CA FAIT MAL

Tristan sends his drink to the back of his throat with equal measures of both abandon and purpose. The moment he does, Noémie steels herself for what is surely to come next. Fighting words, that’s what she had approached him with. Not a gentle hand or soft, empathetic eyes but syllables crafted and forged for war. And war he does deliver.

He rises, so quickly and rough, that he leaves all pretenses of friendship in the empty glass between them. The thing before her is no longer a man but a wolf, bearing blood stained claws and teeth sharpened for a kill. Yet, she does not flinch or blink in surprise at the switch for the lioness in her rears to meet the wolf; her own teeth and claws on display. Noémie steps forward, shortening the distance until the only thing between them is the painfully small table. Her nostrils flare and cheeks flush as her mouth twists into an ugly grimace. Her own hand slams into the table as she leans over, no hesitation and all threat in her movement.

“How, eh? How will you make them pay for our pain? With what weapons? With what army?” An accusatory finger finds itself in his face, pointed and sharp. “You want to die?” She almost says, ‘fine’. Almost says ‘go ahead, I can’t stop you’ but instead she continues with, “—Well too bad. You know I’m right about this. Your rage, your blind anger. It will kill us all. Not just you but Emma and Teodoro and Bastien. Are you ready for that? Is your revenge worth their lives?”

She exhales through her nose, lips still in its painfully gnarled frown. “You think I don’t want to make them pay? That I’m not tired of sucking cocks and egos to make sure that we are safe? …But I can’t be like you. I can’t ignore the facts. And the fact is that we have nothing; no leverage, no weapons, no money, no value. Nothing can help us. If you retaliate now, you will be carrying out a death sentence. Our death sentence. Tristan, please, tell me you understand what I am saying.”

---

she’s right--of course she is, just like she always has been, and there’s something comforting in that fact and something all together completely infuriating. how dare you, he wants to snap, wants to toss this table to the side as if he were hercules and things like weight and gravity were of no consequence in the face of his rage. how dare you keep your armor and hide your bleeding from me, from all of us, when we suffer wounds too filled with salt and sand, that bleed to freely and unceasingly, to possibly be kept under cover? how dare she speak of facts, of understanding, when the world’s very axis has shifted underneath their fucking feet and thrown kindness from the face of it into space? did nyima mean so little that the world should simply go back to being as it was? 

he doesn’t speak any of it--instead he squeezes his eyes closed for a long moment and focuses his energy on inhaling and exhaling slowly. this is noemie, who had just as much a hand in keeping them alive as he did, as nyima did--noemie, the head to nyima’s heart and his hands. he needs her to be with him on this--if not for the sake of whatever friendship, whatever unspoken agreement they had made when the agathe went down and they all crawled upon the shores of the island, then for the simple fact that she is more dangerous to have as an enemy. it is perhaps a cruel thought to have, that she could be persuaded to sell them out to dowling or estrada in exchange for her own survival, but such is the way things are now. with us or against us, pacifism or revenge, life or death. 

he meets her gaze and nods his head in agreement, drags his tongue across his lower lip. “you don’t like my plan, my methods--make me a better one, noemie. join with us, do what you do best and get us what we need. you wanted estrada out of the way, you had a plan, didn’t you? what’s so different about this?” he leans forward, and he would reach out and touch her if he didn’t think she would reflexively shrug off such a gesture, because of these postures they’ve assumed--two animals reared up on their hind legs, their teeth bared. “i don’t want to do this without you--not after we’ve come this far--but i also can’t let this go.” 

“i will be the hand, if you tell me where it is i should strike.” perhaps there was a reason he was this way after all, perhaps it had all been for this — turning himself into this dull and dark creature so that they would not have to feel it. but then he looked at tristan, met the man’s gaze, and he knew that was not true after all. this was not some noble cause, and he could not pretend it was. there was tristan, his teeth just as sharp, his eyes just as hollowed; there was tristan with raised hackles. 

( the story of creation always came with the story of a fall. ) 

teodoro wanted to say: you owe me nothing. he wanted to say: i know what you are, what you can be, and i am sorry for it, for this mess of us. but he did not, for the truth was — tristan might not owe him anything, but he owed nyima. they each did. they owed a dead woman further death. if the world cannot experience her kindness, let it experience the full fury of existence without her. 

