the ambassador

he’s almost forgotten the last words he’d spoken to pasha but the ambassador promptly reminds him. you’ll come back. and despite him saying that he won’t, kane realizes that he needs him to. this is what he’s here for. except the last time he wasn’t asking; he is now, better yet, he’s convinced he’ll have to beg. and for once he’s willing to. 

it’s strange—to feel guilt. it’s never been an issue for kane before, he probably wouldn’t be able to live with himself if it were. there’s too many things he’s done in his life that one should feel remorse for, he’s made so many people his victims, made so many people pay for his sins but he’d always choose to ignore the repercussions. he’d tell himself he’s doing the right thing—right for him—and forget everything else.

and then this place happened. abel’s spirit happened. he can hear him all the time now, ever since he’s touched the knife at the shop—he can hear him, he can see him, he can feel him. kane’s convinced he can see blood on his hands then he blinks and it isn’t there. there’s a shadow in the corner of his eye, follows his every step. there’s whispers in his ear, names of people he’s forsaken for his gain, so many of them and they don’t let him rest, doesn’t matter where he goes. kane hoped they’d quiet down once he steps back onto the ship but the voices followed him; even now, he sees his brother’s face, he sees his partner’s face, they whisper pasha’s name over and over and kane—he wants to scream.

“i’m sorry.” he says instead, and the word trembles just a little. the voices quiet down. all he can see is pasha’s expression—clearly annoyed by his presence, ready to throw back whatever kane says right back into his face. 

it’s another word he never uses the way it’s supposed to. but there isn’t any other way. to make all of this stop. he’ll apologize. and he’ll mean it. 

he stops pacing, turns to face the other man. he feels frozen; his own admission has taken him aback. this is the only way. “i’m sorry. for everything. for what i did to you. for the way i betrayed you.”  kane can’t believe his own words, not because they’re false but because for the first time in his life, his apology is actually an apology. you have to mean it. you mean it. “i’m sorry.”

The admission caught him unexpecting. The bottle pirouetting between his fingertips froze, the ambassador seized by the same icy lapse that halted his visitor. A moment later, both heads stiffly faced each other. Pasha’s gaze went wide and hard, all earlier nonchalance exhaled in the clench of the jaw. It wasn’t his intention to search for something - the ashen eyes on his didn’t shift an inch. What he intended was to wring it out of him.

“You weren’t last week,” he observed frostily. If anything, he’d attempted to wedge his claws into a closed wound. Pasha canted his head, eyes dark. Once unquestioningly complaisant, now steeled in his wariness. He couldn’t be lied to if he believed nothing. “Not for months and not for years.”

It wasn’t me that broke you, then. Who? “You lie as easily as you breathe,” he sloped quietly back into his seat and tipped back his bottle. Made a show of tilting it into the light, examining how much time he had left. ”Have you ever said anything to me that you meant?”

Never mind that- Why mean this? He’d proven his conscience a bottomless pit, so what weight was he here to alleviate? The ambassador had spent his career identifying the machinations that tended to brew around the long tables, and orchestrating his own accordingly. Weaving truth and lie into one inextricable ideal. Kane had shown him nothing but ideals, and Pasha was too enervated to start distinguishing their history thread by thread. A closure achieved through nitpicking was not one he wanted. He wanted Kane to unravel, and show it to him. He shifted his cinder stare from the fermented hourglass to the accused. More ash than fire.

for: @ofvoron​

it hasn’t been long since kane’s left the shop but he’s already made a decision about where he goes next. to whom he goes next. it’s not a plan, not even an idea but the growing pressure of his brother trailing so closely behind him has made him feel desperate. he has to do something to make abel go away. 

he goes back to the ship, which looks almost deserted with so many of its passengers back on land. kane’s gone out to explore—curiosity got the best of him—and now he regrets it. he heads straight for the cabin pasha’s staying in, knocks before he can think about it, before he even figures out what he’s going to say. this never happens, kane always comes prepared. he isn’t now—he doesn’t know how this is going to go, he’s not sure of what’s going to come out of this. the last time this level of spontaneity was required of him, it ended in a bloody tragedy. 

“can we talk?” the words spill out of his mouth the second there’s a crack in the door. before it can be closed right back, he adds, “please.” it’s a word he never uses. and if he does, he never means it. but he does now, as unbelievable as it may sound. “please.”

✤ ✤ ✤

He’s never sure who to expect when he opens this door, anymore. A caulker, poet, fraterniser… Naturalist? He’d not seen her since dear Nyima’s passing. But passing was too sweet a word, wasn’t it? Passing implied an exchange between trusted hands, while she had been snatched- ripped from them. Such distress as that could hardly be bottled. He’d just so happened to be within line of fire when Emma had splintered. The wistful blip in him curdled to gall at what unsought company he was met with when he did open the door.

Dieu- Not you. Dread pooled into every cavity in him made vacant, as of late. Not now.

“Is that not what we’re doing?” He contemplated if the gratification of bloodying his nose would be worth any retaliation to ensue. The door was open barely two inches, and his heel was set on the inside to keep it that way. He would have slammed it then, had he been greeted with turned lips and fang. But the scene of unrehearsed inhibition before him was a snag.

