THE VETERAN.

__

As a true born aristocrat, Noémie is well versed in the act of leivity, able to wield airy lightness even in the most dire of social situations. Tension into giggles and laughter, with just the wave of a delicate wrist and a flashing smile. That was the magic of her; her confidence, her unwavering sense of self. Before all of this, before the arctic and the loss, she could count on her hand the number of times she bowed her head in embarrassment or shame. But that was before, and this the now. 

The truth is: there is no magic to Noémie Léon, just facade. Smoke and mirrors curling and warping; shattering and dissipating in the face of unbearable loss. There’s no particular reason why she drifts into the seat next to Jules. Except to maybe flirt with irony. God, the quartermaster doesn’t even know. You were going to be my next captain. I was going to make you captain. I just needed more time. Her shoulders slump forward, elbows on the bar as she knocks back a drink. She barely lifts her head, just enough to glance at the tattoo. “And which person is that for?” Which of the four dead things gave you hope? 

of all those who might wander near, who might dare to stare at the newly inked word and question it, jules had not expected this agathe survivor. noémie léon, the snake in the basket --- no, no, noémie léon, the weaver of the basket. ( the only thread of womanhood connecting them: this bleeding, damned heart. ) the hand jules had used to ink the word now curled around her own glass. drink for drink, perhaps the two had more in common than jules thought. 

“the crew knows, soon as we set off from land, that not all of us leave the ocean. part of the job.” accidents, sickness, even horrid luck all waited on expeditions. this, they were prepared for. this, they might have survived. yes, i mourn them, but there was always room in my heart for that kind of sadness. “but your lady, your nyima...” 

—

It may have seemed it, but Ayla Dowling was not an unusual sight in a bar. This one, she was sure, had witnessed far more exactly like her, like any of them, and the same in their opposite.  It felt like a place where stories ended and stories began, the same as they might be recalled to any who would listen.  Was it any wonder the former quartermaster was using it for its purpose, for ink to make a mark and cause a memory?  Cruel to think that’s all Nyima could be now; either catalyst or past tense.  Maybe not. Maybe death didn’t exist in this place. Maybe its story had began long before.  “I was going to ask if you wanted any help with that.”  Hope. It was a message that had lodged itself in Ayla’s chest years ago, if she really looked she could find where it had been misplaced.  Instead she reached out a hand, the mimicking of it surely, and let it hover just shy of the writing, devoid of touch at all.  “It’s a lovely sight.” the way it’s worded makes it seem like a date on a headstone, makes her wonder if that’s the point. 

“I’m sorry.” Someone should say it, after all that went on. Something should mean it, and she does. What use was it to try and barter for the Agathe survivors, what use was it to try to protect them, if this was going to happen. She’s sorry for all of it. The island, the failing, the incompetence, the violence. Sorry too that the word inked to Jules’ skin is meaningless right now. A reminder of a failed legacy, and death’s return.  “Does it hurt?”

and then there was ayla, ayla dowling who looked at jules in all her messy state ( drops of ink, drops of blood; a message of hope, a message of pain ) and stood there, tall and proud and steady. the girl asked do you need any help with that?, and jules felt that thick rope lodge itself around her throat. felt the grief --- a grief unearned, not hers, unfair in the way it stood untouched --- settle within. 

what was there to say to an apology here? the ocean ate apologies, pressed them down into the sand, ground them down to dust. to memory. 

what was there to say to any of them? 

“a little,” jules answered. her fingertip ghosted over where ayla had hovered, pale flesh over black ink. ( and so another was dead. and so one day soon it might be one of them. and so the question remained: when death came, would they haunt the living still? ) 

and then, something unexpected, something strange on her tongue that she had rarely offered before --- something she knew that ayla would understand. 

jack watches the process silently, unlit cigarette held between his fingers. 

