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- James dies on a shale slope in the Arctic, and Francis could mark the date and place on a map from memory alone. Has done, even, to offer what courtesy he can to the spirit of a dear friend who suffered such disrespect in death as Hickey’s camp was able to render.
- Francis dies - he doesn't know. Somewhere on the ice, in Netsilik fur, ten summers later.
- He could not, he thinks, mark his own resting place, has allowed his maps to become sentimental moreso than practical. Somewhere in Nunavut still, maybe, but he's allowed himself to lose track of his precise location. He is one of the Netsilik now, inasmuch as he can be, and as such he follows the migration trails, hunting on the island when there's game in the summer and hunkering down to camp in the winter and knowing with an utter certainty that he can never in this lifetime return to England.
- There are nights, certainly. Nights when he thinks of James and of Blanky and of Little and of Jopson and of Goodsir and-
- Nights when he thinks of James Ross come looking for him, when he brings up maps and charts in his mind and wonders how near he and his men were to rescue, tries to calculate out where he would've needed to have them and when, to see them safe. Nights when he lies in a tent and wishes he had known then what he knows now, if only that some of his men could have lived.
- It's fantastical, he knows. Completely and utterly.
- But a life is not so easily shaken as a name, and a part of him remains Francis Crozier, and that part of him would even now like to have been able to do right by James and the men and even Silna.
- Fantastical wishes or not, though, he is dying. And in death he finds himself Francis, for all that the name spoken to see him off into the squall is Aglooka, and as he settles into the snow and waits for the cold to fade from his limbs and wonders what waits for him on the other side of this, he thinks of all the things Francis regrets, the things he would do now, if he had a chance at doing the whole expedition over.
- And then they both wake, the day of Sir John's death, and James is Arctic cold, but just cold. Not the same bitter, bone deep, lung aching freeze he had felt at the end.
- He's too in shock to stop Sir John, not quick or clever enough to get him alone to convince him against visiting the hunting blind.
- Later, uncharitable though the thought may be, he wonders if he even could have or if Sir John would have proved too stubborn. If it’s better for Sir John to have died and left more- practical people to the running of the expedition.
- Francis is certain it's all a hypothermic death dream until a command meeting is being held in his wardroom and James is there and he's not utterly devastated the way he was the first time.
- He takes a map then, a small one, and sketches out what he'd learned of the landscape that on this map is blank, waiting to be filled in, not yet, to the knowledge of anyone else in the known English world, explored, and marks two points - one, carefully precise and near reverent, where he had poisoned James, and the other, more haphazard for the uncertainty of his cold-addled mind, where he had fallen to sleep in a squall.
- James really doesn't feel much of anything over Sir John’s death, and he's not sure if that's numb shock at their predicament or just the fact that this grief has since become an old one.
- Either way, he and Francis pull aside to talk alone, and they don't know if what they experienced was real but it was as real as it needed to be to galvanize their intent to get out of this place.
- “We're not meant to be here, James,” Francis says when they're alone, and knows he's said it wrong the moment it comes out of his mouth. Inuktitut comes easier to his tongue now than English, but James is patiently silent, allowing Francis the time to think through his words before he speaks them.
- He shakes his head, paces back and forth within the wardroom as though an animal caged. “Here, in the Arctic. Not merely now, after our deaths, but at all. Our presence is… a presumption. An attempt at glory that the spirits of this place cannot allow to stand.
- James dies on the ice, a hair’s breadth from rescue.
- Ross’s Enterprise is within sighting distance and Francis has ordered their halest men run ahead with gunfire to get their attention.
- There’s a prevailing air of disbelieving relief all around and Francis climbs into the sledge with James to announce their savior and - and James grasps his hand, as strongly as he is able, his fingers fever warm from infection even in the chill, and Francis’s heart drops as he leans close to hear the breath of words from barely moving lips.
