went looking for a creation myth

WICK DU VOL, the raven

“mi– iskender?” the voice is barely above a whisper but it’s the most elias can manage with his cheek pressed to the door, eyes downcast on the sill. whatever desperation had overcome his manners a moment before– had him already turning the handle before he’d finished knocking– has faltered with the door only half-open, trapping him mid-gesture, crossroads spirit, purgatorial wraith: too far into the gesture to retreat, but lacking the necessary daring to go forward with such an intrusion–

–not when so much of his life has been knowing his place, his space, where accommodation means bending forward and where it means bowing back; deportment as language, procedure as promise: behave and avoid the lash, tongue or tassel; avoid becoming a problem underfoot, something to be dealt with summarily, a nuisance, an annoyance to swat aside with boot-tip or backhand. not that he fears the academic striking him, no, but something all-together worse, can see it clearer in his mind than a memory: iskender turning to him as he steps into the room, cold confusion writ across his features, what are you doing here? are you lost? then, horribly, the twist of realization, and the disgust hand-in-hand: what, did you think you could just… did you think we were…

but no, he’s not thinking, is he? not thinking at all. that’s half the problem. terror, bloodshed, it’s all turned him into this, a thing without thoughts, all hands and eyes and knotted string, tugged until he looks down and his boots are on khodja’s doorstep. foolish. ghastly. catastrophe waiting in the wings.

elias presses his forehead to the door. breathes heavily through his nose and brings his free hand up to curl against his own collar, worrying the skin with his thumbnail like a dog, one tooth tugging on a trouser cuff. makes himself call out, louder than before: “are you there?” 

She should really be surprised by it, knocked off her feet, the same as she causes for him on better days. Only it’s not really visible, for how she is already tense, coiled all the way up from her toes. More wall than person. And she hates it, for the want to be soft, to be a comfort.  It doesn’t matter, because her hands do the only things they can.  They tangle around him, and it’s not lost to her that she hasn’t made a circle with them since the island, refused to loop them, in case it means forever, in case it means curse.  So they move as much as he does, shifting to hold at the back of his neck, or drifting to soothe at shoulders, never stilling.  Reaches to enfold him, like her arms need to find the right slot to click in, so there wont be any chance of them straying.  Mouth to brow, which really winds up mouth to hair, kisses pressed like dew drops to grass after a long night. 

“I’m sorry.” 

She’s not sure what she’s saying it for, just that he needs to hear it, or she thinks he does. There’s so many reasons for it, that it doesn’t matter what the intention is or was. Intent is useless if it hurts someone anyway.  “I’m sorry, Eli.”  Doesn’t ask if he can forgive her, for that’s not the point of saying sorry. Not to her. It’s not about her at all.  Wants to close her eyes and burrow there, let the sea wash her out in a hundred years or less. Except she has no time for that, is already casting a glance at the buildings nearby, looking for any hint at what they might hold. Water, food, alcohol, cloth. Whatever variation he might need.  “Can you tell me what you need right now? And I’ll go and get it.” 

“You can tell me where it hurts.”

“hush. you’ve nothing to be sorry about, nothing in your life,” he says, pulling away so he can look at her as he says it, make sure she sees that he means it.  “it doesn’t matter anymore, none of it, as long as you’re safe.”

how pathetic it all feels now, how appalling, that seasick feeling of betrayal and shame following him since his friends left him for the ice. how paltry, in comparison to this act from ayla dowling, the immediacy of it– him in danger, and her with the rope. 

he smoothes a hand over her hair once, twice, barely registering what he’s doing. feels wild, shaken loose behind the eyes, pulse still racing, but also– awake. really, really awake, for maybe the first time in his life, because the further he gets from the event, the more he can’t deny that there was a satisfaction to it, amidst that terrible violence. after all these days, weeks, poised on tension, to finally act. to be handed a chance to protect something of his own, by his own hands... and to be protected in turn. 

it’s love as he’s come to know it, turned on its face; another facet, turned to the light.

