#resurgam ch15

[the--morning--room]

RESURGAM (Arthur Harrow x F! Reader) Chapter 15: A cold, solitary girl again

"That bitter hour cannot be described: in truth, 'the waters came into my soul; I sank in deep mire: I felt no standing; I came into deep waters; the floods overflowed me.'" -Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14

AO3

I don't know if you're aware of this, reader, but the human body is quite poorly made. The temperature in the desert that night was not nearly low enough to freeze one to death, but it was enough to harden the Thorn's joints until she could no longer move her fingers to wipe the sand from her eyes and mouth. Her breaths came painfully and haltingly, and once her knees failed her she knew she had no choice but to rest. She clutched the thin, whitish hairs of the jackal and let it lead her, half-crawling like a primordial beast, to the relative safety of a cliffside, where she sandwiched herself between the chilled, sandy rock and the jackal's body.

"Thank you," she told it, and patted its slimy head.

There was a faint silver line along the edge of the horizon. The coming dawn, or the distant Cairo skyline? Either way, why was the light growing so quickly?

The whiteness expanded until it enveloped the sky, erased the desert and the jackal, and the Thorn knew nothing but white.

She'd been here a while, she thought. Of course, she'd just gotten there, but she knew that place, didn't she? The columns, the checkered floor. The information desk, where a "Tomb Buster" poster sat upright in a swivel chair. The gift shop with its window full of ushabtis, standing like a tiny army. And of course, the art. Stacks of prone statues, safely mummified in protective wrapping.

Everything was white and silent.

"...And here we have—oh, you! Yes, you. I'm supposed to come and find you. Hellooo..." The friendly Scottish voice cut through the quiet, and an arm was waved in front of her face. That tattoo looked so familiar. She turned to him.

"Billy!" The relief nearly knocked her over. She threw her arms around him, and was met with a sickening squelch.

"Oof. Sorry, love. This happens," Billy said, red-faced, as his stomach fell open and spilled its slimy contents onto the pristine floor. The two visitors he'd been leading, a crocodile and a hippo, exchanged annoyed glances before turning and walking away. Both wore tutus and oversized pointe shoes.

"Can I, um...get someone for you?" the Thorn asked awkwardly. "A doctor, maybe?"

"'S fine. Just something I have to get used to," Billy replied, gathering up his intestines. "Reading room's back that way," he jerked his head, "through the armory, then take a left."

She followed his pointing finger, wove through the suits of armor and past one massive, silvery-gray getup made of material resembling a mummy's wrappings. It was holding a sign: "Reading room this way," then the Thorn's name and an arrow.

Thoroughly creeped out, she followed the arrow. What other choice did she have?

A rush of book-smell swept over her as she crossed through the doorway. It was a wide, cylindrical room lined with shelves of books and a staircase that spiraled endlessly into a ceiling of clouds. Despite the seemingly infinite shelf space, the floor was crammed with stacks of even more books. For once in her life, however, the Thorn had no interest in books. She could only stare in astonishment at the man in front of her.

He said her name, smiling through his beard. "We meet in person at last!"

Indeed, she had never seen his face outside of a computer screen. She knew him, though. The beard, the glasses, the smile that radiated both kindness and intelligence, and that fuchsia scarf he was never seen without. She remembered the first time she'd seen him, years ago, presenting a paper to a livestreamed conference. He had been wearing a simple blue suit, and the bright, cheerful color of his scarf was a welcome contrast to the general stuffiness of the event.

The last time they'd spoken was over email. He'd sent a letter of recommendation to Lowood, he wished her luck and promised to meet her in person the next summer. That never happened, of course. Dr. El-Faouly was dead before summer.

He was dead, and yet there he was now, standing before her. In order for this meeting to be real, one of them must have traveled between worlds. The Thorn knew which of them it was more likely to be.

"Is this the Duat?" she asked.

"You figured it out much more quickly than I did. But, of course, I am actually dead. Well, fully dead. There might be a difference in the way one's consciousness reacts to the change if—"

"Wait, I'm not 'fully' dead? What does that mean?"

