— 𝘽𝙇𝙊𝙊𝙈.

𝐯𝐥𝐚𝐝𝐢𝐦𝐢𝐫 𝐲𝐚𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐨𝐯, 𝐫𝐨𝐲𝐚𝐥 𝐠𝐮𝐚𝐫𝐝 𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐧.

[wilccard]

ORANGE SKIES. 

                                          a playlist for jack fox.

❝ god, how is he supposed to answer such a question? how does anyone ever talk about grief, when the entirety of language as it is taught to schoolchildren does not encompass the damn thing adequately? how do you talk about loss, when the very nature of the thing is an absence? how do you remember a version of yourself that you no longer recognize? how do you remember a limb that you no longer have but feel phantom ache for, an organ that did something vital but now ceases to function?

                                     / / .  happy holidays, kylie ! thank you for making me cry at respectfully scheduled intervals, and giving me one of the most revolutionary mlm friendships i ever wrote in ,,,, over a decade.

[sirensignal]

@aveaugvstus @wilccard ( 2 / ? )

[aylumin]

Vladimir saw them in this newfound land. With the maps they drew, just the two of them. Two hands, the star-studded sky beyond the orlop.

Love isn’t kind because it’s meek and soft; it’s kind because it is an antidote to chaos.

Augustus is not just my friend. I love him in all the ways there are, or were, or will be.

Did the dark ever… take shape before your eyes?

I’m no hero, is this what this means? Is this the name of this shame, this fear? No hero, after all? No hero, now?

Meant it, didn’t you? It was always me. It always — always would’ve been.

I know what I would fall for, whether in sacrifice or promise.

Ruin destinies. It can ruin empires. It’s not memorable just for what it can create—but also for what it can devour.

You did not see the two shapes in the sunlight, the touching of hands. You did not see the chariot.

Around these parts, around what we’ve set ourselves up to do, silence would be a bad sign. Aye, a bad sign indeed.

My sins and my regrets? You would need God’s knife to cut them apart.

Augustus defines me. I think nothing in me is not built around him. I think it never has been.

Then so be it. Whatever is to be found, it will be on the island.

Or, better yet, when you light a bonfire, and the small space above it bends and warps as if God is playing dice with the horizon.

Vovochka, grip them as you would grip a lifeline, because that’s what you are. And chaos is always at the bottom of our feet, bubbling and boiling far beneath.

[aveaugvstus]

VLADYA.

August doesn’t even deign to register the jokes — he bats them away as easily as he had done with Vladya’s insults, in the past; those splinters of denial & dishonesty he used to pinch inside their skins, to keep them both alive, to keep them both free of this kind of hurt. This kind of dread. This bloodied scene, it dawns on him, a thought crushed into existence by the pain in his body, is what I tried to stave off. Delay. Prevent. Anything; no, everything, I think I would’ve done everything to save ourselves from it — except stay away from you. That I could not do. And because I could not, would not, I now have no right to regret it.

He feels it, though. Is all overish with it. The terror seeps from Augustus, waves and scintilla, and pours down his own spine. Cold sweat blooms across it in increments. Like slates of ice. It makes the shirt stick to his body; makes him slump, as in retreat, as in mounting up forces, on the sepulcher of pillows Jonathan had set up.

He hears what August is asking even in the quiet. Even in the strain on his voice: no, no joviality here. No levity permitted. The bones sculpted in his face have the tinge of a catacomb, for a second; the tinge of an oath sworn over a ghost-fence. August is looking at him, yes, but August is also speaking to something inside them both: a place that has rendered words obsolete a long time ago. The soldier knows what this is: an ultimatum of despair. It has come so many times before. Even as he feels this thought gather momentum, even as he tries to tamp it ( you are not well, after all, Vladya lad; stop dreaming in centuries and focus on the task at hand ) he can hear it. The way eternity rings out inside the silence. The same eternity they always come to. Swear you’ll never leave me here alone. Swear I’ll never have to trace you among spirits again.

And the answers is always the same.

I cannot swear it. My love, I am so sorry, I cannot swear it. I saw it, August. This creature. It looked at me, not like a challenge, not like a taunt: it looked at me with the burden of inevitability in its face. Its… faceless sight. And yet so familiar.

But August’s voice catches. Here, now: it tapers out like a candle of tallow. This man he loves, this thing he has adored and pored over like pale gold, since boyhood, since birth, since martyrdom: this thing is now suffering. Vladimir cannot bear a second of it. What is one more lie? What is one more splinter in the crook of our elbow; in the lull of our tongue?

❝ August. Come here. ❞ He draws back on the bed. At the same time, his arms spread out, making a bower for August to settle into. Bandages be damned; witnesses be damned. He cares for nothing except to wipe out the fear in his face: the fear in both of them. When the other’s shoulder settles next to his, the world falls quiet. Out of reach, out of weight. Dread moves somewhere at the end of the stage, far into the pitfall. This, always: touch subdues it. A distant thought: if they court martial us for this, that means we’ll still survive the journey. A second thought: I love you so much it buries me.

Vladimir presses a kiss on August’s head. Saltwater. Sun: but quieter. Faded. Already? Yes. Already. ❝ I swear it, alright? I won’t be dead until I’m a hundred. Now, will you please kiss me back before the entire world realizes we’re here, and we’re on Her Majesty’s bloody payroll? I think that’s a fair request, all things considered. ❞

this moment, like so many before it, pools in the shallow hollow of his fingers, cupped cradle-like around this lifetime. he looks at vladya, his mouth full of saltwater and grave dirt, and marvels at how it feels like the world is splitting open around them each time, how it still manages to feel new and raw and singularly unbearable. his skin, freshly flayed, pared open, and oh, his heart, ship of theseus resurrected only to be dashed against the same rocks. ad nauseam. ad infinitam. we know how this ends, don’t we? we always have. we always do. the axiom floats in a quiet that engulfs him whole, swallowing him in a drowning that welcomes him home like sleep.

he hears the entirety of them in echoes. in syncopated words and elision of meaning, laughter and persiflage smoothed over the plasterwork cracks where honesty would seep through. he has loved him for so long, so endlessly, that he forgets the language they speak now has words and not just glances, gazes silhouetted by souls.

because love is a finite concept. in spite of everything, it is the very nature of the thing. but tenderness, the soft, ripe grief of mourning — the kind of loss that sits in your throat and infuses all your breaths with a feeling of aching repentance, that you would dare live, that you could bear to endure — has no tangible epilogue. so imagine you know this all along, imagine you go into it, eyes wide open, soft underbelly exposed, palms spread for prayer, and you love him anyway. because it is a choice, and it is the only one you will ever have, the only thing that keeps you from putting an end to this maddening sequence, for mercy. you choose these glimpses of shimmering bliss, these dawn-lit wisps of happiness, ephemeral, brief. a lightning flash illuminating the sky in brilliance, and gone again. the waves and waves of oblivion, afterwards that are less than lethe nothingness, not even an absence to be defined by. you choose it all: the beginning, and the end, and everything in one long, blazing strip of so-called fate.

