(no subject)
Title: Deep Water
Fandom: Aubrey-Maturin series
Pairing: None (but vaguely Jack/Stephen if you squint)
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Patrick O’Brian’s, not mine
Summary: Stephen is recovering from being tortured in Port Mahon, but some scars are slow to fade. Spoilers for HMS Surprise. Written for 2lineschallenge.
i'm coming up only to hold you under
i'm coming up only to show you wrong
-band of horses, funeral
Of that endless night in Port Mahon, he recalled very little: flickering candlelight, the chafing of ropes against his wrists, a circle of unfamiliar sweaty, stubbled faces, voices telling him to speak, speak, speak, a maddening, mind-numbing mantra. But his lips were dry and his tongue thick, and he had floundered into deep waters where there were no more words. When they threatened him, brought him back to the reality of his torment again and again with smelling salts and freezing water thrown in his face, he could only stare at them dully and say nothing.
The faces seemed to warp and change as the night went on, familiar and unfamiliar by turns. Once he thought Jack spoke to him, telling him to show no weakness, but when they tied his hand down and applied the instruments, he struggled frantically and cried out, unable to hold himself back. He would lose everything by the time this night was over, he knew that; they would turn him into a witless beast, spilling his secrets and sobbing pathetically for mercy, before they finally put an end to him. When they spoke to him again, he found he could no longer understand them, and not for the first time that night, he feared madness.
Exasperated by his reticence, they strapped him to the rack again, and some still-functioning rational part of his brain calmly detailed the precise damage they were doing to his meager frame: dislocation of the joints, tearing of the muscles and ligaments, contusion of the soft tissues. And then rationality began to wither away; he was sinking, falling away from the candlelight and the ropes and the faces and their meaningless jabber, and he was nearly gone when once again, as he had done so often on board ship, Jack Aubrey saved him from drowning.
* * *
"Which the Doctor has missed breakfast," Killick said disapprovingly, insinuating his ugly face through a crack in the door of Stephen’s cabin. The ajar door also admitted the tantalizing scent of coffee, which served to rouse Stephen from a restless slumber far more effectively than Killick's harsh croak.
After threatening Killick with decapitation should he discard the remainder of the coffee, Stephen roused himself painfully, sitting on the edge of his cot for a long time before he had the strength to stand, dress himself and hobble off to the galley. Pain walked with him, a silent partner; he paid it no mind, even though the crewmen seemed to pay more mind to his pain than they did to himself - clucking and fussing, offering their services. But to accept their cosseting would be to accept what had been done to him, and he was having none of that.
He ate, which put more strength into him, and made his slow, halting way up on deck to see if Jack was about. The sunlight was bright and the sails hung limp in the hot, breezeless air. Half a dozen voices called to Stephen to stand clear of the hands holystoning the deck, and discontentedly, he crept off to a deserted corner by the rails, and watched the gulls dipping and arcing over the calm blue water, their reflections rising to meet them and falling away again. Perhaps he might spot a stormy petrel, he thought.
"Why, there you are, Stephen," Jack said, appearing suddenly at his side - light on his feet for such a large man. "I had thought you planned to stay abed all day. Have you been resting easy, then, my dear?"
"Well enough," Stephen said, sounding slightly peevish. "It is a calm day, is it not? Halcyon weather, they call it."
"I call it a damned nuisance," Jack replied, glancing up at the lifeless sails. "We shall go nowhere at this pace; half the men have been attempting to whistle up a wind, but nothing comes of it. Though the barometer is falling, and we may have a bit of a blow before nightfall. What is this Halcyon? Is it a philosophical word?"
"It derives from a tale of the ancient Greeks. The lady Alcyone, pining for her husband lost at sea, flung herself into the waters, and the gods were kind enough to transform both her and her husband into kingfishers. When she broods her young upon the waves, they say, the ocean is calm and still, and those days are called halcyon days in her honor - though no kingfisher ever nested upon the ocean, in truth; they are freshwater birds, and raise their young in trees or riverbanks."
Jack looked somewhat uneasy during the first part of the story, and Stephen recalled the foolish superstitions of sailors - that speaking of an ill event was certain to bring it about. He had thought better of Jack than that, but he did not remark upon it. "Well, in any case," Jack said, "at least we may take our ease in this weather, kingfishers or no. I'm for a swim - would you care to join me?"
"You know very well I cannot swim, at all," Stephen said, giving Jack a cold look, and wondering if Jack was mocking him. It seemed quite unlike him; although Jack was fond of wretched jokes, they were never at another's expense.
