1. I've heard teeth can explode in air this cold. Imagine.

[bestsir]

Who: Harry Goodsir and divers hands.
What: Continuations from Harry's TMD threads, plus open to anyone else who wants in.
Where: All around.
When: In the days leading up to September's event.

Harry has found a house. It's much like the others, but what catches his attention is that it appears to have been owned by a person—a woman, he concludes from the clothing and other belongings left behind—with an interest in natural history. There's a bookcase in the front room with a variety of scientific and medical texts—nothing scholarly per se, but popular studies accessible to lay readers. He cannot find any other trace of the former inhabitant—no body—and so after wrestling with his conscience for a bit, he eventually gathers up what seems most personal and puts it all in a storage closet. Just in case.

He'll open the door to anyone who stops by.

Otherwise, he is out and about, making himself useful where he can.

Comments

Goodsir & Hickey

[bestsir]

[ Continued from here. ]

The arrogance of the man. Goodsir almost can't believe it.

"I've seen you too, Mr. Hickey," he says, with the faintest emphasis on seen. "I grant you your industry, your ambition, your cunning. Would that you'd have turned it to something good."

Re: Goodsir & Hickey

[friendsfordinner]

Something good. Hickey can't help but roll his eyes at that. Good like what? Like the glory of the empire or whatever nonsense Goodsir was thinking of? For the betterment of all men?

Nah. They were fucked from the start. The only good he'd turn himself to is keeping himself alive, nothing more.

"Industry, ambition, cunning? Those are words that describe you as much as me, Goodsir."

[bestsir]

He can't deny that.

"And I'm no more sorry for what I've done with it than you are, Mr. Hickey."

Which is a lie. Not that he's going to let that show on his face.

[friendsfordinner]

It doesn't look like he's lying. And yet.

"You know, you've damned more than just me. Crozier. Hodgson. Diggle. Hell, only Stanley and that bear are beating you out for blood on your hands due to that act."

He gives Goodsir a small shrug. "It's impressive, in a way. How you're willing to kill a dozen men and you feel no remorse."

[bestsir]

That stings, stabbing right at the heart of Goodsir's lie. But—

"We were all walking dead mean nonetheless," he says. "If I hastened matters, it is a mercy. Though I think Crozier may be all right in the end. And who knows—perhaps you are right and I am wrong, and that bear will embrace you. One way or the other, we shall all leave our bones there."

Goodsir & Kate

[bestsir]

[ Continued from here. ]

"It's rather more that he didn't follow the rest of us into the sciences," he says. "My father and grandfather were doctors, and my brothers and I all studied medicine, anatomy, and natural history. Even my sister studied botany. Joseph was rather the odd man out."

[castitas]

"You're a scientist?" Briefly, she thinks of Warren. That boy practically lives in the Science Lab, and the thought makes her smile a little with fondness. Warren's nice, and a total cutie-pie.

"I like science, in school. It... isn't my favourite, but I like learning." she tilts her head in consideration. "I like photography. And I'd like to write and illustrate children's books."

She smiles again, but it soon falls short. It.. doesn't feel right, thinking about the future. Not when she was where she was before she came here. Coming here is... jarring, as if it's shaken her from everything. It still lingers, though.

[bestsir]

"I imagine you'd get on with my sister," he says. "She's a fine illustrator herself—her studies of plants are quite wonderful. Our mother taught all of us to draw—I flatter myself that I've got some facility. It allows me to illustrate my own papers, in any case. But you are interested in photography?" He brightens. In his time, that's a shiny new science. "I have had some practice with taking daguerreotypes, myself."

[castitas]

"That's pretty cool." She smiles, nodding. To both his sister's skill, and his own. "Drawing things realistically's pretty difficult to do. It's pretty amazing that people can actually do that."

The word 'daguerreotypes' piques her interest, her eyebrows raising. Oh, wait. That's... that's really familiar. They were talking about this in class the other day. Her brow furrows slightly.

"Louis Daguerre." She can still hear Victoria's voice as she utters the name. But... something doesn't quite add up. He's practicing with daguerreotypes...? How? Isn't it not a practice anymore? "I thought... well, I thought daguerreotypes had died out by the 1860's. That's what my textbooks says."

