Fic: From My Hands
Jun. 3rd, 2010 02:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
viceindustriousTitle: From My Hands
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes 2009
Pairing: Blackwood/Coward
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Not mine, just playing.
Summary: In the real world a man can rise from the dead. In the real world there is magic and magic can mend this.
Word count: 6200
Notes: Somewhat inspired by a short exchange with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
inamac in which the word resurrection popped its head up and possibly the fact that unsettledfic mentioned Alice in Wonderland recently. Also, many thanks to Lewis Carroll for writing the passages I used. Lewis you're a peach! (Title cribbed from this song)
-
It's just a flaw in the photograph. A speck of dirt caught on the plates, a smudge. It isn't real.
In the real world a man can rise from the dead. Lazarus of Bethany, illuminate those letters, paint the L and the B with a steady, faithful hand.
His stiff white collar is torn. His shirt clings, soaked with sweat, to his back and under his arms. He lost his coat while he was fighting his way out of Parliament and now he has nothing to pull tight about himself. Not against the whip of the wind and not against the murmur of the crowd. They are saying Henry's name and they are staring up at that dirty mark in the sky. That imperfection (silhouette) suspended between the unfinished towers of the bridge and amidst the gathering storm clouds.
Coward smiles because it's such an amateur effort really. The tacky vignetting, the shadows crowding in on the edges of his vision and framing the flaw too perfectly. If his smile falters at all it's because of the ache in his chest, which is peculiar because although he can't breathe, isn't breathing, why would he need to? This certainly isn't real and you never worry about those sorts of details in delusions or dreams do you?
No, it's a terrible photograph and the hole in the sky is all wrong entirely. He has just enough time to raise his hand, block it out and fix the broken picture before darkness swoops in and devours the world.
Not real, but in the real world there is magic and magic can mend this.
-
Days come first, then weeks and still no one else realizes what has happened. Coward remembers the way that Henry would read Revelation like poetry, in a quick, quiet baritone that made music out of the nonsense verse, but he never imagined the world might end without anyone noticing. The powers that be are too keen to put England back to bed. They tell him there will be a trial and that they will allow him to remain, a gentile imprisonment, in the grand estate of his forefathers until that time comes to pass.
The country is recovering from a fever and stability is the most important thing for her now. Absurdly they behave as though the world can continue like this. As though the clocks didn't stop some time ago, frozen at a quarter past twelve. Certainly he can watch the minute hand creep slowly around the face of the old grandfather in the parlour, but he understands that it's only an illusion. Those fussy, regimented mechanics are deceptive.
Myrrh, civet, storax, wormwood, assafoetida, galbanum, musk. Mix in a copper vessel and bathe in moonlight.
Since the servants have been dismissed he finds himself forcing a routine out of nothing but dust and echoes. In the morning, he draws the curtains open in each of the forty four rooms of the house and in the evening, closes them again. He cannot stand the idea that the manor might seem to be in mourning when there's nothing to mourn. Still, the air tastes stagnant no matter how many windows he opens.
Time can only really be measured by the moon, which is an instrument of magic after all and therefore to be trusted. Other things cannot.
For instance; he must be careful to ration out the time he spends in the cellar as it would be all too easy to lose track of it down there. He must ration out the time he spends with his artefacts of the real world too. The Cartes-de-Visite of Henry in Paris. A copy of Donne's The Flea, handwritten in careful, cramped script on the back of an opera ticket. He worries they'll lose their vibrancy if he looks at them too long, or worse, become infected with this world's falsity. The cut on his thumb at least he can reopen every night.
And he tries to keep to his routines, but then there are days where no room feels safe to enter. The stain on the corner of a rug or the tassel of a cushion will catch his eye and plant insidious doubt that feels more like panic in his breast. It all looks so much like the house he grew up in. At times like these he prefers to sit on the stairs, the knuckles of one hand white, fingers grasping the banister and the other hand curled around a glass of gin.
The first time he'd seen Henry Blackwood he'd been licking the taste of Pimms of his teeth. Ascot, the Gold Cup and the sun had been so bright it had dashed everything else into severe contrast, nothing but shadow and glare. For a long time, those were the things that Henry was to him. The tang of citrus and spice and the faint burn of alcohol on the back of his throat. The beat of the sun on the back of his neck.
Now, Coward images ascending the staircase in his socks and searching through the liqueur cabinet for a bottle of vermouth, some Cointreau, to mix up a cocktail. The gin is lukewarm and oily but it's better to imagine the real thing than settle for a substitute. Mostly he's too tired to climb up or down or move at all.
It had been the green of Henry's eyes, he remembers. Green eyes and olive skin, a different animal to the rest of the Englishmen mopping their pallid brows in the heat. Later he would find out that Henry had not two days prior returned from overseas. Three years abroad studying the mysteries of the world, walking through the streets of Cairo, climbing mountains in Tanganyika, learning things that would remain long after the colour had faded from his skin.
Coward discovers everything afterwards. At that moment there had only been the idea of the man and those hard, bright eyes, watching him.
Three days later Lord Geoffrey Blackwood was found dead in his bed. A problem with his heart, they said and hardly suspicious circumstances for a man in his fifties who had embraced the vice of gluttony with such zeal. Yet the Temple of the Four Orders had shifted uneasily all the same and played Chinese whispers amongst themselves to the tune of the secret cuckoo in the late Lord Blackwood's nest. A danger he had apparently been sweetly unaware of.
Their meetings had been sombre then. Less talk of magic, less of the call and response of ritual, as though those toys were no longer amusing. Instead of a keris, Sir Thomas wielded his knife and fork at their tense dinner parties. Coward managed to piece together the truth from the silences left between the scrape of silverware on china and the clench of Sir Thomas' jaw as he pulled apart his food, the scraps of what was left unsaid and what could be sifted from rumour.
By the time Henry took his late father's seat in the Lords, Coward knew that his illegitimacy was not the real reason the Order shied away from him. Scandal was not what they, nor even Sir Thomas himself were afraid of. But they were afraid and Coward was fascinated.
He sets down the gin and picks up the Book. The Book is an artefact too, in all honesty, but it's one he allows himself to return to over and over. It's his key to setting the world right again and though once it held the scent of Henry between its pages, now the cover is fraying and sticky and the only thing it smells of is camphor. His skin feels less substantial than its paper, more dry, far more brittle and he wonders if maybe he's fading like everything else left here.
He doesn't want to hear the words, their filthy shop talk about shovels and transportation and decay. How much? He asks and lets them name their price. The money is worthless and he promises them whatever they want as long as they can do this thing for him. He won't think about their criminal, dirty hands touching his Henry. He forgives them their mercenary nature, like the thieves crucified along with Christ, they may yet have the chance to understand.
At least he isn't forgetting. Waking, this world is grey and mute, but when he sleeps he dreams in full, blooming colour. Presses the knife into his thumb so blood wells up, deep and rich and steps back into the reality that was sucked out of the hole in the sky.
-
This dream is like like the tune from an old music box.
Tea at Fortnums. Here's the waiter, setting down a baked Vacerin du Mont d'Or and a basket of bread on the table, to which Coward inclines his head and Blackwood pays no mind.
“I know you're a member,” Blackwood says.
Coward picks up a spoon and searches for his reflection it its polished, silver surface. He thought he would have an advantage here, some place elegant and ordered with a thousand invisible rules that only let themselves be known to the well bred. The most basic policy of a consummate tactician, he would be comfortable and Blackwood would not.
But while Blackwood does not quite fit in, he doesn't even try to. There is a stillness in the way he holds himself, upright and unapologetic for the weight of his presence. A stillness in his eyes, watching him, unmoving and sweeping Coward's tactics from the board altogether.
Coward is half surprised to hear himself say. “I don't believe I ever denied the fact.”
