▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▱▱ ・ 𝙰𝚄𝚃𝙷𝙾𝚁𝙸𝚉𝙸𝙽𝙶…

brokenmagxc is the official archive for arthur j. branham — an independent original character set in a modern urban fantasy and speculative crime narrative, with elements of mystery, science fiction, and institutional horror. a former fbi agent and contracted federal investigator, arthur's story unfolds through classified case files, character dossiers, original verses, and an intimate magic rooted in the uncertain architecture of the human soul.

carrd. rules. dossier. verses. interaction guide. support. ▰▰▰▰

𝙵𝙴𝙳𝙴𝚁𝙰𝙻 𝙱𝚄𝚁𝙴𝙰𝚄 𝙾𝙵 𝙸𝙽𝚅𝙴𝚂𝚃𝙸𝙶𝙰𝚃𝙸𝙾𝙽 ▰▰ #𝟶𝟶–𝟶𝟶𝟶𝟶–𝙼𝟷 𝙲𝙻𝙰𝚂𝚂𝙸𝙵𝙸𝙴𝙳 𝚃𝙾𝙿 𝚂𝙴𝙲𝚁𝙴𝚃 𝙾𝚁𝙲𝙾𝙽 / 𝙽𝙾𝙵𝙾𝚁𝙽 / 𝙴𝚈𝙴𝚂—𝚃𝚂𝙼𝟷 ▰▱▱▱▱

independent, private, selective. asks and inquiries welcome. loved and explored by abi.

begin your investigation ... memes. wishlist. psa. ooc. positivity. headcanons. musings. visage. art. saved. playlist. pinterest.

exploring motifs of ... institutional ownership, the soul as both sanctuary and evidence, inherited violence, impossible mercy, the horror of being known only in fragments, unanswered metaphysical questions, the supernatural made intimate, survival without salvation, tenderness beneath surveillance, the violence of being made useful, remaining soft in a world that demands a weapon, love as recognition rather than rescue, and the right to belong to yourself among others.

her answer makes him look around the room, narrow brown eyes glancing toward the illusion of exits. closed door. locked window. dim light casting shadows against four beige walls. her pulse thumps somewhere in his ear and his own answers, patient and slow, while nothing else volunteers itself in the silence that follows.

what he knows is thin and unreliable. the sanitized version sits between his hands like a badly kept secret, all black boxes over smeared text and lonely words left behind without any real explanation. misleading dates, half-filled names, casualty numbers that seem to change depending on the document of the day. the elephant in the room feels more like two-way glass: she knows he is looking, he knows she is hiding, and somewhere above both of them are people hoping neither bothers to ask what is standing on the other side.

he's not buying it. mostly because she looks far too stubborn to believe what she just said herself. and perhaps because the invisible leash of his own buried program draws tight around his throat whenever he considers walking away from another lie simply because its been stamped official. he knows what happens when the people responsible for the ugliness are allowed to name it afterward. containment turns into protection, captivity becomes observation, bodies become incidents and numbers. ‘ acceptable loss ’ becomes the death of any humanity left in the room where powerful people make decisions.

the file leaves his hand and lands on the desk between them. its manila face is blank. the impact shifts the pages enough for their corners to peek out, dates and numbers and names threatening through the gaps. “ i think, ” he starts, voice low and careful, “ that we both know records are pointless when the people who cause them are the ones doing all the writing. ”

everything here is new and suspicious. arthur has enough pieces to know there is a trail beneath his feet, but not enough context to know whether it leads toward an answer or another room somebody has already cleaned. hopefully, ms. redfield knows where one of those paths goes. he's already found too many dead ends, and lately he has started to wonder who notices each time he stops long enough to look beneath one.