he’d seen it done before–soldiers were creatures of action, incapable of dealing with long stretches of boredom without getting into some kind of trouble, and the materials were easy enough to collect even in the most remote of places. he’d always wondered why–wasn’t there enough pain to be had when the surgeon was digging a bullet out of the meat of your thigh? did the cut of shrapnel as cannonade exploded mere feet from where you stood not sting enough? battles came back often enough in the dead of night when the eyes were closed, when you were trying to clean the blood of your friend off of your hands and your face–why did they need to be commemorated in ink, through the visage of a beautiful woman or a passage of scripture that would become unreadable? 

it isn’t until he sees the quartermaster work carefully on herself, the way she seems to gradually go from being a solid line of chorded muscle in her chair to something gently unwound, laid bare and honest with every line, that he understands it. there is no more accurate memory than pain, and at the end of everything, when the ship has splintered underneath your feet, when the gunfire has ceased and the dust begins to settle, all you have that truly belongs to you is the body, is the skin that against all odds, remains stretched over your bones. 

the tattoo is a statement to the universe. i have made my choice, i defy you stars, this thing is mine and this is what will forever be part of it. 

he blinks when she speaks, meets his gaze from across the empty bar. he hadn’t meant to stare, and color rushes to his cheeks. “nothing–sorry. i was just thinking about how i’ve seen grown men weep openly at having that done, and you didn’t flinch once.” he smiles, before worrying his bottom lip between his teeth. “do you think–” he drags a hand through his hair, shrugs his shoulders. “do you think i could convince you to do another one, master rowland? for one of the fallen?” 

strange, then, how it was the pain that was the easiest part of it. what was a prickle, a stab, an ache compared to this thing in her chest? she had grown something of a new organ, between heart and ribs, and she had yet to understand its weight. she could not say: why would i flinch? she could not say: i am used to holding pain elsewhere. instead, she saw the understanding flicker in the man, she recognized his stare. 

for one of the fallen? 

oh, they were all haunted here; they were each doing the haunting themselves. by laughter, by separation, by the hope that had promised and taken again and again. she watched jack steadily --- for vladimir, she imagined. she remembered walking on the berg with the boy, laughing at the way he scrambled after her, young and determined all at once. she remembered seeing the easy friendship between the men, glad none of them were alone in the cold. 

she gestured for him to take a seat beside her. 

“what’ll it be, sergeant?” she started cleaning off the supplies, looking at him in a new light. not a man, but a canvas. not a canvas, but a memorial. where would he choose to carry the soul of his friend? “a word, an image? a piece of belief you both shared? how do you want to remember him?” 

-

“is that the marking of hope found or lost?” fingertips hover just over the newly-inked skin on the woman; know better to touch, plays with fire anyways. their curiosity is subtle, wine under the tongue and leaving behind an aftertaste you can’t quite place.

they pick up the needles from jules, presses it onto their own forearm and starts to draw; aimless runes.

“it seems as though not all of you new visitors carry the same grief - i have seen ignorance and arrogance and everything in between and then some. coming from the same ship, one would imagine you would all be in agreement with what has troubled you so.” said casually, smiles dipping in and out of the candlelight. 

“though i perhaps the terror appears to us all in different forms.” they muse, finishing with their curled design, proudly holding it up to the light. 

“well? what do you think? shall i do one for you, too? or shall we make a memory worth inking onto skin first?” 

“ --- still deciding.” her eyes settled on the easy way the barkeep picked up the needles, the absentminded way they handled the ink. they seemed set to turn this moment cheap, to dance in a place they had no reason to lay their feet. it was unsettling in a way jules would never be able to put words to: the barkeep was making themself into a reflection, all with a smile. 

“why would any of us carry grief in the same way? or terror, for that matter?” narrowed eyes, pressed lips. she did not like the way they spoke of those from the promethean. judgement waited them all, she did not want it here in the tavern too. “no two people see the same thing when looking at the clouds in the sky. why would we agree on what troubles us?”

the curled design was displayed to her, twisting and lazy and beautiful and there now forever. it was the first thing that earned a smile from the once-quartermaster. 

THE ENIGMA seeks out THE VETERAN ( @riversoaked​​ ) after midnight strikes upon the renewal of an impending dawn on JULY 17th, 1845. light, alas, is necessary to baptise a chapter preceded by the eclipsing discovery of the boatswain’s slain body. in the aftermath, the gunner makes her way through the ship in haste; footsteps soundless, but energy frenetic, coming off of her in waves as chaotic as the rap of her knuckles on the QUARTERMASTER’S CABIN’s door.

