Arthur shifted the branches in his arms so he could get a better grip on the pile and trudged back toward the hunting shack, humming under his breath. It was his third trip and it wouldn't be the last. The sun was high in the sky, sending rays down liberally, so there was no need to rush. It didn't get chilly until nightfall, around which time they would cook whatever kills Gareth pulled in. Arthur felt a little foolish that he had to be taught how to gut and skin game by his ten year old, but since Artie had never hunted and Arcturus had always eaten kills raw, he tasked Gareth with teaching him so he could contribute to the meal. Fuel collection, water hauling, and game-skinning fell to Arthur. Kay still wouldn't let him participate in the cooking process, insisting that even in the wild he'd oversalt everything, and they had only so much in the way of spices.
He smiled up at the naked, blue sky. The last few days had been the best he'd had in recent memory. Arthur had the sense that the longer they put off asking Gareth where the nearest town was, for supplies or cell reception, the longer they could preserve their little camping trip.
So when Kay needed a broom, Arthur took his mechanical knowledge and worked out a few natural prototypes. When Arthur couldn't stand the hard-as-earth bed, they beat pine boughs free of insects and stuffed the mattress full of needles. Kay's wrist healed quickly, so there was no need to seek a doctor. There was plenty of water in the well. A creek a few miles off plus a hard lump of soap scrounged from the cabinets made for a refreshing, if frigid, daily wash. Buying shoes wasn't strictly necessary, as Arthur and Kay wrapped their feet with blanket strips. Gareth opted to pad fox-foot whenever he left the shack, so footwear was no issue for him. At every turn, they tried to make do with what the shack and the surrounding area provided.
Granted, the shack itself was full of holes and Arthur wasn't too keen on putting weight on some of the floorboards, but given some time and practice with the rusty axe they'd uncovered in the stump behind the outhouse, surely he could fix the place up.
He shook his head, chuckling at himself. Best not get overconfident. He was a mechanic, not a carpenter, and he'd never touched home construction in his life. There was no way they could just… keep living here… he sighed.
If only.
He really owed Vivi and Lewis a call from whatever the nearest town was. He knew that. But he wasn't ready to even think about going back right now. Surely he deserved some unannounced leave, even in a crisis? Calling meant setting everything in motion, or agreeing to some deadline. The sun was warm, the well-water sweet, and the small game plentiful. The company sure didn't hurt, either. There was only so much Gareth would answer, but even sitting in companionable silence around the outside firepit under the stars nourished a deep crack in Arthur's heart.
And at night, Arthur would wipe his teeth on a piece of cloth and get into bed next to Kay, curling around her as she cradled a warm fox in her arms. There were no more nightmares, and every day he woke refreshed, embracing his family. Sometimes he wondered if this was a dream he'd willed himself into. He chose not to examine that thought too closely. Whether it was a dream or real, it was a good thing.
If he squinted, he could just make out the shack in the distance, about the size of a Lincoln Log house. Almost back. He'd bring in at least four more armfulls before nightfall. He'd probably have to figure out how to swing the axe soon, as he'd already hauled in most of the fallen branches and brush that could be collected from the surrounding area.
"YOU TOLD THEM WHAT?"
You pause, your head swiveling to the right. That voice sounds familiar. It carries over a distance, from closer to the shack.
"HOW COULD YOU!"
Arthur lit up. Ginny. Ginny had landed! He dropped the branches and sprinted in the direction of the voice, a grin stretching from ear to ear.
You have a daughter. A little girl. What will you say first? Hello, Ginny. Do you know Artie had your name picked out for ages before you were even a possibility? He couldn't resist. You are a Kingsmen, after all. There was even this dream—
"ALL THE FLAK YOU GAVE ME, AND YOU… YOU RUINED EVERYTHING!"
You falter some, slowing your step as you approach. You see them ahead. Ginny has her brother by the arms and shakes him. Her head blazes with green flame, like a verdant, writhing flower. Euphoria drains out of you.
"WHAT DID SHE SAY?" Ginny screams in his face. "WHAT DID SHE TELL US?"
Gareth tries to pull away, but can't seem to. You start forward again.
"SHE SAID BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU TALK ABOUT! WE DON'T KNOW HOW IT WORKS!" She shoves Gareth back and screeches, "IF HE'S STILL DYING WHEN WE GET BACK I'LL NEVER FORGIVE YOU!"
You stop breathing.
She leaps skyward, transforming with one graceful sweep of her arms into a small prairie hawk and soaring off. Gareth stares after her, his mouth hanging open like she's punched him.
