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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"In a week. Maybe less." But that would allow enough time to manage the details. Right now he'd buckle under a strong blow or two, but give him a week in the fields and he'll be fit for the work that matters. Everything might still ache, but he can ignore it under the right circumstances. Like this one, lying on his side so close to Thomas that they're nearly flush. The shape of Thomas's hand warm through the thin cotton shirt and the heat of his breathing. There's some wild, unattached urge to kiss him then - to kiss him well enough to mean something by it - but it's there and gone again in the same moment. Some random frenetic spark in a dark room that doesn't find anything to burn.

"Christ," says Ellsburg, a dull complaint among the murmur of conversation. "Can't a blanket be pinned up between us and them?

"Getting ideas, Lawrence?"

Fuck off. Fuck you. James's hand on Thomas's side goes heavier as he wills the bickering to become background noise. He grumbles against Thomas's jaw, "It's not too late to leave them."

Thomas's gaze cuts up briefly, something cold and uncharitable, but it melts quickly down to wryness and then returns to half-lidded inattention. It is what it is. They are comrades, all of them, but that doesn't mean they're universally accepting of each other. They never will be. Probably, some of the women, too, don't approve of what clearly exists between Thomas and James, but have decided to prioritize.

Can't a blanket be pinned up between them. Wouldn't that be nice. Thomas sighs a little, casting away the bristle up his spine, and nuzzles until their foreheads are together. What would they even do behind such a flimsy barrier? Nothing, realistically, even though there will always be some part of him that wants to hold him and press kisses to him. It is an uncertain fantasy. One that wishes for James to paint over the touches he last experienced, for him to burn it all away and leave him new, with nothing lingering. He wants... he wants to want.

This is no place to try and heal what might make that a possibility. The thought doesn't quite solidify.

"They can find their own way to Savannah," he murmurs.

Or off a ledge, if they're going to continue to be intolerable.

He laughs, a low rumble in the fundamental lack of space between them. Fair enough. He can't say he has the strong inclination to take anyone along excepting the women from the main house and whoever they might possibly be invested in. But that would be true no matter how much of an idiot Ellsburg is. Even if they were to rally every man and woman on the plantation, their number wouldn't be enough to stand against anything for long. They'll have to splinter away after - make their own way with a small company and not be among the recaptured.

It's a grimmer, more mercenary thought than should be present here while wound up in Thomas to the sounds of something that might easily seem very much like leisure - where if he closed his eyes and pretended to feel the rise and fall of the sea, he could mistake the noise for the buzz of idle crew. But he can't quite do it. Can't dismiss the constant urge to be question their readiness. Even like this, there's something foreign sitting under his skin over this place that demands to be picked, picked, picked at--

He slides his hand from Thomas's side to wrap around his shoulder, to create some narrow circle of space with the line of his arm that exists separate from the rest of the room. There he can murmur Donne to him - where can two better hemispheres be found? - until the candles are extinguished.

Edited 2017-08-14 15:26 (UTC)

James's voice as he drifts to sleep in the dark is a balm to anything bruised, his touch an anchor in the sea. It's his own fault that his unconscious mind stirs up less pleasant images; he dreams that he's lost in a crowd in a place like he'd never seen, never imagined, and he sinks in it like quicksand, reaching out but never managing to call for anyone. He awakes before the morning bell, when everything is still too-quiet, and clutches at James as if to make certain he's still there and breathing.

Fear is not something he knows how to carry, and it leaves him unsteady. Thomas doesn't remember the details of whatever he saw in his sleep, but the thought that it isn't the world's fault, just his, because he doesn't know what to do out in it.

The lazy tone of the evening without Oglethorpe carries on into the day, though they are none of them excused from work. Thomas is bitterly grateful for it, physical exertion and paying attention to who can speak where and for how long pulling him out of the strange state he'd been in. There's no room for floundering. He tries his best to keep an eye on James, and keeps a closer eye on anyone he sees watching him at midday.

Liam says hello to him again, taking advantage of the lax treatment-- but the both of them know better than to think security is lax in turn. No, it's increased, if anything, cognizant of the inevitable turn to lollygagging within. Taking him by surprise, the younger man asks him in French if there's anyone on the outside from when he 'tried before' that he knows to still be in the area.