In a matter of mere hours, variations of the tale had been spilt aboard HMS Promethean like grapevine. Semantics damned, the crux remains the same: the boatswain had been slain. Vanished alive, returned butchered. The boatswain – who could have been, so easily, someone else. A moment, an inch, a choice; a single unit  is all it takes. It could have been her. The hours crawl miserably, slow as molasses. With every passing rendition, the details relayed seem to turn more brutal. Graphic. A picture painted in blood.

           ( he was torn to bloody ribbons, aye! their whispers were coarse. mauled — fucking mangled to somethin’ all else… it wasn’t an animal. it wasn’t an animal, but — it was fucking something. something other. not of us. rowland never even saw what took ‘im, or so the lass says… )

She barely makes it to midnight. Her mind ricocheting between the past weeks, the tender map of flesh her teeth have charted feral touch across, those eyes she would know in the dark after the number of glances exchanged betwixt the two women, as ardent as the sun kissing the moon in passing — and the absence of it. A loss. An ending. This was supposed to be different. The expedition, a journey, the fresh page to etch the next chapter upon. A new beginning.

As she stands in front of Julia’s door, her heart feels gnarled. The naked eye might find the gunner-woman stood alone in the hallway, but Jaya knows better. That’s the rub, isn’t it? She fucking knows better? The air is chilled by the breath of ghosts haunting, clouds of frost pluming, diminishing notions of clarity. Her fist meets wood harshly, as if intent on making it feel as raw as she does.

Yet the door opens — and no words leave her mouth. Do the shadows in her eyes not scream for light?

jules felt the beginning of tired seeping into her --- the sort of tired that usually makes its way at the end of a long, long voyage. the sort of tired that you don’t quite recover from, you just learned to carry a little better. jules had discovered long ago never to promise safety to the new crew onboard; safety was an anchor, a home, land, anywhere but life at sea. but she had promised protection for the boatswain, the sort of casual hand she extended to all those by her side as they did their work. 

she had lied. the boatswain was dead. 

never had been much good at keeping a crew alive, hm?

a knock at her door, and jules thought about leaving it be. she thought she might be able to turn away, to lock herself inside, to let the matter settle around her, dust to dust, ashes to ashes. but she couldn’t. ‘course she couldn’t. she hadn’t survived this long by giving into the exhaustion; she survived through work. so she opened the door, and there was jaya. 

jaya. a soft echo of thought, a settling. jaya. 

( there was a boy on the beach, and he was dead. his body shredded, his future gone. and it was not the death that frightened the quartermaster, not the way it was so near to being her either; it was how he was still alive when she came across him. it was almost being there fast enough. almost hearing his last words. almost meeting his eyes as she watched the life spill from him, like nothing she’d seen before. ) 

jules did not want to be alone, and it was strange to admit that here, now. when she had spent so much of her life getting used to the freedom, the weight, that came from loneliness. but she opened the door to her cabin wide and moved aside, a silent invitation to the woman. 

it’s been a very long time since he’d seen her like this last — so destroyed with tragedy, so brutally turned inside out, so exhausted with their circumstances. and edward hasn’t felt like this in a very long time either. except right now, he’s trying to hide it; keep it together, for his own sake. he’s fallen apart too many times already in the past few weeks, he doesn’t want to show any more weakness. especially here, in this place — he doesn’t trust it. every step he takes feels like a risk but where his family goes, he follows. so he follows jules; stares at her from a distance for a moment before approaching her. when he takes a seat next to her, he still isn’t sure what he’s supposed to say. it’s an odd feeling to have around your closest friends.

instead of the dead, he focuses on the living. judging by the looks of her, by the harshness of her voice, jules wouldn’t want to talk about the lost anyway. “what do you think of this place?” he asks; something tightens in his chest then — as if with the question, he was going against his own decision to talk about the living, instead of the dead. this place, wherever and whatever it is, it doesn’t feel quite alive. “how lost are we, to have found land here?” 

jules took her time to get to his question. she put away her supplies, piece by piece, appreciating the ritual of it all. turned her arm over so she did not have to look at the very thing she just immortalized on flesh. edward’s presence was accepted, appreciated even --- but it felt small. changed. like he was standing on the tall edge of a cliff and she was calling up to him from the bottom. 