You feel nothing. Yet.
You release the held breath, slowly, and pivot toward the shack. You see a rather still form in the doorway. Yellow hair. You pivot back. Gareth is staring at you, horrified.
It was nice while it lasted.
Artie shoved Arcturus down. As Gareth shifted to all fours, fleeing into the tall grass, Artie put his hands in his pockets, taking measured steps toward the shack, head down. Thinking.
We—
Nope. Just Artie. Just Artie thinking. Artie trudged toward the shack, eyes on his feet. On the grass parting around his steps.
An eternity later, when his toes knocked against the bottom porch step, he looked up. Kay was holding her own arms, shoulders hunched forward, eyes shut. Silent, Arthur mounted the steps and took her into his arms.
They stood like that as the sun dropped in the sky, casting an orange glow over the ground and a shadow over the shack. For a while, there was all the time in the world. Artie held his wife and kept thinking.
Finally, Kay lifted her face, her eyes hollow. "It hurts."
Artie swallowed. He lifted one hand to her face, wiping away the wetness he saw there.
"Can't we just… ask Hades, or… or Persephone..." she buried her face in his chest again. "This is already Persephone's answer, isn't it."
Artie shut his eyes, breathing slowly. You speak the words that need to be spoken, not the ones you want to say. "Kay, it is getting dark. We need to find them. Will you go after Gareth?"
She held on a moment longer. Arthur's nose stung from the scent of mourning. She rose up on her toes to kiss him, her body curving to press against his. His hands moved lower, splaying across her back to hold her there.
If only forever.
She pulled back, wiping a salty track off his face, and nodded shortly. "You may want to find something to plug your ears with. I think I know how to find him, but it will probably pull you off track."
Arthur nodded, turning to grab a couple strips of cloth. Dunking them in the water bucket, he twisted them up and wedged them into his ears. When he glanced up, Kay was already gone. The last rays of sunlight slipped behind the mountains. He returned his hands to his pockets and walked into the twilight.
Ten minutes later, the first few notes of Kay's call did exactly what she warned him. Arthur's feet swerved toward the source of the melody.
It is only the beauty of the song that you are attracted to. You force yourself to stop. To analyze and recognize the intent of the notes, muted as they filter through the modified earplugs. This call is not for you. It does not speak of you in any sense. It seeks someone that it does not know as well as you, but someone it wishes to know and understand.
Arthur took a deep breath and backtracked, returning to the path he'd begun walking. Not that he had any fixed destination in mind. Or any real path. In fact, it was pretty stupid of him to send Kay after Gareth instead of Ginny. The chances of Arthur finding a hawk on foot were admittedly slim. Why had he run off after Ginny, again?
Because he hadn't really met her yet. Not with this new understanding.
His mind wandered back to the fragments Lewis' eavesdropping deadbeat had caught. Ginny had been so anxious.
"What if she's lying and we can't save Dad?"
"We do what she said, and Dad will be okay. He'll live."
Had he really believed they were there to assassinate him to ransom some unknown parent? What a comedy of errors. He could just about cry.
When his vision blurred, he stopped to check himself. And, yes. It is the song again. The solo is now a duet. A second voice cries out to the soft, darkening sky. The singers have not found each other, but their voices twine in a mutual understanding. They share a mutual pain that pulls them together.
This pain constricts your own lungs, as if you are about to lose something most precious to you, something you have tried long and hard to hold onto. Fistfulls of golden feathers flash through your mind, and the smell of her blood, hot and coppery, overlaying the sea-salt smell...
Arthur's legs wobbled. He stomped his right leg hard, shaking his head with vicious force. Ginny. He had to find Ginny. Lying in a puddle of self pity and old memories wasn't going to find him his daughter.
He hiccupped a little, scrubbing his eyes with a sleeve. He just had to tell her the story about her name.
Anger, Artie. All this sorrow is going to render us unable to move, and twilight is fast becoming nightfall. So take this gift from me. Our anger. A potent blend, stored and aged like fine wine—
Artie scooped up a rock and hurled it as hard as he could. He didn't want anger. He didn't want sorrow. He'd drowned in them too long and for gods' sakes, he wasn't about to sink back into that morass! Hadn't they just come to an understanding that there wouldn't be any more wheel-spinning? What exactly was anger going to do for them?
Your chest heaves with this sorrow that isn't even yours as anger spikes, crawling the outline of your bones. If you will not accept these, then what?