- “If this should be it, Francis, if our luck has run out here and I do not wake tomorrow on Erebus, I wish for you to know that- that I care for you. More deeply than perhaps anyone else on this earth. And I find that I can no longer imagine a day of my life without you in it.” James pauses to draw in a ragged breath. “I mean to say, Francis, that I never thought to fall in love would be a luxury I would grant myself, and yet here upon the very edge of the world-”
- He breaks off with a slight twitch of bloody lips that, were Francis inclined to be generous, could be called a smile, and of course Francis is of a mind to be generous, for this is James, bloody and fevered and offering up a deathbed confession and-
- “James,” he snaps, sharp and horrified. “Don’t you dare do this to me. Not now.”
- And James’s smile flickers, wounded at the idea that his affections may be unreciprocated, and all the terrible squall of how could you we’re nearly out stills within Francis for a moment and he hunches over to press their lips together, full of all the feeling he can put into it and hopefully well enough hidden from the men by the angle of his body.
- “James,” he says softer, a plea more than anything. James’s hand goes slack in his. He closes his eyes and draws a shaking breath to compose himself and climbs out of the boat.
- The stricken expression he knows he wears is perhaps more damning even than the kiss.
- They’re taken on board the Enterprise. Francis sees that his men are well in hand and then, when his body finally registers all the limits he's pushed past to make it this far, he goes to lie down.
- He’s not, in all honesty, entirely sure whether he expects to wake up at all. Or if he does, where it’ll be.
- Francis is, remarkably enough in his own opinion, one of the healthiest of the men, but he has still been subject to the dismal choice between rotted, poisoned food and starvation that has led to the scurvy plaguing so many men, and his legs go as soon as he sees the last of his men below toward Enterprise's well stocked sickbay, weak and tremoring with how far passed exhaustion he's pushed these last few miles to ensure rescue.
- He's not got half the mind toward grand gestures of morale James does-did-will, but he's not a fool. He knows that the men watched something in him break when James breathed his last, just as he knows that it inspires a particular sort of loyalty and enthusiasm in a man to watch your commander keep moving despite his own losses, great though they may be.
- Francis, for his part, spent much of the walk oscillating wildly between refusing to even think about it and desperately hoping that the next time he wakes it will be frozen in on Terror.
- But now he's aboard Enterprise, in mostly open water, and Ross is there at his side the moment his knees give out, bracing him up and leading him to his own quarters and providing lemon juice and a good meal.
- He downs half the juice in one go, aware of Ross's concerned eyes on him, and starts on the meat.
- Francis doesn't believe much in higher powers, not the good Christian English ones at any rate, not after his nightmare time on the ice, but this fresh meal is still about as close to heaven as he's ever felt.
- "Our stores were rotted from the outset," he explains when he's nearly finished. "The cans were soldered wrong. We were getting lead poisoning every time we ate, and it was last autumn before we even noticed."
- He swallows the last bite of blessedly fresh food and meets Ross's eyes. "Between that and-" he bites his tongue before he can say Tuunbaq, knows the madness even his oldest (no longer dearest) friend would assume upon hearing of that without having experienced it himself. "-and Sir John ignoring me when I warned him about getting caught in the ice pack over winter-" Francis shakes his head. "We never stood a chance."
- "You've done remarkably well, my friend," Ross refutes, but Francis shakes his head again, disappointment carving out a home in his chest now that he's certain he will live.
- "Sixty men lived, out of the hundred twenty nine we started with. I've not done near as well as I could've." His mouth twists bitterly. "Hell, I haven't done as well as I should've."
- "Francis," Ross begins to disagree, but Francis cuts him off.
- "I promised James," he says, and he sees the moment of confusion it takes for Ross to gather that he's speaking not to him but of a different James entirely.
- "I said that he wouldn't ever have to be cold again after this, and little as you know I care for the opinions of others, I'd rather have not made myself a liar about that particular thing."
- To that particular man, he means.
