jeunesse.

they scoff at the dismissal, as though they wouldn’t be able to put on a show impressive enough to stun everyone for at least five seconds, would be able to finish any performance by the time anyone had gathered enough wits and strength to be able to climb to the top to chase them out, had managed to linger in that fountain in paris before the gendarmerie had arrived, terrors and threats to the daytime public, could easily do so again.

they don’t bother to argue the point, far more willing to prove the point later, but only if bastien feels up for it. he’s gotten better, far better, but there is still something lingering under the skin, not the darkness that they had seen in the troupe by virtue of their very profession, but something less oil-slick and more fungal growth.

they take the rigging slowly this time, stopping every few feet to look back down, see if the actor needs a hand. but they don’t need him. so wick skips into the crows nest, presses against the back of it to make space, designed for one person and their eventually-frozen limbs, watches them smile, shift in. there’s a strange sort of anxiety thrumming in their chest, as though they want to make sure there’s no tabacco ash on the floor, to check that the view is as good as promised, this part of the world the closest to the sky that they call home, to share this comfort that they call freedom, more integral to their nature, the most vulnerable part of their self that anything bastien has seen before.

but he smiles and wick lets that knot relax, grins back, interlaces their fingers together. ‘ oh, i can think of a couple of prizes. ‘ bastien pushes closer and wick moves to meet him, curls under his arm, turned in towards him, grins at the kiss dropped on his cheek, turns his head to chase it.

are you honestly not afraid? they can feel a wrong kind of tension begin to knit up inside them, every piece that they dare not think about back to knocking at the edges of his thought, of his vision, breathes it out, lets the air whisk it away. ‘ well, if you like it, no reason to stop. the world keep turning and these moments between disasters needs to be filled with something, no? nothing i can do to change it, no orders i can give, might as well enjoy the journey. ‘

(( a thing unsaid, unknown :: wick doesn’t believe he can die, doesn’t believe that this could be the end. disaster is a thing to be edged along, a life spent falling is one where you can never  imagine hitting the ground ))

a shrug, before they dip their head, lean forward to nip then kiss at bastien’s jaw. ‘ what were you thinking for your winning gift? ‘

It looks like a hunt of intentions, a movement nestled between wanting and motive. Wick arches, spine of wisp and willow; they traipse their lips over his neck, over the faint shivers gathered there. Their own bends over the distance, almost breaks into goosebumps when Bastien breathes over the hollow of it. ❝Give the orders? To whom? The spin of the world, the curtain of disaster? Huh. I thought orders, on the whole, were my domain. At least between you and I, non?❞

There’s a laughter, here, barely touched by the eaves of meaning. There’s a laughter sheltering from something else, because it’s true, isn’t it? He remembers Wick under him, months ago; Wick taking his instructions with duty and hunger, only a gleam of flouted bravery by ways of defiance.The candle light on him, painting his angles like a challenge, his movements like a chase over corners. Sebastien supposes it’s one of those mysteries, unnumbered and unnamed, that Wick is here, and Wick understands... well, him. This. Fuck, more, worse for the wear of it: that Wick is here, and, while not knowing, while never having known, had taken one look at them and poured into confession. That they’re in over their head, shaken and not quite redeemed, not quite found—that, bien sur, they both are, which even now is a truth sharp enough to cut his tongue on. That he’s not enough, not for Bastien, not for this. And that it still doesn’t stop them. Won’t. Still doesn’t mount up again the ordinances of caution and disaster, still doesn’t hold its center, still doesn’t yield. Wick looks at him as though people like might always have this; the refuge, the unreality. The only real thing, too. Like it doesn’t much bloody matter, because there’s the world folding its paper, and there’s the body of the Gods folding at the middle.

Then, it’s on to barroom wisdom. They waltz through one of Wick’s tirades, very similar to the way Bast himself goes, half flirt and half contemplation. Half mouth and half meaning. While they speak, the string of their waist is picked by the lilt in their questions, the curve of it melding to Bastien’s palm. The actor plants it there, holds. Grabs onto a steadiness that’s nothing more than thin air, nothing more than the thrumming energy that Wick always sang with.

Then he turns them in place: one cardinal point to their hipbone, the other to their jaw. He catches their lips in a kiss, nothing of play, even less of prayer. The previous giddiness runs into its darker streaks. In theme, in tandem with the current, the wind picking up. He plies the acrobat’s back to the pillar without too much effort. He can do it without even breaking the space between them, the way he’s already tasting wine and tobacco leaves, the way Wick is hard against his thigh. Runs his tongue over theirs, his hand over their sides like a spindle. Turns, and presses, and smiles above it until Wick is even more boneless than when they had started.

All throughout, Bastien is only looking in parts. His mind, his eyes, the back of it—some concave twist between retina and fiction—chases the horizon for a silver door. He would feel guilty, if this were anyone else. But how strange, how fucking strange, that Wick just understands. That even unspoken, the hymnal of it hangs: devotion will only ever happen in between the fragments.

❝Aren’t you the wisest thing I ever caught. You make one dread opening their palms to reveal it; as if it could drift away, alors. A flicker and a fault. But then, you also know how I like my gifts, Wick, don’t you? We’ve been through it on so many celebrations. That thing you do? The Montmartre safehouse, remember?❞ His lips drift below the jaw, already sprung into a grin at the memory. He draws a bruise on the dip of their shoulder, sucks on the skin until he can feel them writhing: the salt and heat of it. Thinks, in dim glimmers, oh, this is good.

Thinks, oh, they should both be colder than they are, perhaps, that this warmth spooled in his stomach should not meet the air. Thinks, then, that this doesn’t feel like the Arctic, and it’s nothing to do with need. Nothing to do with the thrill and trial Wick always put your bones through. Bastien goes very still. One shadow of a kiss, even less, and then he’s straightening up.

they’d heard him wailing into the night.

begging for laudanum, by the sounds of it, scratching at a door, screeching to be let out. they’d remembered they have been sleeping, trying to, clutching several fistfuls of blankets up to their chin, silently cursing whatever blithering idiot couldn’t figure out how to unlock a door, and whoever it was was enabling him. 

they recognize his voice now, though the wretched plaintiveness is all but gone now, and in its place is a some implacable curiosity - perhaps plaintive in another way. perhaps this was what dowling had seen, what compelled him to (allegedly) pull him into his quarters and release him flushed and damp. but the actor is doe-eyed and slight and helpless and begging for help, or at least makes an appearance to be perceived this way. they’re familiar with this gambit, played it countless times when they’d been forced into a rut with no other way out but through the guise of helplessness, the promise of skin-slick and sweltering recompense. it’s droll seeing it now, apart and distanced, an indiscriminate recipient of the lure. the question is - do they bite?

but perhaps they recognize the inquisition in the wine-sweet diversion, the underlying demand dressed up in blush and exposure. while others weep over the noble girl and the soldier, this one appears to not even spare them a thought, even his words briefly grazing over the anticipation of a memorial. his gaze too affixed beyond the mourning, beyond the grave. one would think he ought to be reliving a trauma.

all too familiar.

they bite. meet him in kind, honey to wine.

