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John could count on one hand the amount of times since Sir John died that he had seen Lieutenant Little with an expression other than total misery.
They’d all felt it, the loss, but John knew that it had little to do with the circumstances. It didn't take much in the way of deduction skills to figure out why; the captain had been running Little ragged. He’d been sending the lieutenant between Terror and Erebus like his own personal errand boy, all while expecting him to keep up with his regular duties.
More than just regular duties really. It was no secret that Crozier had been putting more and more on the shoulders of his first lieutenant as he became more and more dependent on whiskey to get through the day. They all knew about it, in some capacity. The situation was building to what they all feared would be an ugly climax.
Truly, John had meant to intervene; to pull Little aside for a moment and try to weave words of comfort together into phrases of solace. The one time he had succeeded in finding Little in a rare moment of rest, his mouth had gone dry and his planned speech about the deliverance of the Lord in due time had gone straight out his mind. He’d managed to stumble through some inane question about the stores, but after that he had kept his distance. There had been no choice left but to watch as the furrowed lines in Little’s brow grew deeper as the strain increased.
In John’s few idle moments he imagined gently pressing an index finger to the wrinkles and smoothing them out.
*
They were trying. God knew they were trying. Between their own duties, the weight of trying to keep the ship in order while Crozier was convalescing, and attempting to juggle Hodgeson’s tasks while he was across on Erebus, it was not easy. Hodgeson had gone over to lend a hand to the struggling Fitzjames and Levesconte, who were down two lieutenants and up crew, leaving John and Little in the thick of the captain’s drying out.
John sighed, pushed away the documents he had been reviewing in favour of resting his forehead against the cool surface of the table. He could hear Crozier mumbling through the Great Room walls, and Jopson intoning what were doubtless to be soothing words. He knew the hour was late, though it had little bearing on either Crozier’s or his own unease.
More than anything he wanted to lie down and rest for even just a moment. Instead, he sat up, and pulled the papers back towards himself. Crozier cried out, and he involuntarily tuned his head to the sound, brow creasing in concern. Across the table he saw Little wince, his hand stilling for a moment before returning to what he was writing, a report of some sort, John was sure.
It had become their routine, those last weeks, to meet in the great room when the watch schedule allowed. They worked in silence almost always, but John found it soothing, to sit and work side by side and be silent. There was no expectation to make small talk, which John frequently felt inadequate at, but just to chip away at what they best could manage.
He was lost in a reverie of preparations for the walk out when he felt the weight of Little’s hand on his shoulder. Above them, it struck six bells.
“Go rest, Irving. It’ll keep a few hours more, I should think,” Little said, giving his shoulder a gentle squeeze.
“Yes, sir, I should say so,” John murmured, decidedly not thinking about how easy it would be to put his hand atop Little’s and lace their fingers together, nor how easy it would be to let his temple rest against the fine wool of his sleeve.
“Good man,” Little replied, tone somewhat absent as if he were already thinking of his next task; John did not envy the weight of command he bore. He gave John’s shoulder a final pat before making his way out of the great room.
In his berth, John read his bible and tried not to think of Little; the phantom weight of a hand on his shoulder the whole time.
*
It’s a moment of elation; a joyful hopefulness that John hasn’t felt since before they got frozen in properly. Despite the soreness in his gums and the deep ache in his bones, he felt almost at peace. They might be saved yet, the kind Netsilik family their lifeline to survival in the uncaring frozen wastes. He told them to wait, hoping they understood him; it seemed more polite than insisting on them accompanying him back to camp where Crozier or Blanky can communicate with them. He allowed himself to imagine Little’s face with a real proper smile on it, like the one he’d had earlier that day when Jopson had been promoted. The thought of seeing Little smile like that twice in one day; the thought of being the one to make him smile like that. John hurried himself along, efforts doubled. In his haste he almost fell several times, feet placed haphazardly on sliding stones.
He climbed over the crest of the dune of shale, mouth already half open to speak when he stuttered to a stop. It took him a moment to process what he was seeing; Mr Hickey, crouched over the unmoving form of Mr. Farr. He reached forward, his palm pale against the dark wool of Hickey’s coat.
