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The world does not end in fire. It is not some sudden explosion finally going off, or some singular human error to look back on and blame. No one hears about it before it happens, because everything doesn’t end; it all just slowly… starts to stop. The sun gets a little shyer, the clouds more common - and temperature averages do not fluctuate wildly. No, it simply gets colder by degrees, more and more year by year until what once was peculiar simply becomes ordinary.
Quietly, the cold creeps in. It settles. It does not go away.
It gets harder and harder to sustain anything past dead trees and wilted grass. The horror of starvation becomes real, yes, but it also becomes too common; people’s eyes slide off of human corpses collapsed in the snow, arms outstretched for just one more mile before having found their sleep.
The homeless carry on. The rich in money die. The ones rich in other ways sometimes survive, if they know how to learn.
Arthur sits in the kitchen at the table, hands cradling a cup of tea. The last sachet of earl grey left in the cabinets from years of Parker carelessly buying too much at the store.
He feels, surreally - when he sits and listens to the world - as if he’s gone deaf. No chatter in the hallways between apartments. No early morning greetings or hurried goodbyes between strangers in the streets. No sound of lighthearted playfighting as children rush to the bus stop.
No Parker here to say, “Time for breakfast, English! Put away those papers before you keel over, won’t you?”
There is nothing left. It’s all gone now, even that damned book.
“Arthur.”
A hand gently lays itself over his own.
“John,” he says, and he cannot hide his relief or his grief. “John,” he gasps, eyes wet with all the things he never knew he was supposed to remember.
“One day. Our life together lasted one day, and now - ! Now, it’s,” Arthur lays his head over their clasped hands, to hell with the tea, he’s trying so hard to hold on, “we were too late.” He sobs, he breaks, he hits rock bottom all over again.
When will it ever be enough for the world to give them peace? Why now, when they’d just returned, just prevailed against the odds, does it all turn back around again?
They really had thought it was over. They’d returned to Arkham victorious heroes having saved the world, having saved each other. They’d laughed and celebrated and made plans - so many dreams of gardens, of a cottage by the woods, of the two of them living quietly. Where is the justice in this, the - the fairness? They earned it. They fucking earned it, and now it’s gone. They’ve lost again, but this time he doesn’t know how to win it back.
Thirteen years. What felt like days to the two of them was over a decade. They didn’t even question the abandoned apartment or how dusty everything was, too tired and delirious over the circumstances.
Thirteen fucking years.
“Breathe, Arthur,” John’s voice is firm as he lifts their hands to the body’s chest. “Follow our heart,” he says, and begins counting the beats. Fast, too fast, out of rhythm, Arthur quickly gets them back in order if for no other reason than to make it sound right.
The mantle of John’s cloak tightens around him, light and dark and real. It stills the shivers in their hands. It warms the blood in the body, long frozen over. It touches him, John touches him, and oh -
Arthur smiles, something shaky but sincere. “There you are, friend.”
“Here I am,” echoes back, their ever familiar call and refrain. It soothes him simply to hear it.
For just that one moment, Arthur is whole again.
But the absence of something leaves echoes too - birdsong, running water, the hum of appliances. Branches breaking under the weight of snow, ice cracking as shovels start to dig. The beeping of a fire alarm left with no reply.
He wonders what else he’d missed. New inventions, poetry, wars? Something to explain the state of it all. To blame for the chill that won’t leave his bones.
“Arthur, you need to eat. Just - something, at least.”
“Nothing here but dead mice and dust, I’m afraid.”
“I know, I just…” John’s voice trails off on a sigh. He feels - somewhere between Arthur’s head and eyes - worried. “We should leave.”
“And go where?” Perhaps he says it a bit too sharply.
“Anywhere that isn’t here! Where there’s food and we can fucking figure out what’s going on!”
Their emotions tend to bleed into each other if they’re not careful. And it can be awful, but it can be wonderful too. Arthur softens then, as he feels what John feels.
“Oh, John, I… I’m sorry.” He takes John’s hand and presses a chaste kiss to the back of it. He turns his cheek into it, and feels himself being held. His eyes close as he breathes out the poison that has festered for so much of his life inside his soul. “I am afraid just as you are. We’re lost with no lighthouse to guide our way. But… I need you to know that I am better for having you here. With me.”
John’s foot knocks into his, and Arthur can’t help but to smile.
“We’ll make our own way.”
“Yes,” he affirms. “Together.”
He stands up, eager to leave behind this nothingness surrounding him now in favor of wherever it is John will lead him next. The past may be dead and buried but the future yet lives. The tea’s gone cold but he drinks it anyway, a bitter choke with no milk or sugar but a spot of routine nonetheless. It had taken quite a lot of effort simply to build a contained fire to melt the snow and then boil the water. At least they’d gotten multiple containers of clean water out of it - Arthur shudders to think back to a river full of corpses.
“I love you," John suddenly says, and Arthur nearly trips over a chair save for John’s hand steadying him at the table’s edge. His heart skips a beat, because it isn’t enough for John to simply say it, oh no - John’s love is a force unyielding, strong enough to keep standing where Arthur buckles. It leaves warmth in the wake of a scarred, skin-and-scraps body made more for running on empty. And just like that moment where they both got to see the same stars, there is a light there shared between them that wouldn’t exist otherwise.
“Do you know?” John asks, tender as anything, the gardener forever pulling up the weeds of Arthur’s self-hatred.
Arthur breathes. “Yes. I - I must have known all along.” For who else would want something so sharp and many-toothed but John? John who is dark and possessive and greedy and selfish, John who looks at Arthur’s face in the mirror?
John Doe, who loved first and loved best those same flaws in someone else.
“Arthur," John softly utters, the way a soul cleaves to its other half, and just that.
Sometimes their emotions blend. And though Arthur will never say it aloud, there is a type of grace to be found where the words can’t reach.
He takes a moment. Lingers there, for as long as they can afford to - and then, he pulls out a lighter.
“Let’s go.”
The two of them leave that apartment for a second time, once again set on the path to pull a number of strings. The curtain falls on one act, only to rise for another.
When Arthur shivers against the cold and the wind, John becomes a mantle surrounding him, akin to a second skin. “I’ll keep you warm”, he promises, and Arthur follows him away.
In the dark and lying on the kitchen table, far away from the stage, there is an old newspaper printed 1949.