“it will not bring you rest, this thing.” teo chose his words carefully, giving them softly to the captain. “you say you are certain and steady. i need you to be sure. what if this person who killed our nyima is sorry? what if they cry, beg? will you be able to do it still? will you be able to do it, knowing that we will find no pleasure, no peace, in revenge but because this is what the world is owed?” a life taken too soon, paid with another life. “i am by your side, to the end of this. i know that now. but will you be by mine, even as you see the worst of us both? will you survive, if we are not good men?” 

---

will you survive, the icemaster asks quietly, as if he is afraid that the act of speaking the words will render the very thing impossible, as if survival were not the very red string that wraps around his neck and pushes against the muscle of his throat every time he swallows down another hurt, another separation and carving away of pieces of his flesh, if we are not good men? 

tristan meets the man’s eyes, raises an eyebrow, but does not speak. he doesn’t need to--grief, the wreckage, death itself, has made them into some sort of horrifying, wandering cerberus. they share a mouth of sharp canine teeth, they howl together, they share a mangled and defiant beating heart and they alone stand between the living and the dead. it will always be you and i, he thinks. alone, at the very end of the world, as rome and troy and all of the other empires of the world burn to ash around our feet. this is our burden, this is our fate, that we will survive where others will go peacefully to death. 

“what goodness was left in me is in the ground with her--” he says finally, and he can feel his eyes sting, but he knows that no tears will fall. there is only salt in the corners of his eyes now. “and sitting somewhere on the bottom of the sea with christian. this--this is what remains.” he drags his tongue across his lower lip, and there is salt there too, sitting in the open wounds where dry skin has torn itself open, been worried into blood. “and if we are to be damned for it, at the very least we shall be damned together, teo.” cain to my abel, blood of my blood, flesh of my flesh. 

he rests a hand on the man’s shoulder and feels the corners of his mouth turn up--not in a smile, but something reassuring, something like the clenching of fingers around a wrist in solidarity. “there is never going to be any peace for me, any rest--even if we somehow find our way back to what we once had. i’ll never be able to undo what has been done to me, what i had to do to myself in order to survive--so, if i am to become the monster, the terror that stalks this island, in order for others to live, in order that justice be served, then that is what must be done. that is simply the next step in whatever this is, towards wherever it ends. you need not fear for my resolve.” 

✤ ✤ ✤

“Is that the justice she’d ask of you? Another bloody thing for you to shoulder?”

The ambassador didn’t step any closer to the table. Didn’t test the perilous stretch of ice he expected to find between them. Pasha hung in his wake as surely as his shadow, and just as prone to shift the moment he started. Even with turned head and averted gaze, he couldn’t bring his own to level with the back of Tristan’s hunched form. Quicksilver turned tarnished lead, his eyes remained weighted in some cowering cranny of the room.

“Let her be, Dieu- Let her rest. There’s been enough of ghosts. It does no good to keep them around, now. We should know,” he implored, turning his head for a swift glance toward the establishment’s entrance. Partly to make sure it was still there. Partly to make sure no gutshot ghost was there to cage them in. Partly to buy what precious seconds he needed to swallow down the lump in his throat and roll back the glassiness in his eyes. He crossed his arms - half embraced - and regarded their Judas from the edge of his vision.

Nyima. Oh, he’d always admired her courage. Her steadfastness in spite of the terror that had them locked in veritable chokehold for that long month. He recalled a talk with her at the Promethean’s bow, watching after the boatswain’s husk. To be afraid is to be alive. Should you rid yourself of that fear and return, would I know it was you?

“If you strike a blow back now, you’ll only bring holy hell down on their heads. We didn’t survive this long to die to vengeance.”

