Chapter Text
Arthur's ears rung. Everything felt heavy, stale even with the wind blowing on his face like an ice cold finger scratching at his neck.
First night who-knew-where and he already got stabbed by simply asking where he was! The bastard waited two seconds, probably decided he was an alcoholic or… or a junkie, or whatever. He said something before stabbing him in a language Arthur couldn't understand, and when he faught back instead of letting go of his bag, the assaulter just ran away.
Where even where they? John described a city at night and only in that moment they realized that Kayne didn't even consider about giving them some more informations. How were they supposed to find the Black Stone like this?
Thankfully at least the stabbing didn't seem too deep or fatal, nothing they haven't faced before. They managed to stumble in an alley, behind some trashcans and hidden for the view until they could pull themselves together.
"Arthur," John said, "it's day. The sun is rising through the buildings like blades of honey, and the engines of cars sing like hummingbirds. There are a lot of cars on the streets, of many shapes and colors I haven't seen before."
"I wonder what country they are from." Arthur sighed. They tried to decipher the language on the trashcans to see where they were, but John wasn't good neither at describing the language, nor at reading it so Arthur could try. It was latin letters, at least. "Do I have blood on me?"
"Yes, unfortunately."
"Fuck, we can't go covered in blood like…"
"Sir?" An unknown voice, like a whisper, came to their ears, making Arthur jump and wince right after, the wound on his left side folding on itself. "Oh!"
"A guy is in front of us," John studied frantically, "he seems very young, leaning down on us with big, worried eyes, he's pulling some sort of… rectangular thing out of his pocket-
"Holy shit you're wounded! I'm gonna call an ambulance-"
"No!" Arthur pulled himself up, one hand pressing on the wound as if to hide it even if it was too late. "Please, don't." His voice lowered as John told him how the guy jumped. "It's… it's alright, it's nothing serious."
"You have a stab wound." He frowned.
"It's not the first, nor probably the last."
"He's uncertain Arthur. The rectangle, it… emits light, it's close to his ear. He's smaller than you, we could overpower him easily if we wanted." Young, both his voice and his body. How young was he, to be so hesitant in front of someone with blood on them?
"Listen, just- where- where are we?" He hoped, in a small part of his mind, to not have to overpower him.
"…Italy."
"Ohw! Arthur, he's… he's pointing a light at our eyes! From the rectangle!"
"Are you drunk? You don't seem drunk, nor on drugs. Are you on drugs? Is that why you don't want to go to the hospital?"
"What- no!" Arthur shook his head, John's hand coming up to cover his eyes. "We… I'm just… it's hard to explain."
"Fine," the guy sighed, "I won't call an ambulance. You seemed quite scared about that. But only if you come to my house, where I can at least take a look at your wound."
"Your… house?" Arthur really wanted to know how naive this guy could be. Or how naive they were, to accept his jacket to cover up the blood and follow him. Or maybe they were just hungry and cold. "What… what is your name?"
"Federico. Fede, if you prefer."
"How do you know English so well?" John kept filling him with more and more questions, warning him about cars and pedastrians, and how weird the guy's jacket felt on their skin, thick but not made of fabric or fur and yet warm.
"I just spend too much time online," Fede chuckled as if that was supposed to mean something to him, "it's not that uncommon in Italy. How did you end up here?"
"Friends thought it would be a fun joke." Maybe he hesitated too much, considering the hum his guide let out. Five streetlights? Did he hear John correctly? How big was this city to have five streetlights on only one crossing?
"Cruel friends you have there, sir. What is your name?"
"Arthur. Arthur Lester."
"Very British indeed." Arthur heard a key turning and the creaking of wood. They climbed three flights of stairs, then a fourth. "Here, come inside." Arthur stepped him before he could hear a lock behind him. "You're free to sit down. I'm gonna take some disinfectant, okay?"
"The flat is very small." John begun, "kitchen and livingroom are united, there's no couch and one of the two doors I think is the bathroom right in front of us. The other door he disappeared to seems to be his room, it's ajar but I can't precisely tell how the room is arranged from here. There's a fridge, a stove, both seem so different yet so recognizable… and then there's this… this thing, rectangular…"
"What is up with rectangles…?"
"It doesn't look like proper metal, it's plopped on the counter and has buttons with numbers and small images on it. And in front of us…"
"Let me guess: another rectangle?"
"…yes. It's perched on top of a small table, completely black. On the table there's a long… thing, with even more buttons and more numbers…"
"Not really helpful, John."
