[PSL] in this sense the open jaws of wild beasts will appear no less pleasing than their prototypes

[katabasis]

The bread that is over-baked so that it cracks and bursts asunder hath not the form desired by the baker; yet none the less it hath a beauty of its own, and is most tempting to the palate. Figs bursting in their ripeness, olives near even unto decay, have yet in their broken ripeness a distinctive beauty.

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[katabasis]

It's as reading in a second language. Forzada is both forced and enforced; peace can be a complex thing. He takes it is with all the pleasure and comfort of a knife set into the hand: to put to flesh, to cut apples with.

"That's it precisely. Man is motivated by comfort. And if there is one person in society to keep the door cracked long enough for the rest to become familiar with the gap, then that space can be leveraged by anyone outside it. A margin is tolerable if it's really a foothold." If it's a place where new rule of law is to be ratified, where flames are lit in dark places and carried back to the world saying, See? It must be done.

They are eight strong from the ruin of the Oglethorpe plantation and some of them will find lives inside civilization though it's unprepared for them. How many does it take? At what point does the invisible balance of understanding tip? There must be one. And how they act until then is both necessary to their survival and for what must follow. Again and again and again, Silver had said and he hadn't been wrong. Repetition is how things are renamed, how going out onto some dangerous dark wood can be called keeping order.

(Thomas strips him of him edge; Thomas sharpens him. All these things can be true all at the same time, he thinks.)

And he pauses there alongside the roadway. After a moment James touches Thomas side with just the tips of his fingers. "We should leave the road now."

[aletheian]

Thomas wonders at a few things, but says nothing about them, for now. As of yet unsure how to word them - he was better at it before, able to pull abstract feelings from the chaotic realm of thought and vision and make them into clear and fine words. After so many years in silence he's out of practice; always engaging himself in his own mind, but the translation outward is-- another order of thing entirely.

Walking side-by-side, Thomas is near enough to catch James's hand with the side of his when he brushes his fingertips against him. Just for a moment. He makes a noise of agreement, and spares another look to the horizon before they turn.

"Three or four hours until it rains?" is his estimation, stepping off the edge of uneven earth, still arranged strangely thanks to the poor weather. It'll be good to be away from it and onto terrain made firmer by roots and age.

It's a while before he speaks again, comfortable in their easy quiet.

"I used to wonder if I should be ashamed of what's happened to me," he says, his low voice calm, the sound of it coiling close, as if there isn't enough treble in it to carry out through the thickening trees. "I didn't know how, I realized, sitting in Bethlem. I didn't know how to do a lot of things. I didn't know how to hate anyone. Learning that was sometimes worse than-- the rest of it."

Plenty of people are ashamed of things done to them against their will. It isn't uncommon. It would be uncommon - and too strange - for Thomas to feel nothing about the whole ordeal, to have been abused and violated and simply shrugged it off. But it's there, some unsteady, jagged-edged thing that still makes him hesitate when he pulls his shirt off, that makes him touch his hands to warm skin and pause, like he isn't sure if he should be allowed, anymore.

"Now I wonder if I was less human before I learned those things, and I don't know what to think about it."

He also wonders: is James ashamed of living in this margin? Is what he wants the same position as before, but named differently, set inside a different set of rules? He doesn't know how to ask. He doesn't know exactly why he would need to. And so he rolls the notion over in his head like a stone between his hands, considering.

[katabasis]

The weather will hold, he thinks - at least long enough for them to leave the road well behind them. Of course, they'll want to find a likely spot to ride the rain out before it reaches them; even with the benefit of oilcloth and sturdy shoes, keeping dry is better than getting soaked through. And here, grasping toward the end of summer, whatever storm finds them is likely to break violently then blow quickly beyond them. Whatever hours they lose in the afternoon can be made up by night so long as they're not so drowned that the evening air chills down to the bone.

He's weighing the logistics of that - an eye for what the sway of the treetops have to say about the wind's direction and some thought reserved for being on the lookout for animal foot paths that might make their progress from the road easier - when Thomas speaks into the companionable quiet between them.

(It's so radically different - this silence. Days ago, the stillness which had characterized the absence of Frances, Richard, Charlotte and Sophie had seemed crippling and oppressive; rationally, this should be similar. But it isn't.)

