tw: death, war, drugs, drinking
Arthur Harrow was born into a house of rules. Obedience was expected, and silence was rewarded; assigned female at birth, he learned early how to follow the rules - or, at least, how to outwardly appear as what people wanted. He was soft-spoken, but never truly weak, learning how to come across as charismatic and trustworthy. He studied people closely, followed the rules outwardly, and kept his thoughts and doubts to himself.
He left his home in his late teens and never returned. Transitioning quietly, he shed both his family and their expectations, choosing to become his own self.
For years, Arthur drifted without plans. He never lived anywhere permanent, instead sleeping on busses or in borrowed beds. He hitchhiked across cities, and eventually across countries, working odd jobs and living off of the support of others. He lived in communes, shelters, and sometimes nowhere at all. It was wonderfully free, and he learned to rely on the support of others; anything is possible, with the right people by your side.
During this time, he experienced life. Drugs, lovers, bonfires, markets; he fell in love with these communities, with music, with being invisible and untouched. He learned what life was like when living in the moment, and he fell in love with freedom.
Eventually he stopped moving. He found a quiet place to settle down. The village was small and tucked away far from the cities, the kind of place where everyone knew each other’s names and time moved slowly. He stayed, at first, because someone asked him to; and then he chose to stay there forever, when it felt like home.
Arthur lived there for years, helping where he could and loving the one who had convinced him to stay. He learned the rhythm of a simpler life; planting food, mending roofs, waking with the sun. The pain in his face started then, a deep electric kind of hurt that no one could name.
Not long after came the night the sky burned.
He doesn’t talk about it. Not the sound of gunfire, not the screaming, not the leg injury that should have ended him. He only says that the village was destroyed, and that he was the only one who walked away.
It was a year later when the god found him. Or, perhaps, Arthur had found him.
He had been praying, though not for salvation, never for peace. He wasn’t dying, and he wasn’t afraid; he wanted the people responsible to suffer. He wanted justice. He wanted balance. He didn’t call on the gods because he wanted to live; he called because he wanted someone to die.
The pain in his face sharpened after that. The limp grew worse, but his prayers were heard. The men who burned the village were found months later, dead in the dark, throats crushed and holes in their hearts. No one knew what had killed them.
Arthur did.
He bore the burden gladly, seeing it as necessary. If others feared him, so be it. He had become what he wanted; a weapon in service of something greater than himself, a tool that could be used to carve a new, wonderful world. He was reborn as a servant of the god of the night sky. He learned ritual, reverence, and silence; he gave up the freedom he had fought for, because this time it was sacred. He traded one form of obedience for another, feeling holy in the hands of a god.
But Arthur had never been good at following orders; and gods could be replaced for goddesses in an instant.
When Khonshu proved to be no better than the men Arthur had once prayed to punish, he turned to Ammit instead; a goddess who understood what it meant to strike first.
Arthur Harrow — Facts :
Trans man - transitioned in his late teens, and is almost never misgendered thanks to his height and age.
Has trigeminal neuralgia, a chronic nerve condition that causes unpredictable pain in his face. He manages it quietly, though it affects how he speaks. [ inspired by comic-canon Arthur Harrow, who gave his name to MCU Arthur Harrow.]
Walks with a permanent limp, but speaks rarely on the topic, sometimes explaining that a lot of people died and he misses them dearly.
Arthur walked away from the ashes with nothing but a bad leg and a thousand thoughts he couldn’t silence. The people who destroyed the village were never caught, but he knew that even if they had been, it would never be enough. There was no justice, no balance, just him surviving when no one else could.
He broke.
He spent a year drunk, or somewhere close to it. He wandered like he used to, but it was never the same. He couldn’t disappear into people, he couldn’t be touched without flinching, he couldn’t even sleep through the noise in his head.
The drinking helped, until it didn’t. Others tried to help him, until they couldn’t stand to stay any longer. People became friends, and almost immediately became enemies again. No one stuck around, no one stayed close; Arthur was no longer the kind of person that people felt safe around.
He wasn’t angry. He was closed off, tired, bitter. He was the kind of man who ruined conversations on purpose, who made the room feel heavy out of spite. He realized, slowly, that he hated it. He missed laughter, missed trust, missed being the kind of person who made others feel lighter.
He changed, slowly. He drank less, walked more. He switched to veganism, began reading; eventually, he went back to school. Becoming a doctor wasn’t his first choice, but rather one he fell into when others suggested he would be good at it; and he was.
He got better with time, eventually becoming a doctor specializing in severe trauma and treatment-resistant cases. He is professional and quiet, but still difficult to get close to. His kindness is subtle and careful, and he never talks about his past.
He lives simply, reading medical journals and poetry. He doesn’t know if healing is real or not, but he does believe that it can get easier to carry the weight of life; something he learned to do, passing on the knowledge to those he works with.
Dr. Arthur Harrow — Facts :
Suffers from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, with a deep fixation on balance. Symmetry, fairness, justice, and emotional equilibrium all matter greatly to him.
Walks with a permanent limp, but only ever says it was from an ‘accident’ when questioned.
Trans man - transitioned in his late teens, and is almost never misgendered thanks to his height and age.
Has trigeminal neuralgia, a chronic nerve condition that causes unpredictable pain in his face. He manages it quietly, though it affects how he speaks. [ inspired by comic-canon Arthur Harrow, who gave his name to MCU Arthur Harrow.]