Work Text:
It wasn’t cruelty. Cruelty required care. Of such soft mercies, the arctic sun made nothing but scorch marks; the scrape of shale underfoot, only a trance to its rhythm. The softest part of a man now was his own half-rotted flesh and the ease with which it bruised.
Indifference. That’s all it was. A truth more inherent to man than a kiss or the strike of his fist. A truth lent from God and nature and other such negligent parents. Their greatest act of love was to watch, from a distance, their dying children. And they were dying.
To forsake their ill, the captain explained, was to make things of them rather than men. He wore no judgement, except for in an occasional glance at Lieutenant Le Vesconte. Looks exchanged between he and Edward had betrayed the suggestion as his own. No, the suggestion itself had been evidence enough. Edward was not the kind to make them.
Henry let his gaze sail towards the ground, Crozier's words fading into a mire of canvas flapping with the breeze and, further afield, shrieking agony. The noise would’ve put a hound to shame.
Things, not men.
There was little difference here, the way Henry saw it. Any man left behind was not man, but corpse; those leaving them, soon to be. They ailed. They did not get better. A fall into that chasm called illness broke the spine too badly to ever make it out. Tongues bit themselves rather than speak it. Teeth fell from the impact. Jaws crushed words into grunts, howls, whines. All that remained was the motion of a throat, swallowing spit to fool the stomach and blood to fool the mind.
No, you do not starve. No, you are not ailing. Yes; you will be home again.
Waiting for the dead to die was waiting to die yourself. This much, Henry had already reconciled with — had mused even before the meeting, loitering just off from the tent.
“I don’t understand,” Edward had murmured. But the sheen to his eyes said he knew well enough. It was why he could stomach the proposal only when dressed in threadbare hope: that they might return for the deserted. It was why his words came staggered and heavy now. Why his look flittered so restlessly, in fear of it being returned, and why his neck craned with shame he felt was deserved.
Henry shared none of it, he realised, watching that grey wasteland sidelong through the tent flap. Survival left little capacity for shame. If any remained, it was bleeding out with each yelp from across the camp.
A wounded animal. There would be no healing for it. At best, the mercy of a painless death.
The meeting drew on for a few minutes longer. All the while, Henry scratched into his journal, notes trailing off into senseless marks. There was a vague intention to draw them into a skua. The lines never quite came together that way, though. Numb gnawed at his fingers too deeply for them to listen very well. Without its familiar grace, his body felt quite alien to him now.
He kept hatching, cross-hatching. A mess of marks, wounds on the page. A darkening abyss. Absence.
There was nothing to say.
The captain made little effort to encourage his words, either; not like he did for Thomas and Edward. But Henry was the mismatched piece in his set. Lieutenant though he might've been, he had never served as such to this man. He was lieutenant only to a dying commander.
And what was that, now? Skuas and shale knew nothing of rank. All they recognised in James Fitzjames was the stench of near-death hanging thick at his tent.
Henry circuited in patrol with nothing to do and nowhere to be. Some made better work of pretending there was — bothered to stitch new mouths slackjaw in their clothes, clean their rifles, clear stray tins. Others had surrendered those daily motions, sat silent or sighing, hands clasped over their eyes to keep out an evening sun that burnt bright as day. A few could still whisper; a joke, story, dream. Most let the wind whisper for them.
The men often failed to recognise their lieutenant as such until he spoke or raised his eyes. Having halfway shed the skin of command, his dishevelled greys and worn, fraying jumper did little to set him apart. So he did not speak. He did not raise his eyes. Learning fast from the lone scavenger above, he only circled.
Time passed and felt like it didn't. He counted his laps but forgot his tally, visualised new or old routes around camp until they faded into the blank map of inattention. It was all the same, anyway. Canvas, skin, shale.
On the fifth time his feet brought him to the commander’s tent, driven by habit or routine or some other such passionless thing, he paused. Its tortured tenor had dulled with the sky. Like its sun, though, the sound hadn’t disappeared completely into the night — nor would it. From behind the slight dignity of that tent, shuddered breaths and a whine continued to carry.