– His dismissal stings, acid burning in indifferent disregard. Oh, Elias. Have you always looked like Bastien? How have I never seen it, the romantic poetry oozing from your words––why it’s just like the actor’s lyrical drawl from once upon a time. Once upon an Agathe; once upon a greenhouse bathed in afternoon glow. Or perhaps the resemblance is a trick of the light, the bent trays of the sun filtering through Promethean windows. Either way, she’s been here before; reaching out to someone adored, only to find that the door to their heart has been locked and chained.  With Bastien, she did not fight. They pushed her out, no hands needed; just the right combination of scathing words and harsh delivery; and she had slipped away into quiet distance. When was the last time the actor and her spoke? Eons ago, surely; But Elias was not them and she isn’t sure she could last a day without her Romantic reflection, much less an eon. This reprise will not have the same sad ending. 

Emma stays in place, stubbornness set in her brow. “No. You don’t get to push me out. I have lived my entire life ignored and disregarded; overlooked and cast aside. I will not let you do this to me too. I am staying, whether you like it or not, because we need each other. And I don’t need you to fix me or comfort me. I can heal quite well on my own. So, just let me stay. Tell me how to help you.”

it’s a lovely speech. would have been quite moving at another time, he’s sure, with another person. overlooked, disregarded, cast aside– no better words could she have chosen to pull at his historically neglected heartstrings, on a normal day. one where they were not so recently snipped down the middle.

we need each other, she says, and elias smiles obligingly. falls into the expression easy as anything, considering it’s the same one he’s practiced everyday for years, the natural countenance of a good steward, the one that says: i am calm. i am content. i am inoffensive in every way. “oh, i’m not pushing you out,” he replies, polite as if reciting a menu. tilts his head a touch as he blinks up at her above him. “you’ve got the whole scene backwards, dear. i was the one beside you when half the ship called you mad, and the other called you demonic. you’re the one who left. and without a word of farewell, too– goodness.”

( this tone. this voice. it comes from his own mouth, and yet he doesn’t recognize it. and yet he can’t quite make it stop. )

“so i’d consider this entire production–” a wave towards her, and her general state, “– a bit late to the party. i’m glad to hear you can ‘heal on your own’. impressed at your verve, and all that. but as for myself– i’ve rather lost faith in such ideas. no energy left to spare for them. so, if that’s everything…”

he clears his throat. lets out a little cough he’s never heard before, and knits his hands together over his stomach. breathes in deep for the final rejection, the kick out the door, when he notices:

she’s wearing his trousers.

he stops. frowns, because he has no idea when she could have taken them, hadn’t even known they were missing, but their ownership is undeniable: not only are they absurdly long on her frame, cuffs rolled up nearly to where his knees would normally be, but he recognizes the unmistakable dark green shape near the left pocket– a small leaf embroidered by a london friend, early in his time in the navy. can still taste the gin on his tongue from the evening she’d handed them over, laughing– so you’ll always know what’s yours, even with all you boys dressed the same, the friend had said, and the love had been like a splinter in his throat.

with the memory, the last reserve keeping him going– keeping this act alive– crumples, leveled like a shout.

he has it in mind to write– something, even as he questions its purpose. how paltry it seems now, all of it, the years of work, work, work, pen to page, eyes to book, hopes to stars. what would he write now, ground to eggshells as he is, what is there left to be said? what apart from the horrible? a treatise on sore hands, tired ankles. the knotting of his shoulders, after half a day spent carrying a body across uneven land. a monograph on how, in her unconscious state, the girl had gone limp, listless as a kitten, and how that was the difficulty of it all, much more than the weight. how she kept shifting underhand, her red hair spilling a different direction with every new stumble. where best to house that image, a sonnet or a sestina? the strict embankments of a villanelle, or the plaintive warble of a ghazal? an ode?

yet, somehow, still: he has it in mind to write. like muscle memory, he has it, in a time when he has so little else. so on his first hour open, he makes his way to voronin’s quarters.

She’s never seen that look in his eye; that dark glint, the tired gaze that is more than just exhaustion but soul-deep weariness. God, a couple hours on the island and the forsaken place has already taken the light Elias once had. If she had the strength, she would be righteously furious. If would do any good, she would rage against the universe; just to bring his brightness back to him. But it’s gone and she knows it. She knows because she lost it too, eons ago; when the Agathe sunk beneath hungry waves. This is no new or original play, but just a retelling. But instead of a bright-eyed naturalist playing the role of Tragic Romantic, it is a poet, with dark curls and lost words. And she already knows the ending: they will never get that light back again.  