---

tristan wants nothing more than to be angry with the man that stands behind him--who refuses to step forward from his hiding place and speak of justice and vengeance eye to eye, in the face of naked grief as tristan wears it. he wants nothing more than to snap his teeth and demand that the ambassador set aside diplomacy, and reach over and take this hard earned rage, this tooth and claw thing that he has been nursing inside of himself since the fucking boat started splintering between his legs, since a nightmare wearing the face of the man he’d loved opened its mouth and begged him to spare its life, if he’s so concerned with what it will lead to. 

but who, apart from nyima herself, has done more to keep tristan henin alive? out there, it had been pasha who had believed in him, who had trusted implicitly his ability to keep them all alive--when the beast had started taking dowling’s crew, and every muscle fiber inside of him had wanted to crawl back to the island so the thing could have him once and for all, it had been pasha who had let him cry, who had been something solid to lean against. he doesn’t deserve to get hit in the crossfire, to bear scars he’s done nothing to earn. 

tristan exhales and drags a hand through his hair, throws back the remainder of whatever the barkeep had poured into his glass. “you speak as though we have any choice in who haunts us.” he says quietly. “she saved me twice that day--she died because of a bullet that was meant for me.” he shakes his head, bites down hard on his bottom lip. the pain stands as a stone wall between himself and all of it--as long as it hurts, he can keep sorrow in the pit of his stomach where it belongs, he can keep grief from crashing over him continually until his lungs are filled with saltwater. “how could i ever let that go? she’ll be with me until i meet her in death, pasha--and i deserve that.” 

teodoro had never felt it before now — never felt that twisting thing that all the agathe crew had inside of them, that maggot of rot in their roots, how it drew their feet under sand and under ice, how it tangled them all together. he had never felt himself as part; he had not even realized that he had picked a piece of each of them, pulling part of their flesh and making a new body for himself. a new teodoro, formed from the mess of the others. he felt it now. he felt them now, each of the agathe crew. 

( he even carried nyima with him. the ash of her in his lungs. )

he did not need to guess where to find tristan. he knew. he would be able to feel the man’s heartbeat from across the world, a beat trying so hard to suffocate itself. a shadow as sinister as le silencieux and just as hungry for death. 

teo took the seat next to tristan. 

“i have never killed for someone else before. not without being paid.” survival. that should be his focus, his care. that should be the thing that consumed him still. yet with the explosion of a gun, of a wound, he felt himself change. it should have been the silent one to kill her, the silent one or nothing at all. “we will kill for this, non?” 

let them be the monsters they were named as. 

---

“i’ve never killed anyone--the only time i’ve ever tried was on that island, when christian, that thing--” he shakes his head and picks up his glass, throws back what remains in it. it burns on the way down his throat, still tender from howling and wailing as her blood had drained into his hands, still coated in a mixture of seawater and bile. he welcomes the pain for what it is, a distraction from the larger wound, from the transformation that is occurring inside of him--this rearranging of meat and bones, forming of canine teeth that teodoro has now come to him to finalize, to congratulate without knowing it. this making of prey into something dangerous, into a new kind of predator. 

“it doesn’t matter, my hands are steady--will be steady. we will kill for this, teo. we will kill for this, and for everything that came before it.” he turns his head to meet the man’s eyes properly, perhaps for the first time without the fear of what he might see in them--the hunger for survival that the icemaster wore so proudly, that made him dangerous to those foolishly trying to keep hierarchy and order in a place, in a situation, where such things should have been the first torn apart and used for kindling. tristan looks at him now and hopes that such a thing is reflected in himself--he looks at the man in front of him and prays that teo will teach him how this is done, how the dog makes himself into wolf. 

“i owe you an apology, i think--you were right about them, and i was blind to it.” he shakes his head, drags his hands through his hair. “it cost us nyima--and i can’t change that, i can’t fix it, but i can fix the way we’ve been doing things. the way i’ve been doing things. we can take instead of waiting for them to give like fucking stray animals on the street.” he exhales slowly, worries his bottom lip between his teeth. “but i need you with me to do it--one last time. we put these english fucks in the ground where they belong and we can wait to die or go home--whatever comes first.” 

-

She should be kind. Soft, like Nyima was. Loving, like the woman they both just lost in a flash of powder and blood. But, god, it isn’t in the overseer’s nature. That wasn’t her job. Yes, job; because they all had a job. They being her, Tristan, and Nyima. The triumvirate of the Agathe or, at least, what sorry broken things are left of it. Her job is this: to plan. To twist and pull resources from every crevice and person she can get her graceful hands and sharp claws into; to draw out the best from every survivor until they are sharp enough to endure the unfair reality they’ve been stuck with. And for the case of some, sharp enough to be used in her acquisition of power and information. It was––it is–– cruel work at times, full of harsh truths and firm statements; especially when arguments arose between the survivors. In those times, the tundra could not touch the ice in her eyes. 

