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

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

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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And if they ever did? Depending on the course of the next few weeks, he might be in the mood to thank them personally. Regardless of the blood all over Thomas's shirt and the burn the length of his arm, his own full body ache and...however he must look..., the aftermath of the blaze has afforded them this strange lateral flexibility. In the coming days, he suspects quite a few things will change very rapidly. Some of them must be for the better. Thanks to the fire and everything that had come after, there will be some way to measure who might be trusted (and he already knows who had followed orders when he'd given them). The fact that they have this moment to speak so frankly is a gift all on its own.

Bitterly given and won, maybe, but the point must stand. And that doesn't even begin to touch on--

James suddenly cackles, a hand coming up reflexively to brace at his chest.

"I told Andies to fuck off."

Thomas's reaction is a mixture of-- a lot of things. His newfound piousness immediately challenged with a Goddamnit, James in a rushed exhale. He's laughing a little, but only because James is laughing and he can imagine the kneejerk instinct of a sailor's mouth, so extremely exacerbated by a pirate's, snapping out at an overseer. But he knows how dangerous it is. An extra layer to explain such keenness on extracting pain from him, a slight like that would be worth a strike across the face from anyone but Marshall on an average day.

"He'll be watching you like you threatened his family for weeks," he sighs. Oh, my darling.

"Jacobson is the one who got into it, with me. But he's always been like that with everyone."

Distantly he realizes that naming names in such context is putting a mark of death over this particular man's head. He doesn't so much care.

"Good," he says without thinking, still laughing. He should feel threatened. The whip sharp insult hadn't been calculated in the moment, but he can tell himself there's a benefit to it now. Men like Andies sometimes buckle when they don't have every advantage. What would that look like in the middle of ruining this place?

(Bloody, probably.)

Andies. Jacobson. Oglethorpe. A very small piece of him keeps a quiet running list - so low and instinctive that adding another name to it doesn't give him pause. Instead, he takes a moment to recover his breath then drops his hand to touch Thomas's fingertips again. He doesn't need to ask What did he do to you because it doesn't matter. The specifics wouldn't change the outcome and he's seen how Jacobson lays his hand across anyone he cares to. Maybe Good and the certainty that the ground is shifting (has already shifted) beneath their feet are all that needs to be communicated.

"And Mr Marshall?"

Maybe the sun is getting to him or he's just too tired to think in a straight line or the luxury of sitting in the middle of the day is making him uncharacteristically benevolent, but-- But something.

There is a fraying thread in Thomas that wants to tell him Please don't instigate that, I can't take watching you be hurt like this again, but he's so tired and the thought of James feeling like Thomas is reprimanding him makes it so he doesn't have the heart. Fleetingly he considers Miranda, but even her memory seems to agree to just let it go for now.

He huffs something wordless and presses their fingertips together. He must admit, there's something therapeutic in the dark humor of it. He hasn't had anyone to share so much as a knowing look with in so long that he'd forgotten.

"I think," he says after consideration, "that if I told him this whole place is wrong he'd say he agrees with me, but that agreement doesn't matter, as neither he nor any of us have anywhere else to go. I don't know the extent of what I can buy with that, because I've never pressed. If I'm very lucky I think I could tell him to walk away and he'd listen, but there are so many other things to account for that could influence him."

Is that actually what James was asking, he wonders.

Belatedly, "He tried to keep me away from it. He tried to release you when it was over."

But he still put Thomas in chains, he still dragged him back to this, he's still an overseer. Thomas is cognizant of the layers of complicated, here, but occasionally he has understanding without empathy. The product of a decade of abuse.

Thomas answers and he doesn't honestly know if it really meets the question he'd been asking - isn't sure he really knew what he'd wanted to know to begin with. 'And Mr Marshall', what exactly? Maybe he'd just been asking what Thomas would prefer done should they stumble across the man at the right time on the right day.

Mm - a low hum, as clear an indication that he's listened and heard everything without battering himself over the process of saying as much. Marshall had brought him here as well, after all. Where would he be if not for that? He genuinely doesn't know. Shucking more corn and plucking further chickens? What menial tasks had they put to Benjamin? He can't quite remember.