He pursed his lips sadly. "Your hands."

She looked down to see her fingers flickering. Invisible—then not. Gone—and back again. She blinked, and in that tiny fraction of a second she felt a shock of excruciating cold, her body crying out with hunger and thirst, her heart wailing its brokenness, and sand everywhere. There was even sand in her throat—had she tried to eat it?

"Your body is unconscious," Dr. El-Faouly explained. "Your only hope now is to be rescued, but I'm afraid at this point it would take a—"

"—Deus ex machina." She blinked again, and heard the roaring of the desert wind. Her fingers were frozen.

"Yes."

She let out a hopeless laugh laced with tears. "I think the gods might be a little busy right now," she said. "I'm probably the least of their worries, especially since..." Her voice caught." Since I helped...I helped Arthur..." She broke down.

He looked at her with weary eyes. He said her name, lifted a hand to her shoulder—it passed through. She felt no comforting touch, only cold and wind and sand and hunger.

"Come," he said, and two plump chairs appeared nearby.

They sat. The Thorn pulled her flickering knees into her chest, sobbing into them.

"It's peaceful here," Dr. El-Faouly said. "You're in a good place. Don't cry."

"My scales are unbalanced," she said through a curtain of messy tears. "I won't be staying here."

"Who told you your scales lack balance?"

"Well, Ammit."

"And you know better than to take Ammit's word as law, don't you?" He laughed scoffingly. "For goodness sake, the Ennead doesn't even regard her as a proper goddess."

The Thorn's lips quivered with a sudden, familiar need to defend her goddess. No—not her goddess, not anymore. "Praise revoked" and all that. She looked down at her flickering forearm (the flickers were fewer and further between now). Bare.

"The goddess Taweret weighs hearts on the scales of Anubis," Dr. El-Faouly explained. "Ammit has no say in deciding the fates of the deceased." He smiled. "Your heart is safe."

"Even without Ammit, I don't think my scales are going to balance," the Thorn confessed.

"Why do you think that?"

She dragged a hand across her face, and it came away slick with tears. Her flesh was completely solid now. "Like I said, I helped Arthur. I found the scarab for him, I protected him from Marc and Khonshu. And," she heaved a wretched, shuddering sob, "to be honest, I don't regret any of it. I don't regret loving him, no matter what I did for him, what I let him do..." She covered her face, drowning in shame.

He looked thoughtfully at her. "Do you regret leaving him?"

She nodded, sobbing violently.

"Even after he betrayed you so terribly?"

She paused to try and breathe, disgusted by the feeling of so many sticky tears racing down her hot cheeks.

"You didn't want to be Ammit's avatar, did you?" he pressed.

She sniffed. "Of course not."

"Well, that was Arthur's plan for you. Do you think he would ever change his mind, regardless of how artfully you may have argued against him?"

"Never," she admitted, wiping her eyes.

"Then what exactly do you regret?" he asked kindly. "Sparing yourself from a fate you would have hated?"

"I could have handled it," she said sullenly.

"Really? You could have handled committing murders in the name of a deity whose cause you don't believe in? You could have handled living under her abuse?"

"I could have sucked it up," she said after a stubborn pause.

"You have done more than enough 'sucking up' in your life," he frowned. "No more. You deserve to be treated well, to make your own choices and live your own life."

"What about love? I deserve that too, right?"

"Of course you deserve love, but not if it comes at the cost of your freedom."

Freedom. What was it she'd said to Arthur about freedom? "I have a free, independent brain." She pictured herself as a bird triumphantly escaping its cage, soaring out into the bluest of skies only to find itself promptly shot down. Would that little bird miss the safety of its cage as it plummeted to its death?

"Will he be okay?" she asked. "If he really loves me like he said he does, and he finds out I died while leaving him..." Her eyes were drowning all over again.

Dr. El-Faouly reached out and took her hands. Her flesh was solid now, no more flickers. "You are not responsible for his feelings toward you."

