Act IV: Arthur's Saving Grace
Arthur sprinted as fast as he could out of Sally's home, trying desperately to think of where the closest hatch was. His gimp leg was not helping, and he hurriedly popped a Phlash in hopes it would help speed him up.
The sound of a chainsaw revved behind him, close enough that he could feel the air tearing and heating behind him, the hungered bay of a starved hell hound. Heart racing, Arthur tried putting his full weight on his injured leg, pushing off and prepared to run faster than the demons chasing him.
This proved to be a mistake.
The pain seared through him, a sort of snap that sent him tumbling to the ground.
Not one of my better ideas, as it turns out. Ow.
He worked to peel himself from the ground, when a rush of noise grated into his ears and dear god he was going to be filleted! Arms pushed him back to the ground, his cheek smashing into the concrete and nearly denting his glasses. Blood seeped into his mouth from his freshly injured cheek, and he struggled to free himself, heart hammering in his chest, please, no, please, no, the blades were coming closer he could feel them—
"No, no, put that thing away," the nasally voice growled, and blessedly, the revving of the motor quieted down to a soft, rumbling purr. Arthur allowed himself a small breath of relief, or what he could manage with the weight of two men pressing down on him.
"You'd just make a mess, anyways, and I just had this cleaned."
Good to know the dry cleaning ranks above my life for them.
"Fine. But what do you want to do?"
"Hm, I have an idea regarding this particular Downer," there was a curious edge to the voice, the weight shifting slightly. "Nobody will blink an eye if we took it upon ourselves to provide a new form of Joy therapy to this poor soul, would they?"
"I don't believe they would, doctor Vandemar," the other voice sounded pleased.
A sharp, burning pain not unlike the sting of a particularly angry bee jabbed into his neck. Arthur twitched away as something swept into his system, and it wasn't a moment more when everything went dark.
A jolt of pain, and Arthur wakes up in a flash, heart racing and completely blind. He heard a shuffling of movement, and a low mutter of, "Ah, yes, so he awakens."
Attempting to move, he found his arms were bound by what felt like shackles, his face covered in a thick cloth. Breath hitching, Arthur yanked at his arms, desperately trying to free himself.
"Ah, ah, aaah, Mr. Hastings. Wouldn't want to get your heart rate up, would we?" a voice reprimanded close to his ear. Arthur stiffened, and listened as the voice moved around him, accompanied by the thumping of boots.
" We've heard about your, mm, run-ins with the innocent, wonderful Wellies out and about Wellington Wells. Accounts of a thief stealing all manners of items, practically taking everything that's not nailed down."
A loud, extreme squeak startled Arthur so badly that he flung himself backwards in the chair, banging his head against the metal. Pain shot up the back of his head, and he couldn't restrain a whine.
"Twenty rubber ducks, Mr. Hastings. Really," the voice sneered, the apparent rubber duck giving a gasping squeak as he released his grip. "You'd think they were a precious commodity, akin to gold. That's not even counting the numerous other interesting things we've found in your inventory. Histoplasma mushrooms, phenocyline syringes, a rubber catsuit..."
As the voice quieted, so did the pacing. Hands slammed onto his shoulders, and the voice hissed in his ear, "I know you can talk, damn you. Tell us why you've developed a kleptomaniac obsession, and you may earn yourself a few extra minutes before we administer a new brand of Joy. Coconut, I believe. Trust me when I say we know what Joy does to Downers."
Arthur licked his lips, coughed slightly, and revved the engines of his bullshitting mobile.
"Oh, Arthur. The places you're making me see today," Sally breathed under her breath, eyeing the huge, cement building looming over her. If only he'd managed to get away, or sneak out on his own, but considering the state he'd probably be in...
A deep breath did little to calm her fluttering heart, beating in her chest in time to the frantic thoughts racing through her head. She checked again on her supplies; yes, she still had enough atomizer to down several men, but a whole hoard would be another story. She had to play this carefully, and if it came to it, her charm would have to see her through.
The doors to the Wellington Health Institute opened upon her cautious push. The sound of rushing water greeted her, a large set of stairs leading up to a landing rife with bobbies decked out in red, though the doctors who were supposed to be here were oddly absent. One wrong step could end up with her in the their clutches, and she did not like her chances
"Attention attendees, the keynote dissection and luncheon will be starting in the operating theatre in five minutes."