Fuck. He's exhausted.

For a moment the notion of sleep is overwhelming, but this is precious time. It would be a waste to not use it, and-- something crawls out of the back of his mind then, shifting forward from dream to reality. A shadow passes over his face then, and he frowns as he searches his memory to place what little he recalls of... "Someone from the main house brought me water in the night. I'll find out who it was."

"I'm glad they did that," is quiet. Whomever it was. From the main house means chances are, it was a woman. Who sneaked out under cover of darkness and was - apparently - not caught. Probably those connections are making sense to James, too, and Thomas worries a little about voices floating through the still plantation, putting someone else in danger. Or winding either of them up with notions that could prove to be imaginary. It could be a man, hell, a child, it could be different people, James in the aftermath of that pain could be mistaken.

Thomas wishes he could pull James into him, hold his head in his lap and gently touch what undamaged skin there is, read to him in the shade. Nonsense dreams. At least they can almost lace their fingers together.

"I'll talk about anything you like until mid-day," he says, "but you need to spare yourself or you're not going to get any better."

(So I'll twist an ankle or eat something raw the next time we need to talk, he'd said. Good lord.)

Thomas recites bits of poetry, sweet and sometimes erotic-leaning things just because they're alone and he can't get away with it in front of the others, until one of them alights his memory on something else-- tells a story, then, of he and Miranda staying at his father's country estate by themselves, almost burning down a four hundred year old gazebo and all the ancient prize roses around it in an attempt to sit outside and read by candlelight. Topical, almost.

Almost too soon, his eyes catch on the sight of three men approaching. Thomas sighs. "Here we are," he murmurs.

There's a protest on his lips when Thomas shifts the track of the conversation - if they've been given this time, they should use it for all the things they can't breathe a word of otherwise -, but when he tried to think of what more he could say on the matter, his mind only supplies him with further possibilities and nothing solid to stand on. Maybe it's possible that they've reached the point where nothing more can be done from where Thomas is trapped in a box and he's stuck sitting in the dirt.

So he contents himself to listen, lulled by the heat of the day and the shape of the other man's voice. Some of the lines are ones he knows, and others are familiar only from the sensation - not so different from the pleasure of Thomas telling a story he recognizes the dimensions of by merit of knowing the two people in it.

Then the rise of fall of Thomas's timbre shifts. James lifts his face, blinking, and turns to squint in the direct of footsteps closing in on them.

"What do you know. Like stink on a carcass," says one of the men, barking out a laugh even as he moves straight to the lock on the box, keys jangling.

Andies looks at them from the shadow of his wide brim hat as Flint catches his hand at the slats of the box. It takes some time to get his feet back under himself, longer to haul himself upright hand over hand.

They have to pace themselves. Patience is the hardest virtue, endurance the hardest strength. Thomas knows this by now - he's sat so still for so long without knowing why.

(And now he does.)

Marshall isn't with these three. Too convenient, probably. He gets his knees under him and assumes (correctly) that he's not going to be shown the courtesy of having the shackles removed before he's out, and half-allows himself to be dragged bodily from the cage and dumped on the ground before being hauled to his feet. His vision spots, blood pressure not liking the way he'd been folded up for so long and forced to stand so quickly, but it's a small thing. Thomas stands steadily, and says nothing while the iron around his wrists is unlocked and pulled away.

"Get cleaned up, then the boss wants a word," they're informed by a man who is not Andies. Nunes, Thomas thinks. A new hire. Some cross chatter as feeling returns to Thomas's hands-- "So's you can understand your place in the world, I reckon" "Like any of this has a point" "Honestly, I hope you put up a fuss, hanging's a good show."

Thomas remains silen. He flexes his hands at his sides and doesn't look at anything in particular. They're herded to the appropriate room, uncharacteristically and perhaps pointedly free of razors, and they are observed for the duration of their stay. Despite this, Thomas is almost wholly preoccupied with making sure James is as all right as he's going to get, only bothering with the cuts on his wrists when reminded of their existence. "I've had marks there forever," is dismissive, though he consents to tending to himself eventually. There's nothing to be done about the bruising on his face.

