greatoldjohn | TLV Inbox

I had a life before you, John. In my youth, that involved... gatherings. Celebrations and such.

[Which isn't an answer, but he's not drunk enough to volunteer more. Even that much leaves him feeling faintly fraught.]

Anyway, there's likely to be another one soon, in any case. Christmas is only two months away now, a little less.

[ Oh. ]

[ He didn't miss the shut down on that question. He's trying not to push. So he'll move along to what he hopes is a neutral topic. ]

[ So I heard from a couple of people at the party. What does Christmas entail? ]

[He lifts his hand to try and hunt down his door handle.]

According to Christian teachings, Christmas is the day on which the lord and savior Jesus Christ was born. He's... a prominent and important figure, to the religion, a-and many of its... contemporaries. The son of God and a human woman, Mary. We celebrate his death too, around March or April- it's another major religious event.

[His voice is perfectly neutral, his natural informative tone with no particular emphasis or affectation from his memories on the topic.]

[ An inch or two up, a little to your right. You're just missing the frame. ]

[ But yeah, sure, Arthur. That completely sterile report on the holiday definitely doesn't indicate anything at all. It's as if you aren't the most opinionated son of a gun in their world or any other. He definitely buys this.

Not that he's going to question. Not after the ritual. Not so soon. ]

[ I'm aware of rituals like that, the joining of god and mortal flesh. It's... not something I would think most people would want to know about, let alone celebrate.

The death, maybe, but not the birth. ]

Edited (sorry word repeats) 2022-10-31 09:04 (UTC)

[There it is. And inside they go, so Arthur can strip his suit jacket off and hang it up on the coat rack. He's gotten quite good at doing shirts one-handed, if he can say so himself.]

No, it's-- it's more of a story. God isn't real, at least not in the- the Christian sense. [And he sounds derisive of that fact.] No, the story of Jesus Christ is about the mother's sacrifice, being forced to give up her autonomy and future to be this... this vessel whose first messenger tells her to 'be not afraid', where she's forced to bear a child for a figure that smote entire cities- entire countries worth of people because he saw them as unfit for the world he envisioned. Only for his son to be set up as a sacrificial lamb for humanity's sins - a scapegoat for all the cruelty, and- and petty maliciousness and just- callousness the more self-righteous of the lot indulged in with reckless abandon.

[He finds his chair at the desk and flops into it, resting his elbows on the sides and leaning his head on his own hand.]

It's fucking awful.

...I must confess, I feel rather more sorry for the man than I did before I met you, though that's not to say I didn't before.

[ Listening to Arthur go through all that, hearing the intonations of the various pieces, feeling the way his emotions and passions shift in one direction or another even as he tugs off his jacket and takes his seat-

There is a lot that John is processing here. It's why his voice is softer than it usually is; not the saccharine tone of manipulation Arthur might react to, but the kind of care that Arthur had only heard in full force on the boat as his life had drained out from him.

It's not quite that gentle, but it's the closest that Arthur's probably ever heard. ]

[I see.]

[ There's a feeling that has no particular name, at least not in English, which can best be described as wishing that he had a blanket to settle on Arthur's shoulders. ]

[Is that what you were thinking about? When they-

When I... let them put you in front of the mirror?]

[Not for the first time he wishes he had control of his eyes again, so he could rest with his head in his hands and appreciate the warm darkness, the satisfying pressure of being able to press his palms against his face. Instead of just unblinking, unyielding darkness.

...he knows Parker used to keep a bottle in the office somewhere. For celebrations, or bad nights. He wonders if it made it across.]

...no. Not like that. I was still... well. I was worried about you, more than anything else. That that was... going to be it. My... [He takes a long breath, and sighs it out slowly. There's a tiredness there, the drained emptiness of a recent argument that seeps into his words.] My destiny. My every choice leading us step by step closer to my own demise. To be consumed by you, without having ever solved the mystery that brought us together in the first place.

[ Musing in turn, less tired and drained then... relaxed. This is nothing like the existence he had in the Dark World, but it's also nothing like being the King in Yellow, nothing like the reign of The Unspeakable in Lost Carcosa. Nothing like the aeons of whispering into mortal minds who meant nothing.

It is smaller.

It is... closer.

He is an endless being, contained within less than even half of a single human form.

And he would rather die than give it up. ]

[Even I hadn't realized until that moment that you had consumed me instead.]

Edited 2022-11-01 04:32 (UTC)

[Something about that is so... unexpected, that Arthur laughs, a quiet but abrupt chuckle.]

