[Jake let himself go on autopilot. He really, really shouldn't have. Whenever the stress got to much, he would get in his car and drive- far, far away- as though time and distance alone could remove him from his problems. Usually, he ended up somewhere comforting. Alone in the middle of nowhere, at Gena's, even asking Khonshu for encouragement- though he rarely gave it, were Jake honest. That never did stop him from trying, though.]
[But out of the list of places Jakes mind could have wandered to, this was the last of them.]
[Jake sits in the empty hall of the commune, the stone arches of the building letting in the faint light of the street lamps outside, not a sliver of moon in sight. He holds a wooden bowl in his lap, some thick green soup cooling inside. Judging by the spoon cradled in his left hand, he had probably even eaten some of it, the aftertaste of what Jake would have normally described as grass lingering in his mouth unnoticed. That might have been minutes ago, it might have been hours, Jake certainly wasn't paying attention.]
[The soup had gone cold, either way]
... Arthur ... [Jake doesn't even look at the man sitting beside him, not wanting the strength to fully realize where he is. His voice feels dry, the deafening stretch of silence finally getting to him.]
Arthur do you... do you hate me?
Jake carried tension like an animal, shoulders set tightly as if waiting for a blow that never came. That, or it always did, the man constantly under attack by something Arthur couldn't see - even sitting still he looked prepared to run, weighed down by some invisible burden.
Arthur allowed the silence because of it, not wanting to apply pressure to a man who already looked so close to breaking; even when Jake spoke, Arthur replied lazily, allowing the silence to linger for another heartbeat.
"Hate you?" he echoed quietly, almost sounding surprised. His brows knit tightly, and for only a flicker there was something painfully genuine in his eyes. "... No, Jake Lockley. I don't hate you."
He found it easier to look at the bowl instead of Jake's face, fingers tugging gently on each other beneath the table, some form of nerves hidden just out of sight. Continuing was a choice, he knew; he didn't have to. Maybe he didn't want to; maybe he did, but he was nervous over the consequence of it.
"If... someone has convinced you that every kindness carries a hook, that every hand reaching toward you is trying to... push you underwater, then I can't fault you for believing it. Every man believes what he's been taught."
No, he didn't hate Jake. He mourned him, if anything - mourned what had been done to him, what was still being done to him.
"... Though," he added, "I do hate what your god has made you believe you deserve." He wasn't foolish enough to think there was no separation there; anything he hated about Khonshu had nothing at all to do with Jake. If anything, Jake was just another victim of a selfish god.
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