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"Similar, I think, but not quite. A wraith, in fact, which sounds an awful lot like what you're describing than something I'd consider a ghost. Not necessarily violent until disturbed, but incredibly dangerous to mess with if you don't know any of that." With a light gesture at Hanna, more to the description he gave.

"We found one, a woman that had lost her baby, and had ended up kidnapping a second child to replace it, but- obviously that wasn't proving a solution. John and I helped release her from her torment, by- trapping her in an item of sentimental value, and making a deal with her for her freedom."

Edited 2025-01-24 06:10 (UTC)

Hanna smiles as he listens to the story, finding that a much kinder approach to what he's had to do a few times now. There aren't so many violent murders in his town, but enough to have seen the results of quite a few of them since he started working he investigator gig at seventeen. "I knew a couple, Dolly and Grant back when I was still in high school. Grant taught my middle school history class. He was the best teacher I ever had, honestly." It feels easier talking about them like this, like he had with Sheehan before he'd admitted who they were to him.

"I'd stop by sometimes, small enough town that it wasn't weird. Except one day they didn't answer the door, but it was unlocked, left ajar, which I mean, it was a nice enough house in a less than nice area in town. Struck me as weird, you know?" His arms tighten around his knees, "So I go in, and I've got a marker in my pocket. I'd started learning magic from this weird, drunk guy Sophomore year, traded my lunch money so he could buy beer at the corner store. He'd only just skipped town, but I didn't have a cellphone, so a sharpie is like, next best thing." A short breath, staring down at his feet, the one still settled under Arthur's knee.

"I knew the phone was in the kitchen, so that's where I went. At the very least it was like, breaking and entering, right? But when I ran in, I slipped on the blood on the floor, and there they were." He swallows, "Unfortunately, I do remember exactly how it feels to be possessed."

Edited 2025-01-24 06:29 (UTC)

"Jesus..."

There's not much he feels the need to qualify that with, nor to push Hanna. He's started now, and momentum goes a long way with stories like that.

A favourite teacher might have made sense, in context, but with Hanna's issues already about losing people, it didn't quite sit right, in Arthur's naturally suspicious mind.

But all he does is shift, lifting an arm to rest his hand on Hanna's back, his thumb idly rubbing the skinny man's spine. "I'm sorry, Hanna. I know how horrible it is to walk in on something like that."

He shrugs to hide the fact that the touch originally made him flinch, "It's...fine." He manages softly, "A-anyways, possession like that, you get lost in your own head, like a labyrinth of doors. I have a spell for that, guidance. It leads you to the center, where the ghost will be, and if you talk to them enough, convince them? They'll let you go."

Which was difficult to do certainly when in some disconnected way, he could feel what she was using his hands to do. "They're...different when you find them, more rational, but confused. A lot of them don't accept that they're dead, but...I don't blame her, for what she did."

He takes another deep breath, "She didn't want to leave me behind, so...the logical solution was to take me with. All I had to do was die."

Arthur goes still, frowning and tense.

No matter how much a teacher might love their student, that was still targeted. Too personal, for a random unlucky student to have walked in on. The difference between the fear of dying alone and the fear of leaving someone behind in doing so was that one was far more involved. Even including how being dead would change the person's values to some degree...

"Hanna..." He doesn't want to push, but there's only so many ways to ask. "Who was Dolly?"

Because it's not like he doesn't suspect, now.

Edited 2025-01-24 07:17 (UTC)

He turns his head, burying his face in his sharp knees and thin arms so that he can try and keep his breathing slow and measured, pretend that Arthur isn't there even as he's touching his back. He hadn't had the courage to tell Taylor, he'd just slipped the redacted part of his file into her hands and left it at that the last time he'd seen her. He hasn't asked her if she'd read it yet.

But the thing about learning to trust people with the parts of you you'd prefer to hide is that it's still terrifying to say them out loud. Arthur won't get up and walk away without a word when he next opens his mouth, Sheehan hadn't, it would be ridiculous if he did after what he'd shared earlier, but that doesn't make it any easier.

"Dolores 'Dolly' Cross."

There's a soft gasp from Arthur's throat, an aborted noise of sympathy.

He can certainly guess the rest.

The hand on Hanna's back shifts, slow and predictable to reach his other shoulder, the other resting loose on Hanna's calf, and Arthur pulls him in for a tight side hug.

"I'm so sorry, Hanna." And there is grief in his voice, real and weighty and threatening to crack his calm demeanor.