“I am not coming back,” Pasha advised wearily, before the vulture wasted its time picking at carrion that still kicked. But it hovered. “Nothing you say can make you what you once were to me. Is that understood?” he tried again. Was that not what this was about, then? Inexorable eyes began searching him in the next moment, before flitting up and down the corridor. Before pinning Kane again. And then, strenuously, dragging his heel from one side of the door to the other, and nudging it wide.

“You have until I’m able to see the bottom of this bottle. I’d hate to stain the carpeting, should I feel so inclined to break it across your mug,” in one hand he flourished the wine, glass foregone, and pivoted to start back across the room. Hearing now in session, Pasha sloped into his rickety throne until it clacked onto three of its four unequal legs, fist propped into his stubbled jaw. Half-empty and fermented scepter in one hand, and curtained locks tousled by the unseeable circlet of thorns. The doldrum regent and his court of none. He narrowed his sleepless eyes.

“you say that as if it were out of character,” he cants his head to the side, a lazy smirk on his lips, his eyes following pasha around the room. kane himself can’t be bothered to move; at least nothing more than sitting up in the bed, back against the pillows. but it’s hard to do business like this, with the other man so far away; his charms aren’t all verbal; with pasha, they very much rely on the proximity, the less space between their bodies the better, he’s learned. 

so he gets up; unlike the other, doesn’t care for clothe. when he’s close enough, he takes the wine glass out of pasha’s hand, despite there being one dedicated to him. he takes a sip, sets it aside, begins the game. lets his mouth stretch out just a bit wider, tries to make it resemble something along the lines of fondness (and perhaps he doesn’t have to try all that hard), hand reaches out, arm curls around the waist, as if just a few minutes were too long to be separated for. brings his face close; close enough to smell the smoke and the wine.

“i want to buy land.” he noses the patch of skin behind pasha’s ear, lets his mouth linger against the surface. “but i don’t have the assets right now. none i can move, at least.” pulls away, brings his hand to the other’s face, tilts pasha’s chin up with his fingers. kane’s smile warms up even more. “not exactly politics. my trade this time.” still, it’s money, a domain that belongs to both of them.

“it’s good land. north. asked around, could sell double in a year or two. we’ll split it then.” kane makes it sound like a promise, as if in a year or two, this would still be happening; as if next year pasha is still going to have a place in his business, in his bed, in his life. but unless he makes it sound like a genuine promise, he knows he won’t get anything. 

“think about it,” he says—he can’t push. needs to give it time. so instead he leans in close, kisses pasha, presses himself against him. “but we can’t take too long.” he adds after all, a breath of space between them. 

Comes up to him from behind, as he always does. Pasha hadn’t heard him, but startled only slightly as callused fingers wove between his to steal the drink before flashing him a look, tickled by the gall. 

He wore his heart not on his sleeve but as readily as a second skin; as intuitive to navigate as the first. So Kane played him a tune, strummed on the heartstrings he brushed over everywhere that was unguarded and tender. Lips and fingertips to love them as close to the teeth and claws to break them. Pasha bared them without thought.

That didn’t mean that talk of assets and property didn’t latch a weight to the flutter in Pasha’s chest. Anchored it down, down into his gut, where it strained and rattled against his ribcage. He opened his eyes - something rare, in these intimacies - and glanced wearily to the side. The fingers hooked beneath his jaw guided them up again soon enough.

It wasn’t as if he’d not had acquaintances try to mooch favours in the past, but there was more to this than that. He’d not tallied their winnings but this arrangement was one he was satisfied with, and didn’t that make it enough? When those with several years more experience in his field had achieved half as much, they were quicker to stake their suspicions than their pride. The speculation, that ‘there’s something more to it, there must be’. There wasn’t, but they wouldn’t be satisfied with that. Not when there were falsehoods more preferable to the truth.

Kane had recognised his worths, his aptitudes, and commended them. He’d shared evenings with him whether there was rhyme, reason or not. He didn’t bombard him for favours- Not every time. He told him things, and Pasha listened. And when Pasha told him things, he listened. Things just between them. Things one would only dare to share if they were wholly heartfelt, or monstrously heartless.

Only a beast would have taken this charade so far. He didn’t see one in the man before him. Didn’t look for one, because he trusted it wasn’t there. Or wanted to. Perhaps he too knew of preferences to pursuit of truth.

“I can’t keep doing this, Kane,” he murmured against his lips, tilting back enough to find his gaze. A faint grimace had settled on the mask so unaccustomed to frownlines. “Twice, in but a few weeks… People will begin to notice a bias in my recent distributions. And then they will talk.”

Should he keep sticking his neck out like this, it was only a matter of time before it would lay clean across the chopping block. But he didn’t say ‘no’. He rarely could, these days. But he still had a career he intended to keep; he looked for compromise.

“If I were to put in some words, with the right people,” his arms ventured up, winding over his shoulders. Kissed the corner of his mouth to sweeten the deal. “Perhaps have it taken off the market, reserved until you’ve accumulated the funds… Would that be enough?”

It wouldn’t be. The sensible part of him knew that Kane would only be satisfied when he owned the entire world, and then some. The senseless still coddled the delusion he could give it to him. Seconds passed, and then Pasha sagged and his arms began to withdraw, heavy. They held his shoulders before they could slip altogether - before he had nothing to keep him here at all - and he hesitated. He mustered what he could of a smile before holding his gaze as well.

