#poison plot

The darkness is liquid around him, wavering with each shaky breath. The smell of blood overpowers everything else, and as he registers that, a streak of red breaks through the black. He takes a step forward, testing the spatial limits of his delusion and finding them sound despite the two dimensional visual.

His world is built as he walks: cities, screams, the slowed down chug of semi-automatic rifle fire, all things he associates with the smell of blood. War. Death. The wavering ceases, leaving black and red washed building shells filled with hazy after-images of soldiers running for cover.

He's in uniform, the one that never fit right and yet always was more comfortable than his civilian clothes. He walks on, not caring for the bullets that slice the air around him. He has orders (at least he thinks he does, because why else would he be in a war zone unless ordered to?), and even if he can't remember them (probably to retrieve something. They usually were to retrieve, he was the best at that, a regular bloodhound) he still needed to carry them out.

Another earth-shattering rumble, a building nearby doesn't so much collapse as it does melt into red liquid. Arthur does his best to step around the black-flecked slush it produced as it washes around his boots. What was he looking for again?

An answer. His searches were always for an answer, but then, what was the question?

The world shudders again, and another building collapses, and Arthur ignores it, though as it does the world becomes a bit less red and a bit more black. His only concern was finding his answer. Question. Same thing at this point.

At the end of a row of buildings is a light, neither red nor black, and it draws him. Was it supposed to be here? It doesn't look like it belongs, which makes him wary and drew him in at the same time. He walked into it, blinking at the shift in lighting. On the ground in the center, was a little boy.

"Veerrrrrrooooom." He mimicked, holding his toy plane high above his head. "Pew pewpew."

Outside, three shaking booms followed. Was this his answer?

But what was the question?

"Son." The boy turned around, as did Arthur, to find a man, taller than life with warm brown eyes. "Arthur."

"Dad." His biological father. The one John couldn't remember. Arthur turns around.

"No, Arthur, look at me." He obeys. There was no room for him to do otherwise in the man's voice. "Do you doubt me?"

Arthur's throat goes dry. Did he? Was that the question? No, too specific. It was a by-product of the question. Still, there was only one answer. The truth. "I don't know."

"If you doubt me or if you know if you doubt me?"

"The second one?"

"Arthur." He looks sad. "You forgot us. You forgot John. I can't blame you for that, I can't blame anything but fate and some poor decisions on your mother and I's part, but now you remember."

"Yes." Word by word his guilt is revealed. How do you forget your own twin?

"Then you remember the job I left you with?" The words from long ago resonate under what he says now: Protect John, Arthur.

"Yes." They weigh down on him, heavy with responsibility.

"Then you know why you have to stay." He's speaking slowly now, as if to a child. But then, Arthur was a child. His child.

"Yes."

The man smiles, shoulders straight. He reaches down and ruffles Arthur's hair. "Good boy, Arthur."

But the uniform and boots rubbing on his skin remind Arthur he is no longer the young boy this man remembers. "Wait. Why all this? Why now?"

"I'm dead, Arthur," the man says, grim smile in his eyes, "Why do you think you can see me now?"

Oh. Right, Arthur's dying. And John isn't. Which means Arthur can't. Dammit, John.

The man, seeing that his point has come across, stretches and turns to go. "You're mother is expecting me, and we never keep her waiting. I'll see you again, but try not to be too early, okay?"

"I'll try, dad."

But what was the question?

You're dreaming.

But what if you aren't?

And slowly it occurs to Arthur. If the man was real, if he and his twin's father was real, then John was real. Then what happened was real. Dying wouldn't wake him up.

He turned back to the boy, in time to see another one with identical features join the first, holding a toy train. The plane dive bombs and picks it up, and they go flying to safety together.

In the fourth floor bathroom, John finds his brother with blood down the front of his suit, but he's smiling. And once the cursing settles long enough for him to hear Arthur's raspy chuckle, he asks, "What's so funny?"

"You always were a mama's boy, John."

"You're delirious."

"Yes. That doesn't make it any less true." Arthur allows John to help him back to the conference room. "Hey John?"

"Yeah?"

"Don't worry, I'll live." The tired was reclaiming him again, and things were swimming back to black.

"You better."

Arthur smiles. "Or what? You'll beat up my corpse?"

He doesn't hear John's answer. He's already sinking into the comfortable dark once more. Instead, he hears the man's voice again, strong and confident. He's turned back slightly, so Arthur can see his profile.

"Oh, and Arthur?"

"Yeah, Dad?"

"I'm proud of you, too, son. Never doubt that."

Arthur's chest swells. "Thanks, Dad. I'll see you when I see you."

"Not too early, now."

"Of course not."