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The news is brought by Admiral Hennessey himself. He shows up unannounced, well after dinner, which Thomas takes as anything but a good sign.
He is vaguely aware that both he and Miranda are not too presentable, certainly not dressed to receive guests, but it doesn’t seem to matter much, if at all, in the face of the admiral’s hardened expression.
The first thought that flashes through Thomas’ mind goes to James, because it is him that a member of the Royal Navy knocking at his door makes him think of. It brings to mind superior officers notifying the family of bad news.
(He hopes he is only being paranoid. After all, they are not James’ family, not officially, there would be no reason for such a visit.)
“Admiral Hennessey,” Miranda greets him, politely, when Thomas fails to say anything. She moves closer to him, her fingertips hovering around his wrist. “What brings you here? We were told it was urgent.”
Even in the face of Miranda’s smile and pleasant tone, Hennessey’s hard expression doesn’t shift, not at all. His eyes barely leave Thomas’ face, and that look is so icy that it makes it painfully clear that there are no friendly or nowhere nearly warm feelings to be found underneath.
(Thomas’ stomach keeps sinking and sinking, his bad feeling not seeming much like paranoia anymore.)
“I have received news from a merchant ship that left the port of Nassau,” Hennessey begins, almost in a snarl. “The governor, his wife and their son were butchered by a bunch of pirates, over a dispute for money. Everything fell into chaos soon afterwards, it seems. There is currently no law in Nassau.”
Thomas curses under his breath, his stomach shrinking at the thought of the governor and his family’s fate, their faces flashing through his memory, and at the realization of how this will be perceived in Whitehall, how this will affect all the pirates that he wanted to offer a chance at redemption to, not just those who decided to commit such an act. If he can separate the few from the mass, he knows that not many will be as generous.
It is a few seconds later that it comes to mind that there is an even more pressing concern, though.
“Pardon me,” he says, slowly, his knees weaker than they ought to be and a lump in his throat that he barely manages to work through. “But why is this news coming from you? Where is Lieutenant McGraw?” He supposes he could simply be too tired after a long journey, but Thomas knows him, and he knows that he’d take a carriage straight to them as soon as he’d set foot on English soil.
He has to wonder why he hasn’t.
Hennessey’s expression turns to a bitter smile that looks more like an angry, feral snarl. “What do you suppose a mob of angry pirates would do to a member of the Royal Navy, Lord Hamilton? Why do you think I am the one standing here?”
Thomas staggers backwards, his head feeling all too light and no air seemingly coming to fill his lungs. “What?” he creaks out, something stubborn in him stomping its foot, claiming that it makes no sense and it must be wrong and—
“They didn’t let them leave,” Hennessey presses, his tone cold and unforgiving, no trace of sympathy in his expression. “And I imagine they would be the least forgiving with the man who was commanding them.”
Miranda, god bless her, gently guides him to the nearest chair, letting him down before he can crumble to the ground and squeezing his hand into hers, even as he holds onto that lifeline so tightly that it must hurt her.
God, no, no no no—
“Are you sure about this, Admiral?” Miranda asks, her voice only quivering slightly. At least, that is what Thomas gathers from what he can hear through the pumping of his heart, echoing in his ears as if to mock him, this the sound your heart makes when you are alive, even as it lacks its companion.
“Positive.”
“Perhaps he managed to—”
“He did not.”
He died, on the other side of the ocean, trying to execute Thomas’ plan, Thomas’ vision for Nassau, that cursed colony always resisting England’s attempts at subduing her. James told him more than once how implausible and risky his plan was and—and he died to prove it.
He is gone, and for a moment everything that Thomas deemed important up until five minutes ago ceases to matter. Right now, if he had a match to lit, Thomas might burn the whole of Nassau to the ground for this.
He wants to scream.
(He wants to apologize. Would James hear? Would it mean anything at all?)