"I'm not sure," Thomas admits, wondering about how just how plainly things are being discussed in the other quarters. Very, apparently. "The woman who headed the effort used to come in on Sundays, and she was never permitted after. What I know of her makes me think she was likely forced out of the area."

He can't imagine Ida staying and never hearing so much of a peep from outside. Unless she was hurt terribly, which is a possibility that Thomas tries not to think of. If anything happened to her, it's not like he'd be on a list of people to inform. They speak for a little longer, about nothing, though Liam watches him with a piercing kind of care that makes Thomas think he's being assessed-- does someone with this kind of spine really need two battered white men to kick anything off?

Maybe. Maybe not. If they wake up tonight and all the walls are on fire, well. Could be worse.

There's not much time left in the midday break by the time James returns from the main house, and Thomas just raises his eyebrows at him in silent communication. What a day already.

What a day. Yesterday he'd seen no difficulty in returning back to laboring in the fields, but today he finds himself slow and limping and exhausted before they'd even come up from the fields for water and a moment in the shade. If circumstances didn't demand staying on his feet, he might take the whole break they're given to lay in the dirt and feel every muscle, every bruise. As it is, James merely cuts up toward the main house where Annie is pumping water into buckets. Something must need boiling - for cooking or laundry or a thousand other things. He spends the midday hour helping her ferry buckets back up to the kitchen over and over again, making idle conversation under the squeal of the pump and gush of water as she creaks the lever up and down, up and down. It isn't until they're nearly finished that he starts to ask what he's meant to. Annie beats him to it with her own question.

It gives him pause. Water pours into the waiting bucket. The smell of ash from the burned barn lingers still. "That's doable," he tells her.

"Good," she says, lifting the pump's handle to choke off the dribble of water. "If it isn't, other arrangements will be made."

He's nearly forgotten the twisted tight feeling in his back as he makes his way back from the main house. There's something stark and drawn in his expression, mirrored somehow there in the raised eyebrows Thomas sends his way as he closes the distance to his side. The air's thick with humidity, swimming in heat, but for a moment James finds how oppressive it is as easy to ignore. There isn't much time left to them and this isn't something to be discussed in the bunkhouse - not even in the dead of night under the low dragging breathing sounds of men sleeping.

"We've been pressed," he says when he's near enough to do so in a tone so low it has no chance of carrying in this dense, still air.

"Mister Flint - were something to be changing here, we would need assurances that the convict laborers you're with are friends. Or they will need to be removed. Put away. We thought you and Mister Thomas might see if they can be swayed by voices like their own before that. Is that possible?"

"I've recently gathered that," is his response, just as low. Thomas raises blistered hands to touch lightly on James's shoulders, his touch only there enough to be a presence, and not burden his sore form. Those who might strain ears to overhear them will abruptly tune out if they think it's something romantic-- and, god, watching James struggle today has made him feel just as wounded, somehow. He wonders if now would be an appropriate time to see just how much sway he has with Marshall in the name of getting some kind of ointment for the other man's bruises. Probably. It'll be best to know, and soon, by the looks of how things are beginning to come together.

"What do they want of us?"

Thomas keeps his attention on their surroundings, for anyone approaching, for a breeze that might carry their voices. He thinks, standing there, that it might be much easier for everyone to calmly walk out of this place without opposition and without an alarm being raised, if half those inside were already dead. It's a terrible thought, and one he's not sure he should voice for fear of making it real.

"To make sure the other white men are of the same mind when the work here changes. I gather if they aren't, we may find ourselves on the wrong side of a bolted door." At best. His face is tipped toward Thomas, near enough that he could be murmuring something entirely different. Thank God for being repulsive to polite society, he thinks without any shred of regret.

"I'm under the impression it's believed you and I have more in common with them and might be able to bring them around or sort who's likely to raise the alarm." It's not a bad instinct. What did the African slaves really have in common with the convicts beyond working the same fields? The black men and women are people ripped from their homes; the white men here are almost universally capable of supposedly (or honestly) deplorable things. And if George McNair is any indication, clearly some of the convicts think it's possible to ingratiate themselves with the masters and overseers.