“they speak of a terror stunning enough to draw your dagger across every named god,” they say, turning fully now to watch the thespian, gaze curious and intent. in an instant, all the rigid lines smooth into silk, head canting. “but people lean to terror when there is nothing else to answer their questions. you, however, do not appear to be very frightened. do i presume too much? or too little?”

                              WHEN  — ｡ ‘✧ the second day after docking. 1845. (or is it?)                               WHERE  —  ｡ ‘✧ the highwayman’s rest, front terrace.

It should be terrifying, the way the guest looks him over—gaze jumping, grazing. Growing teeth. It should be, at the very least, off-putting, with a tremor of warning and heed. He cannot remember ever giving this person common territory, before. Cannot remember ever playing at familiarity. A mouth traded for spit in the darkness? Hand braced over the capstan, the barrels, maybe, and a fist moving down the front of his trousers? The actor wants to believe he’d remember a voice like that. The lolled curtain of it, like a velvet sash strung too loosely over the beams. Wants to believe that their way of holding this conversation, all heavy innuendo, a shoulder in their inner space, is because they know what he’s known for. Rather than the horrifying alternative, the inching bile in his mouth: the possibility that they know what he knows.

Maybe he just wants to believe he would remember it, being looked at like that. The way Cedric used to. The way Tristan had, before.

But then, oh, Bastien’s memory in the last few months... well, it’s slapdash. Dashed, too. Or at least it was, the dwindling on both hope and resources, the waning in the sick bay. A wilting to their very soul, it seemed. Culminating, if there can ever be a climax to withering away, with the awful night Casimir Toussaint made him go through. Yes, there was very little of remembrance to Sebastien. Very little of a future, too. Up until recent. Up until the sky, in a rather forthright manner, thank you very much, fell down on all of them. Fell, opened—who can be bothered with the details? The devil is already here. And a door is a door. A search is a search.

There’s a notion for you. There’s a notion he feels like Iles sees. In him. On him.

He’s heard another man call them a professor. A few hours ago; some deckhand with a toothpick in his mouth, a scowl mangled like the fur on a doberman. Bowed his head to theirs and said ‘alright, professor, what’s next?’. Bastien was supposed to have been asleep, by then, a suave ghost in an empty hallway. Yet Dowling had given them no orders to remain inside their rooms, and if he had, Bastien would’ve probably disobeyed it. They went a while back, the once-Captain and the once-mourner. Plenty of disobeying stacked at their heel.

Cannot bring to mind, in the entire carnage, carnality, crossfire of his life, this year and all the ones before it, that he’s ever had a professor take him in. And yet, there it is. The dark eyes make too much of Bastien; too much of power, and knowledge, and things to hold against them both. Their fingers pry his questions apart, merciless and masterful. When they rake through the space between his syllables, the hints he isn’t letting on, the hints Bast themself cannot manifest into reality, because even now it might just be a child’s clutched fist around the blanket, a dying thing’s attempt to pacify the dark, even now it might just be folly—and yet. And yet: it feels like a folly Iles Xu would understand.

The way Nyima might’ve         no, he doesn’t think about Nyima. He has let her go long ago. At the time, he thought it a sacrifice. Now he knows it was the other way around. He wanted to never love anyone, if he couldn’t love them, the people he lost. Admitted it as much, to Ayla. To Emma. He had scraped his heart free of Nyima and poured a strategic cruelty instead, like the molten gold inside its cast, like the skeleton of a crown.

It was cruel. And it was useful. Things can be both: things can only be both, if they matter. Cedric’s first lesson; and the Arctic’s, next.

Sebastien Sylvain squirms in his seat. Wicker and wood; limbs plying softly over the backrest. On the terrace of this stone-hewn town, near these people with no names and no maps, faces who are less than inhabitants and yet so much more, he feels more at home than he has in months. What does that say about him?

What does that say about this place?

When he finally answers, the actor’s voice is barely audible. ❝Did Doctor Bhavsar tell you?❞ The sands gleam like burnt sienna under their soles. Even at a mellow pace, the wind still carries a very fine layer of it all the way up, and it blankets the floor almost like mountain dust. Bastien takes in the view; both to avoid and to preserve.

❝It hardly matters, après tout. However you came to find it, well—you’re right. I’m not frightened. I’m... shaken, perhaps. Whittled down to a few things I never knew about myself, and which I cannot say I like overmuch. Tired, and, oh, in dire need of a fucking bed. But fear? No. This feels like the right page; sharp pieces slotted in. The first... image, instinct, feeling of rightness in, Mon Dieu, such a long time.❞

He stumbles over the words, same as he would stumble over the silence. No easy victory, here. The front of the hotel, with its few cozy seats scattered over the platform, gives an opulence this conversation does not entail. Does not deserve. This should happen in a taut, smoke-strewn corner. It should happen in despair, and the loss of self that people associate with confronting the unspeakable. Yet there is nothing of that, now. Just a bizarre serenity, like an echo drawing near. A feeling of being heard, followed or led; of being on the track at all.

it takes a moment, some thought or process or the thinking that prevents impulsive action that every being bar themselves seems to have, a flash of his eyes before their hand is taken, uses the grip to pull the other to their feet, away from the piles and the texts, heading into the fresh air.

they’d seen him sometimes, in those moments before he inevitably leaves, book or letter in hand, as though the reading were something enjoyable. there was usually something peaceful in it, not just sated from the night but as though the text itself centered, steadied. this, however, this isn’t it, this feels something more akin to the energy before a heist, or after one has gone terribly wrong, where adrenaline and fear and a desperation of options has mired them in stagnation and all their energy is devoted to escaping it. the view, the distraction, it might be good for them both.

they click their tongue in thought, ‘ it might be faster to strap you to my back and climb up, but sure, i’m be patient. i can tie you to me if you’re worried, though you get actual planks rather than the ratlines on the rest of the rigging, so you should be good. ‘ it was designed for the icemaster to be able to navigate from, for the occasional visit from an officer, so wouldn’t be too hard for the actor, just difficult enough to dissuade the average guest from ascending and risking themselves.

then they mirror his grin, wider and far more mischevious. ‘ how often do you bother to look up? ‘ there was a show and then there was a begging to be dismissed, and despite their many faults they did have the capacity of discretion - to a point. ‘ but the wind does carry sound, so we can’t go singing, or we’ll definitely get the attention. ‘ they tug at bast’s hand until they’re up on the deck before they detach, head for the main ladder up to the magpie’s nest. ‘ i’ll go slow. ‘ they say, before starting their way up.