His stride doesn't break and he doesn't reach for him. They merely move in tandem through the walnut and ash, prickling brush and summer withered sweetgrass. James's ear tips toward Thomas, attentive to the shape and sound of him as if he too somehow indicates the future of their shared trajectory through the wood.

"You weren't less," he says, perfectly stark. "You were just...something different. Naive. But society as it is presently builds itself on the enforcement of that difference." Should he say it differently? Is it better if Thomas thinks of himself as more real now than he was before? "What you feel-- it doesn't make what you were before invalid. Suffering can't be the only way to become fully realized."

What would be the point if it was? Why fight anything? Why claw toward a world where things might be different? Why be in this wood at all? He could add 'In theory,' because maybe that's all it is. Maybe right this instance, in this version of things, the only way to be true is through some awful tribulation. But how to divide an aspiration from the present without underming the former totally? He doesn't know.

A ragged growth of brush reaches across their make-do pathway. James uses his body to bend it backward, holding it with hip and shoulder so Thomas might pass-- in theory. He catches his elbow, gentle fingers and the steadying press of his thumb meant to arrest them here for just a moment.

Spurs on the bent branches prick through his clothes to his back. He hasn't asked a hundred questions; saying them makes it flinching and helplessly real. But-- "What you learned from those places - it shouldn't all be justified."

Maybe they are better this way. Maybe they are more true than they were in London. Maybe he wouldn't trade what has happened (even what Thomas has suffered?). Maybe, maybe, maybe. But: there are parts of this that are still deplorable. There are parts of this that can still be called undeserved.

(How can both things be true? It doesn't matter; they are.)

[aletheian]

Naive is such a funny, small word. Thomas, with all his education and experience tolerating the way his father tried to manage his life, still so unwitting. Thomas, who regularly participated in at least half a dozen practices that should have seen him hanged - did see him imprisoned and tortured - so innocent. (He would be surprised, to know how James saw him, then, angelic and soft. He always thought of himself as a bit of a corrupting influence, no matter that he was cheerful about it.)

He must admit there's no other word that fits, at any rate.

Suffering can't be the only way to become fully realized.

James catches his elbow and Thomas, as he listens to him, and looks into his eyes, curls an arm around his middle - naturally, automatically. His hand situates itself between thorny protrusions and his lover's shirt, pressing against his back. There's no conscious thought to shield a part of him from the prickling discomfort, or really any conscious thought about the small pain of it against his own fingers. He's long forgotten to register hurts that rank so low. He's never forgotten how to gravitate to this man. He's not sure he ever knew anything different, even before they met, somehow. They were stardust, waiting to be formed, finding the same orbit.

"It shouldn't."

But here they are.

"You know, I... feel more like myself, out here. Whoever that is, anyway." Thomas smiles at him, wry and lopsided. "I don't know if it's because I'm no longer capable of something as fundamental as living in a house or if I just can't stand to be idle in this world."

[katabasis]

Something in his face seems to briefly sharpen; it's as steel turned in the sunlight, the reflective glint lending an unhoned edge the illusion of some razored quality. A flicker of-- not frustration, but maybe a neighbor to it. It slips away just as quickly, obscured by the shadows between Thomas and the overgrown, unfruited blackberry bush. And maybe he softens on purpose because it's kinder, or maybe it's involuntary, or maybe he doesn't know which it is himself.

You weren't idle before, he wants to say. And If the world was just it would have seen the value in the things you tried to do in the way you tried to do them. But what bearing does either have on this moment or any that might follow it? Can there ever be any point to it except masochism?

(Yes, he thinks. Because someone should still want the version of reality where those people they'd been could be legitimate instead of blind. Maybe it isn't a place where they get to stand, but fuck it-- someone should.)

Instead, James says, "Good to hear it." That's just as true. It might actually be harder to say; arguing with the man would be easier. But his hand steadies at Thomas's elbow, light touch turning secure at the shirt sleeve. "You'll need to. Further--" (He's better on the brink of places like this too. There's some raw edge under his flesh that makes anything less uneasy difficult to translate as more than temporary.) "--I find the part of you that can't be still appealing."

There. That's straight forward enough.

[aletheian]

If the world were just, Thomas would never have had to try, would he? And in the end-- no, not the end. But at some point, some vital, point of axis, a man was just where the world could not be. Thomas didn't change the world but he changed James McGraw, and through him, Captain Flint reached his hand out and disturbed so much. Touched so many. The shape of Thomas's fingerprints was ever there, within his.

