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Arthur picks up the stone.
It hits him like a brick to the head. He doubles over, but—his fingers stiffen, clench. He can’t let go.
It claws up his spine, into his skull. It presses in, like fingers, like when Kayne— but it doesn’t… hurt, necessarily. There’s pressure. He thinks he can hear a distant whisper—or is that John? He can’t tell. His mind is cracking like the ice in Addison, and he sees—
He sees Parker, early in their acquaintance with each other. Parker’s miming a quick little one-two punch in front of him, and Arthur is doing his best to copy. Parker snorts. “You’re gonna break something if you do it like that,” Parker says. “Here.” He takes Arthur’s hand, folding it into a different kind of fist shape. “Can’t believe you don’t even know how to throw a punch,” Parker mutters. “You’ve never gotten in a fight? Never felt the urge to just— let loose on a coupla palookas?”
At the time, Arthur simply shook his head, shoving down the memory of scrapping with William. Now, he focuses more on Parker’s words.
Parker makes eye contact with him, a divergence from the memory. “It’s freeing,” he says. “Letting out all your… your anger, or fear, or whatever, with something as simple as that.” He punctuates his sentence with a little jab at Arthur’s chest. “You get it, don’t you?”
He does get it. A lot has happened since this memory, and—he doesn’t need Parker’s lessons anymore, does he? He’s punched and clawed and kicked his way through so much since then. He knows how it feels, when the terror falls away and the guilt hasn’t had a chance to rush in yet. He knows that feeling, and—he leans in.
He sees.
He feels a smile creep onto his face. He feels— he feels his grin widen, as the Blackstone’s power seeps into him and strangles his thoughts. The grin’s digging into his cheeks, tearing the flesh open, but— it feels so good. It feels so good. He can’t remember the last time he felt anything like this—even Kayne’s little preview of what it’d be like if he won his wager couldn’t compare.
“Arthur!” John yells. “Arthur, Goddammit—”
“I’m fine!” He replies through giggles. “I’m fine. Relax, John.”
There’s a pause. “You’re… fine?” John asks.
“Well.” Arthur is still laughing. “I’m still… I’m still me, I’d say.”
“You’re not— it didn’t affect you? I thought—”
“Oh! No,” Arthur says. “No, it most certainly did.”
“But you said—?”
Arthur shrugs. “Both can be true at once,” he says.
“Ehhhh,” Kayne says, rejoining the conversation. “I’m sure you feel that way now, but— what was it you just said a few minutes ago?” He turns his focus to John. “Which version of our buddy Arthur here do you trust more?”
Arthur would scowl if he weren’t too busy grinning. As it is, Kayne’s comment has only the briefest effect on his mood.
“But!” Kayne claps. “That’s not the point. How do you feel, Artie? Other than, well— ‘fine’ and ‘still you’, whatever those mean.”
Arthur remembers how the King had responded to that same question moments earlier. He wouldn’t say he’s hungry, but he can see how someone else might think of it that way. “Driven,” he decides. “Ecstatic.”
Kayne laughs. “There we go, Artie!” He steps closer, though he clearly still expects John to come at him with the lighter, since he stops before actually getting close. “Now. How would you like to bring that stone over and put it in the Obelisk, like I said?”
Arthur exhales with a laugh of his own, feeling crackles back down his skull, into his spine. They’re like little jolts of electricity, amping him up. “Maybe,” he says. He drops the stone, flexes his fingers. “But first… I’m going to tear you to shreds.”