#Arthur is afraid of losing his humanity!! Oscar wants to make him divine!! he’s scared!!

[hydrus101]

I constantly think about what Arthur’s internal dialogue might’ve been around Oscar’s pledge, how conflicted and wary about it he might’ve been.

When John describes Oscar after his arm comes off and says he’s served his purpose, Arthur can’t even echo him like he usually does. Can’t even finish his sentence and say “he did serve his pur-“ because he chokes up near the end. He can’t say it. Can’t fathom it. Whether it’s from the guilt of his arm or the weight of his sobriety, the idea of being someone’s purpose weighs on him so heavily. Every time Oscar tried to tell him that he is, he shut it down. Quickly. Harshly. Like he didn’t want to think about it. Didn’t want to consider it.

Do you ever think of why? Was it his independence? That he simply balked at the concept of needing anyone else because his self-sufficiency streak was just that strong? Maybe his self-loathing just ran that deep? That he couldn’t conceptualize the idea of someone wanting to help him, not out of trickery or deception or necessity, but because they wanted to, after so long of being hunted? That they wanted to help a man like him? A murderer, on seven counts? Even after knowing what sins he’d committed?

Then, was it the religious aspect? Arthur just rejects faith of that sort at its base level (he was taught to know his saints; he doesn’t pray anymore) and that Oscar is, by trade, a priest, but I don’t think it’s just that. It goes deeper. It must.

Oscar viewed him as divine. His sign from God. The one who pulled him from bedrock. The man he chose, guided by a higher power, to follow into the ends of time and space (as far as he is mentally, physically, and spiritually able) and beyond. His purpose.

Do you think some part of Arthur was scared of that? Of someone seeing him as something good? Something worthy? To be elevated to that level of divinity, to be held equivocal to another man’s God? The being who’s almighty will (these things happen for a reason)(god has a plan)(do you want to see your wife and child again?) had planned and accounted and orchestrated for the death of his only daughter? Do you think that scares him? Do you think it makes him feel guilty? Do you think, in the spaces between running from hunters and pursuing goals and traveling through whatever realm he goes to next, he’ll stop and wonder if he’s cost another man his faith? I do. I do a lot, actually.