They both look terrible.

If they were being escorted by someone gentler, or someone James hadn't told to fuck off, Thomas might say something-- who knows what. It's a lost cause, for now, being marched up to the main house. He watches others from the corner of his eyes go about their work as they pass, seeing who watches them, who looks away, who is studiously avoiding the strange procession.

Walking from breakfast down to the cages hadn't seemed like a trial - too disoriented or made vague from the fear of who he might not meet when he finally found Thomas again to recognize all the aches -, but making the rounds to wash and change into a fresh shirt is. Whatever Oglethorpe wants of them, it can't be to butcher them in his parlor (too keen on seeming civilized and too ready to put on some piece of theater for the yard) so all that's left is to worry over Thomas's arm and catalogue every trembling muscle.

It's a good thing Thomas is watching; being upright for so long has him feeling a little insensible. The path to the main house crawls at the edges, marked by a strange assortment of detail as he tells himself to look while they're led up through one of the side entrances: the paint beginning to peel in the doorway from the summer heat and humidity, small blue birds hidden in the patterns of wallpaper, the carpet runner folded over itself in the hall and a dark skinned girl on her knees watching them intently under the pretense of scrubbing the floor.

When they reach the study it's just James who gets pushed through the french doors. "Not you," Nunes is happy to tell Thomas. "The Lord can be trusted not to make trouble. Get back to work," Andies tells the other overseer, then steps into the study after James and clicks the doors shut behind them.

Oglethorpe is writing a letter. "Please, take a seat Mr Flint," he says without looking up.

There's a ladder backed chair in front of the desk, distinctly mismatched with the other furniture. Either Oglethorpe doesn't care for the potential of James oozing on his own chairs or the slats of the chair back are meant to make him exactly as comfortable as he should be. But a seat's a seat. James takes it.

For some time the room is still, quiet save for the scratch of the quill and the persistent ticking of a clock behind him near the door. He can feel Andies lurking, a shadow across the desk which is scattered with account ledgers - a metal figure in the shape of a dog weighing down a series of loose papers under its hind paws - a portrait of a child--

Eventually Oglethorpe sets the letter aside. "Forgive me. I've been meaning to write the new Governor of the Carolinas for some time."

The look on Thomas's face as the door close between he and James is one that's lucky to go unobserved; an unnerving calm that begs an answer to what kind of trouble anyone is talking about. In the hallway, he steps away with the intent of finding something to busy himself with, knowing the house well enough after five years. Nunes takes his leave, and only then does Thomas look down at the girl scrubbing the floor.

Inside:

Forgive me, for politeness's sake and an unknown party's benefit - not Andies, who is inherently violent enough to find this charade dull, and certainly not Flint. Who, this pointed pause seems to imply, knows a thing or two about a new Governor of the Carolinas.

Oglethorpe is just that sort of man, apparently. Still wearing his wig in the oppressive Carolina humidity. "It is important to me," he begins, after not enough time for anyone to actually accept or reject his good manners, "that you understand I was being honest with Thomas yesterday. Of course, all in true need of sanctuary are welcome, and you are a man who is in truest need of repaying the world for his place in it, but if those men had come to me looking for anyone else I would have rejected them. It does you no good to labor under any delusion that I capitulated to the demands of pirates out of fear."

Would it be easier if this man were more sadistic? If he sat across from Flint and was smirking, instead of gravely earnest?

"I have done you both a kindness permitting this period of adjustment, granting you allowances where appropriate - even when inappropriate." A sigh. "It's my fault, in part. Allowing the two of you such prolonged contact and to house together overnight is kind, the Christian thing to do, but also morally disturbed. You've put me in a position to think on that."

