NO SHRINKING VIOLET

( the siren’s sorrow / evening, landfall / OPEN )

in a lone corner booth, tucked away, katja stares into a whiskey pool. the edges of their fingernails drag up and down the glass—the only indication that they are still connected to a body. the person trapped in the amber reflection is not someone they recognize, but perhaps this is what happens when you kill an innocent. maybe this is your punishment, your cain’s mark: to become a stranger unto yourself. a weak, regretful, echo of who you once were. 

from somewhere across the room a loud thud breaks the settled tavern buzz. it’s probably someone setting down a box, or moving a chair, but in their ears a musket is firing a killing shot. katja flinches—fingers tightening over glass, jaw tensing. they exhale as emma’s cries and tristan’s howls wash over the musket sound; as their vision becomes filled with blood blooming over a working woman’s dress. then a feeling stronger than grief—the unnamed, unholy, love child of guilt and regret—threatens to overwhelm their eyes. so, they pinch the bridge of their nose, blocking out the rest of the world with closed and tightened eyes. 

 a shift in the air occurs, a new presence sensed, even with shut eyes. without looking up the thief says: “go away. booth is full.”

--

This approach is a reprise, a second attempt at communication. The first time had been on the Promethean deck, a few hours after the commotion that ended in one lost life. It started with Violet sauntering over, untouched and unrattled by the day’s violent events, and saying something along the lines of: “You sure showed them, hu?” It was meant to be a joke, some light hearted banter between two hardened criminals. But instead, the joke landed roughly; or more accurately, it didn’t land at all. For not a moment later, Katja was off the deck, twisted expression written on her face, and headed towards the peculiar little town. 

And for the first time in a long time, Violet regretted her words. It’s been so long since she’s had to be empathetic, so long since someone has needed a gentle ( rather than armed ) hand. It does crosses her mind to let Katja go. After all, it’s not her fault that they can’t take a joke. But the way that they fled, how quickly and painfully they made their retreat...It makes her think about her brother...and the first time he ever killed someone. He became a recluse then too, shamed into hiding. The moment the parallel is made, her second attempt is inevitable.  She stands above the other figure, no drink in hand; no way to paint this instance as coincidence. “I’m sorry...About what I said.” The apology tastes so foreign on her mean tongue. When was the last time she said sorry? When was the last time she meant it? And yet, she pushes forward, swallowing the discomfort. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

it shouldn’t disarm him how easily suffering renders him bare, exposed like something raw and wounded, bleeding out for all to see. it coats him like shame, viscous and amber-thick, eroding decades of painstakingly orchestrated front and mythos and performance. grief is the battering ram of constantinople, the sacking of rome, the fall of jerusalem, and he is the empty wasteland of a city that once was. his walls the cartilage and bone lined with soot and the aftermath of siege, his defences shattered against the full weight of all that has been lost.

in his periphery, he sees it writ large across her face: the shadow of sympthy darkening her pale features like a sliver of crescent moon. the pity magnifies tenfold through the lens of mired humiliation, a flinch barely subsumed, a swallowing of too-familiar blood. this is, after all, what he has been careening from casualty to collateral to ruin for his entire life. this sickening churning of disgust, this self-perpetuating, gutting shame. he would rather tear his own throat out then bear a moment of revulsion masquerading as pathos. as if his pain made him somehow more human, and not a wild thing caught in a bear trap, its leg hanging in strips of mauled flesh, gnawed to the bone before it would let anyone else at its neck.

as if his pain made him understandable. forgivable. the lure of false paradise just within reach, a serpent’s tongue dipped in the sweetest venom.

to pity, and the hangman’s noose tightening over his head at the thought of how pathetic — how fallibly, wretchedly human — he must seem to warrant the look on her face. to pain, and how small it makes us, bled out with a half-severed leg. he lifts his bottle in a toast.  “rope would be a welcome relief.”

time has slowed to a crawl for him — seconds, minutes, hours flowing into a miasma with no fixed borders determining when or what or how. one moment she is at the doorway and the next she is across from him, a mirror with her bottle of rum and the sadness sunken into the hollows of her eyes. he wages a petty battle against the urge to recoil, the instinct to hiss and snarl, go away. this is not for you. i drink and drown in my shame alone, my glory and disgust, my self-loathing — all that there has ever been or will ever be — alone. 

if this horror has proven anything beyond the realm of the divine or preternatural, it is what is left in the absence of even nothing. i am all there is.

it’s the look in her eyes that gives him pause, the steady vein of steel, the articulation of a thousand nights of gazing into the abyss and seeing her own eyes gazing back.