- "Ah," Ross says then, sympathy written large across his face, because he does know Francis, knows that he's a pragmatic man and, though often melancholy, not, as a rule, prone to fits of regret over things that are no longer able to be changed. "My deepest apologies then, my friend."
- Francis sighs, twisting his tableware in hand. "I'd like to sleep now," he declares, and does not think about where he hopes to wake.
- It’s the Enterprise, and Francis realizes that deep down inside he was dreading this very prospect, hoping desperately to wake in his whiskey smelling berth on the Terror because this was meant to be a chance to do it right and how can it be right without James here with him, and Francis is not stronger than James Ross, not now, not after months of walking starved across the Arctic, but he learned upon waking of another half dozen of his men who will not make it despite the best efforts of both himself and the Enterprise's glut of physicians, and he will not endure the bitter fate of last man standing yet again.
- (He would, perhaps, be willing to live it out if he wasn’t so sure that he’d be getting another chance very soon. If he hadn’t been so very close to getting it right this time.)
- And he recalls that the last time, he'd woken up on Terror after dying, and he hopes to god he's connected the right pieces and that this will work.
- He checks Ross’s ships logs to give himself the best possible chance at saving his men next time, and then he throws himself overboard with only the slightest guilt at the horror he sees on the faces of his old friend and his men, because if this works none of them will remember that he's done this and he can ensure all of their survival, and he prays, to a higher power he doesn’t quite believe in, that he wakes up aboard Terror.
- He does, and he’s nearly dressed all the way before Jopson enters.
- “Sir,” Jopson says, utterly neutral, but Francis can still read the confusion in the set of his shoulders.
- “My coat,” he grits out, chest tight and body trembling with incendiary fury, voice kept level - just barely - by sheer force of will. “Captain Fitzjames and I need to have words.”
- The men give him a wide berth as he crosses the deck, and wider still when he makes his way out onto the snow and there’s more room to move, though his marines insist upon sticking close as an honor guard. He moves as though they’re not there, too used now to the way pleasantries and civility fade into unimportance in the face of survival on the ice.
- James is already standing just outside Erebus when he arrives, and near two dozen men are crowded around near the rail and below the ice ramp where he’s placed himself, watching in shock as he smashes his personal store of whiskey into a splatter of brown gold snow and broken glass.
- Francis couldn’t care less about that, not really, not after everything, but he knows exactly what the men see when he stomps his way up the ice and shoves James against Erebus’s hull with forearm pressed to collar bone to keep him there.
- “What in hell,” he hisses, through teeth grit so hard it nearly hurts, so very aware of all the eyes on them, “was that? What was your intention with that stunt?”
- It’s a demand, not a question, and Francis can’t decide what he’s most angry at: his own inability to ensure James’s sufficient health for a rescue, James’s allowing himself to give up when success was just there combined with the utter impudence of that confession at that time, or whether he just wants to curse this venture as a whole, curse the Arctic, curse the Admiralty, curse every other single factor that led to their increasingly desperate walk across the ice.
- “You are a phenomenal captain, Francis,” James says, addressing an issue entirely separate to what Francis had asked about, and the utter faith and certainty that reside in his gaze are equal parts terrifying and gratifying and exhilarating.
- Then James continues. “You are a phenomenal captain, sober. And if we are to survive this I will have that sooner than later.”
- Francis jostles James then, shakes him with a thump against Erebus.
- Not hard enough truly to hurt him, Francis could not bring himself to harm James now no matter the depths of his wrath, but hard enough that the Erebus men bristle at the treatment until James raises a single unbothered hand to wave them off, wearing command like it’s tailor made for him where at this time in their original journey he'd have been wrongfooted at the least had Francis done this, especially in front of the men.
- “That is not what I was referring to James,” Francis says sharply. “And you know it.”
- That unflinching certainty in James’s eyes blurs into something softer, and the corner of his mouth comes up. “I meant exactly what I said, Francis.”