Well, that explains where the doctors are. I wonder if they're making poor Arthur the main attraction.
Trying not to think that this could be a lost cause that ends up with them both dead, Sally swallowed her fear and crept forward.
It's likely they do have Arthur upstairs...if they're all crowding the elevator, I have to—
"Good evening, ma'am," the deep voice made her jump. "Or maybe it's morning? Can't quite tell in here, what with the lack of windows."
"Y-yes, definitely a good afternoon to you, too!" Sally replied, trying to ease her way past the bobby.
"Awful odd of you, tryin' to sneak around like as such," the bobby sniffed, tapping his baton meaningfully.
"Oh, no, sorry, I'm, I—" Come on, Sal, think! "I'm trying to keep a low profile to, er, surprise Doctor Vandemar!"
"What? What kind of surprise?"
"A birthday present!" Sally hoped her strained laugh registered as excited, and not, well, panicked and terrified. "I've got a present for him, and I mean to place it on his desk as a surprise. It wouldn't do for him to know I'm here, would it? It would completely spoil what I've got planned."
"Right, right," the bobby bobbed his head in agreement. "Too right. Well, I can help you deliver if you'd like, ma'am, and I can show you right where his desk is, too."
"That's quite alright," Sally waved her hand. "If you'll just show me the elevator, I ought to be able to find him on my own. He always has this, ah, distinct smell to him, so finding his desk will be no trouble for me."
"Too right, ma'am. You'd be doin' us all a favor if you got him a nice bottle of the perfume," the bobby laughed, waving her onwards.
Sally let out a small sigh as she followed him to the elevator. She wasn't about to look this gift horse in the mouth, and trotted after the bobby, all smiles.
"I can't believe no one knew it's his birthday today," she chatted animatedly. "He's such a hard-working man, you know, really likes to get his elbows into the grease of things."
"You sound like quite the admirer," the bobby mused, as they reached the elevator door. "How is it you know Doctor Vandemar, exactly? He's never mentioned you before."
"You know how it is," Sally, squeezing past the bobby and into the elevator. She jabbed the second floor button repeatedly, smiling broadly at the bobby. "That's just how it is nowadays. Good friends forgetting one another."
The elevator doors closed, and she sighed. Her relief was temporary as the elevator inched up to floor two.
What's my plan here, Sal? Go in, pretend everything's all fine and dandy, then douse the whole lot of them in Atomizer?
Nibbling at a fingernail, the ding of the elevator arriving at its destination had her standing straight in attention. The hallway that opened before her was...mostly barren, a few doors leading into smaller rooms. The tang of antiseptic singed at her nose, and she sniffed, easing into the hallway.
No doctors is a good thing, right? Then why do I have this very ominous feeling crawling up my spine..
Silence, as she moved forward. The sterile environment, the lack of any presence, all of it felt incredibly eerie and out of place. She wished, then, that she could be out and gone, sailing away as fast as she could with Gwen and Arthur in tow.
A low murmuring reached her ears, not dissimilar to the sound of someone trying to keep an audience engaged...wait.
Following the sounds of the murmurs, Sally came upon a door, blessed with a small window she could peer through. What greeted her was a wondrous, hilarious, and perhaps horrifying one.
It was a theatre room, the one intended for dissection. A group of doctors were milling around in a crowd, riveted to something in the center. The throng of trench coat wearing terrors shifted, and for a moment, there he was. Arthur, held by the two doctors that had stalked them relentlessly, proceeding to...talk.
"Y-you should have seen the weird things they have going on in that house! Ghosts are real, I swear by it, every time I would turn around, the things would, they would be moved, changed, or even whirling about!"
"Fascinating. And you said you had to 'partake of the mysteries' before even entering the house, is that right?"
"W-well, yes, but that doesn't begin to explain how everything was moved when the only person there was me. It's downright unfathomable!"
"What was that about the yam god?"
"Ah, a fellow man of the yam, is it?" Arthur's tone was one that would be reserved for gently ribbing a close friend. "The golden yam is one respectable, otherworldly being you should always pay your respects to. For instance, I became one with the horse, though that doesn't quite explain how I ended up becoming quite so lame, aha."