“i’ve always heard the stories. just never thought i’d live it myself.” it was his question that seemed to piece it together for her, the wrongness of this place. “islands that can only be found by sailors not looking for them --- sailors that are lost. always met with different creatures, but always creatures of the gods.” 

( we have your hearts’ longing; all we ask in return is every memory, every piece that makes you up, every bit of your future. )

“and by the end of it, there’s only ever one sailor left alive. one to tell the story.”

—

“Of course I’m worried about you. Of course I am.” And there it is, the love that causes it. The tenderness, the care. If the world had been kind, Jules would have been her mother. Ah, but then she would not have Malachy, and there’s a shift to who Jules might have been too. Either of them existing without him in their lives, so wholly immovable. So the world is kinder still. That they have their family.  And there it is too, the cause for concern. The talk of fight.  It should be reassuring, it should be expected. It is, and it’s not. Marcus Estrada had threatened her with exactly this. That fight would lead to Malachy being tipped overboard, Edward too, and more. All of them.  Looks to her eyes and keeps hold of her gaze. This too is not for safety, not for comfort. Wishes to be washed away in the colour of them, the thought of all the tides Jules has seen and conquered, all the rivers and seas and oceans her presence has blessed. A drowning- that had been the talk. 

When will it end.  “Use it.” Places her fingertips to the edges of Jules’. Taps idly at the nails, as though trying to soften them, smooth out a curve. A circle, not that. A moon, for they have one again. The crescent of it, the balance for calm tides.  “but not like that. Not the way you’re thinking. Please.” Slips her hands then to attempt it, to shift Jules’ within her own, to trail them away, entwined. For Ayla to be the softness if the Quartermaster can’t. “I couldn’t bear him being hurt.” Nor you. Especially you. 

jules knew, even then, she could not promise the girl anything --- could not explain the full weight of what ayla was asking back to her. violence was jules’ native tongue, and perhaps that was why she understood it so intimately. understood that it was not an evil thing, not always. that it might liberate them as soon as kill them. 

“i can’t promise how this will turn out.” it will end when we are safe or i am dead. it will end when the albatross soars above us, beautiful and free and unafraid. “but i mean to do right by us, to fight for us. maybe it’s not the way i think it’ll be. maybe it’s holding our spirits together until marcus keeps his word and delivers us to shore.” this was the honesty jules could give: the future may be dark, may be scary. the future may be the very thing we hope it is not. that does not mean it is the end. “but maybe it’s using my fists if he decides to break his word. i can’t say, so you’ve got to be prepared for that --- this might end with me in the sea and you saying goodbye. this might end with malachy lost. this might end with all the horrors calling.”

( tw needles )

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

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

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

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

hope   1845. 

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

“what?”

when: a few days after the mutiny, evening where: the common mess with: @riversoaked & @resurgentisjaya

“Steady?” Ephraim had first signed across the mess. He can hardly fathom answering any notion with more conviction to it. Steady is all they can manage at the moment. Steady is how they hold in the mess, in these blurring days since the mutiny. Steady, is how the hand of the old order brings the forkful of rations to the mouth in the mess, so the new doesn’t take it as an incoming strike.