While Hanna has certainly had issues with derealization, the kind of disassociating he's experiencing now is far less common. The muted pull of Arthur as if he was three degrees separated from himself is jarring, but his own reactions seem to slow as if he's moving through water, his head hitting Arthur's side, and ever so gently leans in.

"It's been almost a decade," he says softly, "I'm-" A breath, "fine."

He only has to shift a little, to rest his jaw on Hanna's curls, to tuck the younger man against him.

"It's been twenty-five years for me," he says quietly. Barely more than a murmur in Hanna's ear. "But it never quite stops the sting."

Edited 2025-01-24 08:24 (UTC)

Arthur has a good seven inches on him, Hanna tucks in easily, and while it takes him a moment, he does fine a space there, turning easily enough to press his face into his side.

He catches what he says, there is some curiosity there, but he can feel how thin Arthur is, and he just gently nods against his side. Horrible things and experiences had left them both rather fragile, but they had survived. He'll leave the question of who he'd lost for another time.

"I'm sorry." He starts, quietly, "for...being a little shit this month." December is always hard, and then Alan disappeared, David and Edwin following shortly after, Sokie assuring him that the Lester pair and John had one foot out the door.

"I always visit in December. Couldn't this year, it- It threw me off."

He just hums in quiet understanding.

"March," he replies, simply and quietly. It's not the same anniversary, he's not sure he could even say his parents' funeral date. But this one was more important anyway. "Since I've been on the Barge, though, it's been a breach every time the anniversary happened."

Though with the breach happening soon, he's worried about this March, now.

"Mmm...spend the time believing you're someone else. I'm sure that's fun when it's over." his tone is flat, sure that he would have a fucking fit if the next December keeps him from going home.

"Do...people ever think you're crazy, Arthur? Running around doing the shit you do...it really doesn't help the public perception, does it?"

That gets a soft laugh that hums in both of their hollow ribcages.

"Ah, well. In my world people don't realise it's all real until it's too late, so. A-a few people, yes." He sighs quietly. "Charlie was one of the ones who'd already been introduced to it all, somewhat forcefully. He's probably the only person back home who knows about John. Everyone else, I knew would put us in an asylum."

Hanna usually does laugh about it, but that can be so isolating and coming off the previous topic he isn't sure he feels like laughing at the moment. He doesn't mind it, just feels awkward, "I had to stop talking about it, for a while. Everyone gave up on me when I couldn't let my 'avoidant delusions' go and 'face reality'." People think you're crazy when you can't stop talking about your ghost parents following a double murder and he hadn't wanted to get shut up somewhere he couldn't get out. Eventually he toned down the volume and length of what he'd say publicly, he seemed far less of the bad kind of crazy and more harmless then, it had taken him a year to find the happy medium.

"Thankfully anything close to an asylum we had in 2001 isn't quite so bad as they were in the thirties, but I don't really like shrinks so my 'crazy' got a little less so for a while until it stopped being interesting to talk about behind my back."

He hums softly. "I didn't particularly feel like testing the efficacy of shock therapy on removing mad gods. Especially since we didn't even fully know what John was until we were up against the King himself."

It's definitely straying from the topic at hand, but Hanna could probably use the respite. "That was actually when we arrived on the Barge for the first time. Right after the King tried to take John, but he couldn't without destroying me, which would have done the same to John."

Hanna doesn't mind the topic shift. In fact, he's sure if he kept trying to get himself to talk more, he'd end up circling back around and freak out at Arthur in some random, stupid way, and he'd prefer not to do that.

"You left for a bit, John didn't, right?" He isn't exactly sure of that timeline. "How'd you separate yourselves anyways? Did the Admiral do that?"

"We've always been capable of physically separating," he corrects mildly. "But that's not the same as doing so safely. John never had a body to anchor him to the human world, so if we did he'd go straight back to the Dark World - to Hell, essentially."

His grip loosens on Hanna a little, just so he can idly rub his shoulder. "I used my first deal to get John his own body, so that we could separate. Not that that disentangled us, we're still connected in a very literal way. Which became a problem when I vanished from the Barge." It's easy to say it casually now, but he's sure it'll horrify Hanna. "John was dragged with me. So while he remembered our time on the Barge and everything we learned here... I didn't."

"Oh...huh. I guess that's what I meant, he'd have nowhere to go if he did." But that's definitely a little different than what he imagined. He wouldn't call John a parasite, but he was definitely still attached.