Though he's wondering how Blackwood knows. Are their secrets so easily accessible? With Sir Thomas in charge he doesn't find that particular notion inconceivable. But he can see already why Blackwood scares them. He speaks those simple words, I know, with a subdued air of omniscience, the realm of the supremely intelligent or the simple minded and Coward has no reason to believe he is the latter.
“It's a waste of your time,” Blackwood says.
“You don't believe then?” he asks.
Affably, as if they're discussing the weather and fully aware that the smile on his face does not quite reach his eyes. He unfolds his napkin and smooths it over his lap, playing his part in the pantomime that they are actually here to lunch, though his appetite is almost non existent. Blackwood has ignored everything but him since they were seated and had not even attempted to pretend otherwise.
“In gentlemen's clubs or in magic?” he asks.
Coward winces and shuffles his chair closer to the table, resists the temptation to glance around the room.
“They're timid aren't they?” Blackwood continues. “Shall I tell you something about yourself, Daniel?”
At twenty four, Coward is the Baby of the House and he's used to condescension. He's equally used to disabusing people of the notion that he is one to condescend to, unless it profits him otherwise and so he taps the top of the cheese with his spoon and waves Henry on.
"By all means," he says, picking up a piece of bread and going to dip it.
Blackwood pushes the dish to the side.
“You're not afraid like them. You won't be able to adhere to their self imposed limits," he says.
“Of course.” Coward moves the dish back to the centre of the table. “But they're useful, you understand.”
Blackwood's scoffing laughter breaks through the dull, stilted chatter of the other patrons. The curl of his lip reveals the crooked set of his front tooth and Coward inhales slowly. They say there was magic on the night of Blackwood's conception and yes, he could believe that. There is something other about him and powerful too, no doubt, but raw is what it is. Raw and rough and not quite civilized.
“They could be made useful,” Coward says.
And what could you be made? He's thinking, meeting Blackwood's sceptical gaze head on. There's a controlled burn in Blackwood's eyes that kindles an answering fire under his own skin and a sudden sense of urgency to...what? He doesn't know. To act perhaps. The room about them is teal blue, their china is eggshell fine and delicate and it's all just so many pastels against their primary colours.
“As to how,” Coward trails off, gestures vaguely with his spoon.
He looks to Blackwood and the words unspoken hang between them. Blackwood's brow is creased, his lips tight as though he's biting back an argument. Coward understands, the Order rejected him. It would be better to hide this empathy, he knows this too even as his gaze softens and Blackwood's sneer intensifies.
“I may form my own order,” he says.
Coward shakes his head. “You should gain their support instead.”
He refuses to wilt beneath Blackwood's silent gaze until at last, very slightly and even more begrudgingly, Blackwood nods. There's a shadow of confusion on his face as though he doesn't quite know why he's doing so.
“You're meeting with the Home Secretary after lunch, aren't you?” He gestures to Coward's cuff links, round black enamel with a narrow stripe of light blue running diagonally across their surface. “Another Old Etonian,”
I can see through you, is what Blackwood is really saying, but Coward isn't sure if it's a compliment or a critique.
“Yes,” he says.
“You know I was there too, in sixty three, I think it was.”
Coward hesitates for only a second. “I know.”
Blackwood raises his eyebrows and in a moment of weakness Coward looks down at his wrists and wonders if he thought about this before putting them on this morning. Thought about it and pretended he hadn't.
“But I was expelled,” Blackwood says, smiling a little now.
Coward pauses and very deliberately sets down his spoon. He considers changing the subject, twists one of the cuff links between his forefinger and thumb.
“I know,” he repeats instead.
“Then you know why too.”
It's not a question. It's everything that Blackwood isn't saying. That he knows more than that, doesn't he? That he knows what the Order says about Blackwood and the rumours about his father's death, the rumours of why Blackwood left England in the first place and what he's capable of. Coward is no ingénue and he met Blackwood here today anyway.
“I do,” he says.
Blackwood laughs and finally begins to eat.
-
Coward rarely remembers the moments before sleep now. His body snatches fitful handfuls of rest where it can and he doesn't sleep in beds that are all too wide for him alone. Curled into himself on the floor, his wrists are his pillow, shirtsleeves dirtied to a waxen grey and he rubs his wet eyes with them when he wakes. It's the mist drifting in through the open windows that's made them so, he thinks, or perhaps sweat from the fever that comes and goes upon him.
The Book is tucked beneath his arm. He strokes his fingertips across the cover and opens it up and-
"`If I wasn't real,' Alice said -- half-laughing though her tears, it all seemed so ridiculous -- `I shouldn't be able to cry.'"
-blinks stupidly at the text. Not his Book. It's slim and red and the spine is creased just like it, but when he turns back to the frontispiece there's a print of a girl and opposite that the words: Through the Looking Glass.
But the library is on the second floor and he can't be that far from the cellar can he? Coward pulls himself to his feet, stumbles once, bruising the heel of his palm on the polished oak floor, and half crawls the rest of the way to the window. He digs his nails into the soft, flaking wood of the sill and then he's looking down at the bare trees, soaked black with rain, down through the murky glass to the estate below.
This is the third floor. The wind is stronger up here, he can hear it whistling through the gaps in the window frame.
He looks over his shoulder at the little red book. Through the looking glass, is that where he is? Did he pick out that book in his sleep? Henry's laughter has followed him out of the dream, waking the house, making it groan like a ship at sea. Outside there's a gale blowing. It roars in the chimney and when Coward's eyes fall there he sees his shoes lying charred on the hearth.
The price of quality. His fault.
He doesn't remember fetching the book or trying to burn the shoes. Time in this place is clearly more slippery than he thought and now he will have to wait for the moon. No sleep, no more. Coward rolls up his left shirtsleeve and passes his fingers over the bruise on his forearm, not quite touching. He could use his skin to tell time too, but it disturbs him to watch as the colours there fade one by one. Some have already vanished completely, as though they were never there at all.
The price of quality is the unique imprint it leaves behind and he cannot recreate these marks. On the curve of his shoulder, on the inside of his pale thigh. The pattern of Henry's teeth. That one, crooked little tooth.
He closes his eyes for just a moment.
-
This dream will have him waking with blood on his tongue. Henry's room, 1887.
“The same things can be done with men.”
The voice makes him jump and Coward snaps the book shut. Henry simply plucks it from his fingers and lays it open again on the desk.
He should have known, did know, what it was. A book the colour of blood and bright as a polished apple, laying there in wait for him. The only thing out of place in Henry's otherwise immaculate quarters. It rankles some, calls to mind the story of Bluebeard, which is really just another story about Eve, about temptation and temptation is something he does not require. He has already made up his own mind.
Coward's mouth twists, unamused, but when he turns and looks up, Henry is smiling in that way of his that changes the whole temper of his face. There are laughter lines around his eyes and Coward can't be angry any more because this is something only he gets to see.
He sighs and Henry clicks his tongue against his teeth and grins and at last Coward gives up.
“The sacrifices?” he asks.
“Any of it.”
Coward tuns back to the book and reaches out to stroke the page, his fingertips following the curve and slash of ink from one arcane symbol to the next. De Resurrectione Carnis, he mouths, frowning thoughtfully at the Latin. The print looks fractured, the pictures scrawled as though whoever had been wielding the pen had been terribly afraid and now that fear was caught like a pressed flower between the pages.
“If fucking is involved-”
Coward flinches despite himself. Henry has no patience for niceties when he's not revelling in the part of the aristocrat, when there's no sport to be had or when the game is more fun played bluntly. By his nature he does not take well to temperance and sometimes Coward has to work hard to stop that bright, bold flame of his from accidentally sabotaging their own plans.
“If fucking is involved it's actually preferable as you eliminate the possible inconvenience of pregnancy altogether,” Henry finishes.
