[ He gets it. He does. He'd like to go home to a normal life with his mundane family. But he made his choice.
He didn't go home after the car crash. Hasn't been back since; despite all of Cindy's calls and emails. His sister is in college living out her best life. And while his krewe expresses concern for him cutting out everything that made him who he was pre-Bargain, he doesn't know where he could begin to explain that he died and came back. ]
I can fend for myself. There's not much that can knock me down that I won't get back up from. And at best, I'd be banged upโbut I'd be able to go back.
[ And while Arthur doesn't seem to be in a mood to listen, he can still drive the point home. ] You're human. You're a lot more fragile than you think.
But we can stay a little longer. [ A nod, to Morgana. ] Just know the moment I smell trouble we'll need to hoof it.
[Lantern boy wasn't wrong, and that the problem. While she was quite sure she could wheedle her way around any harm being done to them, this time, if only because she was so well loved by her kin, she wasn't so sure that it would hold true if Arthur found another way back, or worse, if Arthur heard stories of those who came to faerie and had a far worse time than she had ever had here.
He would want to protect her, and it seemed like he'd go to hell personally if he had too to drag her out of it.
She almost wished he couldn't remember her.
As she thinks, Arthur splutters.]
Morgana is human, [he sounds like he thinks the lantern boy was calling her names, so to cut off a fight before it begins she has to interject:]
Not as much as we both thought, little cub. Or should I say bear? You're not so little anymore. You're going to squeeze me in half.
[Suddendly he looks a little guilty and gingerly places her back on the ground in front of him, and she moves, turns really, so she can look at the lantern boy and his sudden friend. Her head falls back against Arthur who is definitely trying to do some math as to how Morgana could possibly be not human while the adults talk]
You have not introduced your friend, I assume she is why you look so strange from time to time? [Morgana asks, gently, even as she's fairly sure she hears Arthur mutter that he likes "cub" more, and, also, was their mother a fairy? was it Gorlois?????]
[ He's thankful for the momentary reprieve. They're safe for now. ]
The Flower Girl gets protective. [ He offers by way of explanation. ] With her, I'm whole and alive. With me, she gets a taste of life denied her for roughly a hundred years.
[ There are mysteries to unfold still. Answers they need to find to the questions surrounding her death. ]
And since formalities are done, it's nice to meet you Morgana. Though admittedly, I didn't expect to see you wandering around free in Arcadia.
Interesting. [And she was interested, her green eyes sparkle with curiosity at the very concept but one of the other things she has learnt in these lands is not to pry excessively unless you have good reason, and she had none. How Arthur found him was a mystery but at least it meant they hadn't just likely strolled through the hedge at home and so maybe Arthur couldn't do so again easily. He might be safe.
Maybe.]
You thought me a prisoner? [She knows, of course, that it is a solid possibility. But then, she had always felt strange and coming here had normalised something in her so that she was treated mostly with kindness both shocked her and didn't at all. She belonged here, in a way she hadn't at home. No one avoided her or looked at her strangely in Arcadia, or thought her to be a bit mental.]
Of course we did... I always thought you would come home, if you knew how. [Arthur says, still quietly as he leans his head against hers, his cheek resting against the inky black.]
I am sorry to have left you, and to have worried you... [Both of you, apparently, though obviously not lantern boy nearly as much as Arthur.] But why the shovel? Do I have a grave?
[ He's sending a look pointedly over at Arthur at that point and decides that since the younger man had pretty much enlisted his help, he could speak for the both of them. ]
Your brother came to me because weโ [ gesturing to The Flower Girl now ] โhave a set of skills in the domain of the dead.
[ How Arthur had found out about them, he's not entirely sure. He just knows that Pendragon had strolled right into his bar right as he was heading out for a smoke asking if he could perform the Dumb Supper. ]
Normally it means that the living get one last mean with their departed loved ones for closure. But.
[ There had been no ghost to raise. It had been very awkward. He offers a shrug and then adds: ] I only found out about the shovel after Arthur here stormed out hissing "I knew it".