He touches Thomas's side, leans quietly into the shape of his hands at his shoulders; it makes for a pleasant kind of pressure, a gentle counter to the uncomfortable knot high in his back--. "Apparently we've caused enough trouble to make ourselves seem useful." To think he'd been on the verge of asking Annie (and everyone likely she knew) to join them. Just them. It seems like lunacy from this end of the matter.

A pause. James wets his lips. Frowns. "--'recently gathered?'"

Good Lord. Things are coming together quickly. A small frown stitches between his eyebrows, but nothing more; it's unnerving to be on the outside of intricate planning, but far from the most unnerving thing to be going on in their daily lives. Thomas instead decides to hold fast to the idea of this dream becoming a reality, and the fact that they have allies, and that those allies are competent enough to be doing this, united enough to have a strong front, and either pragmatic or compassionate enough to be extending their hand to the two of them.

Footing changes all the time. They must keep balance.

"Liam spoke with me and asked about my failed attempt," he murmurs. "He said nothing so direct, but matched with what you've said I can draw no other conclusion."

Thomas thinks about their fellow convicts and dead men. Not all of them can be trusted. Plenty of them would sell them out, especially after watching what happened to James-- a few would sell them out cheerfully, even without the looming threat of punishment, purely because of hatred and petty grudges. (Even the ones who don't care one way or the other about the evils of Greek love, even so far away from London, some men will always be bitter to see another happy.)

They'll all have to be separated. Mechanically possible, to be sure, the bunk house has different sections but-- but, but. How to herd people, how to close it off. When. It seems impossible, but he's sure it isn't. He just needs to think about it.

He makes an aborted, low noise that's not at all like a laugh - some edge of teeth to the sound. After just a moment, he's evidently made some decisions: "We need a time table - a deadline by which to make all our hard choices so we can deliver it to them and make an argument for why nothing should happen before it. If we don't, we may find ourselves scrambling to meet whatever arbitrary cut off they've chosen." This is too dangerous to go into without some measure of agency and they can't afford to be on their back foot for longer than a moment, however benevolent the rest of them people committed to this might be. Better to set expectations while they still have the opportunity to do so. Before anyone realizes they're doing the two of them a favor and they've almost nothing in the way of leverage except for maybe the dim hope of some girl in Savannah that has no responsibility to anyone except for what she might imagine.

"Three lists then - anyone you believe to be in hand, the hopeless cases, and the ones who fall somewhere in between." Then what? Then they ply the men in the middle until they see which way they're likely to bend. The ones likely to back them will either be truly friends or fold to the pressure of numbers in the moment and aren't worth the time hand picking or risking the slow leak of information by being honest with them. The lost causes are just that.

(There's a prickling sensation in his skin that has nothing to do with aches or bruises. It's a strange, vertigo feeling - the adrenaline spark of realizing he's on an edge and the decisiveness of knowing it demands clinging to. The world narrowing to how strong his fingers are.)

Thomas listens and keeps his hands steady on James's shoulders, as though he can feel and absorb his sudden tension, the rise of something desperate. He is calm in the face of it, his own mind putting together this and that and wondering just how cornered James will end up feeling if he isn't holding this thing by the throat for every moment.

It's something he understands. To feel helpless and out of control is like drowning; to accept you are where you are and to have nothing inside that space to hold onto is maddening. Thomas is not broken by it, but he's--

Experienced.

His hands shift from James's shoulders to be gentle at either side of his neck. I'm right here. He waits until he's looking at him to say anything. "I'll make the lists," he says quietly. "They're not going to move before that happens. It would be too dangerous otherwise." No matter what. Any one of them could just kick the damn locked door down, these structures are not built to last the ages. There's no way an all-out brawl between factions is a part of anyone's plan; it would be a disaster. "James. You've lived your whole life outside. Your knowledge is too valuable a currency to be gambled with."

They are not incidental. This is not mercenary. Thomas has seen the way they all look at each other. They are all real.

There's something in the cant of Thomas's voice that sounds to his ear like consolation, an attempt to soften something James knows for certain is sharp. For a split second he balks between the hands on his neck, the lines of his face flattening reflexively into some impassable thing. He hadn't been asking to be reassured. What part of that had seemed so irrational? People cornered by their circumstances do dangerous things all the time. They get impatient. They find an edge in desperation. Safety takes a second place to what is required. Standing here, they're examples of exactly that. Sensible men would be gone by now, slipped loose the night the barn burned to its foundation.