As for Nyima…her job was to round out the harsh edges of her work, with care and warmth. Tender love to contrast her tough one. For a moment, as she takes in the inebriated mess of a man before her, she lets herself think a grieving thought: You should be here, love. You would know what to say. You would know how to comfort. You wouldn’t feel as angry as I do. Because she is angry, boiling in her blood brand of furious. 

He is supposed to be helping, keeping the rest of their crew together; but where are they now? Who is he keeping track of in this state? It was fine for him to be useless during the mutiny, while she was whoring herself off right and left to collect power; to make sure they wouldn’t get thrown overboard on a whim. It was fine because at least she knew he was supporting the others. But now with Nyima gone…And him like this…You cunt, why can’t you see that I can’t do this alone?

“Oh is that your grand plan? Just waltz into the Promethean like a fucking idiot and get your head shot by any number of Estrada’s armed guards? What a mastermind you are.” She walks forward until she standing across from him but she does not sit at the table. Not yet. “You get tonight. And then you pull yourself the fuck together because we are not out of the woods yet, Henin. I promised to get these people home. Not on land. Home. Does this look like France to you?”

---

for a fraction of a second, he could swear he hears christian--not in the way that he normally does, when things are quiet and his mind has time to stretch its legs, tread the familiar paths of longing in endless circles. that voice is always distant somehow, something he can barely make out. perhaps the drink is stronger than he realized, or perhaps he’s had more than he thought--but he hears the words spoken in the man’s voice, soft and pleading around the edges but knowing in a way that he can’t quite figure out. as if without the man even being present, he knows what is about to happen. 

don’t do this, he says. 

if only it weren’t too late to stop the rage that he’s been swallowing down from rising hot in his throat, sour like bile and tasting of salt. seawater and the tears of every one of his crew, just sitting in the pit of his stomach and burning holes in him. but he still has blood on his clothes, and nyima’s body isn’t even fucking disposed of yet, and somewhere on that wretched ship her murderer is comforted, tucked away like they’re something precious and in need of safekeeping. 

if only he were more like christian, he wouldn’t throw back the rest of his drink as if it were a kind of challenge--a knife thrown at her feet. if you want the title so damn bad, it says, come and take it. prove you’re just as blackhearted and bloodthirsty as all the men who told you you couldn’t have it. he wouldn’t shove away from the table and rise to his feet, his fingers curled reflexively into his palms. 

“aren’t you fucking sick of this yet, noemie? licking the shit-stained soles of english boots just for them to gun us down whenever the whim takes them?” he seethes, speaks each word as if he was taking a bite out of them and handing her each bloody carcass as proof that she is not the only one that turn the truth sharp, make it cut. “marcus estrada had every intention of shooting you and i in the back as soon as the opportunity presented itself, and malachy dowling would have done the exact same if he’d found it beneficial--and now they took nyima from us. nyima, who had never hurt anyone, gunned down by a criminal that got a warm fucking pat on the back for her efforts. i’m done bending the knee and sucking their dicks in gratitude for any of it. they need to fear us. they need to know that there are fucking consequences to their actions.” 

his first thought is that the drink could be poisoned. 

it could be enchanted somehow, like they all said the water on the island might be. it could be shit that they brew in the basement of this place, that will burn his throat on the way down, or make him so drunk that he can’t see straight, that he’ll stumble down the narrow street from this eerie as fuck tavern and straight into the open and waiting arms of the ocean. 

his second thought is that the ocean would more than likely spit him back out--tristan, who would willingly give himself over to the sea in all of the ways odysseus could not, is cursed with the reverse of his winnowing oar. he carries the thing across his shoulders, he walks always outwards towards the coastline, but he is never able to drown. 

the third thought, and hopefully the final one for some time, is that he hopes it does each and every one of those things. 

he throws it back and coughs--it burns, but he barely registers it as something that hurts, that causes pain. the whole of his being is a thing that hurts--every pain that he has so willingly swallowed down like they were sweet, sacramental wine, is alive inside of him and howling. he slams it down and drags his hands over his face, and of course--of-fucking-course, he hears footsteps echo from somewhere behind him. because everywhere he goes now is apparently hollowed out in some way, a void that swallows sound and people in equal measure. he groans, growls, lets some sort of guttural noise rise from the pit of his stomach, and he does not turn around. 