Coward can feel the blush rise on his cheeks and he attempts to convince himself it's one born out of class. He may be a practitioner of the dark arts but he is still a gentleman and the Order's little sexual escapades always seemed tawdry to him anyway. Titillation with discrete whores or more rarely, bored noblewomen who may as well have been whores, notwithstanding their magical pretensions and domino masks.
“Does that bother you?” Henry asks.
He's still smiling, though now it's an expression drawn from a darker palette. Coward pretends not to notice but his answering smile is uneasy. He closes the book again, with finality this time.
Henry catches his hand, gentle but firm.
“Daniel?”
Coward holds his breath and doesn't try to take his hand back. He knows he should, but there's the fear that he may try and that Henry won't let him and he can't think of what will come after that. He has no plan for it. Four years they have known each other now and somehow he's never had time to make a plan for this, for the warm, firm grip of Henry's fingers around his wrist. It happens every so often. If he does nothing, Henry will let go.
“Why would it bother me?” he evades.
Henry tips his chin up and narrows his eyes. He presses Coward's hand more firmly against the book, against all the strange, forbidden things locked up between its pages.
“Don't you find the idea distasteful?” Henry asks, his voice rough.
His voice. Coward shivers, tightens his jaw. He needs to pull his hand away now. Henry's grip is like a brand in reverse, his skin feels hot all over except for that circle of iron around his wrist.
“They're just rituals,”
“But the idea,” Henry says, moving so that Coward is pinned to the desk and his thumb is rubbing up and down, up and down across his pulse. “ Of a young man, stripped, naked on the altar. Hands bound. Legs wide.”
Coward cracks, tries to pull his hand back at last and Henry lets him, but now there's nowhere to go. Not without pushing Henry out of the way. Not without putting his hands on Henry, over his heart maybe, and pushing that away.
Henry leans in, brushes the hair from his ear and whispers. “Anointed, spread open and sodomized.”
“Yes!” Coward hisses, and allows the silence to stretch too long and too far between them before he continues. “Yes, of course I find the idea distasteful, but you do make a good point about practicality.”
Henry turns away from him and Coward clutches at the edge of the desk, tucks his chin against his collar and closes his eyes, breathing hard through his nose. Dear lord, the terror in his gut is dizzying. He has never been afraid of Henry but, oh, he's afraid now. It's too much. If he steps into Henry's fire it might obliterate him, dash his control and his perspective to pieces and they are about great work here and it would be foolish, foolish to fall-
“Take the book, it's yours if you'd like it,” Henry snaps, dismissing him with a wave of his hand.
The lamplight catches his profile and Coward realizes it's too late.
“Thank you,” he says.
Henry's eyes remain cold and distant right up until Coward puts a hand on his arm, leans up and kisses him.
-
The moon is occulting Venus tonight. Coward has been waiting for this and so he paces back and forth through the corridors of the manor and doesn't bother with curtains. More and more there are rooms he finds himself reluctant to enter. Places where the quality of the light makes his breath catch, or the ghost of some scent lingers in the stale air. He knows he's been sleeping too much, allowing too many memories to creep in and infest the corners of the house. They're traps, beguiling him, distracting him from his work. He doesn't need memories when he has the power to change things back.
The dining room is one of the places he avoids. It's too still and the wood of the dining table is too dark. Sometimes when he walks past he thinks he sees it all piled up with lilies, but these are only tricks of his mind, like the stars that dazzle him when his head aches and he screws his eyes shut. The dining table is the same colour as the coffin Henry escaped from at his first resurrection. The same colour as the dead trees outside.
One day soon he'll set the dining table, light the lamps and the house will be whole again. The thought cheers him and for the first time in a long while he wonders how his mother is faring. She left with the servants, refused to sleep under the same roof as her traitor son but he will forgive her that. She'll be happy once this is all over and done with. He knows he's put her through a good deal of unpleasantness and of course, he could never explain how it was all for the best.
The last time dining with his mother, he'd been stroking the velvet on the seat of his chair and thinking of the collar of Henry's robe while she prattled on, distraught over the news of Miss Emily Herbert's death. The fourth victim in that recent chain of ghastly murders. Something about how it was such a shame, because hadn't Emily been such a sweetheart and hadn't he been fond of her?
Her, he'd said to Henry, why not let her be next. I think mother's starting to daydream about marriage of all things.
Coward walks along the lake in the afternoon, his socks sodden with dew and gravel crunching wetly beneath his feet. He walks until the mist swallows the house, until he's walking blind and the lake is the only thing in sight, spread out in front of him like a great mirror.
He has both of the books with him this time and he picks hyssop leaves from the bank and sticks them between their pages so he won't forget that there's a mirror here. If the ritual doesn't work (though it will, it has to) maybe he can walk back to the real world through it.
No, he doesn't blame his mother. He's her only son and he knows there are duties he owes her, ways in which he's let her down. She wants grandchildren so much. But then perhaps they can find a girl once Henry is feeling better, a girl like Henry's mother. Henry would be a good father, he thinks.
-
These dreams are all lost time.
They mustn't be seen together.
Coward is Home Secretary now and he thinks that if they're to be judged inhuman for the sacrifices they're making of others, the sacrifices they're making of themselves should be weighed too. Henry admits that it makes sense, that no one should be given reason to put their names together. He agrees to all of this and more, ever so solemnly, as they consider their next steps.
And then he comes anyway. Coward doesn't ask where he learnt his stealth, if it's a trick he picked up in his youth or if he had to practice at it or if he was born with the shadows on his side. He's content to consider it magic. One day Henry can tell him everything, there'll be time enough for that. For now he's happy to simply find Henry waiting for him on his return home.
Coward smiles and hangs up his coat. He unbuttons his vest and walks over to the chair where Henry is pretending to sleep in front of the fire. It's a fine pretence, but Coward knows what Henry looks like when he's truly asleep. His face is never this calm, his brow never so clear.
He doesn't jump when Henry opens his eyes and pulls him down onto his lap.
“No one saw you come here, I suppose?” he asks.
“Don't be ridiculous,” Henry says and kisses him once, softly, on the mouth.
There's a part of him that knows he should find this dismissal troubling, that Henry's pride is something to keep a close check on. These days though, it does sound ridiculous and the more they do and the further they come, the less likely it appears that anyone could stand in their way. The thought that anyone is even half awake in this dim little country seems a far off possibility. Power is supposed to make you drunk, he knows, but Coward is sure this is more like being truly sober.
Henry slips the cravat free from his neck in a movement so practised and so familiar that for one moment his heart feels full enough to burst. After he hangs it over the arm of the chair, his hand returns to Coward's collar, his fingers toying with the hair at the nape of his neck and it doesn't matter that the fire is too close and the warmth of Henry's body makes it too hot to be truly comfortable, Coward does not move.
“Did you find your man?” he asks, after a while.
“Hmmm?”
“Reordan.”
“Oh,” Henry closes his eyes, sighs. “I believe he's in Belgium presently.”
They sit in silence once more. There is nothing that really needs to be explained. They have fallen into a kind of synchronicity and as the end game approaches it all feels so inevitable. Fated. Coward gets giddy over it at times.
“I want to go to Egypt, when this is over,” he says, on a whim. “I want you to show me.”
“After we've dealt with the rest of Africa maybe,” Henry says, his voice low and his gaze distant and Coward knows he's conducting the theatre of war in his head. “This situation with the Boers in particular.”
Just there, so close to his own, Henry's heart beats to the drums of conquest. Brutal, beautiful Henry is his lion and Coward will watch the path for him and show him where to tread but he has never met anyone who understands how to gain and wield power as Henry does. Not through schooling, but in his bones.
He shifts on Henry's lap, turns in to face him, knees straddling his waist.
“I want to see what you saw,” he says, tipping Henry's chin up.
He touches his lips, his cheekbones, lays his fingertips on Henry's temples and smiles down at him. There are stories that Henry has told him about Abydos, about the way the air hangs still and shimmers in the sun's last rays there. How he'd watched the dawn rising over the ruins of the once great, slept under the stars and nearly had his throat cut more than once.