"Did you not say you wished to learn? By God, Stephen, think of all the fish and... things you could capture, if only you knew how to swim. I dare say a running bowline around your waist would work well enough to keep you from sinking, and the waters would do you good. What say you, my dear?"
Stephen was entirely inclined to refuse, but he did recall his enthusiasm on the subject (so long ago, it seemed), and Jack seemed so eager that he was loath to disappoint him. And so it was that he found himself being bundled unceremoniously over the side of the ship, clinging to the rope with his good hand while glaring at the curious faces peering at him from the rails. Once in the water, he dangled on the end of the rope like a hanged man, his limbs askew, feeling extraordinarily ill at ease. The water was very deep, and so clear that he felt as if he was suspended in mid-air, and might fall at any moment. He could not help but recall the first time he had tumbled overboard, back on the Sophie; his lead-soled boots had weighed him down like a plummet-stone, and he remembered staring up at the surface some eight fathoms above his head, the bubbles of his breath spiraling upwards, shining silver in the sunlight, and the calm certainty that this would be the last thing he would ever see.
Unlike Stephen, Jack was in his element here, his bulk transformed to grace in the water. He dove and rose and sported like a dolphin, his long hair streaming behind him, and Stephen watched him with a mixture of admiration and envy: the curve of his backbone as he submerged, the powerful strokes of his arms as he swam beneath the surface. He seemed so full of life and health, and Stephen wished that he could partake of Jack’s nature somehow, absorb it into himself and regain what he had lost.
"Is it not fine, Stephen?" Jack cried, surfacing nearby, shaking his wet hair out of his eyes. "Upon my soul, there is nothing more refreshing in all the world.”
"Indeed, it is very fine," Stephen replied, not entirely truthfully, for he found it too cold for his taste, especially in the absence of exertion. But Jack's evident pleasure was infectious, and he found himself relaxing somewhat, letting the water buoy him up and easing his convulsive grip upon the rope.
Jack swam alongside him and, with extraordinary patience, demonstrated the rudiments of keeping oneself afloat in the water and propelling oneself about, which Stephen mimicked as best he could, his sore joints protesting at the movement. When he managed to paddle along for a few feet, as far as the rope’s slack would permit him, he felt quite accomplished, though the effort wearied him immensely. "Sure I shall be a sea creature yet," he remarked, gasping for breath.
"You are a veritable mermaid, Stephen," Jack agreed, grinning. "Or merman, I should say. A bit of this exercise every day and you shall regain your strength in no time."
"I have no doubt of it," Stephen said. He glanced down at himself, pale and thin beneath the blue waters, the marks of yellowing bruises still visible on his skin, sighed, and signaled to the hands on deck to bring him back on board.
Back in his cabin, he washed the salt from his skin with the tiny amount of fresh water allotted for personal hygiene, and clambered wearily into his cot. The hands were being piped to dinner, and the ceiling of his cabin vibrated from the impact of their tramping feet, the overhead lamp swaying on its chain. Being on a Navy ship, he thought, was like being caught in the gears of a giant clock, life proceeding in endless mechanical cycles day after day. He found it wearying at times, but now the very predictability - so different from his work as an intelligence agent - was soothing to him. He did not wish for any more surprises, not now. Uncertainty was for healthy men.
He read a monograph upon the subject of new species of barnacles found on ship hulls in the Indian Ocean, and slept for a while as the day wore on. He dreamed he was searching through huge heaps of rubbish for a lost object - some bauble or trinket of vital importance to him, though he could not recall what it looked like. He dreamed that Diana was giving him lessons in Hindustani while describing how she had once ridden a gryphon into the desert. (In the dream, this made perfect sense to him.) And he dreamed, as he always did, of the room in Port Mahon, the stink of ammonia in his nostrils, the cracking and straining of his limbs as he hung upon the rack.
The sound of rain dashing against the window woke him. A blow, just as Jack had predicted. Alcyone no longer brooded her young upon the deep, it seemed. The sky was the color of pewter, and overhead he could hear Jack's great bass voice over the sound of the wind, bellowing at the crewmen to take the sails down. He found that he was cold, but he was too stiff and tired to rise and fetch himself another blanket. He watched the raindrops trickling down the windowpane in intricate, random patterns, like the courses of tiny rivers, and wondered whether this was the precursor to a storm.
It was not; the rain died away after a time, and presently - as he considered whether to take a dose of laudanum or to take up his reading again - there was a knock at the door. "Stephen?" Jack inquired. "Might I come in?"