It grates on the nerves, every second of it. Steady is all they have. Having found a break in attention, Eph had nodded to Jules and Jaya across their tables. Jaya within arms reach; Jules separated from them by several tables and a half dozen heads bowed into their drinks. The guards that mind the ice master, the quartermaster, and the gunner are preoccupied with their own meals. Their own noise. They hardly mind the trio’s lack of it as Eph silently snickers. They’re a little ways into their quick and loose conversation, now. Eph Nudges Jaya near him, first, before he catches the quartermaster’s eye across the mess:

“Really, Jules,” he signs and nods to the watch assigned to her, who stands with his hip canted to the table — tankard in one hand and musket in the other. “You should tell him.” As for what she should be telling him? Rather plain to see: his fly’s not proper buttoned.

this was how they managed it. this was how they kept on, endured. and one day soon, sooner than the ship knew, this would be how they fought on. 

she had nodded to his first comment, but his second came quick behind. it wasn’t right --- not the least bit proper that ephraim could make jules snort right into her pint with only a glance and a brief word from his hands. ( her snort caused no less than three men to jump in their seats, frightened she meant something dangerous by it. the whole damn ship was sitting on the edge. ) her eyes flickered to the guard, and a sigh was quick to follow. she signed back, “my duty.” never was half so good at it as ephraim, but she could land with self-described poetry.

standing to her feet, she shot a look to jaya --- he’s making me do this, remember that, will you? 

jules approached the man set to guard her, sitting on the edge of his table like it was hers to begin with. he stiffened at her approach, and she couldn’t help the smile that came with the notion she sapped the ease right from him. at least they weren’t comfortable with her, at least they knew their position was something fragile. 

she promises and if it were any other place, any other world, any other life, there’s a certain in her voice that near demands he believe her. if they weren’t already shades fading beneath the icy sun, where death was all but a full stop at the sentences of their lives, that it won’t just be malachy but the chance of any of them escaping this with their lives?

still, he has to try.

still, he believes her.

and she smiles. he cannot help but give her a helpless smile in response, knowledge and certainity and bonds and promises that link between them now. theirs is a mission and a goal. theirs is a life built on superstition and the ocean and with these two things they are the most equipped out here.

‘ helpless but angry. should be easy enough to fake. ‘ the smile curls up at the side, even as his eyes shine. they can do it. they have no choice but to do it.

intrepidim​:

By the time Estrada approaches the armory room, he can feel the angry buzzing like copper on the tongue. That’s the lull & lure of it, anger: that’s how it always comes out to play. He’d been through it plenty of times when he served as a midshipman, for all it was only a lip service to his inevitable climb. On deck, rage had a way of becoming instrumental, a marlinespike of a thing. But down in Whitehall, oh-ho, there anger would carve its own demesne. It was not tool, not placeholder, not catalyst. It was mother and master.

With a jerk of his head, he motions to Violet Bell to stand out, stand down.

The fact that she had obeyed him so far would’ve surprised someone with less experience. Someone simpler, and, perhaps, with heaven already safeguarded. But his cloth for people had never been two-fold. The good ones, the rotten ones, was rarely a tale you got to tell. A battle, or a rank, was not bordered by dangerous mutt and cozy tin soldiers. A battle was sidelined on what you managed to promise. The look you gave, the sight you cut out. The barter of it all. With the seas now open before them, the once-admiral had plenty to sell.

Some people already bought it. Some soon will.

Now, it was about these two. The Maori he once employed, and the river pirate he nearly called friend. What an odd little world. He wished he had someone to laugh with at it.

❝ Knock, knock. Are you two still talking yourselves rabid, or do we have a ground to come and talk on? You should know Dowling is safe. Come next week, when we have crossed the leads, and we are further than Ross and Parry have ever been, I will even take you to meet him. Ayla already has. ❞  A lie, that one: he’d rather have Ayla fretting for sights unseen, as befitted their nature. But Timoti and Rowland would mark it all as lies, anyway; there was no cause to be stingy with it. ❝ You know my terms. No weapons, no conniving. Play nice, and you’ll both get to stretch your legs with the rest of them. ❞

“i’ve got my demands too,” she stated, not moving from her spot on the floor. her head still tipped back, her features almost relaxed, almost lazy. what could you say to icarus outside of --- look at me, i contain hubris too? what else would he listen to? “because, as i’m sure you’ve put together, you’ve got me a bit upset, captain. put me in a bit of a spot.” 

the best of lies came with a tinge of truth. he wove his lies together with such art that she could not pick up on which was the thread of truth --- was malachy safe? had ayla seen him? would he stick to his word? she often thought in too stark of colors to imagine the shades, but she could play along with her own tinge of truth. angry, but helpless. angry, but with bigger things to worry about. 

a glance to roi. remember what we talked about. 