If it were anyone else, he'd have no desire to explain himself. But it's Thomas and it's important he understand. "I know how it sounds. But believe me. If we don't make our position clear then someone will eventually misunderstand it." That feels like the most dangerous mistake he knows. He can't do it again.

(What does he know about this territory? More than Thomas, more than anyone who's spent their life here, more than anyone whose only experience with the colonies is the slave markets and the road here. But how much that actually amount to that can possibly be useful to them in this, he's not sure. This isn't trade routes and merchant brigs dashing out from one safe harbor to flee to the next; what the fuck does he knows about the land surrounding a plantation? The towns or the wilderness beyond it?)

"It sounds fine, my love, I'm agreeing with you," Thomas says, and if he sounds placating-- he isn't trying to be, but he supposes that's the sort of thing that's been ground into him after all this time. The knowledge of it touches something sad in him but he refuses to let it take hold; instead of his gaze flinching away he just lets his expression flicker self-depreciating, and chases it with a lopsided, barely-there smile. He wishes he weren't like this. He wishes James's first response wasn't right to the brink of hostility. Please trust me.

"I don't know what I sound like anymore."

Probably terrible.

"I only mean to ask what their position is before we demand ours, in the event they already overlap neatly."

(Come on now, away from the ledge.)

He is aware of the fact that, in his attempt not to sound so conciliatory, he's more or less doing that exact thing, but there's no way around it that he can see. It's likely a problem, but not one he can do anything about. James is right and Thomas isn't trying to dissuade him, he just seemed so damned angry for a moment, and he can't go back to work that way, he can't go confront one of their peers that way. He'll hurt himself, or they won't understand.

A heavy flicker of his eyelids marks that James is hearing him even if the point just comes to settle on top of his own. Of course. He's not planning to be unreasonable - to back Thomas into a corner where he's forced to become dangerous. A letter opener driven into a man's throat, he thinks, and the image that's conjured is so foreign he can only guess that's what has Thomas giving so. Why he sounds like a bent switch looks. "I'm not suggesting we demand anything," he says, purposefully gentle. It's fine. There's nothing here to fray over. "Merely that we come to the conversation prepared."

He isn't arguing. Thomas isn't wrong. Souring this fledgling relationship is as useful as shooting themselves in the foot. If their position aligns with that of their allies, then there will be nothing to debate. Let this partnership be as happy and easy one as possible given the extreme circumstances. But if they arrive at some disagreement, being ready to counter immediately is vital. Better to seem shockingly quick on their feet than hesitating or needing a moment to confer as disparate pieces have a habit of being shaken loose in these matters. If the women and African slaves expect a united front, then it's in their best interests to be exactly that.

(Not that they aren't. Not that they could be anything but. It's a point that doesn't need to be made. He trusts him.)

Push and pull and they even out-- or they will. No matter what, Thomas has faith in that. They never really argued, in London, not outside sparring over politics that was as much enjoyment as it was frustration, though Thomas has always known of his temper. He knew from the very first time Lieutenant McGraw split his knuckles on someone's face over his wife's virtue. He knew that Miranda and James argued, sometimes, real and heated in a way he never experienced with either of them. But that was something Thomas manufactured for himself. The person his upbringing tried to make him be was something he would never direct at anyone he loved.

(1705, autumn; You beat men bloody over the slightest insult to Miranda or I but the things you say in your own head about what you want-- what am I to do for you, lieutenant? Who do I take a glass to in your defense if you're doing it to yourself? Would you have me do such a thing?)

He joked later, after that first night, asking James if he startled him shouting so at his father, or if it was just a relief to see him strain a little like anyone else.

(1707, winter; Thomas finally masters the art of being completely removed from himself, because so much as a flinch and they force laudanum on him, and choosing to be powerless is better than being forced. The memories, too, are less horrifying when he can piece it all together.)

"We're in agreement."

Just coming at it from odd angles, perhaps. Thomas sighs, opens his mouth to speak, and--

The bell.

"--for fuck's sake," is what comes out in a breath, ever sounding like a teakettle letting off steam whenever he swears. It's passionate, his aggravation as genuine as anything, but Thomas is always too proper for it to be audibly convincing.