“unless you’re here to hand over a pistol and the location of the fucking mutinous translator, criminal, whatever the fuck they are to you--turn around and leave.”

mentioned | @dawndusted

his muscle remembers. 

it moves him without the consent of his mind, does not cease even though the heart in his chest has long since done so--someone touches his shoulder and he follows, someone gently guides his hands to water and he allows them to clean her blood from them, even though something inside of him tries to force his mouth open, tries to force the command to stop from where it chokes him inside of his throat. don’t, please--this is all i have left of her, i need her. 

but it dissipates, leaves him with only the salt-roughened skin on his palms. he curls his fingers into them slowly, but they fall open--they remain empty. he’s struck, in the moment, with the illogical desire to remove them from his arms somehow, to sever them at the wrist and throw them into the sea in protest to the way they cannot hold, cannot secure and protect anyone or anything that he has ever taken into himself, buried underneath the gravedirt in his chest. its a useless mental exercise--they keep flying back to him, birds take them into their beaks and skimming the waves and dropping them at his feet, covered in blood, in salt and barnacle. 

he is always left with his hands, empty.

––

Bring your wrath, she thinks in the moment between when he sees her and when he speaks. A plea she makes to the universe: may he be the one to make my pyre––righteous purpose on his hands––and set me alight. May he burn me with his fury so I can feel something. Anything. Tristan, my savior many times over, turn me into your version of a catholic follower; so that maybe my suffering can turn holy. And if not holy, then distracting. 

But it never comes, the desired withering under his anger. He is too kind, too loving. Why must he be so loving to me? It only deepens the guilt. She sees the tired lines on his face, the dark circles, mirroring her own. God, how could she have left him? After all that he has done for her…After all those long, hard, nights of ceaseless watching…This is how she repaid him. Lies and heartbreak. 

His advice is telling: There’s no need to keep treading the same path–to purposefully dig your fingers into the wound. He speaks from experience; words of a man who has dug his grave simply by pacing across the same spot over and over again; a man who has excavated a hole in his own arm––past skin, muscle, bone––and clean to the other side, simply by incessantly picking at a scab. 

Even so, he is strong enough to hold a traitor; strong enough to have some kindness to spare. His touch is gentle, comforting in its repetitive caress. It unlocks something in her and suddenly very single terrible feeling she has deliberately stowed away, comes spilling out. 

Her arms wrap tightly around him, like he is the last thing she will ever hold again; like she will never let go. A strangled sob claws out her throat and she puts the sound against him, burying her face in his chest. “J'ai foiré, Tristan. J'ai foiré. People are dead because of me.” Another sob, ugly and rough. “It’s all my fucking fault.”

---

a sob racks through her, and tristan pulls her closer, wraps his arms around her tighter. if she wants to fall apart she will do it safely, protected by his body--he will not let the grief take the light from her without going through him first, he will not see himself reflected in one who has always been better than he, brighter and far braver as well. give your pain to me, he thinks to himself as he gently cards his fingers through her hair, as he presses a kiss to the crown of her head. i can hold it for you--i can feel it for you without crying out, without flinching. 

let me save you, one more time. let that be enough for both of us. 

“they did--” he says gently, on an exhale of breath, as he cards his fingers through her hair and presses his lips to the crown of her head. “nothing i can say will change that. what i can tell you, what i know for certain, is that you will heal from this, mon cher.” if there is any justice left in this world, if god sees fit to turn his eye to this place for a fraction of a second, this young woman will walk away from this--she will turn the love that is barely contained by the flesh and bones of her body outwards and do something beautiful with it. she will find someone who is strong enough to absorb the light, who will fall to their knees with praises on their lips to be blinded by it. 

perhaps it is a lie--does he not still think of how he lost far more than he saved? perhaps she will eventually resent him for it, when the months and years go by, if they make it that far, and she still feels the chill dancing across her skin, when she wakes in the middle of the night because behind her eyelids is a colorless face, a voice that does not match the one from memory--but right here, and right now, he knows that the lie is the kinder thing. 