He takes Henry's hand and kisses one of the fingers. They ate with their hands there, didn't they? He kisses that finger again and then bites at the pad of his thumb, imagining eating dates from Henry's hand and licking honey from his fingers.
“You will,” Henry says.
“I want your word.”
Henry lifts Coward's left hand and twines both of theirs together. Kisses the same spot that Coward had, the knot of their fingers, his mouth covering the space where Coward would wear a ring if only he could.
“Shall we swear in blood?” he asks.
Coward sucks his lower lip between his teeth and leans in.
“I think something more potent.”
When Henry takes him to bed he wraps the cravat across his eyes and lays him down and his voice is low, like the rumble of a lion or the sound of sandstone grinding against sandstone. He promises to show him Egypt then and draws the curve of the Nile down his chest. Kisses the constellations of the pyramids across his stomach.
-
What he's attempting is difficult enough already, but Coward still wonders if there might be a way to change his dreams. Couldn't a man rewrite his own history? At least in dreams and fantasies. It should be easier than this.
Henry always believed they would be remembered as true patriots because that was the ultimate truth of it but Coward knew words like that needed power behind them to mean anything at all. When the Prime Minister and the House had been bickering over Cromwell's legacy and his Westminster statue, Henry had been dismissive of the whole affair. To his mind, Cromwell deserved no honour because he hadn't gone far enough and in the end his enterprise had failed. Coward merely saw the speed with which England had swept the bones of their commonwealth beneath the rug.
What they achieved would not be forgotten, Henry had told him, and not to worry. That when he visited Egypt he could see how the poets are wrong and that there are no ironic inscriptions on any of Ramesses' fallen statues. Immortality is possible for those with the will to it.
The things that he would change now are not so grand in scope. He would have kissed Henry the first time he laid eyes upon him. If he could misremember his dreams it would be so that not a single moment between them was squandered. But then only a prophet could have foretold a famine like this and he could never have saved enough of Henry's embraces besides. Sometimes in the quiet, constant twilight of the house, the ache of his loneliness swells in him until he cannot catch his breath.
It can't be healed, only endured and his one defense against madness is in remembering that he'll have Henry again soon enough. This faith is how he staunches his screams when the words Henry would murmur to him, sweet things, thinking he was asleep, carry along the sad eddies of the house. He tries not to think of how Henry would toss and turn in the sheets beside him and how he'd wondered if it was worse when Henry was alone, where no one could kiss that little furrow in his brow.
It's been two weeks, watching the moon, lighting the candles, following the Book. It's cold in the cellar, which is a blessing, a blessing but still, two weeks and it was-
But he doesn't like to think about that either. Not about the number of days Henry was alone before he was able to find someone to pay to fetch the body. Oh, Henry was always so fierce and proud and Coward had loved him for that and it was fine too because he made sure Henry never had to know how to say, stay with me.
In the cellar, Henry is covered with a piece of muslin and on the bad days this feels too much like a shroud, but it's a necessary evil Coward won't dwell on. Why, if Henry's only sleeping, waiting for him to say the right words to bring him back to life, why doesn't he want to see? Coward decides that it's his frown. He doesn't want to see that furrow on Henry's brow if he can't wake him yet and the incense he burns is to help him concentrate and nothing more.
He kneels down next to Henry. The air smells strange and his stomach clenches queasily but it's all right, he can't remember the last time he ate outside of his dreams anyway. He's almost certain it's not safe to eat here, not in this unreality, not through this looking glass. Don't they say if you eat fairy food you can never return to the real world? The same things could hold true here.
It's hard to focus though. Coward coughs and opens the Book and the words swim for a moment in front of his eyes. "He was part of my dream, of course -- but then I was part of his dream, too." All wrong, he's gotten the books mixed up again.
He sets it down. He'll go and fetch the real one in a little while, but he's just feeling so very tired and it can't hurt to rest for a moment, can it?
The chalk smudges under his body as he lies down beside Henry. No worry, he'll draw back the lines later, after he finds the Book of course. He might redo the whole configuration just to make sure everything is perfect. Henry would laugh at him for that, his laugh that meant I can see through you and I love you too. Henry would tease him about his fastidiousness and then wear the clothes that Coward picked out for him all the same.
He puts his hand over the sheet, rests it on Henry's chest and he's sure he's not imagining things when he feels a ripple of movement beneath the cloth. Not like a heartbeat, no, like a wave, like something roiling. Life, he thinks, that's what the beginning of life must feel like. The moon is nearly in position after all.
He'll just lay here for a while.
-
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes 2009
Pairing: Blackwood/Coward
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Not mine, just playing.
Summary: In the real world a man can rise from the dead. In the real world there is magic and magic can mend this.
Word count: 6200
Notes: Somewhat inspired by a short exchange with
inamac in which the word resurrection popped its head up and possibly the fact that unsettledfic mentioned Alice in Wonderland recently. Also, many thanks to Lewis Carroll for writing the passages I used. Lewis you're a peach! (Title cribbed from this song) -
It's just a flaw in the photograph. A speck of dirt caught on the plates, a smudge. It isn't real.
In the real world a man can rise from the dead. Lazarus of Bethany, illuminate those letters, paint the L and the B with a steady, faithful hand.
His stiff white collar is torn. His shirt clings, soaked with sweat, to his back and under his arms. He lost his coat while he was fighting his way out of Parliament and now he has nothing to pull tight about himself. Not against the whip of the wind and not against the murmur of the crowd. They are saying Henry's name and they are staring up at that dirty mark in the sky. That imperfection (silhouette) suspended between the unfinished towers of the bridge and amidst the gathering storm clouds.
Coward smiles because it's such an amateur effort really. The tacky vignetting, the shadows crowding in on the edges of his vision and framing the flaw too perfectly. If his smile falters at all it's because of the ache in his chest, which is peculiar because although he can't breathe, isn't breathing, why would he need to? This certainly isn't real and you never worry about those sorts of details in delusions or dreams do you?
No, it's a terrible photograph and the hole in the sky is all wrong entirely. He has just enough time to raise his hand, block it out and fix the broken picture before darkness swoops in and devours the world.
Not real, but in the real world there is magic and magic can mend this.
-
Days come first, then weeks and still no one else realizes what has happened. Coward remembers the way that Henry would read Revelation like poetry, in a quick, quiet baritone that made music out of the nonsense verse, but he never imagined the world might end without anyone noticing. The powers that be are too keen to put England back to bed. They tell him there will be a trial and that they will allow him to remain, a gentile imprisonment, in the grand estate of his forefathers until that time comes to pass.
The country is recovering from a fever and stability is the most important thing for her now. Absurdly they behave as though the world can continue like this. As though the clocks didn't stop some time ago, frozen at a quarter past twelve. Certainly he can watch the minute hand creep slowly around the face of the old grandfather in the parlour, but he understands that it's only an illusion. Those fussy, regimented mechanics are deceptive.
Myrrh, civet, storax, wormwood, assafoetida, galbanum, musk. Mix in a copper vessel and bathe in moonlight.
Since the servants have been dismissed he finds himself forcing a routine out of nothing but dust and echoes. In the morning, he draws the curtains open in each of the forty four rooms of the house and in the evening, closes them again. He cannot stand the idea that the manor might seem to be in mourning when there's nothing to mourn. Still, the air tastes stagnant no matter how many windows he opens.
Time can only really be measured by the moon, which is an instrument of magic after all and therefore to be trusted. Other things cannot.
For instance; he must be careful to ration out the time he spends in the cellar as it would be all too easy to lose track of it down there. He must ration out the time he spends with his artefacts of the real world too. The Cartes-de-Visite of Henry in Paris. A copy of Donne's The Flea, handwritten in careful, cramped script on the back of an opera ticket. He worries they'll lose their vibrancy if he looks at them too long, or worse, become infected with this world's falsity. The cut on his thumb at least he can reopen every night.