- And Francis is going to reply, though he doesn’t know with what, is half tempted to crowd James even closer against the iced over hull, audience be damned, and kiss him hard until that ever perfect appearance is as rumpled as Francis feels with this biting anger and blooming affection thrumming hot under his skin, when they hear Sir John’s voice on the wind, calling for Erebus’s location.
- Their eyes remain locked for a fraction of a second more, and then James wets his lips and Francis releases him and turns on his heel and they call back in tandem even knowing that it’s futile, knowing that they will be that much more likely to survive with Sir John as a martyr and not an obstacle.
- Later, when the lieutenants have been dismissed that the captains might talk over their situation in privacy, Francis shoves James onto the wardroom table and has his way with him in a desperate frenzy, leaving him every bit as unkempt as he’d hoped and then some.
- “Have you any experience with men?” Francis asks, loathe to separate from him for even an instant but determined to ensure James has a good time with this.
- James breaks from their kissing just long enough to laugh.
- “I’ve only experience with men. Women-” he pauses, and Francis gets the sense that he would be making some dramatic gesture were his hands not otherwise occupied “-hold no interest for me.”
- “Right,” Francis says, the word caught up and vanishing against James’s mouth.
- He can still feel James’s fingernails along his back as they both make themselves presentable enough to face their officers.
- He pauses, hand on the door. Turns around, and meets James’s eyes for the barest of moments before hauling him down into another kiss, this one slower and tenderer than the others they’ve shared this day, but no less intense for it.
- “You should know I feel the same way, James,” he says, his first verbal response to James’s confession a day and a life ago, and then he shoulders open the door and they straighten to face the task of a lifetime head on. Together, as clearly they should be.
- It's Jopson who catches them out first, as can really only be expected given the way they've taken to meeting primarily aboard Terror.
- They’re curled in bed together, and Francis is watching James, raking his eyes across the lines of his face, softened in sleep, the slope of his bare chest and stomach, dusted with dark hair and half covered by the blanket. Tender fingers trail behind his gaze, brushing back a strand of hair caught on a tear-streaked cheek, feeling the rise and fall of breath and slow thudding heartbeat and solid, unbroken scar flesh under his palm, assuring him that James is here and whole and alive.
- That’s when Jopson enters, and Francis knows the look he has on his face, knows the raw affection he’s allowed himself to settle comfortably into here, propped up on one arm with James warm and content under his palm.
- An expression is not - quite - enough on its own to be damning, but the linens have slipped down just enough to make visible the pressure bruising of Francis's fingertips splayed out across James’s bare shoulders, and that, and the kiss flush of his mouth even still, sketching a tableau of this is what happened here, is.
- "Jopson, the door," Francis says, steady and firm like he doesn’t know this could ruin him, before Jopson has a chance to voice his opinions either way, and he hears it click softly shut under the weight of Jopson’s nigh unshakeable loyalty.
- James is a light sleeper, and Francis is surprised, quite frankly, that he didn’t wake with Jopson’s footsteps when the door first came open, but he sits up now, as Jopson takes up a post leaning against the door with his arms crossed and a perfectly pleasant demeanor as though there’s not a thing here out of the ordinary.
- James takes in the scene in a glance, jumping from sleep to wakefulness with an ease and speed that Francis himself can hardly manage shy of an emergency, seeing Jopson at the door, the pleasant airs despite how thrown he looks, and dissolving into the very faintest frown.
- Francis fishes his shirt up from within the tangle of covers and hands it over without breaking eye contact with his steward.
- James sits there quietly, bringing himself to some semblance of presentability as Francis and Jopson watch one another, giving every impression of dignity and unbotheredness except for the worried cant of his brows that Francis knows enough to notice but Jopson more than likely does not.
- “I’ll not need any help dressing for bed today, I’m afraid,” Francis says, allowing a sheepish smile to begin to creep its way onto his lips.
- “Sir,” Jopson agrees, eyes still caught confusedly on James.