"What am I supposed to say? I don't know what it is!" Arthur felt for the object on the table, studying it with his fingers and building confusion. He thought it could be just John not being used to human accessories, but the more he felt, the less the object made sense. It didn't even feel like metal. When pressing on some of the buttons, another voice started blasting in, forcing a squeal outside of Arthur's grown ass throat. "The- the rectangle on the table! It lit up, there are… pictures on it! Moving, like the movies you said!"
"What?!" How? John wasn't making any sense, and neither did the voices from the rectangle in what he guessed was Italian at this point.
"Are you alright?" Federico came back in, looking just as confused as he was but without the fear. "I realized we can't sew you back up while sitting so I prepared the bed."
"Yeah- yes, just- fuck-" he tried to click other buttons, but all it did was change from one overwhelming sound to another. How could he stop that thing? He couldn't focus, John was mesmerized at the pictures and kept begging him to leave it on while he desperatey wanted to put a face on the emotions he heard in Fede's voice. "Focus!" He hissed, John still not shutting up in his mind, "focus, goddammit!"
Warm fingers wrapped around Arthur's, coaxing his hands into letting the object slide into Fede's. The rectangle shut up, but one of the hands held onto his and Arthur found himself not wanting to let go. "It's okay, it was just the TV."
"T… TV…?"
"It wasn't just a joke, was it?" Fede's voice felt so much older than it was. "How… how did you get here? Someone kidnapped you? Did you manage to escape?"
Arthur's hand slid out of his, but John's didn't. "You… this- this is a trick, isn't it? You're some cultist, or a serial killer, or…" John's hand retracted.
"I'm not, I can swear it on my mother. Are cultists who kept you locked? Is that why you didn't want to go to the hospital? Because you don't want them to find you?" Arthur tried to get up, backing towards the front door. Gushes of blood spit out from the wound on his side. "Wait! Alright, okay, I won't question you. Please, you're bleeding out."
The sweetness in his voice filled Arthur with hate, and then tingles of reassurance, and then the acre wish to be able to hate that sweetness. It couldn't be real, it hasn't been real for months. Fede stepped closer, his hands risen high. Small and callous, and oh so warm.
"Just let me take a look at you. I promise, I won't ask anything anymore, I've already promised to not call an ambulance but I can't let you bleed out on the street so it's either me or…" it felt so wrong, to be pulled away from the door by so little words. "Let me take you to my bed. Please. I'll cook you whatever you want after."
"I… I don't think we have much choice, Arthur. We can try to break the door, but if he can call an ambulance in any moment it means he might go to the police as well, and we can't risk having to think about police too." At least John seemed as reluctant as he was.
The bedroom was as big as the kitchen, which wasn't much per se. Wardrobe, bed, shelves, a beside table and a desk with a chair, everything was embedded into everything with books and paper and junk littering the ground other than the desk itself.
"Sorry if it's messy, wasn't really… waiting anyone." He seemed genuinely apologetic, maybe embarrassed? "Here." Arthur felt for the bed as John instructed, a little bit to the left, to slot his wounded stomach over the four layers of towels the guy had prepared for him. "I… need you to get out of your shirt."
"Right," Arthur muttered. Unbuttoning kept being tricky to grasp, having each hand controlled by a different person and with the shaking not helping. At least he was washing his hands, not looking at his clumsiness.
"Do you know how much blood have you lost? It doesn't look older than tonight."
"Not much. I… tried to sew it right after, but there wasn't much light."
"I can see that," he could hear the gentle smile in his voice. "You didn't even clean it properly."
"Aren't you too young to know this?"
"I'm forty." He deadpanned.
"…what?" Him and John replied at the same time.
"I'm joking," a laugh replaced his poker face in an istant, "I'm twenty-eight. I know I look like late teen at best."
"Makes it even harder to believe you're not in some king of cult, knowing how to deal with wounds like these…" he tried to grasp at any reason to suspect him, to see it coming.
"I'm… well, I want you to trust me, so I won't lie." No trace of jokes, of lies. Not anymore. "I had friends who… struggled. A lot, in their teens. They were scared shitless, thinking their parents would treat them like they went insane." A warm and wet towel damped the dry blood on his side wound, so light he could barely feel the scrapes. "Maybe I should've told someone, but… I couldn't. They were so very afraid, every single one of them.
