Silna would not allow him to help her transfer Captain Crozier to her sled. Every time Goodsir made a move to try, she subtly angled her body to block him, giving him a hard look as she did so.

You are injured, he imagined her saying - the light notes of her voice speaking English in his head as easily as she had once spoken her own language out loud - you need to keep your arm held still. I am perfectly capable of performing this task on my own. Please let me work.

It wasn't as if he doubted that she could. Silna was the most capable woman he had ever met — one of the most capable of either sex, in fact. Probably, she never needed assistance with anything. He just felt utterly useless, standing there in the epicenter of a massacre, hugging his injured arm to his chest while the wind whistled in his ears, watching her carefully lash Crozier down onto the sled and cover him with furs, with only his own thoughts to converse with.

Perhaps that was why he imagined Silna speaking to him in English, despite knowing perfectly well that she couldn't, both before and after the loss of her tongue. He wanted nothing to do with his own thoughts.

You have betrayed your beliefs and your morals. Your faith has all been for naught. You are going to die here, and your loved ones will never know what became of you.

Echoing in his head. Over and over and over.

He ought to have stayed in Edinburgh, with his brothers and his museum conservatorship. He could have done good work there, important work, without ever leaving Scotland. If only the lure of new discoveries amongst the Arctic crustaceans had been less appealing to his ambitions as a naturalist…

And to think that his greatest concern upon setting sail had been the willingness of his fellow officers aboard the Erebus to assist him in his specimen collecting. It was almost enough to make Goodsir break out into a fit of bitter laughter. Almost.

Silna glanced at him as if he had done so anyway, brow knitting faintly. He pretended not to notice.

She also did not allow him to help pull the sled, gently pushing his hand away when he attempted to take hold of the rope next to her and, again, giving him a steady look of dismissal until he relented. And so they descended the hill, down to the camp, in companionable silence.

(Or companionable enough, anyway. Goodsir doubted they would have conversed in the first place - they both had their own concerns to be preoccupied with at the moment - but the option to do so if they wished would have been... nice.)

(Truth be told, he missed the sound of her voice.)

Silna stopped them in the middle of the camp, pausing for a moment to take stock of their surroundings; then, after a glance back at their patient to ascertain he was still secure on the sled, she made directly for the largest tent of the group. Goodsir didn't follow. Instead, he watched as she pulled both sled and Crozier through the unsecured flap, uncertainty settling low in his gut. He had assumed they were bringing the captain here, but only for as long as it took him to gather some supplies before moving on. Didn't Silna have a camp of her own - with her people, even? Why wasn't she taking them there?

She reappeared at the entrance to the tent, looking about and, when she saw Goodsir still standing where she had left him, tilted her head as if asking Aren't you coming?

He swallowed once, hard, and made himself look squarely at the tent. His tent. He didn't want to set foot in there again. Didn't want to pass by the makeshift table upon which he'd cut apart William Gibson, or look at the medicine chest he had been forced to carry with him as he'd been kidnapped from Terror Camp, and considered ingesting the contents of to escape his waking nightmare. He didn't want to see the cot he had spent three months sleeping on (or, more frequently, not sleeping on), always wondering if this was to be his last night alive, or if this was to be the day Hickey decided his services as a doctor and butcher were no longer needed. But he couldn't explain any of that to Silna. He didn't know her words for it all, and she wouldn't understand his.

Oh, for heaven's sake. It was just a tent. Made of the same materials as the others. Offering the same amount of protection from the elements as the others. It didn't matter which one Silna chose for Crozier's sick bed. It didn't. Truly, it didn't.

(Except it did.)

With a sigh, Goodsir forced his feet to move forward, and went to join them.

Everything was just as he had left it, of course. Cot, tables, medicine chest, assorted instruments that were, ultimately, an unnecessary weight to have dragged along on their trek south. Silna was already undoing the ropes holding Crozier in place on the sled. There was no room in the small space to edge around her and straighten the cot, and when he knelt to assist her she waved him back, so Goodsir - now feeling weary to the very marrow of his bones and really rather numb from it - found himself doing nothing, watching her in silence yet again.

Useless. Helpless and useless.

"There's nothing more natural than pulling weight, Doctor Goodsir."

He looked at his shoulder bags, folded on top of an upturned box next to the drawn-back curtain separating the tent into two spaces - the same ones he'd carried since joining Lieutenant Gore's party to search for leads in the ice, a thousand years ago. Or so it seemed.