Thomas blinks back into the conversation when Hennessey looks like he is about to leave, his eyes once again planted in his. His previously hardened and cold expression is now twisted to anger, the kind of hatred that Thomas recognizes must hide the same anguished scream he himself is fighting to suffocate.
“I warned him,” Hennessey hisses, his face trembling with barely repressed fury. “I told him to be careful with the whole lot of you, I knew that you’d ruin him eventually—” He falters, for a moment looking at him like he might just shoot him where he sits – in all honestly, Thomas might not even attempt to move out of the way, not right now –. “This is on you.”
Thomas watches him leave, frozen.
He wakes up confused.
His head is pounding like he hasn’t slept at all, exhaustion weighing on his shoulders and his throat hoarse like he has been screaming himself raw. He wakes with his face buried in Miranda’s neck, her arms tight around him, and he wonders if there is a particular reason why they are sharing a bed, or if it was just one of those nights in which they both wanted company instead of space.
His stomach shrinks at the thought of the dream he was having, about James and a disaster occurring in Nassau, his worry at him being so far away from home disturbing his sleep not for the first time—then, Miranda stirs too, always too light a sleeper not to realize that he rose first, and he can read the truth in the look she gives him.
“Good morning,” she says, gentle and impossibly sad, her fingers running up and down his arm.
He stares at her for a few moments. “It wasn’t a dream, was it?” he asks then, barely above a whisper, silently praying her to deny it. After all, hope springs eternal in the human breast, does it not?
Miranda swallows, her eyes dropping for the briefest moment, and that hesitation is enough of an answer.
“If you are referring—” she eventually begins, quietly, her fingers curling around his shirt as if she were afraid that he might attempt to run weren’t she to keep him close. “If you are referring to the Admiral’s visit, I’m afraid it wasn’t a dream, darling.”
His breath catches in his throat, perhaps a merciful attempt from fate at choking him, and for a moment he can’t even think, his head buzzing and the events following the Admiral’s arrival becoming clearer, as in response to Miranda’s declaration that they were real.
He might cry, if he had any tears left.
God, James—
“Thomas?” Miranda gently calls, trying to nudge him out of his head.
He lets out a strangled sound, maybe a sob, maybe a disbelieving laugh at the realization of his own massive stupidity. “I did this,” he chokes out, the admiral’s cold expression burned in his mind. How awfully arrogant and stupid was it of him to think that a handful of good men could bring such a change?
“No,” she says, firmly. “You couldn’t have known—”
“You did!” Thomas yells, his voice coming back all at once as he pulls himself up in a sitting position. He wants to shove her away, he certainly doesn’t deserve the comfort of grovelling in her embrace after— “Did you not warn me more than once of the consequences that this might bring on us? Did I not shut down your concerns?”
She presses her lips together, not wanting to agree with him even though he can read it in her eyes that she does. She mimics his position. “You couldn’t have known that he would—” She falters. “I did not think anything like this would happen either,” she says then. It’s a lie. They might not be husband and wife in the strictly traditional sense, but Miranda is his best friend of years, and he knows her well enough to be completely sure that death was among the consequences that she had pictured. She wouldn’t have shown so much concern for the mere risk of a blow to their already rotten reputations.
Though she probably never pictured that the execution would be carried out by pirates.
God, James—
“I shouldn’t have let him get involved,” Thomas mutters instead of arguing, the fire gone as soon as the image of an hanged man wearing James’ face flashes before his eyes. Are there even less civilized ways to execute someone? Bloodier ways? Does he wish to know?
(Not really, though he probably ought to. He should see this and nothing but this every time he closes his eyes, for the rest of this life.)
Miranda lets out a low chuckle, so hollow that it’s unsettling. “I don’t believe he left you much of a choice,” she points out. “I seem to remember a rather dramatic declaration of loyalty to you and your plans, in front of none other than your father.”