Henry stared at Mr. Bridgens fussing at the entrance. He didn’t know what with, didn’t take enough interest to discern why. His thoughts were strangely quiet, save for an anchor that begged him to wait. Think. Rationalise the action already formed in his mind and felt in his body; choose better than temptation. He indulged that hesitance for but a single moment.
Now what?
Now nothing. It was inconsequential either way.
His heel spun of its own accord and strode for the tent, a chase of impulse. There was little to see there, but what did that matter? To hell with it. For the hell of it. He braced to meet James’ ruined body — and met only an arm square to his chest.
“I’m sorry, Lieutenant.” Bridgens bowed apologetically from under guilt-furrowed brows. “Nobody is to enter other than the captain and I. Commander’s orders, sir.”
The denial thrilled him. Boundaries always had, for their potential to be teased. It was the first thing he'd felt in days. He thanked James for that.
“Then I must inform the commander of my mutiny,” Henry replied, careless and armed with a sharp smirk as he tried to push past the once-steward, now-medic, soon-to-be nothing at all. Another man dwelling in the afterlife of old names, roles, titles. A split-second passed where Henry wondered what that must be like for him, then found that he didn’t care.
“Sir!” Bridgens blocked the lieutenant with his full body this time, making greater effort to push back against him. “I do apologise, but I must insist!”
Henry straightened. His smile drained. Bridgens held his ground, good chap, resolute despite an uncertain look.
Well, it wasn’t his fault, he supposed. Just James, as much a fool as ever. To break in would cost theatrics and heroism and a fight Henry was long past. If James was waiting on that, he would stay waiting forever. There was, of course, that other thing. The one harder to believe, as truth often is. The thing that went: perhaps you're wrong. Perhaps the games were over. Perhaps the only man whose look James could bear now, torn open and diseased, was the captain's. Perhaps they were dearer now than Henry had ever been to James. Perhaps Henry had lost James' trust. Perhaps he'd never had it, or not in the way that mattered.
“What’s going on here, Lieutenant?” Speak of the devil, and he shall appear. Not that it mattered. This particular devil had a knack for appearing with little regard for whether he'd been spoken of.
Henry gave an amiable enough nod, stitching a deliberate smile back onto his lips. “Commander Fitzjames does not wish for visitors, so it seems.”
“Except for you, sir,” Bridgens added, uneasy.
“Then perhaps it is best,” Crozier placed an overly familiar palm on the lieutenant's shoulder, "that we listen to his wishes, Henry. Yes?"
Henry studied Francis' eyes for a moment. They spoke of grief and concern. Also of judgement, their embers stoked anew. They said, you've surrendered your right to see him, lieutenant. They said, you would have left this man to ruin. They said, and for what?
At last, Henry stepped back. Crozier gave a final nod to him, then Bridgens, and disappeared into the tent. Sounds of agony soon melted into strained comfort and amusement — the kinds Henry had once wrought, but that James gave him little chance to now.
Pity washed over him from Bridgens' watchful eyes. Few things were as trite as pity.
Henry checked himself over. Looked for anger, or jealousy. Mourning. Guilt. From each, there was a handful of debris, maybe; it was hard to tell really what he was holding. The ashes of too many dead fires had long since suffocated him from inside. All he felt with any clarity was the sense of handing a hound to a better owner. One equipped for its needs. One it had chosen.
Henry had been chosen too, once.
James must've finally learnt to choose better.
Godspeed to the captain.
He gave up an aimless charade of a doffed cap to no one before wandering off into the midnight sun.
Sleep made no visitor of herself tonight. The same death gnawing James’ flesh had likewise seeped into Henry’s, roughening his skin and leaving mottled bruising strewn upon the chest. His wounded hands were harder to hide, partly covered by bandage but ever grazing anew when his head was turned. Though sickness had yet to make a patient of him, these were its promises that it would.
