singillatim | well everybody's heard about the birds

This sucks?

This truly sucks.

So Hickey might have eaten a bird or two. That's perfectly fine! He was a wolf when he did it, wolves are supposed to eat these things. He might have barfed up most of the bird later and had an upset tummy that night, but how was he supposed to know that would happen? These are birds! Birds are edible!

Though to be fair, he should have absolutely known that the birds would try and fuck him up in return. It seems animals in Milton came in two types. They were either normal animals, who behaved as they should, perfect little passive prey. Or they were smart. Dangerously smart. Fuck you up smart. So really, Hickey shouldn't have been surprised that the crows managed to figure out that he was the wolf that ate a few of their friends.

Hickey is surprised that the crows managed to figure it out, but that's an indictment on his own character, not the birds.

He wasn't planning on making his way to the community center. But it's there, these birds are attacking, and it's a close building. Hickey stumbles through the streets, trying to make himself seem small, keeping his head and eyes and all the fleshy bits covered with a jacket held over his head as the crows divebomb and swoop at him. He'll try to swat back at them and manages to hit a few. But he's powered by Old Bear rage right now: somebody should help drag him inside. Because at the moment, the only thought going through Hickey's head is fuck them birds.

Honestly, the fact the birds are Being Weird is a perfect excuse to stay indoors. Not that Kieren needed any more excuses to keep himself cooped up in his cabin. Ruby never turned up. Neither did Connor. He's been moping pretty hard with it, especially with the loss of Ruby. She always made him think of Jem.

Still, there's always plenty to do. He's outside, making his way through the town centre. Until the swarming crows circling the air catch his attention and he presses himself against a building, ducking slightly. If they get him, he's going to have hard time trying to fix that kind of injury.

But also—

... The crows are fighting Cornelius. And Cornelius is fighting the crows.

(Oh, for fuck's sake.)

Kieren growls and grumbles under his breath before he's throwing himself forwards. He's ducking out of the way of any crows trying to divebomb him for drawing too close, trying to bad back with his heart in his throat — desperate to avoid injury.

"Hey, hey—! Stop—!" like how the hell is the man going to win against a bloody murder of crows. Thank Christ Cornelius Hickey is a short man, because Kieren is making a grab for him — trying to manhandle his mate back. "C'mon, leave it, mate."

Indeed, Cornelius is fighting the crows. He's easy enough to manhandle away, but when he's out of reach of the crows, Hickey looks over at Kieren with pure anger in his eyes. This is an unreasonable sort of anger, anger that he's never seen Hickey experience. He is big mad about this whole situation and wants to make those birds pay.

"Let go of me," he snarls. Hickey's operating on nothing but rage at the moment, his sheer anger and annoyance at the situation is in charge. "I had this under control."

He was getting his ass kicked.

We are all very lucky that at this moment, Hickey is human and not a wolf, like he's so often been lately. But he needs thumbs to help carry the bag slung over his shoulder, in which he's carrying the corpses of two ptarmigan. If it was one, Hickey would just turn into a wolf and carry it in his mouth (despite the fact that he absolutely has gotten fussed at by Billy for doing such things). But he was lucky today. Venturing out to the cliffy outcroppings deeper in the woods, he managed to come across a few of the birds. Don't ask too many questions about how and why their necks were broken.

As he spots Fitzjames, Hickey's first instinct is to ignore the man. They've reached something that might be an understanding, but that doesn't mean he likes Fitzjames. Or wants to spend time with him. Or wants to have something closer to said understanding. Hickey is perfectly fine just tolerating the man and not thinking too hard about how in a different life, under only slightly shifted circumstances, he could have James Fitzjames's life. He really wants to ignore him.

But there's something in his expression that Hickey can't ignore. It takes Hickey a while to place it, but then he realizes. The men had that same expression when Sir John died. Something bad happened. Something bad enough to wreck Fitzjames.

Hickey pauses, frowns, stares his former commander down before deciding to just be blunt about it. "What happened?" It's a small town. They're a small group. Whatever it is, whatever happened, it's going to impact Hickey even if Fitzjames doesn't realize it.

Normally, James would consider himself good at handling... Well, just about anything. He's practical, has more experience than others tend to give him credit for, and adaptable; those traits suit him well for when things go wrong, and he can normally handle, process, and then appropriately respond to them.

