Archive of Our Own

i. Canon Compliant

There is a man called Aglooka. He does not live with the Inuit.

He follows them to the water in the winter, builds his clumsy igluit alongside theirs and watches like a child to understand how to catch seals. He is bad at it, but he does not go hungry. What he catches he shares, and, much more often, they do the same.

Every year he gets a little stronger, though he has only the one hand, a little quicker, though his eyesight is not what it was. He learns to pull the sealskins taught and thread a needle with shaking fingers. He learns to keep his voice kind and calm when he speaks to children. He learns to be still, and wait for the fish to bite.

In the winter he almost feels like he belongs.

But in the summer when the sky is forever bright he takes a dog and a knife and walks out across the shale. He walks for two days by himself, the dog panting along behind him pulling the skins and whalebones for the tupiq that he pitches in the same spot every year.

Always the same spot.

He is not lonely. But—

Still, he is happy when he hears the dog start to bark in deep sunlight, thinking it will be young Qinalugaq who used to sleep against his side as a boy at the fishing hole, who had grown taller and stronger than him these past years but still calls him Ataatattiaq. Who had promised to bring word after his daughter was born this summer, so that Aglooka might smile and remember that time passes.

He is getting old, Aglooka. His beard is white, his steps are hunched and heavy. But he forgets sometimes when he is out here, how he must look. He feels young again in the summer, standing out on the shale. The landscape knows him. Or knows who he was, at least.

But the dog does not stop barking even though Aglooka strains his failing eyes to the horizon and finds no Qinalugaq. For one moment he thinks he sees—something. A darkness. A man. A bear. Something else. His body tenses.

Nothing comes.

There is just the sound of his own breathing and the dog barking and barking and barking.

And a wind cutting against the ice.

That’s it?

I told you, the vision ends when you notice yourself. It doesn’t work—a man looking into his own eyes.

I understood that. I only meant—what is this? This vision of me alone, handless and still in the North. That is not what I asked for. I didn’t stay there. I came home.

You asked me to show you a life where you’re happier. I never said you’d understand it. I certainly don’t claim to myself. But the spirits show true. Even if it was a devil to translate—you weren’t thinking in English anymore. You’re lucky I could show you even that much.

Inuktitut, it’s called. I haven’t—I haven’t spoken it in years.

I daresay no one would understand you if you tried. Well, you’re paid up for three, and I won’t shortchange you.

How gracious. Christ almighty.

No need for all that, sir. What do you wish to see?

…

Captain Crozier? We haven’t got all night, you know. I have other appointments to attend to. You’re not the only man in London looking for what might have been.

A—a moment! I… was not clear enough before. Perhaps it would have been better if we had simply never gone. Yes. A life where we stayed home. Stayed—stayed safe.

“We?” You are your men?

…Me and my men.

Oh, great spirits—

Jesus Christ, again with this.

Ahem.  Oh, great spirits, we beseech you. We seek a life that never was. Show us—fill this crystal ball with this other world. Let us see what we wish could be.

…

…

Well?

…You aren’t happier in this one.

What?

But it’s what you wanted.

No, wai—

ii. Everybody Lives

Commander Francis Crozier never did make Captain.

Unfit for the Arctic, they’d said in the end. Too drunk to make it that far North still on his feet is what they meant.

He used to spend days and nights wondering about what his life would be like if he had hidden it all just a little better.

Would he have gone on that voyage instead of sweating and shitting in James’s attic rooms? Gone together, maybe, instead of passing three long winters sick with fright only for James to return missing fingers and toes and teeth? Would Sophy have married him if Francis could have brought her Uncle back to her? Would he have a wife and a child and a home instead of this goddamn emptiness? Would anyone at all have lov—

“Uncle Frank,” young Jamie Ross tugs impatiently on his hand, “I want to see the dragons. You said.”

But he doesn’t wonder anymore. Not often, at least.

He isn’t a captain. He isn’t married. He isn’t out at sea. He isn’t much of anything. Except Jamie’s uncle, and a mediocre one at that. Only remembering to make good on these promised outings when the looks James give him swell into a face Francis can’t bear to meet.

“Dinosaurs.” Francis begins walking again. “Not dragons.”

