AN: So, I'm not sure this is an ENTIRELY appropriate story to post here, but there isn't a separate section for these additions. For those unfamiliar with the mashup books, the idea there is that that Jane Austen's books are great, but they could really be improved by the introduction of monsters into the text. The first was Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, it was a great success and the second was Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, a book that's 60% Austen, 40% Winters. The characters and plotlines are more or less left unaltered, at least at the core, but there are...well, monsters everywhere. In S&S, there has been an event called the Alteration, wherein sea monsters and witches and mercreatures decided to wage war against humankind. Both P&P (And Zombies) as well as S&S (And Sea Monsters) come highly recommended, they're really great for any Austen fan who likes a touch of violent whimsy in their books. For the purposes of this story, all you need to know is that Colonel Brandon looks like Davy Jones in the Pirates of the Carribean movies. Oddly, it works.
Disclaimer: None of the characters or situations in this story are of my creation, nor am I making any money from their use. The characters and storyline belong to Jane Austen. The addition of sea monsters belongs to Ben H. Winters.
Never had he felt he had a home anywhere. How could he? When his qualifications as a member of the human race were constantly in question, it was more than understandable.
From the earliest hours of his memory, Brandon had been beset by unnatural loneliness. Familial embraces and the love of doting parents and servants had been denied the child who, by rights, ought to have been given every indulgence. However, the gruesome protrusions that marred his countenance was an effective blockade against the unrestrained affection that adults often bestowed upon lisping toddlers and babes in arms. It was not that he was maltreated, nor was he abused, however he certainly did not feel the security in the affection of those around him that other children took for granted before they were a year old.
Of her regard alone was he certain, but Brandon, even as a child, held no illusions. Had Eliza been blessed by the Lord with a pair of seeing eyes, he had no doubt that her love would have been hard-won, if it was there to be won at all. It was for these reasons that he could not bring himself to selflessly wish her well, for her deficiency was the source from which all his happiness sprang. In her cloudy, sightless gaze, he was as all other children to her. During the hours he passed with Eliza he could pretend, if only for a moment, that he was as all other boys and she was not any the wiser.
Then, as now, he was sensitive about anyone touching any part of his countenance. She knew him by his voice, ugly and unnatural though it may be, and spent time memorizing the exact shape and feeling of his hands. If they went long stretches without encountering one another, she would have to re-acquaint herself with his hands all over again, if he suffered a growth spurt. It was inevitable, of course, during the course of the time passed together that his face would remain undiscovered by the girl whose main means of interacting with the world was through touch and sound.
When they were about six or seven years old, one summer day, a blue crab, as big as a man, scuttled up on the beach at Delaford, pincers clicking menacingly as it advanced toward the children. They had been left alone by the nurse, who much preferred to spend her time with the elder Brandon boy, far from his monstrous brother and blind playmate. Eliza, of course, did not see the great beast advancing towards her, but she shrieked as any other young girl might when one of those threatening claws reached out and grasped her skirt, pulling her off her feet, toward the nauseating smell of salt and sea the beast reeked of.
Being but a small boy himself, Brandon's first thought was to fetch an adult, but none would arrive in time, he knew. Having been left to fend for himself for much of his brief life, he knew how to think and act quickly in such perilous situations. Running toward the beast that threatened his dear playmate, he had in hand a long, sharp piece of driftwood and with deadly accuracy, drove it into the protruding eyes of the creature.
Squealing in some animal approximation of pain, it released Eliza and scuttled back into the murky water from whence it came. The young lady herself was terribly frightened and threw herself into the arms of her rescuer, quite unselfconsciously, the moment he tugged on her shoulder to pull her to safety further inland. She gasped the moment his cold, clammy tentacles brushed her cheek, pulling back, unseeing eyes wide with something that looked like fear to young Brandon. Utterly ashamed, he withdrew from her arms, cheeks burning with shame as tears gathered in his eyes, no matter how he tried to blink them away.
With a voice that quavered more than he would have liked, Brandon urged Eliza to come back to the house. From there a coach could be called for, replete with the usual footmen armed with harpoons for lancing predatory sea beasts to take her away from Delaford. If she would like to return someday, he would more than understand if she preferred he make himself scarce.