But not this.

The awful unreality of it all, the haze that had settled over him upon understanding the scene he'd discovered, the sense that some sort of connection with the world around him has suddenly severed; he's felt this before, but it usually lasts only a short time. Then come the normal phases of dealing with something horrible--the sense of loss, the grief, the necessity of compartmentalizing and then focusing on what has to be done--except, this time, that isn't happening. Not fully, at least, and without anything to distract himself with, to focus on instead, it's impossible to keep from falling back into that state of disconnection.

But he's at least managed to drag himself outside, wandering around with no real goal in mind, just trying to find a distraction. Look for supplies, perhaps, for anything useful to forage; anything to stay present, but without thinking about what happened.

He's not paying enough attention to notice Hickey before the other approaches, at least not before he's already in speaking distance, though he isn't startled by the appearance either. Why should he be? At this point, even if he'd been able to feel things normally, he'd hardly be concerned Hickey would be any sort of threat--annoying, perhaps, but nothing worse, at least not without reason--and in his current state he's certainly unable to really care even if he had been. There's nothing worse that could happen than has already happened.

The question registers, dimly, at almost an echo of his own thoughts, as if he and Hickey can still read each other's minds. There's no thoughts of James' to be heard, though, nothing really forming long enough to be solid, and he has to really concentrate to figure out how he's going to answer.

There's no need to lie. There's no reason to; the only reason would be to spare himself having to say it. He's not spiteful enough to keep Hickey uninformed, and he'll figure out on his own anyway. He should just tell him.

But putting it into words is difficult, something that drags him back unwillingly to the reality he's trying to ignore. And so he settles on something halfway, truthful but not nearly the whole story.

"Francis is gone."

That should be enough.

Wait. What?

Hickey blinks slightly, frown on his face, as he looks over at Fitzjames. Francis is gone. Francis. Crozier, it's got to be, there's no other Francis here. Gone. But what the fuck does he mean by gone? Vanished, like so many other people here? Fucked off to Lakeside? Or something worse? Something more permanent?

Hickey's trying to keep his cool. He's trying to keep his calm. But the little furrow of his brow, the tightness in his voice, it's like a neon sign to Fitzjames, pointing out what is so obvious. Hickey doesn't like this.

"Gone how? Where? How d'you know?"

Don't let it be gone gone. Let it be something else.

Of course Hickey would have questions. Of course he would, and James might've been able to navigate this more easily in any other situation, but he neither wants nor has any particular incentive to put forth the effort necessary to be graceful about it. If Hickey wants to know, fine.

"Dead. I saw him." It's blunt, the simple, straightforward words helping James keep mental distance. He could say more--that Raju was also dead, that it seems Francis died from some sort of animal attack--but the more he speaks, the harder it is to stay across that line separating himself from the reality of what's happened and what it means.

Cornelius Hickey is someone who likes to keep his emotions to himself. Expressing things like pain, confusion, anger, all you've done is given someone the opportunity to know more about you, to dig deeper and find what hurts and use it for an attack. Even when he was being lashed, Hickey didn't want to give the satisfaction of crying out, of letting Crozier know that what he was doing hurt (which logically speaking, of course Crozier would know it hurt. But Cornelius Hickey is not a logical creature.)

All that practice and calm flies right out of the window when Fitzjames says that Crozier is dead. Hickey's expressions are read clear as day on his face. Shock. Nah, he's got to be kidding. Francis Crozier, dead? That's not how it's supposed to work. The man was supposed to die, yeah, but it wasn't supposed to be like this. He was supposed to kill Crozier, he had him tied up on that boat chain back home. Anger. What the fuck killed Crozier then? It wasn't the Darkwalker, they'd have felt it. So what? A wild animal? Another interloper? Whatever it is, there's a part of Hickey that wants to kill it in exchange.

It's obvious that Hickey's grappling with some emotions as he hears that Crozier died, emotions that he has no idea how to even begin addressing. There's a long pause before he simply asks, "How?"

The shock is indeed obvious, and it's... Not strange, exactly, that this would be Hickey's reaction, but still striking in some way that doesn't immediately settle. Perhaps its that Hickey is showing it, perhaps it's that James still feels the same way himself, perhaps any number of other things. James neither cares nor has the will to examine it--or much of anything else--further.