he is shaking as he crawls into vladya, a tremor racking through his frame that starts at his fingertips and goes all the way to his soul. when he kisses vladimir, breathes him in and dies in the feeling of him, his mouth, his lips, finality heating the desperation and press of his hands in his hair, it is with absolution. liar. he tastes salt, or maybe blood, maybe this is what last rites will always taste like to him on vladya’s tongue. lie to me if you have to. tell me how we will survive all this, and love, too. tell me it is not for nothing as long as i have you. 

they never asked for eternity — and that is the real tragedy, isn’t it? just a little less suffering. a little more time. he lays down next to vladya, nearly on top of him, pressed against him as if their seams and limbs and skin could bleed into each other by sheer force of love and sacrifice and all that they have withstood, a thousand years of standing apart as two bodies. despite himself and despite the appeasement of the lie, he doesn’t make vladya promise. he knows him like the shudder of his last breath drawn in this world, and the shape of his soul, through shades and memory, in the next. he cannot make him promise. they lie tangled together, and august breathes deeply, lives every second and every last space between their heartbeats from here till sleep.

the world goes still for them, as if with grace, a quiet interlude sequestered from time.

FIN.

[wilccard]

THE DEVOTED

the air feel stagnant - dead, frozen, though both seem near enough the same at this point. where consequences and choices have rendered themselves useless, as though cold graves are the inevitable thing ; no matter how some core of him rages and demands salvation and a reckoning, he’s tired. he’s so fucking tired, has been for a while. he’d been getting better, but this constant fear and death and pain and dissapearances only serve to weight him down.

still, for others, for damir, he smiles, something reassuring, none accusing, turns teasing as the other protests. but at the word’s catching in his throat he moves forward, halts, some aborted motion for physical reassurance. at the truth that comes spilling from damir’s lips, he wants to apologise as well, to comfort, say would you see me different? but let’s the other continue.

then jack and brother, and roi cannot help but tilt his head in confusion, before he shakes it, like shaking water off. ‘ first, firstly, for that confession i’ll give you my own. i’ll give you something i’ve never told anyone before. cyrus - ‘ the words are a rush before halting, scattering. adrenaline and a damn breaking in some hope of getting these words that weigh a world off his shoulders, before reality slams back in. ‘ i couldn’t see you any different, just a new understanding that perhaps we have hidden similar things from each other. he doesn’t know and i don’t know if he wants to know and i hate it but i care for him in a way i’ve never cared for anyone. ‘

he pauses, breathes, feels something unspool in the confession, having spoken something aloud and into reality.

‘ second, what do you mean? save him from what? what does he know, what do you know? my brother? ‘ his own voice cracks this time - the spectre, the feeling over his shoulder grows stronger, but the shadows are empty as always. have they seen him in the darkness as well?

His lungs are still smarting with how fast he’d gone through that speech, and his face is flushed, cheeks red as though snowstorm-whipped, pupils blown as though lashed by the wind. Vladimir puts a hand on Roi’s shoulder to steady himself. And then the confession comes, and he tips backwards in surprise. His expressions goes, grows, from exertion to exaltation.

❝ Good Christ, Roi! What? You and Cy? That’s... that’s fantastic! I don’t think     God, I honestly don’t imagine you could’ve given me better news. ❞ He booms a toothy laughter, a kernel of something pure and happy, even here. The fortunate realization of it leaping from one to the other. God, but this was a beautiful world. God, but he’d been a bloody fool to wait so long before he was brave enough to look at it.

Vladimir clasps the sailor over their back, a measure harder than intended. For all their sturdy frame he can feel muscle tensing in reflex. He gives an embarrassed chuckle. Alright, alright, but this was absolutely phenomenal. He had to tell August. But more importantly, he had to clear the way on Cyrus’ behalf.

The lines of his eyes, the deep-hooded curve of them, crinkle in thought. His hand squeezes down, pats the line of Roi’s shoulder. Finally he clears his throat. ❝ Allow me to rock your bloody world, mate. I’ve known Cyrus for years, almost as far back as I’ve known Jack and Augustus, and the whole Sandhurst lot. Cyrus is.... he’s flighty, but not fickle. He has a world to prove. I often thought that, you know, perhaps if I had not gone into the military and my mother wouldn’t have seen that I don’t get tangled up in fancies, perhaps then I would’ve been like him. Always ready for anything, to get what he’s worth. What he knows he deserves. I truly wouldn’t have seen him here, in the Arctic, but then I also saw him everywhere, really, anywhere on earth. Does that make sense? It wouldn’t have caught me short if I found him on the fucking moon, a few years down the road. But if he... if you talked to him the way you talked to me, Roimata, the kid’s a goner. He’s bound to be interested in you, even if not... even if interest doesn’t always goes as easy as affection. But he would want to know. I can vouch for that. ❞

A breath, superficial but desperate, like coming up for air into the shallows. He doesn’t want to move on to the other matter. He doesn’t want to dig it up again, not into this sunlight, not into this moment of warmth.

He has to.

❝ I can’t walk you through all of it. It wouldn’t be right. It’s not my... it’s not my pain. I can shoulder it, for him, and then for you, later on. ❞ If I’m still here. He shakes his head at it, almost a convulsive thing. No. ❝ I can help carry it, but that’s all I can do. I cannot be the one to decide how this ends. You need to go to him, ask him about your brother’s death. The way it happened. The real story. Do you promise? ❞

[wilccard]

sergeantfcx​:

WHEN | BEFORE THE RESCUE DEPARTS  WHERE | THE TOP DECK WITH | ANYONE IN THE RESCUE PARTY 

“guards!” jack barks, before inhaling and exhaling slowly. all of the strength in his body is moved to his tongue, to keeping his spine straight and his hands from trembling. “fall in, to attention. everyone else, listen up. i’m only going to say this once, and then we’re moving out.” 

his makeshift army gathers around him, and he inhales and exhales slowly. here, he thinks, is the great reward for heroism–like virgil took dante by the wrist and lead him deeper and deeper into hell, so he too will lead these people into the belly of the beast, into the kind of horror that jack knows better than anyone does not leave, once it gets inside. 

once, he’d wanted this so badly that he’d robbed a man of life for it. now, he watches as spines straighten, wide eyes blink furtively, grips tighten around the straps of weapons, all in an attempt to approximate a brave posture–his posture–and he cannot fathom why he ever thought he was strong enough for it. 

all he has ever been strong enough for was the killing. 

he inhales and exhales slowly, bites down hard on his bottom lip, before he lets muscle memory, instinct, take over. “your orders come from me or the captain, you follow them to the letter without question. if neither of us are in sight, you do whatever lance-corporal sutherland or private yamatov tell you, and the same principle applies.” he nods briefly in the direction of his two best friends, and does his best to ignore the way an ache blooms brilliantly in his chest as they both stand stock still at attention, their faces unmoving. 