“we could trade stories about kisses and childhood fancies, most of which would be untrue or faithfully embellished in the retelling. or we could talk about the coming war and place wagers on whether we will live to see this mutiny through its end.”  what little light there is in the orlop bends towards him with the intensity of a magnifying lens, refracting flickers and fragments of madness and grief, of a commander of the admiralty’s crown jewel, of a drunken judas, of a man at the edge of civilisation with nothing but his counterfeit name to lose.  “is there nothing left in london for you? no loved ones waiting to see you home safe, no place that you would mourn to leave behind?”

( tw mention/allusion to suicide )

She learned very young that if someone wants to die, has the fatal wish coated on their lips ( like honey, like smoke on skin ), you should let them. For what is more painful? The agony of pulling out hooks of sentimentality from tender flesh, or drowning in heartbreak once they leave you? 

Hugo has the wish, not just on his rum touched lips, but his entire being. Every inch of him, from dark unkempt locks to unsteady hands and weak legs, is slathered in self-loathing potent enough to kill. A vicious, merciless, poison made from his own mind. 

No one can save anyone, she knows that. They––Hugo, her, everyone––are all just weaklings against demons hand-tailored to torture every person perfectly. And yes, more often than not, those demons are stronger than any human spirit. So, who is she to think she can save him from himself? She’s just a girl from Manchester. Closer to Reaper than savior. A killer, not a nurturer.

Whatever has him will keep him, it is fated; but perhaps, if she cannot be a savior...a solace then. His pain will not stop, not today...Not tomorrow...Perhaps not ever. But maybe it will ease him slightly to know that he is not alone. She knows for sure, it would ease her. 

location: the siren’s sorrow.  time: after landing.  with: open to all. 

( tw needles )

this was the true jules, the real one, jules cut and splayed like a tortured albatross set as a tortured omen. sailors, be warned — this might be you one day. children, be frightened — this is what you never want. the grief of it, the accepted anger. i will never be more than this. jules nursing a glass of something ( didn’t ask for specifics, just asked the strange barkeep for the deepest cup they could find ) and jules wallowing in the guilt of a failed ship. her present running parallel to her past. 

a statement, nyima’s soft words, something cruel now: hope led me to you, to this. a question, jules’ harsh voice, something that was finally answered when nyima leaped for the gun and made her choice: why don’t you fight?  

jules finished tying the needles together, dipping them in the mixture of ink and gunpowder. the tattoo would come out black, which seemed wrong for nyima. it ought to be red, maybe green, maybe every bright and brilliant color that reminded someone of warmth and summer. but no, it’d be black. jules lay out her arm on the counter of the bar, nudging her glass to the side and sucking in her breath as she brought the needles to her skin. 

gradually, slowly, the tattoo took form. a reminder, the only thing from the woman jules would allow herself to save. a moment. a thought. a gift. 

hope   1845. 

as she finished, she noticed someone had taken the seat near her. sentiment hardened, and she pulled her arm back. cleared her throat of the tears that had lodged themselves there. 

“what?”

-

This is an idiot’s move, that much the cook knows. Well––she’s not much of a cook now, not after what she did. Guard, lackey, red right hand; that’s what Violet is now. To be a weapon is as natural to her as breathing; the violence as suiting to her being as the scarlet in her hair. But it was nice for a while, to be more than that; for someone to see her not just as a means of destruction but a vessel for friendship. It’s been so long since she had a friend. Her last one was Lawrence, the only one left, and she hasn’t seen him in three years...There are times when she wonders if she will ever see him again.