[She had at times, when peering through the veil, gotten a sense that Arthur missed her. Of course she did. But what she had seen, he had been happy enough. The nanny minded him well and got him friends and activities outside of the house and the watching eye of his father as much as she could.
It was no replacement for a missing sister, to be sure, but the idea that they thought her actually dead settled strangely in her stomach now that she knew for sure the cover story the fae had made for her vanishing act.
Morgana turns her head and looks at Arthur, who looks a little flustered.]
Well, I did. I saw the man walk you into the garden and you never came out again. Anything could have happened to you, Morgana. [Yet he had somehow been so sure that somehow she was alive that despite the "evidence" he could never actually lay the memory to bed.
And so, here they were.
A moment later, Morgana takes his hand and squeezes it. Her hand feels so small compared to his now, when hers used to envelop his childish, stubby fingers.]
I didn't know anyone else could see him, or that you were watching or I would never... [She swallows.]
You boys must be hungry. Or thirsty? I can sort something out for you while you are here.
We broughtโ [ he hesitates, glacing once at the duffel that he'd offered to Arthur to use as a pillow ] โsupplies. We would not wish to impose, but I suppose we could sit down.
[ It's an ambiguous enough response, given how he isn't sure how good Faerie food would be for them. They had enough to tide them over for at least a while. ]
Then seats it is. [And because Morgana is so aligned with the land, because she has lived here and practiced so long it doesn't take much for her to manipulate the nearby plants, who suddenly sprout and grow until they weave into a set of bench seats, cushions made out of moss and other soft greenery formed on their surface.
Arthur startled, but tried not to look too alarmed that his long lost sister, his best friend, had some aspect to her he'd never known to look and see before she went away. Morgana squeezes his hand before using that anchor point to drag him off towards the seats which are more comfortable than they look.]
That was -
Magic, yes, you missed me climbing out of the tree earlier, I guess. You were doing your best rock impression while the Lantern was trying not to draw attention to you.
[Arthur rubbed his temples, sinking back into the seat. At least if the furniture came alive and ate him he wouldn't have to think about this longer.]
[ Impressive, really. Watching Morgana manipulate her surroundings has given him things to think on as he continues to assess present circumstances:
First, she's not a captive. If anything, she looks very at home in Faerie. Second, while it's probably for the best to continue to keep his guard up, he came here for a job. That's to offer Arthur some kind of closure or next step. ]
You can just call me Josh. [ Might be best to dispense with formalities for now if he'd actually like to be referred to by his actual name instead of his title. ] The title really was just because this isn't my side of the tracks.
Oh, he does have a true name. [From anyone else in Faerie, that may well have had a sinister undertone but from Morgana it is simply teasing and done with a big smile.]
Pleasure to meet you, Josh.
[Poor Arthur looks confused again, and realises whatever they had spoken of before he awoke apparently hadn't included an actual introduction, which earns Josh a quizzical squint with a gentle side of did-you-insult-my-sister that he doesn't actually speak.
He continues not to speak even when his eyes go back to Morgana. Part of him expected to find her as she had been, tall for her age but shorter than he would grow to be when he reached the same, her hair up in that too-tight braid she set it in every morning before school and looking after him. That perpetual look of tiredness about her eyes.
But here they were and she was fully grown, a woman now, maybe a few inches taller and much less exhausted. She was not trapped at age twelve, not hurt or killed. What could he even say to her? Come back to where life is boring and stressful and you've got to deal with society just to survive? Did she have friends here? Family? Was this heaven?]
You look lost, little cub. I do not know what to say and I think you do not know what to ask... is that so?
[He just nodded, leaning back into the embrace of her woven chair.]
Perhaps there is a lighter topic for now... like how did you talk your way in here without any fanfare?
I have contacts, among those who choose to live back home.
[ Allies seems like a stretch of a way to describe Fox and Rabbit. ]
And I've been aware of pathways into the Hedge for sometime now, so it was a matter of figuring out what to pay the gatekeeper.
