VENI VIDI VICI.

I’ll do it without the apple. She thinks about it, wonders where he would aim for. If he would pick a point past her or through her.  After all, she’s the reason Vladya’s gone. She hasn’t paid for it, not in the way this place likes; with blood or bone or some part possessed.  It might be why she had approached at all, with no way of knowing whether Jack’s nerves were worn thin enough to imagine anyone as threat, and so turn the weapon on them.  She’s of mind to mention the waste of ammunition, just to argue with him, just to stir something. Only he knows her well enough to know she’d not be herself if she was insinuating such things should be kept for causing harm instead. 

“You can tell me about it, if you like. The Seychelles, or anywhere, anything.”

“I’d not been outside that small cluster of islands. Ireland, England.” Doesn’t mention France, “Until.. well wherever we are now. Where is it you’d rather be?”

---

“god, ayla,” jack can’t help but laugh, can’t help the way his face splits like a wound reopening into a grin. he’s quick to slip the rifle strap over his head, to rest the thing against a nearby stone--there is no need for it here, not when ayla has worked with such diligent and unrelenting kindness to convince him that he is more than his ability to hit a target from a distance, than the tattered remains of uniform and the training that has defined him for so much of his adult life. his hands, his body, are both better served in closing the distance between them, in wrapping around her small shoulders and pulling her into his chest, in making himself something solid to lean against, something that communicates through the power of touch alone that injuries, that grief, need not be borne alone. “you sound just like i did when i was your age. all i wanted was to get the hell away from my parent’s farm and play hero. pretend i was jason on my great ship full of argonauts, moving from great adventure to great adventure.” 

he presses a kiss to the top of her head, before resting his chin on top of it. he wants to tell her not to lose it, not to let it become secondary to the desires of other people in the same way that he had, but he knows--in the same part of his mind that is trying to come to terms with the fact that they might not leave this place, that thinks they might have already passed on from the world of the living--that it’s already too late. the young woman in his arms will never be as young as she was when she stepped onboard that ship again. 

he smiles gently, shrugs his shoulders. “it’s warm, in the seychelles--in a way that i didn’t know it could be, that it never is in england. you would lay on your back in the sand and it would come up from the very center of the earth, it seemed. the waters are so blue they’re almost green--and sometimes, i swear, you can see right to the bottom. we got a day of shore leave, got drunk, and swore that admiral drake’s treasure was there, just sitting on the floor and waiting for someone brave enough to go down and get it.” 

he kisses her head again before he lets her go, before he lets his eyes drift to the line of the horizon, beautiful in its own way, he supposes--unbroken as it is by any flag or nation. “as for where i’d rather be--i don’t know. they train us not to think about it.” he lets his face soften for a moment--a gesture he would only allow for ayla, and tucks a stray lock of hair behind his ear. “i keep thinking about a house, mostly. somewhere green, with plants growing wild. jon’s there, with me. august, if that’s what he decides he wants. you, if you decide that’s what you want.”

he takes to the sea, as he always does when he’s lost. but it doesn’t bring the same comfort here—especially here; it’s been like this for some time now. the sound and sight of waves crashing against the ship make edward wonder how long until they turn deadly. unlike the past, when the very same thing would make him enthusiastic and eager about the things to come. right here, right now, he dreads the idea of what’s waiting for them, whatever they choose to do. 

though he does try, here and there to think of a way out of this. and sometimes, when he lets his thoughts become a bit more foolish, not only does he think of a way out of this but of an outcome—of all of them in a safe harbour, not even an english one, just somewhere out of death’s reach. when the hour is late and he can’t control his mind as well anymore, he imagines the ones they’ve lost among them, too. it always jolts him awake and edward curses himself for the naivete. 

so there’s no comfort in the sand beneath his boots, nor in the sound of the ocean which, if he’s being honest—doesn’t sound quite right here. too quiet, like it wants to hide something from them. the way home, perhaps.

the gunshot rings too loud in his ear as he approaches, reminds him of another gunshot, the one that made everything even worse than it already had been. 