But she’s not going to find a friend in Jules. Of course not. Betrayal and ashen dreams are all that exist between them. That and a musket, hanging off of her hip. Only a fingertip sway apart. Yes, sitting next to Jules is an idiot’s move, even if she is only half settled on the seat’s edge, but Violet isn’t a moron. Or more accurately, she isn’t enough of a moron to approach the former quartermaster unarmed. Just an explanation, and a few words. That’s all Violet wants.

it’s brutal. to risk them dying here, at the end of the world. edward’s never been particularly afraid of it, of death, but he seems to dread the idea of losing his life to the ice. maybe because he’s always liked to consider sea his home and your home shouldn’t want you dead at its door. “do you really still believe we’ll get there? that we’ll get to find it?” that we’ll be allowed to find it? malachy wasn’t taking anything away in the first place. it’s already been taken from the before he made the decision.

he knows that—he’s spent hours talking to the crew, all the boys dreaming and hoping for the discovery; he knows that for some of them, thi is all that matters. this ship. this place. but some of them do have things to go back to. edward has plenty to go back to—friends, a home, possibly a jail sentence, if his fears from before—of being found out—are true. even with the latter, he’d still rather be on their way back to england. but making marcus see reason is impossible when they don’t share the same idea of it; not when edward thinks it’s reasonable to run away, to escape; not when marc thinks that it’s unreasonable to let the sacrifices made already go to waste. 

once upon a time, the purser dreamt of the passage. it was all friendly seas and a safe return; no person lost, not like last time. but the second they left godhavn, every wave would become malicious, every night would take a life. everyone should want to run away from this.

“it isn’t worth dying for.” especially not when it’s in service to england. that country’s glory is never more important than a man’s life, no matter how grand they frame the mission. they deserve to come back, even when they have nothing to come back to. they deserve to stay alive.

Do you really still believe we’ll get there? That we’ll get to find it? Isn’t that the question of the hour. Edward’s voice echos sentiments she has already mulled on a thousand times over. A thousand times she has stared at her cabin ceiling, wondering, pondering, if the reward is worth the risk. Something awful is in the ice, that much even she ( a heathen who has killed their belief in the supernatural ) can tell. Is the reward worth facing the ‘Silent One’ those French castaways keep warning of? Is it worth possibly dooming an entire ship, innocent souls and all? 

And then she remembers Lawrence, the brother who is waiting for her. The only reward that concerns her; not glory or riches or country but the brother whose life is hinged on the map of a passage. Suddenly, the choice comes as easy as breath. Lawrence is worth an entire ship of innocent souls. He is worth an entire armada. “Yes. I do.” There is no other option. We must find it. 

“Play nice and you’ll both get to stretch your legs.”

Marcus addresses that, not to her, but to their prisoners––Jules and Roi––but she cannot pretend that she does not hear it; cannot be deaf to such an absurd concept. It shouldn’t be her place to comment. Violet is not a seaman nor veteran, at least not to any war Her Majesty would ever record; but what is war? Is it not the grappling of power between two groups ready to spill blood for an ounce of control? If that is the case then she is a veteran many times over. The scars on her hands, the bullet wound in her shoulder––long since scarred over––aches in memory to every power struggle she has survived and won. She was a captain once too, of her own concrete bound crew. The alley battles, the guerilla tactics, the victories; all of it, comes back to the forefront of her mind. A flexing of an old muscle. It is the tactician in her that urges to voice protest, but she is careful. Estrada is the captain and she does not forget to give him the respect he is due. “May I have word, sir? In private?” Tense politeness coats every syllable. And when they are alone, away from anyone who can witness a subordinate advising a superior, she continues. 

Off the ice with its prospect of unfathomable demise and onto the Promethean with its much more explicit one. He’d been the last to relinquish hold on his arms; not out of any bullheaded inclination, but the jarring recognition of the face at the other end of the barrel he’d been met with. The very same one that had claimed - with that sly spark in the eyes and incorrigible manner of one not accustomed to taking no’s for answers - that he was to help her with a cake when he was back. To bolster crew morale and build on his own competence. You know, for your retirement.

The cheeky devil. He’d almost smiled.

Now, he looked for a quiver in her brow. It held the fortitude of a killer; funny he’d not noticed before. He looked down the barrel and saw a ghost inside the black muzzle. Their new regent spieled on but he couldn’t hear; not over the drawn echo of a phantom gunshot pressing in on his eardrums. Reverberating in his skull as surely as one cold drop of metal once had.

But overcoming the impossible does something to the inner ego, surely. In evading the absolute. Man hinged on what he thinks he knows, only to be unhinged. Where was the line, then? Was it here? Two inches higher and one to the left of the last one he’d toed? Are you feeling lucky? the slow tilt of his head asked, brow hitched above a dead eye. Apart from that, too still. A coiled spring fit to snap; a hound braced to lunge. He trusted she shared in his own facial fluency. Try. Try, and pray to God you have better luck than the last.