—

the quartermaster’s movements are sudden enough that he doesn’t have time to step forward, out of the reach of her hand before her fingers hook into the collar of his shirt and begin pulling him in the opposite direction. he registers the fact that she might plausibly be the first person to have touched him, to have brushed their fingers against his skin, since they ventured out onto the island in search of the boatswain only through a haze–the thought is there, solemn as a tombstone, only after they let lose a shriek that threatens to shatter the bones of his skull and his jaw at the contact. 

he manages to stop stumbling after her like a pup that has yet to grow into paws that are too big for its body, and wrench himself free of her grip. “you wouldn’t breathe a sigh of relief, master rowland, to see me gone? finally, out of your line of sight and mind? don’t lie to me–not here, and not now, when truth is nothing more than a pompous abstraction, the hubris of the dead and dying who have no control over what is happening to them.” its perhaps cruel–but at this moment, standing here on the ice that was once as restless and devoid of care for the wants of men as the woman in front of him, he finds that perhaps cruelty is all he has left inside of him. maybe now she will be proud of the man she sees before her–maybe now she will look at him and see a worthy sailor instead of a boy. 

he shakes his head and bites down hard on his bottom lip. “my head has not been so long buried in a book that it has made me ignorant. i know what you think of me, what you’ve always thought of me–the only difference is that now i agree with your estimation of me. i shouldn’t be here–” he drags his hands over his face and exhales slowly. “i’ll never be hard enough, i’ll never be able to follow orders without snapping my fucking teeth, especially now that i’m not even alone in my own fucking head. i should have never signed the papers, pretended that i was up to this.”

she prepared for the fight as soon as he pulled himself free of her grip --- there was something crouched in him, something that was ready to snap its jaws at anything that threatened its hold on cyrus. ( or maybe, a piece of her whispered, maybe this was just cyrus harper, true and himself finally? ) she scoffed at him as he spoke, but here was the truth of it, the truth of all he said and all she thought: he never looked more like a boy than he looked now, sad and cruel in the way she had known he would be one day. 

The first thing she hears, the first thing she thinks, all measure up to the same. How right they are. How right. If there’s a hope she has to pour it in herself, with blood or something like it. And there it is, there’s the stupid.  Is trapped by it, lost to it. Gaze caught on the door to sickbay again, as though she might step through it and return to who she was before all this. Before the island, before the mutiny, before.  None of that will change a thing, and she can’t let it. Not when she recognises the voice from before, but the words from now.  Jules is safe, Jules is free. That’s enough for the day. That’s everything. 

Despite the words, despite the present, Jules still holds her. Keeps her there. It’s all she wants, and she can barely stand it. The idea that this could be the last. 

Tucks herself against her. “I’m sorry.”  Hands that refuse to circle now, only tangle against clothing, clinging on. She can’t say she won’t do it again.  “I’m sorry you had to bear this. That I caused it. I’m sorry. If I hadn’t left. I’m sorry.” Shifts her head to turn it toward her. Scanning for any visible injury. Although she doesn’t step back, doesn’t disentangle. Keeps there for as long as possible. Almost healed hands reaching to rest on shoulders, “What happened? What did they do? Did they hurt you?”

all that anger that had caught itself in jules’ throat, all that anger that sat and soured and built since she had first discovered ayla’s disappearance --- it changed as ayla finally spoke. it changed in a way that surprised jules. anger, she knew: the way she had bit her lip to keep from crying out as the rescue crew had disappeared to distance, the way she had punched a beam of the ship until her knuckles were bruised and bloodied, the way she had thought she would shake the girl if she returned until ayla dowling understood the world, understood it wanted them dead and buried, understood that kindness did not have a place on the ocean. but the anger disappeared, and in its place, an understanding. 

her hurt did not matter.  her anger did not have a place here.  there was a need greater than that. 

jules could feel with it, deal with it, on her own; now, she must tuck it away. here was the responsibility she had never quite understood until now: the way to forgiveness was paved with love. 