She is... super confused, right now.

[bestsir]

... Oh.

For a moment Goodsir feels slightly dizzy, as might be expected when discovering that one is talking to someone who is apparently from the future.

"It was the year 1848 before I came here," he says slowly. "What ... what is the year that you come from?"

Goodsir & Little

[bestsir]

[ Continued from here. ]

"He only took me for what I could do for him and his men," he says. He looks down at his hands, thinking of what Hickey forced him to do with those hands. "I'd not have gone willingly. But here, he has no need of any of it. And I doubt that he would know remorse if the embodiment of it appeared before him and struck him in the face."

[fidior]

"They needed a doctor," Little nods as though in understanding. It makes a practical sense that they would take poor Goodsir, to utilise him for his knowledge. The men have all been in such bad sorts, and god, after witnessing what happened to Morfin.... to Fitzjames.... a certain fear has bred within Little, as well. A fear to lose himself. To rot away, to come to the point where one is longing for death. Pleading for it.

Though to take a man against his will... To think that this has happened, that they would behave like animals. Mutiny, kidnap...

"Damn him... that beast. None of it was in your control," he utters quietly, hoping to reassure, seeing the way Goodsir looks downwards to his hands. He knows how it is to feel... forced, though Edward barely knows the scope of just what horrors it is Goodsir was forced into.

[bestsir]

They needed an anatomist, Goodsir almost corrects Little.

"Captain Crozier said nearly the same thing to me," he says with a thin little smile. "Called me 'clean', though my hand was forced."

As he speaks Crozier's name, a tiny spike of anger flares up again, and before he can stop himself, he says, bitterly, "He was waiting for you. 'He'll be here by day's end', he said. Imagining you'd be coming over the ridge with a dozen armed men."

[fidior]

There is a moment, and perhaps after all of this time it is a pathetic aspect of himself — but there is a moment where a flutter of pride swells quietly within Edward's chest. Soft and tired, and with an ache underlying everything, but to hear that Crozier said something similar, that his own thoughts have been aligned with his captain's, gives him a quiet, small joy.

The moment is short-lived, because of course, if ever Crozier would take pride in his loyal first lieutenant, none of it holds true now. Not after what he has done. Little stares, feeling as though he has been struck by those words, the breath taken out of him. Somehow everything feels numb as much as it hurts, a paradoxical state. He can not speak for several long moments in the face of this man, one of whom he'd abandoned.

Then, an exhale of shuddering breath.

"I— tried. Le Vesconte, the rest of the men, would not.... agree."

Shame pools into his stomach, thick as tar. Edward gasps softly, lashes fluttering, as the horror of it sinks its teeth into him, again and again.

"They wanted to keep moving. They—they cast a vote on it."

[bestsir]

That tiny flame of anger only gets stoked by Little's explanation. Part of Goodsir wants to go easy on him, but a harder, colder part, the part that was winning at the end, stares with judgement.

"A vote. Had Captain Fitzjames lived, Le Vesconte would have never entertained such a thought for a moment." He closes his eyes for a moment, seeing again Fitzjames's despoiled corpse, Hickey's face as he pulled on those fine leather boots. He looks directly at Little. "Perhaps I've misunderstood the chain of command? With Fitzjames dead, you were Crozier's second, were you not? And that is what you did with it?"

Goodsir & Thomas

[bestsir]

[ Continued from here. ]

"You're hurt," Goodsir says, in a tone that brooks little argument. "Let me see your hand, if you please. I'm a—"

If ever I was a doctor...

"—a ship's surgeon. Let me help you."

Is there a touch of desperation in his voice? An urge to make of himself again what he thought he was, what he ought to be? Yes—but he really does want to help.

cw: finger amputation

[missionem]

It's the desperation more than the attempt at authority that brings Thomas around. In his reduced state, he's pliant under the weight of another's need to be who they think they ought.

A ship's surgeon, in this case. If there's anyone outside of a doctor ministering to factory workers one might expect to know what to make of his injury, it might be this man.