One second. Two. No shots rang out. Three. Four. Five. Dowling vanished down the stairway. Six. Seven. “What’s all this then, eh?” he murmured too softly, brows arched impassively and the sunken eyes narrow beneath them. Eight, nine, ten. The coronation was complete without a hitch; all trigger fingers loosened. 

An arm shot out.

”Get that fucking thing out of my face-” Mariah backhanded the musket barrel and imposed the space before it could reoccupy, stony countenance splintering with ire as he craned in enough for Violet to hear the growl through the teeth. “What’s gotten into you?”

There have been many dangerous things on the other business end of her barrel––city dogs made wild by starvation, wild men made beastly by the same hungry disease––but it has been a while since she’s encountered anything as feral as him. The chill that runs down her spine when his one good eye meets her two is familiar; like putting on a well worn jacket. She’s stared at death before; and oh does she know he can deliver it. They both can; harbingers of death, that’s what they were. It’s why they struck up such a familiar friendship, isn’t it? 

Perhaps that is the most terrifying part; that there would be no negotiations if a fight started between them. Only a victor and the victim. 

There are words being said, of that she is sure. Marcus declaring the change of power; that he is in and Malachy is out. A proclamation of the ship’s new course--one that points north, and will continue to do so; as long as she has anything to say about. But as important as those words are, they simply become noise. Language is stripped into meaningless syllables outside the bubble Mariah and Violet find themselves locked in. Nothing else exists but them; the whole world distilled into two pairs of steel blue eyes. They say no meaningless words, not even a whisper, for there is no need. All that needs to be said is communicated in miniscule movements on their features.

STATUS: OPEN / post mutiny #FuckMarcus 

to go from the one who usually watches to the one being watched feels like a strange shift, especially under their circumstances. and it’s even more bizarre when you take a look at a purser, who seems like he’s lost all the fight that he had left in him ( for an hour, for a day—edward doesn’t even know himself. he hasn’t been sure about anything before, he’s even less so now; perhaps he’s sure of one thing and that he absolutely despises marcus estrada, despite previously thinking that some sort of a truce could develop between the two of them ). 

sitting in the common mess, of all places, sets of eyes around the room trained on him as he sloshes the grog around in his cup ( how gracious of them to allow him this much ).

A) if your muse supports marcus

the way they divided—he should’ve expected it, all of it and yet there are a couple exceptions that came as a surprise. to think that after everything, marcus taking over helps is any way is simply stupid. edward can’t believe they can’t see it. 

“are we even allowed to speak to one another?” it sounds bitter, more than he anticipated. he shouldn’t be surprised by this as well. 

She takes to the bitterness in his voice like an alcoholic takes to the sting of whiskey; which is to say, perfectly well. She ingests it smoothly, not even a flinch on her features. She’s spent her whole life steeped in hostility; surviving--no, thriving! Blooming! In its toxic space like a poisoned rose.  Does it matter that just a day before, the purser and her were having a friendly drink? Discussing the crew. Their crew. Caring over their well being. Now there was no ‘their’. The only thing in existence now is a line carved in the sand: yours vs mine. 

The issue with all of it is that Ayla isn’t trying to fight back, doesn’t understand why she should be in one at all. It’s obvious there’s a struggle, it’s obvious she’s a placeholder, but what isn’t obvious is who Violet truly struggles against; if it is herself, if it is a situation, if it is a memory.  “I won’t try.” Maybe she shouldn’t say it, but it is confession as much as anything, as telling as her lack of movement, as telling as how it is Violet who shifts her at all. Ayla does not flinch. 

And then it seems that, between the pair of them, it is Violet who is more concerned for her. Particularly because Ayla follows, needs to take a look at the wound up close or try to, see if it’s written on Violet’s frame or her expression. “Its your decision, but I could know you, if you let me. I could try to help, if you let me.” Reaches out a hand again, only it lingers by the cook’s shoulder. “You don’t need to carry this alone. Even if it’s not me, even if it’s not now, you don’t, you don’t.”