Those looks like James doesn’t even recognize him anymore.

“They look like dragons,” Jamie insists when they finally arrive.

He’s right, they do. Fantastical and strange and beyond anything Francis would really care to imagine. Creatures of teeth and claws. Of fevers and shadows on attic walls.

“They’re not. They’re ancient reptiles, whose bones we’ve found buried along the seashore after many years. They lived here on Earth.”

“So did dragons. Until the knights killed them all.”

“What does that tutor of yours teach you, I wonder.”

Jamie sticks his tongue out at him and Francis thinks of a ship’s discipline, but can only really manage a glare. He pulls at his cravat. Too hot for reproofs and tempers. There’s no breeze today, not a lick. He tries not to think of empty sails, only of the waiting trees around them, and the long shadows cast against the grass.

The park is in its second summer and still far too crowded. Francis is one of some several score of men in top hat and waistcoat clutching the hand of a toddling child or arm in arm with a flushed young woman. All of them spinning about in different directions like a dropped bag of marbles.

Makes him dizzy, this openness. The way they can all turn and look and see him.

It makes him want a drink which he is not supposed to want anymore.

Except he always does.

But he did promise dinosaurs. Or dragons. Whichever. And he wants to be able to look James in the eye again. At least one more time.

It’s when his lips are half turned in a twist at that thought that Francis sees him.

For a moment he can’t quite place the face, it’s instead something familiar in the movement that grabs his attention. His eye tracking a shadow against the snow before it becomes a fox, swift and alive.

James Fitzjames. That’s his name.

Captain James Fitzjames, Francis remembers with a frown. Captain at only thirty-three. No—it was thirty-five, thank Christ. Some years ago that must have been, but Francis still tastes the bitter drip of it in his mouth.  

They had almost gone to the Arctic together. Before Francis—couldn’t. He was never sure what Fitzjames’s excuse had been. Had assumed that six months of darkness could not sustain a man who must be seen at all times. Far better suited to laying about a flagship in the Med where one’s duty is to make nice.

But then of course, none of the men whose names Francis had written down for James with a shaky hand had gone North in the end. He tried not to let this total rejection of his expedition sting, it’s not like he had been much in his right mind when he made the list. But to not even take Jopson, well—and Francis had been in no health at the time to find him a position on another ship either. Hadn’t heard from the lad in years.

Hadn’t heard from much of anyone, really, except for James. And who knows how long that would last.

Men who have nothing to offer are easy to forget.

When was the last time he had seen Fitzjames, even? A party, sure. But Francis—well, he doesn’t go to parties these days, does he. So it must have been years ago.

Well then. He probably wouldn’t recognize Francis anyway. Already a forgotten footnote in an early chapter of the biography, he’s sure.

So Francis lets himself look, confident no one will look back. Nobody does.

Just for a moment. Just to remind himself that time passes, and feel all the hurt that brings.

Fitzjames’s hair is shorter, greyer on the sides. Thinning, hopefully, under his hat. Francis remembers the man distastefully as a bright young thing, so thinks the furrows on the side of his face must be new. Or at least sharper, deeper than they were before. His jaw has lost that ripe cut of youth, settling into something square and stubborn. The heft of middle age has come upon him now, Francis recognizes gleefully, his waistcoat not trim but filled.

Except he wears it well. There is no denying that.

He is—handsome. Francis runs his tongue across his teeth. In truth he’d come to remember Fitzjames as nothing but a cloying toss of hair. But here he is full and sturdy. A sapling grown into a sprawling oak. He is grinning crookedly out in the sunlight, his eyes crinkled and pleased, and Francis thinks it again: they had almost gone to the Arctic together.

He had almost been a captain. Almost married. Almost—

There have been no “almosts” for Fitzjames, clearly. Men like him only do.

Francis’s hands twitch. He tries to remember the feeling of cold. Not the cold of shadows and damp, but that bright, sharp cold. The cold that made him alive.

What would Fitzjames have looked like out there, in six months of sunshine? Would he have smiled at Francis like that from across the ice? Would they have been—friends?

He should turn away. He doesn’t. Cured of the drink, but never of this. Sophy doesn’t write him anymore. No one does.