"You may," Stephen said, and Jack stepped into the cabin, showing the same exasperating deference that everyone seemed to exhibit towards him of late. As always, Jack seemed too large for the cramped space - his head nearly brushed the ceiling beams, and even when he sat down, the cabin seemed filled with his presence. "Is there aught amiss, my dear?" Stephen asked him, shifting in his cot so that he faced Jack fully.
"Not at all," Jack said, smiling. "I had a spare moment, and only wished to see how you fared. It is a pity we cannot play a little music, now that the wind has died down again - though perhaps I might persuade Killick to make a bit of toasted cheese as consolation."
Stephen glanced over at his 'cello case, which leaned upright in a corner. "I do not think I shall be playing any music for quite some time, to be frank, brother."
Jack was silent a moment, sitting in the chair with his hands clasped as the lamp threw his shadow huge and flickering against the far wall. Then - seemingly with some trepidation - he reached out to take Stephen’s injured hand, which looked tiny and fragile in comparison with Jack's. Jack looked down at the scars, tracing their lineaments with his thumb, and Stephen suppressed a shudder. Only the look on Jack's face prevented him from snatching his hand away. "Will the nails ever grow back?" Jack asked, in a low voice.
"They will not," Stephen said stiffly, withdrawing his hand finally and turning over on his back. "They were torn out by the roots."
Jack was silent for a moment, his eyes downcast, and Stephen knew he was thinking of that night in Port Mahon, that the memory had not left him any more than it had left Stephen. Then Jack seemed to brighten; he looked up, and his bright eyes flashed in the lamplight. "Still and all, Stephen, they could not defeat you. They thought you weak, but you proved them wrong."
"Indeed," Stephen said, looking fixedly up at the ceiling. "I am weary, Jack; I should like to rest."
"Very well." Jack rose, his great bulk blocking out the light. He smiled warmly. "Sleep well, my dear."
"Good night." The door opened and closed, and Stephen was alone once more.
When he dozed off at last, aided by a substantial dose of laudanum, he did not dream of Diana, nor of the rack. He dreamed of blue ocean depths, of submarine silence shot through with the sound of Jack’s voice, and instead of being afraid, he was obscurely comforted. He let himself sink, knowing that he would rise again, and fell further into darkness and deeper sleep.
Fandom: Aubrey-Maturin series
Pairing: None (but vaguely Jack/Stephen if you squint)
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Patrick O’Brian’s, not mine
Summary: Stephen is recovering from being tortured in Port Mahon, but some scars are slow to fade. Spoilers for HMS Surprise. Written for 2lineschallenge.
i'm coming up only to hold you under
i'm coming up only to show you wrong
-band of horses, funeral
Of that endless night in Port Mahon, he recalled very little: flickering candlelight, the chafing of ropes against his wrists, a circle of unfamiliar sweaty, stubbled faces, voices telling him to speak, speak, speak, a maddening, mind-numbing mantra. But his lips were dry and his tongue thick, and he had floundered into deep waters where there were no more words. When they threatened him, brought him back to the reality of his torment again and again with smelling salts and freezing water thrown in his face, he could only stare at them dully and say nothing.
The faces seemed to warp and change as the night went on, familiar and unfamiliar by turns. Once he thought Jack spoke to him, telling him to show no weakness, but when they tied his hand down and applied the instruments, he struggled frantically and cried out, unable to hold himself back. He would lose everything by the time this night was over, he knew that; they would turn him into a witless beast, spilling his secrets and sobbing pathetically for mercy, before they finally put an end to him. When they spoke to him again, he found he could no longer understand them, and not for the first time that night, he feared madness.
Exasperated by his reticence, they strapped him to the rack again, and some still-functioning rational part of his brain calmly detailed the precise damage they were doing to his meager frame: dislocation of the joints, tearing of the muscles and ligaments, contusion of the soft tissues. And then rationality began to wither away; he was sinking, falling away from the candlelight and the ropes and the faces and their meaningless jabber, and he was nearly gone when once again, as he had done so often on board ship, Jack Aubrey saved him from drowning.
* * *
"Which the Doctor has missed breakfast," Killick said disapprovingly, insinuating his ugly face through a crack in the door of Stephen’s cabin. The ajar door also admitted the tantalizing scent of coffee, which served to rouse Stephen from a restless slumber far more effectively than Killick's harsh croak.