She is full of surprises, the cook can give her that much. Violet predicted a crumbling, or a falter, in the face of her storm. Ayla’s features are delicate; eyes so big and innocent, heart so full of care. Who would have known she could be so enduring, too? The other insisted that they are not a saint but who else could be so determined to speak good, even under the weight of persecution?

Violet glances at the hand outstretched. All her life, she’s carried burden after burden, largely on her own. Her brother was there but he much rather let her do the dirty work as he revels in the outcome of her heavy lifting. She has never resented him for it for acts of love are light on the soul, but she hadn’t realized just how tired she was from it. And now here is this soft, gentle thing; requesting a spot next to Atlas. To perhaps lighten the load on her exhausted shoulders. And so Atlas is tempted to leave his post and burden another in his stead. 

———

As he lids his eyes with the blooming satisfaction of a settled stomach and laces his hands together in his lap, he figures he could tell her he knows the gnawing below the ribs named Hunger like a childhood friend; though, the agreeable quiet that’s settled between them has already alluded as much. 

So he starts elsewhere. Figures theres no harm in admitting, in some small way, to being more human than holy. A catholic priest is just a man, but he is made holy through the sacraments— Baptism, Confirmation, Reconciliation, Holy Communion and Orders; how to say, then, that he’s been made also through busking, composition, recreation, and the hearty communions that come from tavern tables, too? What is a man, if not everything that’s made him? Holy and Human and all. 

It’s a nice thought.

“No. It’s something I, sort of— grew into— actually. I dreamt of being a musician, If you could call it that,” he snorts softly. Musician. “I mean— the word evokes first chair in the Queen’s Hall Orchestra; not shipping-crate chair on a makeshift stage, eh? Most of my performances took place in taverns or on the corners of their streets.” But this discounting— it’s only his own hesitance speaking, isn’t it? Elias pens his verses from the belly of a ship and Laurents never fathoms it makes him less of a poet. Wooden slats or the symphony hall; wasn’t the heart of it the same? 

Laurents shrugs lightly and starts again, this time with conviction. “I was a musician, for a moment. Of course, I still practice, but have since redirected my focus.” Satisfied, he nods and retrieves one last biscuit for the time being. Then, cheeks full of biscuit crumbs, shares a sly crinkle of the eyes. When he swallows it down, he lets her in on a secret: “chaplains never go hungry, either.”

“ — right.” there was a glimpse there of something else — a strength women sometimes learned when left at sea. jules did not know the depth and could not begin to guess at the twists below the surface of violet, but she saw the glimmer of recognition. you could not offer yourself as a comrade in arms without understanding what it might mean. jules tapped her finger on her bottle, choosing her next words with an unusual amount of care. “did you know i wasn’t always a quartermaster? certainly not for company like this.” for queen and country, it used to make jules laugh. “i used to be a wild thing,” she continued, a wistful amusement to the words despite her unsmiling face. “try not to lose it.” 

what she meant was: i’ll welcome you come the battle.

A raised eyebrow. Interest piqued. She could have guessed a wild past for the quartermaster but she wouldn’t be able to tell you why. Perhaps some histories are so vivid that they’re written in the air that floats around you. And Jules is wrapped in unflashy ferocity. In battles fought and won. Violet notes it, tucks the information in the back of her brain. She gives a small, uneven, smirk––a motion of amusement. “Don’t worry. I don’t think I could lose it even if I tried.”

And there it is: a connection forged between two wild women. The foundation for trust is laid in quiet insinuations and suggestions. But Violet has been trusted before and she knows herself well. Trust is so easily broken, when the chips are down.

She has done it before and she knows, she would do it again.

They laugh instead, just as loud but all bright for the adrenaline energy in violet’s voice, even as he slips out of a window and vaults to the street, hot on her heels, screaming and cries of ‘thief! thief!’ echoing in the alleys behind them as they dip and scramble through the twisting chaos of london. his pockets are stuffed with jewlery and a nice comb and a rather creepy doll that he hadn’t been able to tear his eyes away from and a rather nice cushion down the back of his shirt and tucked into his trousers.

they are running on air and he feels like seventeen gas powered stoves are inside him, that if he opens his mouth the shrill whistle of a train has to come out to express the thrill that races through his bones.

‘ Hey, I rather fancied that pistol! Would have looked rather dashing with that on my hip don’t you think? ‘ He jumps over the still sprawling body of the woman, grins down at her and shouts a ‘Sorry!’ over his shoulder as they continue. At the next right, he holds onto a lampost to spin the 90 degrees and continue barreling down the street without stopping.

