THE PHILISTINE

She looks to the island, steeping in his words. “Yes, far too much. If this was fiction, I would have closed the book a long time ago. There’s only so much terror one can believe in.” 

Then that nickname, a harkening to warmer, more lightened, times. She turns her head, glancing at him up and down. So much about him is different here; tar on his hands instead of ink, frost forming on his facial hair. She can’t help but think of his intelligence as wasted on this ship, in his role as a caulker. He could’ve been the Promethean’s head naturalist, if he wanted. But that was how it was between them, always has been; she didn’t understand him and he didn’t understand her but that did not stop their spirits from being linked. Balanced, she used to think, the universe desires to be balanced. Emma and Laszlo were evidence of that. And despite their differences, she knows him enough to recognize his band of care: unembellished affection, blunt words, a focusing on the next capable action. 

“No, but I’m fine.” Grief makes everything taste like ash, like a waste of time. “I’m not that hungry. No fussing, Laz. This isn’t Manila.” I’m not even a little sick.

———

And just like that her eyes stray to the island and she hearkens to the terrors left in their wake. The terror that may well be yet to come. For once, Horace fumbles to speak to that. Whatever quip he's summoning stumbles out of his throat. "You and that Ambassador of yours," he says, folding his arms (less a gesture of crossness than one of warmth, a holding-oneself) "both more concerned whether I'm getting enough inspiration for my book than whether you've stopped long enough for your stale saltine rations."

He scrubs blunt, tar-blackened fingernails down his frosted stubble in thought. "If you say so," holds up his hands placatingly and agrees, "no fussing."

And then he looks to the island in turn. "It certainly isn't. Far as I know you’ve not lost your supper over the railing once." A joke that begins with a snort, but then trails into something more distracted. He’s staring off, now. Glaze-eyed, fixed out across the ice-capped waters. Across the still horizon. Across the island. "...Don't quite know where this is, anymore. Not really."

| 𝑨 𝑭𝑬𝑾 𝑫𝑨𝒀𝑺 𝑳𝑨𝑻𝑬𝑹. 𝑳𝑨𝑵𝑫𝑭𝑨𝑳𝑳. |

Laszlo's sure he knows even less, now. The island wasn't Manila, that much was obvious. But was this port even a port? As soon as he asks it of himself, he finds it a strange question whose origins he can’t account for. As if the very thought, to mistrust what his eyes are telling him he sees, has been planted there by an invisible hand.

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.”

———

The threat of a walking-in-on now fading down the corridor in muffled steps, the caulker risks slipping back into their usual rapport— in the small, dim nest of this dark cabin, it's a far cry from their earliest nights trading a hammock aft in the lower decks, but there's quite the comfortable cot now— he's certainly not one to take it for granted. They can still chat through the eve all the same. Laszlo stretches the cricks from his bones and turns on a heel, dropping back on to the ambassador's cot and stretching out on the quilt. Can almost hear the master caulker crow you bloody layabout, in his ear; but it's only the creaking of the timbers above their heads that sounds within the drum. Only Pasha's lilt, grown familiar enough by now to recognize through the walls, in the night. To recognize with his eyes closed and his head tucked away in his hammock.

No one in their right mind would punch above their weight. "I sure used to," as you know. "Not a single stiff collar in the academy walked free from that rotten rumor column," a low, hesitant snort. And lord knows what he got from it — a blacklisting, a tongue lashing, an exile from the Academy's hallowed halls. Eh, to hell with it all. "And you're quite right. 'Aven't been in my right mind since I popped out my mother. Woman must've dropped me on my head." Prods Pasha with an elbow, as if a snort of laughter's what the moment warrants, of all things.

His own ebbs quickly when Pasha speaks to goodness. I'm not a good man. It slips through his ear and into his skull. Starts to root there. Starts to sprawl and grow. I'm not a good man, I'm not a good man, I'm—

It's true, the lot of it and more. What we get often has little bearing on what we deserve, and looking over at Pasha now, stubbled cheek pressed to the bedspread, Laszlo wishes he could tell him how right he really is. The caulker, (once naturalist, once columnist,) once lived his life feasting on secrets, scraping his profits from the marrow. So why, pray bloody tell, is this one suddenly so hard to keep: You didn't deserve what you got in England— what I gave you with my pen.

