spotsalone: (hickey9)
Cornelius Hickey ([personal profile] spotsalone) wrote 2025-06-09 11:12 am (UTC)

[ Angelo's fingers close around the case and Hickey's stomach twists. He can feel a warm grip around some phantom part of himself, but the sensation is too odd to unpack right this minute.

The Tuunbaq leaps across the gap just as Angelo gives the order to watch their footing. Lucky timing. Hickey grabs for the stove to keep it rolling off again as the floe rocks underfoot, growing more unsteady by the second. The ice, once relatively level, now settles into a slant toward the ridge next to the camp.

He hurriedly digs his match case out of his pocket as the creature steadies itself. He meets its eye and it growls, a low groan that seems to reverberate through the ice—but it doesn't rush him. Instead, it prowls, regarding Hickey with a wariness it hadn't shown the others. A respect, even. There's a look in its eyes that he recognizes from their last meeting, after it left him the macabre offering of a corpse back on Terror. It wouldn't attack him then, either. It spared him twice and allowed him to kidnap its shaman.

Perhaps he had not properly appreciated that gift. He crawled into his hammock that night distracted by what now feel like petty, childish concerns. Crozier's betrayal made him lose focus, even as the Tuunbaq offered him more and more each time it surfaced. It killed Darlington for him, left a gift of Lieutenant Fairholme's sledge party, saved him from the gallows... He would bet it had something to do with the uncanny coincidence of running into those Netsilik with Irving and Farr, as well. Did it call them there, he wonders?

Of course the creature is cross with him. After all that, he chose another direction, veering off from the path it had so caringly forged for him.

Hickey flips the match case closed. Distantly, he feels the faint thump of a heart beat that is not his own. He ignores it, ignores the shouting from the boat. Kneeling in the snow, he holds his hands out like he'd seen Lady Silence do that night on the pack. ]


Do you—

[ —still want me? The words die in his throat as the Tuunbaq breaks into a sprint, roaring as it charges him. For just an instant, a raw dread ensnares his mind. Instinct takes over, like ripping your hand away from a hot stove before you even feel the burn. A match lights, the fuse sparks, the stove's door slams shut—

Hickey stands to run just as the creature lunges, catching him across the chest with a heavy swing. The weight behind the blow throws him backward and he slams hard into the ice. He hears the Tuunbaq bellow—he has to move now—but the impact knocked the wind out of him, blurred his vision.

That's it, then, he thinks, even as he tries to reorient and push himself up. He knows he's lost, but giving up is not his nature. Angelo has the case. The creature can't eat a soul he doesn't have—

Two gunshots crack through the air. The bear shrieks, the most horrible cry it's uttered yet, and rears back to paw at its face.

"Damn it all, Cornelius!" Tozer yells, his second shot firing.

Hickey shakily scrambles to his feet, glancing back just long enough to see a stream of blood pouring from the Tuunbaq's muzzle—and Goodsir, still watching on with his dead eyes at the other end of the floe.

If you want to eat your friend, you will have to cut into himself yourself. The way the creature looked at him a moment ago... That wasn't respect, was it? How could he forget the seething hatred in Goodsir's eyes as he delivered those bags of Billy's meat?

Tozer is waiting for him at the edge of the floe. An unexpected act of camaraderie, though the marine catches him by the arm and all but throws him into the boat before jumping in himself. Someone gives the order to row as Tozer shoves off from the ice.

They're barely past the edge of the ridge when the bomb detonates. The painfully loud blast shatters what's left of the floe and the thing seems to snap in half. The wall of ice offers just enough protection from the debris even as it collapses and rolls, and their little boat jets further down the lead with the wave that follows.

Hickey's ears are ringing. Voices overlap as the men in the boat try to quickly regain their bearings in case that monster survived that final gambit. He rights himself with a groan, his body protesting the abuse of the last few minutes, and his eyes search for Angelo—

It's when he tries to breathe that he realizes something is wrong. The adrenaline still coursing through his system fuzzes out the worst of the pain, but his chest is tight in a way that doesn't match up with the bruises of being flung. He looks down to find the front of his coat shredded and damp with blood. ]

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