They stay, looking at each other, and she wants to break the silence; rush into his arms and apologize for everything. For leaving him to go to the island. For bringing the Silent One to the Promethean. For thinking she could understand a god but she is petrified in her place on the cot. It is in his hands, the first move. And when it comes, that waving away; the wordless rejection, it is a crushing blow. She exhales shakily, like she’s been punched in the gut. But no anger toward him comes. How can it, when it is her fault. 

Still, this is not a fate she can accept. The world is too cold, too cruel, too lonely, for her to endure without him. Instinctively, a hand reaches out to touch his shoulder, his back, his hair; any part of him she can reach, but for the first time since their meeting––she stops and pulls away. “Please––Please, Elias. I beg of you. Please speak to me, mon coeur.”

---

emma reaches for him and he sits utterly motionless as he waits to see what she will do; emma reaches for him and if he weren’t so busy being still and silent and useless, he would tell her not to touch his hands. you don’t know where they’ve been, darling. you don’t know where i’ve been at all.

once she’s made her retreat, he slides down on the coverlet until he is only half-propped against the wall behind him. lets his legs slip out straight until they drape over the edge of the bed, bent to hang at the knee, listless as his half-shut eyelids. drums his fingers over his stomach and looks to the ceiling, a perfect picture of boredom if not for the blood still tacked to his shirt.

“what would you have me say, emma? ton coeur, ma langue– what’s the use of it, any of it? is it comfort, the purpose? well, dear, if that’s all, take whatever you’d like. heart, liver, and the rest– though i’ve little left to offer tonight, apart from body heat and dull company, so. perhaps another cabin would better suit.”

———

Who was meant to know. The chaplain, of all things, winces. Like he’s been abraded. Like the sea’s salt-sting has crowded the scrapes. Who do you even allow— And which to dread more with such a question, the echo or the answer?

In the end, he can’t leave the lad to silence. God knows he’s practiced enough of that.

“I—” but the answer lodges in his throat halfway up. Adams’ apple bobbing dryly. Catching. Choking. It smarts that the steward steps back from him, away from him. Smarts more to realize his own instinct has forced the same. A half-step combined to make the distance whole. Leo shakes his head. A gesture that comes out as nearly unnatural— a jerk of the chin as if led by a string. 

“No one—” He utters, sweat beaded brow glistening in the jaundiced lamplight. A wash of sickly pallor flooding the room, lapping at the floorboards and shrinking walls. Swallows the frigid lump in his throat only to feel the chill bloom through his belly. “—No one.”

---

elias watches the man falter. watches him wince, and reaches for some sympathy within himself– reaches and comes up empty, too sick with the truth for anything other than horror, than frustration. than the nauseous twist of fear.

“why, laurents?” he says, eyebrows knitting together. “what is the purpose?”

he doesn’t fully know what he’s asking, himself, but leaves it open for laurent’s to figure out. an inquiry after the purpose of the drug, the line of empty bottles, the evidence of so many hard nights? or is it the purpose of this denial, the locked door of leonard’s mind, pain pushed under the bedframe like an old album, back where it can’t be spotted by polite company. back where it can’t be spotted by those who love him, those who might pry it open, hold it up to the light. blow off the dust and ask, where does it hurt? and: what can i do to help?

in the days after the rescue mission, elias keeps as busy as he can. he avoids whatever eyes seek him out; he pulls his body inwards and tries to touch, to brush, as little as possible of the people around him. take up as little space on the ship, as little air in the quarters, as he can manage. moves, like all haunted things, in flickers and darts, becoming a presence that fades into the background until it’s needed. until it’s called for.

his head is down as he makes his way across the deck, mind on his destination, playing over the steps he’ll follow once he arrives. retrieve, set, smooth, clear– and check the task off the list. then the next, and then the next, until he’s done early for the day. until he’s alone again, and desperate, and regretting not stretching the tasks out longer, giving his hands something else to do, this energy somewhere else to turn but inwards. as if any of this dreadful dance is within his control, anything other than the body’s instinctual turn towards survival. any decision to be made past what will make the current cruel moment hurt less.

all of which is to say: his thoughts are elsewhere, as he collides into the chaplain.