“no, no. you don’t get to do that. you don’t get to worry about me.” she kissed the top of ayla’s head once, twice. cupped the girl’s cheeks in her hands. gentle, gentle. 

it doesn’t make sense at first, the apology. but then jules stands up, the words falling from her mouth an octave too loud, as if she’s purposefully trying to make them the center of the entire mess’ attention. edward barely has the time to catch on—and he does just as the punch happens. perhaps it’s good that he took this long to figure it out, otherwise it wouldn’t come off as real. and that’s the whole point. he does appreciate the lesser force, though—he knows from experience that this is only half of what jules is capable of. 

“half. probably more. we’re fucked,” the words fall fast, one after another, almost conjoined. but they’ve got seconds, they can’t stretch them out too much. 

he pushes jules away, just as told. “what the fuck are you doing?” he shouts; all eyes are on the at this point. miracle that nobody hasn’t bothered to separate them yet. he wasn’t expecting for their respective guards to be enjoying the show so much. 

then he’s at her throat, the same way she just was, grasping fistfuls of her coat; turns them around so the view of them is a bit obstructed. “what’s your plan?” not do you have one, but what is it—edward knows her, she must’ve already come up with something. 

we’re fucked --- not great, all things considered, but something to work with. half wasn’t all of them, after all. ( christ, when had jules become the optimist? it was necessity more than belief, she supposed. they had to be successful because there was no other option for malachy, for her, for any of them. ) edward pushed her, and she fell back, the sounds of the crowd gathering ‘round heard as something distant, something unreal. 

oh, this would spread fast enough. and just as quick as she fell, edward was there again. she let herself get yanked. “teaching you a lesson,” she announced to the room, grappling him but not moving, not yet.

what’s your plan? the full weight of his trust, the full weight of knowing this was why she had been brought onboard, all those years back, why she had been given this second and golden opportunity in her life. she would do what edward could not; she would do what malachy would never ask of her.  

elias scoots over immediately, making space for ayla beside him, then reaches, unthinking of their company, for her hand. he squeezes it like a lifeline, immediately thankful for the contact, the warmth. “ayla, you know i would never disrespect a lady of the night, nor their valuable craft, but frankly– it’s not one of them holding my heart hostage, is it?” he sighs through his nose. “a brothel, a church or the louvre, it makes no difference where i go. there’s simply no relief to be found.”

he nods along with the other woman’s speech, brows furrowed in thought. “i don’t know about breaking anything in captain dowling’s house. i’d feel horrible about it for ages… but perhaps we can burn down the library down the street, so i’ve no chance of crossing paths with them again.” his face falls rather dramatically, before he’s even finished the sentence. “but the books. oh no, there’s no having that, i could never– but– ayla–” he turns back to the companion closer to him. “i’ll never be able to read again without thinking of them, will i? oh no. oh no.” he covers his face with his hand, whispers into his fingers: “i have been ruined.”

aylumin​.

She was about to protest about how she was a quiet one herself, no lumping her in with morons, when the argument died on her lips. Absolutely compelled by the tattoo she had never registered for its meaning. “They were clearly an imbecile, you’re well shot of them.” Imagine ever being so stupid as to neglect Jules Rowland’s heart. Imagine ever being so stupid as to neglect Elias Shaw’s heart. The world truly was full of idiots, even though Ayla liked to pretend it was full of kindness and wonder instead. The rage and injustice would last probably until Edward returned with Mal, and she could believe in the beauty of love again. Still not evidence against idiots though. 