There was a small chuckle from one of the doctors, then one of the ones holding him coughed and announced to the group, "Well, we'll let you all know how the coconut joy test proceeds. Be sure to thank our dear downer volunteer here for his lengthy lecture, so we best understand his mindset prior to injection."
There were murmurs of half-hearted thanks, one even saying solemnly, "It's all in the name of science, dear boy."
Then, dragging Arthur between them, the two doctors made their way to the door—directly towards Sally. She scurried back, glancing for a place to hide and coming up short. They were headed to the elevator, right, up to the testing floor, and...
If she could get to the elevator before them, she might just get the surprise on them. Sprinting in heels is a feat in coordination and grace that Sally put on to best effect, clicking her way back to the elevator and praying that she would be neither heard nor spotted. Some god, yam or otherwise, must have heard her as she squeezed into the elevator and jabbed at the "close door" button, fumbling in her coat for the atomizer and pulling it out just in time for the door to slide back open.
"Say 'ah!'" Sally cheered, and with a puff of atomizer, each doctor collapsed in a heap, unfortunately on top of Arthur, who let out a muffled "oof".
"Sorry about that, dear," Sally murmured, tugging at the rather hefty doctors as Arthur struggled to push them off.
"No, nah, d-don't even think anything of it," Arthur replied, reaching up to take her hand. With a heave, she pulled him to his feet, but it seemed the wound on his leg hadn't quite healed; he staggered, catching himself on her shoulder, and putting their faces awfully close.
Deep brown eyes stared at her, a dusting of red just visible below them. He cleared his throat and pulled back, moving his hand to stabilize himself on the railing in the elevator.
"Y-you...came to rescue me," his voice was soft, almost puzzled.
"No, you've got it all wrong," Sally preened, closing the elevator door and moving to strip a trench coat from one of the doctors. "I've actually arrived to steal away the world's most talkative downer. I didn't know you'd gotten up to quite so many misadventures," she raised an eyebrow at Arthur, who rubbed the back of his head sheepishly as he put on the coat and hat.
"You heard that...?"
"You'll have those doctors talking for months, I'm sure. Or at least as long as they can remember it. Here, grab hold of him with me, will you?"
She hefted one doctor Vandemar up, Arthur struggling but managing to hold some of his dead weight.
"The story is, we've just celebrated Vandemar's birthday, and oh, our time got a bit too merry, didn't it?" she grinned, shaking the doctor and winking at Arthur, who laughed.
"You always did have a way with tales, you know."
"Yet you were the one who managed the writing gig, mm? I never could manage to remember all those little writer's rules you prided yourself on."
"Hey, those are important for legibility! I always thought you refused to capitalize words just to vex me."
"I've always said I don't have time for it, you know, and all doctors' handwriting needs to be atrocious, anyways. It's one of those unwritten rules people never tell you about," Sally huffed, leaning into her pretend indignation, then added slyly, "And I did it to vex you, too."
Arthur shook his head, reaching over to press the button for the first floor. They lapsed into a mostly comfortable silence, fraught with only light tension at the prospect of moving through the lobby while holding a doctor.
"I missed this."
Sally could barely hear Arthur's voice through the nervous buzzing in her own head, and when she turned to him to ask for clarification, the door opened with a "ding". The red bobby she'd convinced earlier stood at attention.
"Hello, miss, how did the—"
"Ooooh, we've had a fine 'n' dandy time of it, haven't we, doctor Croup?" Sally put on her best drunken impression, swaying forward and nearly toppling Arthur in the process.
"Y-yes," somehow, Arthur managed to hiccup. "What a wonderful party we've 'ad. Wouldn't have missed it for the world, no, no!"
"I think I have an idea on what that surprise was, miss," the bobby sounded amused, if somewhat miffed. Thinking quickly, Sally reached into her bag and pulled out a small canteen of scotch, offering it to the man.
"Why not join us?" she let her head flop to her shoulder, continuing to stagger forward towards the door.
"Don't mind if I do," she could practically hear the bobby lick his lips as he took a mighty swig from the canteen. A moment or two later, he muttered, "Tha's hittin' a lil dif'rent," before collapsing to the floor.
"He's not...dead, right?"
"I think he'd prefer that when he wakes up. Come on, we're nearly there."
Despite her worries and fears that they would be caught unawares while carrying the world's heaviest dead weight, they managed to limp towards the exit without further incident. Sally did worry if they'd spent all of their luck in one day, because everything had lined up near perfectly.