- They supped together, Jopson knows, brought up the meal, and no doubt he expected them still to be at the table, or at the very most sitting together, talking over plans.
- “No need for an escort, either. Captain Fitzjames will be staying on Terror tonight.”
- “Right,” Jopson says.
- Francis watches him shake off his bafflement and surprise in favor of tidying dropped clothes and collecting up the dishes from dinner.
- “Jopson,” Francis says, pointedly, when he's about to leave.
- Jopson turns to face him.
- “I hope that you think highly enough of me that you will hold this in confidence despite what the Articles may suggest.”
- Jopson looks at him, and his eyes flick briefly to James, and he nods, as though it was never even in question.
- This time they die together, Francis has decided.
- He has not shared this with James, has not mentioned his resolution, should this attempt go wrong, to make the in-between as quick and clean as possible.
- Freezing had been peaceful but bitterly regretful. Drowning had hurt, in a way nothing else Francis has ever experienced has. This time, if he must die, he will not have a chance to think before he wakes again on Terror.
- (If he wakes again on Terror, a very small part of him thinks, for two times still does not a pattern make, but the rest of him is so utterly certain that without James alive and well he must that he scarcely pays a thought to the possibility.)
- Claws tearing into one’s stomach is an entirely different type of gruesome than illness, even if that illness is scurvy, but it’s only fair, Francis supposes, that Tuunbaq gets his shot at them too.
- Fair, perhaps.
- But the knowledge of what Tuunbaq means and why he hunts them makes it feel no less cruel to sit soaked in James’s lifeblood on the bare empty nothing of the shale, and Francis knows better, has lived this thrice and has known better since the first, but he is angry, somewhere deep inside where it cannot simply stew but must be moved to action, blindingly, incandescently livid that he has been made to endure this helplessness for so very long, and despite all his resolutions, all his know-better, when Tuunbaq faces him down he grits his teeth and raises his pistol and fires.
- It does next to nothing. He knows this, knows that his presumptuousness in attempting to slay Tuunbaq could only serve to stoke his fury, but it is with a grim sort of satisfaction that he hears the roar, feels teeth sink into flesh.
- He wakes up.
- Jopson is just outside the door in the hall, he knows, but he calls for him anyway, and hears footsteps pick up doubletime for his effort.
- His steward’s steady, undiminished presence as he dresses him is heartening. The dutiful economy of motion, the unbotheredness in the face of Francis’s pensive, irritable mood.
- “There’ll be a command meeting here on Terror later today,” Francis says as Jopson lays out his breakfast.
- Jopson looks up, eyebrows raised in curiosity.
- “Commander Fitzjames will be in attendance, of course, and the lieutenants, but I’ve a list of people whose presence I’d like you to ensure in addition to the usual roster.”
- Jopson nods, prepared to commit a list of instructions to memory.
- “Yourself. Doctors Stanley, McDonald, and Goodsir. Mr Blanky. John Bridgens. Mr Wall and Mr Diggle.” Francis hesitates for a moment over whether to add to that list, then nods to himself. “And Sergeant Tozer.”
- “Sir,” Jopson says when he's sure Francis is finished, in that tone that means he rather desperately wants answers but will not press any further than this lest propriety fall by the wayside.
- “All will be explained at the meeting, Jopson, I swear it.”
- Sir John dies, and Francis and James see him to rest for the fourth time. It feels performative now, false, with the knowledge that they did not even try to save him.
- A command meeting is called, and Irving and Hodgson are first to the wardroom, followed by Doctor McDonald and Mr Blanky and Sergeant Tozer and Mr Diggle and Mr Wall and Mr Bridgens, the latter three of whom Francis can hear Jopson assuring that their presence has in fact been requested.
- Lieutenant Little is next, accompanied by Doctors Stanley and Goodsir from Erebus.
- James is the last to enter, preceded by Lieutenants Fairholme and Le Vesconte.