Laszlo reclines in the chair, staring the ambassador out as he walks him through the thought process. Has one thing to say by the end of it all. Short shake of the head. Sharp quirk of an eyebrow. “You survive a rogue wave by diving under it, Pasha,” he corrected in a low hiss. “Pressing your chest to the bottom, and keeping your head down,” right, perhaps more than one thing to say “—not throwing your bloody arms wide!”

There’s little room for further input. Footsteps reverberate down the hallway to reach them. The caulker has only the time to meet the ambassador’s eyes with a resigned, half-exasperated look as he watches the leg swing up. Laszlo hits the cabin floor headlong, wind knocking from his lungs, and rolls with it in stride. Tucks himself clear under the cot by muscle memory alone ( a movement practiced ashore in his muckraking days; a movement honed to perfection in these seaborne ones. ) Keeps his head down. Presses to the floorboards. Lest some rogue wave of perceived scandal sweep them both out to sea. The footsteps fade. The ambassador can enjoy a sailor in his cabin a moment longer without turning heads.

Laszlo schools the startled look into something a hair more disgruntled as Pasha’s face pops back into view over the side— black hair tumbling down to curtain the man’s face as gravity, presumedly, draws a red flush to it too. Thinks he could near bite the hand that skirts his cheek just to spite its owner, as Pasha pays forward his earlier affections: glancing that playing card clean off his forehead.

“My whole damned life’s a cracking story. The aim’s to write fiction, Pash. Not memoir,” he grumbles, and drags himself back out from under the cot.

Pasha sat back again, clearing the way for the caulker to crawl from his hiding place. At talk of memoir the smile wilted, concealed by pursed lips as he watched him rise up from the floor, scouring frownlines for their purpose. Was indignation the heart of it, or the veil?

“A storm was coming and I clung for dear life to the strongest mast, and made sure the men knew which it was. No one in their right mind would punch above their weight. Had Dowling and Estrada been matched in size, there would have surely been bloodshed,” he took on a tuneless, earnest note, cast a glance to the latch on the door, before baring his gaze to Laszlo again.

“I am grateful to Dowling, for taking us aboard and believing us. I think he has a good heart, and doesn’t deserve to be where he is,” his chest caved a little; an empty breath, void of word or meaning. “But what we get often has little bearing on what we deserve, non? What I think doesn’t matter. It never has, it never does. What matters is what I can make one think.”

Because that had always been what it was about, hadn’t it? Not just on the Promethean, but all that time before. He didn’t have to cement his bucket with promises and he didn’t have to prove it could carry water. As long as one believed it could, then anything they poured into it would come gushing into his pockets.

“I am not a good man. Not even a decent one. Call my methods what you will, but the result is what matters. There have been no casualties, sailing has been smooth, and the Agathe…” Pasha paused. Not any one of his purposeful pauses to lend more volume to the following point, because when it came it was lowly. His tongue was stuck for a moment, before he flattened it behind his teeth. Closed his mouth. Smiled, small, while he waited for the dryness to ebb. “I am long past caring who loves me or loathes me. If they are alive to do it, then I’ll have won.”

when / after landfall where / siren’s sorrows with / open to everyone! 

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.”

✤ ✤ ✤

“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?

“Черт возьми- The second your balls are empty, it’s back onto politics.”

The ambassador cocked his head across a flushed shoulder, fixing the man in his bed with an incredulous look as the latter made the ever-inevitable segue. He himself had managed to fish up a nightshirt from the discarded articles on the floor and pick his way as far as the half-spent decanter perched waiting on his desk, huffing mildly as he turned back to begin pouring out a fourth round of Chianti.

It was routine, surely- All this buttering-up before the bombshell. What endearing spontaneity there was to Kane’s visits was too often negated when the vying for a favour unveiled there was intention all along. Ah, Pasha hadn’t drudged up a career in reading between lines not to have picked up on a pattern by now. He wasn’t a fool.

Or maybe he was. Maybe it was even more foolish that in spite of the cognizance, he indulged him with the political lieu of pillowtalk every damn time. Not in any oblivion to a man’s want to rise up in the world, but his own heart’s want to accommodate it. To see him prosper. To reap the fruit of his labour, when it bloomed in love and gratitude.

Was it amoral of him? Selfish, possessive? Reprehensible, to be taking assets and bricks from the embassy to build something sturdy for himself? He’d have loved him other ways, if he thought it would be enough to keep him here. Maybe it would be. Another day - one day - he’d take the chance to turn him down.