It became clear that it had been a terrible miscalculation as Hickey turned; the smirk on his slash of a mouth as sharp as the knife in his hand. White hot pain bloomed in John’s chest, the cousin of the slowly progressing aches that had found their home in John’s joints and marrow.
It seemed to him a great unfairness that he should die like this, at the hand of a wild-eyed man and not by the illness that had dogged him since the ships had departed Greenhithe or by the beast that hunted them. John wondered, half-aware as his blood wet the front of his slops, if this was some benediction, a blessing from some worse fate. He fell back, the cold press of stones against his spine.
Faintly, on the wind, he heard a shout.
*
There was a chill in his bones; not the typical arctic coldness that seeped in during their first time wintering at Beechey and never truly left, but one more unignorably present. He groaned, twisting, and tried to find the ever elusive warmth.
Distantly, he was aware of voices, an impression of hands that smoothed back his hair.
“... he always be like this?” it was a panicked voice, one that John knew well but couldn’t put a name to. He felt untethered, his head far too light. He wanted to put a hand up to hold it down, lest it fly away without the rest of him, but couldn’t manage to wrestle his arm out from underneath the blankets that cocooned him.
“It’s the effects of the coca-wine and blood loss. It eases the pain but muddles the mind, sir. He just needs rest.” That voice he knew was Goodsir. Kind, gentle, Goodsir, who never had a cross word for anyone.
“Of course. Yes,” the speaker paused to inhale deeply and John placed the voice. Edward. Little, he corrected himself drowsily. “I’ll sit with him for now, Doctor. You look dead on your feet; go rest.”
“If he requires anything, do not hesitate to summon me at once. I shall return by next watch to check his vitals,” Goodsir replied, his tone coloured with gratitude. John heard his foot falls fade, the rustle of a flap of canvas as he exited the tent.
There was a hand then, pressed against his cheek. All cracked, callused fingers and warm palm softly cradling his face.
“Hold on, John. Hold on.”
John felt the call of sleep and despite Little’s request, he let himself go to it.
*
Hickey was hanged the next day; the delay caused by the construction of the gallows. Despite being significantly more lucid he was not well enough to attend and neither Goodsir nor the captains would allow for it. He’d heard it though, through the canvas walls. John had listened intently as the verdict was read, heard every scrabble of rock as Hickey was lifted in the air. He wondered, idly how Hickey felt, if he had felt anything at all.
He wondered the same for himself. It was not vindication, not some cold-blooded justice flowing in his veins. Somehow, it felt like nothing at all and everything at once. The aching in his chest doubled strength, half pain and half longing for something he knew not.
John was no fool; scurvy had him in its jaws and the chances of such a wound healing were slim. Despite the fact that he had outlived Mr. Hickey, his day of judgement was coming soon.
It was not such a comfort as he had once thought it to be.
*
John remembered it in a hazy sort of way; the memories of a man suspended halfway between life and death. At first he had thought that the men’s shouts were from a malicious cause, Tuunbaq returning to finish the job perhaps.When the shouts turned to cheers he realized it wasn’t damnation but salvation. Rescue.
Fairholme had made it across the ice and back, accompanied by the Hudson’s Bay men and fresh supplies. A welcome sight as the seal meat that the Netsilik had generously given them had run out days ago and they’d been forced back the putrid cans.
They had stayed in the camp for a few weeks, long enough to let some of the ill recuperate. It would be a long walk, and they needed all the healthy men they could get. It brought renewed hope and energy to the wearied and worn crew to see men such as Mr. Peglar or the newly minted Lieutenant Jopson moving about camp without the careful, calculated movements of men plagued by scurvy.
Those that had injuries too serious to walk on their own, let alone haul, were pulled along in the sledges. Both John and Captain Fitzjames had argued that they were capable of walking and had been promptly overruled by both Goodsir and the Hudson’s Bay doctor.