He exhales hard through his nose, dredging his hand sluggishly from Thomas's side as men begin to peel themselves out from the shade of trees and the slanting overhang of the bunkhouse's roof. White would-be dead men and African slaves form irregular twin streams of flesh trickling back down into parallel fields and there's no denying the pull of it. But James finds himself compelled to. Just for a second. Just long enough to touch Thomas's face with both hands and say, "It's fine."

Which could mean anything - that he'll make it through the afternoon of backbreaking work; that nothing is going to crumble out from under them while they aren't looking (just never stop looking); that he isn't angry and doesn't need Thomas talking to him like a spooked animal; that he won't let anyone out Thomas is a position where he's unduly compromised (not without being next to him during it) . He strokes his thumbs at Thomas's jaw, nearly kisses him but doesn't, then frees him so they might make their way back down to the work alongside each other.

There's plenty to be done. The ground is nearly dry now and demands breaking before it turns to clay so solid that anything growing there risks being strangled. They dig in matched lines, an uneasy rhythm to the rise and fall of the shovel. Metal strikes earth. Sweat drips from his nose. He works directly behind George McNair who can't look at him, but who sharpens every time James drives the shovel down again. He can't deny that he finds it satisfying: to have something that feels like a weapon in hand again even if there's only one logical direction in which to brandish it.

For the time being anyway. At this rate, tomorrow might turn all their shovels into something fundamentally different.

Thomas would find it interesting to know that James thinks he's being spoken to like a startled animal, and not a wolf poised to tear someone's throat out.

(Maybe it would be easier to pick up on if Thomas acted like he was afraid of being bitten, but he isn't capable. Never has been, with this particular predator.)

More at ease than he should be, Thomas makes it through the rest of the workday without incident. When the bell sounds for the final time and they begin to disperse and wrap up, he stops short after McNair passes him, an uneasy, shocked look on his face that flickers briefly into something hunted. It's not in full view of everyone-- just the overseers facing them, James if he happens to catch it, maybe a few others. Whatever McNair said is a total mystery, having been turned only to Thomas and now wandering off, oblivious to the reaction in his wake.

Said reaction is gone in an instant, and Thomas is fine again when he's at James's side, wiping down his hands and resting the damp rag on his wrist after. He says nothing, his expression schooled back into one that renders his thoughts opaque; when they pass near Marshall the overseer mutters, "What was that?"

"Mind your own business," Thomas answers easily, familiar banter.

"Fuck off, Hamilton."

"Might I speak to you later?"

Marshall grunts his assent, turns to monitor the men still putting up tools as Thomas and James continue to walk. He doesn't say anything else.

He's ready to be done long before the bell rings - can hear himself counting every time he turns over a half shovel of dirt or levers a stone out of the ground. One. Two. Three-- so that when the sound does finally come humming down from the yard it brings with it a kind of sick rush, a flash of relieved light headedness as he rights the shovel and has the luxury of leaning there against it as the men around him break rank and file to toss their tools away and move back up toward the kitchen and slave quarters.

He doesn't stagger out of the tilled rows, but James does take a long moment to mop the sweat from his face with the neck of his shirt. What he wouldn't give for even the slightest breeze. This still air's fucking unnatural, he thinks. By the time he's capable of straightening the line of his shoulders again, Thomas is beside him.

Meaning the question on his mind that's most pressing as they make their way up the path is: "What do you want from him?"

Maybe another one will occur to him after - 'What did he mean?' or some variation on a similar theme. In this immediate moment, he concentrates on the distance between where they are now and a place he can reasonably expect to sit down.

Edited 2017-08-18 00:23 (UTC)

Possibly, this is a bad idea, but everything they're doing could fall into that category. Have been doing. Have always done. London all the way to the New World. Thomas's heart aches to see James so battered; it's like there's been shards of glass trapped inside his chest since that day and every time he sees evidence of that brutality they shift. Possibly, possibly, but he'd been thinking of it even before their strange misfire at midday.

"I want him to do what I tell him," he says after a while.

McNair didn't say anything. Of course he didn't. But it'll be good for Marshall to think he did, because for whatever reason, Marshall seems to like Thomas well enough, and carries a measure of guilt over what happened to he and James over the fire. He'd been nervous; We know you didn't do it, and honestly, we know he didn't neither, but it looks like what it looks like-- and Thomas isn't stupid, they can use that. James hasn't been here long enough, he doesn't have the same sway that comes with history, though Thomas suspects he'd be infinitely better at convincing him if he had. For all his work in politics, Thomas has never gotten the hang of dishonesty or manipulation. All his coaxing was ever done with the scandalous allure of the truth.