Sebastien gave a high chuckle, thumb pads going soft over the calloused swath of Wick’s palm. ❝ Singing? You flatter yourself. Or maybe you’re flattering both of us, since, y’know, I don’t think we’ve been in a state fit for it in a long, long time, ami. ❞ They’re up the ladder in the flash of a moment; Wick, practiced, as always, a nimble whisper of motion and ropes, no surprise to anyone who’s known them longer than a second          and Bastien, now, Bastien is on the stumbling block with heights, not afraid so much as too detached, too lightheaded to dominate them properly, to keep balance, rather than just gawk at surroundings, go moon-eyed at the suspended thrill of it all. Wick was closer to Lucille, on this end.

But, well, this isn’t a Montparnasse exercise. This isn’t some will o the wisp show. This is Bastien having to climb for clues, having to climb for the chances that something, bon Dieu, a scintilla of sense, will reach through the mesh between horizon and ocean. Doesn’t know what they expect, really; a hole in the sky? Cedric’s handwriting spooling from a cloud? He should be embarassed at the giddy hope of it; he should be ashamed, really, the spiritual weight of it, that after all this time, he still didn’t make peace with grief. That he couldn’t rest with their memory without tracing it in this insane, edge-of-the-known-world, fool’s errand task. He should be mortified.

He isn’t. He knows exactly what Cedric would do; feel, sometimes, as if he spent a lifetime training them. Cedric was aware about this place, about whatever power corrupted, sanctified, colluded inside it. If not aware, then at least, putain, he had a pretty good guess on it.

And, naturally, as so many times before, Bastien was left to grasp at the threads.

He thinks of it, again: Cedric holding his own arm, looking at the window hatch. Cedric, in their cabin, sleepless as always, eyes quiet and heavy on the horizon.

In the crow’s nest, he turns to Wick. Skips a foot down the last rung, reaching for purchase, and hoists his weight up. Debates, for a moment, with the fluttering remnants of morality still clinging to them, coming clean about it. Justifying this newfound joy, this spirit, this restlessness to seek the truth. He confessed it to Tristan; still doesn’t know how that went down, still doesn’t know what the man intends to do about it. What if Wick just laughs it off for a lark?

The actor lays it on the mat of their mind: “Wick, you know, yeah, my friends? My lovers, too? That whole troupe business? Well, see, garcon, turns out, they’re not fucking dead, after all. That they were on to this, they were intimately, finely aware that something is going on, occult, ritualistic, whatever. Turns out, yeah, that they’re just utter bitches about it.”

For now, he just smiles broader. Maybe later, he’ll explain this to them. Maybe there’s still a future where Wick can be by his side. Bastien steps in their space, the narrow warmth only spurred on by the crow’s nest tight margins, and finds their hand again. ❝ So, how did I do? Climbed quick enough to earn a prize? ❞ He loops their arm around them, draws it to the small of their back until there’s no more distance; such a change from a month ago, in the sick bay; from the roadblocks of grief that stretched behind them. That insurmountable touch, that pier, even as he laid his head  on their shoulder. Is it just because Bastien has enough to go on, now, enough to hope he’ll see them again? Is it healing, really, or just another false, feather-wisp cure? So many kinds of laudanum, after all; why wouldn’t belief be one of them? He asks himself that, just once; then he stamps down the thought. He’s not wrong about his. He can’t be.

Her arms work, it appears. The first hope that has offered anything at all of return. They loop around him, and she sees the circle of it, parts her hands to press separately against his back instead. Burrows into the warmth of him, cheek to collar. Just dips in like the surrounding will be escaped. 

It’s unfair to put that on him, when she still can not know the things he went through on that island. Still can not know the suffering he has endured. 

“I wouldn’t have you there, Bastien. I wouldn’t want you to hurt at all.” Can feel the tremor of her hands, the way her arms shake from holding them up. Not in offering this time, but in request. She’s drawing something from him when she has no right to. Comfort and choice both. Of course she means it, of course she wouldn’t see him on the island - of course she had; for that was her fear, wasn’t it? That Bastien would have been trapped there forever, that there would be no after for him, no future, no chance, no hope. And that is why she had tried to offer it, in the smallest way possible.  Have a creature to hold that may understand you, as you understand it. Have something to care for when the need for your own care seems diminished. Redundant, resigned. Think of how they might hurt when you lash out just to feel something. 

She should stick to it. Say only that. As she said it to Pippy, to Emma, to Jaya, to Jon, to Iskender. As she said it when it was all too late.  Would happily have him hate her for it.  Except.  Except.  Everyone deserves to be loved without bounds, without will inflicted upon them and their own stolen from them. To see that there is a choice, always.  To not be kept in a trap of their own longing, tearing themselves apart for any sense of freedom.  “You have no need to be sorry. Not to me. Never.” 

Lifts her face to kiss the line of his jaw, the top of her sanctuary and the underside of his.  A mess, a terrible mess, the hood that falls behind her flourishes against his coat, more movement than she makes. All the punctuation has to be in words, and she hasn’t the heart for the English. Not now, not when she’s tired of all of it. Tired of the conflict between safety and freedom. “You have me for no return. Always. Even then.” She can not want anything from him, and wanting anything for him is much the same- imposing her choices instead. If he had gone to the island, it would have been her fault, but it would have been his choice.  “Take me to bed, de la manière qui vous plaira.” Laughs then, a hollow aching sound. For she might be in the same condition as he was when he said something similar, something opposite. For he might not even realise the reveal. “There’s too many people here to still be alone. Do not ask me to endanger you.”

That she had understood him all along is no surprise: that comes later, that always comes later. The surprise in how his blood springs up at the dry beckon of her voice: the hollow sound, the hollow of her throat. The way pulse and portion both lunge up inside it. Come with me, Bastien would have said, had they met them anywhere else. Had they met them on a space that went on, stretched outward, rather than inward, rather than in the belly of the hull. I’ll take you somewhere where sorry is meaningless. No sea-glass, no sea-sight. I’ll show you land and towers, come, it’ll be worth the people you leave behind. I’ll show you a life worth the loss.

But they had met here. And for all their whims, for all the fact that he was used to a world with no consequences, Ayla was not. For Ayla, action and price, fault and fraction, came linear. He could never really understand that. For all his wrongs, his marrow-deep hubris, there was only one reckoning, one loss. And, as it turns out, it might not even have been the final one.

He has to tell them about it. Tell them what he knows, what he thinks he does, about the doorway. Tell them what Cedric said.

But now here. It’s not a matter of risk, not a matter of swords swinging over their dove-tailed neck. There is no more of sparrow, and no more of starling to either of them. There is nothing anyone aboard can do to change that: not Estrada, not the God or devil inside the ice. They were creatures transfigured. Creatures drunk on their own power, their own amphora of guilt.