[ Some things are universal. Guesting laws. Tithes. He'd approached stepping into Arcadia the way he would a Dead Dominion: with extreme caution and enough back-up plans to guarantee a return trip. ]
They can be picky, or so I am told. I haven't had much to do with them and my escort here has little need to pay tribute to anyone. [As far as she knew, anyway.]
You mean the man I saw you with? [Arthur asks, and Morgana nods but also shrugs a little as she's not entirely sure what Arthur had seen on that fateful day.]
Don't get your hackles up, he did what he did to protect me. He cares for me very much. He is kin.
arthur pls don't punch him he's just confirming shit
But it would make sense, now that he considers it. She's not Gentry, but if she were of Gentry-blood, then that would explain why she's able to wander without fear of being taken. ]
Quick question. [ Because he noticed it earlier but didn't think anything of it until now. ] We're on a border: fall and winter.
[ He nods to the line where the gold of autumn faded and transition into the crystal of snow. ]
You kept to this side when you were peering at Arthur earlier. Was that because permissions from the other court are required?
I like to stay where I am welcome and protected. I have few friends in Autumn and fewer kin, though I dare not say with certainty that I have none there.
[Faeries had a way of just popping up in her bloodline it seemed. It wouldn't actually shock her at this point if she had a whole host of cousins somehow in Autumn or Summer.] It is a fear-filled land, also, more prone to playing with that which haunts you most than Winter ever would.
I have lived here or in Spring but nowhere else, and I don't mean to try the other courts on for size.
[Arthur's frown grows so deep that it makes his forehead crease.
Then about a minute later, regardless of if anyone else is talking at the time.]
Wait, who is the fairy kin? They only took you so is it Gorlois?
Not my Da, no, but his kin. I cannot say if you have any in you, sorry. [After all, who could say with the way fairies fucked around and let other people find out.]
[ Fox had commented something about Arthur, but he doesn't remember it right now. Something about the boy not being Fae, but that he had protections more than mostโfor all that the boy was oblivious to it.
He crosses over the border and into Winter, no sense standing on the other side of the fence given that safety's more likely to be true if he sticks with Morgana and Arthur. ]
That must be the reason the old ghost seemed particularly convinced that you were okay, for all that he still has a bone to pick with your stepdad.
[ Gorlois had been an interesting discovery the day he'd followed Arthur to the cemetery where a 12-year-old Morgana had presumably been laid to rest. The old(er) man had stood close to Josh, his ghost particularly lucid for a facsimile. But then some of the restless dead became that over the years. An entity of their own with some limited sense of agency instead of an echo of what had been left behind. ]
Old ghost? [Morgana immediately is paying more attention to Josh, as though he had tugged a string connected directly to her.] My Da? Gorlois? You saw him???
[This, Arthur remembers. That look of pain that could become so intense on Morgana's features that he was tempted to flinch himself. He had never met the man, not even in a dream, at least nothing before all of this but he had seen him in a thousand ways Morgana was nothing like their mother or anyone else he had known growing up. She was more her father's daughter than she had ever been ygraines and it didn't take knowing the man to be sure of it.
Especially when she had that look on her face and she hadn't once asked after their mother, who, too, had never asked after her or considered Arthur might be speaking the truth.
Quickly he finds himself gently stroking patterns on her palm, to soothe and distract her.]
[ He doesn't expect such a visceral reaction, but he can tell that this is important. At least, judging by the way Arthur's taken to fussing gently over her. ]
Yes. He's still hanging around where, I assume, your mother had him buried.
[ The old ghost wasn't a Reaper, but it's telling that he was calling the shots and keeping the dead in line. He was also, if Josh was to take him on his word, capable of stepping away from where he'd been laid to rest to wander the Pendragon home. ]
He asked that I help Arthur. But yeah, was around.