Eliza's tiny brow furrowed at that pronouncement and she rushed forward, one hand outstretched. Brandon thought that she meant to strike him and he flinched, bracing himself for the blow. It would serve him right for having so deceived her on the matter of his being like other people. Yet that blow never came. She simply raised her hand to his face, tracing his features with an expression of wonder that might easily have been mistaken for fear at first glance. Brandon was utterly frozen during her perusal of his 'til now unknown face. Incredibly, Eliza was all smiles as the great mystery of her friend's countenance was revealed to her and it was in that moment that Brandon fell in love with her completely.
Oh! How easily he had defended her from monsters of the deep and how thoroughly he had failed to rescue her from mere human treachery. And yet, what could he have done, short of running away and eloping with her? It would have been the ruin of them both, there were enough gothic novels detailing accounts of grotesques such as himself, half man, half beast, spiriting beautiful young women away. Had they attempted to fulfill their happiness, it would have been the happiness of a moment before he was carted off to some holding cell in Sub-Marine Station Beta to await grisly experimentation while Eliza was returned post-haste to his brother, the lover the authorities would have supposed her to have been abducted from.
And so Eliza married and Brandon attempted to make himself respectable. As respectable as a young man with the face of a malformed octopus could reasonably become, of course. All the while, slumbering fitfully in the artificial, oxygen-rich environments of their underwater encampments in the East Indies while man-eating barracudas battered against the bulkheads, he half-dreamed, half-willed her to be happy. Perhaps she could be content with his brother, perhaps marriage had cooled his more unsavory personality traits, perhaps they might learn to love each other...the thought made his feelers clench angrily and caused his fingernails to embed themselves bloodily in his palms, but for her sake, he wished with all his heart that it could be true.
How wrong he had been. How tragically wrong.
All the years in His Majesty's service had taught Colonel Christopher Brandon many things, chief among them was that search and rescue missions rarely ended well. Due to his unique skills in the area of underwater recovery (his unfortunate condition making him more than usually suited for the task), he was more often than not tasked with returning those many, sad souls who were missing and presumed deceased. More often than not the presumption was indeed correct. His years of military service had hardened his heart to the worst of it, of finding once hale and hearty brothers-in-arms, friends, some of them, torn to neigh unrecognizable shreds by the vicious ministrations of their aquatic enemies.
Fortunately, though it was his duty to drag those badly gnawed corpses to the surface, he was never charged with dispatching addresses to surviving family members of their sons', husbands', brothers' deaths at the front lines. Whether because his superior officers felt he had performed his duty to the uttermost or because they feared that the mention of his name might send a spike of fear into the hearts of those who already suffered a cruel loss was never made clear to him, though Brandon suspected that it might be the latter.
As it was, as a worldly man of three and twenty, he had already learned his lesson well on the futility of hope...and yet.
And yet he searched for her. Unendingly, obsessively some might say, looking for a girl who was by all accounts beyond the help of any. The encounter with his unfortunate brother – and what a strange thing was this! That he, afflicted, cursed, monstrous man that he was might have chance to call his perfectly-formed brother unfortunate! - had only strengthened his resolve rather than dimmed it. For what could he do, but search for her? Eliza had been the light of his life, the sole beacon on a dark, foggy sea.
When at last he found her, what joy and what anguish had been his. Hardship and cruelty had not diminished her beauty, though from the moment he entered the hovel she was living in with her daughter he could immediately perceive that she was not long for this earth. Naturally, she was wary upon hearing the clack of his boot heels against the floor, though being much elevated above sea level in her current abode, Eliza did not fear the worst – even so, the worst horrors that mankind had visited upon her might be equal to that which she could suffer from the depths of the sea.
"Who is there?" she had cried out fearfully, reaching a hand out to the child who came immediately to her mother's side, her own dark, perfectly clear eyes gazing up at the terrifying stranger who now stood in their midst.