“i don’t doubt you abilities mister fox but even now, i’d rather not tempt fate.” edward can’t bring himself to mirror jack’s laugh, the sounds just isn’t there. he walks closer, hands folded behind his back. edward looks to the sea again—maybe if he stares at the waters long enough, a change will come. “have you been into the city at all? to explore?”

---

for lack of any other entertainment, older cadets at sandhurst had often taken to telling stories about navy men to the new recruits--as though a completely different measure of taxonomy were needed to make sense of them, instead of being simply a different species of the same thing. bunkmates had shivered, whispered tales to each other about lashes doled out for minor offenses, as though such a thing didn’t occur within the very walls, about mutinies and food that featured cooked rat as a major ingredient, and they had pulled their blankets up around their chins, looked furtively towards the nearest door, when they spoke of sailors having their mouths sewn shut by cruel captains, by doctors that wanted to verify a patient was actually dead before closing his burial shroud for good. 

jack watches edward boyne turn his body towards the sea, watches the corners of his eyes relax almost imperceptibly as they follow each calmly lapping wave, and thinks that perhaps the tales hadn’t been too far off--only, the purser had pulled the invisible strings through his lips himself, to keep the howling, the grief of it all from constantly bleeding out from between them. after all, he thinks, you can only swallow so much of the stuff before it makes you sick, before you’re coughing it up mixed with bile and salt water. 

perhaps it’s the better solution, in comparison to letting it all settle just underneath the surface of the skin like a bruise that never stops throbbing. in comparison to constantly having the palm of his hand pressed against his ribs to cover the hole. 

jack wraps his fingers around the rifle strap and shrugs so that the thing lies across his shoulders, before coming to stand beside him. “august wanted a room--we haven’t--” he swallows, and shakes his head. “it hasn’t been just the two of us, since we lost him.” he lets his voice trail off, follows the weary path of the purser’s eyes to some distant, unseeable point on the horizon. he’s never been able to draw comfort from the water in the way that so many men do--and even now, he finds himself grinding his teeth at the way the tide draws in and out, regardless of the two of them standing here, regardless of the pain that sits between them like a shattered monument. 

“i’ve also been making a list of every advantageous vantage point in town, because i can’t hope to arm and defend a perimeter, keep estrada on his fucking ship.” he sighs, and brushes a stray lock of hair behind his ear. “its the only useful thing i can think of doing--and even then,” he feels the corners of his mouth pull upwards, just slightly. “the thought of putting a bullet in marcus estrada’s skull from five different angles isn’t nearly as comforting as i had hoped it would be.”

this is not his rifle. 

here, in this mirage of a place, conjured by the grief stricken minds of mad men out of seawater, this purgatory made of mist and blood, he still thinks of the old adages tossed around by instructors at sandhurst, old soldiers holding court around campfires in the field. the nature of the beast is this, they would say. eventually, you come to know the body of your gun like the body of a lover--your hands get to tracing every curve tenderly, you know the exact location of every knick and freckle. then they would grin, elbow the nearest boy still too green around the gills, the one who they deemed still too quick to flinch, and mutter under their breaths--’fraid that’s what passes for tenderness out here, lad. 

the rifle jack settles against his shoulder is heavy, hard bodied as every firearm is--but it isn’t his. his is warmed by the hands of another aboard the promethean more than likely, or perhaps it sits prisoner in the gun room--the j and the f carved into the stock obscured under layers of gathering dust. another casualty he failed to prevent. 

he exhales, bites down hard on his bottom lip as he tries to settle the one he now holds against his shoulders, against his flesh and bones. this is not his gun--but he thinks that perhaps that might be fitting, for he is no longer a soldier. he stands yet again with his boots planted in the uncertain earth of foreign sands, only this time he does not shirk the sun--he allows it to perform its work, to melt the flaking gold leaf that covers his skin and turn it into armor, to make him into more. 

let them call me a hero now, he thinks as he gently slides his finger towards the trigger. let me be worthy of it. 

he fires, and the bullet shatters his green glass bottle target. 

he feels the corners of his lips begin to pull upwards. he will not fail again. 