It's food for thought, this. It's a whole damned canned ration, tin sealed with lead. The caulker thinks it might poison him if he sups on it long enough. But thinks he'll starve without it, as is. So for now ( once again ) he keep the whole mess down. Keeps the knowing to himself. Reels his thoughts back to the present, the conversation at hand ( one had here, now, stretched out side by side on a quilt rather than toe to toe through anonymous tabloid. )

Now he turns in toward the ambassador, tone a spot more— genuine. "I've never been a man of planning ahead," clearer and clearer by the day, that. "I... trust your aim’s true on this." A far stretch more easier to admit than I trust you on this.

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.

“For you?” he breathlessly picked up where he’d left off, head cocked in musing. He let the hand from his hair and reached toward him, tapping down two fingers just before his face and sliding free a card that had seemingly escaped him earlier. He spun it around - the jack of clubs - and flicked it between Laszlo’s eyes, grinning innocuously once it fell away. “A cracking story, surely.”

———

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.

WHERE: The Upper Deck WHEN: A few days after the Mutiny WHOM: @philistined

If she closes her eyes and holds a coat tight against her body, she can pretend that she is the person who first met the Arctic. With closed lids, she can imagine that the creaking wood and flapping sails belong, not to the Promethean, but the Agathe. If she focuses on the waves’ steady beat, she can almost feel the echoed excitement of a person long passed. 

But then she opens her eyes, tears falling with a will of their own, and she takes in a view of the island. At some point, she had hated it; its barren soil and brutal terrain. Now, all she wants is for the sea to freeze over once more; just so she can walk across it and stay in the island’s embrace forever. 

It’s what she deserves, after all. 

Emma hears steps to her left and glances over at Lazslow. The back of her hand catches quickly to cold tears. It is still jarring; to see a face that she associates with tropical waters and humid afternoons, in context to a frozen wasteland. Oh, if only they could be on La Favorite again, enjoying the beaming sun on their face. Or eating duck eggs in the Philippines. Anywhere but here. 

She sniffles, blaming it on the cold. “Getting good content for your book? I’m expecting a character to be named after me.” A smile is offered but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. They are still as haunted as ever. Then her tone shifts into soft yet serious concern. “Are you doing alright? With everything?”

———

“Getting more than enough,” the caulker snorts wryly as he comes up alongside her and plants his tar bucket by his foot. “Too much, even.” Laszlo looks down at his gloved hands. Smudges the tar off of one finger just to get it on his thumb.

“Oh, ‘course, Rosie.” a small, half-dismissive grumble of endearment as he eyes her sidelong. “It’s already written in stone. Well— Stark’s Ink,” shrugs nonchalantly. “Close enough.” 

“from where i’m standing, it seems quite the opposite.” the second edward even just looks at someone that’s on the same side, there’s bodies standing just a foot closer, eyes trained on a point in the wall just shy of his head. he can’t talk to jules without having half the ship eavesdrop. he can’t see malachy. he hasn’t even had the chance to look for ayla. and what else is there to talk about, other than exactly what the caulker said—mutineering the mutiny. 

“good luck with that.” nevermind marcus having lost his goddamn mind, they’re supposed to be having a service for another two people lost to—that thing. this place. whatever it is, it’s hungry for them and with sailing forward, it feels like they’re about to give it exactly what it wants. or maybe they already have. dead, alive—maybe they just can’t tell the difference.

that would solve so much, were they dead and this was just a divine joke. but they’re still alive, stuck in a real place, here on earth; a place that wishes them harm and makes sure they don’t have enough to fight back with. how do you get out of something like that?

“not from you,” he replies, surprised at how hostile it comes out. he pushes the cup away, a finger of grog sloshing around the bottom. “do you really think that estrada can get us out of this alive?” edward’s dangerously close to the line of thinking they’re never getting out of this safely either way. or maybe he’s already crossed it and refuses to acknowledge it; suppressing his fears is what he’s always done best. 

——— Good luck with that. “Thank ye’—” Laszlo grunts, tipping a two-fingered salute from his forehead. Surely he knows the bite in the statement— though, he takes it as he wants it anyway. As gospel, however flippant. 