"Watch Morfin here in front, and me, at the corner of your eye. Match our strides. You'll take to it - I know you will."

He looked at the bags and thought of Graham Gore, dead only a little more than a year now instead of a thousand; thought of what a kind and cheerful soul he had been; thought of how the lieutenant hadn't laughed at him, not even once, when he'd insisted on pulling his weight with the sledge and failed miserably.

He thought too of John Morfin: quiet, steadfast Morfin, his slow descent into agony, begging to die, and his brains blown out on the rocks.

Useless then. Still useless today.

"You call me 'doctor', but technically I'm just a surgeon. Anatomist, in fact."

"That's a doctor in my book."

What would Gore think of him now, he wondered. Would he still have the same utterly unfounded confidence in him? Would he still consider him worthy of the title doctor?

Whatever the man might have thought… it didn't matter. Graham Gore wasn't thinking anything about anyone, and he hadn't for a very long time.

Goodsir considered him incredibly fortunate, in that regard.

(Are either of us really so fortunate?)

It took some time to get Crozier settled on the cot, and towards some semblance of comfortable. The captain drifted back to consciousness a few times - most of them while Goodsir was attempting to clean his wounds (aided by a torn strip of nightshirt and water from Silna's canteen) - but never far enough to be cognizant of his surroundings, and never for very long. Goodsir would have liked to close up the slashing cuts before bandaging them, but lacked the necessary needle and surgical thread. This meant, of course, that the wounds would have to close on their own. Crozier would need to be kept as still as possible to avoid re-opening them. Which also meant he would be in no condition to travel for a while. Ergo: this camp was going to be Goodsir's home, again, for the foreseeable future.

Silna's, as well, if she stayed.

(Would she? Despite having every reason in the world to abandon him and Crozier to their ultimate fate, and he wouldn't have it within him to judge her for it if she did. But surely she wouldn't. She already hadn't.)

She had busied herself with clearing the odds and ends out of the tent proper while Goodsir was tending to Crozier, but seeing that he was more or less finished with what he could do for the time being, rejoined him at Crozier's side.

"He should live," Goodsir said quietly, attempting a smile to convey that the prognosis was a good one; his lips twitched, but the expression didn't quite make it fully onto his face. "Provided infection does not set in."

Really, it was sort of pointless, speaking to her in English, wasn't it? And yet he still continued to do it. It just seemed… polite. He could hardly ignore her presence when he didn't know the Inuktitut words for what needed saying (which was often) and besides, she seemed to understand well enough as long as he didn't ramble. That perceptiveness of hers, coming into play. It almost verged on uncanny at times.

Like now - she nodded slightly, and turned to consider Crozier. What she saw evidently satisfied her; turning back to Goodsir, she caught his gaze, held it for a long moment, then reached out and tugged at his waistcoat.

He frowned, not comprehending.

Without breaking eye contact, Silna touched light fingertips to his injured shoulder, then pulled at his waistcoat a little more insistently - this time with both hands.

Oh. She wanted to inspect his shoulder. Sans clothing. Was he interpreting her correctly?

"That isn't necessary," he said, the faintest hint of awkwardness creeping into his voice as he put his hand over hers to gently push them away. (She couldn't see him in a state of undress. It wouldn't be proper.) (As if what was proper in jolly old England held any meaning here. If it ever had at all, it certainly didn't now.) "I don't require a doctor."

Silna shook her head in the negative, her face taking on the same hard look it had worn when she'd insisted that he allow her to load Crozier onto the sled on her own, and placed her hands back on his waistcoat. Then they proceeded to stare at each other in a silent battle of wills that lasted only a few seconds at most, but felt like a small eternity to Goodsir. (He was tired. And tired.) With another sigh, he relented, dropping his gaze to his knees and giving the barest nod of assent. Maybe, when she was done, he could finally rest. At least for a little while. Lie down and close his eyes and not dread having to open them again.

Lie down, close his eyes, and never get up again.