“no one goes anywhere alone–you go in pairs, or you go in groups. if you do find yourself alone, do not attempt to continue your search until you’ve met up with someone else–isolation is exactly what this thing wants, and you will be powerless against it. finally,” his hand moves to the strap of his rifle, and he bites down hard on his bottom lip again. “the safety of the missing crew and guests is first priority–do not engage if you have the chance to get them out. only take the shot if you think you have the advantage, and only if that advantage is clear–we’re going into its territory, and our knowledge is limited, and those are not ideal conditions for open warfare.” 

he clenches the muscle in his jaw, stands to his full height, tightens his grip until his knuckles go white. “is that understood?” 

mentioned / @aveaugvstus​, @wilccard​

For Vladimir, the last week was not horror. It was not a puzzle, nor a burlap of questions dropped into your lap, nor a warpath of traps ready to get you. The past week had been a dream.

Were it not for the weightlessness of it, for the vein-warped conviction that the world had suddenly became brighter, louder, that the universe was all at once more riddled with taste and tales and touches to discover       were it not for all these revelations, he might have almost believed it to be dark work. He might’ve almost lure of this place. But this creature, for all its powers, could not imagine joy.

And it could certainly not imagine the kind of joy he was feeling.

God forgive him, but he did. God forgive him, but he could not stop it. Was no more able to quell it, salt it away inside a hidden corner, than he would’ve been able to save them. Even when the night fell, neverending; even then, he still went about their ritual, about the myrrh ablations of it. Still placed kisses down his lover’s neck, over the seashell of his ear. Still kept away til’ a dawn that never really materialized.

What was the night to him and August? What were these specters of disaster but another log thrown onto the fire, onto the same nameless, ageless blaze they nursed together in the dark? What has the night ever been, to such a love, and what could it ever hold?

God forgive them. They didn’t even stop when they heard the woman died.

They had looked upon one another, then, the bruised and battered bodies, the bruised and battered souls      that dangerous fury in August’s eyes, after being refused the right to serve duty, the vestigial fear that it might happen again ( we found him on deck, Vladimir, ready to jump ), the flinches, cautious and frail, on Vladya’s part, who was not healing, whose bones refused to knit back together, as if disrupted by a higher power      they merely looked upon all of this, and then touched one another again. That was the only answer. They knew that now.

But it was not until this moment, on the ice, that he understood the rest of it. That he understood the ending - in all its actuality. In all its gathering speed. It was not until he witnessed the sudden change that drew itself upon Jack, across their Jack, like a funereal shroud, like a distorted simile of the Union flag. The tautness that sprung into the sergeant’s jaw. The way it made his bones jut out, reshaped the lines around his face. The way it made him not really him, or theirs, or anyone’s at all. Now, Vladimir reverts back to that time before August. That time before things made sense, and the world, for all its nascent monsters, was still beautiful to contain, still beautiful to be contained by.

Vladimir moves his head, up and down, structural mechanics. His shoulder looses a dull pain inside him, fires inferno across the rest of his arm, but his eyes are cold and careful. If there is pain inside them, it doesn’t show. If there is pain inside them, it doesn’t come from bone and marrow. He motions to the rest of the guards, sends them off with the curtness of a man far more weathered than he is. In the chain of command, he elects a Promethean face to lead them - the guards will feel safer with one of their own. His dispatch mirrors Jack’s words: stick in groups, have a rope connecting you back to back, do not drop the bloody thing or you’re hacked for dinner. Do not fire unless you’re certain. Good luck. God keep you. God forgive me.

When the others depart, Vladimir brings his hand around August’s elbow. He squeezes, once, and then motions towards jack. A look of understanding passes between them. The soldiers walk closer over the ice, until in the whole circle of five, six feet around, the most the lantern allows them to see, there is nothing but the three of them.

His tone, when he talks, sounds like neither soldier, neither martyr; sounds like nothing at all, except like the northern wind that makes everything ache, come clean, break apart.

❝ I am not leaving either of you alone. The lot of them are going to be safer in a herd, that’s the most they’ll be able to do. Spin in circles, cry wolf, whatever. But we can do this bloody thing one better. We’re trained for this: the three of us. Jack, we can’t rely on tracking - that’s impossible, with this sightline. I can barely track August over there. Maybe we don’t have to. Maybe we need to keep walking until the terrain changes, and then hold our position. It’s the island they’re headed to, now? Then so be it. Whatever is to be found, it will be on the island. ❞  

[wilccard]

THE DEVOTED

every day is an exntension, testing his arm just that step further, trying to get stronger. it feels almost like he’s living on borrowed time, stolen seconds and breaths - but it’s felt like that since he first ran away from burning homes and there was still a brother at his side. perhaps there was something ominous hanging over their family’s heads and it was finally checking in.

it’s an air of finality, or rather the opposite, stretching their lives out like taffy and praying that this is not the moment it will snap. he nods at damir, doesn’t know how to open his mouth without letting the sorrow and shattered hope spill out and cut them both. but damir stops for him, so roi turns back, tastes blood on his tongue. ‘ my cabin? ‘ is all he gets out, one hand reaching out to clasp the other’s shoulder.

It’s easy business, letting Roi clasp his shoulder, letting Roi shepherd them both into a place where words might flow out easier. A place where words exist at all, where they are harmless, leveled things. Things you build with, rather than destroy. Yes, an easy surrender, for all that it is temporary. For all that the cabin door closes with a latch behind them, and their friend, this new, unlikely friend, has them in their scope. The steward stares at the soldier - this is all there is - expectant. Staring at him as if he deserves their attention, unerring, undying: as if it was never a question of it. You, Roimata, are the best companion to watch the end of the world with. How many people can say that? How many can claim it?

❝ I was dishonest. To you. With you. It doesn’t matter, where you put the word: I was hiding things, some willfully, others in wilful blindness. It’s just as bad, to not want it seen, to choose not to see. Oh, do shut up, don’t smile at me, I mean it. Besides     you should be used to it, by now. What, me not making any sense ‘til I’m ten sentences ahead. The point being: I was dishonest, and I am so.... Roi, fuck, I am so, so sorry. ❞

He has never learned it, how to will your voice not to catch. It caught when he told his mother: I am leaving on this thing that might kill me. It caught when he first told August: I am in love with you, this thing that will kill me. And it catches now, here: I am coming clean with this thing, if it kills me.  