The caulker settles back on the bench and quirks an eyebrow at the hostile refusal. Ventures a “—you goin’ to finish it, then?” just for good measure. Just in case ( because one never knows, right? ) Takes Boyne’s pushing the cup aside in the next moment as clarification enough and yields with a relenting nod of his head. Fair.

“Not sure what else there is to think, or hope, from here,” he admits — no bite to it. Words sobered in spite of the man that speaks them. Somber, even. “Thought the same of Captain Dowling, but I’ve seen where that got us.” Three dead. A hunting party of inexperienced, gone off from under his nose. Emma gone off from under his nose. The latter of which is the least forgivable in Horace’s eyes, but that’s a hand he's got no mind nor reason to show, here.

WHERE – BELOW DECK WHEN – AFTER THE MUTINY  WITH – @philistined​

“you know what i really fookin’ hate, laszlo?” victor drawls as he lowers himself onto the floor next to where the man is working, sheathe of papers tucked to his chest, pen firmly in place behind his ear. “is that i could find wherever you are onboard this wooden coffin, any time i wanted to–all i would have to do is follow the sound of your master caulker there. he should speak even louder next time, i’m fairly certain there are people on the coast of north america who didn’t hear him barkin’ orders like an edjit.” 

he grins lazily and pulls a silver cigarette case from the pocket of his trousers, emblazoned with looping V and B, tangled together ornately like snakes. it doesn’t shine like proper silver should, he doesn’t care for it with a cleaning cloth or watch the way it catches the candlelight with pride–it had been a gift once, a final haymaker tossed across his cheekbone to remind him that he should stay splayed across the ground, with only the pavement his only parchment, the blood dripping slowly from his mouth his only ink.

congratulations on graduation, the note had said. you’ll do great things in the future, and i for one cannot wait to see them. the letters E and L had been slashed across the page at the bottom. 

the case deserves to rust like the memory of the man–which is why he’s not precious about offering the contents to the man beside him, with his rat-like features and his prose as rigid and opaque as his caulk. he lets his own hang loose from his lips, while he strikes a match. “finished your pages, shite as usual. you should let me give you a copy of the memoir i wrote for one of the admiralty–saw it laying around here somewhere. you’d be better off just copying my descriptions word for word. might even just let ‘ya, cause i feel so bad about this.” he shakes the sheathe of papers with a laugh, ignores the warm tendril of familiarity that wraps itself around his spine, settles at the back of his ribcage like a banked fire. 

the pages were honest–better than whatever dickens had put out in the time they’d been gone he had no doubt, but he’d fling himself over the side before he admitted as much. laszlo would probably think he was lying, at this point– or he’d break victor’s nose and ask what good that was supposed to do him, to be more constructive instead of complimentary.  

———

Laszlo’s head jerks up from the section of the hull he’s caulking, cheeks smeared with the dirty work of it. His mustache twitches with impatience, eyes crinkling as he fixes him with a pointed look from beneath furrowed brows. “You’re certain it isn’t just me?” Jabs the brush in his direction. “—way you’re yammering on, edjit this, barker that— it’s my hide that’ll get the lashing.”

Then he cocks an eyebrow as he sizes him up for intention, a slow, quizzical arch. “Though, something tells me you’ve already cracked that,” ducks his head back down to dip his brush, “y’are a sharp one, Vicky.” A glint from the corner of his eye stays his hand at the end of the next tar-slathering stroke. That cigarette case, tarnished silver catching lamplight, hinging open in his direction. The caulker rocks back on his heels, then. Cranes his neck to peer down the corridor and confirm the lead was indeed looking the other way. Satisfied with the relative obscurity this claustrophobic deck provided, he deftly snatches one. Props it between his lips and leans in for the struck match. 

“Shite?” He grunts sourly. “That’s an improvement from the last. Next step up’s worthy of wiping shite, I’d imagine.” Loo roll, or the like. “Oh?” he scoffs ( and minds it carefully, because the snicker’s almost honest-to-god mirth ). “Would you be so kind?” 

