Swanson didn't like to remember his days with the gang.
He didn't like to remember the aching hunger that ate at him. At the days that blurred together into nothingness. When he would wake from his stupor in places he doesn't recognize, with people he doesn't know. The brunt of jokes he was too drugged up to register.
But he knew.
He knew.
He hated the sad regard they would give him.
He was a person.
A person.
Now he knows that they weren't equipped to help him. That they were barely holding on themselves.
He doesn't like to remember the times with them. It brought him too much sadness. He had pulled himself from the gutters as the gang crumbled around him. Each day he felt like he was waking from dream.
Each night he plunged deep into a nightmare.
One night he woke to cold sweat, body jittering from a sickness he could not name. He sat by the fire, hands wringing themselves raw as he watched it dance. A racking cough echoed from behind him and he watched Arthur's long legs step over the log, a half braided rope in his hand. They sat together in silence, the years they knew each other stretched between them. He thinks of all the times Arthur found him and took him back. Of his voice filtering through his mind as he fell away. He was no longer the man he remembered. They both weren't. Arthur's fingers worked quick and steady, braiding the thick strands together. When he reached the end, he unbraided it and starts over. Swanson watched as it came together again, the motions soothing in the repetition. When Arthur finishes, he unbraids it slow and hands it to Swanson. Swanson takes it, eyes traveling up to the Arthur's face. Quietly Arthur explains the motions, guiding his hand as he works through the braid. They work through it as the fire inches lower and lower, the horizon lightening. Swanson is half way through the braid when he realizes that Arthur is no longer beside him.
That had been the last he saw of him for a long while.
Sometimes- when he feels the gnawing hunger of drink or the want for the numbness the drugs gave him- he sits beside the fireplace, fingers braiding the rope in his hand. The one given to him so many years ago.
And he remembers.