All the world is in movement around them, but Fitzjames stands still—he is watching something. Someone. Some far figure Francis cannot decide upon. That pretty young lady, was she blushing at her intended from under the poplar tree? Those two young boys sprinting across the grass, were they looking to hurl themselves into a father’s waiting arms?

No, Francis would have heard if he had found the time to get married between trips around the Med. Wouldn’t he? An invite would have been received by James and Anne, surely, with the news coming offhandedly, “that young Captain Fitzjames… married, you know.”

And though there are many nights that blur together in Francis’s mind, he knows that the name Fitzjames would have brought him back exactly here, thinking, we could have gone to the Arctic together.

Thinking he is not a captain. He is not married.

He is an old man greyed and unloved. A forgotten ghost in an attic. Whose hands shake in crowds. Who nearly drank himself to death and retired in disgrace. Whose only friend spends nights frowning into the fire after a voyage he will not speak of, which he should never have taken in the first place.  

He has nothing to offer. Not to a man like Fitzjames. Captain Fitzjames. Tall and handsome and smiling in the sunlight.

Not to anyone.

And the greatest betrayal perhaps is that he is too tired even to hate Fitzjames for it as he might once have. He doesn’t feel much of anything, except the heat and the sting of time passing even now as he stands before the dinosaurs that look like dragons.

So he does turn away then. Blinks at the dark figure suddenly in front of him. Who—?

And then the wind begins to blow.

Too close, Captain Crozier! Far too close.

No, no, it was—I needed to leave. I couldn’t—see him like that.

Like what? He seems to have turned out alright without it at least.

He does. Without me. 

Weren’t you friends with Captain Fitzjames on the voyage? Your voyage. For you did go to the Arctic together in this life. I remember when they brought you home. You had your picture in the paper.

We were—I—he was—It is hard to explain. The bond between a captain and his second is… sacred.

…Right well, you do have one more for the night. You can have whatever you want.

…

Captain Crozier, again I must mark the time.

Is there not—could we not find—

Ask.

A life where we came back together, alive.

Who? You and Captain Fitzjames?

Yes, me and Captain Fitzjames.

 iii. Somebody Lives/Not Everybody Dies

In a house in the woods draped in ramblers, with a door that creaks and windows that stick, live two disgraced navy captains.

It is not a handsome house.

Overgrown and overlooked, more of a cottage really. Untended lately, now that Francis can only make attempts at the garden for so long before his knuckles swell and James forces him to rest.

When they first arrived it was worse. Spirited out of London and society on the heels of their court martial as if death himself still stalked their every step, only to find a house it seemed death himself might call home.  

“Drafty,” James had sniffed, though he was in no real spot to complain, things being what they were. “I worry for you when winter comes.”

“I am not so fragile as all that, you know.” Francis had been years younger then, his hair still holding color his eyesight still fair. “And in any case it will be better than canvas walls and a filthy sack.”

“And yet worse than Ross’s roaring fire.” And James had felt so guilty. Francis worries on quiet days that he still does. 

“James. I have made my choice, hm? And am quite happy in it.”

“If you’re sure.”

He was right, though.

The house is cold in the winter and hot in the summer. It shakes in the wind and shudders under fat drops of rain. Something is always falling down or falling apart; they have thatched and patched every inch of the place, it feels like. They keep no servants, and entertain few guests. The letters stuffing their post box have grown fewer, over time.

Children say the house is haunted. And maybe it is.

This is not the life either thought he would lead, once upon a time. It is barely a life, shelved away and forgotten in this cottage in a field in England. It occurs to them both that had they died in the North, had they let the ice and shale claim their bodies instead, that they would have been remembered as heroes.

There is nothing for either to do about this other than keep living.

They are sitting now in their front room, sharing the settee. The clock on the wall ticks softly. James is reading to Francis who always forgets where he has put his glasses. A shadow passes by the window, and he looks up in anticipation of a crow, a buck, a fox. Some reminder that time still passes. Outside, at least.

But there is a man in the window. His eyes—

Francis sits up with a start as the windows are blown open with a bang.

Right then. That’s all I need.

What? Is that really what you wished to see? The two of you living as ghosts, run out of London to be forgotten in some country hovel?