After threatening Killick with decapitation should he discard the remainder of the coffee, Stephen roused himself painfully, sitting on the edge of his cot for a long time before he had the strength to stand, dress himself and hobble off to the galley. Pain walked with him, a silent partner; he paid it no mind, even though the crewmen seemed to pay more mind to his pain than they did to himself - clucking and fussing, offering their services. But to accept their cosseting would be to accept what had been done to him, and he was having none of that.
He ate, which put more strength into him, and made his slow, halting way up on deck to see if Jack was about. The sunlight was bright and the sails hung limp in the hot, breezeless air. Half a dozen voices called to Stephen to stand clear of the hands holystoning the deck, and discontentedly, he crept off to a deserted corner by the rails, and watched the gulls dipping and arcing over the calm blue water, their reflections rising to meet them and falling away again. Perhaps he might spot a stormy petrel, he thought.
"Why, there you are, Stephen," Jack said, appearing suddenly at his side - light on his feet for such a large man. "I had thought you planned to stay abed all day. Have you been resting easy, then, my dear?"
"Well enough," Stephen said, sounding slightly peevish. "It is a calm day, is it not? Halcyon weather, they call it."
"I call it a damned nuisance," Jack replied, glancing up at the lifeless sails. "We shall go nowhere at this pace; half the men have been attempting to whistle up a wind, but nothing comes of it. Though the barometer is falling, and we may have a bit of a blow before nightfall. What is this Halcyon? Is it a philosophical word?"
"It derives from a tale of the ancient Greeks. The lady Alcyone, pining for her husband lost at sea, flung herself into the waters, and the gods were kind enough to transform both her and her husband into kingfishers. When she broods her young upon the waves, they say, the ocean is calm and still, and those days are called halcyon days in her honor - though no kingfisher ever nested upon the ocean, in truth; they are freshwater birds, and raise their young in trees or riverbanks."
Jack looked somewhat uneasy during the first part of the story, and Stephen recalled the foolish superstitions of sailors - that speaking of an ill event was certain to bring it about. He had thought better of Jack than that, but he did not remark upon it. "Well, in any case," Jack said, "at least we may take our ease in this weather, kingfishers or no. I'm for a swim - would you care to join me?"
"You know very well I cannot swim, at all," Stephen said, giving Jack a cold look, and wondering if Jack was mocking him. It seemed quite unlike him; although Jack was fond of wretched jokes, they were never at another's expense.
"Did you not say you wished to learn? By God, Stephen, think of all the fish and... things you could capture, if only you knew how to swim. I dare say a running bowline around your waist would work well enough to keep you from sinking, and the waters would do you good. What say you, my dear?"
Stephen was entirely inclined to refuse, but he did recall his enthusiasm on the subject (so long ago, it seemed), and Jack seemed so eager that he was loath to disappoint him. And so it was that he found himself being bundled unceremoniously over the side of the ship, clinging to the rope with his good hand while glaring at the curious faces peering at him from the rails. Once in the water, he dangled on the end of the rope like a hanged man, his limbs askew, feeling extraordinarily ill at ease. The water was very deep, and so clear that he felt as if he was suspended in mid-air, and might fall at any moment. He could not help but recall the first time he had tumbled overboard, back on the Sophie; his lead-soled boots had weighed him down like a plummet-stone, and he remembered staring up at the surface some eight fathoms above his head, the bubbles of his breath spiraling upwards, shining silver in the sunlight, and the calm certainty that this would be the last thing he would ever see.
Unlike Stephen, Jack was in his element here, his bulk transformed to grace in the water. He dove and rose and sported like a dolphin, his long hair streaming behind him, and Stephen watched him with a mixture of admiration and envy: the curve of his backbone as he submerged, the powerful strokes of his arms as he swam beneath the surface. He seemed so full of life and health, and Stephen wished that he could partake of Jack’s nature somehow, absorb it into himself and regain what he had lost.
"Is it not fine, Stephen?" Jack cried, surfacing nearby, shaking his wet hair out of his eyes. "Upon my soul, there is nothing more refreshing in all the world.”
"Indeed, it is very fine," Stephen replied, not entirely truthfully, for he found it too cold for his taste, especially in the absence of exertion. But Jack's evident pleasure was infectious, and he found himself relaxing somewhat, letting the water buoy him up and easing his convulsive grip upon the rope.
Jack swam alongside him and, with extraordinary patience, demonstrated the rudiments of keeping oneself afloat in the water and propelling oneself about, which Stephen mimicked as best he could, his sore joints protesting at the movement. When he managed to paddle along for a few feet, as far as the rope’s slack would permit him, he felt quite accomplished, though the effort wearied him immensely. "Sure I shall be a sea creature yet," he remarked, gasping for breath.