And he tries to keep to his routines, but then there are days where no room feels safe to enter. The stain on the corner of a rug or the tassel of a cushion will catch his eye and plant insidious doubt that feels more like panic in his breast. It all looks so much like the house he grew up in. At times like these he prefers to sit on the stairs, the knuckles of one hand white, fingers grasping the banister and the other hand curled around a glass of gin.
The first time he'd seen Henry Blackwood he'd been licking the taste of Pimms of his teeth. Ascot, the Gold Cup and the sun had been so bright it had dashed everything else into severe contrast, nothing but shadow and glare. For a long time, those were the things that Henry was to him. The tang of citrus and spice and the faint burn of alcohol on the back of his throat. The beat of the sun on the back of his neck.
Now, Coward images ascending the staircase in his socks and searching through the liqueur cabinet for a bottle of vermouth, some Cointreau, to mix up a cocktail. The gin is lukewarm and oily but it's better to imagine the real thing than settle for a substitute. Mostly he's too tired to climb up or down or move at all.
It had been the green of Henry's eyes, he remembers. Green eyes and olive skin, a different animal to the rest of the Englishmen mopping their pallid brows in the heat. Later he would find out that Henry had not two days prior returned from overseas. Three years abroad studying the mysteries of the world, walking through the streets of Cairo, climbing mountains in Tanganyika, learning things that would remain long after the colour had faded from his skin.
Coward discovers everything afterwards. At that moment there had only been the idea of the man and those hard, bright eyes, watching him.
Three days later Lord Geoffrey Blackwood was found dead in his bed. A problem with his heart, they said and hardly suspicious circumstances for a man in his fifties who had embraced the vice of gluttony with such zeal. Yet the Temple of the Four Orders had shifted uneasily all the same and played Chinese whispers amongst themselves to the tune of the secret cuckoo in the late Lord Blackwood's nest. A danger he had apparently been sweetly unaware of.
Their meetings had been sombre then. Less talk of magic, less of the call and response of ritual, as though those toys were no longer amusing. Instead of a keris, Sir Thomas wielded his knife and fork at their tense dinner parties. Coward managed to piece together the truth from the silences left between the scrape of silverware on china and the clench of Sir Thomas' jaw as he pulled apart his food, the scraps of what was left unsaid and what could be sifted from rumour.
By the time Henry took his late father's seat in the Lords, Coward knew that his illegitimacy was not the real reason the Order shied away from him. Scandal was not what they, nor even Sir Thomas himself were afraid of. But they were afraid and Coward was fascinated.
He sets down the gin and picks up the Book. The Book is an artefact too, in all honesty, but it's one he allows himself to return to over and over. It's his key to setting the world right again and though once it held the scent of Henry between its pages, now the cover is fraying and sticky and the only thing it smells of is camphor. His skin feels less substantial than its paper, more dry, far more brittle and he wonders if maybe he's fading like everything else left here.
He doesn't want to hear the words, their filthy shop talk about shovels and transportation and decay. How much? He asks and lets them name their price. The money is worthless and he promises them whatever they want as long as they can do this thing for him. He won't think about their criminal, dirty hands touching his Henry. He forgives them their mercenary nature, like the thieves crucified along with Christ, they may yet have the chance to understand.
At least he isn't forgetting. Waking, this world is grey and mute, but when he sleeps he dreams in full, blooming colour. Presses the knife into his thumb so blood wells up, deep and rich and steps back into the reality that was sucked out of the hole in the sky.
-
This dream is like like the tune from an old music box.
Tea at Fortnums. Here's the waiter, setting down a baked Vacerin du Mont d'Or and a basket of bread on the table, to which Coward inclines his head and Blackwood pays no mind.
“I know you're a member,” Blackwood says.
Coward picks up a spoon and searches for his reflection it its polished, silver surface. He thought he would have an advantage here, some place elegant and ordered with a thousand invisible rules that only let themselves be known to the well bred. The most basic policy of a consummate tactician, he would be comfortable and Blackwood would not.
But while Blackwood does not quite fit in, he doesn't even try to. There is a stillness in the way he holds himself, upright and unapologetic for the weight of his presence. A stillness in his eyes, watching him, unmoving and sweeping Coward's tactics from the board altogether.
Coward is half surprised to hear himself say. “I don't believe I ever denied the fact.”
Though he's wondering how Blackwood knows. Are their secrets so easily accessible? With Sir Thomas in charge he doesn't find that particular notion inconceivable. But he can see already why Blackwood scares them. He speaks those simple words, I know, with a subdued air of omniscience, the realm of the supremely intelligent or the simple minded and Coward has no reason to believe he is the latter.
“It's a waste of your time,” Blackwood says.
“You don't believe then?” he asks.
Affably, as if they're discussing the weather and fully aware that the smile on his face does not quite reach his eyes. He unfolds his napkin and smooths it over his lap, playing his part in the pantomime that they are actually here to lunch, though his appetite is almost non existent. Blackwood has ignored everything but him since they were seated and had not even attempted to pretend otherwise.
“In gentlemen's clubs or in magic?” he asks.
Coward winces and shuffles his chair closer to the table, resists the temptation to glance around the room.
“They're timid aren't they?” Blackwood continues. “Shall I tell you something about yourself, Daniel?”
At twenty four, Coward is the Baby of the House and he's used to condescension. He's equally used to disabusing people of the notion that he is one to condescend to, unless it profits him otherwise and so he taps the top of the cheese with his spoon and waves Henry on.
"By all means," he says, picking up a piece of bread and going to dip it.
Blackwood pushes the dish to the side.
“You're not afraid like them. You won't be able to adhere to their self imposed limits," he says.
“Of course.” Coward moves the dish back to the centre of the table. “But they're useful, you understand.”
Blackwood's scoffing laughter breaks through the dull, stilted chatter of the other patrons. The curl of his lip reveals the crooked set of his front tooth and Coward inhales slowly. They say there was magic on the night of Blackwood's conception and yes, he could believe that. There is something other about him and powerful too, no doubt, but raw is what it is. Raw and rough and not quite civilized.
“They could be made useful,” Coward says.
And what could you be made? He's thinking, meeting Blackwood's sceptical gaze head on. There's a controlled burn in Blackwood's eyes that kindles an answering fire under his own skin and a sudden sense of urgency to...what? He doesn't know. To act perhaps. The room about them is teal blue, their china is eggshell fine and delicate and it's all just so many pastels against their primary colours.
“As to how,” Coward trails off, gestures vaguely with his spoon.
He looks to Blackwood and the words unspoken hang between them. Blackwood's brow is creased, his lips tight as though he's biting back an argument. Coward understands, the Order rejected him. It would be better to hide this empathy, he knows this too even as his gaze softens and Blackwood's sneer intensifies.
“I may form my own order,” he says.
Coward shakes his head. “You should gain their support instead.”
He refuses to wilt beneath Blackwood's silent gaze until at last, very slightly and even more begrudgingly, Blackwood nods. There's a shadow of confusion on his face as though he doesn't quite know why he's doing so.
“You're meeting with the Home Secretary after lunch, aren't you?” He gestures to Coward's cuff links, round black enamel with a narrow stripe of light blue running diagonally across their surface. “Another Old Etonian,”
I can see through you, is what Blackwood is really saying, but Coward isn't sure if it's a compliment or a critique.
“Yes,” he says.
“You know I was there too, in sixty three, I think it was.”
Coward hesitates for only a second. “I know.”
Blackwood raises his eyebrows and in a moment of weakness Coward looks down at his wrists and wonders if he thought about this before putting them on this morning. Thought about it and pretended he hadn't.
“But I was expelled,” Blackwood says, smiling a little now.
