3. You may be a warning of things to come.

[bestsir]

Who: Harry Goodsir and divers hands
What: La'an's postmortem and after
Where: The Milton church
When: After the Darkwalker claims its victim
Warnings: There's an autopsy. Goodsir has some PTSD. Fun for the whole family.

The unheated church basement will do for a mortuary. Someone finds a long table and Goodsir has La'an's poor cold corpse laid out on it, covered with a sheet.

He hasn't performed an autopsy—

(Twenty. I have performed on—)

—here, not yet. The deaths that have occurred so far have presented no mystery, but La'an's is something new and terrifying, and Goodsir feels he must get to the bottom of it.

[ There are a couple of prompts for Goodsir specifically, but feel free to start your own threads. ]

Comments

[bestsir]

Goodsir looks over at him and realises how he scarcely knows this man at all. Apart from his name and rank, a glancing of talk about his reputation amongst the officers and crew—what goes on in Edward Little's mind when he's not at sea? Who is he under the uniform? Goodsir has almost no idea.

"This is the question we must answer for ourselves, then," he says. "Who and what it is we are, when every familiar thing has been stripped from us."

[fidior]

There's a soft exhale at the other man's words. Oh, how they ring true — how they have rung true since his arrival to this place. And perhaps before.

"I... have asked myself that question daily." He might try to smile, even faintly, but in the presence of that shadowed double alongside him, his mouth is too heavy, and sinks further into a frown. There is no reprieve to be found in relating to Goodsir with such a thing; it aches, and he is sure it aches for them both. His voice is slow and sad.

"In truth, these days... I feel as though I am nothing at all."

[bestsir]

"You are not nothing," Goodsir says firmly. "Nothing would be a man without a thing to offer—no intellect, no experience, no heart. I know Miss Marsh cares about you, and she is a girl who values character. Our duty is no longer to the Discovery Service or the Royal Navy or even to our nation—it is to the people here."

[fidior]

The words do catch hold of a certain place in his heart, and Edward dips his head, that heart sinking heavier and heavier within his chest.

"You are right. It is our duty now, but I... I have failed. I have failed the people here. I was meant to keep them all safe, but Lieutenant Noonien-Singh—"

Voicing her name aloud has him giving a soft gasp of ache, and the words fall off immediately. His double leans in closer, and Edward closes his eyes, wounded. This hurts so badly that he doesn't know what he can do with it.

[bestsir]

"There was nothing you could do."

Goodsir moves closer and puts a hand on her shoulder.

"It is a cold comfort, but if there is anything I can say with any confidence—there was nothing you could have done. I don't know how that monster chose its victim, but I do not believe we could have stopped it. You did not fail her. Or we all did."

[fidior]

There was nothing you could do. The words he's grappled with time and time again, torn between paradoxical whispers that he could do nothing more, and that he is unbearably weak for being unable to do more.

Even through the effects of his shadowed twin sitting so close to him, Edward feels surprised by the other man's touch at his shoulder. (And... warmed, he thinks, even if so subtly.) He values Goodsir's words in a very particular way — this man, brave and true. He'd been overlooked so easily during the Expedition, and Little now wonders how.

He swallows again, staring down at the wooden floor of the church.

"What if it happens again? How do we... stop it? Stop our history from repeating?"

He knows the others of them surely must have thought the same — so much of this rings familiar. A beast, untimely deaths... things that can not be reasonably explained.

[bestsir]

"I hope that we are wiser now," Goodsir says after a moment's thought. "We have learnt hard lessons from our arrogance, and we need not make those mistakes again. We know of the most poisonous mind in our own ranks, and we know that we should not presume to understand according to our own lights. We ask questions, we observe, and we stick together. That is all there is."