It wasn't so terrible a thought, all things considered. His limbs certainly felt heavy enough to keep him down indefinitely, once Silna pushed him into that position, as Goodsir had the distinct impression she was going to do. She seemed determined to take charge of his care now, as he had once done for her. Having their roles reversed was a little odd - he was accustomed to being the one doing the caring for. It came with the territory of being a medical student, qualifying as a surgeon, signing on as the assistant for a Discovery Service expedition. But now there was no one left to care for, except -

A jolt of pain in his shoulder jerked him out of his mental wandering. Silna had taken his upper left arm gently in one hand and was attempting to slide it from both of the waistcoats he was wearing at once; she'd already managed to free his right arm without his even noticing. (He really needed to stop stewing in his thoughts, if it was pulling him so far away from reality.) (Among other reasons.) Goodsir took a deep breath and allowed her to turn his arm as she wished, squeezing his eyes shut against the latent pain and accompanying nausea, as if he were no more than a life-sized doll incapable of his own movements. He kept them shut while she pulled down his suspenders - there was a surprising amount of relief in having even that little amount of pressure gone from his shoulder - took her time in undoing the small buttons on his shirt, and gripped the fabric in both hands to pull it up and out from his trousers.

(Being cared for, being undressed. It had been a very, very long time since anyone had done those things for him. And Silna, though brisk of demeanor, was still managing to be exceedingly gentle in her task. It was a gentleness that seemed utterly out of place in this camp - this very tent - where so much horror had come to pass.

The backs of Goodsir's eyelids were burning. His lungs were beginning to burn. And so was his throat. Not just his hurt shoulder and arm, now.)

A burst of tiny ripping sensations spread across his back as the fabric of his shirt was lifted away from his skin, and he realized he must have suffered some abrasions as a consequence of being dragged over the rocks. Not as relatively unscathed as he'd first thought, then. He couldn't help but catch his breath in a wince; he sensed Silna pause, then resume working his shirt off over his head. Thank goodness for voluminous sleeves, and shirts like billowy clouds. He hardly needed to maneuver his arms at all in order for her to remove the thing.

And then his back was prickling with discomfort and exposure both, as the air hit his bare skin.

Goodsir didn't open his eyes. He merely sat there, a puppet with its strings cut, waiting to be attended to.

There was the faint rustling sound of fur against canvas as Silna shifted around to sit at his side; fingertips brushed over his ribs, and he involuntarily flinched before reminding himself to breathe. The fingertips danced up and across the span of his shoulder blades, pressing in briefly at seemingly random points, sometimes leaving the impression of stinging pinpricks in their wake but more often punching holes straight through his thoracic cavity. -of course not actually punching holes, but damn if the pain wasn't there in his chest anyway, and suddenly he had never felt so utterly naked in his entire life. When was the last time he had been touched with such deliberate care? He couldn't remember.

(No. He could remember. The same hand, fingers curling over the same shoulder she'd just set back in its joint; the same hand, placed lightly on his chest in reassurance as they parted ways forever.) (Except not forever.) (But it hadn't been on skin before. He hadn't known then just how delicate her hands felt, in spite of the calluses and patches of roughness on them. It was - it was stabbing knives through the cracks in his deadened heart -)

With his eyes squeezed shut against the pressure building behind them, he was completely unprepared for the touch to his cheek: light, inquisitive, prepared to pull back at the first sign of discomfort. He flinched again, a faint twitch of muscle beneath Silna's fingertips; then he stiffened in surprise; and then - with a distant, shallow twinge of dismay at his continued failings as a man - he found himself leaning into the touch. Transforming it into a caress, as he turned his cheek into the palm of her hand; exhaling a shuddering breath; coming to the realization that he was trembling all over, and it was tears burning at his eyes -

- oh, no, you can't do this, you have to keep yourself held together, the men can't see you falter this way -

- there aren't any men left -

For a frozen eternity of a moment, Silna didn't move. Then Goodsir sensed her shifting in place, the fur of her parka brushing and pressing against his bare arm, as the hand on his cheek slid down to the base of his neck. Her other hand suddenly landed square in the center of his chest, lightly, but the small spot of warmth from her palm was still akin to having a brand applied directly to his sternum.

His trembling intensified.

Slowly, almost hesitantly, as if he were a wild animal in danger of spooking, she touched her forehead to his temple.

His breath hiccuped.

Just as slowly, she adjusted the tilt of her face in what felt very much like the lightest of nuzzles at his cheek, and went still.