Coward pauses and very deliberately sets down his spoon. He considers changing the subject, twists one of the cuff links between his forefinger and thumb.
“I know,” he repeats instead.
“Then you know why too.”
It's not a question. It's everything that Blackwood isn't saying. That he knows more than that, doesn't he? That he knows what the Order says about Blackwood and the rumours about his father's death, the rumours of why Blackwood left England in the first place and what he's capable of. Coward is no ingénue and he met Blackwood here today anyway.
“I do,” he says.
Blackwood laughs and finally begins to eat.
-
Coward rarely remembers the moments before sleep now. His body snatches fitful handfuls of rest where it can and he doesn't sleep in beds that are all too wide for him alone. Curled into himself on the floor, his wrists are his pillow, shirtsleeves dirtied to a waxen grey and he rubs his wet eyes with them when he wakes. It's the mist drifting in through the open windows that's made them so, he thinks, or perhaps sweat from the fever that comes and goes upon him.
The Book is tucked beneath his arm. He strokes his fingertips across the cover and opens it up and-
"`If I wasn't real,' Alice said -- half-laughing though her tears, it all seemed so ridiculous -- `I shouldn't be able to cry.'"
-blinks stupidly at the text. Not his Book. It's slim and red and the spine is creased just like it, but when he turns back to the frontispiece there's a print of a girl and opposite that the words: Through the Looking Glass.
But the library is on the second floor and he can't be that far from the cellar can he? Coward pulls himself to his feet, stumbles once, bruising the heel of his palm on the polished oak floor, and half crawls the rest of the way to the window. He digs his nails into the soft, flaking wood of the sill and then he's looking down at the bare trees, soaked black with rain, down through the murky glass to the estate below.
This is the third floor. The wind is stronger up here, he can hear it whistling through the gaps in the window frame.
He looks over his shoulder at the little red book. Through the looking glass, is that where he is? Did he pick out that book in his sleep? Henry's laughter has followed him out of the dream, waking the house, making it groan like a ship at sea. Outside there's a gale blowing. It roars in the chimney and when Coward's eyes fall there he sees his shoes lying charred on the hearth.
The price of quality. His fault.
He doesn't remember fetching the book or trying to burn the shoes. Time in this place is clearly more slippery than he thought and now he will have to wait for the moon. No sleep, no more. Coward rolls up his left shirtsleeve and passes his fingers over the bruise on his forearm, not quite touching. He could use his skin to tell time too, but it disturbs him to watch as the colours there fade one by one. Some have already vanished completely, as though they were never there at all.
The price of quality is the unique imprint it leaves behind and he cannot recreate these marks. On the curve of his shoulder, on the inside of his pale thigh. The pattern of Henry's teeth. That one, crooked little tooth.
He closes his eyes for just a moment.
-
This dream will have him waking with blood on his tongue. Henry's room, 1887.
“The same things can be done with men.”
The voice makes him jump and Coward snaps the book shut. Henry simply plucks it from his fingers and lays it open again on the desk.
He should have known, did know, what it was. A book the colour of blood and bright as a polished apple, laying there in wait for him. The only thing out of place in Henry's otherwise immaculate quarters. It rankles some, calls to mind the story of Bluebeard, which is really just another story about Eve, about temptation and temptation is something he does not require. He has already made up his own mind.
Coward's mouth twists, unamused, but when he turns and looks up, Henry is smiling in that way of his that changes the whole temper of his face. There are laughter lines around his eyes and Coward can't be angry any more because this is something only he gets to see.
He sighs and Henry clicks his tongue against his teeth and grins and at last Coward gives up.
“The sacrifices?” he asks.
“Any of it.”
Coward tuns back to the book and reaches out to stroke the page, his fingertips following the curve and slash of ink from one arcane symbol to the next. De Resurrectione Carnis, he mouths, frowning thoughtfully at the Latin. The print looks fractured, the pictures scrawled as though whoever had been wielding the pen had been terribly afraid and now that fear was caught like a pressed flower between the pages.
“If fucking is involved-”
Coward flinches despite himself. Henry has no patience for niceties when he's not revelling in the part of the aristocrat, when there's no sport to be had or when the game is more fun played bluntly. By his nature he does not take well to temperance and sometimes Coward has to work hard to stop that bright, bold flame of his from accidentally sabotaging their own plans.
“If fucking is involved it's actually preferable as you eliminate the possible inconvenience of pregnancy altogether,” Henry finishes.
Coward can feel the blush rise on his cheeks and he attempts to convince himself it's one born out of class. He may be a practitioner of the dark arts but he is still a gentleman and the Order's little sexual escapades always seemed tawdry to him anyway. Titillation with discrete whores or more rarely, bored noblewomen who may as well have been whores, notwithstanding their magical pretensions and domino masks.
“Does that bother you?” Henry asks.
He's still smiling, though now it's an expression drawn from a darker palette. Coward pretends not to notice but his answering smile is uneasy. He closes the book again, with finality this time.
Henry catches his hand, gentle but firm.
“Daniel?”
Coward holds his breath and doesn't try to take his hand back. He knows he should, but there's the fear that he may try and that Henry won't let him and he can't think of what will come after that. He has no plan for it. Four years they have known each other now and somehow he's never had time to make a plan for this, for the warm, firm grip of Henry's fingers around his wrist. It happens every so often. If he does nothing, Henry will let go.
“Why would it bother me?” he evades.
Henry tips his chin up and narrows his eyes. He presses Coward's hand more firmly against the book, against all the strange, forbidden things locked up between its pages.
“Don't you find the idea distasteful?” Henry asks, his voice rough.
His voice. Coward shivers, tightens his jaw. He needs to pull his hand away now. Henry's grip is like a brand in reverse, his skin feels hot all over except for that circle of iron around his wrist.
“They're just rituals,”
“But the idea,” Henry says, moving so that Coward is pinned to the desk and his thumb is rubbing up and down, up and down across his pulse. “ Of a young man, stripped, naked on the altar. Hands bound. Legs wide.”
Coward cracks, tries to pull his hand back at last and Henry lets him, but now there's nowhere to go. Not without pushing Henry out of the way. Not without putting his hands on Henry, over his heart maybe, and pushing that away.
Henry leans in, brushes the hair from his ear and whispers. “Anointed, spread open and sodomized.”
“Yes!” Coward hisses, and allows the silence to stretch too long and too far between them before he continues. “Yes, of course I find the idea distasteful, but you do make a good point about practicality.”
Henry turns away from him and Coward clutches at the edge of the desk, tucks his chin against his collar and closes his eyes, breathing hard through his nose. Dear lord, the terror in his gut is dizzying. He has never been afraid of Henry but, oh, he's afraid now. It's too much. If he steps into Henry's fire it might obliterate him, dash his control and his perspective to pieces and they are about great work here and it would be foolish, foolish to fall-
“Take the book, it's yours if you'd like it,” Henry snaps, dismissing him with a wave of his hand.
The lamplight catches his profile and Coward realizes it's too late.
“Thank you,” he says.
Henry's eyes remain cold and distant right up until Coward puts a hand on his arm, leans up and kisses him.
-
The moon is occulting Venus tonight. Coward has been waiting for this and so he paces back and forth through the corridors of the manor and doesn't bother with curtains. More and more there are rooms he finds himself reluctant to enter. Places where the quality of the light makes his breath catch, or the ghost of some scent lingers in the stale air. He knows he's been sleeping too much, allowing too many memories to creep in and infest the corners of the house. They're traps, beguiling him, distracting him from his work. He doesn't need memories when he has the power to change things back.
The dining room is one of the places he avoids. It's too still and the wood of the dining table is too dark. Sometimes when he walks past he thinks he sees it all piled up with lilies, but these are only tricks of his mind, like the stars that dazzle him when his head aches and he screws his eyes shut. The dining table is the same colour as the coffin Henry escaped from at his first resurrection. The same colour as the dead trees outside.