There's no such thing as being comfortable in the chair, just as there's not really anything he could possibly communicate to the man behind the desk that will change whatever he's already prepared himself to say. The threat of the Carolinas is an empty one - he has been paid what Flint assumes is an exorbitant fee to keep him from becoming a spectacle and there would be no avoiding it if he were delivered to the hangman there. It must be meant as a reminder of Oglethorpe's generosity along with everything that comes after.

So he says nothing. Never mind that the effort is exhausting on top of useless - that in the drama of this, his cue hasn't arrive yet; James can't imagine a version of events where Oglethorpe could conceivably keep him and Thomas separated for long. Nothing else had managed it.

In the hallway, the girl on her knees continues to scrub the floor. The bristles of the brush against the wood fill what might otherwise be an oppressive kind of half quiet, underlined only by the occasional indistinguishable murmur of voices behind the french doors. Instead the back and forth of the brush overlaps any trace of talking entirely, a rhythmic kind of camouflage interrupted only by the passing of Nunes and the girl dunking the brush back into the bucket of soapy water. She slaps it back down to the floorboards with a wet thwack.

"Your face looks awful," she tells him. "Not that I mean anything by it."

"Thomas Hamilton is an important milestone for the work here," Oglethorpe is explaining. "The way he was when he arrived - well." He smiles at Flint, wry and paternal, the smallest spark of something honestly regretful. "I'm sure you've heard all about it. And on top of all that, complete silence for months. I admit even my own faith wavered, waiting for him to die. But he prevailed somehow."

(A faint crick as Thomas kneels down, knees protesting in a verse he doesn't bother listening to, finding another brush in the basin. He knows better than to stand here like an idiot waiting for someone to tell him to do something. Look busy, speak quietly.

He hasn't told James anything about the hospital, or what it was like arriving at the plantation. There are things he wants to leave buried, things he wants to forget. What if James looks at him and sees-- that.

"You can mean something by it." Swish, scrape. "I know better than to resist them, but here I am.")

Tick, tick.

"He prevailed over being spirited away by anarchists, too, what an ordeal that was. Thank the Lord God that Governor Ashe was still with us, else I don't know he'd have been spared the noose." This said with faint irritation. "All that and Thomas has settled into a model product of this great experiment. I'm sure you don't see it that way, but you will, in time. You'll understand what he understands: that this is how you should behave. There is peace in this work. You are finding yourselves here."

Oglethorpe believes what he's saying, but there's a strong performative element in it, too. He observes Flint closely, seeing just how much of this he's buying, if anything. Option B waiting in the wings if he detects any pushback.

Something in his face closes. He can feel it happening, involuntary and as impossible to stop as the roaring in his ears. The sound of it narrows the shape of everything else Oglethorpe is saying; James finds himself staring at the letter set aside - the upside down shape of the words like if he stares at them long enough, the urge to say something insane will evaporate.

Tick, tick.

"Governor Ash knew Thomas was here?"

(She moves the brush in long vertical stripes and gives him a skeptical look. "Here you are," she agrees. "Looking like that." As far as role models go, he's not a very good one.

For a moment it seems like that's all she has to say about the matter. But it can't be - if she was trying to avoid conversation, there are easier ways to do it than staring directly at him. Instead she pauses, finding her brush and knocking it against the edge to shake out the excess water and soap.

Tang, tang, tang, goes the wood against the bucket's side. It's loud enough to be annoying, loud enough to make a few words of conversation easy to miss.

"How do you feel though?")

He can taste something bitter unwinding in his mouth when he asks it - a latent, vicious heat beginning to set its fingers against his ribs. It's useless and it should be exhausting to be angry over the prospect. Ashe is dead, having already paid for what James understood to be true (killing Thomas and Miranda and everything he'd ever wanted from the world--). Shouldn't this be less reprehensible? To know that Peter was just keeping secrets like the coward he was?

But instead he can feel himself sharpening. Anger might be dangerous here, but it has always been dangerous everywhere. He can't help himself.

Oglethorpe is earnest about his thoughts on Lord Hamilton - been through so much, uncooperative in so many strange, silent ways, but still finding himself shaped. Properly. Or so his words describe the man. His words that are still happening - incidentally, apparently - when Flint asks his question.