Politics, deserters, figureheads. Homesickness and runaway spies. What fickle gridlines to move inside: damn England or don’t. What intemperate chessboard. No, this is not a matter of queen and knight. This is a matter of steps planned ahead. It’s about time he started learning how to.

Looping his fingers through the crook of her waist, the long, slanted armrest, like the handle of a sugar bowl, Bastien urges her on. The two of them walk in synchronized foxtrot, quick over the rungs, slipping past the wardroom. Their feet pick up, almost tip into a run, so that by the time they reach her cabin they are both flushed and dappled with blood. The actors unlocks the door and almost stumbles through it, the nymph dragged in tow like a falcon on the hunt.

The room is the same, left untouched since she had led him here       before all the truths came crawling back up, apples bobbing inside the barrel, corpses swimming from the marsh.

❝ Dangers? Hardly. The fun is just starting up. Hush, inside with you. ❞ When the door closes, he leans back on the hinges of it. There is so much to do, so much to find, he can feel it springing inside his throat. Navel to nape. Joy to vicious determination.

Sebastien exhales, all spirit, all giddiness. A blush rises to drown all the blue from his face. All the sleep, and the ice, and the snow it carried. The actor bites back a chuckle. Barely, barely; he pins it down with canines and sense.

❝ Oh, I have a world to tell you, Ayla. Je suis tellement reconnaissant que tu sois là. What would I do without you, now that everything starts making sense once more? You absolute pixie, you sprite. To run off like that—quelle folie, quel feu! Oh, I could eat you up. Yes, je sais, some people died. Do not go mournful on me, mon coeur, my beautiful siren. People always die, isn’t that the chorus? We don’t carry their crosses all the way home, do we? We save that for those we love. Oui, oui, we can cry later. Now we must talk, talk, talk! But first: water. We need to get you some water. To drink, yes, but also——❞, their arm shoots up, ruffles through her curls, the damp tangle of hair and exhaustion, ❝ we must douse the wildling out of you. ❞

“My oh my.” Nour’s words drench themselves in dizzying, shimmering apathy. In the sweet syrup of disdain. “Such a darling, pathetic creature you’ve drowned into today, Sebastien. What pushed your head under the water and kept it there, your cheeks are glacial.” They tut, their body leans them closer. Hands marginally colder than Bastien’s frigid cheeks rub colour back into pale skin. Unkind hands. Mocking hands. A could-have would-be promise of sharp nails, flowering red petals on white. If.

“Who knows what the good father intends, mon petit mignon.” Their breath is ice across Sebastien’s ear. “I for one have been praying for their poor souls since the news returned. Is it not so for you?” Sweeping Bastien’s curly hair from his forehead, they tuck a strand behind his ear only for it to spring out again. Nour sighs. “You must take better care of those pretty lips, you’ll ruin yourself in this summer cold. How would you go about seducing our darling officers when you dress yourself like a drenched thing.”

“But what can I say for our recent happenings — the word of the lord is a mouth opened in the nightless dark. Toothless. Hands for teeth.” Wistful. Half-mad, but a drowsy madness. The kind of madness that has poppies crushed underfoot, seeds crushed in the mouth. “If only I had gone. If only I could have seen, heard the dark for my own. But perhaps we’ll have the chance soon, hm? That would be —  idéale, non, mon cher?” A thin slit of white in their smile. “Je veux entendre le silence. Je suis immensément curieux, et tu?”

The French comes as no ambush, at first: who doesn’t know French, today, and still lives enough to cash in their paycheck? It’s spoken with the delicate hoist of a footnote: a petticoat dagger, rather than a sword, and he says: oh, I’ll take it. The eyes don’t strike him as any more dangerous. Bastien has seen mockery in all its shades, in all its gruesome seasons, and this one hardly looks the deadly kind. Whatever it is they’re looking for, they seem to have come a long way for it, and then stopped at the wrong fucking door. He wonders if he should check them, quell it while the going is good. What are you doing, chou chou? Have we met before and I’m short the cue? You’re up my crotch like I owe you blood money.

And they are, and they’re only gaining headway while his mind is pondering on the politesse of it. The journalist is sliding one leg through his, no hunt, not even courtship, and he realizes they scarcely know what they’re about. They keep the palaver, the smokescreen of it, for all that it slinks like carbon from their mouth. Like red flares firing off over the wasteland. Heady, he thinks, high-gone on laudanum. Or perhaps powder; perhaps it’s the coca leaf, rather than the poppy.

❝ Ah, get a grip. You’re giving the rest of us a bad name. Least you could do before you sneak upon a poor cunt like that, dear, is share the spoils. Do you usually start with the bed talk, and only then follow through with some snuff? What ugly routine. I always found it better the other way around. ❞

The actor rolls their eyes, a flash of white pupils, and bats their hand away. He has no time for this. Villiers croaks like a signal, not a voice, not even a throat he might fuck. Something that betrays distress, betrays bleeding necklines. Bastien barely has time to disengage from this tete a tete, this tooth and nail, before their fingers find purchase on the swath of his skin. They nestle there, devoid of any intention. Hollow, held off, but for the nascent injury within. Makes one think of the waylaid traps planted inside the undergrowth. Makes one think of illness, and storm.

Before he speaks, before he utters a word of acknowledgement, she watches. Her eyes note, with concerned attention, how his body years for the space beyond the ship’s rails. For the island that is steadily slipping away. Was this how Emma looked at the island? Before the young naturalist took up the trek herself. If so, how did Noémie not notice that? How did she not stop the girl from marching into the jaws of death? Well, it is too late for that. The past cannot be changed. All she can do now is ensure the safety of the rest. Of Bastien. She takes her place next to him, close enough to touch arms. And when he begins rubbing his limbs from the cold, she easily steps behind; wrapping her own arms around his frame. Does it look like she’s hugging him? Or holding him back from the edge? Both equally valid, both equally true. 

“Désolé, Sebastien. I don’t know when.” Much like on the island, she has been too busy for death. But this time, her hours are filled with plotting and thinking; crafting people into pawns or threads to add to her web of connections and leverages. Let others mourn for their dead, she says to herself. Let her keep her living alive. 

“I wasn’t aware you wanted to speak of the island at all. I would have spoken about it with you, if you wanted. Although I’m not sure what you would gain from it.” She rests her cheek against his hair, a rare sweet motion from the steely overseer. “That’s what they say. One says they saw an eye, another a doorway. I tried to speak with Emma-Rose but she pushed me away. So, who knows what happened on that island. I’m just glad we got our own back from that cursed rock.” Jehanne, Emma. Those are the only two things that mattered to her. Doorways opening to another realm were only a footnote.

❝ An eye? ❞ They might almost laugh, for all the vibrant energy coursing through them. An eye sounds marvelous: it all sounds fucking marvelous. A story, an odyssey in reverse: what was lost, and what was won. At last, after two months——after what bears the imprint of centuries, hours spent screaming inside the pillow, staring blank-faced at the window hulls, half-waiting, half-wanting for another tendril to rise from the black waters——at last, a turn in the tale. A turn that makes sense. Not one of finality. Merely... a test, of sorts.

