Archive of Our Own

The thought occurs to Edward Little, former Lieutenant, formerly of the HMS Terror – formerly many things now, and all past tense, all gone – that the ironic, invisible twists and turns of fate have placed him in a situation noteworthy for a rather unexpected reason.

It is noteworthy for many reasons, in truth, though the most obvious reasons matter not at all now.

The obvious reasons are the stuff of history, of legend, because he is now an occupant of a desolate, untamed, almost otherworldly wilderness, one seen by few if any representatives of what Edward Little considers, in a vague and uncritical way, the ‘civilized world’.

His situation is as unique as it is dire… he has no idea if another living soul has ever seen the things that he’s seen, walked the paths that he’s walked. This is regarding both his literal steps and his metaphorical ones.

He has lost sight of himself. He knows that now. He has failed everyone he ever really cared about. He has failed himself most of all.

All these things are facts, grand and horrific facts. They are the most brutally apparent elements of this singular moment in time.

But they do not occupy an overly important place in Edward Little’s thoughts just now.

No, what strikes Little with a crackling, thunderous blow as sharp and wicked as a bolt of lightning breaking through a dreadful Arctic whiteout is the realization that for the first time in ages he is truly, absolutely alone.

Alone.

He is alone for the first time in his memory, certainly. But, then again, his memory is so very unreliable these days.

Lieutenant Little – solid, fastidious, unimaginative – used to have such a good memory. A sharp, methodical mind, at ease with ship and sextant. A good head for numbers, for calculations, for dates, for names and faces.

Not anymore.

Now the faces drift past his eyes, mere paper cut-outs of people, and all of them merge together in a shadowy blur and none of them are here.

He cannot remember where they have gone, but he knows enough to understand that they are not here anymore.

They are gone.

And he is alone.

The rank of Lieutenant affords certain privileges on a British naval voyage, one of the most valued being a certain modicum of privacy not afforded to the lower ranks of the crew. Back on Terror, Edward Little had his own small room which no one could enter without his permission and invitation.

This privacy was an illusion, of course. No one is ever really alone on a ship, not even one of Terror’s size. He could shut a door or a curtain but on the other side was always, always a constant stream of men, flowing like a river, loud, shuffling, inescapable. He was never truly on his own when a sea of humanity was perched just beyond some thin planking.

Even the Captain, the poor Captain, one of those disembodied faces that float before Edward Little’s eyes and accuse him of unspeakable horrors, could not completely shield himself from prying eyes in his moments of weakness and misery.

There is no being more like God on earth than a captain on his ship, and if even Captain Crozier could not have a little privacy, a space in which he was completely and totally alone, what possible chance did anyone else have?

And Edward hadn’t minded it. Not at all. For all that he was a quiet, taciturn man, leaning almost to the morose, he hadn't minded it.

Thomas used to tease him about that.

"Who would have thought that grim-faced Lieutenant Little is actually the sweetest, gentlest, kindest man in the world?" A beautiful smile would stretch across that beloved face.

"In the whole world?" Little would reply, gamely playing at flirtatious teasing even though he was never very good at it.

"Well... in the whole Arctic, at least."

"The sweetest, kindest man but one, I think," he'd said, amazed at his own daring, and delighted to see a blush heat those pale cheeks.

He'd never minded never being alone. It had been a comfort to him for a long time, having so many people about. It reminded him of home, of his boisterous brothers, all so far away now…

And also, stepping quick and sure through the bowels of the ship, travelling back and forth, flitting in and out of all the liminal spaces that exist between officers and men, between bow and stern, was Tom Jopson.

Those sea-glass green-blue eyes the color of the dark base of an ancient iceberg. The way those eyes met his with a steady certainty that spoke to the man’s unwavering loyalty, or twinkled with the ostensibly demure steward’s secret, unexpectedly wry, almost wicked sense of humor. That pale, smooth skin, that sleek, black hair, a thick lock of which always slipped, unruly, down across a delicate temple, only to be brushed back by slim, capable fingers…

Edward rocks in place. Lolls back where he is sitting. The image is just enough to inspire this awkward movement in a useless, stagnating body. It is more of a spontaneous spasm of nervous energy than anything. He is not currently capable of anything more.

