RL’s been kicking my butt lately, with the election and some other things going on, but here it is – Chapter 10! Hope you like it. As always, the fic is on Ao3 in its entirety so far, and I could really use the sweet sweet validation of comments/kudos/likes/reblogs right about now, if you’re so inclined!
In Which Silver Gets a Nasty Shock, and Miranda Kicks Ass (With Intent to Take Names)
To the Upper Air: Chapter 10: The Mirror Cracked
The following morning:
His head was going to split apart.
It was the only explanation James could think of for the blinding, throbbing pain that started somewhere at the back of his skull and radiated out, testament to the night he had had. He was still alive – that much was not in question, but the how and the why of it escaped him for the moment, lost in the thumping of his pulse and the faint ringing in his ears. The last time his head had hurt this badly –
He had woken up eleven years in his own past. He opened his eyes, suddenly alarmed, his gaze taking in the relatively small room that he now found himself in. He did not recognize it. The light spilling in from the single window told him it was no longer evening, but he did not know what time it was, or what day, or what year. What if -?
“Easy,” a voice said to his right, and he could feel and hear his heart begin to beat faster, recognition washing over him. He rolled over and sat up in one motion, panic beginning to twist his stomach into knots – and felt his hair brush past his neck. Like ice water being dumped over his head, it stopped the panic in its tracks, giving him something else to focus on. He took a deep breath, the panic suddenly ebbing away, his heart slowly returning to its usual rhythm. Flint did not have long hair – did not, in fact, have any hair at all. James did. He had not gone forward in time, then, thank God. Still – something was out of place. He knew that voice, and it did not belong here – or perhaps he did not.
“Silver,” he croaked, and the man in question stepped forward into his line of vision.
“The one and I sincerely hope only,” Silver said with a grin, and James blinked, his mind refusing to reconcile what he saw in front of him with what he had somehow expected.
“Silver?” The other man raised an eyebrow.
“Ye-es. We just discussed this. You do remember that?”
“Of course I do,” James spat. “I -” He shook his head, still looking at Silver, who crossed his arms.
“You’re staring. Is something amiss?” asked the curly-haired, two-legged, painfully young man in front of him.
“You’re – younger,” he managed to spit out stupidly, and Silver grinned.
“I know,” he answered cheerily. “ Oh don’t give me that look. You’ve no stones to throw. God – look at you!”
James grimaced. He could imagine only too well what he looked like at the moment, for all that Silver had not spoken out of derision. He ran a hand over his hair, and felt the dry, stiff places where it was covered in blood or dirt. His coat was little better, he knew, and he could only imagine the state of the rest of him. None of that mattered, however, in the face of a more pressing question.
“Where am I?” he asked roughly, and Silver frowned.
“You don’t remember?” he asked, and James shook his head.
“Would I be asking if I did?”
Silver gave him a look.
“Still your old charming self, I see,” he answered sourly. “You know, I had high hopes. Here I was, thinking that coming back here might sweeten your disposition – make you a touch less cantankerous, but it appears-”
“Silver – don’t make me ask again. Where are we?” James asked, and Silver rolled his eyes.
“We’re perfectly safe,” he answered. “When I found you in that alley last night and saved your hide – you’re welcome, by the way – I brought you back to my room. It’s nothing as fancy as where you’ve evidently been staying, but it’s a damn sight better than staying with the corpse of the poor bastard that attacked you. You’re lucky -”
“How the devil do you know where I’m staying?” Silver rolled his eyes again, and James just barely bit back the urge to strangle him. It was truly amazing just how annoying the man could manage to be in the space of five minutes.
“Such language, and from an officer in her Majesty’s Navy, too,” Silver said, the same shit-eating grin plastered on his face. “You know, I knew you were Navy, but it’s one thing knowing it and another altogether seeing it. I thought you said you were a lieutenant?”
“Promoted recently,” James grunted. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Here as in this building, or here, more than a decade in our mutual past? Because while I know the answer to one, the other is as much a mystery to me as I suspect it is to you.”
James shot him a look, and Silver grinned.
“Here in London,” James clarified. “Apparently tailing me, unless by some coincidence you just happened to be in the area last night.”
“I wasn’t following you,” Silver answered, and James raised an eyebrow. “Well – not exactly, anyway, although I will confess I was looking.”
“Why?” The question came out almost before James knew what his mouth was doing. Silver considered the question for a moment, his expression turned thoughtful.
“I’m not sure myself,” he answered finally. “I suppose, all things being equal, life was a lot more exciting with you around, and besides, I thought that if there were one other man on the face of the Earth unlucky enough to end up stranded over a decade in the past, it would be you.”
“You came looking for me because you were bored?”
“Something like that – yes,” the other man admitted, and James sat for a moment, frowning, unsure what to do with that information.