But today was not that day. Pasha made him wait however - measured himself in what few ways he could - flipping open an engraved silver case for a cigarette, lighting it, taking a lengthy drag. The exhale came as half a sigh as he eyed the window, orange rays of evening painting the scriptures bared on his desk. He absently wondered whether it was one of them Kane would come up for, like a child jabbing the candy-shop window. His lips twitched at the imagery - a kneejerk fondness, as his head tilted in concession and he swirled his glass with a roll of the wrist.

casimir lets pasha glower. lets him gnaw on himself, toss his head like a horse at a fly. eventually, he moves to drink from the glass casimir poured. eventually, he folds in on himself, the chest dropping, losing some of that frantic air casimir had been waiting for him to work out, the whine that needed to be exhausted before the jaw could click shut. casimir takes the muttered russian– oh, surely a curse– as a good sign.

but perhaps the touch to the man’s chin was a step too far in this nonchalance, these reassurances flung out with such casual confidence he’d hoped pasha would do him the favor of not examining them too closely, because at the tap the ambassador looks up. looks at casimir, and it’s the gaze of a hawk sighting another. says his name, and the doctor knows he’s in trouble.

this is the line he didn’t want to tread, the corner pasha has backed him into: too vague, and the ambassador won’t trust him, will never drop the topic. might even be shot off into another wind-up, skittering into a second act of panicked rage. share too much, and… he’s shared too much. pasha might be placated, but at the exposure of the surgeon’s own neck, the pulse held out to the other man: see? this is how it beats. this is how it starts and stutters, what makes it stop. what makes it shudder.

and theres… nothing tactically wrong with that angle. such an admission might even endear himself further to the man. get him another ally in this cursed voyage. it’s just that, all things considered, he’d really rather not.

casimir hisses a sigh, turns on his heel and towards the table. leans his hands on it, back to pasha, shakes his own head– a mirroring now, him the one with something to work out, a stirring to exorcise, and pasha so steady in his armchair. turns back again, crossing his arms and looking at the ambassador with tight lips. nothing to be done. nothing to it. when pasha’s voice softens, it’s the final slice.

“i’m sure because i designed it so. voronin– pasha. please.” he stops the plea there. refuses to beg, even as he’d rather answer anything else. tries to find a way around, even now. “can’t you trust me? yes, you chose to put yourself in the line of fire, but the battle itself was by my design. if there was something left to wound you, i would tell you. i’ve– pulled strings, some of them my own, to keep you out of it. it’s my job, non?” he drops his arms, stretches out something taut in his neck, his shoulder. closes his eyes. hopes the moment of truth, slipped in between the facts of the mess, goes unnoticed. or at least unbothered. “to minimise the casualties.”

they’re already in it, so: another surrender, pourquoi pas? why the fuck not, at this point? he huffs a half-laugh, grim and grimace. “of course it– well. it’s nothing pleasant, to have one’s life spun into a cage. perhaps i should be glad he wasn’t the jailer, knowing his type, and i certainly never expected him to be the key, but– yes. it’s a disappointment. he was a disappointment to me. it shouldn’t be possible, to be disappointed by something that comes as no surprise. what a strike of idiocy, that. but it’s the truth. now you know. does it make you happy?”

Can’t you trust me?

In all his years navigating politics, he’d loathed that it was even a question. To set foot into such a stream - ever-flowing, ever-winding, ever-changing - you could do nothing short of submerge and let it wash into every inch of your life. The undercurrent had swept him off his feet once before and it’d been nothing short of a miracle he’d managed to right himself from it.

He knew how to stand staunch now. The undercurrent, pushing and pulling in the blackness of the depths of it all. He resented that everything had to be second-guessed and cross-examined even beyond the long table, because everything was a negotiation. The giving of gifts; the planting of oneself in another’s life, to keep hold of them. A shared drink between friends; the vying for a slip of the tongue and commodification of confidence. A kiss on the cheek, throat, between the shoulders, learning the shape; the sheepskin agenda in looking for cracks.

Here, here? How about here? Find your way to the heart, and the hand isn’t far from there. Fit it like a glove and scribe whatever deed you want in your favour. Bestow yourself a palace. Declare war on the world. Keep a smothering hand on the heart, and it will have nothing to say.

Casimir had got something right: to the ambassador it could only ever be posed as an inquiry. An answer formulated only in cross-examination of what was before him, untethered by the arguments put forward by everything so unreliable and human he’d found so goddamned fucking fallible in himself. The parts of him that tugged a poignant chord at the plea despite the impartial veneer in the eyes that met him. The parts that wanted to.

So with little other choice, the surgeon laid bare his grounds and for a moment Pasha forgot himself. His face fell open but he managed to catch his jaw before it did so as well. He watched him as he spoke - watched as he squirmed under the weight of it, this brunt of sincerity. The mere notion of Casimir confessing to such lengths for him - an investment, partner in crime (had they met under different circumstances, he might have even ventured to call a friend) - clocked him so off-guard, it was almost harder to conceive as a lie than truth. There was no loyalty among thieves; he thought he’d known that. This wasn’t how it usually went.

And then he painted him a picture so vivid it was almost a window. In the glass he could see his own ghostly reflection and if he adjusted himself, he was certain he could overlay the role of the fool just as seamlessly. Casimir took a step forward and met him in the middle and Pasha put his fingers to the pulse. Warm and beating; they had something in common, after all. Was he happy?

“Something like that,” he replied after a long beat, blinking the vacancy from his stare as he reeled it back from beyond him. It drifted and weighed down to the floorboards, free of any stimuli that would hinder the arduous churning of these revelations through his head. He drummed his fingertips unrhythmically into the armrest. And by the time he faced Casimir again, his face was red in the faint light.

