Explain It Like I'm Tree

Outline

"Are you still in love with her?"

Arthur is very quiet for a long time. He says he thought he still was for a while, but then he found himself angry with her more often than not. "I think, no matter what I wish I believed, I believe she was reckless taking us to explore that cave. I blame her for enough of this mess that every time she does it again, I want to scream. I don't know if I can ever forgive her for that night. I don't think I am in love with her anymore. I don't even know if I can be good friends with her right now."

This busts Vivi pretty hard on the sidelines.

Then Arthur keeps going and startles Green!Arthur even more. "I don't know if I can be your friend right now either. I looked for you for so long. I put everything else aside to find you. And ever since I did... even in the times when we were trying to live together... you've wanted me dead at some level. I don't know what to do with that, but I don't want to see either of you anymore. So if you're going to kill me, do it. But be sure it'll fix this." With that, he sits down and refuses to say anything else.

Not exactly sure how the scene resolves properly, but Green!Arthur doesn't kill him. Haven't decided at this point if Green!Arthur merges with the suppressed parts of Lewis to form a more whole Lewis who can speak without the apparitions, or if Green!Arthur just lets Lewis' better nature be in charge again and vanishes for now.

Either way, the toy factory returns to its normal abandoned state. Arthur, Vivi, Dib, and Mystery are loaded back into the van, which Lewis possesses in order to get it moving properly. Nobody talks to each other.

Dib is dropped off first. Lewis thanks him for trying to help and apologizes for putting him in danger. At some point, Dib tosses the film, as this situation seems too personal to exploit and he'd rather keep his connections with the group than the proof.

Arthur, Vivi, and Mystery are dropped off at home so Lewis can drop the van off at Lance's and pick up Vivi's car—and explain where Lance can get the truck cab he left behind.

Vivi still doesn't say anything, she just leads Arthur—who has retreated to kind of a shell-shocked state—over to Yettle's trunk and sits him down at the base of it. She leaves him there with a blanket wrapped around him and goes back inside the house.

Real shock is finally setting in over everything that happened that day and he's distraught. He tries to explain to Yettle, but he can't speak properly. It's too jumbled. He doesn't feel safe.

Then, for the first time since he lost his arm, a giant hand lifts him off the ground and places him high up in the branches. From there, he can calm down just enough to go through his experiences. Yettle doesn't answer or advise, but she listens.

Over the next couple of weeks, the group haltingly works out the following idea: they can't stay together anymore as a unit. At least, not now. There's been too much damage between them. Vivi asks Mystery if he would stay and look after Arthur for her, and Mystery agrees. Arthur gets Vivi to agree to letting Lewis follow her (Arthur may not be able to forgive her or be close to her, but he still cares and she is still reckless. He also hopes that maybe Vivi and Lewis will be able to work things out while Lewis is watching her back).

Lance moves into the house and takes over mortgage payments. Vivi and Lewis go out on the road in the newly repaired van as mobile paranormal investigators.

Time passes. Arthur never texts or calls, but Mystery uses his phone on the sly to send updates. Arthur takes a few projects on for Lance's garage, but only from home. Anything he fixes has to be brought to the house. Mystery says that Arthur spends a lot of time outside and "smells weird" but can't elaborate.

Arthur begins to spend over 24 hours at a time out in the yard, usually leaning up against Yettle's trunk.

Concerned, Vivi returns to check on him. Even though it's been a year, he tells her it's too soon—but in such a way as if she'd just left a week ago.

Hurt, she leaves. She leans on Lewis a little more, now, and doesn't threaten him with exorcism except as a joke.

She comes about once a year, but every time, Arthur says the same thing, and with the same sort of bewilderment, as if he'd just said this to her a day before. The time he spends outside continues to lengthen and he eats less. When Arthur's skin starts to change, Mystery calls in the team, begging Vivi to bring Dr. Noble off the clock and under patient confidentiality.

Dr. Noble is way out of her depth when her tests on Arthur confirm his skin is becoming bark, his blood is partially sap, and he's definitely developing a system that will benefit from photosynthesis. He is not surprised at all. He reminds his friends that once, a long time ago, Yettle gave him some of her own lifesap.

They start trying to figure out how they could reverse this, but Arthur has no desire to reverse it and puts a quick stop to that conversation. It isn't death, he argues, it's transformation.

I don't have a good concrete end in mind. Arthur continues to transform, moving slower and slower whenever he does get up and go in to fix anything. Eventually he does put down roots, right next to Yettle. Vivi and Lewis visit every year. Mystery stays nearby, keeping an eye on him and Lance, who never really accepts this and grieves when Arthur roots.

...............................

End note: I'm sorry I could not either finish this story properly, or bring it to a more healed and hopeful place. Part of this end idea came from a conceptual reversal of the classic "I found a dryad in the woods and cut her tree down to 'free' her to leave the woods and marry me, oops she died I didn't mean that to happen," myth. Part of this came from a loss of some relationships in my life that made me realize that sometimes there is too much damage between people for the relationship to continue, or sometimes the relationship cannot be salvaged because one of two parties doesn't want it. I don't think Arthur's withdrawal from the world or shutting out his friends and refusing to try and work things out further is a good moral, I don't, but I couldn't talk him out of it in my head either. Sometimes characters won't listen to the author, and all the author can do is lay out what the characters actually choose.