After all, Cedric and Yelena had put them through so many tests, had they not?

The actor reins it in. Just as before they would fake laughter, plaster on a smile for Noemie’s benefit, now they nip it in the bud of their lips. A red impulse, stamped down inside the embrace. Sebastien wraps around Noemie’, honesty and facade both struggling for a foothold. His lips press a kiss on the top of her head. ❝ That sounds ghastly, ma belle reine. I think Emma might push all of us off for another day or two. Guilt does that to you, tu sais? I would be one to speak, after all I’ve courted guilt, and blame, and went to bed with each. ❞ Was, did: oh, the things endings make of us. But no more. No more. There was a door. Intermezzo, rather than curtain fall. And now for a new spring upstage.

The laughter, oh, he has to gulp it back again. It goes down easy, easy. He cards his fingers through her hair, parts it from the way it’s fallen over her forehead. Then he turns her around, a half-pirouette leading from the taffrail, his hands tight around the lithe grip of hers.

“I— no,” Laurents balks lowly as his eyes shift to the book, taken aback when Bastien makes a connection he himself didn’t catch. Suddenly, it feels rather obscene to read about the trifles of this Emma when the one they’ve come to know is out there. “—I hadn’t realized,” he clears his throat. Hands restless, shoulders rolling as if even they don’t sit right in their sockets. Now, he puts the book down entirely. Mops his clammy brow. Notes the familiar itching, twitching in Sylvain’s legs but fails to ascribe it proper meaning.

It’s a far harder thing to hold his tongue in the weary half-light, but Bastien ( even in their own disarmament ) still has a way of slipping past his shell and provoking the gristle beneath. “And you seek out the soul ‘same way I’ve seen many a surgeon wield their scalpel.” He volleys thoughtlessly, ducking his head to ruffle his hands through the disheveled curls. Always with the digging, you. You- Holds his tongue because the heighted irritation is just another passing vice, filling space withdrawal burrows. Tells himself, it does not become him; he will not become it.

Uncanny, then, that the next subject the actor raises is the Surgeon. He’d have thought to ladle his woes, maybe, had they not just filled the bowl with this ‘favour or two’. Had they not just spoken to him with a a familiar hoarseness. With a familiar glaze in the seeking eyes. Suddenly, he feels quite cold in the bones.

And it’s Leonard’s swift comprehension that speaks to truths his tongue will not; it’s his bloodhound’s nose for the question Bast is asking, just as the one he isn’t.

There’s something I need you to do for me. He can guess well enough.

“Don’t.” Leo croaks with a rousing shake of his curly head. “Ne me demande pas ça.”

                                                      ⁎⁎⁎

❝ Ah, mais pourquoi pas? Que s'est-il passé, Laurents? ❞ Without calculation, with no measure of grace, Bastien turns to the corner. From the seat further off, as if it were a pulpit, Laurents frets, blanches. Flings out axioms, calls the soul to the forefront. How emblematic; how empty. In response, Bastien bares teeth.

He thinks upon the chaplain’s bones, where his head meets the bench, where the wood licks the nape; occiput, he chances they’re called. Cedric would chastise him for not remembering. Cedric would chastise him for not having sucked their marrow out, by now.

Their eyes lave the top of his head, from crown to sternum, from cock to crossed fingers, with the depth they carried all the way. The depth of what they know about the man, as well as what they don’t. As well as what they don’t even have to. Safeguarded, stashed pocket-deep. Stored away, back when he still wanted to be good; back when he still wanted to be good enough to earn his friends back. Back when he was a wounded thing, lashing out, rather than a thing with a plan.

As if the priest were a whetstone, Bastien drags the length of their gaze all across. Hones it, holds it down.

There’s no delicacy to be kept, just as there was none to be had. They had walked this fair game before, hadn’t they? The actor had cast his pennies on this spin, once ago, and he had been all too swiftly turned away. So be it. He’s not one to hold grudges, not one to nurse injuries about his cocksmanship. They could’ve had Laurents on his knees, if they wanted. They had settled for touching his neck, that day in the cartography room. A finger under the hook of their collar; the stiff symbol of it. That opening and closing, between paper slips and leather, old tomes growing mold, and the viola still playing over it. As if it didn’t matter. As if this man wasn’t offering himself for the taking. Bastien had not advanced, then. Had not seized their jaw around the throat.

Now, like like any sparing, like any boon, they are here for their toll. The rulers raise their levy; the conquerors hold out their palm.

Lick it, Laurents. Sugar cube and spit. I could’ve taken the little self-illusion you have left.

❝ Do I not bore you, Father? Because, frankly, I bore myself; un petit peu. The seduction, the saccharine game of it. Are you not tired? I can promise you this, and that, and legs spread open, and it’ll be all the same to you. We both know there’s nothing you want from me        or, rather, nothing you’ll allow yourself to. But that doesn’t mean I can’t make it ugly. Doesn’t mean I can’t make you loathe it: being upright, being true. Being this thing you chose, withdrew into, a prim little coward. Oh, I know there’s no point offering either mouth or mercy for you. But the pain it’d take for you to say no, n’est ce-pas, is almost as much as the guilt of saying yes. Should we put it to the test? ❞

On the floor, their leg sketches an arc. They put their weight on it; half-way to raising up, half-way to springing. It’s a taunt, and yet it isn’t. There’s no way Laurents would know they lack the power to stand up, now, lack the power to practice the sins furled on the bluepeter. They might topple over, if they tried. But their eyes carry all the intensity of the hunt, the fox-race, the spring through the glade. For all that their limbs are bloodied with it, and the thorns are reining them in. Bloodhound inside the bracken; how’s that for a prayer book gild? The actor chuckles, a drop of sound. A volley of splinters.

e : the mutiny / t : some time post mutiny, late morning / l : deck / p : @thespicn​

the air is colder when there aren’t any clouds - despite the direct sunlight, it only threatens snow blindness against the ice that the ship skirts around. still, there’s something to be said of the freshness of it, energy and bouyancy. it brings them light-footed to a number of doors, but they’re dismissed from each one for work, and no doubt their own shift starts soon -

surely bastien’s leg has healed by now? and the fresh air ought to do them some good. they haunt the ship and ask a few questions and find bastien alone, presumably unotherwise occupied ( they don’t truly bother to check ). they reach a hand out to him, ask ‘ want to see what the view looks like from the very private crow’s nest? ‘

They do a double take, at this       just a small quiver to their brow, a jump of their chin. The actor stares at the palm for a beat. Bemused, rather than put off; with so much happening, how can you fault anyone for keeping their distance? Doesn’t even know if he wouldn’t prefer it. Some avoidance, some drawback of feeling, some panel sliding shut. Because there is just so much he has to research. So much he has to find out. Where does one even start? Old Gods, sky doors, sacrifices. Things frozen in the ice. Who could he even go to?