“Well, now I’m embarrassed,” he muttered, brow twitching in exasperation as he propped his elbow on the table and turned his face into the heel of his palm. “Bon Dieu- You could have stopped me sooner.”

He took a breath of fresh air as he mulled on the additions for longer. Dragged his hand from his eyes to prop up his chin, half-hiding the mouth. Couldn’t face him wholly with what came next. Couldn’t not look at him, either. “I had something like that,” he murmured. The heat in his face began to feel colder and he curled his nails into his palm. “A couple somethings like that, in- In England. The second was the thread that they ran with.” He didn’t feel the need to elucidate more, on that matter. Toussaint had learned firsthand all that one loose thread could unravel. “But the, ah, the first- He is a disappointment.”

His gaze slipped. To look at Casimir now would be too much. He didn’t doubt a doctor could tell the difference between a wound that was fresh and one that had been healing, reopened. He didn’t feel the need to elucidate on that one, either. ‘Disappointment.’ All the soured sentiments and shattered memories that the term couldn’t contain, only label. One of countless. But he supposed in learning the chinks in the armour, they could be fortified. And for the most part he had. He’d learned not to remake his mistakes; learned to plug his ears to the sirens’ wail. You’ll come to me, you’ll see. You’ll come back.

Vaguely, his wrist throbbed. “It was good of you to do that. Especially in not knowing my… Predicament, with the embassy,” he went on, quieter still. He’d minimised the casualties not because they were a patient, or because they were innocent, but because… Well. He’d hurt his head enough, trying to wrap it around Casimir Toussaint for one day. For now, he hoped the wordless squeeze he reached for above the surgeon’s wrist communicated what gratitude he found his tongue couldn’t translate.

Outside of business hours - he supposed. It was black beyond his window - but he supposed it often was. He’d had a glass of wine. Or a few - he supposed. Matters of state and ship were better handled on the wagon, of course. But if what she had come to burden him with was so dire, wouldn’t she have thought to adhere to his working hours? He supposed.

“Madame Léon. If I’d known you’d be paying a visit I might’ve thought to doll myself up more,” the ambassador sloped a shoulder into the cabin doorframe and arched a listless brow towards her. He’d gotten as far as a knee on the bed before her dainty knock disrupted him. Not to sleep, just yet - a glance just skimming his shoulder would imply he’d intended to take a bottle of wine in lieu of any bedfellow. He blinked at her, before a tickled smile bled onto his flushed face. “Actually, no, I wouldn’t. I really was quite comfortable.”

She had no second thoughts of her own, it seemed. Pasha canted his head forward to glance one way into the creaking shadows, and then the other. “This is a queer hour for fraternising… You know that your brand of cajolery isn’t really one I go in for, oui?” he flashed her a look, more wry than stern in the squint, before he hoisted himself upright and swept the door the rest of the way open with his heel.

the ambassador.

A cold hand on the throat. Not tight enough to steal the breath but still it did. It was funny, in some gallows way, how an indelible touch could feel different when it was no longer trusted. How beautiful things could turn to gall in hindsight when there were ugly truths brought to light. How memories of happiness couldn’t stay true, only because they ended unhappily. How funny and cruel.

The touch was only transient, but sometimes a stroke of poison was all it took. Pasha glanced back up at him, against all better judgement. The glassy eyes turned mirrors, reflecting all the blackness and ice around that he couldn’t summon himself. Do you? he reflected. too. Do you have somebody?

“Survivors. A naturalist. A wordsmith, or two. I’ll pull this wrist from its socket if you don’t unhand it- The surgeon would have a field day,” he uttered, knuckles blanched in a fist as he pried on the grasp. The ruly lips were tapped of diplomacies; they twitched, fleetingly, into a chapped snarl. “Don’t beg, and have no one. You’ve gone to such trouble dredging up all this sordid irrelevance, coming to me- Have you exhausted seven years of options already?”

Kane claimed he wasn’t cruel and Pasha almost tossed back his head and laughed. Almost. “The intention to put yourself first isn’t cruel, no. It’s how one enacts it.” The wrist was whitening, now, in the unyielding hold. He didn’t intend to stay in it long enough to bruise. To give him the satisfaction of another lasting mark. “To claw yourself up from the mire by using lives and loves as leverage, steppingstones- To take the forefront only by throwing others back and hacking them into submission in your shadow… There are worse things I could call men like you. Things like you.”

He spoke softly but not timorously. It was a purposeful quietude; the sort that demanded nothing short of undivided attention. “The day I come to trust you with my back over any other, let it be known that I am beyond all help and hope; for from then on I won’t care what ends up embedded in it.”

Pasha stared him out for a few moments more. Any longer and that boa weaving between his ribs would constrict his chest fit to burst. “You’re not still speaking to me with the expectation you can win me over. So what, then? What is this?” he narrowed his eyes and leaned back. Put a spare hand against his shoulder- Braced to start prising or battering, at the next moment’s notice. “Let me go, Keane.”