Remember, Sal. Gift horses!
They dropped the doctor near enough to the entrance and beat a hasty retreat, hampered only by her damn heels and Arthur's broken leg. Expectation ran through them, like the chord of a violin being strung over and over, and Sally was certain they'd soon hear the sound of alarms, of feet pounding after them, intent on stringing them up and killing them.
Which would also mean Gwen—no, no, don't go there.
It wasn't until they made it to the nearest hatch, until they'd stumbled down the ladder and had locked the door behind him, it wasn't until their feet had touched the floor and there was no one around that they both collapsed to the floor, exhausted, spent, and tired. Sally could feel her hands shaking, but she was too strained to even open her eyes an inch to see how Arthur was doing.
Arthur, for his part, took a shaky breath, and in a shakier tone said, "I—god, Sal, I don't know how I can repay you."
"You saved Gwen's life," she laughed, opening her eyes to look over at Arthur. "I should be saying the same thing to you."
Arthur smiled, though it didn't reach his eyes. He shuffled away from her, tentatively stretching out his injured leg and hissing through his teeth at the pain.
"You shouldn't—"
"Why'd you do it?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"Why'd you..w-with my dad, of all people," there was a bite behind his words, there, and Sally groaned.
"Do we really have to do this now?"
Arthur stared, no, glared at her, and Sally felt a small part of her wither.
How long have you hated me, Arthur?
"It was—" She hated this. "I didn't..." she took a breath, steeling herself.
"I needed a place to stay. Your father, Mr. Hastings himself, offered me a roof over my head after my mother, well. But he," she swallowed, and felt very small as she murmured, "he didn't offer it for free, and I didn't realize I could say 'no'."
Arthur's journey of expressions, from anger, to shock, to horror would have been comical in any other situation. A hand went to cover his face as he gasped.
"God, I—I never—Sal, I'm so sorry, I just, I didn't even think—"
"You didn't," Sally's laugh was bitter as she got to her feet. "No, you didn't stop to wonder how the girl with boys hounding after her could ever be anything less than a—"
"Sally, wait," Arthur struggled to his feet, reaching out to her. "I think I've been a fool, no, worse, I've been a right arse about this, from the beginning. I think I..." he trailed off, looking lost for a moment. "I was blinded, back then, and I let that ruin us. It's been rotting in the back of my head for years, now, and I think it's time I let that go," his smile was wan, and she could see sweat pearling on his skin. "The misplaced anger of an idiot boy who couldn't see what was really going on feels all rather foolish, doesn't it. I think we're allowed to grow up a little, and I wish...I wish things could've gone differently."
Sally laughed, and shook her head.
"I think we can, make the go differently. Hell, we're both trying to change, to leave, and that says a lot about the both of us. But," she tilted her head to the side, her brows pinching together, "did you really have to bring this up now, of all times?"
"I," Arthur cleared his throat, opened his mouth, then went silent again. A small, nervous laugh, and he murmured, "I had a whole speech prepared and everything."
"You and your speeches!" Sally laughed, reaching over to bop him on the shoulder. "Remember that one you gave as D'Artagnan, supreme duelist and leader of the Musketeers?"
"No, no, that one's gone quite foggy," Arthur scratched his chin, a twinkle in his eye. "Can't say I recall a single word."
"Maybe I can jog your memory," Sally cleared her throat, stepping ahead and opening the door to the tunnels. "Dearest residents and fellow ne'er-do-well, we shan't vanquish our foe without proper plans and," she smirked, "running amok. Our foe, the doddering fools of Wellington Wells, haven't seen the likes of our genius! We'll," she paused, "we'll take their boots and kick their own tushes with them."
"Ha! You don't even remember the right words," Arthur continued in a grave tone, "We shall present their posteriors to our glorious swords of words, and thrash them a'fore they have yet a chance to think."
"That's it, posterior," Sally laughed. "You were always looking to use every word you could scrounge from the dictionary, weren't you?"
"And proud of it," Arthur's magnificent nose went up with said pride, and he nodded.
Sally shook her head, at the memory, and at this present moment. The past seventeen years had been such turmoil, and it felt like, even for this moment, even if a part of her still felt she hadn't earned it, she had a single drop of joy.