- He shuts the door with his heel on a backstep and Francis is upon him immediately, decorum falling by the wayside to cross the wardroom in a few quick strides and pull James close with a palm to the back of his neck so that they stand forehead pressed to forehead and Francis can feel James warm and steady and alive under his hands for the first time since the last time.
- It's the same dizzy, desperate relief every repeat, and it is not fair, he thinks, that he must always live with James’s death, no matter how short a time it may last, but he cannot in good conscience wish the pain of the other way round upon James, and so he will endure.
- “I see we had the same idea,” James says, fingers clutching hard at the lapels of Francis’s coat, referring to the particular gathering of people in the wardroom with them.
- Francis huffs half a laugh.
- “If I can't read your mind by now…”
- He shakes his head, without pulling away. Swallows.
- “Christ alive, James,” he gasps out.
- “I know,” James chokes, eyes shut, and Francis can tell the only reason he hasn't been dragged into a complete body-to-body embrace is the audience they have. “I know.”
- There's a mildly scandalized clearing of the throat from Lieutenant Irving, and James’s white knuckle fingers slowly loose around Francis's coat and Francis trails his hand down his arm and away, and they take a breath together, reveling for an instant in the heady intimacy of sharing the same air, and turn.
- “Make yourselves comfortable, men,” Francis declares, gesturing at the too few chairs. It's a room furnished for a standard command meeting, at most, now holding a great deal more by virtue of circumstance. There's nothing he can truly do to make it less cramped, but he knows he cannot remain sitting for the whole of this meeting, unable to walk off the intensity of emotion he knows this conversation must produce. “The commander and I will stand.”
- The Terror lieutenants and Doctor McDonald and Blanky are the ones who've spent the most time in Terror’s wardroom, and they're quick to do as Francis said and make themselves at home.
- The Erebus lieutenants too, granted a modicum of certainty by their rank that some of the people in the room do not have, settle easily into the trappings of a command meeting. Irving takes the window seat, as is his wont, and chairs scrape as the table is claimed first by McDonald and Le Vesconte and then by the rest of the lieutenants.
- Mr Diggle takes the last seat at the table, leaving Stanley and Mr Wall to stand with Blanky and Tozer, though it's more of a loom in Stanley’s case.
- Goodsir and Bridgens squeeze into the other window seat, neither especially slender but both of them amicable enough personalities to make it work, and Irving is joined by Neptune, who settles down atop his feet with a low huff, and Jopson, who hesitantly joins the proceedings when Francis nods him out of the corner he'd originally placed himself in.
- “Gentlemen,” Francis begins, “we’re in what you could call an interesting situation. First on the agenda is the matter of our stores.”
- He informs the cooks of the issue with their food stock and sends them off to enact whatever solution they deem necessary.
- James takes the seat Mr Diggle has just vacated, and when they’ve left, when their footsteps have gone far enough that Francis can no longer tell their specific noise from the general noise of an ice-locked ship, he speaks again.
- “As for the rest of you men,” he says, and sighs.
- “I am well aware that, being who I am, who we are-” and he gestures to himself and to James- “what I am about to tell you will strain belief. Nonetheless, it is true, or as near to true as anything I’ve experienced in my time on this earth.”
- “Captain?” Lieutenant Little asks, lost.
- “A drunk and a known exaggerant, Lieutenant,” James says, and Francis doesn’t need to look to know the eyes all turn to him at that comment, but James has hit precisely upon the crux of the issue. “Any story from the two of us, with no one else to confirm the validity, is by nature suspect.”
- The room is still, air close with the weight of indecision. Francis and James have not asked anything of the men, not outright, but James’s words demand more than trust, more than loyalty.
- They demand faith.
- And to these men, they’ve not yet proved themselves worthy of that faith.
- Blanky is the first to break the tension. “I’ll bite,” he declares, with a careless shrug that belies the true depths of his competence. “Can’t get much worse off no matter what yarn you two are about to spin.”