His mouth is open, mid-thought, and it closes with distinct irritation at realizing he's being tuned out.

"Governor Ashe is who made arrangements for Thomas to come to us," he says, distinct impatience threaded beneath the pointed words, like speaking to a child. Like Captain Flint is many steps behind. Like perhaps, given it was his own friends who delivered him to the plantation, it should be obvious who sent his lover.

(Thomas makes a noise of agreement, low. Yes, looking like this. On his hands and knees he scrubs the wooden floor, tepid water licking at his worn fingers, occasionally touching the wounds; he forgets to notice the discomfort. Someday, he will find it such a struggle to reconcile this habit - what closes his mind to recognizing pain will close his mind to recognizing the opposite, at least for a time. Relearning how to feel tenderness fully will force him to feel brutality, too.

He gives her space to continue, or not. People change their minds all the time.

How do you feel?

Thomas says nothing, for a time the only sound in the hall the off-rhythm swish of bristles. He realizes he's smiling at the floorboards. Faintly, but he is. When he sits up to dunk the brush in the pail, he lets his weight rest on his heels for a moment and looks at her properly. Smiles properly, too. Gentle sunshine in an unwitting counterpoint to the gathering stormclouds on the other side of a set of doors.

"Human.")

There are many clocks in this house. Spread far enough apart that the noises do not overlap in the still of night, causing no one undue irritation. Whatever one reaches this room is faint, a lullaby of time slipping past. Years, slipping past.

"The late governor was a selfless man. As I understand it, the Earl of Ashbourne was quite opposed and required convincing of the merits of a false demise." Opposed to a real one, the abrupt end of the sentence implies. Or not. Oglethorpe surely knows a dramatic tale for each of his wards, but it would be impossible for him to be privy to every fine detail - particularly of lords so far above his station.

"Like your own."

(Maybe she doesn't expect that flash of warmth from him - not when he's here on his knees in the hall of the main house with his face all battered and his companion behind closed french doors. Or maybe she's just mulling over some unspoken possibility and the smile on his face and how honest he seems complicates matters. Either way, she pauses. Digests it.

"What about your friend?" Asked with some false lightness.)

Arrangements had been made. In what world was it possible for the Earl of Ashbourne to be convinced of anything he didn't already believe necessary - especially when it came to his son? How close must they have been for Peter to have swayed that man of anything? He can feel his pulse in his throat, pounding in time to the tick of that goddamn clock. James closes his eyes for a moment, finding the study and Oglethorpe behind the desk unbearable. Thunk, thunk, thunk. He lets the sensation swallow him up, a buzzing in his fingertips absorbing the ache in his body and the uncomfortable dig of the chair against his bones.

"And now? Who is paying you to keep him here with both of them dead?" Alfred Hamilton hacked to bloody pieces and Peter Ashe splayed across the stone of the thing he'd traded his friend for. Is there an account in England being slowly funneled here even now by some unwitting accountant? Or a willing one? Or-- "Or is this just charity I should be grateful for?"

("I'd be angry if I were him or you," she says. "Not that I am - angry, I mean." Swish, scrape. "Just don't care to see anyone else in trouble."

Humans do all kinds of nasty things to each other. Even ones that smile so nice.)

Tsk. Oglethorpe is dismissive, and the overseer still in the room with them shifts his weight, impatience and boredom manifest. Clearly, it's not any business of this ex-pirate where the money comes from. Maybe it's a solicitor, maybe it's business partner or distant relative. Maybe there's no further funding at all, and he's just that dedicated to his cause of rehabilitating and protecting these wayward souls.

"I must admit," he says, edging on dry, "that of all the tales to come through these gates, Captain Flint and Thomas Hamilton may be the most theatrical. And I don't even know every angle."

("Who am I to be angry at?" sounds a bit rhetorical. "Whomever lit the fire? Whomever blamed the inspiration for it on the person I care most for in the world?" His voice is soft. She knows, he's very certain, how much more agonizing it is watching someone you love be hurt than it is to be hurt yourself.