Laszlo leans back on his heels again once the cigarette’s lit. Steals another glance down the hull to mark just when he might be sniffed out for slacking on the job. “You’d owe me as much, after this. Distraction does a seaman in, you know. Here— write up my charges, then, if you’re so clever with a pen,” he lifts a hand and counts each wealthy possibility off his filthy fingers. “Dereliction of duty. Insubordination—” he’s having fun with it, now, despite the curdled look he affords Victor. “Think fraternizing with a guest while on shift’ll see me permanently on six-water? Or just general duty owing?”

e : the mutiny / t : some time post mutiny / l : off the side of the boat / p : @philistined

the socks. their shift in the rigging was over and laszlo should just be starting theirs, and they’d just forgotten to do the daily tally up of who’s turn it was with the striped warmer socks last night, but wick was 87% sure it was his turn with the striped but could possibly trade over the spotted red ones. ( and if he cannot do math, well, that’s not his own fault )

he slides down the rigging and then wraps his own rope on the post next to the caulkers then slides down that too, stopping just past where horace ( who in their right mind would prefer to be called horace ) was hanging, then reaching out for one of his feet.

‘ mornin’ light of my life and sun to my sky, how are you this fine morning! please don’t kick, i’m just going to - ‘ he reaches out to grab at the lace of the shoe ‘ - take the sock owed to me and i know that you’re still wearing it because it’s the nice sock and it’s definitely my turn now. ‘

———

Come hell, high water, horror, or mutiny— a ship must still sail on. And the caulker, like many others of his station in this case, is well expected to make it so: whoever’s holding the cat ‘o nines. Lowered down the starboard side on a plank seat held aloft by two ropes, Horace is minding his work at the time of the disturbance; like, though he’s not pointing fingers, someone else could be. But Wick has clearly found more purpose in pestering the socks clean off his feet. 

He kicks. “Bugger off!” he hisses, clutching tight to a rope and counter balancing the tar bucket on the plank to avoid any blunders as he steadies himself again.

The evening had been a quiet one. And when it was quiet one’s own mind always made for some terribly boisterous company, and Pasha - quite fucking frankly - was not in the reflective mood tonight. So he’d decided to take out some damaged cards and occupy himself, but silence - that taunting dealer - had always the habit of making a deck of the day’s misfortunes and playing within his head the perfect hand of solitaire.

The game of the death-obsessed; with its inevitability and one’s own oblivion to a doomed hand, no matter how it was played. He’d encountered such an impasse right now, brows drawn above his steepled fingers as he scrutinised his piles for the fourth time over. So utterly resigned to this silence, that the crack of his cabin doorhandle against the wall sent the ambassador nearly out of his skin and his cards most certainly across the floor, caught by the leg that swept out in his haste to twist around from his bed and look. He clasped a hand to his stuttering heart and reclaimed his tongue a few seconds after he recognised his fervent gatecrasher.

“Christ- The night, Laszlo!” He recalled his invitation to the Epsom Derby, back when he’d been in the good graces of England and her patricians. He’d seen racehorses come out of the box that day with more delicacy. Pasha’s hand fell falteringly from his chest as he watched him, bewilderment exhaling into levity as he heard him out, the corners of his lips twitched haplessly by the end of it. Almost fondly; as if such crudeness had translated differently, in one of his tongues.

“That’s politics,” he muttered, shifting his attention finally from the caulker to the weathered half-deck now strewn across the woven rug. He leant across the cot and extended an arm to rake them back into a jutting pile. “There’ll be no executioner’s block. Your head hitting the deck would be enough to sink us.”

“But enough of that. Ah-” he jerked his head up to Laszlo when he saw him step closer, arching his brows his way with a stern bob of his curls towards the washstand’s basin. A smile, sly albeit good-natured, worked itself into his countenance as he sat upright again, shuffling the cards together again as he watched him. “Wash your hands, and come here. I want to see what you’ve been working on this past fortnight that’s had you carving that paper rather than writing on it.”

———

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.

Christ, the night, always struck the caulker as a tasty turn of phrase. Always sits on the Ambassadors tongue nicely and, he finds, rolls off his own just as well when he tries it on for size. It’s far more eloquent ( and less blaspheming ) than loosing a Jesus, fuck—! when he drives the latest and largest of splinters into the webbing between his thumb and forefinger; careless while caulking some seam in the orlop. 

