angelo and the hickster's post-belle arctic adventures

[spotsalone]

CORNELIUS HICKEY
caulker's mate (T)
alive

ANGELO SAUPER
lieutenant (NZ)
alive

SOLOMON TOZER
marine, sergeant (T)
alive

GEORGE HODGSON
lieutenant (T)
alive

MAGNUS MANSON
ab (T)
alive

EDWARD LITTLE
lieutenant (T)
alive, 1 hp

CHARLES DES VOEUX
mate (E)
alive

WILLIAM PILKINGTON
marine, private (E)
alive

JOHN LANE
boatswain (T)
alive

JOHN DIGGLE
cook (T)
alive, lung damage

JOHN SULLIVAN
capt. of the maintop (E)
alive

JAMES RIGDEN
coxswain (E)
alive

ROBERT FERRIER
ab (T)
alive

ROBERT THOMAS
mate (T)
dead, scurvy

THOMAS ARMITAGE
gunroom steward (T)
dead, tuunbaq

JAMES DALY
marine, private (T)
dead, tuunbaq

EDMUND HOAR
captain's steward (E)
dead, tuunbaq

THOMAS TERRY
boatswain (E)
dead, scurvy

THOMAS WORK
ab (T)
dead, scurvy

HARRY GOODSIR
surgeon (E)
alive, rescued

code by pagans



angelo cr chart
mutineers cr chart...

timeline:

• arrival; late july, mutineers' hill
  
• tent chats; early august, temporary camp
  
• spotting the ships; late august, terror camp
  
• tuunbaq attack; sept 1, ice floe camp
  
• boarding terror; fellas it's gay; early sept, hms terror
  
• dog to dog communication; early sept, forecastle
  
• bark bark bark; early sept, on deck
  
• coat! and post-tozer debrief; early sept, angelo's cabin
  
• 🌶️; early sept, hickey's cabin
  
• the dogs are unionizing(?); mid sept, cargo hold
  
• tozer/captain stuff, look at them having an adult conversation; mid sept, greatroom
  
• little rescue mission; early oct, terror bay
  
• post-little debrief; early oct, hickey's cabin

Comments

[spotsalone]

[ Hickey hums, frowning. Nothing but a hypothetical. Angelo is technically correct, but something about the phrasing doesn't sit right. It takes him a moment to sort out why. ]

I wouldn't say that. A hypothetical is a reality that will never come to be. I may have avoided this particular end for myself, but it's still part of the story.

[ Their current circumstances are a strange transition for him in that way. If his survival had always been guaranteed through immortality, perhaps the camp would be easier to ignore. The chapter of his mortality has not been fully closed yet, and won't be until they're far away from this place. He may no longer be threatened with death, but the arctic still has its claws in him, doesn't it?

Especially now that there's more at stake than just his own survival. Angelo is not immune to the dangers here, not by a long shot. His future in this world may never have included the potential for ending up like those corpses at the camp, but now that future is much more likely for him than for Hickey.

He hugs Angelo to him a little more tightly. ]

It's not as if I had any control over Ish's intervention, either.

[ The sentiment escapes him before he realizes he's traded one uncomfortable topic for another. Their adventure today has worn him out too, leaving his mind dull and distracted. Annoying, but at least the misstep is with Angelo and not someone he'd be more reticent with. ]

[cleansheets]

[ Ish's intervention... Angelo isn't sure how to feel about it anymore. At the time he'd been furious. Every Monday, waking up plucked from the end he always should have met. "Put me back," he said to Ish at their very first meeting, and he'd been screaming it in his mind for days and days, and now... It's hard to decide how he feels. To say Ish "saved" his life would be giving him too much credit, but he certainly prolonged it.

And he prolonged Hickey's in exactly the same way.

Angelo had never realized - not when Hickey told him about the perils of the expedition back at the castle, not when he agreed to come to the arctic with him and not even when they were marching the grueling miles back towards the ships. A risk of death, yes, even a great one, but... ]

... we'd both have wound up frozen bodies never to be found.