One day soon he'll set the dining table, light the lamps and the house will be whole again. The thought cheers him and for the first time in a long while he wonders how his mother is faring. She left with the servants, refused to sleep under the same roof as her traitor son but he will forgive her that. She'll be happy once this is all over and done with. He knows he's put her through a good deal of unpleasantness and of course, he could never explain how it was all for the best.
The last time dining with his mother, he'd been stroking the velvet on the seat of his chair and thinking of the collar of Henry's robe while she prattled on, distraught over the news of Miss Emily Herbert's death. The fourth victim in that recent chain of ghastly murders. Something about how it was such a shame, because hadn't Emily been such a sweetheart and hadn't he been fond of her?
Her, he'd said to Henry, why not let her be next. I think mother's starting to daydream about marriage of all things.
Coward walks along the lake in the afternoon, his socks sodden with dew and gravel crunching wetly beneath his feet. He walks until the mist swallows the house, until he's walking blind and the lake is the only thing in sight, spread out in front of him like a great mirror.
He has both of the books with him this time and he picks hyssop leaves from the bank and sticks them between their pages so he won't forget that there's a mirror here. If the ritual doesn't work (though it will, it has to) maybe he can walk back to the real world through it.
No, he doesn't blame his mother. He's her only son and he knows there are duties he owes her, ways in which he's let her down. She wants grandchildren so much. But then perhaps they can find a girl once Henry is feeling better, a girl like Henry's mother. Henry would be a good father, he thinks.
-
These dreams are all lost time.
They mustn't be seen together.
Coward is Home Secretary now and he thinks that if they're to be judged inhuman for the sacrifices they're making of others, the sacrifices they're making of themselves should be weighed too. Henry admits that it makes sense, that no one should be given reason to put their names together. He agrees to all of this and more, ever so solemnly, as they consider their next steps.
And then he comes anyway. Coward doesn't ask where he learnt his stealth, if it's a trick he picked up in his youth or if he had to practice at it or if he was born with the shadows on his side. He's content to consider it magic. One day Henry can tell him everything, there'll be time enough for that. For now he's happy to simply find Henry waiting for him on his return home.
Coward smiles and hangs up his coat. He unbuttons his vest and walks over to the chair where Henry is pretending to sleep in front of the fire. It's a fine pretence, but Coward knows what Henry looks like when he's truly asleep. His face is never this calm, his brow never so clear.
He doesn't jump when Henry opens his eyes and pulls him down onto his lap.
“No one saw you come here, I suppose?” he asks.
“Don't be ridiculous,” Henry says and kisses him once, softly, on the mouth.
There's a part of him that knows he should find this dismissal troubling, that Henry's pride is something to keep a close check on. These days though, it does sound ridiculous and the more they do and the further they come, the less likely it appears that anyone could stand in their way. The thought that anyone is even half awake in this dim little country seems a far off possibility. Power is supposed to make you drunk, he knows, but Coward is sure this is more like being truly sober.
Henry slips the cravat free from his neck in a movement so practised and so familiar that for one moment his heart feels full enough to burst. After he hangs it over the arm of the chair, his hand returns to Coward's collar, his fingers toying with the hair at the nape of his neck and it doesn't matter that the fire is too close and the warmth of Henry's body makes it too hot to be truly comfortable, Coward does not move.
“Did you find your man?” he asks, after a while.
“Hmmm?”
“Reordan.”
“Oh,” Henry closes his eyes, sighs. “I believe he's in Belgium presently.”
They sit in silence once more. There is nothing that really needs to be explained. They have fallen into a kind of synchronicity and as the end game approaches it all feels so inevitable. Fated. Coward gets giddy over it at times.
“I want to go to Egypt, when this is over,” he says, on a whim. “I want you to show me.”
“After we've dealt with the rest of Africa maybe,” Henry says, his voice low and his gaze distant and Coward knows he's conducting the theatre of war in his head. “This situation with the Boers in particular.”
Just there, so close to his own, Henry's heart beats to the drums of conquest. Brutal, beautiful Henry is his lion and Coward will watch the path for him and show him where to tread but he has never met anyone who understands how to gain and wield power as Henry does. Not through schooling, but in his bones.
He shifts on Henry's lap, turns in to face him, knees straddling his waist.
“I want to see what you saw,” he says, tipping Henry's chin up.
He touches his lips, his cheekbones, lays his fingertips on Henry's temples and smiles down at him. There are stories that Henry has told him about Abydos, about the way the air hangs still and shimmers in the sun's last rays there. How he'd watched the dawn rising over the ruins of the once great, slept under the stars and nearly had his throat cut more than once.
He takes Henry's hand and kisses one of the fingers. They ate with their hands there, didn't they? He kisses that finger again and then bites at the pad of his thumb, imagining eating dates from Henry's hand and licking honey from his fingers.
“You will,” Henry says.
“I want your word.”
Henry lifts Coward's left hand and twines both of theirs together. Kisses the same spot that Coward had, the knot of their fingers, his mouth covering the space where Coward would wear a ring if only he could.
“Shall we swear in blood?” he asks.
Coward sucks his lower lip between his teeth and leans in.
“I think something more potent.”
When Henry takes him to bed he wraps the cravat across his eyes and lays him down and his voice is low, like the rumble of a lion or the sound of sandstone grinding against sandstone. He promises to show him Egypt then and draws the curve of the Nile down his chest. Kisses the constellations of the pyramids across his stomach.
-
What he's attempting is difficult enough already, but Coward still wonders if there might be a way to change his dreams. Couldn't a man rewrite his own history? At least in dreams and fantasies. It should be easier than this.
Henry always believed they would be remembered as true patriots because that was the ultimate truth of it but Coward knew words like that needed power behind them to mean anything at all. When the Prime Minister and the House had been bickering over Cromwell's legacy and his Westminster statue, Henry had been dismissive of the whole affair. To his mind, Cromwell deserved no honour because he hadn't gone far enough and in the end his enterprise had failed. Coward merely saw the speed with which England had swept the bones of their commonwealth beneath the rug.
What they achieved would not be forgotten, Henry had told him, and not to worry. That when he visited Egypt he could see how the poets are wrong and that there are no ironic inscriptions on any of Ramesses' fallen statues. Immortality is possible for those with the will to it.
The things that he would change now are not so grand in scope. He would have kissed Henry the first time he laid eyes upon him. If he could misremember his dreams it would be so that not a single moment between them was squandered. But then only a prophet could have foretold a famine like this and he could never have saved enough of Henry's embraces besides. Sometimes in the quiet, constant twilight of the house, the ache of his loneliness swells in him until he cannot catch his breath.
It can't be healed, only endured and his one defense against madness is in remembering that he'll have Henry again soon enough. This faith is how he staunches his screams when the words Henry would murmur to him, sweet things, thinking he was asleep, carry along the sad eddies of the house. He tries not to think of how Henry would toss and turn in the sheets beside him and how he'd wondered if it was worse when Henry was alone, where no one could kiss that little furrow in his brow.
It's been two weeks, watching the moon, lighting the candles, following the Book. It's cold in the cellar, which is a blessing, a blessing but still, two weeks and it was-
But he doesn't like to think about that either. Not about the number of days Henry was alone before he was able to find someone to pay to fetch the body. Oh, Henry was always so fierce and proud and Coward had loved him for that and it was fine too because he made sure Henry never had to know how to say, stay with me.
In the cellar, Henry is covered with a piece of muslin and on the bad days this feels too much like a shroud, but it's a necessary evil Coward won't dwell on. Why, if Henry's only sleeping, waiting for him to say the right words to bring him back to life, why doesn't he want to see? Coward decides that it's his frown. He doesn't want to see that furrow on Henry's brow if he can't wake him yet and the incense he burns is to help him concentrate and nothing more.