The first two sticklers in the pads of his fingers he could put up with— Tell himself I’ll go see the surgeon by, say, eight bells. Now, blood welling the same scarlet of the academy’s old wax seals, he finds he can’t be bothered to wait. Starts to wonder if it’s some sort of curse, this, the most menial of means to bewitch a poor sod: may you prick your fool fingers on every plank you touch. Thinks he’d makes for one dreadful take on Sleeping Beauty. Thinks he’ll go get Toussaint to kiss it better. Laszlo packs up his supplies and curls the tar-and-blood-smeared hand to his chest, heading through the decks.

The latest morbid service behind them by then, the sickbay’s back to empty. The only elephant in the room now’s that hoisted hatchet of mutiny, and the tightrope walk that’s attempting business as usual beneath it. Laszlo leaves his bucket and brush by the door and knocks the toe of his boot into the frame. 

The gentry, more than any other miserable souls on earth, need their discretion. Laszlo knows this just as well as anyone who’d previously scrounged up a living from ransacking their metaphorical sock drawers for secrets to sell to the papers. And occasionally, their literal sock drawers. It’s how the caulker even came into possession of such a finely dyed wool pair as the one he skitters down the narrow hallway in, now. 

Their purple stripes peek from the trouser leg as he kicks open the door to the Ambassador’s host cabin. 

“Voronin, dear.” Laszlo hisses as he closes the door behind him so delicately. “What the fuck?!” A hand flies from the doorknob ands arcs up. At any given time bandages band several of his fingers. This morning, he’d driven a splinter into the middle digit on the job— the perfect accent to the crude gesture he’s just raised in lieu of a greeting before stalking toward Pasha.

“Yesterday, you tell me to keep my head down,” yesterday, in this very room — where the ambassador routinely lent out his writing desk so the caulker might stain his fingers with ink once more, in a space ‘far more suitable for a novelist.’ “Today, I’m shaken down by my own bloody crewmates and subjected to an Inquisition of My Allegiances!” Of course, he’d slithered his way out of it in much the same manner he’d slithered out of binds before: by praising whatever God was necessary. Marcus Estrada, I thank you for this food, Amen. In that same noncommittal way those who chose the pews closet to the exit, did. In the same way some of the similarly ranked crew did; a line of neutrality toed down whichever path was least resistant. Only banks that, come safe harbor again under Estrada’s helm or not, condoning isn’t taken for a capital crime.

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 ).

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. 

———

Were it not for an acute awareness of the muskets riddling the room, the caulker might be more forthcoming with the flippant remarks. Christ, you’re a barrel ‘o laughs. Or maybe something equally tone-deaf. Now, numbingly neutral party as he is, he’s finding it wiser to toe the line; lest he be drawn and quartered by men on all sides. Though, he’s never been that wise. He still opens his fool mouth in the end. No respect for the dead in this dreadful world; even less for the living. Why not roll with it, eh?

“Seems to me you can speak to whomever you like, Sir,” Sir, because deposed or not, Boyne still vastly outranks him. “Long as it’s not talk of,” waving a hand in the air, swatting for nothing, “mutineering the— mutiny.”

Laszlo squints into the depths of his own cup, gives it a one-two swirl, and works the whole thing down in one staggered marathon. Drains it just before he drowns in it, and sops his moustache dry with the back of his sleeve.

“Frankly,” the caulker clears his throat, the word crackling for it. “I’m keeping my head down. Whoever’s at the helm, hatches still need sealing and decks swabbing. And while I’m scrubbing the muck off the planks I’d much prefer to keep my insides, well,” a simple shrug, “—on the inside. See?” A far stretch more eloquent on paper, he is. 

🌙 — ALL ABOARD ! The HMS PROMETHEAN welcomes ( HORACE LASZLO ) as ( THE PHILISTINE ). They are ( 32 & cis male ) and might be painted as ( JASON SCHWARTZMAN ). They come here as a ( crew ). Their specific occupation is that of ( CAULKER ABOARD THE PROMETHEAN ). When you strike up an acquaintance, address them as ( he/him ). Their deeds on land precede their arrival — people say they are known to be ( ADAPTABLE, ELOQUENT, RESOURCEFUL ) but ( FICKLE, COWARDLY, OPPORTUNISTIC ) when the tide turns. Their purpose aboard falls in line with ( EXPERIENTIAL RESEARCH FOR THE NEXT GREAT BRITISH NOVEL ).