✤ ✤ ✤ hates it, that there’s an opening that pasha could use to see right through him. because kane does not have anyone; he’d made sure to burn all the bridges in the past and now tries to rebuild them with a single piece of rope. except the other side does not want to catch it. it falls, drags him down even, as if his every attempt made it heavier by a hundred pounds. 

but he doesn’t let it show. he’s not ready to sink just yet. he’ll find his lifeboat soon enough. or turn someone into one.

his hand doesn’t move at the request; it tightens for a second, a squeeze to prove to the other that kane isn’t going to listen. he stares right back at pasha and feels his throat swell with words that he isn’t going to say. then his hold shifts, his fingers trail across the inside of the ambassador’s palm; the tightness shifts into something quite opposite but it doesn’t last long. kane reminds himself that he can’t be giving pasha any more weak points to attack him at. weak points he didn’t even realize still existed. his hand feels cold after he takes it away and it isn’t the weather’s fault. 

“you’ll come to me. you’ll see.” says it like some sort of a charm. he’ll say it two more times after pasha’s gone to make sure it works. drop a coin into the sea if he has to. “you’ll come back.”

When Kane relinquished his hold and ghosted his palm in that tainted, noncommittal way of his, the ambassador jerked it promptly to his side and glowered at his surety. All this felt like a tale he’d left unfinished only by circumstance; a once-cherished story he’d reclaimed years later, to leaf past the bookmark and find only a few pages left. The chapters were now too perverted and stale in his memory for the denouement to resonate anything but a rusty, broken bell. But finishing it was, if anything, a formality. So he did.

“Goodbye, Kane.” Clapped shut and shelved, Pasha tore his eyes from him and trudged past. The fingerprints clung to his wrist, still - his phantom wouldn’t release its hold so easily. At least this time he’d had the courtesy of leaving him something.

The ambassador knows exactly what he’s doing when he inquires toward the caulker’s true work; and the thing is it almost nearly works. Laszlo cocks his head toward the washbasin as if to start that way, lead at once by a generous line of flattery. “The same as I’ve been—” snaps out of it just as quickly, quelling his thirst for any measure of literary conversation before Pasha can dupe him straight out of his earlier convictions with it. That’s right— he was just angry. Bushy brows shove together in the middle as he drags his hands pointedly down his own front in a sorry excuse for a cleanup. ( Surely he’ll see himself earned duty owing for it, should he be caught unawares by the command’s next inspection, but that’s a future concern. )

He could thank the stars and heavens above they’re alone right now; renders rank and decorum meaningless. Gives him the leeway necessary to do this: Laszlo stalks another step toward the ambassador and snatches the deck of cards. “Allow me, sir.” Shuffles them between his muck-darkened hands. Nimble fingers sliding one free and trapping it between index and middle for the man to see. The joker, naturally— its clownish features sporting a fresh smear of caulk. Then he flicks it dead from the wrist, glancing the playing card clean off Voronin’s forehead. 

“You’re getting off subject, love,” He drags the chair from the little writing desk and spins it ‘round on a leg to neighbor the cot, before thunking down into it unceremoniously. Plants his feet, and leans forward on a knee; the same positions they’ve taken up plenty times before over the last few months. The one that states unequivocally: all right, then, tell me the story.

“What’s the bloody aim, here, then? What’s in it for you?” And then of course, more importantly, “what’s in it for me?” Not that he plans to take sides in the matter; call it a head-remains-on-shoulders insurance policy.

He wasn’t getting off so cleanly it seemed. Still (woefully) cleaner than the caulker, at any rate. The smile dropped as the deck was snatched from his hands and jumbled with a generous smothering of caulk, arching his brows at the audacity though managed little more than a dumbfounded blink when the joker ricocheted off his temple. Watched as Laszlo drew up a chair and watched as he leaned in, folding his empty hands in on themselves once they acknowledged their loss and clasping them over his knee.

“For me?” he echoed hollowly, letting his gaze stray up to a corner of the room. He plucked his answer from some similarly unrelated cranny before he faced him again. “The best seat in the house.”

He’d known of those among the survivors who’d begun festering the notion in their flurried heads that they’d brought this misfortune aboard with them. It would surely spread quicker than he could nip it. Tossing the lot of them onto the ice would do nothing, of course, but when desperation brimmed the hearts of men there was room for very little else. Jehanne’s convictions had stuck with him, no matter how he’d tried to dislodge them. When their hearts became too heavy, some gall alchemy would turn desperation to blame that could be divvied, to relieve some of the weight. Both in their hearts and in the ship.

“The Promethean never took to having us aboard wholeheartedly. I simply ensured that our passage was no longer a point of contention,” Pasha clapped a hand idly over the strewn and dirty deck and pulled it back to himself, slotting the joker back into some unrecallable point in the middle and shuffling it anew. “You survive a rogue wave by turning into it, embracing it. No one could have avoided this, so was it unwise of me to book it to the highest point?”

His head fell towards his shoulder, something hitching the corner of his mouth into a portion of a smile. “And if there’s a change in the tides, a more favourable course to be charted… I’ll be close at hand to the wheel, non? We’ve dallied on this graveyard long enough; I don’t intend to see another ship-”

Footsteps outside. He’d not heard them until they had made it this close, over the sound of his own damn voice. And so, came their customary manoeuvre- Lest he risk the muckraking sure to ensue the discovery of a sailor in his quarters at such an hour (he’d tasted enough of it to last a lifetime). The leg went out, pressing into Laszlo’s side and with a firm shove he and the chair both tasted threadbare carpeting with an entirely discrete clatter, the ambassador spinning back to face the door in preparation to to lurch into his most unimpeachable posture...