Edward is so hungry.

No.

It’s… it’s wrong.

Wrong to be hungry.

He shouldn’t be hungry.

He has eaten.

He has eaten.

But he hungers still.

And the hunger is deeper now. Deeper than before.

More profound. He hungers for something other than food. For something he can no longer name, for something lost, for something powerful yet as fluid as water.

And he is alone.

You are never really alone on a ship. You can go into your room and close the door, but you are never really alone.

You have your own room.

You can invite him in.

You can invite him in, with his eyes bright and beautiful even though the dark shadows beneath them tell you that he is tired… and you know he is tired, he is pale and dazed and exhausted from cleaning up after a desperate, sick man, the father you all share, day after day after day… and instead of letting him go back to his own bunk to sleep the sleep of the virtuous and innocent you lure him into your own room, invite him in, and he comes to tend to you…

Because that is what this is, and you know it in the darkest recesses of your heart. He takes care of you. He keeps you going when all your strength is gone.

He tends to you, nourishes your soul, feeds it, pours himself out for you to take and take and take. He is so beautiful in his stolen ecstasy, panting, straining, gasping. He is always beautiful, no matter what the situation.  

You give him what pleasure you can with your rough, wind-chapped hands, with the gentle press of your mouth, with the warmth of your broad body, but this doesn’t change your own selfish nature, your relentless need… it doesn’t change the fact that you are greedy, so greedy, so desperate for him, doesn’t change how he gives you more than you could ever hope to return.

He smiles at you, a quick, gentle smile full of compassion and bravery, and it ruins you again and again every time you see it. You go weak for him, every time.

And still you ask him in, invite him to break the illusion of privacy, and afterwards he falls asleep on your chest and you breathe in the scent of his hair, and even then, even though you are the only one in the whole ship who is still awake, even then you are not really alone.

That…

That’s not…

His thoughts are confused.

He was thinking of something else. He has gone off-course.

That… that is the past. Hands and mouth and black hair and blue eyes and warm skin… that is the past. That is a face that floats past his blurring vision.

"Were you ever afraid of me, Thomas?" he'd asked once. "Did grim-faced, plodding, irritable Lieutenant Little ever make you nervous with his mean look and his arrogance and his recalcitrance?"

Are you afraid of me now?

"Now you're putting words in my mouth," Tom answered with a half-grin. "I never said 'plodding' or 'irritable', and certainly not 'mean' or 'arrogant'. I didn't even mean 'grim-faced' really... I think you have a lovely face, in fact. I thought you handsome and dashing from the moment I met you. You're rather like a one of the romantic poets underneath the practical sailor's face. You have such lovely sad eyes."

That's not an answer, Thomas. I asked if you were ever afraid of me.

"If I was ever nervous around you," Tom continued, thoughtfully, only half-aware of Edward's silent watchfulness, "it was only because you are always so capable, so controlled, so much the master of any situation. Any lowly steward would be a little intimidated. You are a practical and worthy and intelligent man, a first lieutenant through and through. And you do tend to play things very close to the vest, my sweetheart," and here Tom had pressed a soft kiss against Edward's neck, a little apology, "...and it can be a bit disconcerting for the rest of us at times. Especially since I wasn't sure..."

"Wasn't sure?"

"...If my attentions... the kind of affection I felt... if that would be welcomed."

It was Edward's turn, then, to kiss away all doubt and fear.

Do I frighten you?

"And now I feel so safe with you, Ned," Thomas said. "I know you are capable. You are a wonderful..."

Edward Little has to stop. 

He's gotten caught in the past again and he... and he... 

He is not on Terror anymore. Those moments were memories, were dreams. The things he remembers are so confused. They don't help. They are open wounds. They are not what he needs right now.

Right now…

He is alone.

He sits in a tent in the new camp they made. The tent they set up after they left the sick and dying behind.

It is his tent. He doesn’t have to share it with anyone else… not another living soul.

Not another living soul.

There is not another living soul.