That thought. So nearly familiar. Arthur's hands signed a similar lyric fragment as it ran through his head. There's a desert in my blood and a storm in your eyes.
He tilted his head back. The sky had deepened to purple. The first few stars were out. "First few" meant something completely different away from the city. It meant the sky was already spangled with the largest, most brilliant points of light and all recognizable constellations. Soon, utter darkness would fall, and the blank spaces between would be seeded with the smaller, softer-looking stars.
Am I the king of nothing at all?
Unexpectedly, the corners of his mouth curled up. He took a step forward. Then another, and the next came down like a military march. He touched his fingers to his lips, signing the words he wanted next to his mouth. Am I the king of nothing at all?
You are… stunned? Confused? In the midst of all this, you are asking if we can… sing a favorite song?
There. As darkness grew, so did contrast. By the bathing creek there was a point of light. Bright green. The dirge for Arthur's lost future filled the night while Ginny burned her rage, and this was not the way he wanted it. None of it.
Please, Arcturus. Sing with me. Speak with me. Do this together with me, and I'll show you why what we heard doesn't matter.
You used to sing before there was a you and a me. You grew cautious when the Peppers asked you not to do it around them, then stopped completely as you became closer with Kay. Before that, you and Lewis and Vivi used to mess around in Uncle Lance's garage, didn't you? You and Vivi took turns on the mic. Vivi was horrible, but it didn't matter because it was fun. Lewis refused. You never did get him to sing, so you would take the lead. You weren't amazing, but you weren't terrible either.
You plant your feet for a moment, take a deep breath, and shout into the night, "AM I THE KING OF NOTHING AT ALL?"
The lovely elegy is startled into silence. The green dot flickers for a second.
You do not allow the dirge to recover its momentum. You turn in the direction the music had come from, shouting, "THEN YOU'RE THE QUEEN OF NOTHING AT ALL!"
You spin around, marching toward the speck of green light. The next breath, and the next line, are more measured, flung out around you like a challenge. "But I remember the fight and I forget the pain, I got my hand in your pocket and my key in your chain. Am I the king of nothing at all?"
An eerie note breaks back in. It takes all of two seconds for you to recognize what is happening as you tear the earplugs out, discarding them. You can hardly believe it. Gareth is backing you up. You still haven't introduced Kay to enough good music, out in the safety of the cliffs. You probably haven't gotten around to Walk The Moon with her, but Gareth knows the tune and Gareth is sending it right back to you. And if he knows it, surely Ginny does too. Your face is wet with fresh tears, but not sorrowful ones. You let the music carry you on, onward to Ginny, as you continue filling the melody with the right words.
"And you're the queen of nothing at all! Oh, through the wilderness, you and I will walk into the emptiness."
Fresh strength flows into you as Kay's voice tentatively joins Gareth. Of course she will find it easy to pick up on the melody, even on first hearing. You cast a lightly glowing glamour, just enough to see the immediate area so you don't trip, and you pick up speed.
"Oh, and my heart is a mess. Is it the only defense against the wilderness?"
What a joke. You break off to laugh at yourself. The melody loops itself, waiting for you to rejoin. It hurts and it cleanses all at once as you catch your breath, latch onto the next musical bar, and cry, "Cross my heart, and hope to die! Taking this one step at a time! I got your back if you got mine. One foot in front of the other!"
And the twined voices swell to bursting behind you, and you cannot help yourself. Every step comes with a swing of an arm, or a twist of the hips, and you find that you are dancing your way to Ginny, singing, "One foot in front of the other!"
There. On this side of the little bathing creek. Perched in a low branch of a juvenile pine that has seen better days. Mostly because it is charred and smoldering. In its branches sits a little prairie hawk, wings bundled tight to its sides, wreathed in green flame.
The melody of the song continues, but the attention of it has turned away from you. Now, it is a means of two sirens coming to understand each other, though in a much lighter tone. You appreciate this key much more.
You cannot stop smiling. You sidle right up to the tree and offer the wrist of your prosthetic up to her talons, your face nearly splitting and your vision blurring. "All that we have is each other," you conclude, quietly, for her. "One foot in front of the other?"
She leaps off the branch, and you can see her body blurring and stretching as she shifts to human form mid-drop. You adjust to catch her, sweeping her into a spin and laughing. Laughing. Why are you laughing? You don't even know why, but Artie is laughing like his heart is whole and you cannot help but join in.