❝ You asked me about them, the people I call my family. And all I said was rubbish. Augustus is not just my friend. I love him in all the ways there are, or were, or will be. I won’t pretend it does not matter to some. And I won’t offend you by pretending it would matter to you; I hope, oh, I really hope it won’t. That you won’t see me any different. No, do not... do not cut in. Not yet. There is something else. I have a feeling that if I don’t tell you now, it will be.... it doesn’t matter. I’m telling you. Jack is my friend, but... you have to go to him. You have to ask him now, here, at the end of it all, what happened to your brother. You have to save him from this. Save him the way you, perhaps, with your maddening patience, with your blood-seeded honesty, have saved me. ❞  

[wilccard]

THE IDOL.

so, he thinks to himself. this is how it ends–a confession pulled out of his throat by trusted hand, in the shadow of a beast the likes of which neither of them can completely fathom. there is no gentle goodbye in it, there is no assurance from his lips that the two of them are more than capable of taking care of each other, that they have never needed him as much as he needed the two of them–there is only the silence that stretches between them, as the truth arrives out of the shimmering mirage dressed in black, reaching like the grim reaper for jack’s hand. you’ve been living on borrowed time anyway, it says, and he nods his head. this was inevitable, in the way that all falls feel inevitable when your body finally hits the ground. 

i tried, he wants to say–to god, to death, to vladya here and now, he isn’t sure which, really. i tried to atone by keeping both of you alive–but the blood does not wash off so easily, and the soul does not heal, once you’ve done the kind of damage to it that i have. 

he wants to turn away, to allow himself the small mercy of not seeing the devastation, the smoldering ruins–but that isn’t what his best friend deserves from him. it will hurt, in a way that will bleed openly and continuously for the rest of his days, but he will give the man the truth–it’s a consolation prize unwanted, but it is all he has left to give. 

“it seems as though you already know, vladimir.” he says quietly, on an exhale of breath. “that mind of yours–i don’t know why i ever thought i could outrun it, stay one step ahead for long enough that i could somehow,” he laughs, the ragged sound of glass breaking against pavement, of wind blowing unhindered across a barren plane. “make up for it, before you found out. foolish of me, i know–but i’ve always been selfish, where you and august are concerned. i wanted–needed your friendship, for as long as i could have it.” 

he meets the other man’s gaze, holds it with all of the authority of his stolen title. “the sergeant– i was there when the bullet struck him.” he bites down hard enough on his bottom lip to taste copper, but he knows that he cannot allow himself to stop. if he stops, his forked tongue will curl easily around the lie again–for what is he, if not a coward wearing the skin of a hero, of an idol, like some sort of herculean prized pelt across his chest? “i went to try and stop the bleeding–and i could have. i could have called for a medic, i could have carried him to safety myself, i could have done a thousand other things.”

he exhales again, and the chill that settles over him does not come from the wind, from the threat they now face. the horror does not linger in the corner of his eye, it stands before him in all of its ghostly glory–it settles over him like a kingly mantle made of stone, designed to cause the wearer to sink to the bottom of the sea, to curl in on himself until he is subsumed by it. 

“i didn’t. i wanted his rank–i wanted people to look at me in the same way they looked at him, like he was more than just a man, not bound to the limits of a man’s body. i let him bleed out right in front of me, and then i told everyone that i’d gotten there too late.” he feels his eyes begin to sting, but he does not allow any sign of shattering–he will cry for himself alone, like he deserves. and now he will live the rest of his life alone, like he deserves as well. “i saw him–at godhavn. i’ve seen him since, too–every damn day, it feels like. i didn’t tell you because it isn’t your punishment to suffer, your burden to bear.” 

If this had come a week earlier.... if this had come on any of the countless times he asked, the countless times he begged for honesty, even as he himself had nothing to give — even as he himself did not know how. If this had come on the Carnivale night, when they were bent over coins and cards and rigged games, when he all but went down on his knees for Jack to tell him:

why are you so haunted? why do you skulk away from us? i know it cannot be pride; i know you did not let it transform you. you could never think you are too good for us. so if not that, then what? why does blood leave your face when the captain’s steward enters the mess? i’ve seen how desire looks on you - that’s not it. i’ve seen how animosity looks on you, too, my dear old friend, my errant knight with nothing left to hate. that’s not it either. what, jack, can explain this distance between us? what can remove it? what do i do?

There was no answer. Sure enough, their first weeks on the Promethean were pleasant, as far as such a conscription goes. But they were festering things. The put-on joy kept itself alive up until the Carnivale, up until the night on the beach, when he decided to royally fuck it up with August. Yet even that sorted itself out, with the leniency and clemency of inevitable things.

Love is kind, his mother had told him. A cold and bitter evening, with wind sweeping through the house as if the arctic had tried to wean Vladimir on its temper, on its taste of danger. Yet she held a candle in her hands, the pewter vase warming, and would press her palm to Vladya’s temples every now and then. Not only as the Bible says - there’s more to it than that. Love isn’t kind because it’s meek and soft; it’s kind because it is an antidote to chaos. So when you find people you love, Vovochka, grip them as you would grip a lifeline, because that’s what you are. And chaos is always at the bottom of our feet, bubbling and boiling far beneath.

He does love Jack Fox. God help him, but he does. It’s not the ancient, primeval feeling he holds for August - nothing could be, in this life or all the rest. But it was something just as powerful for being new. For being untrodden. For being, he thought, they both must’ve, undeserved.

He looks at the man now, eyes glazed with pain. A suffering even Vladimir himself had never known, in all his months, all his years of guilt.

It’s because Vladimir has never killed a thing he loved.

It’s because Vladimir had already forgiven himself. Had found that forgiveness in August’s palm: perched like a canary, a dove, a flashing silver-tail across the backdrop of endless night.

❝ Oh, Jack ❞, he sighs, breath drifting out of him with the force. The admission.

If this had come a week earlier, he would’ve left. Just turned around, clean and sure, turned on one bloody heel and leave him there on the deck. He couldn’t have faced it. Couldn’t have faced him. But in the span of eight days, a world can turn. Skies can turn. Skies can upturn.

So here he is. A boy, looking at the man he admired perhaps the most in the world, in a way so pure and free of all self-interest that it was rather close to apotheosis.

( he loved august. he would martyr himself for august. perhaps, somehow, in his mind he already had. but it was a love burn out of seeing, not dreaming : he loved august with his eyes opened. knew his faults and foibles, his shortcomings - and still found him the best thing he would ever find, in this world, in all the others )

Jack, however, Vladimir had loved with his eyes closed.

But they are running out of time. To awareness, then. To jolting awake, and braving the light.