He has seen the carnage outside. He is distantly aware that he is himself mutilated inside and out. A ruined body. His outsides now match his insides.

He thought he saw something earlier. He thought it might be that creature – what had Crozier called it in his fumbling translation? – Turn-back. No… No. Tuunbaq. That was it. He thought it might have been that great beast come to claim him at last.

It wasn’t though.

It was something else… something tall, with a red, skeletal face, and antlers. It had whispered to him and left, and that was the last time he had heard a living thing’s voice.

He is changing. He knows he is changing. His face, his eyes, his mouth. His hands, his fingernails. His arms and legs. Deep inside his chest. The top of his head.

Thomas had been bleeding from his forehead. From everywhere else, as well. Pale and cadaverous and oozing blood when Edward left him to die. When they last kissed Edward could taste copper on his lips.

And now it is Edward’s turn. It is Edward who is changing.

It was the meat. He knows that now. He never should have eaten it. Never should have done a number of things he thought were proper and correct at the time.

That meat was Henry. Henry Le Vesconte. Handsome and dashing and quite determined to keep walking and then quite, quite mad at the end.

At the very end.

He shouldn’t have eaten it. The meat. It did something to him. It changed something inside. And now he has a strange new need, a desire for something that no food can satisfy.

Former Lieutenant Edward Little is hungry.

It is a strange kind of miracle, but former Lieutenant née Steward Thomas Jopson finds that he is no longer hungry. The pain in his body that was his constant companion these last few weeks is gone, replaced by a feeling of almost euphoria – an emptiness so profound as to almost be fullness.

He is distantly aware that this is a bad sign. He is also aware that he has been very ill, and that bad signs are to be expected at this stage.

As a steward he learned the fine art of anticipating wants and needs. Reclaiming this kind of understanding and foresight now, in what he is well aware are his final moments, seems somewhat fitting.

He knows, too, that he has been hallucinating all sorts of things. Food, drink, rescue, Crozier, Edward Little. They all came to him, as real as anything…he could reach out and touch them.

But they aren’t here now, and Thomas knows, understands that those visions were dreams.

Just dreams.

He wonders if his whole life up until now hasn’t been a dream.

Who’s to say?

Perhaps he is dead already.

He has tapped into his last stores of strength and pulled himself out of the tent he shares with another man, a man who now lies still and silent. Gone.

He wraps himself up as best he can in blankets and discarded slops and curls up just outside the entrance of the tent, using the side of the structure to prop himself into a sitting position. He places himself next to the pile of useless, poisonous Goldner’s tins left behind as an offering to the dead.

As a way to assuage guilt.

Boiled Beef. Veal Cutlets Tomato. Vegetable Soup.

He kicks the tins over, feeling a strange wave of petulant disdain that flames up and then dies an instant later. Childish, perhaps, and useless… but there is no one left to judge him for it.

Thomas Jopson is no fool, even if he is sick and half mad with hunger and loss. He knows that extended exposure to the elements will kill him even faster than the sickness already eating away at his body, but it doesn’t matter. He'll gladly brave the cold.

He doesn’t want to be inside the tent anymore, staring at poor Hudson’s filmy, unseeing eyes. It is too grim inside the canvas structure – it feels too much like a coffin, a crypt.

Thomas just wants to be alone for a while.

Just wants to sit here by himself and look at the ice and the stones and the sky.

This world – and it is another world, as sure as if Terror and Erebus and all the poor souls on board had somehow taken flight and landed on the moon – is so different from his tiny family home in London. So different from the dark, smoggy, narrow cobblestone streets lined with row after row of wooden structures crammed with people.

He did not often stargaze at home. It is true, back when he was still a living, functioning part of this fast-dissolving world, he had always tended to look up, to meet things head-on with an open, frank gaze, to keep his chin straight and his eyes watchful no matter what.

It is a very unusual quality in a steward. Crozier had remarked on it more than once. Thomas Jopson - the one who looks up.

Edward Little was always the one to let his gaze slide off and down and away when thoughtful or troubled, would look at his shoes if challenged or embarrassed. For a first lieutenant he was surprisingly shy.