He rolled onto his aching back, attentive to the sounds he could still hear from James’ tent. Whispering, hushes, tears. As he imagined him there, bedridden and weeping, he thought of their last visit. James, sitting quieter than usual — still able to sit at all. James, with his gaze kept stubbornly away. James, playing pretend that, if he didn’t look at Henry, Henry wouldn’t see what he did not want seen. Of course, he could have covered his eyes and still known. There was a stench to it, now. Acrid. He'd been smelling it for months.
Henry grinned through it. James joined him. They joked about old times, prodded bleak humour at times to come, and laughed like neither knew those times were running out.
“I admire you, Dundy,” James said during a lull in their merriment.
“How concerning.”
James made a playful jab for Henry’s shoulder. “Laugh, laugh, my friend. It’s true. We’re at the end of the world, and yet you keep your good spirits.”
“Well, with such spectacular companionship—”
“Really, Dundy,” and he saw then that all the amusement had drained from his expression, “I envy you that.”
They had never made habit of dealing in sincerity. A mere scrap of the stuff had them flinching away. Vulnerability. Few things quite so twisted. That night had been different, though. James’ eyes were wide with an earnestness so rare, Henry dared not blink lest he lose it. Lord knew he wouldn't find his way there again.
"How do you do it, Dundy?"
"Perhaps," Henry murmured, "you only think that I do."
"You expect me to believe that it's all a great sham, then?"
"No. But that you've always seen what you've wanted to see."
"And you? What do you see?"
Henry said nothing. There was no right move. Not one that didn't hurt James, not one that wouldn't complicate life, not one that couldn't make him feel less human than he already did.
James spared him the answer. He merely smiled, warm and gentle, missing his usual humour and full of all his failing heart. “You must remember me as I was, you know.”
And how could Henry forget? He'd bore witness as his frame thinned from want. He'd touched pale skin and greasy hair as though it were well and clean. He'd not let his eyes linger on the yellowed stains of his shirts, the bandages he'd seen bundled in his tent. He would gaze into his eyes with a grin, the same as he had before they'd streaked red. After all, the blood that gathered along his scalp, Henry had once wicked himself. Had pressed a kiss there to christen him clean before he strode out, head held high, dressed in a red sash as a glorious and beautiful Britannia.
Henry might've helped him live on in illusion, but he'd not lived there with him.
“As I was, Henry.” He was only Henry when it was serious. James moved a hand to his thigh, dancing that line between like and love as deftly as he had in health. That would be the last time he touched him, as things turned out. Henry hadn’t known it at the time; who does?
“Promise me that."
"You have my word, James.”
Somewhere in those nightless hours, silence fell.
Henry could only sigh.
It wasn’t morning when they dragged out the body. If there was no night, there could be no morning, either — just another hour strung onto a rope of hours. This particular hour saw the sun hauled high, drenching James and his witnesses alike in cold, unforgiving light.
His boots stood to attention from under the dark cloth that swathed him. It rippled gently with the breeze, betraying his silhouette. Henry wondered if his eyes were shut.
Crozier gave no eulogy. He held no service. He was with him as he'd passed, he confessed, where he'd paid his own respects as if they were the only ones that mattered. In the tear-thick tone of his voice, Henry recognised a particular bitterness: that of the worst kind of mourner, the one that believes his grief special. The man that expects all to weep but none to understand the unique depths of his loss. His connection.
His love.
Henry couldn’t resent him for it. There was little left to fuel such passions. It would have been a great irony, anyway, when he might've felt the same, if he'd felt anything at all.
His attention sailed from the captain’s voice to his body — the veiled pain in his features, those glazed eyes, his slightly-trembling hand. If James had passed quietly into nothing in the night, the reason why confessed itself upon Crozier’s quivering fingertips. The man was heavy with the weight of blood.
Henry considered whether he might’ve done it himself. Barely a heartbeat passed before he knew he that he would’ve. The commander could stand tall till the collapse, valiant and proud and vain; but, after that, there could carve no deeper wound into James Fitzjames than indignity.
Yes, if he’d asked, he would have done it himself. With the last of his love, he would've done it.