"You are a veritable mermaid, Stephen," Jack agreed, grinning. "Or merman, I should say. A bit of this exercise every day and you shall regain your strength in no time."
"I have no doubt of it," Stephen said. He glanced down at himself, pale and thin beneath the blue waters, the marks of yellowing bruises still visible on his skin, sighed, and signaled to the hands on deck to bring him back on board.
Back in his cabin, he washed the salt from his skin with the tiny amount of fresh water allotted for personal hygiene, and clambered wearily into his cot. The hands were being piped to dinner, and the ceiling of his cabin vibrated from the impact of their tramping feet, the overhead lamp swaying on its chain. Being on a Navy ship, he thought, was like being caught in the gears of a giant clock, life proceeding in endless mechanical cycles day after day. He found it wearying at times, but now the very predictability - so different from his work as an intelligence agent - was soothing to him. He did not wish for any more surprises, not now. Uncertainty was for healthy men.
He read a monograph upon the subject of new species of barnacles found on ship hulls in the Indian Ocean, and slept for a while as the day wore on. He dreamed he was searching through huge heaps of rubbish for a lost object - some bauble or trinket of vital importance to him, though he could not recall what it looked like. He dreamed that Diana was giving him lessons in Hindustani while describing how she had once ridden a gryphon into the desert. (In the dream, this made perfect sense to him.) And he dreamed, as he always did, of the room in Port Mahon, the stink of ammonia in his nostrils, the cracking and straining of his limbs as he hung upon the rack.
The sound of rain dashing against the window woke him. A blow, just as Jack had predicted. Alcyone no longer brooded her young upon the deep, it seemed. The sky was the color of pewter, and overhead he could hear Jack's great bass voice over the sound of the wind, bellowing at the crewmen to take the sails down. He found that he was cold, but he was too stiff and tired to rise and fetch himself another blanket. He watched the raindrops trickling down the windowpane in intricate, random patterns, like the courses of tiny rivers, and wondered whether this was the precursor to a storm.
It was not; the rain died away after a time, and presently - as he considered whether to take a dose of laudanum or to take up his reading again - there was a knock at the door. "Stephen?" Jack inquired. "Might I come in?"
"You may," Stephen said, and Jack stepped into the cabin, showing the same exasperating deference that everyone seemed to exhibit towards him of late. As always, Jack seemed too large for the cramped space - his head nearly brushed the ceiling beams, and even when he sat down, the cabin seemed filled with his presence. "Is there aught amiss, my dear?" Stephen asked him, shifting in his cot so that he faced Jack fully.
"Not at all," Jack said, smiling. "I had a spare moment, and only wished to see how you fared. It is a pity we cannot play a little music, now that the wind has died down again - though perhaps I might persuade Killick to make a bit of toasted cheese as consolation."
Stephen glanced over at his 'cello case, which leaned upright in a corner. "I do not think I shall be playing any music for quite some time, to be frank, brother."
Jack was silent a moment, sitting in the chair with his hands clasped as the lamp threw his shadow huge and flickering against the far wall. Then - seemingly with some trepidation - he reached out to take Stephen’s injured hand, which looked tiny and fragile in comparison with Jack's. Jack looked down at the scars, tracing their lineaments with his thumb, and Stephen suppressed a shudder. Only the look on Jack's face prevented him from snatching his hand away. "Will the nails ever grow back?" Jack asked, in a low voice.
"They will not," Stephen said stiffly, withdrawing his hand finally and turning over on his back. "They were torn out by the roots."
Jack was silent for a moment, his eyes downcast, and Stephen knew he was thinking of that night in Port Mahon, that the memory had not left him any more than it had left Stephen. Then Jack seemed to brighten; he looked up, and his bright eyes flashed in the lamplight. "Still and all, Stephen, they could not defeat you. They thought you weak, but you proved them wrong."
"Indeed," Stephen said, looking fixedly up at the ceiling. "I am weary, Jack; I should like to rest."
"Very well." Jack rose, his great bulk blocking out the light. He smiled warmly. "Sleep well, my dear."
"Good night." The door opened and closed, and Stephen was alone once more.
When he dozed off at last, aided by a substantial dose of laudanum, he did not dream of Diana, nor of the rack. He dreamed of blue ocean depths, of submarine silence shot through with the sound of Jack’s voice, and instead of being afraid, he was obscurely comforted. He let himself sink, knowing that he would rise again, and fell further into darkness and deeper sleep.