- “I trust you, Captain,” Jopson says, and this version of him is clearly out of his depth speaking during a command meeting (any version of him, really, none ever truly got the time to become comfortable in command) but throwing in his piece nonetheless. Francis offers him a nod of appreciative acknowledgement.
- The Erebus lieutenants are next, and then his own, and soon it’s only Doctor Stanley who has yet to agree to hear them out.
- James looks at him, and Francis is reminded, perhaps for the first time, that they know each other well.
- “Do you trust me, Stephen?” he asks, sincere as anything.
- Stanley’s frown doesn’t move. “It’s hardly a matter of trust, sir.”
- James smiles, just slightly. It’s not a happy smile, exactly, but something in it seems to resonate with the doctor. “And yet,” he says, open ended and expectant.
- Stanley sighs deeply.
- “Very well.”
- James’s smile becomes a beam, and he leans in, catching the attention of the room the way he always does, with that seemingly effortless charisma, and he unfurls a map and meets each man’s baffled eyes in turn as Francis fills in the missing pieces.
- The tale he tells, Francis can’t help thinking, grimly, is going to be far less heroic than usual.
- Tuunbaq looms out of the fog, Silna a small brown shape by the bear’s flank. The men are gathered behind him, a sea of cream and tan rippling nervously.
- Nervously, Francis notes, but not fearfully. Not this time, not when Francis has led them from their ships across ice without a single casualty.
- He steps forward, twenty some feet ahead of his men. He stands braced for impact, feet shoulder width apart and hands down at his sides, unarmed.
- “Hold your fire, men,” he says, voice carrying clear and sharp through the still air, and he hears the slide-click shuffle of arms being reluctantly shouldered.
- “We are leaving,” he declares in Inuktitut. “As fast as we can. We should not be here. We are leaving. We-” he gestures at himself, at his men, gestures to say us in particular, this group, to say I cannot speak for all my people but I speak for these- “will not come back. We are leaving.”
- Tuunbaq stalks forth, a liquid shush of fur and muscle the only sound of his movement.
- Francis does not move, standing still despite the fear sluicing down his spine like icemelt.
- A great paw comes up, and Francis breathes deep and slacks his muscles in anticipation of pain.
- “Don't move,” he hears James from behind him, voice raised and tone hard, keeping the men in place. Keeping them safe. Good.
- Claws rip into Francis’s right arm in the next instant, flaying skin and muscle clean from bone and tearing into the meat of his chest.
- The pain sends the world tilt on its axis, and he staggers with the blow, catching himself as much as he can with his good arm braced against the shale. For a moment he's certain he's miscalculated, that he will die here and bleed out and wake once more frozen in.
- Then he meets Silna's eyes. She's next to the Tuunbaq, palm resting, fingers splayed wide, on the barrel of his chest.
- “You are leaving,” she says.
- It is - just barely - a question.
- “I swear,” Francis says, and he tries to convey the depth to which he means it in his tone.
- She looks at him, eyes searching. She looks at the men, and he follows her gaze to where James is standing, halfway between Francis and the men, arm outstretched to them in the gesture for wait but gaze locked on Silna and the Tuunbaq.
- “Go,” Silna says.
- It's an order.
- Francis nods urgently.
- She turns away.
- And the Tuunbaq - fades into the mist, so smoothly that Francis can't tell if it walked away or - something else.
- The doctors swarm him then, peeling back his shirt and waistcoat to prod at the lacerations in his arm and chest.
- He hears James order the men to get back to camp, to what they were doing, and then he's there too, holding onto Francis's hand and saying his name.
- Francis grins, half delirious with bloodloss and the heady relief of success. “We’ll match,” he says, about his arm and his chest, and it startles a laugh from James.
- “I certainly hope not,” he says. “My sniper story is a good deal less entertaining given how we know it ends.”
- Francis squeezes his hand and shakes his head, still smiling. “We're going to live this time, James. I know it.”
