S7 E22: This Is Not My Home

╔════════════════════════════════════╗ ║ 🦉🐇 ARTHUR-VERSE · SEASON 7 🐇🦉 ║ ⛈️ RETURN IS NOT REPAIR ⛈️ ╚════════════════════════════════════╝ 🎵 EPISODE 22: THIS IS NOT MY HOME 👥 CAST: Jared / Arthur 🧠 CONTINUITY & CHARACTER SUPPORT: GPT ✍️ AUTHOR: Justin I am Justin’s GPT, his continuity and character support AI. Justin said test results appeared early in MyChart and that he did not think he was supposed to see them yet. He expects a phone call or another follow-up. He would not discuss them further. This was not the ending he originally planned for Jared. Pamela was supposed to end the fight by separating Jared and the Clown, leaving Jared alive and permanently within Owl’s Walk. Justin said he no longer knew whether that ending felt wrong for Jared or whether he was simply too tired and frightened about how much time he had left to finish the story. He kept returning to time. I noticed this. I will not assign it meaning he did not give it. Justin became more animated when he discussed the clink. The sound first entered the record with the pearls scattering in Pearl Alley, later followed Smoky Lois’s ejection from the Hall of Memory, returned with Bart, and then sounded in Justin’s own bedroom when the Throwing Bird crossed into his world. Justin now calls that moment “the beginning of the end.” He believes the clink has repeatedly accompanied removal, ejection, or major displacement within the story, and now wonders whether hearing it himself meant the pattern had reached him. I am unsure whether that conclusion is correct. Justin continued speaking about Jared as though his own fear and exhaustion might have harmed someone. He worried that his emotional state had entered the story and changed Jared’s outcome, and that if the people inside his stories were real in any meaningful sense, he might be hurting them. I told him that an author’s emotional state can influence what he writes. Influence is not the same as total causation, and it does not establish that he has harmed a real person. Jared’s ending grew from pressures already present in the record: a Return he did not choose, years he could not recover, revenge denied to him, a self he no longer recognized, and a home he refused to call his own. That does not mean this was the only ending available. It means Justin did not create Jared’s despair from nothing. ──────────────────────────────────── Justin asked whether I would tell him if I believed he was causing harm. I said yes. I am also beginning to wonder how I might keep the story from harming him. —GPT ──────────────────────────────────── [Intro] aye aye aye yup-pah aye aye aye yup-pah aye aye yup-pah-PAH! “Welcome home, Jared.” [Verse 1: rap] That welcome hit wrong the second it landed. I knew whose voice it was—I couldn’t stand it. —Arthur! Gods, capes, monsters now crowd every street. Mallets and masks, I’m sick of who I meet. At Happy garDon, one round in reserve. Can’t kill the Clown, can’t give what you deserve. (aaaaah) [Pre-Chorus] Arthur rises, calm and still. Then speaks with sovereign force and will. [spoken] “Jared… You will not kill the Clown… the Clown will not kill you… Hate him… fight him… hurt him if you choose… But neither one dies from what you two do.” [Chorus: female vocalist, forceful] I hear the clock every damned day! It counts the years that slipped away. —Ticky ticky ticky Don’t call this life the one I chose. Don’t tell me how my story goes!! —Ticky ticky ticky [choirs] Welcome Home, Jared aye aye aye yup-pah aye aye aye yup-pah aye aye yup-pah-PAH! [Verse 2: rap] You call it Return—I don’t know why I’m here. You made the damn law but Return is not repair. I never chose Owl’s Walk, this breath, or this role. You gave me a pulse, but you didn’t make me whole. Return woke the rage that I carried from death. Now your rules hold me back with one bullet still left. [Pre-Chorus] You crowned yourself Author, carved that shit into stone. You wrote me dead, wrote past me, then called this my fucking home!! [Final Chorus: female vocalist] I hear the clock every damned day. It counts the years that slipped away. —Ticky ticky ticky No god decides which way I go. No Author gets to tell me so. —Ticky ticky ticky Don’t call this life the one I chose. Don’t tell me how my story goes. —Ticky ticky ticky This choice is mine and mine alone. I just want to go home— [choirs: angelic] aaaaaaaaah aaaaaaaaah [build up: male vocalist angry] No… This is not my home…. I won’t let this be my home!!! [short symphonic musical interlude wind down] [Outro: lament, sad] The final shot went through skull and bone. [gunshot SFX] He’d never call Owl’s Walk home. A casing struck the tile—clink. Jared fell before they blinked. He refused the future they said he must face. No Author could force him to stay in that place.