However, this strange boldness of Jopson’s was most often applied in his interactions with people, and his searching gaze was rarely directed towards the greater mysteries of the heavens. He rarely had the time or inclination to look up at the tiny patches of gray and blue visible from his cramped quarters in England.

Now he could practically drown in sky. And, in spite of everything, it is beautiful here.

Vast.

Empty.

When darkness falls in a few hours, the cold will kill him.

They'll never be found, probably. The others will never return to this camp, to the tents. They will all die, silent and still in this place. In time what is left behind will also disappear. Nothing will be left except bones sun-bleached as white as the surrounding stones. Maybe not even those, eventually. 

Gone.

At least he isn’t hungry anymore. His body seems to have given up on that idea. 

Instead, he floats. It is a disconcerting but not wholly unpleasant feeling, looking up at a brutally blue sky and feeling like he might float away.

Because Jopson has, after much pain and grief, accepted the reality of his situation – and because in his case he knows that hallucinations are still a factor – he is less surprised than he perhaps should be when he glances down and sees someone walking towards him across the plain.

Tall and dark, the strange figure emerges from the vast expanse of unforgiving landscape and makes its way to the scattered tents and the abandoned men who haunt them.

Jopson grows more alarmed as the figure closes the distance between them and its face becomes clearer to his blurred, weakening vision.

Still, he feels the fear only distantly. It is a vague sense that this is not normal, that this is not right.

Terror is there but buried deep down.

The thing’s face is red. That is the first thing Jopson notices. He has seen so much red these last few days, usually coming from some orifice on his own traitorous body… but here, now, looking out at the great expanse of white and blue, the color’s presence is striking.

The thing is red. It walks on two legs and its face is red. It has horns, large horns like antlers. Deer antlers. Its face is narrow, brutal, sharp.

Skeletal. Stripped of everything that was once living.

It is a blood-red stag skull atop the body of a man. And it is coming this way, walking across the wasteland. Coming for him.

Thomas stares wide-eyed at the thing as it comes nearer and nearer… and then he can’t look at it anymore. He squeezes his eyes shut and drags in a labored breath.

It’s a hallucination. You know it’s not real.

You know it’s not real.

Yes, another voice in his head pipes up, mocking. Like Lady Silence wasn’t real. Like Doctor Stanley setting himself on fire wasn’t real. Like Cornelius Hickey’s knife-like gaze and horrendous betrayal wasn’t real. Like the invisible poison in the food tins wasn’t real.

Like Tuunbaq wasn’t real.

In this nightmare realm, why wouldn’t this new apparition be real?

Fear cripples him, and he slides down against the side of the canvas tent until he is almost lying horizontal on the ground in front of it. He struggles to take air into his gasping lungs, the stress too much for his weakened body.

He allows himself a last, brief glance at the azure sky before closing his eyes again. He can hear the huffing breaths of the impossible thing approaching him.

He can’t take much more. If it kills him, it kills him.

The world is silent for a brief moment, long enough for Jopson to wonder if the thing is gone… if it ever even existed. He keeps his eyes closed.

He feels something on his face, his lips.

Soft. Warm.

Human. A human mouth.

He gasps weakly, his own mouth yielding the gentle pressure of this not-quite-familiar kiss, and when he does so he feels something wet and heavy slide past his lips. As it slips over his tongue, he tastes it… the tang of blood, the rich buttery fat, the half-forgotten sweetness…

Meat.

It has been partially chewed and comes from this strange thing kissing him, claiming his mouth like a lover and feeding him like a baby bird, but Thomas can’t help but swallow the nourishment down convulsively.

It is a small offering in the face of the grand, sweeping reality of Thomas Jopson’s desperate and slow starvation, but the… the food, the meat… it seems to fill him. It eases the pain, makes breathing easier.

His eyes drift open slowly. He pulls away.

The face of the thing he saw, red and skeletal, is not the face he sees in front of him now.

“Ned?” Thomas rasps out. He barely recognizes his own voice. He’s impressed he can speak at all. Perhaps it was the meat, some magical power it contained. That would not be the most surprising thing about this.