THE PROGENITOR | SOHRAB KHOSROW 

@ferroustype

“ALL I HAVE IS MY ARROGANCE  I WILL TEACH IT TO LEAN BACK AND SMOKE A CIGARETTE IN YOUR FACES,  AND YOU SHOULD BE SO LUCKY.” - MOHJA KAHF “ISHTAR AWAKENS IN CHICAGO” 

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Happy Holidays Lack!! Love you!! 

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?” 

---

how do you want to remember him? 

god, how is he supposed to answer such a question? how does anyone ever talk about grief, when the entirety of language as it is taught to schoolchildren does not encompass the damn thing adequately? how do you talk about loss, when the very nature of the thing is an absence? how do you remember a version of yourself that you no longer recognize? how do you remember a limb that you no longer have but feel phantom ache for, an organ that did something vital but now ceases to function? 

he spares a glance at the quartermaster’s arm, where a bloody but black word sits permanent in the flesh--hope. perhaps that is how you begin to make sense of it, carving out one word at a time until you collect phrases, until the truth of it is made of flesh and bone instead of something abstract and unknowable. the quartermaster wants to remember hope, here where it could easily be argued that none exists--what does jack want to remember of vladimir, in defiance of the life without him that now seems to unfurl itself like ribbon, like the red string attached to the belt of theseus as he makes his way through the shadowy labyrinth towards the minotaur? 

he smiles, as he meets the quartermaster’s gaze. “something only he’d be able to make sense of, brilliant and pretentious all in the same fucking breath. aristos achaion.” he swallows, sinks his teeth into his bottom lip and worries it for a long moment. the memory plays out as if it were happening right in front of him--silvery images move, versions of them that no longer exist that have a softness around the edges seat themselves across the table. vladya’s hands move excitedly, august grins as though he’s managed to wrap a rope around the moon itself and drag it down to make friends with, the jack before egypt rolls his eyes and pretends not to be fond of the two pups he’s somehow found himself in charge of, that have somehow sunk their milk teeth into the muscle of his heart and made a den for themselves from the bones of his ribs. he doesn’t need to hear the noise of voices, of sandhurst happening around them, to know what vladya says. 

“that’s what they called achilles,” he says in tandem with the memory, his voice suddenly rough. he clears his throat, blinks his eyes, and it all dissipates, like snow being blown on the wind and falling onto solid ground. “it means the best of the greeks.” he swallows, feels the corner of his mouth pull up again. “he’d hate it--never make the comparison for himself, but--” he shrugs his shoulders. “he’s not here, and i am. so, best of the greeks it is.” he meets her gaze again, rolls up his shirt sleeve to reveal the blank expanse of pale skin that stretches over the bones of his wrist. “over the pulse point.”

he can see it, the way that jack is wrestling with something deep inside, the way his eyes track through memories, the tears that push through, the connection between them a single thread, but when you look closer, see that’s nothing but loops and knots of twine that gathered, yarn twisting and catching, doubles back, trails that drip before being dragged back in, seeped and salt-dried.

vladya is gone.

first instinct, he scoffs, wet and choking, laugh of disbelief despite the truth he feels settle around him. ‘ of course he fucki - ‘ an exhale, half-laugh, catching, serrated in his throat. but this isn’t it, this isn’t all of it.

there is more grief here to be processed, garrote wire that threatens to join between them, or slive through the connection, tightening around both their necks. jack is looking at him with - roi doesn’t know. has never known, apparently, didn’t know jack well enough until there was a rangi sized hole standing between them that they both pretended he filled.

this time, it’s roi who doesn’t return the hug, for the first second, then clings back, desperate. he wishes to be a child again, curled into an embrace of ignorance, where if he closes his eyes, someone bigger and stronger will deal with the issue. he clings back, hurting, for jack has an air of finality around him and roi doesn’t know why and this cannot be it.

