Chapter Text
Nadine was beginning to get a bit suspicious about the fact that I seemed to turn in earlier and earlier each night and came back the next day more and more fatigued, so my visits to Arcturus were shorter for a while. It took a week to repair the drapes, but it was wonderful work. I held Arcturus’s hand with one hand and repaired the fabric with my other.
On the seventh day, I opened Arcturus’s eyes, finally ready to trust our bond more than I distrusted my gift.
I opened his eyes to my old room in seven dials. I blinked in confusion.
Jaxon insisted on these lodgings, Arcturus said, a touch of amusement in his words. I suspect he intended it as some form of taunt, but I confess to taking nothing but comfort in it.
“You’re sweet,” I said, my Irish accent pervading Arcturus’s deep voice. It was just as strange as it had been when I did it in Paris. “I’m glad you ended up here, too.”
I surveyed the room. It was largely unchanged, as though I had just stepped out to collect rent from the I-4 residents that needed the firmer hand of a mollisher to cough up Jaxon’s due.
Those days felt very far away, now.
A glint of light on metal caught my eyes. On the desk sat an unfamiliar ring. I walked over, taking care to try to make the movements as natural as possible, not like a puppet. It was unadorned, just a plain band of metal, though the metal was a fascinating mixture of silver and gold, mixing together in swirls. Beside it were etching tools, and if I squinted - how bizarre to be making that expression with Arcturus’s face - I could see something etched onto the inside of the ring.
“A posy ring,” I murmured, the low tone suiting Arcturus’s voice a bit more, “Like the one Ivy showed us at the safehouse.”
My emotions were doing a strange thing as I took in the scene, trying to melt and explode all at once.
Yes, said Arcturus, I had meant to hide it from view when you possessed me, but the work today progressed faster than I anticipated. It is for you, of course. Ivy spent some time telling me about them in Paris. A token of true love and friendship, with messages of secret affection. It is said that wearing the message against the skin makes it more poignant. Eliza caught me working on it and cautioned me against casually giving a woman a ring in the current century, as it may hold connotations you are not comfortable with. A touch of hesitance entered his mental speech. Is it alright?
“Of course it’s alright, Arcturus,” I said, overcome. “I seriously don’t know how someone so sweet can even exist. I can’t wait to see you again and see it myself.”
Occasionally throughout the course of Sargas proselytisation against flesh-treachery, there emerges an argument about human capacity for love. An assertion that creatures as limited as the Sargas believe you are cannot possibly love as an eternal being can love. Your music, your art, your capacity for building and growing things for the sake of creation, these things put paid to the idea, of course. When Ivy described these rings to me, however, I wondered how such an idea had ever lingered long enough to be spoken aloud. There is something insurmountably profound in the gift of a token like this, religion mixed with affection, a prayer to hold against your skin for you alone. You have only humanity to thank for this gift, Paige - I would not have imagined it on my own.
“No,” I said to him. Until now, I had only ever said the truly vulnerable things I wished to tell him in Gailge. This time, it wouldn’t be enough. I wanted him to know his own importance.
“I have you to thank,” I said. “What a gift you have given me, Arcturus. To trust me enough to let me into your dreamscape, to believe in me enough to wait for me to come back each day. To take enough comfort in being with me that it helps you heal, to want me to succeed enough to convince me to possess you. To love me enough to make me this ring, to share with me this wonder of human tradition. My safe port in a storm, my solace, you have given me something to follow into the dark, to wade into the unknown of the æther for, in pursuit of the other end of the golden cord. No gift you could give me could ever mean as much to me as the gift of you.”
In his dreamscape, with me standing at the helm, unseeing, I felt him wrap his arms around my waist from behind and tuck his head into my neck.