THE ROMANTIC

( estrada’s quarters / the night of the mutiny, late / @intrepidim )

elias has often thought that he’d make a good scriptwriter. not a figurehead, no, not one to face outwards, to lead the rally cry. but to spin the words themselves, weave them into something to pull at the heartstrings, to fasten the knot at the throat? yes, he thinks he could become good at that. he thinks, given enough nurturing, he might have a sort of knack for it. 

which is to say: he knows how to pull out an emotion. coax tears and rage in equal measure. he knows how to move the hearts of men, in one direction or another. what he doesn’t know is when to stop.

he makes his way to the vice-admiral’s quarters with the fluidity of the drunk, even as he has never felt more sober. eyes too bright, smile too placid. he wonders, idly, what estrada’s rage will taste like. a blow to the jaw, perhaps, to set his head ringing, ringing, until it empties of all else. how lovely. or perhaps: he’ll fasten him on the spot, hold him down until he goes numb with it. the cool, blanketing weight of another to force him into sleep, force him into peace. it doesn’t sound at all that unpleasant, now, not compared to what he knows of waking life.

elias enters the room without knocking, without greeting. estrada is seated at the small table in the captain’s former room, the space made to entertain groups of the most intimate guests. papers lay about like abandoned thoughts. the steward approaches him, passes over the chair nearest, the chair across from the man. slides, instead, into the one directly next to him. sets his elbows on the table and leans into them, into estrada’s space, setting his chin in one hand and looking at him appraisingly.

“did you know pippa?” elias says, suddenly, in lieu of a greeting. not giving the man a chance to ask any questions, like: what the fuck are you doing in my room, because he has a piece to say tonight, and he intends to get through it before he gets whatever is coming to him. “the dead girl. she was so lovely, in life. i knew her in london, distantly– a friend of a friend, dearest of a dear one. too busy being lovely to spare me the time of day, but i’d never blame her for it, not an inch. an afternoon in her presence would have been an honor to me, frankly. though i suppose that’s off the table now.”

as he speaks, he drops one hand. traces a pattern in the wood grain with it, following the line of the table until he reaches vice-admiral’s own palm. traces over the lines there too, around the wrist, up the forearm. stares him down, eye to eye, like a deer to a lantern. “she was still warm, you know. even in all that cold. warm up until the moment she was taken from me. warm when she was laid down in the infirmary bed. might still be warm, considering…” he wonders if his eyes are glowing. it feels like they are. it feels like he’s on fire. “such a recent tragedy. i don’t suppose there’s been enough time for the blood to pool, you know? not yet. not in the wrists…” he taps the base of estrada’s palm. “or the elbows…” his hand snakes under the vice-admirals, until it reaches the hinge of the arm. presses once. “or…”

the hand holding up his chin suddenly falls, flickers like a leaf to land on estrada’s leg. slides down, down, curls under the flesh there, even as he never breaks eye contact. “the underside of the thighs. all the normal places for a corpse. but you didn’t wait that long, did you? couldn’t wait until her body was in the ground–”

he leans forward, boxing estrada in now, the fingers on his forearm digging in, the hand under his thigh leverage to pull himself closer to the man. “before you had to stage your fucking mutiny. a person is dead, and you couldn’t wait for her to be put to some semblance of rest, before– what, changing our sailing route? but no, no, of course not. the murder of a lovely thing isn’t enough to stop the plans from ticking along, no? not for men like you.”

It’s funny, how the steward slinks forward. Funny, how save for Sohrab, whose hand he had led across the deck and into the lap of victory, no one has touched him in quite some time. Before the mutiny. Before her. Funny, how the intruder didn’t even think to change a shift of clothes.  How he had gone through an afternoon without someone ordering him out of that coat is beyond the captain’s understanding. The mulch on his boots fastens to the floorboards. Funny, that, too. Not funny enough to deter Estrada from thinking, of course, the unending mental insignia: someone will have to clean that, come morning. Still     - it’s funny, the sight Elias cuts.