“You’re – what the fuck is the matter with you?” he asked rhetorically.
“Nothing, for once,” Silver answered, a satisfied smile working its way across his face. “And I intend to stay that way, so whatever you decide to do next, let’s not make it anything that’s likely to get either of us killed or maimed, just as a suggestion.”
“Wait – we? Us?”
“Unless you’d like to try and get off that floor and track down whoever tried to have you killed on your own.”
He had a point, James was forced to concede. His head was throbbing, various parts of him hurt almost as badly, and he was far from clean enough to walk the streets without occasioning comment or even to hire a coach. From the sunlight bathing the room and highlighting the stark, white walls, he could guess that it was likely still morning, but of what day?
“Shit.” He put a hand to his head. “What’s the date?”
John’s eyebrow raised further.
“It’s Wednesday,” he answered. “You were out for a few hours. I’d have worried, but they hit the hardest part of you.”
James swore again, and tried to think through the raging headache. He had not been out for all that long, but someone had clearly ordered the beating and perhaps worse than that. And as he had no particular enemies at this time that he was aware of –
“Thomas and Miranda,” he murmured, trying to stand. He wobbled on his feet, and Silver raised a hand, placing it on his arm and pushing him back down onto the mattress.
“You’re going nowhere just yet,” he said. “You think the thugs were sent by someone else?”
“Yes,” James answered in lieu of nodding. “I need to get back to them – they’re in danger. I -”
He tried to stand again, and this time the dizziness that hit him forced him to sit again. Silver grimaced.
“You’re still groggy from the blow,” he opined.
“You don’t say?” James snarked, and Silver grinned.
“I do say. Tell you what, Captain. Why don’t I do a quick check on the Hamiltons while you stay here? I’ll let them know you’re safe, make sure that they’re warned, and come back here for you.”
“Head wound,” James gritted out. “Shouldn’t be left alone.”
“You’re going nowhere like that,” Silver answered. “And if what you say is true, then there might be a lot riding on warning them. We should -”
“I’m coming with you,” James gritted out. He placed one hand on the mattress, the other going to the bed post, and he pulled and pushed himself to his feet, closing his eyes against the vertigo. He opened them again a moment later and took a deep breath. He was up. He had had worse than this, and he was going to Thomas and Miranda. Nothing else was a possibility. He took a step and then another, and Silver shook his head.
“You’re going to fall over,” he predicted. “Trust me. As someone who used to do so all the time -”
James took another step, stubbornly ignoring him – and felt the moment that his stomach ceased to heed his instructions, seesawing up and down, sending a wave of nausea rolling over him. He stopped moving altogether, surprised by the force of it, and closed his eyes. The nausea receded after a moment and he swallowed hard. Silver sighed.
“Are you going to listen to me this time, or are we going to continue having this discussion all the way to Albemarle Street?”
James opened his eyes again, glaring at Silver, and regretting it a moment later as the nausea returned full-force. He swallowed again, unable to retort, and took a deep breath.
“You may have a point,” he admitted grudgingly, and Silver snorted.
“You don’t say?” he echoed James, and then flashed him another shit-eating grin at the look on James’ face. “You invited that,” he informed James, who continued to glare at him.
“What the fu-” He stopped, and took a deep breath. No. The mere fact of Silver’s presence was not an excuse to slip back into habits he’d sworn he was going to break. “What happened last night?” he asked.
“Do you mean just how badly wrecked are you under that uniform, or -?” Silver asked.
“The men I was fighting,” James asked. He was sitting down again, now, and the pounding headache had at least begun, slowly, to ebb away. He had evidently taken one hell of a hit, although he did not truly remember it. “Did they survive the encounter?” He was dreading the answer, he realized, and had to swallow once again against the nausea that rose in him now that had nothing to do with the head trauma. He had forgotten himself again the night before – had felt the moment that James McGraw had given way to the monster that still lived inside him, and the memory of it sickened him. Jesus bloody Christ, what had he done?
“James?”
He blinked, and realized that he had missed Silver’s answer entirely, wrapped up in his own guilt and disgust at himself. He winced, and shot an apologetic look Silver’s way.
“Pardon,” he offered. “Repeat that, please.” Silver blinked, and then frowned, confusion sweeping across his face.
“I said, they should all have survived, excepting of course the bastard I killed that gave you that head wound. Did you just apologize? To me?”
He ignored Silver’s question entirely, focusing instead on the words that came before it.
“They lived?”
