Chapter Text
Carnivale is still going strong when Francis arrives. There are lights all over the inside of the tent, torches and men’s laughter and music floating up into the sky, and Francis smiles despite himself when he sees it. Somehow, there is still joy here.
He makes his way inside and weaves his way through the decorations—a truly impressive amount of them, created from castoff supplies and remnants of broken spars and torn sail. In the main room, George Hodgson is up on stage singing, and Francis spots Irving in a corner, tucked into Tozer’s side—smiling, even, and looking almost real.
A wooden floor has been laid down over the center of the ice and on it, tramping heavily in their winter boots, men are dancing. Francis stands to one side, watching them romp across the boards, reminded again of the Antarctic Ball. And there is Thomas Blanky, too: standing to one side, drinking from his wooden leg. Francis has to laugh at the image.
It’s been long enough, he tells himself. I’ll talk to him when this is over. At last, the idea doesn't fill him with incredible dread.
He sees James, then, and any other thoughts are knocked from his head.
James is wearing a dress. It doesn’t fit well, worn over his other garments as it is, but there is velvet at his wrists and ankles and a neckline that dips low enough to reveal snatches of throat beneath his half-open collar. His hair seems to swoop back from his face of its own volition, as if it is done concealing him from the rest of the world. He shines as he capers about the dance floor, knocking heavy boots on the boards from under his golden-brown skirts and laughing with his head thrown back.
Francis smiles, feeling his eyes crinkle, and waits until James’s gaze catches his.
James’s eyes widen comically. He leans over to his dance partner—Fairholme, it looks like—before parting from him, weaving through the crowd to arrive at Francis’s side.
They move away from the dance floor, so that no one will marvel at their captain talking to thin air. Once they have a little space, James leans in to speak. Francis can smell the liquor on his breath, strong enough that he feels a pang of wanting for a moment.
“Is it done, then?” James asks in what can only be called a stage whisper.
“I believe so. Silna walked away with the creature. It saw me, and yet… it didn’t attack me. It’s possible that we will not see it again.”
James clutches at both of his arms. “Then, Francis, we are saved!”
It’s hard for Francis not to feel as though he is saved, too, even as his arm wavers and one of James’s hands passes through him.
James pulls back, frowning.
“And you?” he asks. “Are you alright?”
“I think I am,” Francis hedges, managing not to look down at his hands. “I have no way of knowing. Silna… drew on me, I think, for the ceremony. I don’t claim to know what it did to me, but her ritual is over, and I am still here.”
“Let us count that as a blessing, then,” grins James, and reaches up to adjust his hair. Francis notes the way he brushes delicately at the waves, as if they are styled in some high fashion that he mustn’t disturb.
Francis chuckles despite himself and looks down as he says, “That dress suits you.”
James touches his hair again, a nervous motion this time. “Do you really think so?”
“I do,” Francis nods.
“Well. Can I invite you to dance, then?”
Francis looks around himself. “The men will see you dancing with no one.”
James laughs. “The men are drunk. They’ll think it a joke.”
Francis huffs. He can’t imagine it—dancing in the press of bodies, stepping through the motions of some jig with James’s hands in his own. Not when he died nearly a year ago. He doesn’t deserve this continuance of a life he abandoned—
But he stops himself. James has warned him not to let his pride and his guilt get the better of him. And in this moment, Francis wants nothing more than to agree with James’s request.
“Very well, then,” he says, feeling a grin break across his face. “Let’s dance.”
He offers his hand to James—in the fashion of a gentleman offering his hand to a lady, he realizes after a moment, although James accepts with no hesitation. James pulls him onto the dance floor, his hand warm in Francis’s own, and after some stumbling and laughter they manage to fall into an approximation of the way Francis used to dance at more official functions, a long time ago. Before long, they are whirling across the boards. Francis doesn’t know the last time he laughed this much, and each time he looks up he sees James, smiling and beautiful in his borrowed dress.
I want it to be like this forever, Francis thinks, and he doesn’t even reflect on the way his steps occasionally pass through James’s, or the times that his hand slips out of James’s grasp. He is too caught up in the moment, drunk on the heady air and the way time seems to stretch out before them: a promise of something bright that Francis might be able to hold onto, if he just tries hard enough.
-
Spring again.
Francis stands atop one of the rough shale hills on what he has come to know as King William Island. As he has trained his ability to travel farther and farther from the ships, he has become very familiar with this seemingly barren place and the teeming life it supports beneath its surface. When he turns over one of the pieces of shale, tiny insects scatter over the stone. He stares out across the island and sees the shapes of Netsilik in the distance, and he smiles.
Then he stops. They aren’t Netsilik at all, he realizes. Concentrating, he takes a step that carries him two hundred yards closer to the figures in question. They wear uniforms in blue and black and they haul boats on sledges behind them. Francis blinks once, shock coursing through his body.
Rescue. It’s a real rescue.
With his heart in his throat, he flashes away to the ships.
-
“What will happen when you return to England?” asks Francis at last.