It's easier to respond to questions when they're split up like this, short pieces that can be focused on as simple facts without having to face the entire situation. He doesn't know, for absolutely certain, the actual answer, but it's easy enough to get close, and his voice is quiet and distant as he speaks. "An animal. A bear, perhaps." The bear, perhaps.

There's no need to discuss the fire, the other body, the final scene itself.

His shock and surprise is very quickly shifting to anger. A bear? A bear's the thing that took Crozier out? No. Not happening. That's not right. That can't be right. Francis Crozier can't die to something as every day and commonplace as a bear, not in this world. Not while Hickey's here. It's a complicated mix of emotions moving through Hickey, a mixture of 'this shouldn't have happened,' 'I don't want this to have happened but won't admit it,' and 'why wasn't it me.'

He doesn't even know if he wanted to kill Crozier or not. There were times when he did. But there were also times when he would have given anything for the man to just pay attention to him. No matter what, it should have been him.

After a moment or two of silence, while Hickey tries to push his face back to normal and tries to decide what the hell to do next, he settles on, "Where is he? His body, where is it?"

James watches the emotion cross Hickey's face, and normally he might've been doing exactly what Hickey doesn't want, in cataloguing and carefully filing them away for possible future use. He's not exactly the type to use being emotional against someone--it'd be terribly hypocritical if he did, though that isn't the main reason--but a person feels and why can be incredibly important information for a variety of reasons.

But right now he doesn't really care, because he can't care about anything or he'll care about everything, and he can't afford to do that.

Still, a little spark of something comes through at Hickey's next questions, a little flash of James' usual sharpness and personality. It isn't enough for his tone to reach scathing, or disdainful, or even exasperated, but the words themselves might imply clearly enough how he knows he should feel about answering these particular inquiries.

"Why would I ever tell you such things?"

Someone is a bit infamous as both a cannibal and a graverobber, and whether arguably justified in the previous instances or not, that still loses any trust that might've been extended when it comes to Hickey's motives. James can't imagine he wants to pay respects, and if he doesn't believe James' word on the situation, too bad; that's all he's going to get for now.

"He's my captain too," Hickey snaps back, before realizing what he's doing. He pauses for a moment, having realized what he said, before he quickly takes a different tack.

"Besides, want to see it with my own eyes. Dunno if I'll be able to tell if it's a bear or it's that bear, but that makes a difference."

There we go. Use that big murderous bear as justification. Try to hide the fact that you're a bit shaken up, that you want to see his corpse for yourself, that you want to see with your own eyes that the man you loathed and respected and hated and desperately wanted to see your potential is dead.

There are so many things about Hickey's responses that James will think over later on, particularly that first comment, that Francis was Hickey's captain too. An odd thing to claim, from someone who had led a mutiny, but perhaps a sentiment that some part of Hickey still truly means.

But it doesn't change James' answer, and neither do the other arguments, which would've been far less effective even in a normal situation. He doesn't believe for a moment that Hickey could tell in more detail what had happened, even considering his wolf ability, because Edward has the same power, and seeing the body is out of the question anyway; James has no intention of letting Hickey know where it is for the obvious reasons, but also because he'd have to explain the condition of it.

He'd been truthful about what he believes had killed Francis, but not what happened afterward and not what happened to Raju, and although James imagines Hickey might already know of the relationship--he'd been around them while pretending to be Francis' pet wolf--James is still not about to reveal anything more about the matter than absolutely necessary. He owes that much to both of them.

So, finally, his response is simple. "No."

"Then I'll find the answer out myself," said with zero hesitation. Fitzjames won't tell him? Fine. He doesn't need that man anyway. He's smart, strong, capable enough on his own to figure out what happened. He knows what Crozier smells like. He knows where Crozier lives. If he goes over there, shifts into a wolf and starts sniffing around, he'll find something in the end. After all, a bear attack isn't clean. There's got to be blood, tracks, something he can use to learn more.

Because Hickey isn't going to just accept this. He's not going to take Fitzjames at his word, just assume that everything's fine and the other man is telling the truth. Nah. Forget that. He's going to see this and learn as much as he can on his own.

"And as far as I can tell? Nothing you can do to stop me."

well everybody's heard about the birds

closed to kieren

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closed to fitzjames

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