his brows draw tightly together, a flash of pain crossing his face before he can school it back to neutral. this is, perhaps, the first honest thing she's tried to say since her arrival. he can tell. honesty sits somewhere warm in his chest, a pressure above the lungs that pushes a breath out of him despite his best efforts to remain still. even without that strange sensitivity of his, he likes to think he has learned the method of her madness by now. the tightening around her eyes. the hard line of her lips. the way she looks at him and then looks away as if staring too long hurts. she believes herself—believes he doesn't understand. or wouldn't. or couldn't.

it angers him, suddenly, that she would doubt him this way. after they had survived so long, found each other again and again at the other side of their cages. after they figured out how to leave messages, small notes, clues, supplies. a coffee on a windowsill made just the way she likes it. a file he was missing somehow leading right to her. after he had bargained with every instinct in him long enough to trust her closeness. she pulls the trigger here, pushing him away with a bullet aimed at the fragile uncertainty between them.

understanding. he has never needed it as the price of staying. there are things about ada he may never understand, doors she has kept locked so long that their hinges have rusted twice over, and he knows that. has accepted it, mostly. but some small horrible part of him starts to think he understands far too much to ignore the qualifier now.

you don't understand. as if he never could.

he takes a step closer. dim firelight casts shadows over them where movement and distant noise threaten to drag them back toward the room beyond, but here, tucked into the dark corner of some basement they have both crawled through, arthur cannot find himself caring about anything except the woman in front of him taking a step away. one. then two. the ravine grows larger between them.

he reaches, then abruptly stops himself. his palms hang open, empty and useless, where they want to touch her but refuse to cross the last line she has left between them. his fingers twitch once before curling toward themselves. arthur swallows. when he finally speaks, his voice has lowered small between them. he finds the safest true thing he can say without killing them both where they stand.

“ you won't let me close enough to try. ”

a growing thread of gold interrupts the deep brown of his eyes, some emotional part of him reaching the surface before his expression can break beneath it. he takes another step. it's becoming increasingly harder to maintain his own restraint, to keep all that hurt tucked politely beneath his tongue where she does not have to see what her distance has done with it.

“ i ask, and you don't answer. i wait, and you don't come. i listen, and you tell me what i'm hearing is not what you said. ” he searches her face, something like grief crossing his own. damn her for making this difficult. damn himself more for caring enough that difficult has never stopped him.

“ i want to. i want to see you, ada. not what they say you are. not whatever version of yourself you think is safest to leave with me. ” his hand lifts again, barely, then thinks better of it. hangs there between them for half a second before falling back to his side.

“ i want to see you. ”

his brows pinch, breath stuttering between them as the light in his eyes brightens, settling on the glass of her face.

knuckles turn white around a phone case, the dim screen casting thin blue strips against the side of his cheek where he holds it up to his ear. his other hand trembles around a folder that threatens to crinkle in his grip. eyes are squeezed shut, shoulder leaning hard against the brick wall beside him as rain trickles into his hair despite the partial cover beneath the awning. breath draws shallow. the beginnings of a fever color his cheeks warm, an unhealthy pink spreading beneath skin otherwise leeched pale by the cold.

“ no, matt. ” his voice is quiet enough to disappear under the rain, though irritation gives it something sharp to cut through some of the noise. “ i know what they said, i was there when they said it. ”

arthur pauses. his head lowers, thumb rubbing along the hard edge of the phone while someone speaks into his ear, a deep muffled murmur that hums between them. beyond him, the secured perimeter glows cold from bright floodlights. pale reds and blues dance in the sky. yellow tape divides the dark into open and closed spaces. men in protective suits move behind plastic barriers and portable fencing, little white bodies passing back and forth beneath the rain as if sanitation could convince the outside world of a cleanliness the place did not have. occasionally, a radio coughs. someone calls out a number. the service door behind him opens and releases the scent of antiseptic, wet concrete, and a thin metallic ghost.

arthur's stomach churns. his lips press together as he waits for it to settle. it does not.