It’s a bit longer at the breakneck pace before the pair start to slow down, a normal pace to blend into the crowds before they break off and enter the house that wick was squatting in to get away from his parents. ‘ i do have to say, the escapes are always my favourite part. ‘

Violet laughs into the air, wisps of white coming from her mouth as mirthful clouds. “Yeah! Would have looked great with all your matching bullet holes!”

They finally slow and now the game has gone from high stakes tag to unfriendly hide and seek. She exhales, long and slow, as if that will slow the hummingbird drum of her blood. But she loves this, the thrill, the liveliness; and as she keeps an eye out for Wick in the crowd, she know he feels the same. For a moment, a spark of attachment comes to life; created by the possibility that you have, perhaps, found someone just like you. But as soon as it arrives, she begins to smother the feeling. You shouldn’t get fond of people like Wick. People like him never really stick around, not even if you want them to.  

@romantiisme

He is good at this. Turning simple words like ‘you’ and ‘i’ and ‘we’ into dreams so real you can almost touch them. Lawrence was––is––good at it too. The dangerous difference is that Elias actually believes in what he’s saying.

JULY 30TH, 11:58PM, THE NIGHT AFTER PANTEA’S DEATH.  PROVISIONS ROOM.  FOR @mauraudmore​​.

there is no making sense of it; if rationality guided them by north star and compass rose — some higher power, that ancient, vainglorious raison d'être that existed in the blood and wanderlust of all men — it has gone extinct. the only certainty beyond the ice swallowing them in its maw, and the sea and sky haemorrhaging shadow like an oil slick, is that he cannot spend another fucking second in that cabin. the night she was gone, he lay beside her and dreamed that the bed beneath them became a pool of blood, and as she eclipsed his breath to kiss him, her mouth began to pour with it. black and oblivion-thick, spilling forth from her red mouth, her luminous eyes until he was breathing in it, drowning, asphyxiating. 

so no. no sleep, no cabin that reeks of her scent and her hair, the jasmine and pomegranate blooming throughout the sheets, sinking into the very wood of the four walls of their cabin. no empty bed where he cannot imagine what is worse: the absence of her, or a reincarnation summoned by grief or feverish madness, the silent one itself playing the tenuous strings of his mind like a symphony. the sorrow is fresh, an open wound left untreated in the process of triage, and therefore easier to compartmentalise. first, the alarm upon discovering members of their crew and several guests had vanished in that same night; second, the assembly of a rescue party; third, the scramble for supplies, weaponry, the trip-wired pandemonium aboard the ship he is left in command of. do not mistake him — his duty is not valiant, or herculean. a second filled with havoc and controlled chaos is a second freed from the pallid longing filling his lungs to walk out onto the ice after her. to be with her. to sleep, at last, inside the cold of her.

in the quiet dark of the provisions room, he strips off mask, armour, skin. underneath it all, he is a stranger even to himself. this creature of wretched nothingness, so afraid of himself and the consequences of being human, so unfamiliar with forgiving himself for weakness, he cannot even properly fucking grieve the loss of his love. she would not have come if she did not love me. she would have lived. this was not how love was supposed to go; all those songs and sonnets and stories about love and all its bloody promises, the world at our fucking feet — the rustle of fabric and foosteps breaching the room is almost a mercy. the bottle of rum in his grip swings wildly from his loose fingertips as he gestures up into the air without sparing even a passing glance.

“if you’re going to stay, i have two rules. one: don’t speak of her. two: this isn’t a fucking pity party. when dawn breaks, strike it from your memory.”

-

There is some twisted comfort in knowing that grief still strikes the same here as it does on land; that even if the light in the sky has burned out and ice has entrapped them within its malicious grasp, the heart of men have not changed. They still beat, they still bleed, they still die.

As she lingers by the doorway, leaning on its frame in faux nonchalant, a drop of pity finds its way into her observation. Empathy is an ability she thought she had killed in her many years of survival, but apparently it is more tenacious than weeds. She had always suspected that there was more to him than he let on, more underneath the charismatic veneer she just knows he has spent his entire life crafting. But now, as he unravels with sorrow, the suspicion grows deeper. There is a man underneath all that mythos. I wonder who he is?