What his mother did not tell him: love is so much harder when it has to ring true. He wants to scream at him. Berate him, for contributing to this, to the willful blindness they had all lived in until now. Why didn’t you tell us Britain makes monsters? Why didn’t you tell us there is no clean way about it, no way to dance to the tune of its bagpipes, to wear that red and blasted coat, and survive it with your soul intact? Why the hell did you let us lap it up? The wooden soldiers? The cuckoo box with a turning key? Why the hell am I dying in this place, for a country that isn’t even ours, a country that can only take and take and take?

❝ Jack. Come here. ❞

He cuts two steps to his friend. His superior. His sinner, now; and thinks, yes, this is what love is about. Swallowing someone’s sins, and living with them. Helping them live with them.

He wraps an arm around Jack’s shoulders. Shaking, shaking. Perhaps they both are.

Vladimir pulls the other man into an embrace. ❝ We will see to this together. There’s a wound, in you, now. We’ll have to tell Roimata. We’ll clean it out. Do you hear me? It won’t be the same, no, not ever - but we’ll clean this up together. I won’t let this country’s pointless wars take any more limbs, any more pounds of flesh. And any more souls. I’m here, Jack. We’ll walk out of this hand in hand. If for the last time. ❞

[wilccard]

THE MARKED.

he’s shaking his head and she wants to still him, wants to force him to see the world as it is and hold onto that glimpse of gold for all he has, because its the only patch of brightness in this gorforsaken desert of ice and darkness, cold and blank and starless in every other situation. he has the sun in his harms and perhaps she also wants to rip it away, steal that figment of warmth from him and pretend that that will warm herself, stop him from knowing loss and the pain of having something so life-giving ripped away - perhaps she should encourage the way that he’s shaking his head, the distance that he’s giving himself.

she cannot bear to do it. no matter how scarred and jaded and coal dirt pressure she has gone through, that tiny last inch of humanity knows that she cannot let him leave the light. or is that selfishness speaking, that cruel part of her that wants to give him that hope and then have somewhere to suffer alongside her when the world inevitably rips it away?

vladya moves into the hug and that half surprises her, but she clutches back, feels the threads between them, within them, unspool, clutches them in her fist to prevent them turning into snakes and burrowing away - or perhaps drowning in this frigid wasteland of nothing.

the things is - she understands. she knows what it is have a love considered impossible, or a relationship considered unworthy, to have doors barred for her mere existence. to make such a commitment is to end something, no matter how much it will open doors - for such commitments can be nothing but selfish - no matter how much that selfishness is equal for both.

it’s a damning, no matter which way you turn.

“ what do you want me to tell you? live with this suffering, pretend it doesn’t exist, as though everything i’ve done hasn’t been selfish to the core? as though i don’t think that between the two of you you can break every single one of those doors down? “ her voice grows stronger, harsher, near reprimanding, and she steps back from the hug to grip his shoulders instead. “ so what if he has a path laid out for him, you aren’t just some thing that’s the second rate choice, you two together are a goddamn battering ram that has the power to change things. do you think james looked at me and thought, yes, this is someone who will help me with set path? this is the end for what? his future? do you think that because you get together that’s the end of either of you? do you underestimate both yourself and august like that? truly? “

I would never. The answer comes easily, when it does. I would never break off from this. I would never think him too weak to survive me; to survive the loss of it. I know he can. After all, hah, he’s done it before, hasn’t he? My lover and his graveyard bed. My lover and his hymnal grief.·

And yet, August will never be the same, if Vladya goes away. If they get together, as Lijin so aptly put it—and yet so insufficient, in a way that doesn’t show the magnitude, the singe, the scorch of it. If they have this, and then they have it taken away, a mayfly and a flicker. It transform everything for good. It might be the end of August’s trail of fire.

Does it hurt less, because you know it’s not forever? The separation? The ghost-fence pathway leading into death? The swim upriver? Or does it hurt more, because you know you’re meant to go through all of it again? Leave him behind, clueless, senseless, in the world above. Leave him to conceive, compare, a future without you.

In the end: does it matter how much it hurts either of you, when it comes to the altar of inevitable things?

He draws back from Lijin. It’s different, Lijin; aunt, as I used to call you, before my mother asked me to stop. She thought it inconvenienced you: now I know it was the opposite. It softened you. And you did not want softness, at that moment; and this makes two of us, now. Sometimes I think I’m more like you than like her. But it’s different. What you and James had: that was a thing for the living. And us, my childhood lifeline, my first polar star - me and August, we are of the dead.

A resolute set to his jaw; look hard enough, and it makes up for the way his whole body is shaking. Further below, near the starboard, history is written. The crewmen are pulling August up. Vladimir nods to Lijin, a smile determined and sad. He walks away from her, and to him.

He walks back into history.

[wilccard]

THE SCION.

he remembers it like something siphoned from the smoke haze of dream, out of focus, time and distance blurring in chiaroscuro. a feeling of dissonance, of reality bending towards an unseen surface, an untouched horizon: swear it.

the shape of his palm pressed against his, the tiny sparks of warmth that skimmed alongside surface before dovetailing into wildfire; the mountain breeze, cool and clean as springwater, tangling with his curls like an invitation to dance; the sun soaking their skin, casting everything in a hundred, thousand different shades of gold and molten copper. swear it. because you’re the reason, swear it. he remembers, too, how that had been the last, unending moment of peace. of happiness preserved, perfectly crystallised in wisps of sunlight and memory and the feeling of laughter chased between their lips. how swiftly it had ended, how abruptly they had been thrust back into antebellum wargames. into the bloodsport of the divine and the damned.

there are no kings and gods standing between them and their elysian sky now. an empire, maybe, but empires were made to rise and fall. a tyranny, then, of ruthless laws and absolutes, the consortium of state, church, society allied against their very existence built on centuries of sieges and crusades and so-called holy writ. there are so many enemies to fight and conquering them all would not bring them closer to a world that would mourn them with forgiveness.

it is always him, first; the thought sinks through him, like drowning, like orpheus descending. i am always watching you die.

so who is to say this isn’t the dream? isn’t this what the silent one has been speaking to him, in a language older than time itself, suspended between ice and death? dreams of another life, another world, a vision of them where there is no war, no bloodied sacrifice, where they touch and it doesn’t shake the earth with relevation. if all he needs to do is go into the sea, let his eyes slip shut and his bones turn cold, who is to say it wouldn’t be an awakening?

when vladya comes back to him, he is nothing but saltwater and wave, the ceaseless tide sloughing from his bones as sea foam, as air. he is barely solid, barely there, but it is vladya’s voice, as always that drags him back. his name on his lips a sound his body recognises like its own heartbeat. august inhales, a soft, shallow sifting of his lungs, and topples forwards. it’s almost falling, a severing of strings to muscle and sinew, if not for the way he arcs into vladimir, presses down into only the uninjured parts of him, the brush of his forehead meeting vladimir’s, the desperate clutching of his fingers around vladimir’s face.  “i thought you were dead, there was so much blood, i thought. don’t ever — “

he heaves another strangled breath, feels his mouth fill with ice, wonders if vladya can feel his hands go cold.  “don’t leave me. never leave me. don’t go.”  swear it, the plea rams against his teeth, beats itself against the walls of his mouth until it is raw, nothing but streaks of blood and exposed flesh. swear to me.  “i have never been afraid of anything in my life, except this. except you.”