“ because i did not consent to it. ” he answers sharper than he means to, his eyes opening as the words leave him feeling empty and cold. gold catches briefly beneath the brown, thin and bright with fever, before he shuts them again. “ i consented to bloodwork, imaging, observation. that was what was written down, and that was what i agreed to. i did not agree to them putting something in the line while i was restrained because someone decided it would be easier to ask questions after. ”

the folder bends beneath his hand.

“ no, i don't know what it was. they won't tell me. apparently that is part of the problem. ”

matt says something. his lips pull at one corner, bitter and soured. he swallows the expression down, grimacing at the pain that flares because of it. the motion struggles. his throat feels too small, dry despite the rainwater slipping cold beneath his collar. there is heat everywhere else—under his eyes, behind his teeth, gathering at his joints with a familiar, miserable heaviness. “ i'm outside, ” he answers, then pauses.

“ because i am not going back in there. ”

fear unravels against the sharpness of his tongue. arthur seems to hear it himself, enough for his brows to draw close and for shame to cross his features, stupid and habitual. he straightens from the wall just enough to regret it. the world leans beneath him, brick turning soft at the edge of his vision. his hand catches the wall again before his knees can make embarrassment public.

“ i know. ” softer, then. “ i know what the protocol says. i also know what happened the last time somebody told me protocol was for my safety. so unless you are physically here to drag me back through that door, i suggest we find another option. ”

then something changes. not the phone or the conversation—outside. a second presence enters the wet darkness beyond the awning, distant enough to be indistinct but close enough to trigger a reaction, and drawing closer. arthur feels it before his eyes can track the figure—movement, warmth, attention. another body settles under his skin, caught by that perception of his that steals pieces of the world and presses them against his bones whether he wants them there or not. his attention snaps sideways to it, finding immediately the shape of a man approaching him at the border of the secured area. his spine goes rigid.

“ matt, hold on. ” the phone lowers a few inches from his ear. “ hey— ”

his voice thins at first. he clears his throat and tries again, forcing authority over the sudden lack of breath. “ hey—don't come any closer. perimeter's closed. ” rain gathers at the ends of his hair and slides in slow tracks along his temple. the fever has made his eyes glassy, brown darkened around a thin aureate ring that pulses once when the other moves. arthur lifts his free hand in warning, palm outward, though the gesture shakes badly enough to betray him.

“ they haven't cleared the exterior yet. you need to go back the way you came. ” his gaze flicks toward the barricade, then back. the folder shifts beneath his fingers, the federal seal at the face crinkling under pressure he doesn't realize he's accumulating. his face pinches. matt's voice becomes distant through the receiver, tinny and irritated and asking something arthur doesn't answer. instead, he grips the wall beside him.

he has sat on the other side of this table more times than he cares to count, so familiar with the cold steel of it that he barely shifts when the door finally shuts. finality did not startle him. neither did rooms—not anymore. any four-walled prison could be endured, and the file beneath his palms was clear proof of that, even as it remains unopened. it is old enough for the ink across its face to have browned, the letters of his name fading into small suggestions of someone who may have existed once and then been filed away badly.

arthur stares down at it with distrust.

not for the facts—facts had always been easier to survive than interpretation. no, it is the handwriting sprawled across the cover that unsettles him, narrow and deliberate, struck down with the kind of institutional cruelty that often looked necessary until examined under the right pressure. someone had held a pen over his life and decided where it began, where it ended, what parts deserved to remain legible. the writing was not his. the file was not his. in fact, it should not have existed at all.

and yet, here it is between his hands, worn at the edges and carrying his name like evidence of a life he had never been allowed to own completely.

he lifts his gaze slowly to hers. sleeplessness deepens the brown of his eyes until the amber there looks buried beneath soil.