"They're trying to survive, too."

Feeling human doesn't mean he feels pacifistic. It doesn't mean he doesn't also feel shattered, in pain, or heartsick. He just feels, he's still capable of it and he and James are still capable of laughing with each other, fingers touching through the slats of a cage. Some men can't be broken. Like he did when he first fell in love, he understands more about himself and more about the world when he's with James.

"How I feel about this place and those who keep us here," and now his voice is even quieter, his low murmur barely audible over the rough sounds of the bristle brushes but no less steady, "has not changed since the first day I arrived."

'Angry' is an empty word, in comparison. 'Hateful' pales. Thomas doesn't think he has one in English, or Spanish, or French. This place is not a farm, it is where men and women are brought to be annihilated; not mercifully killed or uncreatively tortured, but to have every facet of themselves worn down into something different, erased and warped, changed. Left inhuman.

Thomas has existed in the smallest of spaces, in the dead air gaps between the awfulness of this reality. He is not a fighter or a military strategist, he is only himself, who has spent months in silence, who has learned how to time authority, who dedicates his attention to ushering others - white and black, male and female - out of the way of the all-seeing eyes when possible. He escaped. Only for a moment but he-- he had it, beneath his hands, and when he was dragged back he didn't let it end him.

He smiles so nice and thinks about the end of this place. At any cost.)

"But I shall tell you my angle, James." Did you know that you are the child here, being remade, did you know that I am the total authority, that 'mister' and 'captain' are titles to mock you. "It is this: for all Thomas is important to my work, he is not more important than the stability of this place. I will not allow you to destabilize, or provoke, or inspire any one man - him, or anyone else - into the same destabilizing behavior. If I find cause to so much as suspect you again, every inch of it comes out of Lord Hamilton."

Just so.

"If that becomes necessary, it will not be a state of endurance. It will be once, and if you press the issue, I will arrange to send him, and only him, to the hospital in Williamsburg. It will pain me, but I won't have myself cornered."

He's quiet for a long moment, attention heavy as a stone on the man across the desk. Bird song leaks in through the open window of the study, Andies shifts in the corner, and the clock tick - tick - ticks.

(The line of her arm doesn't falter, scrubbing just as aggressively now as a moment ago. But she looking at him, ear tipped toward the low murmur of his voice between them. "Good, she starts to say, nearly jumping out of her skin when the door at the end of the hall opens to the outside.)

"I won't back you into one," says Flint. It tastes true. He'll murder the man in the open if that's what it takes to make this moment honest. He won't give him the opportunity to find a corner to hide in, he thinks.

There's a bang from the hall like a clap of thunder.

(Bettina McNair takes three steps into the hall, the bucket of fresh water for the scrubbing weighing hard on her arm. When she looks up and recognizes Thomas, all the blood drains from her face and her grip slips. The bucket cracks against the floor, upturns, and sends a wave of water flowing down the length of the hall to soak the folded carpet and their knees.)

BANG

brings the hallway and the study into the same reality once more. Thomas does not jump out of his skin, even nearly, attention recognizing someone walking in before he looks up-- which he does, at the sound. Bettina, who doesn't speak, who lives in the house and is a good girl. Hannah beside him has one hand over her chest, feeling her heart race and giving the white woman at the end of the hall a look of consternation, but Thomas's gaze is more concerned. Silently worried she's hurt, and seeing that she isn't, worried at what might have spooked her so.

He waits to push to his feet until he hears the door open and Andies's rough inquiry, knowing better than to appear like he's had any moment to conspire with someone who's made a loud noise. (Of all the things. Still.) "It's all right," he says to her quietly, and kneels down a beat before she does to right the bucket. Her hands scramble, unsteady, and Thomas extends one of his as if wanting to check and see if she's harmed - she limply extends one of hers, and he turns it to see the indent of the handle on her palm, but nothing more.

Bettina who doesn't speak and lives in the house, who is well-behaved and trusted, whose brother would do anything for her.

"It's all right," he repeats. Looking at her this time.