Thomas remembers too, he remembers having to swallow back a wave of tears when James stood up and did what no one else seemed to be willing to do: for all the men that attended his salons, nodded along to his ideas, perhaps even truly agreed, they all turned their backs on him in the light of day. They all whispered of his madness and foolish idealism in Whitehall, no one dared taking the stand Thomas wished they would. And then James—the one he wouldn’t have asked to do this to, the one that in spite of everything Thomas tried his hardest to keep out of his father’s hair, stood up and loudly claimed his place by Thomas’ side, with no thought to what he was risking.
Thomas loved him more than ever for it, he was grateful for it—a little scared, yes, but James seemed so sure and—You are good man. More people should say that. And someone should be willing to defend it.
The only thing that seems to matter pertaining to who Thomas is, right now, is that he got the man he loves killed. Because he dared too much. For the first time in a long while, foolish idealism sounds about right.
“I should have let it go—I should have forgotten all about it when he asked me to,” he says it quietly enough that he isn’t sure Miranda heard, his heart heavy with shame.
He can almost see James’ teasing grin, hear his voice as he taunts: “Shouldn’t a literate man such as yourself know a little more of what happens because of the hubris of men, my Lord?”
Miranda soothingly runs her fingers through his hair, and when he meets her eyes they are full of unshed tears. “Come here,” she only whispers, gently pulling him forward.
He knows that he should probably push her away, because somewhere in her heart she must blame him for this, for not having listened to her counsel and having so caused something horrible to happen to someone they both care for so deeply—instead, weak as he apparently is, he gratefully buries himself in her, clinging to the back of her nightgown like he is fighting a force dragging him down to the pits of hell.
“I didn’t want this,” he rasps out, the urge to cry pushing behind his eyes, constricting his throat, yet no tears seem to come out. It feels important to let her know, that at least she knows that he is thoroughly sorry—
“I know you didn’t,” Miranda assures, running her hand up and down his back, while pulling him even closer with her other arm. She pauses for a few moments. “I’m sure he knows it too,” she adds then, quietly.
The next breath Thomas takes turns to a first, painful sob, and as he completely fails to stop his tears and regain enough self-control not to burden Miranda with his sins, shaken by sobs and with each shake of his shoulders echoing as an ache in his chest, it feels like he has no space left to breathe.
He doesn’t know of any funerals.
He wonders, hidden in his room and accepting no company other than Miranda, if one is being organized. Probably a service to the whole crew sailing the ship to Nassau.
There is a chance that Thomas will receive an invitation, as he is probably expected to make an appearance, but then he thinks of the look on the admiral’s face, of the blame he threw at him, and he wonders if he won’t keep him from attending.
If he did, Thomas would be grateful.
“Thomas.”
Miranda quietly closes the door behind her, speaking in an urgent tone as she walks closer to the bed. She has tried to make him resume to his ordinary life, and he has been refusing. As of now, he doesn’t think he could get through the day without bursting into tears at the first reminder of—
“What?” he asks, resigned, mostly to cut off his own thoughts.
She gives him an apologetic look. “Your father is here. He wants to see you.”
Thomas wants to throw up. “No,” he says, firmly. His terror comes out as defiant anger, even though he knows that it isn’t her that he should battle.
“I tried to talk him out of it.” She grimaces a little. “He wouldn’t listen. I’m sorry, you have to see him, or—you know him. He might just come here himself.”
He swallows heavily.
She is right, of course she is. And if there’s one thing worse than having to see his father in the first place, it is not having a chance to dictate how he presents himself for the encounter.
“Tell him I’ll be right there.”
He does his best, dressing himself up properly, trying not to look as exhausted as he feels. He doesn’t completely succeed, he can tell immediately by the way his father scrutinizes him and turns up his nose in disgust.
“You wished to see me, Father?” Thomas asks, jaw tight, in an attempt at cutting off the moment of silent judgement.
He stands tall under his scrutiny, trying to only listen with one ear and not be affected by the satisfaction that his father isn’t even bothering to conceal enough for decency.
“It would seem that things are not going to work out the way you desired.”