Eli takes her hand and she lifts her other to gesture to Jules’s tattoo, expression questioning as she looks to her. An attempt to ask why she hadn’t spoken of it before, even if she already knows the answer. So strange to be settled between two people who dealt so differently with emotion. “Anyone who walks away from you isn’t worth your love.” Squeezes Eli’s hand back though she’s looking to Jules. “You deserve far better for your beautiful heart.” And then she shifts another pillow so she can see to the patient, “You haven’t been ruined, but you will be if you imagine someone has claim over books, as well as your love. I think smashing things sounds like a great idea. There are some plates in the cupboard I detest, and we could just pretend we dropped them while baking. I am terribly clumsy. Or Jules could stab them, and I don’t mean the plates, though really there’s not worth the effort. You’ll have forgotten them tomorrow, I promise, or at least be sure that you had a lucky escape.”

it was worth repeating: jules didn’t care for this conversation in the slightest. she didn’t care for how elias sought out ayla to comfort him, taking her hand like it was the most natural thing in the world. ( wasn’t it true that people who were so... dramatic in love hopped from one person to another in search of it? ) none too subtle, jules took a seat on the edge of the bed as well, shoving herself between ayla and elias and breaking their handhold. “can’t speak to what you deserve, but if you don’t even have a token from them to burn, couldn’t have been much of a relationship to begin with, hm?” 

jules had taken to walking down to the sickbay a few times a day, excuses turning more feeble with each turn --- hoping, always hoping, to come across the girl. she had caught only glimpses of ayla since the return from the island. enough to know she was alive, enough to know she had suffered, enough to know jules had not kept her safe. and as jules finally saw ayla after all these tumultuous days -- the full sight of her, each of them there in the hall outside the sickbay -- it all swelled inside her suddenly. 

“you stupid, hopeless girl ---” 

she pulled her close and let herself feel the soft animal of the girl’s body. ayla dowling was breathing. ayla dowling was alive. that was her heartbeat, right against jules. that was her warmth, jules could feel it. 

no privacy --- there was no fucking privacy on this fucking ship. jules never thought the promethean would be too small; it was the largest ship she’d ever worked on, but since her title had become half-void, since she had become one of the watched and the distrusted, the ship had turned into a prison of its own. she wasn’t even allowed her anger. she wasn’t even allowed her worry. even that now belonged to marcus estrada. 

she sat across from jaya, jaw clenched and arms crossed. her boots pressed firmly against the ground, and she tried to keep her voice low, private, knowing it wasn’t. knowing people were listening and suspicious, and she hated it, she hated being on display like this. 

“i’ve got shit to say to you, and seeing as how we can’t get one moment just the two of us, i can’t say all of it. so i’ll say some,” she started, trying to keep her voice steady and controlled. “just listen, alright? listen.”

“i don’t sit and wait. i am not the one twirling my fucking thumbs like some stupid wife waiting for her stupid husband gone to war --- that’s not me. but that’s who i was made to be. by you, by ayla, by malachy and edward and eph. i waited on this ship, and i had to deal with everything that’s happened since alone. and i failed, so i’ve got to deal with that alone now too.” it had felt all too familiar, the loneliness of survival. it had felt familiar, the helplessness of waiting. “so i’m mad, you hear that? i get to be mad. i thought we were in this together, i thought we were equals --- first time i’ve felt like such in a good long while --- but you... god, jaya, you infuriate me.”

it was the closest she would come to saying it: i’m glad you’ve come back to me.

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 ).

“and i thought there wasn’t any privacy before,” he says; the joke falls flat, his voice too devoid of emotion to carry it out. he drops his head down, too tired to keep looking at them; at this point, he’s not even sure what’s the right thing to say. maybe there isn’t anything to say at all. “they follow you everywhere?”

( tw violence )

she would not have long to speak with edward, she knew. even a brief conversation held its dangers here. everything had become dangerous, but there was something familiar to it too. she had survived this before. and so she took the seat across from edward, grabbed his cup, and took a long drink from it. 

“i’m beginning to think i’ve got myself an admirer.” she tipped the drink in the direction of the person that had been assigned to watch. ( rarely did a few minutes go by without fantasizing about strangling them just to get a moment alone. ) her gaze returned to edward before falling to the table. “i’ll talk quick then. also --- apologies, mate.” 

she stood suddenly. 

“you really fucked up, ed!” a declaration for the whole room. 

and then she punched edward clear across the jaw. 

( not as hard as she could, mind you. hard enough to look real. hard enough to leave a bruise. ) she reached over, pulled him up again, leaned close like she was still deciding whether or not she meant to tear out his throat with her teeth.