Oh really, that's- is that how you see us? That I-I-I-- tainted your godliness in some way, this- fractured soul of the King in Yellow, it's...

[His voice slows, and his eyes widen in alarm as the words come back to him, from the place where he'd been reduced to nothing, nearly nothing - except for a single memory, and a dark figure trying to talk him out of it.]

...entangled, in... mine.

[Not tainted, Arthur. But I am not what I was. I am not a piece of a greater whole. Not in a way that matters. I was that, but now I am something new. Something...

Yes. Right.

Entangled with you.]

[ A soft wry chuckle.

[The King in Yellow, his name Unspeakable, his realm unattainable...

And you were the catalyst through which it- I- came to be.]

Edited 2022-11-01 05:11 (UTC)

Let's not discredit that you did most of the work yourself. I've still known you for less time than you were trapped in my mind during the coma.

[He'd passed out after being stabbed in the guts and woken up a month later to the Entity having suddenly decided to become John. And much more decent conversation, as it were.]

But... I am glad, you know. That I... that we could help you discover humanity, i-in a personal way.

[Arthur...

You choked on your drink when Rawne told you the date he's from. But that span of time, so... so impossible for you to take hold of...

Nothing of note for the King.]

[ He knows there's a chance Arthur may get offended but he'll continue and hope he doesn't. ]

[Yet your influence in so short a time had done what untold aeons could not, did not. All that time when I was what I was.

And now I'm not.]

[ A wry sort of chuckle. ]

[I'm not trying to give you a big head, Arthur, or butter you up. But this entangled thing we are... as commonplace and everyday as it is while we live it, it is anything but. ]

Edited 2022-11-01 05:30 (UTC)

[He's more exasperated than offended. At least he's not being called 'meaningless' again.]

I suppose you have a point. Us adjusting to it as well as we have by no means makes it common, o-or even considerable as such. What we are is... unusual. Unique.

[He's quiet for a few moments, then huffs.]

Or, it is back home. Some of the people we've met here already seem to function on entirely different scales.

[ Does that worry you? ]

Only in as much as we don't know what we're up against, here. At least back home it was either some abomination from the Dark World, or your own fucking cultists.

[There's no real heat there, though, just a sort of resigned exasperation.]

There's just going to be a lot of... a-adjusting, I suppose. To some people's... powers.

[ The girl with the butterflies...

I am sorry about that, Arthur. ]

It's fine.

[In the faintly clipped tone of "It's not fine, but we don't have the leisure to talk about it".]

It was unreasonable of me to expect you to recognise that. I'm not sure I could have if I could see.

[ Except they do have the leisure. But he knows that tone well enough and it's been a long enough evening, a nice enough evening, he doesn't want to argue. ~~Growth~~. ]

[ I'm sure we'll both get better at figuring out the other people here. It's part of our jobs, isn't it? ]

Yeah. And you said... eight decks, around twenty rooms each. At maximum capacity we'd only be dealing with around a hundred and sixty people, which- it didn't seem to be quite that many at the party, surely. It shouldn't be too difficult adjusting.

[ We should do a walk around together sometime tomorrow. Give you a sense of the scale of things.

Were you assigned a job?

I was. ]

[That gets a more genuine chuff out of Arthur, and he shifts in his seat so he can pull the communicator out of his pocket and slide it onto their desk.]

That was messaged to you? You'd have to let me know.

[ It was. Here, let me show you how to-

You can actually set it to read out to you, if I'm not here. And to give a sound notification when you get a message. ]

[ He won't touch it until Arthur gives the go ahead but then that left hand will work fast to fix the settings.]

['ll be working in the art gazebo up on the deck.]

Edited 2022-11-01 07:57 (UTC)

Thank you, John.

[He may well keep it up while John is present, even just to give himself that slight edge of independence he misses.

But the reveal- well, it would make Arthur blink, but there's a visible oh! in the way he sits up a bit straighter.]

The art gazebo? Really?

[He's baffled, but in a positive way, he's madly curious.]

[ He doesn't begrudge him that independence, hence finding out these things in the first place to show him. But he had checked with some of the odder names he knew and it had had a bit of awkwardness. Not that he expects Arthur to be writing swathes about Shub Niggurath. ]

[ Yes. I'm not sure what that will entail but I'm... excited to discover it. ]

Well, you'll definitely have to show me it later. A gazebo is- it's like a pavilion, a small, open structure - like a house without any walls or windows, just the roof and struts holding it up. They're usually quite lovely.

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