Rest

Louise’s face was the first thing I saw when I woke up. She was sleeping peacefully, holding me in her arms like a pillow.

I stayed as still as I could, attempting to not move a muscle, because I didn’t want to wake her. Eventually her eyes fluttered open and her face turned red immediately.

“Ahhh!!!” Louise immediately jumped out of the bed and struck me in the face with her actual pillow as hard as she could.

“Aghh!” I dodged the pillow in the nick of time, mere contact could have cost me my life.

“What are you doing in my bed, dumbass?” She yelled while blushing even more.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” I barely evaded her as she kept chasing me around the room once again.

This scene then continued on for a few more minutes until we were both exhausted, and catching our breaths.

I tried to apologize again for the tenth time, but she suddenly threw herself at me and hugged me tightly.

“H-Hey!” I stuttered, caught off guard completely. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Arthur, I…”

“It’s Jack.” I corrected.

“Right, sorry.” She said.

So you’ve finally decided to drop the persona, huh?

Shut up, it has nothing to do with me.

What are you planning on doing with that body now? Surely you have no more use with it, now that you’re planning on returning home.

I never said anything about that.

You can’t hide your feelings from me, fool, I’m literally inside your body.

I slowly pulled away from Louise then offered her my hand.

“Let’s start anew,” I offered her. “Nice to meet you, my name is Jack.”

“Nice to meet you too, Jack, I’m Louise.” She smiled and took my hand.

Afterwards, we left the room and went back up to see Emmett fast asleep on the cold floor.

“Yo, wake up.” I shook him awake. “It’s time.”

“Huh, what…time for what?” He slowly got up and stretched his arms out. “Arthur, what the hell are you waffling about?”

“My name is Jack, by the way.”

“Oh. Uh, okay, why did you wait til now to tell me?” He looked confused.

“It doesn’t matter, we have things to do.”

“What kinds of things to do?” Louise asked.

“Well, first things first, we need some proper rest, like in our actual homes.” I answered her. “Once we get that, we can meet up sometime over the course of the next few days and discuss our plan of attack.”

“What do you mean, plan of attack?” Emmett exclaimed. “You heard what Selphine said, it’s over!”

“No, not yet.” I insisted. “We can’t just roll over at the very first sign of resistance.”

“It’s not about resistance, idiot! It’s about the fact that this plan of ours apparently requires the total destruction of Obrillis? I don’t know about you, but me personally, I’d rather not destroy the planet I live on, but that’s just me.”

“Don’t worry about that.” I told him.

“What do you mean, don’t worry? I think that’s a pretty big deal!”

“Calm down, Emmett.” Louise interjected. “Let’s just all go home and get some rest for now, alright? We can talk about this later, when we’re all freshened up.”

“Oh, right, that shoulder must be killing you right now.” He noted. “Sorry.”

After that, we finally went our separate ways, although I walked with Louise a bit, but she reassured me that she was fine and that her wound was all but fully healed, it was only a matter of time, which those next couple of days would be able to afford her.

But the real issue now awaited for me at home, I mulled it over a bit and decided to be truthful to them. I didn’t want to interfere with their family situation when this wasn’t my problem in the first place. Besides, I wasn’t him. Even if I possessed his body, and even though I had all his memories, I still wasn’t him. I’m not Arthur Barnaby, I’m Jack. That’s who I am and have always been, even during those times that I’d tried to run away from being Jack, but at the end of the day that was all me.

“Yo.” I said, as the two of them stared at me.

“Where the hell have you been?” Dan immediately started yelling.

“I’m not your son.” I said, confusing them.

“Arthur, what the hell are you talking about?”

“My name’s not Arthur, it’s Jack. I’m temporarily in your sons body.”

“It’s those magic shenanigans he’s been up to again, I suppose?” Aubrey sighed.

“Wait, you knew about them?” I asked, not having expected that.

“Of course.” She continued. “We may have done a bad job at cultivating our relationship with him, but we’re not blind.”

“So you believe that I’m not him?”

“Of course.” She said, as Dan stayed silent, eyeing me up and down.

They hadn’t seemed very shocked. Of course, I would have been shocked to see them in shock, after all, I’d recently just learned that The Void drained emotions from it’s people. SO naturally, they reacted as if nothing crazy had happened.

“How long do you think he’ll return?” Dan suddenly spoke up.

“Well, um…at least a couple of days, I guess?” I estimated. “Maybe a bit more?”

“Hmm…”Dan looked a lot calmer now, knowing that he wasn’t dealing with his son. I didn’t know if that was a good or a bad thing, though. “This is your home until Arthur gets back, feel free to make yourself totally comfortable Jack.”

“Thanks.” I nodded my head to each of them then made my way in. That had been a lot easier than I expected, naturally due to the influence of the Void. But this was only further proof that something had to be done about it, parents seeing their child suddenly coming home and claiming that they’re someone else should be met with at least some sort of reaction, whether that would be mockery, concern for their mental health, or anger at this prank. But they hadn’t reacted at all, as if they were simply just there. Something had to change soon.