When Crozier’s gaze hitched upon him for a moment, in its survey of the scattered crowd, a wordless understanding passed between them. For once, Francis' eyes softened on him.
They stayed soft, too, when he said he would accompany the burial party. Whether they approved or not, it mattered none; he had already set off for Edward before the captain could find it in himself to deny him.
Henry assumed Hartnell's place at the reins of the sled, hauling at Golding's side. Hartnell instead scouted for a burial site, while Edward clung his rifle sling desperately at the helm. It was strange, pulling a corpse. Lighter than what Henry was used to in a way that made it feel like a ghost. He kept breaking for a glance over his shoulder, needing to check that it hadn't slid off. That he hadn't forsaken it somewhere. He half-expected it to start shrieking, as James had when his broken body was laid into the boat. Instead, it only rocked, limp and uneven, roughly over the shale.
Eventually, Hartnell was pointing and calling and directing: a groove at the base of a mound. Subtle; tucked away.
Nothing at all like James Fitzjames, then.
Hiding, too, though, so maybe a little like him, after all.
Together, they hoisted the cloth from its bed. It looked like a sack, the way it was stitched, but Henry felt within it that unmistakeable weight of a man. That unmistakeable body, its back cradled in his arms, and he remembered that same unmistakeable weight and body as he'd leaned him into a dip during a spectacle of a dance. Oh, everyone had treated it like some improper joke, one made between two old friends and fuelled by the kind of bravery that comes only from liquor. Henry had danced better. James, too. But neither had danced with such abandon. Neither had laughed more with their partner. Neither had felt closer, or warmer, or even just more held.
And now, he let go. Abandoned the corpse to a graveyard of stone. The men worked at his body with rocks, encircling James' sides at first. They built them out and up, then the legs, feet, chest, leaving for last the face. Henry thought again of his eyes, their bright heat, now dulled and opaque beneath the fabric. The dark pinpricks on his lips. The yellow-red mouths of reopening wounds, the last to kiss his skin.
Remember me as I was.
Henry cast the first stone on his face. Somebody had to. It still felt like he was drowning him, and he didn't like that. He did it anyway. Another, and another, and Golding had joined in, Hartnell too, and it was nothing, nothing at all, continued until the last of the fabric was buried in a shallow, unmarked grave.
Henry stood at its side, looking down. A palm soon tore him, by the shoulder, from his peace, where he found Edward looking like he wanted to say something. There came no voice to shape the order so clearly on his tongue: a reminder that they needed to leave, to haul, to push on, words to that effect. His eyes wavered on the ground. He licked his lips nervously and went to speak, but—
“Not yet.” Henry cast his gaze back towards the grave.
Edward turned to leave, then hesitated. Some courage. Shame, more likely, or fear of it. His hand twitched, tightened into a fist, a desperate grasp at resolve. "The captain… ordered us back the moment we were finished, Lieutenant."
“And I am not yet finished, Edward.” He said plainly.
The lieutenant studied him a moment. Whatever he read there, he didn't like his chances of changing his mind. He rounded up Hartnell and Golding, and started back to camp. Their scraping footsteps soon faded into the only thing here that would outlive them all: the wind, with her song like mourning.
Henry thought of James, beneath the shale. The two of them, alone for the first time since the last time, and the last time now forever.
Remember me as I was.
And what was that? A moth, ever pathetic in its attempts to draw near flame? His dear Dundy, for a moment, being the flame he wanted to draw near? A shadow of a man in hunger, a child vying to be seen, beholden to his thirst of love and bound by shallow shows of glory for it. The thousand things James Fitzjames never wanted to know. The thousand things Henry locked away for safekeeping, to let him rest easy at night. A fool that died still fooling himself. Or, maybe not. He wouldn't know, now. James wouldn't have wanted him to,
“To all that you were, my darling,” Henry mused. “Every blasted piece.”
He drew his notebook from a pocket, cast all its days gone to the grave, and turned his back, for the last time, on his once-commander, half-lover, and friend.