He could feel her breath ghosting over the untrimmed riot of his beard, and the heat of her lips very close by. Her face was warm next to his. Her hands on his chest and back seemed to be exuding a strange kind of electricity, trickling through the meat of his muscles into his vascular and nervous systems, sparking feeling back into the cellular matter at the very core of his body. And all without a hint of the sexual. He was in a state of half-undress, a woman's hands were on him, for the first time in his life, and he did not feel even the tiniest frisson of sexual interest. He just felt… he felt…

...cared for? Loved, even? In a wholly innocent way, the sort of love one feels for a close friend, but made all the more significant for the fact that Silna, by rights, ought to be repulsed by him. His fellows had killed her father. Murdered her friends. Kidnapped her and very nearly subjected her to mob 'justice' for the deaths of their friends. He didn't deserve her trust or her regard. Yet, somehow, he had earned the former. And she was freely giving the latter. Offering him what comfort she could with her mere presence, because it was all she had to give.

Perhaps she thought it was very scant comfort, and had decided that a little was better than none at all. But it wasn't. Dear God that he had lost all faith in, it was so much more.

Almost before he was even aware of what he was doing, Goodsir turned his face towards Silna's, touching their foreheads together and briefly sliding his nose alongside hers in a nuzzle of his own, exhaling raggedly. Then comprehension caught up to action - and it was as if his cheeks had just caught fire - but Silna didn't flinch, pull away, or otherwise react negatively at all. If anything, he was almost certain she moved a millimeter closer when she touched the tip of her nose to his cheek again.

He lost track of how long they sat there in such fashion: a lovers' embrace, in the most platonic sense of the term, and in its own way far more intimate than if their relationship had been a sexual one. He did not allow himself to drift off into the mire of his own thoughts again. It was easier to stay anchored in the present when he had the twin points of Silna's hands, warm on his skin, to focus his attention on, and the rhythm of her breathing to match his own to. At the very least, it was long enough for his trembling to subside, and the ache in his lungs and throat to ease, but not so long as to become uncomfortable. When Silna finally - still gently - pulled her hands back and straightened up, Goodsir reluctantly opened his eyes to meet hers in wordless thanks, and found his lashes were wet.

He'd had no idea that he had been weeping. Funny. He had thought himself beyond shedding tears by now. (Tears of pain, no. Tears of sheer emotion? Most emphatically yes.)

Silna held his gaze without blinking, eyes traveling over his face as if assessing the state of his mental condition, for a full minute. Goodsir granted her the respect of not looking away, though he badly wanted to. (She could see him, he thought. Not as who he presented himself to be, but as who - and what - he really was. The impression was a disconcerting one.) Then she nodded almost imperceptibly and reached over to collect what remained of his nightshirt. Turning the fabric this way and that, she considered its shape from several angles, picked one, and gestured for Goodsir to bend his left elbow so she could begin to wrap it.

So she did understand how to best treat a dislocated shoulder. But why would she want to set his arm in a sling before he had got his shirt - at bare minimum - back on? He was well broken out in gooseflesh, especially now that she had moved out of his personal space, and the temperature would only drop further when night fell.

"Silna?" he asked, at a loss for how else to inquire after what she was doing.

She glanced at him, as she tied the ends of the improvised sling in a knot behind his neck.

He waved vaguely at his own torso with his free hand. "My shirt…?"

Shaking her head, she got to her feet and went to pick up one of the furs from her sled, which she had placed aside on the makeshift table opposite of the medicine chest. Goodsir also stood and took a small step back, out of the way, as she spread it out on the tent floor like a rug. Then she collected the second fur and laid it down on top of the first; kneeling to smooth it out, she caught his eye again and nodded towards it.

Sit down? Or… oh, what was sleep in Inuktitut. It was one of the basic human needs. Surely they had taught each other the respective words. But hers wasn't coming to mind. Sini… no, hini… hinik… hinik-something. It ought to be in his dictionary. His dictionary, incredibly, had come with him from Terror Camp. But it was also in the medicine chest, which he still didn't want to open. He would have to hope she remembered his word.

"Sleep?" he asked, pointing at the furs.

Silna paused, then nodded again.

(There was that teacher's pride in a well-learned student, pricking at his carbonized heart.)