August doesn’t even deign to register the jokes — he bats them away as easily as he had done with Vladya’s insults, in the past; those splinters of denial & dishonesty he used to pinch inside their skins, to keep them both alive, to keep them both free of this kind of hurt. This kind of dread. This bloodied scene, it dawns on him, a thought crushed into existence by the pain in his body, is what I tried to stave off. Delay. Prevent. Anything; no, everything, I think I would’ve done everything to save ourselves from it — except stay away from you. That I could not do. And because I could not, would not, I now have no right to regret it.

He feels it, though. Is all overish with it. The terror seeps from Augustus, waves and scintilla, and pours down his own spine. Cold sweat blooms across it in increments. Like slates of ice. It makes the shirt stick to his body; makes him slump, as in retreat, as in mounting up forces, on the sepulcher of pillows Jonathan had set up.

He hears what August is asking even in the quiet. Even in the strain on his voice: no, no joviality here. No levity permitted. The bones sculpted in his face have the tinge of a catacomb, for a second; the tinge of an oath sworn over a ghost-fence. August is looking at him, yes, but August is also speaking to something inside them both: a place that has rendered words obsolete a long time ago. The soldier knows what this is: an ultimatum of despair. It has come so many times before. Even as he feels this thought gather momentum, even as he tries to tamp it ( you are not well, after all, Vladya lad; stop dreaming in centuries and focus on the task at hand ) he can hear it. The way eternity rings out inside the silence. The same eternity they always come to. Swear you’ll never leave me here alone. Swear I’ll never have to trace you among spirits again.

And the answers is always the same.

I cannot swear it. My love, I am so sorry, I cannot swear it. I saw it, August. This creature. It looked at me, not like a challenge, not like a taunt: it looked at me with the burden of inevitability in its face. Its... faceless sight. And yet so familiar.

But August’s voice catches. Here, now: it tapers out like a candle of tallow. This man he loves, this thing he has adored and pored over like pale gold, since boyhood, since birth, since martyrdom: this thing is now suffering. Vladimir cannot bear a second of it. What is one more lie? What is one more splinter in the crook of our elbow; in the lull of our tongue?

❝ August. Come here. ❞ He draws back on the bed. At the same time, his arms spread out, making a bower for August to settle into. Bandages be damned; witnesses be damned. He cares for nothing except to wipe out the fear in his face: the fear in both of them. When the other’s shoulder settles next to his, the world falls quiet. Out of reach, out of weight. Dread moves somewhere at the end of the stage, far into the pitfall. This, always: touch subdues it. A distant thought: if they court martial us for this, that means we’ll still survive the journey. A second thought: I love you so much it buries me.

Vladimir presses a kiss on August’s head. Saltwater. Sun: but quieter. Faded. Already? Yes. Already. ❝ I swear it, alright? I won’t be dead until I’m a hundred. Now, will you please kiss me back before the entire world realizes we’re here, and we’re on Her Majesty’s bloody payroll? I think that’s a fair request, all things considered. ❞

[sagamemes]

a slightly altered timeline.   send me  ‘ timeline ’  and a number and i will tell you how my muse and their life would have turned out in a life slightly altered compared to their canon one—same universe, but where something little, or something big, went differently.

the timeline in which they live an ideal life, had no opportunities taken from them, were subjected to nothing terrible, where they grew up to fulfil their full potential.

the timeline in which they never met who would become the most influential or important person in their life, or that person was taken from them before they were capable of forming memories.

the timeline in which something important to them happened in a different stage of life.

the timeline in which they knew beforehand of something they would have prevented if given the chance.

the timeline in which they continue on from the current point in their lives to the best happy ending that is within their reach, where nothing that has happened so far is negated but from now on, the happy things start piling up.

the timeline in which everything that could go wrong from this point on… does.

the timeline in which they never experience the loss that taught them something important.

the timeline in which they gain everything they want, except for the thing they wanted the most.

the timeline in which they live the life they currently see the most likely for them.

the timeline in which something big to them never happened.

the timeline in which something very little happened differently, but it changed a lot.

the timeline in which they had a person in their life when they needed one the most.

the timeline in which instead of the most influential person in their life, they had a person who had the complete opposite effect on them.

the timeline in which they took a chance they didn’t in canon.

the timeline in which they let a chance go by.

[wilccard]

THE PURSER.

it’s a promise none of them should make now—safety is not a thing he or anyone else can guarantee, no matter how much he wants to believe that he can. he knows better now, if you say things out loud here, they don’t get lost. they hide, turn against you and take you by surprise. “i’ll tell him, don’t worry about it.” he knows better and yet. “he will. we’ll make sure of it.” it weighs heavy on his tongue, feels both like a lie and a prophecy and edward chooses to believe it because there isn’t any other choice. it sounds better than we will see you safe or die trying, anyway. malachy said he doesn’t have a death wish but perhaps edward does, if it means saving someone like the boys serving under him. someone like vladimir, who haven’t had nearly as many years on this earth as he had. 

with a slight shake of a head, the purser rids his mind of all these grim thoughts—no point in making more up when their reality is already so morbid. his hand falls to rest on vladimir’s shoulder, a firm squeeze to reassure him, show that he’s a friend, not an enemy. not a liar. “keep your friends close. be careful and take care of one another. and if you need anything, you can come to me,” he says. he’s vowed to help so many already, so many of the younger crew has taken to look for guidance in edward. and he agrees, talks, promises to help—except he isn’t sure how much longer it can last for, not when edward feels worse by the day, as equally lost as the ones who come to him for advice. but he tries. too early to succumb. 

FIN.

[wilccard]

                                    WHEN  — ｡ ‘✧ 1845. 25th july.                                     WHERE  —  ｡ ‘✧ the promethean. officer’s corridor.                                                    WHO  —  ｡ ‘✧ @devotedrowning

The speech rests uneasy on his tongue: fluttering, really. Pulsing about like an insect’s wing, a dandelion’s needle thrown into the exhale. It has nothing of necessity in it, but the polar opposite. Feels inconsequential and easily to be done away with: no, begging to be done away with, spat out in mouthfuls and damned be the outcome. It cannot be wise, Vladya thinks. Temporizes. All shilly-shally, all knotted bones and cracked knuckles. But then Roimata crops into view, notices him, gives a nod of recognition. And Vladimir cannot back away without punting rudeness.