Edward Little, clean-shaven except for his usual whiskers, healthy and alive, and dressed impeccably in his naval uniform, smiles down at the dying Thomas Jopson.

Immediately, however, Thomas can see his mistake. He has gotten it wrong, misnamed this creature.

Edward’s true eyes are a soft brown, not the burgundy red that now drills into Thomas’s soul. Edward’s skin is not pale and gray like this… this thing… and his features aren’t so drawn and cruel and sharp enough to cut glass. In his heart, Thomas knows that this is all wrong.

The hunger in this being’s face is nothing like the hunger that is usually in darling Ned’s eyes when he looks down at his beloved Tom.

“Beloved Tom.” Not-Edward echoes Jopson’s drifting thoughts, his voice deep and melodic and lacking the soft roughness of Little’s normal cadence.

Hands find Thomas’s face, cup his pale, concave cheeks, and the former steward can recognize the callouses, the touch of his lover’s fingers against his over-sensitive skin.

But the nails… the nails have grown. They are longer now, and sharp. A predator’s nails.

Dangerous.

It is wrong. It is just familiar enough to be terrible, to heighten the sense of uncanniness.

Thomas tries to pull away, though he does not get far. There is a tent at his back and a stranger standing between him and the whole of the Arctic. There is nowhere to go.

“No…” he murmurs.

“No?” not-Edward repeats, tone somewhere between mocking and incredulous. “No, Thomas? Are you vexed with me, my love?”

“You left me,” Thomas mutters, summoning some of the residual anger he'd thought lost or buried inside of him. Little's shaky voice, arguing that abandoning the sick and dying was the best, most practical choice, echoes in his mind. It still hurts, in spite of everything… this brutal fact. “You left me.”

“I have returned,” the thing replies. “I’ve come back to save you. I promised I would. I always intended to. No one quite believed me, but I always, always intended to return here, to this place, to save you. I never would have left you otherwise.”

Strangely, now, at the end of all things, Jopson can believe this. As much as the memories still hurt, he can believe this.

He can forgive Edward, sweet and protective Ned, because he is dying and because he knows that what the stranger is saying is probably the truth. The Edward Little he had known, the Edward he loved with all his heart would have told himself again and again and again that he was coming back, that this separation was only temporary, that he would find help and return to save his Thomas from death.

He’d think he was doing right. He always believed he was doing right.

“It d-doesn’t matter,” Thomas forces out through chattering teeth.

This is true. The weakness of his voice bears out the truth of this. Help has come too late to save freezing, sick, starving Thomas Jopson.

Burgundy eyes narrow and two rows of white teeth are bared in a feral grimace. Jopson fancies he can see red stains on the teeth, sharper than they should be. Perhaps it is only his imagination. Another hallucination.

“I am here, Thomas.”

“T-too…” Thomas tries to shake his head, to shake off Ned's caresses, but it hurts too much. “Too late…”

“You will not leave me.”

You left me! Jopson wants to scream, but he cannot summon the energy to do so.

Before he knows it, Edward’s mouth is upon his again and more of the strange meat is pushed inside of him, fed to him in that grotesque, intimate way. Again, as before, he has no choice but to swallow it down.

The warm fire low in Thomas’s belly, the one that is always kindled by Edward – a fire that Thomas can barely remember now since so much has happened since they last were truly one flesh, together – catches, glows, and then twists upon itself. Jopson feels something… a heady mix of erotic desire and revulsion.

He swallows and it is the same as those perfect, stolen moments when he swallowed down Ned’s hot, swollen flesh, his spilling seed… the same, but not. Everything has changed, and nothing. Quite different, now, and yet…

He must cling to what he knows.

And he knows…

He pushes the creature away. Not-Edward goes easily, shifts back on his heels where he is kneeling. The terrible kiss leaves a red stain smeared on Jopson’s mouth.

“You’re not my Ned,” the former steward says.

There is a long, pregnant pause during which Jopson is quite sure that his end has come – that the beast, exposed as a fraud, will kill him now, and afterwards perhaps consume him, will tear flesh and drink blood and crunch bones.