Goodsir dutifully eased himself down onto what he now understood to be a sleeping pallet and began the awkward process of wrangling his sea boots off with only one hand. Daylight was still peeking through the gaps in the tent walls, but he was opting not to question her motives. Not anymore. Not with the stubbornness she had displayed thus far in bending him to her will. And not that doing so was particularly difficult at the moment. (Not that it had ever been particularly difficult for her to do, now that he thought on it.) If she wanted him to sleep, then he would sleep. She would hear no arguments from him. There really wasn't anything else he wanted to do, anyway. And maybe, just maybe, he could take the sense memory of the warmth of her hands, her forehead pressed to his, with him into unconsciousness and not dream a hellscape of nightmares.

Or - maybe it need not be sense memory. If Silna had planned to attend to any other matters before sundown, it seemed she was abandoning all of them for the time being, because while he'd been removing his boots she had been removing her furred outer layers. The parka, she had folded up and set by where his head would lie, clearly for use as a pillow; the folded pants she set aside for herself.

Maybe, he could forget all about avoiding a hellscape of nightmares and simply go straight to hell itself. Because, after her furs were discarded and she went to tie the tent flap closed, she continued right on with removing the rest of her clothing.

The instant he realized what she was doing, Goodsir very nearly gave himself a bad case of whiplash turning his head quickly in the opposite direction, lest he catch a glimpse of something he really, really shouldn't.

Right. Never mind his being in a state of undress in her presence, and how improper it was; this was infinitely more improper. Improper in the extreme. Entire leagues of impropriety. But Silna didn't know that. As a matter of fact, she probably wasn't even giving it a second thought, if the accounts of Esqimaux life in the Erebus's library were to be believed. She was merely settling down to sleep as she normally would - and surely had done, ever since leaving the expedition for the second time. And she was going about it in such a businesslike manner that ulterior motives were obviously not on her mind. Possibly, this was a sign of her trust and degree of comfort with him, if she was behaving as she would with her own people. Possibly. But instead of feeling pleased, he was only feeling distinctly flushed.

(But still not with any degree of arousal. Good heavens, no.)

(Honestly, this was a little bit hilarious. The strongest emotions he'd felt in months, all in the space of a few hours, and they just had to be varying shades of embarrassment. Not relief, not renewed hope, not happiness. Not even renewed despair. Embarrassment.)

Keeping his face turned away from Silna, Goodsir pulled up his stocking feet to get them beneath the fur blanket and slowly slid down onto his back, being mindful of his arm in its sling. Only when he was was settled and could very firmly close his eyes did he let his head drop onto the folded parka. Then he very slowly exhaled. The fur beneath him hadn't appeared to be a thick one, but it was surprisingly comfortable, given that it was all between him, the meager layer of tent canvas, and the rocks. The fur above him had the weight he would naturally attribute to a large animal skin, but it didn't put a suffocating sort of pressure on his body. The parka made for a more than adequate pillow. By far, it was all the softest material he had come in contact with for years. Already, he could feel the exhaustion in his bones seeping away with the unexpected level of comfort, and he imagined an oily pool of it, slowly spreading out beneath him and soaking into the canvas floor.

Then he sensed Silna crawling up to slip beneath the fur next to him, and held himself very still, as if by doing so he could somehow escape the fact that she was nude and they were sharing a bed.

(Last time had been different. Last time, they had both been fully clothed. Last time, it had been an act of kindness on her part, meant to calm and soothe. This time was -

- what was it?

Necessity?

Or -)

Goodsir was aware of her curling up on her side, keeping a modicum of space between them, close enough to share body heat but not close enough that their bodies touched. Then he felt her shift very slightly, and suddenly the warmth of her hand came to rest over his upper arm.

He couldn't help it; he opened his eyes and, after a beat of hesitation, looked carefully to his right. There was nothing untoward to be seen now that she was covered by the fur blanket, of course. And no eyes to meet, either - she was tucking her face against his shoulder. Another point of human touch to go alongside her hand, just as she given him mere minutes ago, but meant to last longer this time. This time was no less innocent in intent than last time, only much more intimate. Embarrassingly, reassuringly intimate. Comfort, regard, and trust: freely given, expecting nothing in return.

You are safe here, he imagined her saying - could all but actually hear her saying, in the touch of her hand and the stir of her breath on his skin. You are not alone. You need not be afraid any longer.

I was never afraid, he would reply. Not for myself. I was afraid for you.

Don't be afraid for me, Harry Goodsir. Now he was indulging in flights of fancy again. Rest. Go to sleep.

He slowly inhaled, felt a few strands of her hair tickle at his nose, and closed his eyes.