An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Terror (TV 2018)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Relationships: Francis Crozier/James Fitzjames, James Fitzjames & Henry T. D. Le Vesconte, James Fitzjames & George Henry Hodgson
Characters: James Fitzjames (1813-c.1848), Francis Crozier, Henry T. D. Le Vesconte, George Henry Hodgson, Cornelius Hickey, Solomon Tozer
Additional Tags: Vampires, Orpheus & Eurydice Motif, James Fitzjames Dies, But He Gets Better, Canon-Typical Illness, The Best Walker In The Service etc, James Fitzjames's Boots, James Fitzjames's Gloves, James Fitzjames's Sweater, daring rescues, Reunions, Men Crying, Silna Ex Machina, Fix-it fic, ambiguous ending, First Kiss, Canon Era, Canon-Typical Gore
Summary:
Commander James Fitzjames, acting captain of the doomed Franklin Expedition, awoke under an arctic moon with rocks pinning his hands and legs, covering his face and threatening to choke him by falling into his mouth.
Happy Fitzier Exchange Day to all who celebrate (me)!!! Here’s a canon divergence vampire AU born out of that most ancient of impulses: Hey wouldn’t it be fucked up-
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"im gonna give myself a break from writing for a little bit, borealis was so much-"
anyway, i saw the bts picture of tobias menzies smoking one too many times and blacked out and when i came to there was six hundred words on my screen. flash fiction be upon ye.
3. What work are you most proud of (regardless of kudos/hits)?
I really like like a cigarette (i want this). I love writing flash fiction, it's my favorite thing to do, but it's harder to pull off than something in the 6-10k word zone, especially in an au setting, but like a cigarette just came together so quickly and efficiently, and it communicated literally everything that I wanted to show about the setting and how the characters were adapted to that setting. It felt like a very effective magic trick, and I love magic tricks.
29. Favorite line/passage you wrote this year?
Oh, god, this is gonna be hard. I'll pull a couple options under a read more:
“My dragon as she might be my sister or my friend or my daughter, not as she might be my horse-”
-borealis
I really liked this dialogue from James; it was effective in it's place to quickly establish the dragon-aviator relationship and I think it's cute. I think dragon dad!James is fun. :)
But to flog a man for someone else's failing- namely, Laurence's? No. No, Laurence was not a flogging captain.
-spare the rod (spoil the child)
Did I expect the "Will Laurence had a bad CO and now he has to adopt every child he meets about it" fic to take a turn into "Will Laurence has opinions on flogging"? No, I did not. But it was a fun little exploration, especially since this was the first time I'd really written Laurence, so it was a cool thing to capture for my version of his voice in this first attempt.
There was nothing to do for them, but he cast around helpless for a moment anyway. Surely, this was not how Englishmen behaved- there would be a court martial, and more than that, James would have to answer to these men’s mothers, who would want to know how their sons were left so far from all that they had ever known.
Boots crunched on the snow behind him. A hand on his shoulder. Would he ever be able to conceive of a body as a singular thing again?
“Captain,” Dundy said, as warmly as he could in such a howling wind, “we must return to the ships.”
He was right, of course.
James pressed a gloved hand to his brow as he rose back to his feet. Dundy kept his hand firm around his shoulder as he did.
-borealis
This passage was already one that I worked really hard on making sure it would land - it is in many ways the emotional centerpiece of the story and is certainly the point upon which the plot divergence turns, so it really needs to Feel like a catalyst - but then when I saw @noughticalcrossings's initial sketch for it while we were working together for the Bang- oh I was blown away. I rewrote part of the scene to reflect how the illustration made me feel and it was so much stronger for it. So I have a lot of fondness in my heart for the Fairholme Is Decapitated Scene :)
Francis thumbed away the beads of blood which were sluicing through the twin scars just underneath the curve of his jaw, usually hidden by his shining hair and now having gone the same way as the rest of his scar tissue. He didn’t seem to notice what it was he’d done, but James, even in his delirium, had never overlooked a single one of Francis’s movements. He did not intend to fail now, so close to the finish line. Instead, he turned into the hand which cupped his neck, as much as he could, while Bridgens explained how to massage the poison down his throat. Francis’s thumb continued to swipe that warm little arc as he listened to John’s instructions, the last bit of comfort James could accept before he accepted the lip of the green bottle that Francis brought to his lips, as nervous as a first kiss, as careful as a last farewell.
-mirror-finish
My first concept from mirror-finish was James Eating Hickey and taking his boots back. My second concept from mirror-finish was the visual of vampiric puncture wounds dissolving from scurvy. The how and when of James becoming a vampire shifted around a couple of times in the ideation phase of this fic, but the image of Puncture Wounds Dissolving From Scurvy proved Very Stubborn so I was really excited to get to convey that in the flashback in mirror-finish and I still really like it.
If you cannot tell from my comment I ADORED mirror-finish, what a brilliant story! In case I can tempt you, I would love to hear/read about what life might look like for them, if they ever manage to return to England? And does James ever feed on Francis? 👀
EEEE thank you so much for all your kind words I'm really glad it spoke to you that much!!
I do have Thoughts about a post-rescue-vampire-verse but we'll see if they ever get turned into something Workable. The one where they go back and the one where they don't. If they do go back, it'd be after Silna helps feed the people who survive (and James turns the people who don't) and then JCR or a whaling vessel or what have you pick them up and take them home and then you've got Early Victorian Vampire James Fitzjames What Crimes Will He Commit (gay ones) which is always a fun time.
But of course All Those Guys Are Still Dying A Lot and so you could also get either James as the solo survivor or (more likely, because I am a sap) James and Francis as a surviving duo. Silna isn't exiled because Tuunbaq isn't dead, so she's like "Hey guys. Yeah, these are my...white boys? I dunno. Yeah they're rescues. I feel obligated to them for deeply unknown reasons. I wish I could leave them to die but. I can't. So. Will you make room in your heart for two aging sailors. One of them is a freak of nature. Yeah I dunno either." and gets to pass them off. Maybe Goodsir also survives, because Silna throws him over her shoulder and takes him home when she sees shit's breaking bad with the main group, in which case she's like "My husband won't stop crying until we rehome them. Someone, anyone, please god anyone but me, teach these guys how to feed themselves."
The Secret Third Option is the one where the main group does survive and they do get picked up by JCR or a whaling vessel or what have you, but James can't go back to England because he can't cross running water. Ice is a gray area: it's water, but not running water, so he can be in the Arctic but he can't ever be anywhere else. In this situation, I think James and Francis send the survivors back to England and tell Little to tell everyone that they both died (we are dead and gone etc) and then they rock up to the Netsilik like "heyyyyyyyy :)" and Silna (who still threw Goodsir over her shoulder) is like Sorry We Don't Accept Solicitors. But they end up integrating into the Netsilik tribe and playing hide and seek with any other European explorers over the years (while also maybe acting as guardian angel type situations insofar as they drop off fresh food or give them warnings about ice and the creatures that live on it) much like Francis's canon show ending.
In any scenario, I think like, within a year of whatever their ending ends up looking like, Francis looks in a mirror (or water reflection etc) and is like "Hm. I was already more than a decade older than him. That will only ever keep being true." and asks James to turn him so he won't have to Live Forever Alone. This is treated like a wedding. In my heart.
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