“That’s what I just said,” Silver pointed out warily. “Flint -”
“That’s not my name,” James interjected. He inhaled, suddenly able to breathe again. He had not killed them. The wolf had been loosed, and yet the only casualty last night had fallen not to his blade but to Silver. He exhaled shakily, and pushed a hand through his hair, ignoring the feeling of dried blood at the back of it. He had not given in entirely, then. Still – it had been close. Too goddamned close for him to feel anything other than frustration and a nagging, gnawing sense of guilt and worry and utter disgust eating through him. He had sworn to put Captain Flint to rest, and yet two hits and worry over Thomas and Miranda had turned his resolution to ash. What was it he had told Silver? That darkness usually tried to present itself as necessity? He’d said it, but clearly he had not actually listened to his own advice. The thought sent a fresh wave of anger crashing through him, and he clenched one hand and closed his eyes, trying to get hold of it before it could build once more. He could do better than this. Thomas deserved to have him do better than this. He –
There were eyes on him. He turned and found Silver watching him, his bright, blue eyes riveted on James’ face.
“What the hell are you staring at?” he snapped, disconcerted and somewhat embarrassed to realize that he had an audience to his moment of self-reflection and reproach.
“You,” Silver said baldly. “Christ. No wonder you grew the beard. Are you aware -”
“If Thomas and Miranda come to harm because you elected to stay and stare at my face instead of going to warn them -” James started, attempting to rise, and Silver reached out and, without ceremony, laid his hand on James’ shoulder, pushing him back down.
“Alright.” He shook his head. “Christ, I’d forgotten how fucking single-minded you are. I’m going. Try not to -”
James frowned.
“Wait. You forgot?” He gave Silver a look that was halfway between confusion and surprise. “How could you forget? We last spoke a little over a month ago.”
Silver stopped, turning back to look at him, and James felt his stomach sink into his boots at the look on the younger man’s face – surprise, followed by realization, and then chagrin.
“Fuck,” he said succinctly, and James frowned.
“What-?” he asked, and Silver closed his eyes.
“God fucking damn it,” he muttered. “Of course. Of course you wouldn’t -” He opened his eyes, head tilting toward the ceiling, and he gave a mirthless laugh. “Of course,” he repeated. He turned back to James.
“How much do you remember?” he asked, and James frowned harder.
“How much of what?”
Silver scowled.
“What year was it, when you presumably fucked off and came back here?” he asked, and James frowned.
“1716,” he answered. “Just before -”
Silver’s face contorted oddly just for a moment and then the younger man turned away, running a hand over his face, his shoulders suddenly tense.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” he swore. “So you don’t -”
He turned back, and James started to rise, started to cross the distance between them, forgetting momentarily his aching, pounding head and the various aches and pains littering his body.
“Silver – what the hell -?”
Silver shook his head.
“It’s -” He took a deep breath. “It’s a long story. One we don’t have time for. I’ll go and check on the Hamiltons. You stay here and -” He gestured. “I don’t know. Read or something. Meditate. Whatever you do now that you’re -” He gestured again, his hand waving up and down James’ body as if to indicate his general state of being. “Jesus,” he muttered. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours.” He turned, and James started to rise.
“Wait -” He started, and then sat back down with a hiss. When he opened his eyes again, Silver had left the room, leaving only silence in his wake. “Damn it,” James muttered, massaging his aching head. What in the hell had he missed?
***************************************************************
“Flint’s dead,” they told him.
John did not remember the next few days – lost in a haze of drink and grief and Madi’s voice, comforting but distant. When he’d come back to himself, he’d had a new tattoo, a parrot, and a burning hatred for Billy that he could not quench.
“Flint’s dead,” they’d said. Eaten up at last by guilt and grief and the booze he’d been turning to more and more often when last he and John had seen each other, and John had never doubted the story. He’d known – of course he had, and yet he’d raged and wept and made a damn fool of himself, closing the tavern early and losing the day’s business. And when he’d gone to sleep that night –
The street he stood in smelled like piss and beer. It was a sadly familiar scent – one that John had not missed, and yet it was a great deal more grounding than he had ever expected, pulling him slowly back from the edge of shock, pushing his mind into working order once more.
Until now, he’d wondered if he was dreaming.
He’d suspected, of course, that he was not. The sheer overwhelming presence of London had weighed against the notion, and yet there had been some lingering doubt – a sort of feeling that his dreaming mind might have taken him to a place where he had been happier. Younger. And then when he had heard mention of Thomas Hamilton – when he had started this quest – well, it was only natural, wasn’t it, after hearing of the man’s death, to dream about the friend he’d failed? This, though – this was no dream. He could not have dreamed this, because –
Because he had been expecting Flint.
The thought was a silly one – akin to a child’s wailing when they discovered for the first time that the world was not a fair place or a kind one, and yet it was what passed through John’s mind over and over again, bringing with it a spike of both shock and bewilderment. When he had first begun looking for his friend, he had been looking for Flint, not McGraw. Flint, who was brilliant and violent and wounded and fascinating. Flint, who had captured John’s attention from the first time he had watched him outmaneuver Singleton and ensnare the crew with the aid of a bloodstained piece of paper. Flint, whom he had fought beside, bled for – and who fucking remembered more than a year of their friendship.