You don’t see it, do you. I suppose no one else would. 

 Look here, come back tomorrow, Captain Crozier. Ask for what you truly want. A life where you discovered the Passage. Where you were knighted like Sir Ross. Or—wouldn’t you like to speak to your men one last time? To Captain Fitzjames? I can do it. I can feel him in the room, now that I know him. He's here, watching you.

I already told you that I do not need your damn table-knocking. That that’s not why I’m here!

Table…! After everything you’ve seen tonight, do you really believe that’s all it is?

…I…

Half-price, I swear. He wants to speak with you.

Good night, sir.

You’ll be back. They always are.

i. After Death

There is a man called Aglooka. He does not live with the Inuit

He follows them to the water in the winter, but leaves them in the summer. He knows now he is not meant to feel at home here. That he should never have come.

But he does not live alone.

Something lives with him.

“It wasn’t him,” Aglooka speaks into the empty tupiq as the flap closes behind him, “I don’t know—I don’t know what it was. If it was anything.” He is past those first rusty days of disuse, his English sounds more fluent now. Becoming once again the language he was born with. He cannot rid himself of that. “Do you?”

“It felt like you, Francis,” the voice that lives in the tupiq with him says, rounded and deep and without any sound, “but not quite.” There is a carry to the voice always, like a person howling from afar, though it treads softly against Francis’s bones.

In any case, he has gotten used to it by now. After these many years of waiting and listening for it to reach him in the sunlight.

“Hm well. The dog finally stopped barking.”

“Then all is well.” The stones grow warm under Francis’s feet. The air shimmers around him. The voice curls up like a fist in his chest. “Lie down, my love. Lie down with me.”

Francis does.

ii. First Times

The wind blows so strong that Francis reaches out in a panic, grabbing Jamie’s thin shoulders and pulling the boy against his chest.

“Uncle Frank!”

Francis at first thinks this is a protestation at being so close to him, Jamie already squirming and pulling free out of his arms, but when he opens his eyes—when did he close them?—he sees that the wind has blown the hat clear off Jamie’s head, and he is trying to chase it down as it tumbles across the park.

Christ of course he can’t even have a simple, good turn. There can be no gentle breezes in this life, only these angry gusts.

“Go on, grab it, Jamie!” He does not need Ann Ross pursing her lips at her son’s bare head. That was his good outings hat, Francis knows. “Hurry, lad!”

They dodge their way in between the courting couples and strolling families, Jamie knocking his way through lovers’ arms and chains of schoolgirls while Francis frowns apologetically from two steps behind. He nearly runs Jamie down however, when the boy stops short in front of him.

“Jamie, what—?”

“Excuse me.” Suddenly there is a hand holding the hat out to them now. And Francis looks up to see that the hand belongs to none other than Captain Fitzjames. “I believe this must belong to you, sir,” he says and it takes Francis a second to realize that he is in fact bending down to address Jamie Ross. He had been so focused on the hand holding the hat, it’s scarred fingers broken and mended in just the wrong shape. How strange. Not the sort of injury a captain receives in peacetimes.

“Thank you,” Jamie says, cramming the thing back on his head in relief. “My mother would have been very cross.”

“I’m sure, at losing such a fine hat. You’ll have to introduce me to your haberdasher.”

“What?”

Fitzjames smiles in the way of one used to explaining things to young boys. To midshipmen. To lieutenants. “A seller of fine things.”

Jesus but Francis cannot stop staring. He is so close now. It is a violent meeting of two separate lives, like tectonic plates crashing into each other. Though Fitzjames’ tone is gentle.

“Uncle James,” comes a voice, and a shy face which looks nothing like Fitzjames’s own peeks out from around his legs. “You said you’d ask if he’ll go play?”

“Ask him yourself, Will.”

“Is that a sword?” Jamie asks instead, pointing at a long stick in the boy’s hand.

“For the dragons.” Which is really all it takes for the boys to start chattering away. Things are very easy for children, aren’t they.

But this leaves Francis stuck. Christ he has certainly never meant to get this close to his own failures if he can help it. He tries to hide his face in his collar, and hopes that he will be able to grunt an excuse in a moment, find somewhere shaded to wait for Jamie from afar. He shifts his body, prepares to move.