“you did what you did because you love--you love so much that you cannot stand still and simply let it pool inside of you like dank well-water. i can’t fault you for that--just as you did not fault me for hesitating on the island, when that thing--” he bites down hard on his bottom lip, shakes his head. “it doesn’t matter. what i’m trying to say is that if we did not act on such impulses, there would be far more laying dead behind us, than living in front of us. we have to try--and you did what i’ve been too tired, too afraid to do since we got here.” 

he does his best to smile warmly, presses a kiss to her forehead. “you remind me of him--christian, he would have done the exact same thing if he were here. i would have begged him not to take the risk, to find a way that didn’t involve going back there, in the same way that i would have begged you. and then he would have gone--because he would have rather had everyone else live, even if he didn’t.” 

                                                      ⁎⁎⁎

❝ Mais tu ne comprends pas? ❞ He wants to jump out, take Tristan by the hands. Bury their face in his neck, bite down, clamp onto a squeal or a scream because it’s true. It wasn’t some gibberish, some goose chase laid out by soldiers to excuse their own incompetence.

Oh, doesn’t he see what this means? Bon sang      certainly one of the smartest men he’s ever met, ever longed for, would not get boggled down by a few gruesome details. Would keep his eyes trained to the big picture, the only thing that matters to them. In Bastien’s ears, the patterns fall so loudly into place, each of them in the perfect slot, the pincer to puzzle, that any other sound is susurrus. Any other life is undercurrent.

It means that this place is the passage. It means that the creature that seized their ship, that sinuous half-form, is nothing more than a rail line. Something to be traversed. What had closed can be torn open what more. And the cost of it? The toll it would exact? Why, when had an actor ever inquired about price? It’s poor form, doing it before the show.

They giggle, a tingle to the chords. Sebastien’s tone reaches out to touch parts of Tristan that his fingers cannot. When they next speak, there is something of the votary inside it, something of the choir. A breaching into the inner sanctum. ❝ Oh, we have a lot of work to do, dear Capitaine. Do lift your spirits, or I’ll have to do it myself        and I dare say our reputations on this ship can’t take one more blow. ❞

The actor chances a sideways glance, scouting out for errant deckhands. Eavesdrop, eyes that can’t be spared. The prow’s surroundings are empty, but even like this, oh, merde. They know Tristan likes to cut a fine thing, propriety, decorum. Favors his appearances something wicked. It used to drive them mad, really, and even now, after everything, accounts for so much of their infatuation with him. Though perhaps that is no longer true: perhaps stoicism led to something truer, something darker. Like lead paint stripped off by the saltwind. So he takes a leap of faith, leap of need—skips forward. Presses in. Presses his face to Tristan’s collar.

❝ Can you imagine, if we reach the gates? If we give it what it wants? Can you imagine it, Tristan, seeing him again? ❞ 

---

“after the last time i saw him--” tristan exhales and shakes his head--but the memory does not settle inside of him like stone, does not fall to the bottom like excalibur, after bedivere carefully uncurled each of his king’s dead fingers from around the hilt and watched it break the surface of the lady’s lake. it settles somewhere between his ribcage, just underneath his throat, and it unfurls like bird’s wings, feathered and brushing the bones of his shoulders that have for so long only carried ache, have only curled slowly inwards as he adjusted to compensate for more and more across his back. he cards his fingers through the hair at the base of sebastien’s neck as they tuck their face into his shoulder, grin against his skin like they haven’t since tristan watched them fly through the air like something out of puck’s own midsummer’s night dream--and he does not dare give name to the feeling, even though he knows it. 

it’s the speaking, the releasing, that makes a thing vulnerable. is it not miracle enough that beautiful and winged hope did not look at the gravedirt that tristan has continually swallowed down, watered with salt and brine and blood, and take flight? why must he speak it, open his mouth and expose it to this place? 

he presses his lips against the side of sebastien’s head and shrugs his shoulders, and he laughs. it hurts, pulls at muscles nearly atrophied with disuse, but what else is there? at the end of the world, there is only laughter and there is only the foolish and brave hope of the impossible. “i didn’t know i could imagine it--it seemed far more painful than just letting him go, remembering him as he was.” he allows the corners of his mouth to pull upwards, and he moves the hand that has been carding gently through their hair down to their shoulders, the small of their back. they speak as though the door, the gate, had not swallowed a young man whole, had not let the ones that loved him grieving and clawing at nothing at all, no recourse--and yet tristan wants to light the spark that has pressed against him, to give the devil, the king of all the fae, chase through the glittering and dark woods.