- It's the better part of a week before Francis can sit up without splitting his wounds open again, and longer still before he can do it without overwhelming pain, but he keeps the arm, for which he is exceedingly thankful.
- But he is not half as thankful for that as he is for the fact that, four days after his confrontation with Tuunbaq, all of the hunting parties come back with game.
- He'd told James he knew they'd make it this time, and he'd meant it, but now that nebulous sort of certainty solidifies into something sure. Not once, in all the times they've tried this, have they ever been successful in their attempts to hunt.
- Francis will not miss this for the gift it is, an offering from the Arctic itself that he may make good on his promise to leave with his men and never come back.
- The Enterprise is not only within sighting distance this time.
- It’s within shouting distance, and even that distance is rapidly decreasing as Ross’s men mingle with Francis’s like a giddy, unreal sort of benediction, handing out bottled lemon juice and salt meat without the slightest hint of lead in it and loading injured and hale alike into boats to be hauled up into the ship proper.
- Francis defers the offer of sustenance just now, his arms too occupied with keeping James hefted up as they board a boat.
- The injured have been carried this far by the haler among Francis’s men, their sledges abandoned at the sight of rescue that they could meet the Enterprise more quickly, and most of them now have been passed off to Ross’s people, and his arm and chest burn so sharply it's almost as though he can feel the Tuunbaq’s claws opening him up all over again, but Francis will not let them take James.
- Not until he’s certain that James will be well, and maybe even a while then.
- Not when Francis can feel James’s blood soaking into his own coat from his wounded arm and side, not when James has died clinging to his hand thrice and it’s begun to seem it’s Francis’s lot in life to be this for him.
- Not when they are so close now to success that he can feel the heady buzz of hope grow solid in his heart.
- He’s certain, without any question, that the men, the entire near complete complement they've managed to keep alive this time, have heard things they needn’t have.
- He’s said anything and everything he could think of to keep James with him these last few hundred yards over ice, promises and provocations both and not half of them repeatable in polite company, or even merely Christian company, and he will be deeply ingratiated to them should they deign to keep their lips closed on the matter, but for now James is in his arms, bloody and fevered and weak, and Francis is being helped into a boat by marines clad in coats that aren’t the slightest bit shoddy, and Ross knows enough about Francis’s proclivities and holds him in high enough regard besides that Francis feels fairly well secure in their safety, aboard Enterprise at least, and he curls forwards around James, presses his lips to the top of James’s head and shuts his eyes and allows himself, for the first time in a very long time, to trust unflinchingly that everything will be well.
- For the first week aboard the Enterprise his entire body is an aching amalgamation of tender and sore. Tender where wounds that have never really closed are finally beginning to heal, and sore everywhere else as his body acclimates to food and warmth after so long walking starved across the edge of the world.
- Then, when enough days have passed that even the worst off of them are well enough to take a turn around the deck, his days are spent playing interference against the bombardment of questions his men are being subjected to by their insatiably curious search party.
- It’s an endless queue of “What happened?” and “How did you survive?” and “No really, tell us!” that he can’t answer with any honesty because if he tells the truth he and all his men will be condemned as liars at best and insane at worst.
- There’s a moment, a few weeks into their time aboard the Enterprise, that Francis begins to dread their return to England, because if their rescuers are this invasive then how insufferable will civilians be?
- Then he catches sight of James, leaning on the railing a ways away, face tilted toward the pink-orange-violet sunset, a faint, pleased smile on his face. James thrives at parties, in the exact way that Francis decidedly does not, and he’ll almost certainly handle the curious public just as deftly.
- James must feel him looking, because he opens his eyes and turns and his smile cracks that much wider. For Francis, and it’s like first sunrise and spring thaw all wrapped up into one staggering wave of warm affection that makes the whole world go whiskey soft around the edges.
- For that smile directed at him, if nothing else, Francis will endure any crowd’s questions for as long as he may yet live.