Chapter Text
A man steps into a darkened tavern on a dark, bitingly cold winter evening. Feather-light particles of snow dust his hair and cause strands to cling together and hang down in front of a furrowed brow. He does not brush them from his eyes as he enters the building, but the heat generated from the collection of bodies and the few scattered candles begins to work immediately. One by one, the snow flakes melt into his hair.
He walks into the tavern purposefully, back held straight and proper. His posture belies the true nature of the establishment- it is in a sorry state. The walls are weather beaten wooden planks tied together with fraying rope. They leave many gaps, some almost wide enough for the man to slip through if he so chose. The wind cuts through mercilessly, and from time to time a layer of snow is deposited across the beaten earth floor beneath his feet. The roof is a piece of waxed linen stretched across each plank, bucking and undulating in the wind. It does a decent job as a roof, although its original purpose undoubtedly was something else.
He is far from the first customer to enter the ramshackle tavern. The small building is packed almost shoulder to shoulder with men, the odor of sweat and cheap tobacco heady in the air. They don’t seem to mind, as the close quarters contact serves to keep them warm. The man is the only one perturbed by this density, as he squeezes through each row of men with increasing difficulty. His shifting gaze alights on the barkeep, who gives the man a sharp nod and wordlessly scoops a flagon of ale from a barrel.
The man leans through the final row of huddled men and grips the flagon carefully. He reaches into a pocket with his other hand and flips the barkeep a bronze colored coin. He does not spill a single drop.
“Have you seen Ciaran today?” the man asks, raising his voice only minimally as loud as it takes to be heard over the low thrum of conversation around them. The barkeep has to lean forward to hear him clearly.
“Aye, lad,” he says. “He left nary a half hour ago. Ye didn’t see him on your way in?”
The man blinks and then shakes his head. “Thank ye,” he replies, and then picks his way carefully through row after row of men once again. He gulps the ale in great swallows and by the time he reaches the gap in the planks that serves as a door, it is empty. He leaves the flagon on the ground.
He manages to track Ciaran down with tremendous difficulty, involving a keen sense of smell and a careful eye to footprints in muddy snow. Ciaran, drunk almost beyond coherence, barely remembers the business they have at hand.
To the misfortune of all touched by this tale, he does.
Coins pass into hands, hands grasp each other in agreement, and a deal is struck. It is struck on the honor of drunks and thieves, but Brennan Jones has never been one to shirk an agreement. He leaves a few coins poorer with a slip of paper tucked carefully in his breast pocket.
It’s passage on a ship for three.
–
Somewhere not too far away, a boy buries his mother. It’s a thankless task, made all the more difficult by the frozen earth beneath his feet. He hacks away with his shovel as if he’s mining for precious gemstones. The wind freezes any liquid coming forth from his eyes, pasting his lashes together like glue. His technique is haphazard, uncoordinated. His face is screwed into a frown, and every strike of the shovel is accompanied by a howl of rage and grief. His dark, curly hair is frost white as snow clings to it. It does not melt despite his invigorating task at hand.
His grief makes him brittle. The shovel mirrors him, the bitter cold weakening its integrity. At one final blow to the ground, the metal end shatters. Pieces of it scatter and slide across the ice. The boy sinks to his knees in front of the shallow grave and wails in agony. Hands covered in splinters cover his face, smearing crimson over his frozen tears.
Her body lies beside him. The hole he has made is not near big enough to nestle her into the earth. The hole in his heart is big enough to swallow the earth whole.
He allows himself moments of weakness, tears finally allowed to fall. Salty water ebbs onto his cut, bleeding hands. He notices this not at all. He has room for one source of pain only, and it isn’t this one.
The sound of his agony draws another boy out of a small, extremely humble dwelling. The second boy cautiously picks his way over to his older brother, keeping his eyes firmly on the ground to avoid seeing the look on his face. He instead finds his gaze fixated on the still, icy corpse of his mother. Her eyes are closed and she looks almost peaceful. He swallows, tries to convince himself that she’s only sleeping.
“Liam?” he says quietly, afraid to interrupt the loud expression of grief. But he can’t stop himself, he sees the blood running down Liam’s wrists and onto the homespun shirt he wears.
Liam quiets, struck by a familiar sense of duty toward his younger brother. To protect him, to keep him safe. He swallows back tears and puts on a watery, unconvincing smile. It doesn’t reach his shining eyes.
“You’re bleeding,” Liam’s brother says in the resulting silence, when it becomes clear that Liam will not be saying anything in response. “Can I help you?”
Liam wants to keep bleeding. He feels as though if he bleeds enough, his spirit or his soul or whatever it is that separates the living from the dead will seep into the frigid earth and flow into his mother. It’s the least he can do, failing the task of burying his mother.
But when his younger brother finally lifts his own tear-filled eyes to meet Liam’s, he can’t bear to let the boy down. With a resigned nod, he pulls himself off his knees and follows his brother into their house.
The younger boy finds a strip of fabric in their mother’s supplies. They sit at their table, and Liam watches his brother’s face as he inspects his palm, pulling each splinter one by one. His brother’s fingers are nimble, deft. When he finishes, he wipes the blood away and tenderly wraps his brother’s hand. A sudden surge of guilt twists Liam’s insides. He should be the one tending to his brother, not the other way around. He grits his teeth, but lets the boy continue working.
Finally, the other palm is divested of its unwelcome additions and is wiped clean. The boy carefully ties two strips of fabric around each hand, to keep the wounds clean and protected. Without a task to concentrate on, the younger boy’s face crumples into grief.
“What are we going to do?” he asks. It feels like a rhetorical question. It’s one that deserves an answer.
“We survive, Killian,” says Liam firmly. He moves his hands under his brother’s, holding one hand in each of his. “We will survive, I swear it.”
Killian sniffs once, and a tear escapes the well in his eye and trails down his cheek. “How?” he asks brokenly, as if he cannot possibly fathom an answer to this question.
Liam swallows back an empty platitude. “I don’t know,” he admits quietly. “But I promise I’ll look after you.”
It’s not an answer to the question, but it soothes Killian to hear it. He nods, then leans forward clumsily and wraps his arms around his older brother. It’s not something they do often, embracing. But if any situation warrants it, it’s this one. It solidifies Liam’s promise more firmly than any handshake, any signed contract ever could.
“I love you,” Killian whispers against Liam’s shirt.
Liam’s heart nearly stops. He’s never heard Killian say that to him before. He’s always simply understood that to be true. It feels good to hear it spoken plainly.
“I love you too,” Liam says, and in a rare moment of weakness he allows himself to kiss the top of his little brother’s head.
The voyage ahead of them is lined with pain, with suffering beyond what either of them know now. It will be these moments of comfort, of fleeting but powerful joy and love, that keep them true. This is the moment they become each other’s lifeline, and this line is never once broken.
Liam and Killian Jones, from this moment on, would walk through fire for the other.
Their father, alas, is an entirely different story.