It’s a proper carry on, this one, until it isn’t. Oh, he nursed no illusions: he still remembers the boy took a shine to Dowling, a shine and a stiff one, who’s there to judge? Old Malachy could still draw the colts to him, that’ll likely never change, unless he gets himself a bullet wound smack in the middle of his head. No, Marcus expected the boy is here to give him a telling off. A how dare you, stamp of honour, stomp out. The rigmarole. Again: funny.

But then he goes and mentions Pippa. The name is barely out, doesn’t have time to slide out from the stupid hole that births it, and Estrada’s body rears up. His nostrils flare. Around them, the colour goes out, seeps as if someone punctured it. On the table, everything stills. Underneath it, his lungs fill with something viscous. Like phlegm, like bilge water, he cannot think through it.

Oh, Elias Shaw, for this I will tear you apart.

❝ Make the plans stop? ❞ It’s a good thing the other drew so closely. This way, Marc can smell the sweat and ice on him, the grief coming in vapours. This way, he can curl his nose, a lever of disgust, and then laugh in his face. At all of it. Touch, and feeling, and litany too. ❝ No, no. No way about it, boy. The death of a lovely thing? That’s what makes plans tick into motion. That’s what makes the best of them succeed. ❞

The Arctic?, Pippa had asked. Tell me more, oh, please tell me more! He can almost hear it; smell it. It overlaps with Shaw, with the fucking grime on him. She was drinking champagne, they both were        Marc remembered how it put him in quite the tight spot, having to pour it for her. Risk her getting hot in her cup, or risk facing her wrath. Christ’s sake, the mouth she had. The temper. Ever since the nursery room: she was ten, twelve, and already could talk him red in the face. He had thought she could win over empires. He had wished she’d never have to.

The steward’s eyes stick to him like resin. It’d be just as easy to pop them. Like breaking a seal.

He settles for breaking him instead. ❝ But tell me        where were you when your friends legged it? Walked out to meet death, shake its hand? Brave, traitorous, the lot of them. Foolish, too. Don’t mistake me for agreeing. Yet also quite… efficient. It got all of us where we’re standing now. But you? What tight nook did you crawl into that night? You certainly weren’t in the surgeon’s room. Or the salvage party, perhaps? Did you go out of your way, made an awful run for it, and saved something in particular? No reports mention it. It’s like you never took part at all. ❞ His lips pull into a smile. They’re so chapped, and so drained of blood, that they feel the inside of a scar. The white-worm of it, unhealed. His voice is close to that. Close, worse. His voice is the sound the hull was making when the ice petrified, when their ship was stranded. A thing trapped, now entrapping.

The Captain leans into Elias.

❝ Watched all of it, did you? Wrote it down, too? The saga of some scruffy boy, a nothing from nowhere—and all the things he could not save. Please, kid. You bore me an awful sort. Go break into the pantry, rummage through all the sludge. Drink ‘til you can’t walk straight again, by all means. Foaming around the mouth at the first lick of good champagne. That’s how it gets you by the throat, no? The taste of what you’ve never had? Tip tap, then. Fuck off to Devon Island, if you’re keen on it. The tawdriness of courage. You’ve got the flapping of a fish about you; just as much slime, and just as little guts. That’s more like the poem I’d seen in you, way back when. Go spill your glass, or your guts, on someone else’s trousers. I’m not the man who’d think twice about it, now, before bleeding an apology out of you. ❞

On his thigh, Estrada’s hand clenches around the steward’s. Yanks it to him, closer down, draws it over his crotch. ❝ It’s no surprise that in whatever backwater you come from, you’re used to solving grievances on your knees. But my cock isn’t twitching. See? There. Not even a jump. So you can keep your hands in your pocket, lest you lose a finger or two. You might need them, to rub off whomever can keep you safe. It won’t be me. If you make anyone hard at all, Elias, it’s not for the right reasons. Who’d want to get in bed with a stray? A thing that leaves droppings of mud all over? Go on, scaredy cat. You can be someone else’s hole for the evening. ❞

“You want me to hurt you.” Says it with much the same reverence and confusion, the stark provocation of her repetition before. The question of why, of what has been done, what he wants of it. It’s a revelation, but not a reveal, not truly.  Misses the way he speaks of softer things, and far more brutal; confession she takes as casually as her own. Does not wonder at at all. That is her cruelty, to believe he loves so easily and abandons it in the announcement of it. 