"He was always trying to protect me," she said. "He's going to think he failed."

"It's not your responsibility," he repeated, gripping her hands. "He's a grown man; he can take care of himself."

"But what if he..."

"He will grieve, he will recover, and he will move on. And you will do the same."

"I can't." She shook her head at the wall of books, unable to look her mentor in the eye. "I can't."

"I said the same thing when I arrived here, knowing I was leaving my loved ones behind. I worried so much for my daughter, thinking she would never be able to move on. But of course, she did. She had to."

"You don't know Arthur. He's," she interrupted herself with a high, panicked laugh, "he's a professional sufferer. He never gets over anything. He needs—"

"He needs a kind of help that you were never equipped to give him. Either he gets that help, or he doesn't; either way, it has nothing to do with you. You renounced his love. He is no longer yours to worry about."

She was remembering the nights she spent pulling shards of glass from Arthur's shredded skin, and how each shard would leave a sickening deluge of blood and pus in its wake. That's what Dr. El-Faouly's words had done to her heart—not that she herself hadn't caused the wound. She had left Arthur behind. She had rejected his goddess and broken off their engagement.

He would never have abandoned her. She would have only had to stay by his side, loyal and silent, and let him make her Ammit's personal killing machine. In return, he would have loved her, cared for her, kept her company for the rest of his life. A few million sinners' blood on her hands, in exchange for a lifetime of romantic bliss...if that wasn't a fair trade, what was?

No. No, she would have hated it. It would have been hell, serving Ammit, and living with Arthur would have been even worse. Didn't his goddess always bring out the worst in him? Ammit would have been a plague on their marriage. The most loving, sincere religious fanatic is still a fanatic, and even his most passionate kisses would never have been able to love the sticky sheen of guilt off her heart.

She bent her body into a pathetic curve and let out a long, slow wail into her knees. Waves of hot sand beat at her dying body. She could feel the brightness of the sun behind her closed eyes. There were voices, two of them, arguing above her.

"What if I hurt her?"

"Steven, look at her. You carrying her to the car isn't going to damage her any more than the desert already has."

"I just don't know, she looks so frail..."

An exasperated sigh. "Fine, let Marc do it then."

"No! Wait! I can do it, just let me—"

Her hands were disappearing, blinking away before her eyes. "I'm going back," she said. "No, I don't want to. No, stop," she cried in a panic, unsure of who or what she was pleading with. "Let me stay here, I want to stay here!"

"It looks as though your body has other plans," Dr. El-Faouly said. "We'll see each other again someday. Say hello to my little scarab for me."

"Your what?"

He smiled. "She's right next to you. Tell her—"

She blinked, and was alive.

The first things she knew were yellowness and hot air, then a sliver of morning creeping in through a pair of thick curtains. There was just enough light for her to note that nearly everything in the room was broken, and the various pieces of things had been scattered across a loveseat in the corner. Someone had apparently begun cleaning up, but never finished the job. A cracked mirror across from the bed showed the Thorn that she was in a white bed, and wearing white clothes: A man's T-shirt and baggy shorts. Her hair felt clean, and smelled like an unfamiliar shampoo. Nearby, another woman sat cross-legged on top of the bedside table. She was balancing a laptop precariously on her knees, and seemed either unwilling or unable to look at the Thorn. The light from the computer screen exaggerated the pronounced circles under her eyes.

"Morning," said Layla.

"Little scarab." The words slipped from the Thorn's mouth so unexpectedly that she almost felt as if the words weren't her own.

Layla slammed her laptop shut with a ferocity that left the cracked mirror vibrating like a cowering animal. Her face was stony. "If one of you people," she growled, spitting out the word people as if it were a deadly curse, "ever calls me that again..." Wet bullets of grief shone in her eyes.

"I'm sorry," the Thorn said reflexively. "I don't know why I—"

"Just stop." Layla shook her head and put a frustrated hand to her face. She took a single loud, tremulous breath, lingering on it as if considering making it a sob. She stood up suddenly, nearly knocking the small table to the ground, crossed the room in a few staggers, and flung the thick curtains wide to reveal a stunning panopticon of Cairo, pyramids and all.