‘ jack. just - there’s nothing you could have done that could be this bad. just please - ‘ pulls back, rests his hand on jack’s cheek. ‘ please just tell me. ‘

---

he doesn’t expect it--the way that roi steps away from him in anticipation of the blow, without ever knowing from which angle it’s going to come, and then closes the distance and wraps his arms around jack’s shoulders as though it is he alone that is tethering the younger man to reality. a flame flickers in the back of his mind, offers the small warmth of hope that perhaps roi will still let him stay, let him continue to protect, to find a way to get him out of this prison cell, for fucks sakes, fuck you marcus estrada you fucking imitation colossus--but he presses the palm of his hand over it, knows that it won’t be enough. truth is a double edged sword that way, healing and still leaving a cut behind, leaving the blood. 

“there is roi--god, there is. and as much as i wish i could go back and change it, prove that i’m not the man who did it anymore, i can’t.” he shakes his head, bites down hard enough on his bottom lip to taste copper on his tongue, which mixes with the bile at the back of his throat to create something sour, something sickening that settles in his chest, sinks to the pit of his stomach. he doesn’t pull away--he’ll let roi decide if he wants to cross the fissure that exists between them to solid ground, or if he wants to drive the heel of his boot into it and break the ice, forever throwing them on opposite sides. 

“tamati--he caught a bullet in egypt, like i told you. it was bad, he was bleeding--but i got to him.” he exhales slowly, closes his eyes. “i got to him, and i could have tried to stop it--i could have dragged him to the nearest medical tent, done a thousand other things that could have saved him, but i didn’t. i looked at him, and i thought about how badly i wanted to be him, to have what he had--and i let it happen.” he swallows, and lets it hang for a long moment, holds the young man in his arms as tightly as he can so that he can absorb some of the impact, despite the fact that it was he who threw the haymaker, the right hook out of nowhere. 

they don’t need to speak--not at first. 

its the unspoken agreement between all soldiers, that the mouth cannot be opened in mourning--for if you cry for one comrade fallen on the field of battle, there is nothing that will stop you from wailing and gnashing your teeth for them all. patroclus knew what he was doing when he put on the armor, says odysseus. it was to achilles fault that he mourned, that he fell to his knees, that he gave into the side of himself that was all to human. there is still a war to be fought, a battle to be won, the day after. 

but it is also more than that. 

jack and august do not speak because there is something fundamental that has been lost, because the very nature of void defies all attempts at definition--you cannot speak of what is no longer there, you cannot put a name to the thing you cannot see, you cannot put easily navigable borders around the thing you cannot make sense of. it is enough for the two of them, orphans in this world as they are, to look to the other side of the table and know that the man across bleeds endlessly into his hands just the same. for jack, it is enough that eventually august stops pushing. it is enough that the younger man falls into his arms and allows jack to protect him, to use his flesh and bones to construct a safe place for the two of them to worship at this small shrine that exists strung between them both. 

it is enough, until jack is staring down the spine of a knife pointed at the other one third of his bruised, bloodied heart--until the two of them spare a glance at each other and nod, as they follow captain dowling down onto the beach and into the heart of this phantasm of a place. it is enough, until freedom brings with it decisions they’ve both been pretending they do not see out of the corners of their eyes--brings with it the sudden endless span of a life that does not include him. 

jack closes the door to their room and exhales, drags a hand through his hair. hadn’t ayla told him he had a choice, here and now? to fade away or do what needs to be done, to fight for the peace he craves do desperately now? he’s been playing at hero, at captain and sergeant and whatever he had been taught he needed to be--now it was time to become, to embrace what he’s spent so long fighting, pretending that he does not want. odysseus first had to go to troy, make himself the cunning hero, the glorious victor, before he could walk inland with his winnowing oar, before he could bury it for good and no longer think of the sea. that transformation, he knows, begins and ends with the young man in front of him. 

wherever augustus sutherland decides to go, whatever he decides to do, jack will be with him. 