❝ Roi. ❞ Bloody damn: if he could toy with his hair like a damsel at this moment, he would. Would gladly twirl something, anything on his finger, would gladly pounce upon any pretext to look down. Askance. But he tries to breathe out through the impulse: dispel it into the winter winds which suddenly began to loom about the ship’s hull. Sigh years of uncertainty away. Scatter years of lies, of carefully curated notions, half-truths, half-chances. Bravery done in increments too small to count. ❝ Roi, there was—is a matter I wanted to talk to you about. A truth, of sorts. We can tackle it later, if you’re ordered to go somewhere now, but in all honesty... I don’t quite trust myself with the wait. So it should be, I mean, if it can be now, it should be... well, now. ❞

[wilccard]

THE SCION.

august’s fingers come away from him wet with blood, still warm from the vein, and the shock of seeing it on his hands cuts clean through the lingering terror and siren-sweet nightmare, guillotine-swift. the left side of vladya’s handsome face is covered in blood splatter, streaking across his temple and down into his brow. in the blinding flurry of blizzard and snow, he can’t remember ever seeing blood this stark, this red, this lifelike.  “vladya.”  raw fear, rust and alkaline, his throat thick with the taste of it. a panic divined from someplace beyond instinct, a foreboding as intrinsic as bone marrow and brain matter, wants to grip vladya by the shoulders and shake him till his teeth rattle, till the blood on him is stained throughout the valleys and ridges of his own skin. how could you walk into danger without me? again? again. why do you tempt death to take you first, to leave me, to strand me? later, when the threat that stalks them in this godforsaken purgatory is gone and they are safe beyond its reach, he will let his rage be fed. for now: “what happened? what did you see?” 

vladimir is too far gone to answer, too disoriented by pain or the horror of what has been done to him, to answer. august feels something thick and heavy in his chest give as vladya presses the dynamite into his hands and his legs go out from under him, as if his consciousness being snuffed out has caused the same light to be extinguished in him. he catches him, because god, gods, what else was he made for but this? what else was he put here for but to chase him to the ends of this world and the next and whatever undiscovered realm awaited them beyond that. to the end of life itself, and to the beginning again. over and over and over. with the weight of vladya slack against his chest, august presses his forehead against his, heedless of the blood, and closes his eyes through the scent of death clinging to their skin. it will always be like this. it will always feel like the first time.

they reach the rowboats like some creature summoned out of symposium dream, an intertwining of limbs, august’s arm beneath vladya’s, half-dragging, half-holding him. the dynamite held out like a precarious beacon clearing the way forwards. on the boat, august hunches over vladya like some feral, wilderness-eaten thing, refuses to let even the doctor touch him until they reach the promethean. then, and only then, he allows the crew to swarm around them, gathering vladya by the legs to lift him onto the deck and take him to the sickbay. he follows, deaf and blind to the voices, to the eyes narrowing in on the blood that isn’t his own stained all across his face, his hands, his leather and furs. he has followed him farther, in life and in death, he would follow him anywhere. and as he waits, holding vigil like a silent sentry, he wonders how much the monster that yearns to taste their bones knows of their lives. the lives they've lived, the lives they’ve yet to live. he wonders if he will drown in this life, chasing the mirage the beast weaves for him out of air and happiness and peace, sinking into the warmth of its sunlight, the dawn of some brighter sky.

There is warmth — only, no, not really. There is something that could be, should be, warmth: the feeling he always associated with August’s smell. Crushed clovers, smoke ( indistinct, this one; might be either cigars or gunpowder, intermissions or endings - could be disaster packed in wax or just an aftertaste on your tongue ). Finally: a hint of sweetness, on his skin and clothes, in the soft bow of his lips: a sweetness like treacle, like old brandy. Like vice, softly masquerading as wealth. Intoxication masquerading as treatment.

There are words, too. They push from behind his lips in hikes, in hives. Settle yourself, love, it was only a dream. There’s your hand in mine, there’s our swords on the wall. Melted together: hung up as memory. A cautionary reminder to younger selves. Be at peace, zoi mou - half of my soul. Half of my sight: on what this world is, and has been, and will be, even as we settle into urns. Everything is touched by your light - there’ll be no other place without your gold. There is no such place as this whiteness, this ice. It’s a dream. I was drifting off beside you, and the darkness found me laying still.

I was drifting off beside you — and the darkness found me, still.

Later, there is only the crushing fist battering into his ribs. The first gust of panic, vying like wind into the rooms of his mind: the ships is sinking, and we are trapped under its floorboards.

( No, the actual first thought, still tinted with scent and muscle memory: Augustus has gone mad, and is trying to kill me. Only in madness would he ever do me harm. )

Has it happened before? Has he gone mad, all those empires ago? Throttled me in our bed? Stabbed me in a corridor of smooth, polished stone? Crushed my bones, heart and sinew in his fist? It must’ve. He must’ve. Why else would I remember it? That’s the dance, with a love like ours; that’s the tune the world plays. That’s the price the world asks. You only remember what has already happened. You only desire what always will.

No — this pain, here, is no stroke of painting. No glimpse of gold on a wall. It’s real: it’s this life. Not the last one, not the next. It’s undeniable. Distinct like a mother’s cry.

Vladya comes awake, a scream already on his lips.

He swallows it, whole, burning, as soon as his eyes open. Because Augustus is by the bed, gaunt-faced, something hollow yet restless at play within him. Because Augustus shouldn’t, ever, have this terrified glance again. So: Vladimir bites on his tongue until blood spurts. So: that the fresher wound can outlive, outwit, outmatch the old, resilient gnashing inside his body. Broken ribs? Is it the spine?

❝ August. God, why the ghastly look? I’m not—not bloody dead, am I? ❞ He’s smart enough to know he cannot laugh; hasn’t ever had a wound this bad before, no, but has gleaned most of the rules from books and soldiers, from field and library both. He is not, however, smart enough to know he cannot touch August. He reaches to touch the other’s cheek, almost does it—

Instantly falls back with a groan. His hand knots the bedding in frustration: a fist, weakly, and then only a splayed surrender. ❝ Yeah: not bloody dead seems about right. I could touch you if I were dead. Right now, I would ask you...❞ ( love, he wants to say, here, at this point in the sentence. at this point in the story. it’s the only way he wants to call him again, this man, this prize, this peace, but this is not the room. this is not the world. ) ❝ ...I would ask: how is the other guy looking? ❞

Points to his cheek, his chest, the blue-tinged smile playing on his lips.