Did she bury us together, then? Well not me but... you know. [There is such longing in Morgana's eyes at the thought of seeing her father again, of finally getting to rest with him. There had been times as a child she wished she could have and might have tempted fate enough to cross over if not for the steady anchor of looking after Arthur.]
She did, father was unhappy about it, but she did.
Uther is unhappy about everything, up to and including the rotation of the earth. Strange though, given... everything. [The betrayals, the immediate moving on after his death - or before it, really. The fact she had stopped noticing Morgana was even a person as soon as Uther came around.]
[ He's thoughtful as he watches their exchange; the barest hint of a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. Based on everything he's heard so far about Arthur's father, he doesn't care much for the man. But Gorlois was a whole kettle of fish altogether. ]
I... [ he pauses, purses his lips a little and then works out what it is he really wants to say. ] If you can travel out of here, I can arrange for you to speak with him.
[ He still has most of what they weren't able to use up for the Dumb Supper, Morgana not actually being dead and all. ]
I have never gone on my own. Grandfather sometimes let me in the lands betwixt but never fully home.
[Yet her desire to see her father does more than enough to cover any fear the idea brings her, she looks deep in thought even as Arthur's eyes grow more eager. Faerie seemed nice enough, for such a strangely fair and foul place, but to have Morgana home, amongst the living, somewhere he could always find her?
That, he couldn't let go of. Not now, not ever. He squeezes her hand, and though his knowledge of such things was hardly anything at all, he spoke with confidence.]
I am sure you will pass safely with us, Morgana. You say these people love you and they have no love of us yet we were safe enough.
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[ He gets it. He does. He'd like to go home to a normal life with his mundane family. But he made his choice.
He didn't go home after the car crash. Hasn't been back since; despite all of Cindy's calls and emails. His sister is in college living out her best life. And while his krewe expresses concern for him cutting out everything that made him who he was pre-Bargain, he doesn't know where he could begin to explain that he died and came back. ]
I can fend for myself. There's not much that can knock me down that I won't get back up from. And at best, I'd be banged upโbut I'd be able to go back.
[ And while Arthur doesn't seem to be in a mood to listen, he can still drive the point home. ] You're human. You're a lot more fragile than you think.
But we can stay a little longer. [ A nod, to Morgana. ] Just know the moment I smell trouble we'll need to hoof it.
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He would want to protect her, and it seemed like he'd go to hell personally if he had too to drag her out of it.
She almost wished he couldn't remember her.
As she thinks, Arthur splutters.]
Morgana is human, [he sounds like he thinks the lantern boy was calling her names, so to cut off a fight before it begins she has to interject:]
Not as much as we both thought, little cub. Or should I say bear? You're not so little anymore. You're going to squeeze me in half.
[Suddendly he looks a little guilty and gingerly places her back on the ground in front of him, and she moves, turns really, so she can look at the lantern boy and his sudden friend. Her head falls back against Arthur who is definitely trying to do some math as to how Morgana could possibly be not human
while the adults talk]You have not introduced your friend, I assume she is why you look so strange from time to time? [Morgana asks, gently, even as she's fairly sure she hears Arthur mutter that he likes "cub" more, and, also, was their mother a fairy? was it Gorlois?????]
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The Flower Girl gets protective. [ He offers by way of explanation. ] With her, I'm whole and alive. With me, she gets a taste of life denied her for roughly a hundred years.
[ There are mysteries to unfold still. Answers they need to find to the questions surrounding her death. ]
And since formalities are done, it's nice to meet you Morgana. Though admittedly, I didn't expect to see you wandering around free in Arcadia.
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Maybe.]
You thought me a prisoner? [She knows, of course, that it is a solid possibility. But then, she had always felt strange and coming here had normalised something in her so that she was treated mostly with kindness both shocked her and didn't at all. She belonged here, in a way she hadn't at home. No one avoided her or looked at her strangely in Arcadia, or thought her to be a bit mental.]
Of course we did... I always thought you would come home, if you knew how. [Arthur says, still quietly as he leans his head against hers, his cheek resting against the inky black.]