He was passing by a carpenter’s shop, and he kicked disconsolately at a piece of wood as he passed by, sending it careening back toward the shop from whence it had come. It served him right – of course it did. He had assumed a great many things when he had started out this quest to find his friend. He had assumed, for starters, that the man he found would be the man he remembered – the man he had vowed, twenty years earlier by his own reckoning, to save from himself if possible. Thus far he had needed saving, alright, but not of the kind that John had anticipated. Far from it, if what he had seen of Fli – of James so far was indicative of his general state of being. The man he had seen this morning –
He sat down, the stone of the low wall he had been passing digging into his arse unheeded, and he passed a hand over his face, his mission temporarily forgotten. The man he had spoken to in that room this morning was Flint, and yet he was not. John was having difficulty processing the difference, and yet it was there, right in front of him, staring out of green eyes that were somehow less angry, less weary, less haunted than he had ever seen them. It was in the apology the man had offered him for not paying attention, in the fact that he’d said the word fuck all of once since he’d woken, in the odd, clipped sound of some of his words, reverted back to an accent that John had only ever heard him use when issuing orders aboard the ship. It was a remnant, he now realized, of the man’s past in the Navy, a hanger-on that he had not previously even wondered if Flint might have missed, so used had he been to the rougher, broader accent Flint had used when John had known him. Most jarringly unfamiliar, though, was the fact that four men had attacked James Flint last night and three of them had survived to tell the tale. And the fear in James’ voice when he’d asked what had happened to those same men –
It was almost as startling as the lack of lines on his face – the smooth brow, the furrows that had only just started to form around his mouth – the disconcerting youth of the man that Silver only remembered as an experienced sailor with the weight of the world on his shoulders, aged before his time by grief. Christ, he was young. James had said it about John, but he himself marvelled at the corresponding revelation. The man who had been Flint was, in fact, no older than Silver had been when they had first met – in fact, John would have lain coin on him being a few years younger still. Which meant that in ten years’ time –
In ten years’ time, the man that John had just met would be perhaps forty-three, fully fourteen years younger than John had been when he had gone to sleep to wake in a time he barely recalled, with a leg he barely remembered how to walk on, and a thousand – no, two thousand questions running through his head, facing a friend he felt he had forgotten more about than he had ever known. Christ – how in the hell was he meant to relate to the man now, with so much between them that James plainly did not remember? Furthermore, how could he possibly keep this version of James out of trouble when he did not understand the thoughts running through his head?
All of it, he suddenly thought with something strongly resembling irritation, had begun with Thomas bloody Hamilton. It was he that had started this entire chain of events – his loss that had given rise to Captain Flint, and his influence, apparently, that had turned everything John knew about his friend on its head, and since the man was apparently the center of the entire puzzle, he could fucking well explain what the hell was going on, both with James and in general. John stood up, mind made up, scanning the street for a hackney. Thomas Hamilton was about to answer a few questions, including who the hell he was, what he looked like, and what the fuck was so fascinating about him that his mere presence was enough to do this – to take the man John had known and turn him into this person he barely recognized, in body or mind.
“Albemarle Street,” he instructed the driver as he climbed into the hackney. “The crest with two ships and threes stars quartered.”
****************************************
The road to Windsor, twenty miles outside London:
“‘Ey – settle down back there!”
The thumping he had heard moments before quietened. The carriage continued to bump along the road, and the man driving it settled back into his seat.
“Damn noble pain in the arse,” he muttered. He transferred the reins to one hand, using the other to pull his cloak closer about him, cursing the rain under his breath as more of it came pelting down, making the trip more miserable than it had been to start with. They were heading into summer, and the roads certainly showed it, he thought irritably, lifting the reins and bringing them down sharply in an effort to get the horses to move a trifle faster through the thick, heavy mud. They would never reach Windsor before dusk at this pace.
There was a sound of a door opening, and he turned, looking downward, to find his partner, the hood of his cloak pulled over his head and his hands wrapped in cloth, swinging his way into the driver’s seat.
“What the bloody ‘ell d’you think you’re doing?” he asked, surprised. “You’re supposed to be staying in the carriage with her Ladyship, aren’t you? You should -”
“You,” said a distinctly female voice from under the hood, “should rest your horses.” A pistol clicked, and he froze, feeling the barrel dig into his ribs. Miranda Hamilton pushed the hood off of her head, and smiled, her dark eyes fixed on him, bearing an uncanny resemblance to a fox that had just cornered its quarry. “Now,” she said, deceptively pleasantly for a woman who was currently threatening to kill him, “perhaps you would care to tell me where we’re headed. Your friend wasn’t very talkative.”
Meg's Mumbles 