For a long moment, Brandon could say nothing, so overcome was he at seeing her again after such a long, heartrending absence. When at last he spoke, it was haltingly, his speech hesitant and full of repressed emotion, trying to make a proper greeting, like the gentleman that he pretended to be. However much he may have changed during his tenure of service, his voice, with its gutteral, gurgling quality could not be mistaken.
Eliza's sightless eyes overflowed with tears made of equal parts shame and relief and she beckoned that he come near, her daughter already making a hasty retreat across the room, evidently much frightened by this creature whose voice made her mother cry. Brandon was not without tears of his own to shed. How little time they had, how much time they had wasted! What a fool he had been to believe that they might find happiness apart, what an unpardonable fool.
The final days of Eliza's, in a tragic twist of irony, were filled with more mutual happiness for the pair than the last years had brought each separately. They recounted their shared past with nostalgia and great joy, while more recent events were spoken of sparingly, if at all. Brandon entertained her with tales of his military exploits, keeping the gorier aspects of those same exploits to a bare minimum where he could. The sole object of Eliza's discourse involving the last few years that she spoke on with any joy was her beloved daughter, her constant companion and greatest happiness. The girl had not the impediment of sight of her mother, neither did she resemble her a great deal in particulars. Plump and round-faced in the way of all small children, she had thick brown curls and dark eyes that actually called to mind the Brandon branch family than it did Eliza's own fair kin.
The child herself seemed both fascinated and nervous of Brandon, by turns. It was clear that her mother doted terribly on him, but then, this was not the first man her mother seemed fond of in her life that frightened her. Brandon was kind to the child, of course. He was kind to everyone reflexively, as though his mild temperament might distract from the horrors others beheld when they stood before him. His considerable fortune afforded Eliza and her child comfortable lodgings and he was a near constant companion as her hours on earth drew to a close. Weariness and the comfort of knowing that the man she had loved all her life loved her still enabled Eliza to make the impertinent request that Brandon care for her child, to take her under his protection.
It was an unconscionable thing to ask, that this child, conceived in moments of necessity and fear, by a low man who bore no relation to the noble, unfortunate individual who always had her heart, be his burden. But Brandon was not a man unfamiliar with burdens. Without hesitation he vowed that he would care for her daughter with all the attention and devotion he would bestow upon a child of his own flesh and blood, tainted though both might be.
When she breathed her last breath, it was Brandon who held her in his arms, contact with his own regrettable face unavoidable, but she died smiling, a look of contentment on her face, peace in her unseeing eyes that remained even as he closed them, the act a final severance from the woman who had meant so much to him, the only woman who could bring herself to love one such as him.
This time, it was Colonel Brandon who dealt with the particulars of the burial, of the writing of necessary letters to those who lived and might care what had become of his poor, dearest girl. None of these would fear the mention of his name, in truth, it no longer mattered if they did. The one whose acceptance had mattered most to him was gone, and her acceptance had never been hard come by.
There was only the matter of the child. Just because Brandon felt certain that he could regard her as if she was his own, it did not follow that she would ever come to feel the same way for him. After all, he was the living embodiment of things that made children cry out in the night, and this tiny girl that he barely knew now had only the monster himself to come running to with her fears. It was an unsettling prospect for anyone.
And somehow...for all the girl might resemble the man who had fathered her, how like her mother was she in spirit! When he knelt before her, at a good distance, lest a closer inspection of his features prompt her to flee, she came to him without prompting. Anxiously, as might any child faced with a grown man who was strange to her, she looked at him, dark eyes meeting dark eyes. Perhaps they were united by their mutual loss. Perhaps children are just made of sterner stuff than adults, but as her mother had done so many years ago, little Eliza raised a small, wondering hand to his face. Again, Brandon was quite taken aback by the action and simply remained still as she traced his features, from forehead, to chin, starting a little when one of his longer tentacles, quite without his permission, wound around one of her small fingers.
Amazingly, the child laughed and, looking up at him with all the trust in the world asked, "Are we going to your home now, sir?"
Scooping the child up into his arms, Brandon spared one last look at the small apartment where he had been so inexplicably happy for such a short period of time. Yes, he said, his heart heavier than the great metal submarines that would convey them safely there. We are going home.