I am sorry to have left you, and to have worried you... [Both of you, apparently, though obviously not lantern boy nearly as much as Arthur.] But why the shovel? Do I have a grave?
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Your brother came to me because weโ [ gesturing to The Flower Girl now ] โhave a set of skills in the domain of the dead.
[ How Arthur had found out about them, he's not entirely sure. He just knows that Pendragon had strolled right into his bar right as he was heading out for a smoke asking if he could perform the Dumb Supper. ]
Normally it means that the living get one last mean with their departed loved ones for closure. But.
[ There had been no ghost to raise. It had been very awkward. He offers a shrug and then adds: ] I only found out about the shovel after Arthur here stormed out hissing "I knew it".
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It was no replacement for a missing sister, to be sure, but the idea that they thought her actually dead settled strangely in her stomach now that she knew for sure the cover story the fae had made for her vanishing act.
Morgana turns her head and looks at Arthur, who looks a little flustered.]
Well, I did. I saw the man walk you into the garden and you never came out again. Anything could have happened to you, Morgana. [Yet he had somehow been so sure that somehow she was alive that despite the "evidence" he could never actually lay the memory to bed.
And so, here they were.
A moment later, Morgana takes his hand and squeezes it. Her hand feels so small compared to his now, when hers used to envelop his childish, stubby fingers.]
I didn't know anyone else could see him, or that you were watching or I would never... [She swallows.]
You boys must be hungry. Or thirsty? I can sort something out for you while you are here.
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[ It's an ambiguous enough response, given how he isn't sure how good Faerie food would be for them. They had enough to tide them over for at least a while. ]
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Arthur startled, but tried not to look too alarmed that his long lost sister, his best friend, had some aspect to her he'd never known to look and see before she went away. Morgana squeezes his hand before using that anchor point to drag him off towards the seats which are more comfortable than they look.]
That was -
Magic, yes, you missed me climbing out of the tree earlier, I guess. You were doing your best rock impression while the Lantern was trying not to draw attention to you.
[Arthur rubbed his temples, sinking back into the seat. At least if the furniture came alive and ate him he wouldn't have to think about this longer.]
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First, she's not a captive. If anything, she looks very at home in Faerie. Second, while it's probably for the best to continue to keep his guard up, he came here for a job. That's to offer Arthur some kind of closure or next step. ]
You can just call me Josh. [ Might be best to dispense with formalities for now if he'd actually like to be referred to by his actual name instead of his title. ] The title really was just because this isn't my side of the tracks.
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Pleasure to meet you, Josh.
[Poor Arthur looks confused again, and realises whatever they had spoken of before he awoke apparently hadn't included an actual introduction, which earns Josh a quizzical squint with a gentle side of did-you-insult-my-sister that he doesn't actually speak.
He continues not to speak even when his eyes go back to Morgana. Part of him expected to find her as she had been, tall for her age but shorter than he would grow to be when he reached the same, her hair up in that too-tight braid she set it in every morning before school and looking after him. That perpetual look of tiredness about her eyes.
But here they were and she was fully grown, a woman now, maybe a few inches taller and much less exhausted. She was not trapped at age twelve, not hurt or killed. What could he even say to her? Come back to where life is boring and stressful and you've got to deal with society just to survive? Did she have friends here? Family? Was this heaven?]
You look lost, little cub. I do not know what to say and I think you do not know what to ask... is that so?
[He just nodded, leaning back into the embrace of her woven chair.]
Perhaps there is a lighter topic for now... like how did you talk your way in here without any fanfare?
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[ Allies seems like a stretch of a way to describe Fox and Rabbit. ]
And I've been aware of pathways into the Hedge for sometime now, so it was a matter of figuring out what to pay the gatekeeper.
[ Some things are universal. Guesting laws. Tithes. He'd approached stepping into Arcadia the way he would a Dead Dominion: with extreme caution and enough back-up plans to guarantee a return trip. ]
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You mean the man I saw you with? [Arthur asks, and Morgana nods but also shrugs a little as she's not entirely sure what Arthur had seen on that fateful day.]