“Do you remember me, Commander Crozier?” Fitzjames asks this without even turning to address him.

Really nothing in this life can be easy, not even suffering.

“Captain Fitzjames,” Francis says in acknowledgment, feeling his own cheeks heat up at being so addressed. Few people know to call him much of anything, let alone by rank. “Yes, we al—” the words he has thought to himself so many times today fail him. What does Fitzjames care for a voyage that never happened? “Yes, I do.”

“I see.”

Fitzjames does look at him then, a quick defensive snap of the eyes, like he is daring Francis to speak only so that he may shout back. Yes, Francis remembers this. The armor the man would drape himself in. The constant parries to anything Francis might say. Exhausting. Would they have even survived each other, out there?

“How have you been?” he asks when the silence has gone on for too long. ‘It should have been me’ likely not a sentiment to do him any favors. “Still have you out in the Med?”

Fitzjames blinks.

“The…?” He shakes his head, shakes his whole body, really. “You haven’t—you mean you haven’t heard.”

Francis can’t help a roll of the eyes. He remembers this too, the idea that one and all should be tracking the accomplishments of James Fitzjames. “I am afraid I am not much in with Admiralty gossip these days, no longer being their humble servant. If you have a new post, I wouldn’t know anything about it. Are you being sent out to deal with that trouble with the Russians, then?”

“No, I—” Fitzjames shakes his head, steps closer. “I’m afraid I’m not anywhere but London these days. I don’t—I am not in the navy anymore either.” Another step closer and Francis clocks the slight drag of his foot. A limp. “I thought you might have heard. Everyone else has.”

“Were you injured?” The hand is now resting in Fitzjames’s pocket, so he can’t look at it again, decipher it. But even trips to the Med can cross the wrong people, he supposes. Though that should’ve landed the man with some comfortable desk job. Glory to be found in its own way if you know the right people.

Fitzjames smiles. He is missing an eyetooth. “Yes, but nothing quite so noble or good as whatever you’re thinking, I’m sure. The Admiralty doesn’t want a man like me around.”

Ah. A scandal, then. Doesn't explain the injuries but—well there's time for that, isn't there. To know him.

For Fitzjames says the words as a challenge Francis is sure, but he accepts it as an invitation. For the first time that day—for the first time ever, perhaps—Francis let’s himself look at Fitzjames. That is, Fitzjames the man before him, not the memory and not the cloud of theories. There are worry lines by his eyes, and a stiffness in his stance. Tension all along his shoulders and down his neck. His smile is not so easy, it is a bitter little thing. Probably much like Francis’s own.

But he is somehow more familiar now. And still very handsome. It is Francis who takes a step closer.

“Well, that’s alright then,” he says for want of anything else really. He will ask James later about it all, but in the moment he finds he doesn’t care much what has brought them both here to the park on this day. It has happened. “That’s alright. I don’t—Christ, who could I be to judge?”

“Perhaps the perfect man for the job. You never did like me.” There, that flick of the head. Tossing hair that no longer exists. Francis recognizes that.

“No, I—well.” He never did like lying either, had never been any good at it. “I did not like many people,” he offers instead.

Fitzjames lets out a barking sort of laugh. “Very good, Francis.” The use of his name is sudden, grasping, but not unpleasant. Quite the opposite. “I always did appreciate your sense of humor.”

“Well that I know is a lie.”

The smile is a little less bitter now.

They watch in silence as the boys run about, Jamie having found his own stick to fight off the still, unmoving beasts before them. Dragon or dinosaur it doesn’t seem to matter to them in the end.

“Do you remember,” Fitzjames takes a quick breath, “do you remember that we almost went to the Arctic together?”

“I do,” Francis says. What did that cold feel like? He wants to remember, thinks of that image in his head again, of Fitzjames smiling at him from across the ice. The eyetooth is still missing in his mind to match the man before him. But he finds the empty space charming. “I think—I like to think that we might have been friends, you and I. And perhaps both of us—still sailing. Even now.”

“I’m afraid I’m in a short supply of friends these days.”

“As am I.”