"Wow," the Thorn breathed.

Layla paused in front of the window, her back to the Thorn. "Yeah," she agreed, apparently with some reluctance.

"Thank you for, uh," she could think of no less awkward a way to put it, "saving m—"

"Thank Marc," Layla said curtly. "And Steven. One of them, can't remember which, but he saw you in the sand when we went back to get some stuff we left in that car."

"Are they here?"

"No." She moved away from the window, started to sit on the sofa only to note the mess covering its cushions, and sank down to the floor instead. "No, we're...we're kind of taking a break."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be."

Layla's face was shifting oddly. Sometimes the shadow of a beard, the glint of a pair of studious glasses, and the shout of fuchsia-colored fabric around her neck would appear, just for a glimmer of a fraction of a second. It seemed to the Thorn that she had yet to entirely leave the Duat—or maybe the Duat wasn't ready to let go of her. Or, it could simply be the ghost of Dr. El-Faouly materializing around his daughter. Of course, she could also have been hallucinating. Even I'm not certain what the truth was.

"Well," said Layla, "don't you want to know what happened?"

A clump of dread had been growing in the Thorn's stomach, anticipating this subject. Clearly, Layla and Marc had survived Ammit's wrath. That fact didn't bode well for Arthur.

"I don't know," she said.

"He's alive," said Layla. "Does that help?"

A tear slipped down the Thorn's cheek and hovered saltily on her upper lip.

"You were supposed to be Ammit's avatar, weren't you? Is that why you left?"

Avoiding Layla's gaze, she nodded.

Layla mirrored her nod, an infuriating knowledge in the way she pursed her lips. "Yeah," she said, "I saw that one coming."

"You did?"

She shrugged. "I always thought something about you and him together didn't really add up. It seemed wrong. And this explains it."

"What do you mean? Are you saying you don't believe he could love me?"

"No. Well, maybe. I find it hard to believe he could love at all."

"And what gives you the right to make that judgment?" the Thorn retorted wildly, her voice climbing in pitch. "Who do you think you are, saying something like that about another person's relationship? As if yours is so perfect."

Immediately she felt herself tense and recoil, shocked by her own cruelty. Layla, however, only hardened her jaw. A deadly silence followed.

"I guess that's fair," Layla said. "But I do know what it's like to be lied to."

The Thorn, of course, wasn't sure what Layla was referring to—but she nodded anyway, wary of opening her mouth for fear she might let loose another needless barb of cruelty.

"I had to hear the truth from Harrow before Marc had the balls to tell me himself. How fucked up is that? To have to learn something like that from the man who shot my husband?"

The Thorn swallowed. "The man who what?"

Layla closed her eyes. "It was so loud," she said, "and the echo...and the blood on his white clothes..." She was shaking.

"He shot Marc?" the Thorn heard herself say. "Arthur did?" His name had never felt less pleasant in her mouth.

Layla nodded, swallowing a sob. "I wanted to kill him."

"He would have killed you first."

She let out a short, mirthless laugh. "Yeah. For sure."

From there, she told the whole story, up to and including the battle between the three avatars in Cairo.

"Stop," the Thorn said suddenly.

"Really? Now?" Layla had reached the point in the story where, sutured to the side of an overturned van by one of Marc's crescent darts, she watched Arthur approach Marc's prone body while Ammit and your humble narrator tangled in combat on the horizon.

"I don't want to hear any more." Tears were dripping from her chin and staining the white sheets between her legs. "Not yet." Never, she thought.

"Suit yourself," Layla said with a tired shrug. "You probably want some food or something, right?"

The Thorn shook her head. Her stomach cried out pathetically, earning an unamused look from Layla.

"I'm getting you some food," she said. "After all that's happened, it would be really stupid if you died of hunger now."

She left, and the Thorn let her body descend into convulsive sobbing—but not before crossing the room to yank the curtains shut. The pyramids would not be a witness to her suffering.