Very quietly, "Three years ago there was a problem with how certain men were getting on, and they re-sorted sleeping assignments. If he thinks we're being harassed by the man who sold you out, who Marshall knows was lying, I think I can get him to put men where I want him to."

He doesn't slow, but the line of his shoulders turns by a degree and it looks like there might be some word hanging just behind his teeth. It doesn't leave his mouth though - instead he pivots his attention farther up the path to where McNair is walking in the company of a few other men. There's some suggestion of conversation between them; one of them laughs, a hand clapped to a shoulder--

James huffs out a low breath and speaks equally low, a murmur that hardly clears the crunch of small stones under the feet: "That works." There's a curl of warmth in it that sounds more like 'Smart man,' a broad stitch of fondness. "If I were to press McNair, his friends might come crawling. Two birds."

It'd be a succinct way of starting their list of lost causes - give Marshall something else to chalk down and anyone with their eyes peeled for the African slaves a concrete sense that the two of them were taking the task they'd been given seriously. He can't imagine it will be difficult; McNair's already twitching with the urge to be spoken to. The only challenge is finding something to say to him that won't make Bettina angry when it works its way to her ear.

(That too is more flexible than it would seem, he thinks. He isn't sure sensible is an apt description for the woman, but reasonable? Certainly. And she must be fully aware of where her brother stands already. She must have known what she was committing him to when it was decided who was to sway the convict laborers.)

"He wants to be pressed by now, I think. I've made sure McNair's been thinking about the fact that they're going to remember it was him who threw your name out there," he says, voice quiet enough just for the two of them. He's very good at this staying quiet game, but then, most people here are. It's how they must live, sectioned off and between lines. "When Oglethorpe decides he really wants to know who started the fire, they're going to start with him, and ask why he did that."

Thomas has been softly pushing him into a corner. He'll have to make a decision-- throw himself on the sword or let it fall on Bettina, or remove them both from the situation entirely. Maybe he's too soft-hearted, giving him a chance, but then again, maybe he would find vicious satisfaction in the man letting himself be punished over it in her stead, because it was his word that set them on James.

He would feel guilty. Probably. Hopefully.

(Scandalous allure of the truth.)

"What degree of moral responsibility is there?" He asks after they've gone a few more paces. "Do we count among our number men who I know would follow us if the reason they're here is something like preying on children?"

Good. Because today he wants to do the pressing. It's been an effort to say next to nothing to the man, trusting that there's a kind of agony to being ignored when a blow's not just expected but somehow inevitable. It would be stupid to just do it for his own satisfaction, but this isn't that. Finally given reason to turn the screw on McNair and he can't see why he'd do anything but.

Thomas speaking softly again dredges his attention back around. "How many would it rule out if we didn't?" is his immediate response, so quickly that it's clear he he either isn't concerned or has asked himself the question enough times for it to be familiar.

There are maybe six men already he can think of off the top of his head as needing to be quietly set aside before even taking into consideration their crimes. Surely Thomas must have more than that. They've numbers, yes, but already that's a noticeable chip in the ranks of the white convict labor. Can they afford to be selective about anyone willing to stand and fight and listen?

(Nevermind the morality; what about the logistics?)

There is a measure of comforting satisfaction to know James will do something about McNair. His history as an officer, more recent history as Captain Flint-- he knows how to push men. Right or wrong. Whatever it results in, Thomas has already resolved to back it, because he trusts him.

(It's fine if George McNair gets his throat torn out. Liam, no, they need him and his number, but to hell with McNair.)

"Overall, eight," is a sigh. He can't nevermind the morality. Of course he can't. He is who he is, still. Somehow. Somehow. Thomas is almost surprised at himself, but there's no room to reflect on it. He doesn't want anyone to stay imprisoned like this, it's inhumane, slavery is a chief cog in the machine of the empire, but if some men can't be trusted not to harm others without constant, tyrannical supervision, surely they can't be a party to setting them loose. "Three would back us for certain. Two definitely not. The others are-- less communicative." James'll know which, as he's pointed a few out, and even if he hadn't, that kind of disturbed nature is easily spotted.