He kneels down next to Henry. The air smells strange and his stomach clenches queasily but it's all right, he can't remember the last time he ate outside of his dreams anyway. He's almost certain it's not safe to eat here, not in this unreality, not through this looking glass. Don't they say if you eat fairy food you can never return to the real world? The same things could hold true here.
It's hard to focus though. Coward coughs and opens the Book and the words swim for a moment in front of his eyes. "He was part of my dream, of course -- but then I was part of his dream, too." All wrong, he's gotten the books mixed up again.
He sets it down. He'll go and fetch the real one in a little while, but he's just feeling so very tired and it can't hurt to rest for a moment, can it?
The chalk smudges under his body as he lies down beside Henry. No worry, he'll draw back the lines later, after he finds the Book of course. He might redo the whole configuration just to make sure everything is perfect. Henry would laugh at him for that, his laugh that meant I can see through you and I love you too. Henry would tease him about his fastidiousness and then wear the clothes that Coward picked out for him all the same.
He puts his hand over the sheet, rests it on Henry's chest and he's sure he's not imagining things when he feels a ripple of movement beneath the cloth. Not like a heartbeat, no, like a wave, like something roiling. Life, he thinks, that's what the beginning of life must feel like. The moon is nearly in position after all.
He'll just lay here for a while.
-
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Date: 2010-06-03 05:38 am (UTC)...Ow. My heart hurts very much from this. (Also: very much impressed by the seamless weaving of the story and Through the Looking Glass.)
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Date: 2010-06-03 08:40 am (UTC)Ummm...not about the heart hurty-ness. *Pats your poor heart* I'm stoked the TtLG stuff wasn't intrusive! It's kinda of an oddly structured fic anyway.
Thanks for the lovely comment! I think the angst is all cleared from my system for the time being, heh. :D
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Date: 2010-06-03 08:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-03 08:30 am (UTC)(Honestly, this was just going to be porn you know, but somewhere quite early on I got sidetracked. SHOCKING! fic is weird like that)
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Date: 2010-06-04 12:21 am (UTC)Okay, so I cried here "Henry would be a good father, he thinks."
Here "Kisses the same spot that Coward had, the knot of their fingers, his mouth covering the space where Coward would wear a ring if only he could."
And then the whole ending. This is beautiful and elegant and just... stunning. THIS is how I imagine them together! *mems*
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Date: 2010-06-04 01:14 am (UTC)Ha, this fandom has me doing little fist pumps when people inform me of their broken hearts! Which is really quite strange in the abstract, but then it's what I was going for, so hoorah for that! Hee.
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Date: 2010-06-04 02:01 pm (UTC)Oh, and I adore your characterisation. Young, pretty Coward, letting people believe he's a naive boy. Blackwood not quite fitting in, but not really needing to either. And, most of all, how you have them interact, how in a way they really are equal partners, with different talents that complement each other so perfectly. Especially loved these two parts:
"Henry has no patience for niceties when he's not revelling in the part of the aristocrat, when there's no sport to be had or when the game is more fun played bluntly. By his nature he does not take well to temperance and sometimes Coward has to work hard to stop that bright, bold flame of his from accidentally sabotaging their own plans."
"Just there, so close to his own, Henry's heart beats to the drums of conquest. Brutal, beautiful Henry is his lion and Coward will watch the path for him and show him where to tread but he has never met anyone who understands how to gain and wield power as Henry does. Not through schooling, but in his bones."
And this here is probably one of the most beautiful lines I've ever read in fanfiction: "The room about them is teal blue, their china is eggshell fine and delicate and it's all just so many pastels against their primary colours."
Erm, sorry for this absurdly long rambling comment. I'm too heart-broken to shut up. ;)
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Date: 2010-06-04 03:22 pm (UTC)Welp, I'm positively radiating glee right now. Thanks, Linndechir. (Question, how do you pronounce that? When your username pops up I always think 'Oooh, its lindy! Super!' but maybe I'm mentally pronouncing it wrong.)
My theory on the heartbreaking nature of this ship is all down to Hans. He does so much acting with his eyes and it's painful to watch all that pride/love/adoration falter and break down. It's not a very big role and he really makes the most of it.
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Date: 2010-06-04 03:38 pm (UTC)Just go with "Linn", if you like; it's easier and everyone calls me that anyway. The whole thing is pronounced with that "ch/x"-sound that doesn't exist in English, the one you'd find in the Gaelic word "loch". The username is very, very old, from the time where I thought that my RP characters would be more interesting if they had pretentious sounding names. The character is long gone, but the name somehow stuck with me for all these years. ;)
Well, yes, you are right about that ... but as much as I love to see Hans with tears in his eyes, faltering and breaking down and desperate, I also want to see him smile. Even more so, I want to see Blackwood smile, because it's just radiating, it's like some sort of God smiling down. Erm, fangirling again. I don't know, I just need to see my villains happy. But if their unhappiness is as perfect as this fic, I won't complain. Much. ;)
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Date: 2010-06-05 01:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-05 04:48 pm (UTC)*Ahem* Anyway...thank you! Mmmm, I do like all flavors of Blackwood/Coward. Luckily I don't have to choose which I like better! :D
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Date: 2010-07-04 08:57 pm (UTC)Let me remedy that with excess comment-age.
Ok, first off, I don't know what I said to help inspire this, but yay! I need to say it more often.
Coward smiles because it's such an amateur effort really. Ouch. Ouch ouch ouch. I love the photographic imagery (esp. as a b/w film photographer) and how hard he is trying to convince himself otherwise. Coming back to reread this, this really is where you can see that something has … snapped. Gone awry. Everything is on the slant from here on in.
Henry would read Revelation like poetry, I am now desperate for some of that. Or really, Henry/Mark reading anything aloud. I love the layering and constant referencing of literature in this.
His disconnect, and how hard he's striving for it, maintaining it. It's painful and beautiful and despairing. The image of him sitting on the stairs is just … burned into my brain. I find that I am constantly struck by the words you use, the imagery. Just a little jealous here.
Guh, just rereading is sending me off into incoherence again.
their filthy shop talk about shovels this is where you gave me a little bit of hope. And then you completely dashed it at the end and broke me to pieces. Which makes this even more cruel. Not that I don't love it and love it because of that, but, yeah.
The dinner conversation. The dancing around each other. Their words (so perfectly in tone for them). I love that it stays a meal, interactions with food – that the trappings don't disappear for the conversation.
Ok. I was going to say something about Alice, and other things that I love, but right then I just descended into tears again. I can’t even. Every time I start to recover something else sends me off. he made sure Henry never had to know how to say, stay with me. The ending kills me. Just kills me. Movement. Ung. Can't process.
I think this is one of my top five favorite B/C pieces I've read so far.
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Date: 2010-07-07 12:24 pm (UTC)Mark's voice. Mmmm. After overdosing on his body of work these last few weeks I'm not sure whether I prefer his RP accent or his Estuary one.
And you're not made of fail! You did comment actually! Just not on this post. :P
Also, you're back! Woot! Can I dare hope for more B/C fic from you? Not to nag or anything, ha, but you do it so well. I should also say I hope you had a nice month off and whatever you were sorting out went nicely and you've been enjoying this summer in general too!
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Date: 2010-07-08 01:51 am (UTC)...am terribly jealous of being able to overdose on Mark's work. I am finding it impossible to get a hole of anything of any of my favorite actors lately.
Well, at least I said something! Normally when I don't comment right away it's because I am too overwhelmed to write.
Yeah, the computer is (mostly) functioning, and we're looking at satellite internet, which would be ... idk, life changing? (GEEK)
B/C - *facepalm* So I finished almost nothing while I was gone. I do have a bunch of half finished b/c, and some drabbles. Which will get posted soonish. Unfortunately for B/C, H/W took over because of the kinkmeme fills.