You are arrogant, foolish, echoes the implication, nothing but mild disgust for this disgrace of a son, daring not to follow his father’s lead.
“I suppose that at least recent events will serve as a lesson.”
Thomas ceases to let his eyes wander at his father’s pointed tone, turning to him even before he has fully realized what he is referring to.
“That is what you get for wanting to pardon traitors,” he asserts, patronizingly. Thomas is a little too worn out to be properly outraged. Let him think what he will, he doesn’t care. In the wrong as he may have been, disastrous as his idea has turned out to be, he has already been faced with the worst of his punishment. Some more scorn certainly doesn’t hold a candle to it.
There’s a moment of silence, his father considering him carefully. It’s strange that he doesn’t seem satisfied at the lack of a rebuttal, for once in—a very long time, actually. Thomas barely remembers what it felt like to be mute in front of Alfred Hamilton’s judgement.
Perhaps he somehow can see it, that Thomas’ silence has very little to do with him. Perhaps that’s what makes him attempt to dig the knife deeper, looking for some sort of victory.
“It’s a shame, isn’t it?” he asks then. “To lose such a promising officer in a useless errand such as this—but I suppose that after he chose to foolishly follow you down this path of madness he only got what was coming to—”
Thomas isn’t entirely sure how it happens, but he doesn’t even hear the rest of the sentence, and before he knows it his fist is colliding against his father’s face, making him stagger backwards.
He hits again, and again, and he probably would have continued even as his father fell to the ground, hadn’t he felt Miranda’s arms around him, pulling him back before she stepped in between them, facing Thomas and telling him to stop and to calm down—
There’s blood roaming in Thomas’ ears, heavy breaths being dragged out of him as he tries to think and he can only be reminded of his father’s scorn, of his attempt at slandering James’ name for having dared to defy him, of his blatant satisfaction at the outcome—
“You—you insolent—” his father snarls, clumsily pulling himself up, glaring at him like he is trying to will him into submission.
Thomas’ stomach is still boiling.
“Get out,” he thunders, his muscles trembling with rage and need to strike again.
He has never been a violent man, but now this might be just what he needs; this was his father’s last offence, one that Thomas has no intention of letting him get away with, one that he physically can’t let him get away with.
(James was a good man, and someone should be willing to defend him.)
“Go!” he yells, when his father has yet to move.
Thomas is at the receiving end of another glare, one that promises repercussions which he doesn’t have it in him to fear at the moment. Miranda’s hands are still firm against his chest, like she fears that he isn’t done yet, and he doesn’t know if he would disagree.
His father goes, and it’s an hollow victory.
“I hope you feel better, at least,” Miranda tells him, later, her lips pressed into a tight line of disapproval as she takes care of his bruised hand.
(Thomas thinks that it’s a little funny, this whole situation, because this—this is so much more like James than it is like him. It’s funny.)
(It’s horrible.)
“I wouldn’t say better,” he confesses, quietly. He doesn’t feel sorry either. “I felt—something that wasn’t pain, at least. For a moment.” One could make it an habit, of getting drunk off that all-encompassing rage.
Miranda hums noncommittally, not raising her eyes on him. His stomach shrinks at her tacit disapproval, because if there was ever a moment when he needed her close it is now.
“He deserved it,” he says, defensively. Trying to get her to at least admit that much, offer a bridge between them.
(He is not willing to apologize, not for this.)
Miranda looks at him then, silent for a few moments, a shadow crossing her face. He thinks it’s anger.
“Undoubtedly,” she says, tightly. “I would have loved to do that myself.” Thomas’ relief is so great it might be palpable. “But,” she adds then, hardly a surprise. “The last thing you need now is to make him a bigger enemy than he already was. It worries me what he might do in retaliation for your disrespect.”
There’s a laugh building up somewhere down his throat, his sorrow wanting to lash out, ask what more could I lose, but he catches himself, knowing how unfair it would be, knowing he loves her and she doesn’t deserve this.