[ This was certainty. Of course it was. The Tuunbaq would not have saved Hickey. They know that now. Angelo saw it happen, and it had been an illusion but it had also been a vision.

They'd have been two unfortunate lowlifes preserved in ice, yet forever unknown.

What a thing to have in common. And what a stomach-turning prospect. His own near-death still fills his mind with a kind of longing, but Hickey among those wretched figures at the camp... He didn't think it was possible to feel any sicker about the memory. ]

I still want to rip Ish to shreds for all of it, but his timing was decent on that one.

[spotsalone]

[ Leave it to Angelo to so bluntly spell out the thought Hickey would've rather left as an implication. Frozen bodies, never to be found. After he escaped London, he liked the mystery of it, the way he managed to vanish into thin air, the police left forever chasing a ghost. That was when he expected to be starting a new life on the other side of the world, though. If he were to die out here, wearing another man's name, suffering a slow inevitability until his body simply decided to stop living... That's a much more pathetic story. ]

He'll get what's coming to him eventually. His timing is the only thing he's good for—although... I'm still cross with him for ratting me out over the frog toy, but I would have gotten away with it otherwise...

[ Which means he would not have been executed, which means he would not have earned immortality through death. Ugh. ]

Let's not give him that much credit. Perhaps instead let's consider it a reminder that the best path forward may not look it in the moment.

[ Hickey's execution was certainly a low point for him, but in reality, it was the best thing that could have happened. The same goes for Angelo and being deprived of death. Hickey knows better than to ask about it again, but surely someday Angelo will admit that he's glad for the change of course. ]

[cleansheets]

[ Despite the gravity of the topic, that gets a snort of amusement from Angelo, muffled against Hickey's collarbone. ]

Alright. Let's.

[ Hickey's optimism is an eternal point of fascination to Angelo. It's an attitude he associates with bright-eyed fools, with the kind of people they were stuck with at the castle, idealists who do not know better. Hickey is none of that - he's just adept at spinning things. A conman who never stops and yet somehow he's got everybody fooled. Angelo included.

After all, he can't help thinking that Hickey has a point. If Ish hadn't sabotaged him at the end, if they hadn't met in that hall of mirrors, if... It's pointless to speculate, and still. ]

I don't like the idea of fumbling blindly forward, but we'll just have to play the cards we're given. As always.

[spotsalone]

[ As always, Angelo says, and Hickey thinks of how frail Billy felt as he died. We'll make the best of a bad situation, like we always have. Angelo is not sickly, but the differences between their bodies is growing more apparent as the polar night looms.

Hickey lets his arms fall to Angelo's waist instead, hoping the subtle shift will stop him from associating this moment with the memory of Billy. Really, the similarities are thin. He's only thinking of it now because of the camp, surely. ]

It's only blind fumbling if you aren't using your head. Ish didn't intend to provide us with the opportunities he did; we were the ones to capitalize on them.

[ There is an element of blind fumbling, of course, but Hickey refuses to think of it in those terms. He prefers to squeeze any semblance of control he can get out of a given situation. ]

We'll do the same with this new development. Bringing Little on board is sure to unlock a number of opportunities we haven't anticipated.

[cleansheets]

[ 'We' feels like a rather generous assessment, when Angelo spent most of their time in the castle in a haze that he's not sure he's fully woken up from even now. It's strange to think that it's been months since - months without Frontal to help him sort through his unmanageable mess of feelings, and he's still moving forward. It makes his heart twist unpleasantly to brush upon that thought, no matter how briefly. ]

Then let's hope Tozer knows what he's doing and he doesn't croak on us immediately. If you want to go for the emotional appeal, surely we should make a longer show of trying to keep him stable.

[ Although the 'we' in this is as generous as the one Hickey had been using - Angelo has no intention of attending to Little himself.

There's a beat in which it seems like that's all Angelo had to say, but then he adds on another question: ]

What kind of person was he, as a lieutenant?

[ His predecessor - the first lieutenant of HMS Terror. It's not as though Angelo has truly started identifying with the title, but holding it gives him a measure of security to anchor himself in a story that fundamentally was not meant to include him. ]