He has her free hand, so she has pinned herself to the floor otherwise. It’s alarming how she is stuck there, unable to move or reach or soothe. Strokes his cheek with her fingertips as a lifeline,  “You are all good, that can not be.” It can. It can -(he thinks himself bad, and that is not good for him)- even when she says it as full truth, wields it like a commitment of her faith in him.  He kisses her palm and she knows it. There can be nothing that is not good in him. Surely she has known him for long enough, an addendum of intimacy. 

The tether between them falls, before or after his words she can not tell, but she’s keen to pick it up again. Keen to tell him they’re always together, that there need not be a parting for them. Even as the words leverage at some sunken part of her- a lockbox of doom and chaos, that has, that has, thus far, only been peeked into in horror, and not spilled out entirely. You’ll be the death of me. 

Trails her hand to her side, between them, presses to sweep the other free of her weight, before using both for leverage. Before peeking up to meet him, all fluid movement to her lips at his cheek. Shifts to sitting to press nose to chin, head to shoulder. Leans against him as though he’s solid enough for them both, another measure of goodness- that he wont see them off-balance. Curves her hand against his chest, above the heart, it settles softly. 

“I don’t know what’s happened to make you think any of it. I’m sorry I don’t, I wont until you tell me, but I also wont keep quiet about it when it pains you. Don’t ask me to watch you suffer and do nothing. I couldn’t do it for a stranger, and I can not do it for someone much more than that.”

“I love you Eli, for your mind, for your heart, for your soul. For everything in between and for no particular reason at all. Don’t you see I had no choice, and I still would have chosen it. You are wonderful, and you deserve to know it, at least believe it.” Shakes her head and dips her chin to his collar. “I’ll be here whether you do or not, but stop fleeing from it. You flinch away from all types of love even when you have it, and we’re on a bloody ship, there’s nowhere to hide. So don’t make me pin you down again, you know I will. For I’m your friend.”

---

“no, i would never– for one, i don’t think you could hurt a single thing, ayla dowling, without hurting yourself. and i’d never ask that of you. but…” the fingertips against his cheek distract him, thoughts scattering like pebbles under a wheel, and for a moment it is all he can do but close his eyes. all he can do but feel it, this rare and strange gentleness offered nowhere else, yet somehow possessed in spades by this one person who has, in some great twist of luck, decided him worthy to receive it in excess. “you can’t assume this, this blanketing goodness. it’s too much power. too much liberty. what if i hurt you? what if i were to believe you and–” 

( and what if there is something corrupt, at his heart? what if this vigilance is a gift, a wall between the world and a shadow he knows not of, lurking and liable to burst forth at the smallest unspooling? what if he’s been trying so long, jaw wired shut with the effort of it– that he no longer knows what heaven or hell he might be, underneath the struggle of it all? what if there is something of him that is essentially ruinous? )

 “you need to be more careful. with everyone. some of the people on this ship…” frowns, tucks a piece of hair behind her ear. “if anything happened to you, i’d be lost. so next time you put blind faith in a hopeless stray, remember you’ve got my heart in your hands as well as your own, yeah?” tries to crack a smile, even as it falls flat, stilted as straw, as a scarecrow, and nearly as dried out.

it is a relief when she tucks her head under his, when he doesn’t have to think about everything telegraphed across his face like type on a newspaper. leans into the touch, the crutch of it. doesn’t make a sound as she says her piece, lets the words wash over him and imagines a life where he could believe them. except– it doesn’t stop, this barrage of love, of misunderstanding. misplaced concerns, misplaced trust, building like a wave. a riptide. overwhelming as a live wire to the fingertips, and by the time she gets to ‘we’re on a bloody ship, there’s nowhere to hide’ he’s halfway lost, head underwater, lungs full of salt. terror terror terror. a switch flips and he pulls away from her, pats her on the shoulder. laughs– a strange, abortive thing, more choke than joy. 

a switch flips– and he retreats.