What right do they have to pass that kind of judgement? What right does Thomas have to mark them down into lists, anyway? If they need the help of those men, isn't it just as awful to benefit from their aid only to put them back into bondage after as keeping them here in the first place? If they're permitted freedom, will James and Thomas be responsible for any crimes committed after? Who's to say some of them haven't actually reformed?

There's a part of Thomas, some new thing that's developed over the past decade, that flatly suggests using them and killing them after, and for a moment he's quietly horrified at himself.

Can they afford to dismiss the use of six men? That's six warm bodies potentially capable of carrying sticks or burning a piece of this place to the ground, of downing an overseer intent on raising an alarm, of downing a man on a horse being spurred for the road. The chaos of sacking a place is a series of odds tipped by weight of numbers more so than skill. And what about after, when they slip away from the gutted remains of this place? Six more men walking in a different direction in the woods are six more sets of footprints a hunting party might follow, six more scents for dogs to chase--

And if they can take such a loss, at what point do they stop cutting names away? Which crimes are too deplorable to risk the involvement of the men who committed them? Is there a finite number of lives ruined that warrants being dumped into a dark hole and forgotten forever?

"If they agree to work toward something that's good, I don't know that I can refuse them. A thing that's right can't be invalidated by the involvement of a few men." How many of his own crew had once done something despicable? And there had been men among other crews who he'd fought alongside touched with more cruelty, capable of unspoken wretchedness. That couldn't have been his responsibility - not then, and it can't be theirs now. "I think," he says, some large part of him unhappy with his own answer. "That our responsibility is to seeing this done."

Six men likely won't make a difference. But they might. And if they can ruin this place in the same breath as earning their freedom alongside that of a hundred others, then don't those dozens of maybe happier lives balance somehow against what a handful of others might later choose to do? And maybe they'll be lucky. Maybe they'll do something that warrants a bullet in the head after.

"But if you'd rather differently, I'm all ears." Tell him how he's wrong.

"There is what I'd rather and what is necessary," Thomas says after a stretch of quiet in which he chews on James's point. Feels the truth of it in the ache of his jaw, no matter that the taste is a bitter one. He has endured less pleasant things. "And what I'd rather is something I can't honestly say I have the proper perspective or experience to make a call about. You're right."

Even if neither of them are thrilled about it. To himself, Thomas makes a silent promise that if he ever hears word of one of these men-- doing something, relapsing, getting near some woman or child-- that he'll find a way to see to ending that threat. That's part of the responsibility to seeing this done. It must be.

Thomas doesn't love being wrong, but he doesn't balk at being corrected or being made to see another perspective. He feels something like the sensation of a healing burn inside him, crackling further to reveal new flesh beneath. Selfishly he holds tightly to that sensation, sparks akin to what he felt whenever he and James had at it over this or that in his study in private, or his salon in public, or closed in his bedroom with Miranda rolling her eyes. Now isn't the time to be thinking of any of it and yet--

It's the perfect time, too. It isn't the same. It's aged with them. Thomas tips his head back to look up at the darkened sky, and the stars twinkling to life. It's good, I think.

The imperfection of the conclusion could easily sit there on top of his skin, itching like some infected scratch if he let it. Because there are versions of events in which he can opt to do nothing for those men, but that isn't one in which any of them are even here to begin with. It certainly has no bearing on the reality which they're a part of. Best to draw one line in the sand until it's resolved; maybe later they'll have the luxury to draw another.

He's quiet for some time beside him, studying the backs of the men ahead and them then tipping his face to glance at Thomas' throat, the fray of his shirt collar and the sturdy sinew of his bare forearm, nut brown between the dying light and his color from working in the sun. A rooster calls from the hen house and the horses in their lean to shelter whip their tails at flies. Oglethorpe's youngest boy screams and laughs from the porch, thrashing in the circle of a woman's arms as he's tickled. The sound carries through the still air, easily heard over the note of men trudging up from the fields. James touches his hand to the ruddy back of Thomas's neck. thumb drawing the edge of his hairline.

"When do you expect Marshall will come speak with you?" It matters. Ideally, McNair will need to be goaded before then.

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