#jopnell

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Relationships: Thomas Hartnell/Thomas Jopson, Thomas Hartnell & Thomas Jopson Characters: Thomas Jopson, Betsy Hartnell, Thomas Hartnell, Sarah Hartnell Additional Tags: Pre-Relationship, Background Relationships, jopzier and tozjames, we are headed toward jopnellzier, Chronic Illness, Hurt/Comfort, Recovery, Illnesses, Stand Alone Summary: “My name is Betsy Hartnell and I need to speak to Captain Crozier.”

Hartnell. This would be Tom Hartnell’s sister then. “Captain Crozier isn’t home at the moment, may I take a message?”

Miss Hartnell frowned. “When will he be back? I can wait. It’s really quite urgent. It’s about my brother, Tom, he sailed under Captain Crozier to the Arctic. The captain said Tom could come to him if he needed help.”

- - -

“Do you think you’re very clever?” Betsy asks. Or, rather, Jopson believes she’s asking him, as her upper half is currently obscured by the branches of a tree. Branches move in a way that suggests she’s priming for the rest of her ascent, and Jopson instinctively moves toward the base, expecting the youngest Hartnell sister to come tumbling down like a loosened apple.

“Pardon?” he asks the branches.

She makes a noise in the back of her throat—something like disgust. “Oh, you’ve answered my question already.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand what the question was at all, Miss Hartnell.”

Her head pokes out from the leaves, framing her face like she’s some sort of angry wood sprite. Her long black braid hangs down like a vine, swaying in the September breeze. “You’re either a fool, completely in love, or both.” Her dark brows furrow. “Probably both.”

This time, with much more feeling, “Pardon?”

Betsy rolls her eyes before disappearing back into the tree, and Jopson only sees the white flicker of a stocking before she’s making a higher ascent. It’s not proper, certainly, and he’s already tried to tell her so. Yet as her older brother warned, attempting to corral Betsy into being proper was just a slight degree above impossible. 

“D’you really think no one’s noticed you two sighing over each other?” she says. Then, she drops her voice and layers a thick dockyard accent over it. “‘Oh, Mister Jopson! You’re so talented at making bread and fixing my buttons and— Ohhh, is there anything you can’t do?’”

Jopson finds himself at a crossroads between insulted and amused. “He doesn’t sound like that,” he says, rather than defending himself or Hartnell.

“I grew up with him. I know what he sounds like,” Betsy retorts.

He turns his stare down at the ground, at the mealy apples and old, dead leaves. “Nothing of the sort is happening, Miss Hartnell. Your brother and I are friends and—”

She reappears again in a flurry of leaves, higher this time, and less amused. “Come off it, Mister Jopson,” she says flatly. “A lieutenant suddenly decides to befriend Tommy?”

“What do you make of Captain Crozier then?”

Betsy shrugs, disappears for a moment, and returns with an apple in her hand, looking triumphant. “He reminds me of a father an’ both of you are looking for his blessings before you post the Banns.”

Jopson nearly squawks, indignant. “I beg your pardon!”

“Oh, please do.”

He struggles with words long enough for Betsy to get another apple and tosses it down to him with the accuracy of the Navy’s finest gunner. Hartnell was also right when he said she would have made a spectacular sailor. It lands neatly in his hands—either as a peace offering or a projectile weapon, he isn’t sure.

“All’s I’m saying, Mister Jopson, is that I’ve noticed, and Mary’s noticed, even though she’s far too polite to say anything,” Betsy goes on before she takes a massive bite of her apple. Jopson can almost hear her mother chastising her table manners; or, perhaps, tree manners. 

“There’s nothing to—”

Her expression silences him. The Hartnell family all share the same trait of communicating their exact feeling through their faces with no verbal effort. In this case, Betsy looks at him like he’s the greatest fool in the world. Immediately, he feels like it.

“—nothing to notice,” he finishes rather lamely. In a way, he feels defeated, and all by a teenage girl perched in a tree. 

“Mhmm. Well, once you’re a bit more comfortable with the truth, can you kindly do my sister and I a favour and stop acting like a lovelorn heroine whenever he enters the room? Your sighs will put all of our candles out, I think.”

sorry this took me 800 years ;w;”

-----

Jopson heldout a small bundle, no bigger than his palm and wrapped gently in loose clothand tied closed with a bit of twine.

“I cannot.”

“I insist.”

Hartnellopened his mouth to decline once more and as politely as possible, but his mindwas filled with the voice of his mother reminding him that it was a terriblerudeness to decline someone’s gift and an even worse offense to do so to theirface.

So he acceptedit and went to pull loose the twine but was stopped by Jopson’s gentle handquickly placed upon his own.

“Not now.”Jopson’s voice and expression were both ever so soft, and Hartnell could nothelp the flutter of his chest, “When you need it.”

When you need it.

He opened itfinally, days later, exhausted and near frozen from his watch. He had abstainedas long as he could from opening it, waiting for whatever moment Jopson hadintended, but decided the moment was one that alleviated his suffering.

In the dark,in his hammock, he gently pulled loose the twine holding the makeshift bagshut.

A few hard sweetsand chocolates, the gold foil was recognizable even with little light. Hartnellsmiled softly to himself, carefully and quietly unwrapping one of the squaresto pop it whole into his mouth.

When everything was silent and still except for ice and wood, Jopson came to him in the dark.

He cried, still, and though months had passed it was nearly impossible not to. So far from home, completely alone in a ship full of souls Hartnell felt as though he had not one to turn to. Without his brother, what was he to do?

Jopson sat with him as silent as a shadow, offering a hand, a shoulder, an embrace - whatever it was that Hartnell needed in that moment. Whatever he could offer to show that he understood his pain. To show that he cared.

she just told me that to ease the hardship of a long-distance relationship, she apparently wants him to start picking a book and reading it to her over the phone.