“so, lance-corporal,” jack smiles warmly. “what do you make of this fine fucking mess we’re in?”

he listened. it made him flush, just how deeply jack had watched him — had jonathan truly been so unobservant, to miss all the ways jack had studied him? to see the sergeant’s eyes grace his flesh with interest, with curiosity, with the same love that jonathan turned to the world around? even as jonathan had found himself sketching in the margins of his notes ( brilliant blue eyes, rough and perfect hands, the sharp curve of a nose ), he had never guessed the attention to which jack fox fixed on him. he had never guessed the attention to which jack fox fixed on everything.  

the rebuilding cracked, for just a moment, for just one brief breath: i knew it wasn’t you.

oh, oh, jack. it was. it was jonathan. it had been jonathan who thought he saw the creature trapped and helpless, it had been jonathan who took it upon himself to unearth it. it had been jonathan that dirtied his hands, digging them deep into the island to save it, thinking — if this is the creature, it is a child, if this is the creature, it needs us as much as it fears us. it had been his choice, real or imagined as that choice may have been. it had been him that begged for its return.  

but jonathan listened to jack now, quiet and steadying himself. and, in hearing, in listening, he found something new. i have every intention of honoring his sacrifice. in speaking to augustus as vladimir laid in the sickbay’s bed: you would not wish for him to be anything other than what he is, would you? the thoughts running parallel to each other. vladimir was a boy who chose the hero’s end; vladimir was a man who understood what that meant. 

and even as vladimir might live beyond the veil, even as he might be waiting for them to simply open the door and reach through for him, jonathan knew this much: he could not stop the wheels of sacrifice, of martyrs and of saints. it did not lesson his guilt, his grief, his confusion, but it settled it. it made it bearable. here is the hurt you feel, and here is the lesson within it. sometimes there is purpose, sometimes there is only the pain. loss as a form of love. love as a form of loss. 

his forehead rested against jack’s own. 

it was time to start living again.

“i want life. i want life, even when i have little stomach for it.” especially then, especially now, when he felt too weak-kneed to hold the weight it took to love the dark spots growing in the world alone. ( for darkness grew too, like plants, like mold, like love. ) especially then, especially now, when he pressed a kiss to jack, to his cheek, to the gentle lobe of his ear. he had never guessed that grief and joy might both exist within him like this. “will you stay with me? speak of love and hope and all things good in the world. speak to me of what we might do, you and i, tomorrow or one week from now or five years. help me be brave in this.”

---

“i can do that.” jack exhales, practically into the doctor’s mouth. he wants to gently wrap his fingers around the man’s throat and make him swallow it carefully, internalize it like wine in the blood, in the same way that food nourishes the body--do not be afraid, i will be brave enough for two of us. i will make myself your sword and your shield, your home and your hearth--whatever you need until you are ready to be it for yourself, make of me. “but you should know, you don’t have to be brave with me. i love you--i want you when you’re scared, when you’re heartbroken, all of it. i want all of you.” he exhales a shaky breath, shakes his head. “there is no need to hide your hurt from me--not when i share it.” 

he gently moves the doctor’s hand from where it rests on his cheek to his chest, where noticeably there is no uniform jacket, no medals or gleaming gold buttons--only the soft fabric of a shirt that has seen better days, and his flesh and bones beneath it. this is the only bravery that is needed here, to be more than what the clothes on his back might dictate, than what someone else with a crown atop their head might tell him that he is. here, with jon, he is brave enough to be a man before he is an idol, before he is a blunt instrument to swing at an enemy. 

he smiles, and he can feel the heat that has been brimming in his blood begin the process of turning into something else--the age old miracle of making something into wine, something sweet on the tongue, singing and intoxicating. he steals another kiss, lays another prayer at his favorite altar. “it’s strange--they tell you not to think too hard of the future, when you’re a soldier. it’s the hope that kills you, that distracts you long enough that a bullet catches you in the chest or in the head. you’re only supposed to think of living for the next minute, or the next hour.” he gently tucks a lock of hair behind jon’s ear, shrugs his shoulders. “i’ve only ever thought about being a general--but--” he worries his bottom lip between his teeth before chuckling breathily. “i don’t think that’s what i want anymore--and i don’t think that’s what vladya would want for me either.” 

AYLA DOWLING | THE DOE-HEARTED @aylumin