“ where did you find this ?? ”

the question comes before anything else, low and careful despite the ache gathering beneath each cuff. metal rattles faintly as one finger moves beneath the old ink, tracing the label without touching it. he stops where the letters read tsm1.

his expression changes. the corner of his eyes wrinkle. his mouth hardens to a thin line.

he feels the approach before the sound of footsteps confirms it. by now, arthur has learned the rhythm of the blacksmith's breath, the timing of his pulse when it enters a room, the calluses of his hands against the air like a second skin when he clenches and unclenches his fists. the prince is glad for the privacy of his own mind where it catalogues henry as if every small proof of his life were something to be cherished and valued beyond what eyes could clearly see. embarrassingly, he has found himself a diligent student of one foreign boy among many more familiar wolves. he does not regret it one bit. though, henry tests that theory more and more with each passing day.

that bastard. what does he think he's doing ??

arthur lets out a small breath. his body is stilled over the map table, the shadow of his silhouette rigid against lines of war. marks of different sizes litter the space between. his council consists of seven men, four of which are still marked with signs of travel, two who catalogued command from within the castle walls, and one steward with a vocabulary sharp enough to make even the king's men nervous. most of them know to politely look away when henry saddles up to arthur's side and leans. several look vaguely amused. one of the castle men frowns. the steward has never known privacy in his entire life and continues to stare expectantly.

arthur takes in the frown without looking at it. a problem for later, then.

his palm flattens on the map where his fingers had been skimming a trade route previously cleared. his face does not change, nor does he lift his eyes from the route he was examining even as henry moves back to his post. his pulse does, however, skip a beat as heat gathers beneath his collar and crawls up his neck. damn blacksmith. the offer, too warm and too entirely wicked for how easy it sweeps his mind, swirls with unnecessary visual clarity. he swallows, then taps where he had meant to. orders are given succinctly. he raps the wood twice with his knuckle and men start to move. the steward and the frowning man linger.

“ the ordinance— ” the steward starts. arthur cuts him off with a wave of the hand.

“ will be revised. any objection should be routed to me directly. do not hesitate because the new words are good and men do not like good words. ”

the steward pauses, then nods before leaving the room. arthur raises his gaze to the frowning man then, eyes narrowing with an impatience that could be acknowledgement for the lord's disapproving interest or a perceived insult by the man wasting his time. “ yes, lord halvard ?? ” arthur asks, stepping between the noble and henry still posted behind him. the older man smiles, polite and empty, before canting his head.

“ it is unusual to see foreign influence within these meetings, ” the man says with a voice full of confident distrust. “ i am just ensuring we are clear on matters most important to the crown. ”

arthur's lip twitches. the challenge was direct, as they had grown to be since his arrival to the capital, and he can almost hear mikola's warnings of wolves and sheep circle cleanly behind his ears. he feels his blood boil a hair too long. this man deserved nothing of him, least of all his anger. yet it was impossible not to feel the thread of protective fury in his chest, especially for henry who still hovered beyond his shoulder in wait. arthur smooths his own face to show nothing but disinterest. then he gestures toward the door.

“ i assure you, ” he says, voice lowering a hair, “ that my concerns rest with securing the south road to ensure my people have food enough to survive winter and war. if you have concerns beyond that immediate need, i suggest you take them up with the southern widows still waiting for answers instead of with your pride and my time. ”

the frown settles on the lord's lips again. arthur glances at the door pointedly, and the man shuffles out with a quickness that suggests he understood both the warning and the threat laced beneath every word.

finally, the room settles on quiet as the door closes and they are given the illusion of privacy.

arthur lets out another breath, longer and more tired. he turns to face henry, that blush rising up his throat again when their eyes meet and he remembers why he wanted the room to clear. “ you, ” he says, wagging a pale finger at him. “ are going to get me in trouble one of these days, you know. ” he circles around the table, reaching for the other's wrist as they meet, a gentle brush of his fingers against skin. pulse, breath, warmth. proof of life beside him. the simple act of checking seems to ease the prince enough, lowering his shoulders and removing pressure from the knot building at the base of his neck. he looks up at henry then, a small smile forming. they stay connected at the hands.