Bon sang, but hey were never the bookish type. They loved their plays, and could nurse a good poem to its grave, roll it off the tongue until it lost all sense and left only music behind. But they didn’t read for information. Didn’t pore over text, not unless it transported them somewhere beautiful, a place or a notion that burst upon the tongue. That stayed there, steadied you. They could never cope with Cedric’s scrolls, the tomes and heaps of it—it was a point of contention, gentle mockery between them. If anything was ever gentle. If anything was ever just a game.

The thought is a splatter of ice, a slab of it. What if Cedric had known about it?

Wick, insistent, lovely Wick, a grin like a parting of legs on their face, prevents it from unfolding. Whatever they’re looking for, Bastien can look, too. Could use the visibility to take the lay of the land. They grip the rigger’s palm, thumbprint on the callouses. ❝ If you’ll be patient about it, then yes. I’m up for a climb. But hurry me along on those bloody ropes and I’ll sink my teeth in your ankle. ❞ A corner of their mouth ticks, upturns. ❝ Private? Tsk. Always thought you liked putting on a show. Bon, alors—how private is it? ❞

“i’ve had enough memorials for one lifetime–for once i didn’t ask.” tristan shrugs his shoulders as he comes to stand beside them–for once in his life, or at least, for the first time since christian was dragged below–it feels as though he is coming in safely to the right port-of-call, on the back of a gentle breeze, instead of standing in the eye of a hurricane. had he not fallen in love with tristan like this? stood on the deck of a good ship, his hands wrapped around the rigging, the sea rolling restless and alive underneath of him? 

he spares a glance around the top deck–before he does the unthinkable and allows the corners of his mouth to pull up into a smile, before he reaches forward and wraps his hand gently around their neck and pulls them close enough to press a kiss to the sharp corner of their lips. that young man, the guard–he was brave. his sacrifice should be honored with equal bravery. 

he lets his hand fall to his side again, before he comes to lean against the railing, before he fixes his eyes briefly on the island–so ordinary, another large portion of cleaved rock floating without purpose, here in the daylight. “i don’t know for sure what happened to them out there–part of me isn’t sure that i want to. so one more horrible thing happened, another person lies dead because of that fucking rock–add it to the list. nothing surprises me anymore.” he shakes his head, bites down hard on his bottom lip before exhaling–allowing the fight to drain from him, the stubborn hope that feels so much like anger that simmers in the pit of his stomach. 

“nothing walked out, mon coeur–that much i know. it only took the boy. i did ask about that, for the same reason.” 

                                                      ⁎⁎⁎

❝ Mais tu ne comprends pas? ❞ He wants to jump out, take Tristan by the hands. Bury their face in his neck, bite down, clamp onto a squeal or a scream because it’s true. It wasn’t some gibberish, some goose chase laid out by soldiers to excuse their own incompetence.

Oh, doesn’t he see what this means? Bon sang      certainly one of the smartest men he’s ever met, ever longed for, would not get boggled down by a few gruesome details. Would keep his eyes trained to the big picture, the only thing that matters to them. In Bastien’s ears, the patterns fall so loudly into place, each of them in the perfect slot, the pincer to puzzle, that any other sound is susurrus. Any other life is undercurrent.

It means that this place is the passage. It means that the creature that seized their ship, that sinuous half-form, is nothing more than a rail line. Something to be traversed. What had closed can be torn open what more. And the cost of it? The toll it would exact? Why, when had an actor ever inquired about price? It’s poor form, doing it before the show.

They giggle, a tingle to the chords. Sebastien’s tone reaches out to touch parts of Tristan that his fingers cannot. When they next speak, there is something of the votary inside it, something of the choir. A breaching into the inner sanctum. ❝ Oh, we have a lot of work to do, dear Capitaine. Do lift your spirits, or I’ll have to do it myself        and I dare say our reputations on this ship can’t take one more blow. ❞

The actor chances a sideways glance, scouting out for errant deckhands. Eavesdrop, eyes that can’t be spared. The prow’s surroundings are empty, but even like this, oh, merde. They know Tristan likes to cut a fine thing, propriety, decorum. Favors his appearances something wicked. It used to drive them mad, really, and even now, after everything, accounts for so much of their infatuation with him. Though perhaps that is no longer true: perhaps stoicism led to something truer, something darker. Like lead paint stripped off by the saltwind. So he takes a leap of faith, leap of need—skips forward. Presses in. Presses his face to Tristan’s collar.

|| closed starter for @thespicn

|| location : hms promethean | fahra’s cabin

|| date : a few hours after the mutiny

When she finds them on the ship, Fahra momentarily believes Sebastien is a ghost or a mirage. Their disappearance, Emma’s disappearance, Jehanne’s leaving with others to rescue or worse and all of the events, the returned being welcomed with weapons and betrayal. Suspicious stares crawling behind her back, fingertips ready to murder someone, Fahra still is in shock that no one has sent the survivors to their death. She finds Sebastien and her first reaction is to grab his hands and slowly walk towards her cabin. Her hands are clammy, a thing that a few days ago would have made her feel ashamed and nowadays the only constant feeling she feels is liquid dread filling her lungs.

Too focused on walking, she doesn’t even notice if she’s hurting Sebastien, if her fingers are trembling and if they will leave purple bruises. Probably not, she could wonder that both of them are fragile like small birds made of glass, physically hurting one would require hurting yourself. This leads to thoughts of hurting, the strange sort of thoughts that make her chest ache with the welcoming feeling of despair.

She brings Sebastien to her cabin (she refuses thinking about Iskender and this gift), opens the door and rudely pushes him into the room. Fahra knows she’s not acting like herself, she’s acting more like a cornered animal, mind becoming a blank space of panic as vultures become close. She could trust Dowling’s offer of safety, the one given by Estrada and Pasha is one she won’t allow herself to feel calm while choking on it. In the end, as most animals do, she hides in a hole, hoping to feel safety in the cabin and knowing that she only will feel safe when near the survivors.

❝ Where were you? ❞ she asks not accusingly, but with voice filled with relief. She knows she is not Noémie, not Nyima, the protectiveness she once had is a thing of the past, it transformed itself into selfishness, and yet surprisingly, she finds herself searching for visible injuries on Sebastie’s skin, searches for purple and dark bruises or any subtle sign of harm done. ❝ Did someone hurt you? ❞ she asks again, the question barely a whisper echoing throughout the small room.

She takes the inventory of his bruises with such intensity, such lingering touches, that it feels more like lovemaking than like being put back together. She takes it with more care than people have taken most things from him. In as long back as he can remember, or as far as he can bear to. Inside that timeline which started with Geneva, and spooled, like some God-touched skein of yarn, all the way to the Arctic. All the way here.