… As the footsteps were already vanishing down the corridor. False alarm. He deflated, arms sinking over his knees, head between his shoulders. Lifted a hand to scratch at a stubbled cheek as he glanced toward the conspicuously toppled chair. Another moment passed before he hung his head over the edge of the cot, pushing the locks from his eyes with one hand to better glimpse the startled face still faithfully rolled beneath it.

THE PROGENITOR

when: during the rescue. where: main deck with: @intrepidim​ ; @ofvoron​

(…)

“When the status quo fails, when the sails go limp and the ocean lays flat, men grow desperate. Doldrums. Eviler than any deva. Boredom makes men caustic as quicklime. So imagine what fear does?” 

The cartographer switches the script on him, now. Shifting his hand from their hip to their shoulder and taking him by the small of the back; once the follow, now the lead. In control before the first snag in their stride is even registered. “The only medicine is purpose. Keeps sailors happy, keeps ‘em agreeable… keeps ‘em calm…” Voice lilting lower and lower in its conspiratorial hush. 

“They’ll fall in line for almost anything, now— long as it’s a change of pace. So give them something to do.” The crew, they mean. “You’d make a fine enough Captain, my boy. Fine enough to see it through. And it wont take much; the groundwork is practically laid for you,” teeth gritted now, jaw indented with ire as their molars scrape the inside of their own cheek until they taste copper. “—and it’s already been stained bloody enough.”

Her eyes, iodine dark, bore into the vice-admiral in that same way they have only a few dozen times before — when he’s been the one at the table, her advising the precise sweep of his pen. “There’s nothing to it, really.”

❝ Golly, Sohrab, would I? I am so pleased you think so. Had no fucking idea. Look, I’m outright gushing with it. ❞

His voice is thick with bite, has it slathered on like weapon grease. His eyes pick up the gunshot ringing out in theirs, and amplify it, urge it ever onwards. It’s a scatter-shot of clues. ❝ Do you think I would have let Dowling go at all, if I had any intention to keep my heels locked in? This is what it had to come to. This is why I stayed behind, and nodded them on. Not because I want to stand over their graves, but because I will never see a grave again—at least not wrapped in the Union jack. At least not opened, and filled, for England’s sake. So thanks be for your vote of confidence, love. But this is what has been set out for us. Perhaps even by a divine hand     who’s to say? Who can vouch for, or against, any devils watching? ❞ As a sleight that could counter the gall, the vitriol, the usurper takes their palm in his. He tugs them on, along with him over the deck.

A call to their talk of only a fortnight ago. The way he thought he’d take them waltzing on the tail of a funeral      spin them with the death watching, spin them for the benefit of those who can no longer. He thought he would lay his chin on their head, press a kiss, draw scent of gunpowder and charcoal. Ask them: what do I do about her? I’m ruined over her, Sohrab. I catch her looking at me, and then she snakes her hand through his arm, Montgomery’s fucking greycoat, and I’m halfway there to murder them both. I’d turn this whole ship southward just to watch her come towards me instead. Watch her carry that smile. Whisk her off to London, Mauritania, everywhere. She could do anything, be anything, and I’d have one request: never leave me. Bed him, bed her, bed the whole world and call it a card-trick. Just never leave me. What do I do? Did this wait inside me, this madness, and never sprung out all my life? Did you see this is the way I’d end up, when you met me, and I could lick the name of any woman out of my mind? Did any of us call this? How do I win her over? How do I do this, and survive the journey, too?

He’d never got the chance to ask. Never, and now, there is no point of it. There are no smiles, no dreams, no card-tricks. Instead of leading Sohrab in a dance, herding them to the fence of his salvation, the usurper picks up the pace. Together they cut the breadth of the deck, now depleted of some fifteen souls, fifteen pairs of useful hands that might turn the tide. They halt just short of the milksop’s silhouette. ❝ To give them something to do, we must first give them something to talk about. Someone here has spent their whole life talking. Picking truth in and out, like fleas off a stray’s fur. The crew trusts you: that will be your domain. But for those you have not yet charmed, I need a dirtier hand, a finger bent by the force of circumstance. ❞ Estrada measures the second, the plunge of his eyes into theirs. He measures it, and then, when its length relays nothing but agreement, and the cord pulls smooth, he steps forward. Calls to the Ambassador, this nowhere boy, this nowhere man.

❝ Vashe prevoskhoditel'stvo. Ser Voronin. We have a job for you. ❞

“Is the inauguration so soon?” Voronin canted his head, though it was some moments after that his eyes rolled over to the pair. Your excellency. His lips curled charily. He’d not asked for Pasha, then; he’d asked for the ambassador. “Ah, you can spare me the formalities. If you’re about to ask of me what I think you might, Ser Voronin has a rather lovely record of official exploits that I’m sure would clash heinously. Better this was set apart.”