Instead, the shadow version of Edward Little chuckles softly and fixes Jopson with a soft, thoughtful look that nearly belies his red eyes and sharpened features.

“What am I, then?” he asks.

The creature does not seem upset. If anything, he seems curious, and Jopson can feel his own mouth drop open slightly in surprise as Edward continues speaking, almost half to himself, as if they are mid-conversation and working out some complicated equation between the two of them.

“I don’t know what I am anymore,” Edward says. “I have been thinking about it as I wandered this place, looking for you. It is a strange thing to not know, but I have been thinking about it. Thomas… do you believe gods, spirits… do you think they can travel? Can move between countries, between continents?”

Thomas shivers and watches the other man, eyes wide with fear.

“There was a story Hodgson told me once – he'd heard it from his cousin in America,” the former lieutenant says. “The tale came from the Algonquian tribes of east Canada, who also suffered through cold winters, starving winters. Not like this, of course… but similar in some ways. Perhaps all gods are the same, at the end of the day. All stories. Perhaps stories and gods are the same thing. Do you think an Algonquian fairy tale can migrate to the Arctic, Tom? Do you think, after hearing the story from his cousin, Hodgson carried the spirit of this thing onto the ship with him and gave it to me? Carried it and gifted it to me like a spare tin of tobacco?”

Jopson doesn’t have an answer. He’s never really thought about it before.

Edward continues, unperturbed, voice washing over Thomas like water.

“It was a story about a beast, a strange beast that used to be a man. It was said that in the winters when food was scarce, the people were driven to desperate extremes by hunger. Hunters would wander the wilderness and find nothing. In their need, they committed unspeakable acts, broke the laws of nature, and in doing so forfeited their human souls. They became Wendigo – monsters that always hunger, transformed into starving animals by their crimes.”

“C-crimes? Ned…” Tom gasps. “Edward, what did you do?”

“I was hungry,” the creature replies. “I wanted to live.”

Tom squeezes his eyes shut again and swallows. His throat is desperately dry, and it hurts to do so. Edward strokes the former steward's temple, hand trailing down his cheek to his throat, his chest.

“I wanted to live. And now I’ve come back to you.”

Jopson shakes his head, chokes the words out. “You’re not my Edward. You’re… you’re a demon. A monster wah-wearing his f-face. Y-you’re not him. Demon.”

“Demon,” Edward repeats. He looks thoughtfully at the other man for a moment before giving Tom a wide, terrible smile.

“That is very fitting, coming from you.” The thing’s smile twists, and one finger, the nail long and sharp, comes back up to trace the side of Jopson’s face. “You… an incubus. Seducer. More beautiful and deadly than any siren’s song. I remember you.”

Little sighs softly, closing his eyes for a brief moment before opening them again and fixing them on Jopson.

"I remember that."

Jopson flinches, watching Edward warily as the other man weaves dark magic with his words and continues to absentmindedly caress his lover.

“Always quick, delicate, an air sprite standing so solemn and strange among the tea things. An ethereal creature polishing silver spoons and measuring out brandy. Folding linens, smelling of soap. That searching gaze, that unearthly beauty. A changeling, hiding in plain sight. I watched you. I remember. My eyes always found you in the Captain’s rooms, no matter what else sought to draw my attention away. I was bewitched from the start, caught in your web. Like a fool I held back…”

“No,” Jopson interrupts. He is throw off balance, confused... Edward never used to talk like this, never used to speak in poetry for all that Tom used to tease him about being a secret romantic. Regardless, Jopson cannot allow this thing to so willfully misunderstand their relationship.

“You… you’re wrong. It wasn’t like that. W-we never held back. Once we realized our mutual affections…”

“I held back,” Edward cuts him off, voice sharp and ragged. “I wasted time. I waited. Hesitated. I should have claimed you like a stag claims a doe, mounted you that first day, the first time I saw your eyes, blue like chips of sea-glass catching the light. I knew then that you were mine, that we were written in the stars, and I should have said so. Should have made it so. When I first saw your face and learned your name, I should have done this. But I didn’t."

The man, the creature lets out a small huff, dangerously close to a sob, and his caress transforms into a tightening, almost punishing grip on Jopson's face and shoulder.