Bastien tries to shush her, coddle the worries into bed. Coo them out of the room. There is to Fahra what there was—no, damn it, what maybe still is—to Essi. A softness so perennial, so boundless,  that it managed to blanket all the edges in him. It should be a shock, to think they’d never met before The Agathe; to think even now there weren’t more than a handful of months, of meetings, spread at their backs. But here it is. She touches them and they are half bird, half beckon. They’re already springing to the pad of her thumb.

Bastien carries her palm to their lips. Places a kiss, a lip turn like a game of chess. A love meant to distract, detract. It was how he’d always done it before, when he limped home hoisting more bruises and bullet than the furl of a flag, and Essi, or even Lesya, would chafe their knuckles with fretting. Of course, there were more wounds back then. Of course: they were more shallow.

The inventory is this: a cracked lower lip, flesh cleaved in several places where he’d bitten it. A patch bluing on his temple, a purple circle lower on their chest, this one hidden by the woolcoat. Some gash down the back of his arm, a nasty thing from shoulder to wrist      that one, he cannot recall. The moment Toussaint had locked the door he became something else. Like it happens now, with Fahra, only in reverse. And oh, what a reverse. Beast, rather than bird; though did anyone tell them apart, ever, unless they loved them? Could anyone name anything they did not warm back into life? Did anyone have the right to?

Fahra would understand. It’s why he doesn’t say it. ❝ Hurt me? That depends. I did get put under key, and, ma bien-aimée, you know how much I favor that. You know how it favors me. So, no. It wasn’t... wasn’t a cozy time of it. ❞ He laughs empty against the lines of her hand. Takes in the scent of talc, lavender, something velvet and veering home. ❝ It could’ve been worse. No one laid a hand on me, Fahra, beloved. Mon Dieu, with the state I’m in, it would’ve looked far uglier if they did. C'est ce que c'est, I suppose. All others point are moot, really, non? Where were       what held you? ❞

1st August the mutiny, immediate aftermath lower deck for @thespicn

There is silence.  There has been silence.  Silence has a noise. It’s the sound that pours from a doorway, as Jon and August scream, it’s a howl, It’s in everything that follows. The thawing of the ice, the weight of footsteps that change when they carry a person, and then carry a body.  It’s all the words Marcus Estrada throws like coins to penniless children. It’s all the gruffness and thumps on flesh as rifles jab.  It’s the skittering half of all things in Ayla Dowling’s head, until all she can hear is the singing of blood. Her own. Until she launches herself at whoever is in front of her, eyes trained on the Vice-Admiral’s back. The only thing that saves her from a bullet, is the way her hands drive from underneath the mutineer’s chest, to reach out, away, away, after. As though she means no harm to them, as though she’s simply trying to climb over the obstacle. She does nothing, and still the world spins, still her head spins.  By the time it’s over, by the time there’s no form before her gaze at all, no path to follow, she’s being held up only by the arm around her waist. Arms limp at her sides.  All that forward momentum goes to her mind again, and not her shell. 

It’s centuries before she sees anything again, except the tactics shaping before her eyes. The hallway is a blur, before there is a pinprick of light that seeps- creates a focal point as colours paint to canvas, and surrounding can be seen. Like some forest being hit with the sun’s rays through the treetops, animals awakened in the dusk. 

She goes to him. Except she doesn’t, she is rooted. Can’t quite tell if it’s because she simply can not move, or will not- for she refuses to want anything of him. And right now, right now. 

She sees him. In all her betrayal, she has seen him. “I’m sorry.” It’s an exhalation, when her voice was stolen to hope, carved into mantra instead, to whisper to August over and over and over again. To imagine at Pippy’s brow, filtering through somehow. “Were you safe? Are you safe?” The Agathe, the question of them, the way Marc had answered. She needs her hands to move, to reach for him. Yet they do not belong to her, once more. 

The only thing he expected to be of interest, upon blinking into awareness this morning, was tearing out Casimir’s throat. They attuned their scope to it, the little they could muster from focus. Nursed the embers of some great rage inside their chest, bent over them and blew. Oh, no great loss, salud: Bastien had certainly tried. Then in the middle of their fit, tactical in how he places his scope, the surgeon said: oh, yes, speaking of—the hunting party returned. With the fated turn of an astrolable, the actor’s thoughts pirouetted. Priorities sifted the air like a dagger, an extended ankle. Ayla. He had to do and find them, lead them to it, this semblance of home. He has questions. Above that, above all of it, he has questions that breathe in tandem with him.

On deck, hell has already broken, and is now patching itself back together. One might almost dread missing it, this implosion, this artisan disaster.  But Bastien knew enough of tipping points to know: half the time, they’re not worth the buzz. So, what? An usurper stole away the ship’s helm, as deftly and certainly as spiriting away any other symbol. It hardly proved much eventuality, and even less event. With power grabs like this one, you could, on the usual, rest easy. There wasn’t a whole lot to miss. And on the Promethean, sure enough, come next month hell will freeze all over again. Just in case some watchers missed the show.

It suits them fine to be flippant about it. But even as his arms want to wrap around her, they know this would not play that way for Ayla. For them, this wouldn’t be a matter of casual lines, casual mechanics; but of casualties. She had been put at the center of it. Strangely, similarly, much like the Agathe survivors once were. He remembers it: the crosshairs, the crossroad. And the young Dowling had helped them out. Even for that, something inside Bastien’s soul would still jump in a kindred motion. A pulse of loyalty, a sprig of kindness nursed in all the worst places.

Of course, now there is far more than that. There is the matter of the door.

He pulls them by the shoulders into his embrace. In the end, the few inches of height allow them to shadow her, hide both face and farce from the air. The flaps of his coat are pulled, extended, to wrap around her own body too. ❝ You’ve made a first-class mess of it, Ayla Dowling ❞, Sebastien speaks, chuckles, into their hair. He’s giddy with it, the hope that something else awaits; the hope that it is not all written into darkness.

three truths.

first: he is not giving sebastien the vial. he took an oath, primum non nocere, and while he doesn’t believe in apollo, or asclepius or hygieia or any of those other gods he pledged covenant to that final night before his graduation, with a mouthful of wine and latin whispered in unison, the brush of a dozen hands pacing circles under the stars– he does believe in intention. in choosing who you are to be, and moving through the world as that person, no matter how difficult it may become. 

it’s not the first time he’s withheld a balm, and it won’t be the last– how strange, the part of caring that comes with saying no. saying, some pains are good for you. some pains leave you better off. 

second: he is not letting sebastien on that ice. primum non nocere, indeed– he has the itching certainty that to stand by and let him waltz to his death would leave the surgeon somehow as culpable for the loss as if he had slid the knife in himself. or, more likely, knowing what is out there: crushed the man’s trachea between his own beastly teeth. 