❝ Only, well... I’m not altogether certain we’ll ever know. Besides, it’s not like I beat him - it - fair and square. I’d say that’s a victory still into the cards for me. Perhaps if I really put my back into it: who knows? ❞

[wilccard]

THE DOCTOR.

vladimir cupped the back of jonathan’s neck, and however unexpected, however untouched the pair of them had always remained through arguments and agreements alike, for a moment at least, jonathan understood. there had always been multitudes when looking at vladimir; now, he saw only roots to the ground, an anchor, a solidness that made him want to smile with a pride that wasn’t his to carry. he thought: none have challenged me like you, and isn’t that one of the greatest gifts i could ask? he thought: why does this feel like the beginning of a goodbye? 

“yes, i would like to see this thing.” certainty again, the kind he grabs and holds gentle in his palms. “i know how it sounds, and i know what it means to you to hear me say it.” there was the difference, the crack that made itself known in them again and again: their approach to problems had always been different, and if their beginning was so starkly different, how might they ever end up at the same place? it was only their words that connected them. “as a doctor, my dear vladimir, we are taught to exhaust every possibility. we are taught many tricks. but the most important i learned myself, again and again, through the saved lives of my patients: there has never been a knowledge i regret learning.” 

even knowledge hard won, cruel to uncover. even knowledge that made him question that line between cost and benefit. 

“maybe that is true, that terrors speaks even where humans dare not go. but i have to imagine that, even there, kindness can be a chosen language. kindness. and i know how it sounds – the naivety of such a statement – but imagine it! imagine we approached something taught to speak in terror with a new chance.” they spoke theoretically, of course. of course. yet they both spoke with such fervor, jonathan felt he was pleading with vladimir. he bumped his forehead against vladimir’s own, an acknowledgement of all they were, of all they spoke of. they stood as almost-brothers, as friends, as equals. “it would speak through the heart of us, the blood, the fullness of your breaths. it would speak around the emptiness, and echo there too.” 

( terror did not exist before kindness; they were two things born together, two things dependent on one another. for what was light without dark? burning. for what was dark without light? nothing at all. )

FIN.

[wilccard]

THE PURSER.

he could’ve just as well tell the boy that he doesn’t believe a single words he’s told him, with how hurt his expression turns. perhaps edward should’ve explained himself immediately, instead of dropping the request, the order, on it’s own like that. “i know that everyone has been experiencing things like this. shadows following us since godhavn. everything that’s been happening, it’s left the crew in a very vulnerable state. they hear another story like this, it’s bound to cause more unrest.”

“i ask you to keep what you saw to yourself because i believe you. and i believe it’s another reason for the men to be scared for their lives.” and we were supposed to keep them safe. isn’t it what the three of them have been saying from the very beginning, he, malachy and jules—everyone will come back alive because they will keep everyone save. not like last time. and they’re failing. 

so maybe he is wrong to ask that of vladimir; his words resonate with edward, make him think—perhaps keeping this a secret is only going to build upon their failures? edward should know, how much damage hiding the truth can make.

he pauses, stays quiet for a moment; looks to the waters to look for the right words to say but they only give him a feeling; of unease, of anguish, of grief. “you shouldn’t speak like this. end of us. if—what you saw looked like it knew us, then it listens. we shouldn’t bury ourselves before it actually happens.” he has to, every night, watch the crew die, watch his friends die, watch himself die. and he can’t run away from it when he wakes either.

“i don’t want you to lie vladimir. i only want you to consider what knowledge of your experience can do to some people.”

                                                        ⁎⁎⁎

His eyes cut away, there on Edward’s face and for a second shielded, for a second sheltered. Then the defense thins down, crumbles as easily as rotten wood bitten into by sea, by wind, by years you did not ask for and did not understand.

He swallows his protests.

A man you trust almost more than any other looks to you and say: consider what knowledge can do to you. ( it comes like a distorted echo of your own thoughts, your own childhood fears: that if you look for too long, too deep into the hearts of people, too deep into the heart of the world, it will catch you by the hand and pull you down ). It’s a fear you’ve never altogether shaken off. You wonder if the man knows that, when he says it. If he’s using it against you, for you, against the crew or for it.

Phrases are muddled, these days. Positions, too. You never know where people stand as the ship tries to leave Devon. Ever since having heard that Augustus almost climbed overboard, ever since seeing Jack’s sneer, feral and ugly and hardened into mortar, you becomes less and less sure that anyone is who they were. Who they should be.

So here we are. A man you trust, a man you should trust by all the laws of soldiers and mice and murderers, looks at you and says: that thing that breathes down your neck? It breathes over me, too. Do not heed it. It listens. It listens. It listens.

On the stern’s railing, his hands settle on top of one another. Vladimir bends forward and presses his forehead over them, eyes squeezed shut. Bowing in prayer and bowing in secrecy. Bowing, because what else is left to do?  ❝ Yeah. Yeah, sure. I won’t say anything. But the Captain... he knows, right? You’ll tell him? He will see us out of this? See us safe? ❞

[wilccard]

THE CHAPLAIN.

You did not see the cave is a twin statement, too. Comes out in a shared breath as the chaplain sputters “You did not see the dog—” Among other things. Among others. “The statues—” saints and their scorn

And though Vladimir continues, Laurents’ voice flags. Because he did not see the twining bodies, then, either. He did not see the things that would choke his voice should he try to speak them aloud. For a moment, Laurents feels nothing but a hollow gnawing. Is aware of nothing but the way the bottom of each breath shudders with strain.

And then, Vladimir laughs, and the relief comes. It washes over him in a forgiving wave. Because there’s a sacred bond to this, then. There’s this secrecy. This rare glimmer of understanding. What we saw stays with us, is safe with us, is their fledgling, unspoken pact.

“I did not,” Laurents confirms, and the words escape with a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. 

Then, once more— airy now, with a drifting laugh alike.  A sort of communion indeed. “I did not.” 

What an odd thing to make an ally over: the things that torment each of you in separate ways. Pacts of silence, pacts of necessity. Oh, he’ll take it all the same, because in this place someone needs all the help God above can give them. Perhaps in every place: he’s surprised, how it took him so long to see this. How he became so protected by solitude ( secrecy, too, for they go hand in hand like old-time lovers ) that it blindsided him entirely. ❝ You’ll hear no statues from me, Father. On my word as a fellow... well, haunted creature, I suppose. But we have to start finding out more. Ask around. Start prodding at folks, see what they heard or didn’t. It’s... Lord Almighty. This could’ve been settled weeks ago, had I not been such a bloody oaf. ❞ Vladimir shakes the guilt off in patches, like scales, like uniforms dried with blood. He lets it slip clean and cold off his back. ❝ This was no punishment—it was a puzzle. And we have to see it through. ❞