"What the fuck?" demands Andies, stuck at the opposite end of the hall for fear of tracking dirt through the water and making mud, a sure-fire way to infuriate his employer.

Thomas looks over his shoulder and Hannah is looking at him, expectant now, knowing she can't speak up if he's there to do it for her. A hierarchy like another set of chains. Calmly, "Gravity got the best of her, is all."

Logically, it sounds nothing like a shot. But James is on his feet anyway, insensible to exactly why except for the last time he'd sat across the table from someone with opinions on how best to manage his relationship with Thomas in a house meant to be fine. Two steps toward the door are all it takes to open the angle there, to see Thomas with the woman and overturned bucket, but--

Andies barks at him to 'Sit down until you're told otherwise', but James - pulse high in his throat and boiling resentment turned abruptly to something bitter and unreasonable - has a hard time following the direction. He drifts back to the chair but can't bring himself to sit down.

(Thank Thomas's God that he didn't reach across the desk and fetch up the letter opener right there in plain view; but he won't be caught again. He won't be pinned that way again without the ability to do some damage on the way down.)

"Don't just stand there and stare at me," Andies growls at Hannah. "Get this cleaned up - the two of you, take that carpet outdoors and hang it where it can dry."

Bettina, hands trembling and avoiding Thomas's eye entirely, hurries to brush past him to fetch up the edge of the water sodden rug closest to Hannah. It allows for a split second where the two women can share a look between them. Hannah starts to open her mouth to protest that she's stronger and would do the work faster than the white woman. Bettina nudges her with the toe of her shoe and simply turns an expectant, inarguably mortified look on Thomas.

"Language, Mr Andies," is Oglethorpe's contribution, overhearing the explanation and sitting back down in his chair from where he'd only begun to rise. He eyes Flint, but doesn't pick at him to obey to the letter - strange, but he's seen a lot of men and women with a lot of ticks come through these gates and into this room. Like beaten dogs.

Thomas, meanwhile, looks past Andies at James, fighting the instinct to reach out to him-- for what purpose, he's not sure, but the look he glimpses on the man's face before he's barked at to step back from the door makes an impulse rise in him to say I'm fine, look, it's all right. His gaze twitches back to the overseer, letting himself take a moment to react; it would look like too-competent acting, otherwise.

Something he's beginning to see the shape of is happening with Bettina. He goes to her side and helps her with the carpet, exchanging a look with Hannah neither of them really know what to make of.

"I'll get some towels," she says, and they part ways, Hannah further into the house and Thomas and Bettina outside. Andies drifts back into the study, letting the doors thunk closed behind him.

Different worlds once more.

Breezing past the interruption, Oglethorpe says, "I'm glad we understand each other. Now, for a few days, you'll do work in the kitchen and laundry. I don't want a repeat of Benjamin."

For a moment his attention is divided - sliced between the doors closing and-- he shifts his hand on the chair back, looking straight back to Oglethorpe. Kitchen. Laundry.

"Of course not," he says, raw and more abrupt than he really means. James searches after the sharp edge of how angry he'd been seconds ago and finds it's gone crooked. Too stitched through by something else - the jangling buzz under his fingers and the ache in his skin - to keep together here.

He make some vague motion toward his throat after; maybe it'll be taken as a reasonable excuse. "Anything else?" 'Sir' should go after that. Let Oglethorpe think he's too off-footed to realize it.

(Is he?)

(No. Fuck him.)

What else could there possibly be to say? Certainly Bettina isn't saying it, steadfastly mute as she and Thomas would the sodden carpet out into the muggy heat of the day. The garden fence is an acceptable place to hang the thing and she pins all her focus there. If she thinks on the task hard enough, it will be as if someone perfectly anonymous is helping her with it.

"No. That's all. Take him to Mrs Oglethorpe, she is aware of the situation." More correspondence, presumably, is slid back to the center of the man's desk. "And don't track any mud through my house, please."