“As they say,” the chaplain chuckles, a dry-throated rasp, “yeah.” Pushes the heels of his hands into the sunken eye-socket, a rub to clear the floaters— clear the dull thrum of pressure pressing on his brow. “If— if something…?” he trails in a flagging echo, focus adrift somewhere beneath the sprawling ice outside.

 For now, he only sees the surface of it: Elias, like anyone would have right to be now, is scared. Watching any crewman, let alone a close friend, disembark for the ice would do that. Laurents doesn’t even fathom it could be by way of going with them. Only looks on at the young man, searching his face. Will this help you? My saying ‘yes’? In the end, he figures the sorrow of the subject a small price for the assurance of the soul. Death, after all, is only a transition, he surmises, and we’ve looked it in the face quite often as of late. 

“Of course… eventually, I would,” he reluctantly assures him. “Just as you, without me. We all must— go on, in some way.” he philosophizes groggily. “Though,” a weary, slight smile. “I’d miss you, terribly.”

Should he look closely enough, should he take his hand, he might recognize Elias for the ballast stone he’s made of himself. Or might feel the barometric pressure of his sinking as a bloodless pounding in the ears. But for now, the steward is a league away across the room; and Leonard is in the eye of the storm, floating.

---

elias rises from the chair.

nods, several times, even as he’s not sure what he’s agreeing to, what he’s signing up for. what he’s signing away. not that it exactly matters. the chaplain’s face is so soft in exhaustion; elias thinks he would agree to about anything, right about now. throw his books in the sea, revoke all alliances to poetry, to love, to beauty and its gods? surely, certainly. anything, if it might stall this moment, might keep leonard’s face like that, not yet hardened with consciousness. not yet taut with the truth.

“well, if you’re sure,” he says, awkward. “anyway, i should let you go. i should let you sleep.”

he would like to kiss the back of his hand a final time, make an invocation of it, a farewell with some ceremony to it. but elias knows not to touch him. doesn’t move any half-step closer into the chaplain’s orbit, for fear of the temptation to do so. fear of what touch does to him, has always done, the great catalyst of it; thinks laurents could level him with a fingertip to the wrist right about now, exhausted as he is. could have him sinking down, crawling in beside him. let me stay here. let us sleep. why leave at all? why not forget? why go out into the cold, when there is warmth here, and friendship, and safety, and the rock of the ship, and another’s breath going quiet as they slip into the realm of the unknowing?

he takes a step back, nods again. slips out the doorway, and somehow manages to not pause on the sill. to not look back, one last time.

rude, to enter anyone’s rooms without their permission, but eli had had a notion of surprising the man with– well, a silly thing really, too absurd to deserve the title of sweet, but he’d found the book during a routine tidying of the cartography room, tucked under the leg of a chair as balance, and knew it would be much better use in the hands of his friend. a history of maritime animals, it said, emblazoned across the cover, with a small golden monkey reaching up from one corner as if to help flip open the pages. and oh, in times like these, if something could be found– something could be given– that may offer a spark of happiness, of escape? 

what a shame it would be, to waste another moment withholding it.

elias had knocked once and gotten no response, so he’d thought: the coast is clear. it would take only a few moments to deposit the book on laurents’ desk, a surprise for whenever he returned. so elias had crept in. seen no form in the bed, and breathed a sigh of relief (his task suddenly made easier.) then he’d seen the bottles.

he doesn’t know why he’d picked the vial up. as if touch could gift him more answers, or rather: change the answers that he already had, that were all too abundantly clear. lost in the texture of it, the color, he doesn’t notice when the chaplain enters the room, but there isn’t much shock left in him to jump– so he reacts little apart from a turn of the head in his friend’s direction, the half-sighed admission of his ignorance. 

normally, this would be the point when elias would step towards him, offer a word of comfort, a soothing hand. but nothing about this moment between them is normal, and in the roiling anxiety of his gut– he hesitates. moves back, in fact, a half step, fingers curling around the bottle, his other hand holding him steady on the desk to his side. flinches further at the chaplain’s response. meets the other’s too-raw honesty with his own.