#man!!!!!!

he couldn't go back home to his old town & family, or rejoin the navy, he'd have to explain what happened to the expedition. it couldn't stay secret-everyone in the town would've known grace was on that ship

he's not built to have that responsibility Entirely on him! and he's definitely not built to be a victorian gossip column celebrity about the mysteriously disappeared sailor returning from the dead and then ostracised bc nobody could fathom that their Noble Explorers could resort to violence to survive

i don't even think he had an alternative plan,,,i think he just wanted to go back because it was a last scrap of "going back to normality" to cling to,,like once it was all over he could just go back and pretend that whole thing didn't happen. and go back to....normal? the normal he wasn't even happy with in the first place,

bonus funnies under the cut