That's all, just an ordinary man-to-man exchange. Andies wastes no time herding Flint out of the room, taking them on a route the other way out the back of the house to avoid the wet floor. Thomas's fate for the rest of the day undeclared, at least to the two of them. There's plenty of work to be done in laundry, less laborious than in the fields but no less tedious, and no less seemingly eternal. The lady of the estate isn't unkind, but she takes her work seriously. A divinely ordained mission. Pious and insufferable like her husband.

In the garden, Thomas searches for the right words. If there are any.

"No-one's going to hurt you just for being next to me," he tries, but intuition tells him that's not quite right. He presses the heavy roll of carpet, water squelching out. Maybe it'll dry in a bloody week, with how humid it is. "...James pushed your brother. I know. I'm sorry."

Edited 2017-08-03 01:03 (UTC)

Tick, tick, tick goes the clock in Oglethorpe's study. James pauses, his hand on the chair back and the sound on his ear - bewildered by its familiarity - and then he's ushered away. He tells himself the next time he's in the room, it will be under very different circumstances.

In the garden, Bettina follows Thomas's example: squashing the water out from the carpet and then smoothing it over over the fence line. It won't ever smell the same, but the only people putting their noses in the carpet can't be allowed to be bothered by any tang of mold. As long as it appears acceptable maybe it doesn't matter that it'll become rotten.

What she doesn't do is look at him or say anything. Instead she focuses entirely on scraping the water from the rug with the angled side of her hand, eyes bright enough that she might be on the very edge of tears and jaw clenched so hard it's visible. Bettina McNair doesn't speak, but fear and frustration and the stitch of something like anger is a kind of language they must both be fluent in.

Thomas, so empathetic as he is, just-- doesn't know what to say, for a moment, so moved by her obvious distress that he feels some of it threatening to creep into his own heart. He swallows it away.

"If you want me to leave you touch my hand," he tells her. He doesn't know why she doesn't speak - if she won't, or if she can't - and hopes that's not a patronizing way of communicating. He's spoken to her before, he's read to her in small pieces, exchanged smiles and sat quietly for long hours in kitchen work. They have a history as best anyone can in this place.

The carpet hangs limply, looking like the sad skin of a dreary animal.

All at once, Thomas feels like an idiot.

"Thank you. For bringing him water." He watches her reaction very closely.

Later, after the rest of a long day for which Thomas is deemed fit enough to return back to work properly, and James is released from his modified duties, Thomas thinks he might actually collapse. Spending the night in that cramped box, the horror of watching James go through everything-- the toll feels unreal. But he waits, accepting sympathetic looks and noting who avoids him. (And it is noteworthy.)

They can't talk at night in the bunkhouse with so many waiting ears, they're locked in as anticipated, and they can't sleep curled up together on a too-small bed with James's injuries. Thomas sleeps beside him with an arm outstretched over the gap, fingers hooked against his hand. It's still like that when they awake.

Waiting until midday rest is a trial.

There are a thousand things he wants to say to Thomas, but by the end of the day even the undemanding work of folding linens has exhausted him. Peeling himself out his clothes is too specific a kind of agony then; James only gets as far as pulling the tails of his shirt free before he lays belly down into his own narrow bed and manages almost nothing in the way of conversation before falling asleep.

In his dream, someone is driving a metal post into the middle of his back - pinning him to the dirt. 'Stay down,' someone pleads. 'I'm begging you.'

Come morning his shoulders and back are stiff enough that the women take some pity on him and give him the task of ironing ribbons and shirts because he can do it mostly one handed, trading from one arm to another when the first begins to ache. The youngest Oglethorpe daughter sits in the room under the eye of her mother and reads aloud from the bible while they work. It reminds him of being a boy and pressing his father's clothes while his mother is bedridden, the man in question there only for as long as it takes him to find another merchantman (anything to avoid being the navy - even another three years at sea).

They're turned loose in the hottest part of the day. He waits for Thomas in the shade of some shedding tree along the path between the slave quarters and the main house, sitting on a chip from the wood pile discarded here. When Thomas comes up from the fields, James holds out an apple to him. He's already had a bite from it.

"Annie's asking about your arm."

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