The silhouette of his inebriated form flickers, and instead of a previously unassailable demi-god, she sees herself after the death of Clara...After the murder of her family. ( The murder she is responsible for. ) Her own self is made of grief, sins in her blood; loss in her bones. Anger and regret wrapping her organs and flesh as second skin. So his words, in all their roughness and edge––devoid of the slick charm only Hugo Montgomery possesses; they do not phase her or make her uncomfortable. 

“No, you’re right. If this was a pity party, there would be more rope around.”

She steps into the room and approaches, her own bottle of rum between steady fingers. She sits herself directly across from him, unwavering and unafraid in her gaze. Her calmness seems to say: You have anger? Darkness? Grief? Good. So do I. Let’s see who the worse monster is. 

She takes a long swig, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand after. “So what the fuck do we talk about then? Childhood stories? First kisses?”

and oh, how he many times had he imagined this moment, staring at the ceiling of his quarters far too late in the night, divining potential scenes from the dark of the room and the gold light of his imagination. how charming he would be, how bold. how her eyes would light up in recognition and– just like that– everything would go back to how it had always been, a pocket of honey-drenched sunlight in an otherwise cold and dark place. the respite of a familiarity with no ulterior motives, no intentions to parse out, that simple sort of love that can only pass between those who’ve known each other in their most vulnerable forms. in childhood.

what he hadn’t accounted for entirely is how damn awkward it would be. he almost regrets holding his hand out at first, not really ready to touch yet, to meet skin with this person who still feels, to him, half-spectral, half a figment of the past. the delight he had imagined on her face never quite comes around, and soon he can feel the smile on his own falter at the corners. ah. 

“thank…you?” he says, putting his hand back in his pocket as soon as it’s polite to let go. suddenly it is difficult to meet her eyes, so he casts his gaze around the kitchen instead, as if seeing it for the first time. hunches into himself like he regrets taking up the space. “yeah, it is! surprising, i mean. i think i saw you boarding, actually, and nearly thought i’d lost it. but then i heard your name…” and that does bring back his smile, soft and small. “not many names around here quite so fairytale. violet bell. hmm. hard to forget, that one.”

-

In ideal imaginings, her quip would have landed; brought up a laugh or a chuckle. Surely Lawrence or Bitty would have been amused by her rough compliment. However, all it had managed to do was show how deeply the years have changed them. Their brands of humor are different, that much is clear, but what else?

His smile, that soft beautiful thing; a familiar sight glowing like the setting sun over a London horizon; it tells her that somehow, someway, he had kept the innocence she lost. The good things like excitement and fairytales....They had managed to stick to his skin the way nicotine smoke and death sticks to her’s. The realization strikes somewhere in the beating rock that one could call her heart and there is no stopping the smile that finds its way to her lips. She scoffs harmlessly, incredulous but in the friendliest shade.

“You’re still nice,” she replies––wiping her hands on a towel. “You drink? We should catch up. If you’re not busy.”

open / the neverending night / rip pantea :/

if he couldn’t tell the night and day apart before, he surely cannot do now. he had few ask him if it really mattered in a place like this, to be able to easily tell when it’s time to sleep and when it’s time to come to life. it surely doesn’t now, with darkness swallowing them whole. it feels like they’ve reached the end of the world—sailed all the way towards the horizon and sank.

he never dreamed of her dying. he dreamed of so many of them, ready to believe that one of these nightmares would come true—but never her. it both proves that he shouldn’t believe what he sees when he’s asleep and makes his fear grow even stronger. 

he should go back below deck but like so many of them, he can’t look away. “i braced for many things to go wrong during this entire expedition. but this—this is far beyond any of what i imagined.” 

-

The center of their universe is right there. In the space the woman left. A crack in the ice, in the fabric of reality itself, siphoning all their attention. Would it suck in their souls too? If they let it? She doesn’t want to find out.

So, she shifts her universe to the man on her left, eyeing him with measure. Taking in his terribly mesmerized expression. She has no words to counteract his. Nothing to say to soothe the terror that has gripped them all so firmly. Perhaps the words are in another language...Or maybe they haven’t been invented yet. But she does what she can. The woman nudges him, a way to break the spell. “Come on. Freezing our asses off isn’t going to bring her back. Let’s get a fucking drink.”