Instead, he breaks into a small, perhaps more sincere than he would have thought possible, smile. “We could flee to Paris,” he suggests. They used to talk about that, back when they were younger, yearning for freedom.
She meets his eyes once again, smiles tenderly at the memories. “We could,” she agrees, softly.
Perhaps.
Thomas isn’t sure he can live with the memories in this house, with the reminder that London itself is.
They could flee. Start again. Be happy.
(Always one man short. Miranda wasn’t the only one that he ever dreamed of another, freer life with.)
He drops on his armchair, finally resigning himself to not actually reading anything, because for all his need to fill his time with something, each book that he picked up made him want to tear all of the pages off in frustration after a couple of lines. Not even reading brings any comfort now.
He doesn’t have the energy for it, and—hell, there are memories attached to that too.
(When giving your whole self to someone, the risk is that there won’t be anything left untouched.)
The end result is that Thomas can only sit on his own, attempting to ignore the now hourly occurrence of tears prickling at his eyes, his breathing getting more laboured than it is comfortable as his chest tightens.
Miranda, who knows of this, because her sister died when she was twelve, assures him that it gets easier. That he will learn how to better carry it, the memories will grow fonder and brighter and the pain duller.
Thomas isn’t sure if that is for better or worse: if James is still such a strong presence, a ghost following his every step, it is almost like he isn’t fully gone. The moment when Thomas will wake up and not lose his breath as reality hits will be the true tragedy.
“Thomas!”
It takes a few moments for him to register Miranda’s shout, unsure if he has imagined it. As she calls out for him again, he realizes the urgency in her tone, and he shoots on his feet, already moving to the door as it’s opened.
“What—?” he lets the half-question hang in the hair, struck by the tears streaming down her face. He hasn’t seen her have a proper cry yet.
Only then, when they are standing in front of each other and he has reached for her arms in a poor attempt at comfort, he notices that she is smiling, impossibly wide and bright. He frowns, opening his mouth to ask what is happening, when the reason for her strange behaviour walks up behind them, dressed in tatters, dishevelled and with a newly grown beard, but impossible not to recognize.
Thomas’ mouth opens, but not a sound comes out.
James gives him a sheepish smile, shifting his weight from one foot to the other and fidgeting with his hands, clearly not sure of how to behave, and Thomas’ heart all but bursts on the spot.
“James,” he breathes out, relief choking him as he moves towards him, his legs seemingly too heavy to allow him to leap as fast as he would need to. “James—”
He pulls him into a tight embrace as he breaks into a smile and his vision turns to a blur, his fingers trembling as he tries to get a solid hold of James’ shirt, because he isn’t letting him go anywhere, ever again, not so long as he is alive—
James is alive. He’s standing right in his arms, hugging him just as fiercely.
Please, Lord, don’t let it be a dream, please—
“I’ve missed you,” James utters in his shoulder, quickly, like he is afraid to voice it, and Thomas breaks into a laugh, letting tears fall down his cheeks without shame.
I’ve missed you too, so much, you have no idea— He wants to say it, to let James know in excruciating detail just how much he needs him to be there, just how badly it wrecked him to lose him, but all he manages is to utter his name, still as disbelieving as he is overjoyed.
He pulls back, blindly searching for James’ mouth out of sheer need to taste him again, instead of bitter tears of grief. James doesn’t push him away, parting his lips when he gets as lost in the moment as Thomas is, then he hears him mutter in protest, pulling away slightly.
“Thomas,” he whispers, a frantic warning as he looks around for witnesses.
“I don’t care,” Thomas pleads, fully ready to let everything else burn just to have this, he has missed him and he needs him, he cannot waste another second— “I—I really don’t care, I—”
James understands, his eyes soft and welcoming as he brushes his lips against his before gently nudging him away from the hallway, towards the door. Tangled as they still are, they close it to shut out any prying eyes, and this time it’s James that pulls him down.
(Thomas still tastes tears, but they are somehow sweet.)