So Thomas offers up his mittened left hand, his right curling tightly around the water glass. His nod is slight, giving Harry leave to reveal what's underneath. Once the mitten is removed, the injury is obvious. Thomas has only an index finger and thumb emerging from a rust-coloured blob of bandages, wrapped such that it's clear his other fingers aren't simply folded down. They're gone entirely.

"It's not much more appealing out of the butcher's paper," he rasps, with a trace of pitch humour.

[bestsir]

Goodsir doesn't flinch at the sight—he's seen worse, after all. "You'll need a fresh dressing for that," he says. He may be from a time before germ theory, but at least he knows there's something to keeping wounds clean and properly dressed. "I believe there are supplies in the back—a moment."

He returns a moment later with bandages—unusually clean and white ones to his eye, sealed in paper packets—and a bottle that he might have ignored if it weren't for the words WOUND CLEANSER in big letters on the side. He briefly puzzled over what might make that better than water, then shrugged and decided he might as well use it for what it says on the label.

"Allow me," he says. He takes Thomas's hand and carefully sets about cleaning and dressing his hand.

cw: finger amputation, hand trauma, infection, gross

[missionem]

Thomas ought to know better than to let himself be in such a state. Germ theory or no, the smell of old blood alone should be inducement to take better care of his hygiene.

But it's difficult to attend to his injuries one handed, as Goodsir will be easily able to tell as he works apart Thomas' clumsy bandaging. Thomas hisses through his teeth as the surgeon works, then muffles a groan against the meat of his other hand as the last of the bandage is removed.

It's not only his fingers that are gone. The back of his hand is macerated, exposed to a grinding mechanical trauma that lays bare some of its inner workings. The lines of his tendons show through mangled flesh that shows the characteristic signs of early infection in its granulation. Thomas bites off a shout as whatever astringent is in Goodsir's WOUND CLEANSER bottle is applied, turning the rest into a grunt as new sweat breaks across his brow.

"And- all this before we've even- Christ- been introduced," he pants, inanely, as if talking might ward off the worst of it, "Thomas."

His name, if the the surgeon even has need of it.

[bestsir]

The sight of the injury laid bare is alarming, but the first order of business is to ensure that it's dressed.

"Harry Goodsir," he replies. Carefully, he wipes away any mess, then begins to wrap the bandages around the hand. "Some sutures would not go amiss, but I haven't the supplies as yet ... What happened? Were you attacked by someone or something here?"

Goodsir & Rei

[bestsir]

[ Continued from here. ]

"Let me see. I'm afraid I'm still getting to know this library ..."

He scans the shelf and takes down one, more or less at random. "This one looks promising," he says, offering it to her. "I ought to read it myself, as it's rather far beyond what I learned ... but you are welcome to it, if you like."

[alef]

Rei takes the book gingerly, as if it's a delicate thing, and not just bound paper. Even though she point-blank asked for one of these, it's still surprising that this man actually gave it to her, like it's nothing.

"Thank you," Rei says. It's her second time saying those words, but it doesn't feel any less strange than the first.

She flips it open to an early page. You are more than your genes, she reads. You are your connectome.

"You never learned genetics?" That does strike her as a little strange. Every scientist she knows has.

[bestsir]

"I—I'm afraid I don't know what that is," he says. "That is to say—I see that word on many of these books—" he gestures at the shelf, "but it is entirely unfamiliar to me.

[alef]

Again, that strikes Rei as odd. But maybe it all makes perfect sense, if she considers everything together. The scientist seems a little uncomfortable, and humans tend to become uncomfortable when they have to admit they don't know something. He did say he was a scientist, past tense, so Rei concocts a scenario in her head in which this man has flunked... scientist school?

She'll work on it. But it's enough of an explanation for now.

"Genetics is the study of genes. Part of your DNA. The instructions a body gives to make living things. I was created through advancements in the field."

Among other things. But that's why it's important she reads this book, you see?

[bestsir]

It dawns on Goodsir that this must be some of that ... future science, for lack of a better phrase, ridiculous though it sounds.

"Ah. I think—this is very strange, and I don't pretend to understand it—I think that such knowledge is beyond my own time," he says. "By a hundred years or more, at least. And that is why it is all strange to me."