[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]

Silver had been right. There are people who can bend reality to them, whose shape in the world Nature twisted toward. Only, he'd mistaken Flint for the man with that capacity. Had killed him for it. Had willingly become the part which bent, but was unwitting of to what end. It's a vicious, unspeakable justice. If it weren't for every other part of this - Thomas's grip crushing his hands and how incandescent he is in the revelation of this violence -, he might laugh.

This should be the kind of thing that breaks a person: the man in front of him bears very little resemblance to the one made uncomfortable by a public hanging and gone pale over news of blood in the street of Nassau, the man who could forgive but not condone violence. Yet Miranda reaches out through the dark to them and the impossible knot in him unravels. How alike they are. How recognisable they remain to each other, even removed by time and distance and death. Even when transformed into these dangerous things.

He doesn't make any effort to loose his hands or temper the heat between them. "There's a version of the world where people can be principled and happy. Where the truth isn't something to be ruined for and there are no broken men so there's no such thing as necessary violence." He believes that. What would be the point otherwise? "But this isn't that place and I can't leave it this way."

Does he mean the plantation or everything else? Arrangements could be made - he could send Thomas away. See him off safely. But he knows that's not happening either. So Silver is right again: it will be this, again and again and again either until he's dead or satisfied.

[aletheian]

"I know."

Thomas presses closer to him, hands still clasped so tightly, near enough to lean in and touch their foreheads together, though he doesn't. I know. That there is a better world, because they've lived in it and seen the shining edges of it, that this is not it, that James can't endure walking away from it and granting it continued life.

Can't issue it a pardon.

"You told me that if I wanted to stay you'd stay." His low voice is quiet, just for them, but there's an urgency to it. "You told me that if I said it was impossible you'd drop it. And that's-- it's not good enough, if your conviction can be banked by anything, even me, then this has already failed."

Case in point, he feels, is that it's taken him so long to say so. Thomas hasn't been a person capable of making choices or thinking about abstract problems-- Thomas hasn't been a person since he was ripped from James and Miranda in London. James cannot use him as a north star for any of this because as much as he's coming back to himself - coming into whoever he is now, scarred and burned and fortified in the worst ways - he is fundamentally incapable of having appropriate perspective. It galls him to accept that, but it's the truth.

"I'm not what I was."

Now he does touch their foreheads together, his eyes closed. If he has grief over anything it's for the both of them, the lives that have been claimed, the way their hands are both in the other's and not split between a third.

"I don't know yet what I am now. But I know you. God, James. I know you. And you aren't dead."

[katabasis]

Don't be Orpheus. Don't look back for him.

It should be an impossible request, but it isn't because-- "Look at me." He presses their hands against Thomas's belly for just that modicum of distance. So he can see Thomas as he is exactly here in the dark with him. "You're my partner. I'm yours."

Because even if everything else has fallen away, that much is true. Because Thomas is right - he can be neither ahead or behind him, neither driving or guiding because he is here with and beside him. That's all he's ever wanted. His war, her war - No, it's been theirs since before he ever stood up in the Hamilton house to say that Thomas was a good man. Nothing shifts that. No circumstances can divorce them from each other and if the only thing their partnership accomplishes in ten years is to unmake just one miserable place then isn't that still worth it?

"That's never changed." No matter who was dead. No matter who was broken. No matter distance or time or how dangerous.

[aletheian]

It's an indefinite thought exercise; Thomas doesn't need to be forced, he's not going to ask James to stop, but the drive needed to do this is one that is so brutal as to not be able to stop. James has confessed this horrific murder and it's as good as Thomas doing it himself for how tied to one another they are, for how their souls have grown and cracked to match. It's awful, and it's good.

They're a mess and they're not. Thomas looks at him and his eyes are clear. "I love you," he says softly, because words are failing him in this moment, almost laughably uncharacteristic-- and so, in absence of a politician's command, here's the truth. On these tangled and shadowed paths they haven't walked before, they've been of the same mind, just stumbling over different cracks in the stone.

"Sounds as though I can't talk you out of it," is even softer, something dark and satisfied in the way it curls between them. I want you to try to talk me out of it was never about wanting to stop, but always about seeking holes in logic, and holes in resolve.

It's not wrong to do this over and over. It's not wrong to seek satisfaction until life ends. That's the point of living.

[katabasis]

None of this is the kind of thing that should make a person happy. They are standing in the ocean of dark between the main house of a plantation and the slave quarters where they live, speaking of bloody plans with the tacit understanding that they are so dangerous that reasonably they could be lethal to one or both of them. But his pulse is quickening and the feeling which blooms high in his chest isn't rage or fear or the unspeakable thing that just hungers for bones to break between its teeth. It's not relief either. Not the cold comfort he's taken in this careful, methodical, evasive approach they've spent so long lingering over.

It's a wild, fervent kind of joy: cracking him open and shining a light through it. He fights down a smile, then stops and lets himself - be happy, love this this between them. --God, he loves Thomas so much and it must show in every angle of him, in the soft noise he makes when he breathes out, in every consonant: "It seems I'm committed."

[aletheian]

Thomas smiles.

Brilliant, honest, lines on his face from age and wear so much more obvious, nothing about it pained or mingled with more reasonable emotions like-- caution, wryness, regret. No. He loves James and he loves the storm in him, that abyss on the ocean, he loves the fire, he loves that he can breathe that black water and be galvanized in those flames.

I will know you even in the dark.

One hand untangles from their desperate clasp, and Thomas raises it to trace rough fingertips over James's jaw, though the red hair on his face to his ear, holding the back of his head. He kisses him. Edging on harsh, this emotion too fierce for anything else, not sealing a pact between them but striking fire in the one they've always had.