingering, unpleasant smell of bodily fluids, something in it utterly foreign to Willa under the rusty tang of blood.

"You're warm," he says, concern unsubtle in his voice. "Hopefully it settles, but if she's been out there for too long we might need to watch for a fever."

[Should I try to find a road towards the town? Do you think they have a doctor there?]

He's worried about both of them, considering, but this is so far out of the realm of things he knows how to deal with. She's clearly young. He doesn't know what to do with young.

He doesn't want to think about what he did once upon a time.

Without really thinking about it, she reaches up and takes Arthur's hand gently, turning it over. Her stomach churns a little at the smell. Willa presses Arthur's palm against her too-warm cheek, heedless of any smears left on his skin.

His hand is cold, bones jutting out of the flesh like creases in metal, but when she presses his palm against her face, his breath catches in his throat. And he can't hide the way it shudders when he exhales, how his eyes abruptly sting as this delicate, fragile trust is placed in his hand.

She thinks he can protect her. What the fuck is he supposed to do with that?

"Go to sleep, Willa," he mumbles instead, and he tries not to think to hard about it as he moves his thumb, stroking across the soft edge of her cheekbone. "We'll wake you when we get there."

Wherever there ends up being.

[Arthur?]

He's felt all the things going through Arthur and Arthur, no doubt, has felt the concern and confusion going through him in turn. John doesn't know what's going on, be he knows he's somehow important to this girl and that's...

That's huge. That's amazing and bizarre and it fills him with such hope. And that hope, in turn, makes itself fear and worry soon enough. The deal had been to get Arthur to New York. This is a whole other person. He can ask Arthur to trust him but Willa...

It leaves him troubled, especially seeing how much trust she has in him. In them.

Willa closes her eyes and keeps them closed, nodding, but barely. Enough for him to feel the motion without moving his hand. Without interrupting that gentle comfort.

"We're going to be okay," she says, soft and insistent. "We're all going to be okay. I don't... know who Larson is, but if we can get back to the Barge, if we all can--we'll be okay. John, you'll get your body back, and Arthur, you'll get your eyes, and..."

Another nod, and she very carefully shifts John and Arthur's belongings enough that she can lean sideways and rest her head on Arthur's shoulder. She's still shivering a little bit, but at least the worst is over, when it comes to getting them to believe her. She thinks. She hopes.

Then she falls asleep.

Edited 2023-10-20 05:11 (UTC)

He takes his arm back as Willa adjusts, purely because the position is unsustainable, but then her head is resting on his shoulder and it's just...

God. He hasn't had physical contact with someone who hasn't wanted to kill him in months. He almost can't remember what it's like, to have someone just- touch him, hold his hand or grip him in a hug or just lean on him, and he's not sure now he won't shatter under the weight of that simple, human kindness.

Something tickles down his cheek, and he lifts his hand to wipe the streaks of new tears from his cheeks. Taking a deep breath as he does, trying to rally. Keep it together.

"What's it like, John?" His voice isn't steady but he's going to fucking well pretend it is. "Out there."

John almost adds to the tears, feeling that relief in his partner, that Arthur is accepting that softness. He'd been so fucking scared down in the mines. So scared watching Arthur in the depths of his rage and pain. This, even more than his choice to save people in the cave, has him relaxing just a little.

John clears his throat.

"Right.

"Addison passes by. Small buildings between the trees… the snow is melting away, already, from the warm day. The buildings here look hollow. Empty pieces, as if reflecting the weather. Just the bones remain. We’re passing a building. The Red Right Hand."

He pauses.

"And the road, it winds between the trees that hug it closely, as if this road were a path carved between a mountain. The town is behind us now. Addison is behind us."

"And all that happened here," he murmurs in response.

Only, perhaps not all. Whoever Willa was, was a question that needed answering sooner rather than later. When she wasn't half-feverish and delusionally rambling about magic ships and Uncle John and...

His only loosely rolling train of thought was derailed by the sound-sensation of the dirt road growing more compact, the tip of the wheels onto asphalt, and he finally puts his hand back on the wheel. "Slow down- where are we?"

[I think we’re coming to a main road of sorts.]

Willa sighs quietly, shifting a little to get comfortable. She turns her face toward Arthur's bony shoulder, stirring a moment before being lulled back to sleep by the sounds of their voices. This time when she shivers it's not from the cold--it's a dream, or the start of a dream, and she knows it is one, but she's also pretty sure it isn't one in a way she can't explain.

A city. A ruin of a city, made from dark not-really-stone. A ruin of a city that isn't quite black, seen from above and littered with--broken dolls?

Well, well, well. It's a man's voice. Elastically cheerful in a way that gives Willa the crawls, even in her sleep. It comes from everywhere around her, or it feels like it does. Who invited you?

"Invited me to what?" Her response is somehow silent but definitely audible at the same time. She can't feel her lips move, can't feel anything really.

The dolls aren't dolls, her brain says, but she's not sure what it means.

Always with the curveballs, our Arthur. You've got the mark of a strange god on you, poppet. Who sent you? What's their game? Why oh why can I not tell?

The dolls aren't dolls. What is she trying to tell herself? It feels important.

"Who are you?"

People guessing is half the fun.

The dolls aren't dolls.

Oh.

Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck, oh, god, fuck--

Talk soon, little germ.

Willa flinches awake, clinging suddenly to Arthur's arm as she tries to orient herself.

Edited 2024-01-14 09:05 (UTC)

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