Don't get your hackles up, he did what he did to protect me. He cares for me very much. He is kin.
arthur pls don't punch him he's just confirming shit
But it would make sense, now that he considers it. She's not Gentry, but if she were of Gentry-blood, then that would explain why she's able to wander without fear of being taken. ]
Quick question. [ Because he noticed it earlier but didn't think anything of it until now. ] We're on a border: fall and winter.
[ He nods to the line where the gold of autumn faded and transition into the crystal of snow. ]
You kept to this side when you were peering at Arthur earlier. Was that because permissions from the other court are required?
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[Faeries had a way of just popping up in her bloodline it seemed. It wouldn't actually shock her at this point if she had a whole host of cousins somehow in Autumn or Summer.] It is a fear-filled land, also, more prone to playing with that which haunts you most than Winter ever would.
I have lived here or in Spring but nowhere else, and I don't mean to try the other courts on for size.
[Arthur's frown grows so deep that it makes his forehead crease.
Then about a minute later, regardless of if anyone else is talking at the time.]
Wait, who is the fairy kin? They only took you so is it Gorlois?
Not my Da, no, but his kin. I cannot say if you have any in you, sorry. [After all, who could say with the way fairies fucked around and let other people find out.]
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He crosses over the border and into Winter, no sense standing on the other side of the fence given that safety's more likely to be true if he sticks with Morgana and Arthur. ]
That must be the reason the old ghost seemed particularly convinced that you were okay, for all that he still has a bone to pick with your stepdad.
[ Gorlois had been an interesting discovery the day he'd followed Arthur to the cemetery where a 12-year-old Morgana had presumably been laid to rest. The old(er) man had stood close to Josh, his ghost particularly lucid for a facsimile. But then some of the restless dead became that over the years. An entity of their own with some limited sense of agency instead of an echo of what had been left behind. ]
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[This, Arthur remembers. That look of pain that could become so intense on Morgana's features that he was tempted to flinch himself. He had never met the man, not even in a dream, at least nothing before all of this but he had seen him in a thousand ways Morgana was nothing like their mother or anyone else he had known growing up. She was more her father's daughter than she had ever been ygraines and it didn't take knowing the man to be sure of it.
Especially when she had that look on her face and she hadn't once asked after their mother, who, too, had never asked after her or considered Arthur might be speaking the truth.
Quickly he finds himself gently stroking patterns on her palm, to soothe and distract her.]
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Yes. He's still hanging around where, I assume, your mother had him buried.
[ The old ghost wasn't a Reaper, but it's telling that he was calling the shots and keeping the dead in line. He was also, if Josh was to take him on his word, capable of stepping away from where he'd been laid to rest to wander the Pendragon home. ]
He asked that I help Arthur. But yeah, was around.
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She did, father was unhappy about it, but she did.
Uther is unhappy about everything, up to and including the rotation of the earth. Strange though, given... everything. [The betrayals, the immediate moving on after his death - or before it, really. The fact she had stopped noticing Morgana was even a person as soon as Uther came around.]
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I... [ he pauses, purses his lips a little and then works out what it is he really wants to say. ] If you can travel out of here, I can arrange for you to speak with him.
[ He still has most of what they weren't able to use up for the Dumb Supper, Morgana not actually being dead and all. ]
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[Yet her desire to see her father does more than enough to cover any fear the idea brings her, she looks deep in thought even as Arthur's eyes grow more eager. Faerie seemed nice enough, for such a strangely fair and foul place, but to have Morgana home, amongst the living, somewhere he could always find her?
That, he couldn't let go of. Not now, not ever. He squeezes her hand, and though his knowledge of such things was hardly anything at all, he spoke with confidence.]
I am sure you will pass safely with us, Morgana. You say these people love you and they have no love of us yet we were safe enough.