Fitzjames’ eye shifts back to him. Francis can feel the flush spread across his face as it tracks him up and now. Perhaps he might know something of why Fitzjames is no longer a captain.

“Your son seems to be getting along with Will, at least.”

There is a tone to the question. A reedy thread of a different thought. Francis knows just the one. And he knows his answer.

“Oh—he’s not—he’s Ross’s. I’m… well, he calls me Uncle. I don’t—I have no one.”

His feet are hot on the ground. Like the very earth is moving and shuddering beneath him. Tectonic plates crashing and forming new land. Mountains where there once were oceans.

Fitzjames tilts his head, just so. “Well then, why don’t we leave them be for a moment, get out of this sun. Walk with me, Francis. C’mon.”

Francis does.

iii. Happy Endings

“Good Christ!” James has dropped the book in shock. “Wind on the beam today I suppose.”

Francis watches, mute, as he stands and goes to shut the window. It’s empty. No shape of man. No face peering in. Did he ever see a face? He is not wearing his glasses. Where are his glasses?

“Are you alright, my love?” James asks once he has rejoined him on the sofa. The hand pressing against Francis’s forehead is rote but no less tender for it. “I thought you said you were feeling better today.”

The fact that Francis no longer swats the hand away is learned. And only on good days. He presses into the touch. “I thought I saw someone. Outside.”

He knows he gets confused lately. Forgets where he is and what he’s seen. Panics. Like last week when he broke one of the cups from James’s tea set. Rosey shards all over the ground and James standing there silent. So he knows it is a kindness when James says, “Maybe another young sailor come to ask advice about going North.” James settles back in, though he keeps a hand on Francis’s knee. Pressing him down.

Those men have not sought them out in some years. Eventually word spreads that you’ll only be told to bugger off.

“Maybe,” Francis allows as a kindness himself, and places his hand over James’s. “Read a bit more, won’t you? While the light is still good.” He can’t always focus on the words, but the sound of James’s voice keeps him calm. Even on days where he sees ghosts outside their window.

“Alright then,” James picks the book back up, “but don’t sit so far away this time. Stay by me, keep me warm, hm? I told you this damn house was drafty.”

“That you did. I remember, I remember.”

Francis does.

iv. Ambiguous Ending

Francis leaves the man’s house through the back door, and hates himself the whole walk home.

It is winter, he forgot his scarf and his coat is pulled around his ears. His breath wavers before him, a ghost milky and full. Christ, he is such a fool. Goddamn Christ. He knew he should never have gone. 

Wouldn’t he like to speak to Captain Fitzjames? Jesus. Sure, only to be talking to the man’s own knuckles rapping against his chair. And paying for the privilege, half-price indeed. He scowls at the way his terrible heart leapt anyway, just for a moment. Serves him right doesn’t it, starting this foolishness. And what even was that? Some stupor he was placed in? Could he have been drugged, maybe, and led into his own memories?

But by the time he steps through his own door, the wind beginning to howl outside, he thinks only of James’s face. Older. Fuller. In movement. Eyes crinkling or lips moving with the words on a page.

Alive.

Sometimes at night when he is alone and eveyrthing is so very dark he tries to picture that face and he just... can't. Slips through his fingers like snow melt.

Perhaps, he thinks as he hangs up his hat, lights the lamp and ignores the cobwebs in the corner, it would not be such a bad thing to go back. The man says everyone does. Should he be so very different? Does it matter if it’s not real? Oh, he’s read all the tricks. Mirrors and whistles and accomplices hidden in the next room. But there are worse ways to disappear into his own mind. He knows.

And James would be... well, Francis could see him. Some version of him. Some memory of him, maybe. And that would be—

There is a knock at the door.

Francis stops. Did the knock come from the door? From the table? Or from somewhere else. His own bones. It is late. He is alone. Outside is biting cold and the wind—

The knock comes again. Louder. Not a sound. An echoing right through the middle of him.

“Francis? Francis, it’s me." 

There are choices to be made in this life, Francis knows. He's seen them. Again he asks himself, does it matter if any of it is real? If this is a memory or a vision or a ghost?

"Won’t you let me in? It’s very cold. I've come a very long way."

Francis does.