Ginny is still on fire, blazing and weeping all at once, fingers knotted into your oversized flannel shirt as her legs clamp around your waist. She's trying to get words out but there are too many tears in the way.
She, too, has a scent, now. It is also like Kay and like you, but there is more of the high, cold winds about her. Her scent nips at the nose with untold stories of soaring ever higher, trailing clouds behind her.
"All that we have is each other," you whisper.
And your feet can't seem to stop. You continue along the edge of the creek, your steps landing in semi-precarious ways as you cradle your flaming, weeping ten-year-old and dance. The melody that fills the air begins to fade, wending its way to the end, and your steps slow as well, until you are standing still at the edge of the creek. Where, now, are your words? What can you possibly say to this distraught child?
The words come to you, straight from Artie's heart. "You're smart, Ginny. You and Gareth are so very smart and strong and brave, but you don't understand what it is that you've already done for me. There is no way to stop what is happening when you left."
She drenches your shirt. Her wail muffles against your shoulder.
"There can't be," you say, savoring the words as Artie's understanding finally spreads to you, "because I wasn't even supposed to get that far. This was the end of the line, Ginny. I was a dead man the second I… the second I lured a monster into my body. It was just… a matter of time." You see it for a brief moment, the size of the gift you have been given. You regret haranguing Persephone behind her back, surely this is far greater repayment than you were owed.
"Without you here, Mother would have found me, wouldn't she? Found me, and unmade me. No body, no soul, no Arthur anywhere ever, and then no…" it is so hard to see with all this water in your eyes. "No Gareth, singing like that with his mother. No Ginny come to find me all the way in the past. No chance to see the living proof that I could never possibly be that monster to any kids I might have. Just, Arthur gone." Gone, and in unutterable torment during the unmaking process, but you keep that to yourself.
The flames on her dim, curling lower and closer to her body.
"Did I ever tell you about your name?" you ask. When she shakes her face into your shoulder, you squeeze her. "I had a very sad dream a long time ago. I dreamed that I was writing a letter to the little girl I thought I could have someday, but probably wouldn't get to. I called her Ginny, and when I woke up I was laughing, because I knew it was short for Guinevere, and then I couldn't NOT have that be the first pick name. Not in this family."
Ginny gives a little hiccup, the flames winding around her limbs and transmuting into an orange shirt. Cotton, by the texture, and a rough orange pair of shorts. Gareth wasn't joking, this kid knows how to glamour properly. With the gentle glow you cast, you can see a thin layer of yellow bristle all over the top of her head. You wonder what it will look like all grown out, how obvious a clue it would have been that they had to shave their heads in order to pull this off.
You kiss the top of her head. "I bet this wasn't just for me. I bet it was mostly for me, but this was all about you guys getting more time with me, right?"
She turns her face just enough to peek up. A flash of bottle green eyes shot with red.
"This right here is your 'more time with me,' Ginny. It's not all that you wanted, it's not all I would wish for, but it is some more time. All of us, together, knowing we're family." The corners of your eyes crinkle. "Dear old uncle Dib would give his eyeteeth for some of this time for all his questions, but he doesn't get it. It's just for us."
And finally she giggled, choking a little as she wiped snot and tears off her face. "He's gonna be so mad he's gotta wait so long to ask us questions."
"Oh, knowing him, he's probably going to be mad the whole time he has to play dumb. I mean, of course we have to tell him later. Kay and I will catch hel—flak. We'll catch flak for this whole fiasco, but you can't be told where you're headed until it happens. Gods," you giggle too, donking your forehead lightly against hers. "What a mess. Someone oughta teach you proper time travel etiquette."
She snorts a laugh. "You don't know anything about it, so I don't know anything about it, right?"
"Now you're getting it." You lift your head and eye her. "Anything else you're getting?"
She droops. "Gotta 'pologize to Gareth. Not his fault."
"Like I said. Smart."
She drops her head back to your shoulder. "Just a little longer?"
You squint in the direction you think the shack is from here. "It's a ways back to the shack, and who knows how long those two need to talk before they come back. We have plenty of time to ourselves." You set her down, then crouch, turning so your back is to her. Immediately she clambers up and clamps onto your back. You stand and start walking back to the shack.
"So. How do you feel about canned pork and beans this evening?"
Note: Chapter title and interwoven song lyrics from the triumph song of the fic, One Foot by Walk The Moon. Also, I know I tend toward doing April Fools' Day chapters, but I don't have the inspiration for one in me this year, so no need to brace yourselves. This is canon to the fic, and all upcoming chapters are as well.