They had ended up together in a sledge, Fitzjames spinning yarns and tales to entertain both the haulers, those that walked alongside, and John. The stories lacked his old sense of pomp and glamour, but made for a welcome distraction as they trudged ever onwards.
“I expect we shall be reading the memoirs of Captain Fitzjames before winter of 1850,” came quietly from Little walking next to John’s sledge. He had hauled earlier in day, and still sounded winded, a high colour in his cheeks.
“I should very much like to see them. Perhaps I shall get him to autograph mine,” John joked, inclined his head as the Captain in question soliloquized about marching through desert sands.
“Do you think we’ll merit a mention, Irving?”
John smiled, closed mouth to hide missing teeth. “I certainly hope not; if we do I pray it’s flattering.”
“A flattering tale of wayward lieutenants,” Little intoned.
“Homeward lieutenants, sir,” John said, and cast his eyes towards where Fort Resolution waited, miles and miles of arctic wastes away.
Little reached over the side of the sledge, clapping a hand on John’s shoulder with a careful gentleness and then let himself fall back and behind, to the next group of men.
*
The feeling of a rolling deck under John’s feet was so novel, an oft-dreamed of sensation; an oft-prayed for sensation, that he could scarcely believe it. He couldn’t have even begun to guess how many times he had asked, on bended knee with palms clasped, for open water and to feel the ocean move beneath him again.
His first turn out on the deck after Goodsir had deemed him healthy enough to leave the walls of the sick bay had felt like an answered prayer. He had been anxious to see the sails full of wind and guiding them across the oceans back home; he had worried that it was all the fevered dream of man dying alone on the shale of King William Island.
John closed his eyes, leaning hard on his palms against the bulwark as it finally sank in. They were going home; after all of it they were going home .
“Careful you don’t fall in, Lieutenant; we wouldn’t want to lose you now,” Little broke John’s reverie, his voice light and warm.
John started, prompting Little to reach out and steady his elbow, a crinkle of concern in his brow. “Alright, Irving?”
“Yes, sir. Just thinking about home,” John said, with a distracted gesture in the direction of England. Illogically, he could feel the warmth from Little’s hand through all his layers of wool and cotton
“It’s hard to believe we’re really going home, isn’t it? After everything,” Little turned to to look out over the water, letting his hand rest on John’s forearm. There was a small, wistful smile on his face.
John cleared his throat, looked down at Little’s hand, then back at the water. It shone in the afternoon sun, the surface dotted with whitecaps. “Where’s home for you, sir?”
Little’s smile brightened, his own eyes fixed on the sea. “My family’s estate in Surrey. We raise horses there; it's absolutely beautiful this time of year. And you?”
”Edinburgh. Perhaps,” John said slowly, as if testing out the words, “perhaps you could come visit, once you are settled.”
Little turned, and John remembered wondering once what it would be like to be responsible for making Little smile like you’d just handed him the sun. It was intoxicating, almost indescribable, and John knew instantly that he would do anything to keep having the privilege.
“I should like that very much, thank you, Irving.”
“John,” he corrected before he had time to think it through, and Little’s eyes crinkled at the corners, pleased.
He had a vision of Little stepping off the gangplank and disappearing into the crowds at the quay, only to be seen again at the Admiralty or perhaps a dry dinner party in Edinburgh before he returned to England for good, and it left a sour taste in his mouth. Once they landed at Greenhithe it would fracture their small, insulated world. He had no choice left; it was now or nothing at all.
“I would like you to call me Edward,” Little - Edward said, pitching his voice low.
“I would like that too, to call you Edward, I mean,” John flushed, stumbling over himself. Edward smiled indulgently, moving his hand to lace their fingers together atop the railing. His eyes darted, taking in where all the men on deck were. Satisfied that they were all occupied, Edward leaned in, pressing his mouth quickly to John’s.
John reached out, grabbing a handful of Edward’s lapel, pulling the moment out a few dangerous seconds longer before he relinquished his grip, ever mindful of the sailors around them. All the medals and praise the Admiralty could grace them with were worth nothing in comparison to what he held his hands now. John smiled; the salt air filled his lungs, the sea moved beneath him, and they were going home.