Their rescuers are only a few days away, and he can’t abide it anymore—the waiting and wondering and sitting on his hands and kissing James while he feels as though everything might be about to slide away from him. And he feels sick, too, for thinking of the men’s rescue in such a way: as if there could possibly be any downside to such a miracle. So, although he could keep these last few days for himself, he asks.
Best to get it over with, if the answer will be painful.
“What will happen?” James frowns. “I imagine there will be a great deal of questions. From the Admiralty, and from the public as well. About Sir John’s death and all the rest. We shall have to fabricate something about the bear.”
“I mean…” Francis takes a breath. “What will happen to me?”
James looks at him, startled. The two of them sit in the great cabin on Erebus. James has his feet up on one of the other chairs, while Francis sits at the table, his elbows resting on the wood with his hands folded in front of him. There is a commotion outside in the crew quarters as everyone scrambles to pack for their departure. Men on watch finally sighted the approaching rescuers a few days ago, confirming what Francis has known for weeks.
“Francis, nothing will happen to you,” says James. Then he frowns and adds, “Will it?”
“I don’t know,” Francis admits. “I imagined that once you all left the ships, I would… fade away.”
“Do you feel like you’re fading away?”
“No.” Francis looks down at his hands, through which he can’t see the grain of the table.
When he doesn’t continue, James thumps his feet down to the floor and leans across the table, placing his hand over Francis’s.
“Francis,” he says, “half a year ago, I mocked you for wanting to die.”
Francis winces.
“I know it was unfair in the extreme,” James continues. “I mention it only because I feel the subject bears revisiting.”
Francis takes a moment to parse James’s words. He flinches again when their meaning strikes him, but this time he doesn’t look away. He forces his gaze up to meet James’s.
Funny to only know it when I’m already dead, but…
“I don’t want to die anymore,” he says.
“Then you need not. We don’t know how this works. Why assume it’s going to go badly?”
Francis frowns. “Where would I go?”
James reaches out his other hand to take Francis’s between two of his own.
“Come with me. Back to England. However ghosts travel… do that. You said you’d gotten better at leaving the ships.”
“I still don’t know if I can leave the Arctic entirely,” Francis says uncertainly, but James cuts him off.
“You said you thought the great cabin on Terror was your anchor. That you wake up there every time your consciousness is cut short. But you also said that when you saved Irving, he seemed to anchor himself to Sergeant Tozer.”
“Well, yes,” Francis admits.
He remembers how quickly the color returned to Irving’s face when Tozer entered the room. How Tozer knew exactly what to say to reassure Irving that his continued existence was not unnatural or wrong.
“Then anchor yourself to me,” James says.
“To you?”
“It’s not as if anyone is going to believe my story, anyway. Why not bring a ghost back with me?” James laughs to soften his words.
It hardly feels possible, even as James suggests it. That Francis could escape the ice, could separate himself from the ships. Could see England again, with someone he cares about… someone he could love, at his side. He has imagined himself doomed to remain here forever, in penance for the mistake he made more than a year ago, on a dark winter night.
And yet…
He clears his throat. “You’re really asking me to come with you?”
“And to stay with me,” James adds. “In whatever way we can manage. I lost you once already, Francis, before I hardly knew you. I won’t lose you again.”
Shocking even himself, Francis feels tears threatening at the backs of his eyes. He forces himself to look away from James’s eager smile, to swipe at his face with one cuff. There is no blood on the white of his shirt when he pulls it away.
“I would like that very much,” he says, and James beams at him so brightly that he needs no other sun.
-
There are men rushing across the ice toward Terror and Erebus.
On board the two ships, peals of laughter, exclamations, and the thumping of boots on wood abound. Harry Goodsir rushes down the packed-snow ramp with a crate of medical supplies, in case any of the approaching men need treatment. Thomas Hartnell waves his hat in the air. Even Stephen Stanley cracks a thin smile from his place atop Erebus, with his arms crossed across his chest.
James and Francis stand aboard Terror. Amidst the whooping and yelling, Francis shoots a sideways smile at James, who returns it.
The sun is beginning to come up, and the gentle orange-yellow glow illuminates the two ships where they lie, tilted and amputated but still intact. Francis puts his hand on James’s arm and squeezes, the excitement of the men around him rising to catch at his own throat.
Perhaps he can manage this. Perhaps, despite everything that he has done wrong, he can go home.
Across the deck, Jopson emerges from the hatch, blinking in the sun. Beyond him, perched on his wooden leg in the half-amputated rigging, is Thomas Blanky, his triumphant whoop resounding even over the voices of the other men. Francis smiles to see both of them. He has many reparations to make, not only to Jopson and Blanky but to others besides. Now, at last, he has the time to make them.
Francis looks down at Terror’s deck, canted and icy. Behind himself and James, there is only one shadow. The sun slants right through Francis, leaving no trace of his presence as it lights the boards behind him.
In the distance, their figures barely silhouettes against the white snow, their rescuers come over the ridge.