He frowns, trying to figure out exactly how that would work, "Wait-" He wants to get it right in his mind before he tries to wrap his head around how that probably affected the both of them. Memory and the shape of it, losing and gaining was always a hard subject to the affected and those around them. "How long were you gone for? I mean, time is fucked, but like, here versus home? And when you say dragged...uh, his mind went with you and his form didn't?"

He gives a brief hum of acknowledgement. "It might be easier to think of John as renting space in our reality. He's not a being that naturally belongs here, so he need somewhere to live. And without his new body, he was dragged back into mine, so we were still together back home. I was still blind."

He shrugs a shoulder idly. "Thanks to memories we got from a very early flood, we knew that we were supposed to be home for- perhaps three months and change. Thanks to John remembering that where I didn't, we were only gone for a little over one month. And... we got separated by the King, somewhat forcibly. After which I came back to the Barge briefly, but I was only here briefly before I- went back, our bond does work ways, but... it went poorly, basically. We both came back to the Barge at around the same time, independently. We were only gone for a week here, overall."

Edited 2025-01-26 09:57 (UTC)

Splitting him without his body, instant deportation. He gets it, "And I'm sure that was fucking jarring when he remembered having his own form, and you didn't."

The back and forth of that sounds complicated, Hanna staring down at his own knees, thinking about it. A month is long enough for a whole bunch of shit to happen. Hell, if he could go back home just a few hours before what actually happened, knowing what was supposed to? He could fix so much shit, or at least get a better outcome.

"Apparently, my buddy Conrad died shortly after I did, like minutes and hours after. I met him on the Narrenschiff." He was supposed to be waiting outside still, "Now that I know, I think I might be able to fix it without much at all, depending on when I end up when I have the chance to. That knowledge must have really saved your ass. Did you believe him when he said he knew, or...was that a bit of a fight? That shit can get really complicated."

"Admittedly it took John some time to convince me, and not for lack of trying. At that point in our time together he had... damaged some trust between us - we had just learned he was a piece of the King in Yellow, and had gotten tricked into going through with a ritual that was supposed to join John back to the King. It didn't work, John was too different, but the King still dragged us into the Dreamlands to try and separate us by force."

He lifts the arm not looped around Hanna to fuss with his hair again. "In all honesty, nearly that entire month was spent in the King's prison. We were only actually travelling there for a few days, a-and after we got separated I was with Edwin, ah- h-he was called Yellow then, for a couple more."

"And I'm guessing that those Dreamlands are nothing like Kirby's." That'd be kind of funny, but he's thinking probably not. Though with that in mind, he wishes he still had a gameboy...he now has an itch to play some Kirby pinball.

Not letting himself get distracted though, he nods, finding his curiosity piqued by each little piece of information Arthur mentions. "Do...do you mind talking about what happened there? I mean, spending a month in a prison created by an entity like that, must have really fucking sucked..."

In the version that they lived through, rather than the memories they got from the flood, that he knows are real in some way thanks especially to Edwin and Charlie?

"Honestly, compared to everything else of the King's, his prison was... relatively unremarkable. Just a series of- giant holes in the ground, maybe fifteen feet deep, sixty paces around the wall." Because distance was harder to measure when you couldn't see, but depth was easy to try and reach. He gives a hum. "You know, I don't even remember getting put in there? The King was trying to get into my head at that point, trying to get me to let go of John, o-or just break me. But since I refused, he left us there to rot. To try and win by a war of attrition."

"Why is there always just some stupid hole you're supposed to rot in? You'd think they'd think of something else. No one is original any more." Whether it's in his own mind, lost in a series of doors that might as well be a pit or a literal pit of a prison.

Hanna can't help but crack a smile, thinking of the look on the King's face if he even had one. Perhaps he had a tone that gave it away. "It is funny though... I bet he was pissed, skinny little man like you giving him the finger. Arthur Fucking Lester and his balls of steel."

"Ah-" and he gives an awkward chuckle. "Well, less skinny before. Part of it did involve trying to starve me out. When breaking my mind didn't work, he tried my body instead."

He rubs his thigh, a little above his knee. "And when trying to wear me down slowly didn't work, since John and I broke out after a month regardless, he lost patience and tried to do it more... quickly." A tight smile, more of a grimace as he huffs. "Broke my leg in three places before John was forced to agree to leave me, before anything worse."

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