“And when I touched you, I always held back. Furtive fumbling in the storeroom. Hushed embraces in the dark of night. Biting off my own moans, using my hand to cover your mouth. Made pathetic with fear and denial. Scribbling trite little verses I never allowed you to see. Longing, always longing, always hungry… hungry, but afraid to touch you in the daylight. Afraid of what others might say and do. Preoccupied by morals and reputation. Cowardly and weak. I was always so cowardly and weak."

Jopson didn't know he had any tears left in him, but the tell-tale prickling and burning in his eyes tells him he still has more sorrow to share. He is wounded deeply, as much on Edward's behalf as his own, and it kills him to hear the underlying desperation still present in Little's voice.

"Ned..."

“I should have stripped you of everything you are, of all the pretense, and laid you bare, made you scream, made you weep. I should have done it up on deck or out on the ice, out in front of everyone, where everyone could see. I should have killed the Captain, who stole away so much of your love and attention, and the crew, and anyone else who challenged my right to you. I should have shown you who you belong to, again and again until you forgot yourself, until you forgot everything but me. Instead I let my own doubts, the petty concerns of propriety infect us both.

“I should have broken you, sweet incubus. I should have torn you open. Pretty witchling, I should have beaten you… punished you for making me love you more than God Himself loves his children. I should have stripped you of your terrible power, shattered your charms and spells, and made you wholly mine, my darling love-slave, long ago. We make quite a pair, you and I.”

For a horrible moment Tom can see the creature in front of him in its entirety.

He can see that it wears three faces, seamlessly overlapping.

The first one he has already seen – the skull with its antlers, blood-red, the stark image of hunger and death.

The second face is like Edward’s but not – it is pale and drawn and still alive even though it shouldn't be, existing past all hope, past all salvation. It is decorated grotesquely with delicate, ornate rings and cruel chains which loop around and pull at Ned's tender skin and make him terrible to behold.

In this face Tom fancies he can see all the things that brought them here, to this abandoned place out on the rocks – and those things aren’t the ships themselves, or the coal fueling them, or the wondrous science of engines and ropes and geometry that made them, although these are all still a part of the beast. No, what drove them to this point was the naked greed, the insatiable ambition, the careless destructive gluttony that launched their ships in the first place.

The third face is the most tragic of all, because it is the one most familiar, the one that is still beautiful in Jopson’s eyes.

He sees Edward's human face, and Edward’s familiar look of gentle adoration. That warm, sweet look reserved only for Thomas Jopson, for darling Tom, from his beloved Ned, and bestowed only when they were alone together. That look Ned always wore in the moments when he took special care, when he was kind and loving and tender, dedicated to removing all pain and giving only pleasure.

Thomas sees more now on this boundary line between life and death than he ever could before, and he sees the turning clockwork of the world, and none of it changes the fact that the thing in front of him evokes all the feelings he'd thought he'd lost. All the old feelings. 

For all that it is a terrible thing...

"Are you Edward Little?" he asks.

A brief yet heavy silence falls.

The Wendigo huffs out a breath.

The sound speaks of both amusement and despair.

"Yes, Thomas Jopson," he says. "I am."

Then...

Then for all that this thing is a wretched, wicked creature, Tom loves him still.

Thomas Jopson is lost and confused and tired… and if this is to be his final temptation, he wants it to end soon. He curls up, feeling the cold now, feeling it seep into his bones, and lets out a low sigh.

“W-what do you want?” he asks after a long, pregnant silence, his voice breaking again.

“Oh, Tom...”

The words come out plaintive and soft and desperate.

Jopson hears his lover’s voice, deep and untainted and echoing so sweetly those stolen moments – in their bunks, in the storeroom, behind the tents – when Edward’s eyes were full of him and only him, and when Tom, in turn, was filled with Edward pouring himself in.

“Oh, Tom…” the creature says. “I’m so hungry.”

Jopson sucks in a shaky breath and curls in further on himself, pulling away, his weakened, broken heart pounding in his chest.