It is awful but it must be good enough. It is, because they are here.

Thomas kisses him. Not the soft or sensual affections of everything they've had so far, nothing even indicative of chastity despite the lack of outright sexuality in it. A little harsh and almost biting like they're sealing a pact. It's Good and Thank you and What a fortunate coincidence, I find a similar part of you appealing, too.

(He always has.)

"Maybe," he says once he's stepped back, hand still perched solidly at James's side, "you should describe to me the philosophies of aiming a pistol, while we're on this outing."

Just in case. They've got some time, after all.

[katabasis]

Thomas is so-- brilliant. He is bright and sharp and shining even here, as they've fallen from the road and are pursued by foul weather. Nevermind everything that should cast its shadow over him. Forget the part where maybe the man has lost some capacity to recognize his own vitality; it's as if James could still close his hands around him and feel the shape of Thomas's importance in the world he's been estranged by. As if he has some radiant quality that transforms into weight and being and creates places where there should be none. And how sharp his kiss is shouldn't burn away James's lingering frustrations, and yet. And his hand at his side shouldn't seem so steady, and yet.

This is how people should care for one another, he thinks. If there's a piece of him that wants to take Thomas by the shoulders and hold him here until he sees himself, then there can be an equal part that just wants to keep him here to kiss him in a way that's better and kinder and some other kind of heated. He can also let him go - let Thomas step back -, and he can laugh out loud though a moment ago it didn't seem likely.

He does laugh - (christ) -, a hoarse sound as his fingers slip from Thomas's elbow. He touches the small of his back instead, a gentle encouragement to move on from this place. "What's there to say? Point and pull the trigger. That pistol shouldn't be trusted to hit what you mean to unless you're over top of it." Practice is the real answer, but that's hardly productive.

"--Though mind the line of your arm," he says. "There can be a moment between pulling the trigger and the discharge. Keep steady through it and you'll practically be a marksman."

[aletheian]

As he knew he would, James finds some scrap of practical advice in a request whose answer should be 'practice'; initial dismissal followed by something Thomas would never have thought to keep in mind, that gap between attempt and actual launch. He smiles, walking alongside him once again.

(Maybe the burden of I wish you could see yourself how I see you has has changed hands. Thomas carried it for so long, over his dear sailor. There is a possibility that he'll never accept his own worth again after everything that's been done to him, despite the way he's been able to hold himself together, and that James now carries it. Is it somehow fitting? Symmetrical?)

"You are so uniquely beautiful when you laugh like that," Thomas tells him, accompanied by the quiet rustle of leaves shifting in the open air, the crunch of growth beneath their feet. "It does something to your eyes - the same thing that happens when you try not to smile. I think-- you should hope we don't come across any wildflowers, because I'll ask to tuck one behind your ear."

Thomas stahp.

Anyway.

After an hour of walking, the sound of a rifle in the distance followed by a dog barking breaks the serenity-- not so distant that they don't catch the aftershocks of birds trilling their alarm, flying away, but not so close that it's any birds near them. No further commotion can be heard, which makes Thomas think it's a hunter, but corrects himself internally; it's not like he'd know. He looks over at James, quizzical.

"Would anyone who lives in Savannah proper be out knowing the weather's about to turn?"

[katabasis]

It's all nonsense. The philosophy, the sentiment, the fairly useless question of how anyone becomes a crack shot having last fired a gun decades ago - every piece should have very little hold on them as they travel through the wood. Or maybe they do. Maybe it's the place which is incidental and these questions and their shared fondness are the points by which the rest is tethered. The shape of being kissed is as solid as the trees around them, the question of what comes after as the smell of encroaching rain in the stale late summer air. And Thomas, though he is easy and brittle by turns, seems more true than the gunshot.

CRACK! The report murmurs afterward, a hum of the sound lingering in the air. James realizes his own stillness only after Thomas speaks. He turns his face to him, ear cocked still toward the hole in the afternoon punched by the sound.

"It's possible."

Though unlikely? He isn't certain. What does he know of hunting or the habits of people who live in real, proper places? Next to nothing. There's a fleeting thought for the fact that they might have brought a rifle along so as to craft a better lie for their presence here, but he can't imagine it would really lend them anything but the smallest measure of legitimacy.

So: after a moment, he walls on again - along more or less the same line they've been traveling. "We should keep moving." They'll either find out or they won't.