The ambassador straightened up and faced them bodily, fingers clasped neatly over the arched brass wings of the scavenger-headed cane. He glanced between them, this rising storm and its riling wind. He wasn’t sure when they’d come, but he was versed in the warning signs. The shift in temperature - the warm and able bodies sent across the ice. The abrupt hush - the scarcity of sentinels on the upper decks, lips frozen shut. “There’s no need to waste our breaths recounting what we all already know. I spent enough time breathing the same air as legislators to get a nose for the rot and machinations that brew in close quarters such as these.”

Pasha’s gaze homed on Estrada. “If it’s my language you want to speak, Vice Admiral, I would like to hear what it is you think I want before we go any further. Escape involves not just running away, but arriving somewhere. Diplomacy is the art of building bridges; observing both banks of the river, taking an active part on both sides…” he leant back his shoulders, and the cane struck decking like gavel to block. “This is a wide channel, but you know that. В тихом омуте черти водятся.”

Why would he do this? Why should he do this? He’d wait for Khosrow and Estrada to remind him. “I can accommodate a meeting in the middle. I can build you a bridge unfellable by Arctic winds, if you give me the groundwork. You should know platitudes make brittle shovels and ambiguity even brittler foundations… But I see you’re the type that values expediency as I do - Dowling barely turned his back and you’re on the draw,” his lips twitched in a would-be smile. He reckoned he may very well have to conserve them for better use, here out. Having spoken his piece, grave earnest resumed him and he looked across them both.

“oh, darling, you forget that i was convenient for you, too.” bitterness cuts through his grin, even though he doesn’t have the right to it. still—kane refuses to be the only foul character in this story; he refuses to agree that their transaction was just one-sided, that he was the only one who benefited from this. and it wasn’t inconvenience that drove them apart, it was kane’s rule of not letting things go too far. and sometimes he thinks that with pasha, they almost did. he made the escape in time and never had to pay for it. perhaps he is now. 

every single word falling from the ambassador’s mouth pushes kane further away from his plans and it irritates him. it’s clear, how used he is to getting what he wants, even if it’s an allyship from a man whom he betrayed years ago. his words are failing him this time—pasha has had time to grow a thicker skin and recognize insincerity. maybe kane was the reason for it. he hopes he is—he likes the idea of pasha owing something like this to him. 

“so you’ve toughen up. good.” he says. he’s itching to reach out again; kane knows that it won’t go unnoticed, won’t go with causing some sort of stir. his hand lies flat on pasha’s chest, they’re still so close that he doesn’t even have to try; his fingers shift across the surface, to his neck and then just like before, he drops his hand, even before pasha can get a word in. but he stays close. leans in even more because that’s what kane does, pus and push. “do you? do you have somebody? who’s left?” it’s a cruel question, considering the amount of loss all of them have been surrounded by on this ship. 

and then the touch is returned and it feels like a hole being burned into his flesh; like the fingers will leave a mark. not only the fingers, but the words as well. they sting but he enjoys it; he shouldn't—it means he’s losing but there’s something mesmerizing about getting to witness this, this change. the man who’s capable of standing up for himself. the man who can say no to kane. many don’t. barely any do. 

“i could get on my knees in front of you for many things,” he whispers, low; forces them to share a breath. “but i won’t beg.” there’s more he could say. cut deeper. but he’d only prove the point he tries to refute next.

“it’s not cruelty.” he refuses to let pasha go. he should, but his hand catches onto pasha’s wrist, keeps him there. he’s pushing again, but that’s the only thing he knows how to do. “putting yourself first is never cruel. you know me. you know what i came from. everything i’ve ever got, i deserve.”

✤ ✤ ✤

A cold hand on the throat. Not tight enough to steal the breath but still it did. It was funny, in some gallows way, how an indelible touch could feel different when it was no longer trusted. How beautiful things could turn to gall in hindsight when there were ugly truths brought to light. How memories of happiness couldn’t stay true, only because they ended unhappily. How funny and cruel.

The touch was only transient, but sometimes a stroke of poison was all it took. Pasha glanced back up at him, against all better judgement. The glassy eyes turned mirrors, reflecting all the blackness and ice around that he couldn’t summon himself. Do you? he reflected. too. Do you have somebody?

“Survivors. A naturalist. A wordsmith, or two. I’ll pull this wrist from its socket if you don’t unhand it- The surgeon would have a field day,” he uttered, knuckles blanched in a fist as he pried on the grasp. The ruly lips were tapped of diplomacies; they twitched, fleetingly, into a chapped snarl. “Don’t beg, and have no one. You’ve gone to such trouble dredging up all this sordid irrelevance, coming to me- Have you exhausted seven years of options already?”

Kane claimed he wasn’t cruel and Pasha almost tossed back his head and laughed. Almost. “The intention to put yourself first isn’t cruel, no. It’s how one enacts it.” The wrist was whitening, now, in the unyielding hold. He didn’t intend to stay in it long enough to bruise. To give him the satisfaction of another lasting mark. “To claw yourself up from the mire by using lives and loves as leverage, steppingstones- To take the forefront only by throwing others back and hacking them into submission in your shadow... There are worse things I could call men like you. Things like you.”

He spoke softly but not timorously. It was a purposeful quietude; the sort that demanded nothing short of undivided attention. “The day I come to trust you with my back over any other, let it be known that I am beyond all help and hope; for from then on I won’t care what ends up embedded in it.”