“I thought it was for meat,” Edward continues unabated. “I thought it was for the blood, but I ate and ate and I’m still so hungry…”

“And now you’ve come to eat me?” Thomas interrupts.

Edward opens his mouth to answer but pauses before he continues.

His brow goes furrowed and thoughtful, a long-lost look Thomas loves.

“I thought so,” Edward says. “But. If I eat you… you’ll be gone. In me. Part of me. But gone.”

Jopson lets out a breath that is more of a sigh and lets his eyes drift closed. Those calloused hands return to cradle his face, and he leans back against the canvas tent, exhausted, and allows the touch.

“You cannot leave me.”

“It’s too late,” Jopson reminds him, voice barely more than a whisper.

“No…” Edward says, voice equally low. “I need you, Thomas. I came back for you. I want you. I hunger for you.”

Tom cannot fight it when it comes. If the Captain was here, if he wasn't dying slowly, if he wasn't still in love with the man doing this to him, perhaps he could have. But he cannot, and he does not.

Edward’s lips find Thomas’s again, and for the third and final time Edward feeds his lover the strange, forbidden meat.

They part again after, as lover's do - come together, then part. After a moment spent looking at each other, evaluating and thoughtful, Jopson's gaze slips away and lands on the vast, darkening sky behind the creature, and Little's new burgundy eyes drift down and fix themselves somewhere in the middle of Thomas's chest. 

They sit in silence for a long time.

Thomas swears he can feel the earth turning beneath him.

“What will happen, Edward?” he asks, finally.

“You will change. You will become.”

"Become...?"

"Like me."

Thomas sits and ponders this. He looks up at the sky and fancies he hears the sound of the watch bells on Terror, hears the Captain's voice calling his name, gruff yet fond. 

"The Captain..." Thomas swallows. "He told me about the Esquimaux tribes here. From when he learned their language. A story. Like yours... like Hodgson's story. About their heaven. Well, not heaven... I mean, about what they think happens after they... after."

Edward cocks his head to the side slightly, interested. Always eager to learn, Jopson thinks fondly.

"He said that s-spirits return. Often as the next g-generation of children. But not... not always. Spirits do not always come back human. And the spirits of animals come back, too, and that's why they are so careful when killing seals. Because... because the spirit lives on. In different forms, but the spirit lives. C-comes back. The same hunter kills the same seal... forever.“

His thoughts are getting confused.

He thinks that maybe Edward is right - he is changing. But death, too, is a kind of change.

Who knows?

He is close to that other side, that boundary, and whatever waits for him beyond it.

Crozier was also right. 'Close' is the worst, most painful thing.

“I don’t think I’ll become like you." The words slip out a little easier now. They fill Jopson with a kind of hope. "I may find the sea, and become like the selkies in the stories my ma... mother used to tell me. Or I may… like you said, I may find the air. A sprite, an air spirit. The sky. Maybe I'll become a seal or a bird. I never thought about the sky before, but maybe I’ll be something that belongs up there.”

Thomas manages to throw a wry glance at Edward, who looks back at him with his burgundy eyes, the brow furrowed with thoughtfulness.

“But you belong on earth, I think,” he adds. “You seem like an earth-bound creature, whatever you are. You were always watching your own footsteps, eyes on the ground. I may not become like you.”

“It makes no difference,” Edward says firmly, an echo of his past self blending seamlessly with this new thing's desperate, all-consuming desire. “You are mine, and I will find you. Whatever else you are, and whatever you become, you are mine.”

They sit in silence for a moment, the Wendigo and the dying man.

The brief Arctic day is reaching its end and the sun is slowly vanishing in the sky.

"What do you want, Thomas?" Edward asks, and he sounds so much like the kind, loving Ned of old that it breaks Jopson's heart. "What can I give you? I'll give you anything you want if you'll be mine."

There are as many different kinds of hunger as there are kinds of love. 

Thomas Jopson finds that there is something, here at the end of the world, that he truly craves more than anything else.

“I want a kiss," he says. "A real kiss.”

The Wendigo bows his head and leans in and gives darling Tom a kiss... sweet and gentle and almost-chaste.

Then, together, they sit and watch the sun set, and wait.