"And so I started bringing disinfectant to school, bandaids, bendages, even painkillers. Then it wasn't enough anymore. I was a kid just like them, you know? I don't know what to do for emotional support, so the wounds kept getting bigger and bigger and I… I reinvented myself. Who thought learning to sew from your grandmother could be used on skin as well?" He tried to chuckle, but it came out like sequins on cold concrete.
"Is it…" Arthur's throat knotted right at the base. "Is it why your voice…?"
"I guess I had practice over the years, trying to calm down teenagers in full panic attacks." He pressed a bit more and Arthur hissed. "Sorry. I'll have to remove the crust, so be very still, okay? Everything is disinfected."
"He's taking a… knife? It's very thin, very sharp, like your shaving kit's but it's inside some sort of case." John stared, but Arthur could very much feel the peeling on his skin.
"A box knife?"
"Yes," Fede replied, unaware Arthur wasn't speaking to him.
"Why do you have…?"
"I draw a lot, I use it on pencils. It's okay." Again with that honey giving him tingles. "Here, now I'll give it a last clean and I'll start sewing."
"I can do that myself."
"Do you want to do it yourself?" John described how the thread slid into the eye of the needle, "I'm going in, okay?"
"Okay." Arthur braced himself with a deep breath, looking up at the closet that protruded from the wall, creating some sort of nook for the bed. After everything that happened recently, the rhythmic motion and pain of the needle felt almost like a lullaby. The Order of the Fallen Star, and then Larsen and Yellow and Noel and the Butcher… god, Kayne did a number on him. And Noel? Maybe Noel could still be alive, after all Kayne announced that he was sending Larsen to the Dreamlands while for Noel he just said wherever… maybe it's a tracable wherever? Will they be able to find him, once they find the Black Stone and give it to Kayne?
The Black Stone… where to even begin? How was Italy connected to this? Could this be another version of Italy as well, where everything is… rectangular, for some reason? He didn't even know much about Italy to begin with if not the food and Mafia and some music. God he missed music, to let it flow like it flowed whenever he was at the piano… could he even go back to playing like he used to, with one of his hands not his anymore? Maybe he could teach John… or maybe, when all of this is over and they're able to have different bodies, he'll teach both of John's hands.
"Done," Fede announced with the sound of scissors. He pressed a piece of fabric on it, some sort of bandage that stuck to his skin tightly.
"What thread did you use?" Arthur felt the wound, how neat the stitches were. He wasn't joking about his proficiency with the needle.
"It's very thin plastic one. I use it for bracelets but it doubles nicely." Plastic?
"Isn't plastic like… used in women's socks?"
"Yeah? It's a different plastic." John didn't let the suspiscion in his eyes slide. At the same time, another suspiscion rose within Arthur's mind.
"Fede, I… need to ask you a very weird question."
"As if you haven't already." He smiled with all the patience in the world, and in that moment, Arthur really felt like he could tell him anything and everything.
"What year is it?" He went straight for the point, his fingers tightening in the bedding as he tried to pull himself up to sit.
Fede hesitated, one of his hands still holding on to the needle and the other just barely brushing on Arthur's skin. He waited for John's words, for the confirmation of fear, confusion… but when John told him there was only worry, he hoped to be able to believe it.
"It's 2025, Arthur." Fede said. "What happened to you?"
"You promised not to ask anymore questions." 2025. Twenty-first century. Ninty years after his time, more than a hundred from his birth. From the war. From the recent elections, from… everything that made his time, his time. No wonder the cars were different, and there were more streetlights, and the clothes and all those rectangles… Arthur already felt so painfully inconsequential, with the gods and the otherworldly planes of existences, but now that he was so far up in the future… no, he wasn't even that far up. A hundred years are nothing next to human history, next to the wholeness of the planet's history. The powerlessness came back even stronger.
"I- sorry, you're right." The small contact on his side pulled back. "Just know I'd believe pretty much anything at this point."
"Why?"
"Boredom? It's that hard to believe?"
"Boredom?"
"It's a boring world, Arthur Lester."
"I'd love some boring, believe me." If he only knew what he has been through, just a fraction of it he wouldn't be that excited. No one would be.
"I can see." John reported how Fede started to study his chest, his stomach, his arms. The scars littering them, wondering what had happened to that strange, strange man in the alley. "Do you prefer sleeping or coming to the kitchen as I cook?"
"I'll come with you." He wasn't ready to sleep in his house, not like this. Everything felt too good, first the roof over his head and then healing him and then that damned honey in his voice. He wasn't going to give him his sleep, too.