he’d like to believe this further proof of his moral integrity, but he knows there are others with similarly dangerous plans for their night– and he is not on their doorsteps now, is he? is he even bothering to intercede, does he even feel bad? no. non, pas du tout. patently, it’s obvious: his morals play favorites, and sylvain– hopeless thing, from the ache in his eyes and down to the small bones of his ears– has somehow wedged his way into the doctor’s good graces, without either of them noticing anything afoot. 

a realisation to examine later, surely; now, he just clenches his jaw, sighs. looks at the man like a problem to be solved. a puzzle with an answer at the end of it, a thing to be cracked open. what will stop you, sebastien? what do you want more than anything else?

and then, thirdly, lastly: a circling. step back until you hit a wall; retreat until it clicks into place. sylvain is tantalus, and casimir holds the one vial aboard that may aleviate his very specific brand of suffering. he is not giving sylvain the laudanum, not tonight, not ever. but sebastien doesn’t know that. sebastien doesn’t know him. doesn’t know what he would and wouldn’t do, to get what he wants. doesn’t know what he wants at all.

he makes a small, displeased face at the way the other man half-collapses without casimir to hold him up. the surgeon’s name expelled like a sigh. further proof of the wreck of his state– further proof he has no business leaving the ship at all. “perhaps you’re right, sylvain. surely we’ve abandoned the realm of the conventional by now, this far into the abyss. it would pure cruelty to prolong your suffering, knowing the key to your relief is so close at hand.” as if the words themselves have conjured it, he brings the vial out from his pocket. holds it to the light between them, just out of reach of the other man. just beyond the grasp of that hungry, hungry gaze. 

“i can’t give you the entire vial without the loss being noted, but i won’t leave you high and dry either. tell you what…” pockets the drugs again and steps further away, back towards the door now. like tempting a stray cat out of a barrel. “come with me to my quarters, and let me administer the laudanum myself. i’ll be able to monitor you in peace there, in case anything goes awry. and once you’ve settled, you’ll be free to go on your merry way, off into the night. d’accord?”

                                                      ⁎⁎⁎

He doesn’t know what it is that surprises him, really, about the surgeon’s quarters. It seemed as if the entrance happened in an instant, a knife-flick, rather than the pull of a door. His sense of time is warped, either way; wrapped, too      sleeping inside things that passed and things that never will. He tries to pare it down: is it the size of the room? The fact that it’s more barebones, more stripped of varnish and odds, varnish and ends? All that regalia they associated with Toussaint, up in Hotel Dieu. All the souvenirs of someone who can decide what to save. Decide what to keep.

Bastien blinks, and their eyelids start hurting. Yes, they knew it’d happen, the pinches inside soft tissue. Knew it shouldn’t be much of a start at all. They used to drip milk and water from a cloth, when Thien went through this; boiled water, cooled down inside the cusp of their hands. Thien would say, I feel like I’m either going blind, or like I should. Like I’d rather. Bastien wouldn’t say anything at all. Would say, hush, maybe, would weave in different subjects, different spotlights to stun the pain. But there’s no stunning to pain, not this kind. He knows that now. Wonders if it made Thien feel weak, the fact that he even tried to move him out of it. A center that can never budge. A center that can never turn, only grow.

The apprentice he was, the diptych of obedience and airs, would care if Toussaint noticed. If he looked at their eyes at all, and took stock of the red rim around them, the almost-tears. Would be irked beyond measure that someone would accuse him of crying.

But there it is. And what else to accuse? From Toussaint’s vantage, the grand vesta opening on all this burnt land, Bastien is blameless. No guile, save for the weakness. Of him, on him. For Toussaint, there never was a difference.

He shudders when the door closes. The current nips at their limbs, and without even thinking, muscle drawn to what is safest, they gravitate towards the pipes. Knows where they are, because this room, much like the best of them, mirrors Ayla’s cabin. The cabin lent to him. Fuck, he needs to go back for Ayla. Bon sang, get on with it. I have to go and see what they’re talking about, down there. Have to go and be with them. Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for a chance to make a headaway of it, docteur? To find that island again, and look inside it? Wear it all inside out? Do you know? Anything, anything at all?

The actor’s palms stick to the wall, desperate to capture the heat. Their back half collides, half curls over it, ribs bunched by the cornice. Their chin drops into their chest. It is not, really, as if they had much power to begin with, back when Toussaint cornered them in the sick bay. But now, in this bedroom, this consecrated shrine, all the balances upend. He loses even the little power he had; the bargaining chips, the common ground, the hunting ground. Power? Need strips you of it         that is what Cedric had kept on trying to teach him, and Bastien refused, in some perverse, pervasive acceptance of their hunger, to accept at face value.

❝ Well? Will you apply your cure, then? ❞ He speaks softly to the surgeon. It’d be a mistake to think it a softness of its own. His tone drops, droops. A lulling pendulum in the cave of their throat. Sebastien can hardly muster more; flesh betrays, where before they had so often betrayed it. Wants to say, get on with it, I have a whole conspiracy to catch up with, and they’re messy businesses to be late to. Wants to say, who the fuck hurt you, Toussaint, and why did you never touch me? Wants to say, not underneath, but at the top of the pile, the quickest blanket to grab, will you let me sleep here? I cannot bear to sleep in that cabin alone. There are nights where I prefer it. Those are the worst nights. Those are the nights that scare me. Please, I’ll be good—just, let me? I’ll take the floor. Wants to say, well, ask, where exactly does need stop? How much can need amass, amend? It’s awful, that he thought he loved Cedric, the troupe, life, with an infinite spirit. He understands, now, bunched in the corner of this hard man’s chamber, that there is only one thing to be spoken of in infinities.

Need.

And poppy is the son of it.

From slumping, his body boils into something else. His body understands the threat of this better: that it might not happen, that Casimir might not follow on his word. What’s a word kept to a wraith? What’s a word kept to voiceless things? No. No, anything, but I must have the vial.

With a muffled scream, the actor throw up their arms. This dithering, this stalling—and what for? Casimir has no need of anything he might give. In their gesture, the arms convulse, a tension that springs rather than streams through. And the, well, the actor just turns inside the corner. With their hand is still on the wall, they push themself forward, straighter up, closer into his space. For all the good it does. Oh, le réveil. They hiss the words, scales-caked tidings.

❝ I know you think I was set to betray you, Docteur. I know you think I must be punished for it. Bon Dieu, perhaps you think I must be punished for a lot of things. But if there’s anything left of mercy inside you, you’ll string me on the rack later. Tomorrow. Do whatever you want. When’s the last time you had a shot at it? A living thing entrusted to your hand, and not a dead one? Je le jure, Toussaint, you can cut my whole body open and throw it into the water. Hack at the liver, the twirling eye nerves. Anything. Merde, anything. Just. Please. Give. Me. The. Dose. ❞