A/N: Never have I seen so many reviews on a fic of mine, I must say! Thanks
a lot, you guys and sorry for the delay. This summer has been quite
stressful and unpleasant, but getting better now that my vacation is coming
up!
Anyway, a few things: Yeah, I guess Vyse does seem a bit out of character. Better keep an eye on that. Also, I was trying to get a 'london street urchin' voice for Marco (Always though that Valua looked like industrial Britain)
Finally, this chapter is more of a drama than the comedy adventure of the first two episodes. Hope you like it anyway and whether you do or not, the humour and adventure will be back next episode. Cheers!
*~*~*~*~*
Episode Three: Whispers in the Dark
*~*~*~*~*
As life-shattering catastrophes went, it didn't really take all that much time to unfold.
He and his crewmates had plunged adventurously into the great and daunting Dark Rift, heedless of the warnings of the older (and somewhat wiser) sea dogs and the pleas of their womenfolk. There was nothing that could have turned them back. When the untold wealth of nations beckoning from just beyond the Rift, there were few indeed who could have quenched his thirst for glory and adventure. Even Polly and little Annie.
So they'd entered the rift, all five of them, Robinson, Max, Haraam, Razor and Kingsley, leaving behind friends and kin alike. They coasted for days therein, doors and portholes bolted up against the swarms of strange and frightening fish with which this strange new world teemed. At least, it seemed like days. They experienced neither night nor day, just an endless dusk, like late afternoon twilight hidden by heavy storm-clouds, promising a downpour which never came. And all the while, the five had regarded in silence the numerous sunken hulks of ships belonging to adventurers more luckless than they.
The worst were the portals. How many there were, they never really counted. It was all Kingsley could do to keep his eyes fixed straight ahead as they sailed from one great grotto to another with the shimmering walls of the passages swirling around them like a monstrous kaleidoscope . And when they'd traversed one portal, they found a grotto almost exactly like it just beyond, with perhaps three more portals leading nowhere.
Once, they'd happened upon a chamber that was markedly different from the rest. It was pitch-black, lit only by the glow of a hundred black stones. The idea of a completely black stone giving out any sort of light at all was curious, to say the least, and yet when Haraam and Robinson had ventured outside and examined the spectacle for themselves, there it was. They were moonstones. They must have been, although it was unclear from which moon they had fallen. Haraam had frequently come across red stones as they fell in the deserts through which he had roamed with his family before seeking a life in the sky, and a silver one had once fallen on Robinson's home island when he was very young. But black moonstones? Where could they have fallen from?
For sure, the mystery had taken their minds off of their disorienting surroundings, but the next chamber held something which jerked their minds firmly back to this alien world.
They only knew it was there, that cursed serpent, when it closed its great, needle teeth on the bow and, with a deft twist of its neck, had sent the little boat hurtling end-over-end through the air. And when they stopped tumbling, there was only time enough for Kingsley to regain his firm grip on the wheel and for Max and Robinson to establish that Razor had struck the bulkhead a little too hard and broken his neck in the tumble before the thing came at them again.
And it had hurled them as a huskra throws a toy across a field, again and again. Each time they'd tried to speed away, deluding themselves that their cheap junk-heap could outrun a creature to which they must have seemed little more than a light snack. Even when the creature's enthusiasm had torn one of the walls of the bridge clean off, even as Robinson watched Haraam and Max tumble out of the injured ship and plummet out of sight to their deaths, he still thought, in a manic, desperate fashion, they could somehow still escape.
He was still thinking of what he would say when he was reunited with a stern-faced Polly when the sudden downward tilt of the ship and Kingsley's ashen face told him beyond a shadow of a doubt it would be quite some time before he would have to endure a bawling-out from her.
Perhaps forever.
*~*~*~*~*
The power of the dream was enough to jerk him back into wakefulness, it was so vivid. He lay there, staring in blank terror into the darkness of the bedroom. For a moment, the ceiling was the rotting timbers of a shipwreck and his duvet, ragged sailcloth. Then his eyes adjusted as true alertness returned, and the vision receded with the last remnants of sleep. And suddenly, the room wasn't so dark; a faint, orange light spilled into the room in a thin line from the closed shutters at one end.
He kicked the covers off of him and swung his legs off of the bed. For a few moments, he sat on its edge, rubbing his temples with his thumbs, widened eyes staring into the vanishing darkness of the room he shared with his wife, at the back of the tavern of which she was hostess.
Then he got unsteadily to his feet and shuffled over the shuttered window, skin crawling with every step through the darkened room until he was close enough to fling open the shutters and let the crisp early morning sunlight stream joyfully in, banishing the darkness.
Beneath his thick, bushy beard, Robinson smiled. Then he pulled on a clean shirt and shuffled out of the bedroom. It was a whole two minutes before the bleakness with which he shared his days set in once more.
*~*~*~*~*
"Robinson?"
It was a little while before he even registered that someone had called his name. He looked up sharply, startled, from his breakfast of bacon, eggs and sausages, looking around quizzically for the source of the voice.
"Robinson!" The voice came again, stronger this time, more impatient. This time, melancholy stupor or no, it was unmistakeable, and he grinned sheepishly at the speaker.
"Sorry, luv," he said scratching the back of his neck. "Mind was elsewhere."
From the kitchen of the Crescent Island tavern, Robinson's long-suffering, albeit infinitely patient wife, Polly, frowned and fixed him with a quizzical, of worried, look. "I was going to ask if the sausages are a little overdone, since you stopped chewing them awhile ago-"
Robinson hastily swallowed and coughed. "Sorry, Pol, guess I must have forgot what I was-"
"-But I guess I should really be asking what's going on beneath that matted mop of yours. So, here goes. What's on your mind, Rob?"
Her quizzical visage metamorphosed subtly into the Look. He stared stupidly at her, not certain how to respond. Which was the usual reaction he had whenever she fixed him with That Accursed Look. Finally, he shook himself and answered, stiffly: "Nothing, Pol. Nothing at all. You're worrying over nothing."
He bent over his meal again, and succeeded in skewering a rasher of bacon and bringing it halfway to his mouth before the space behind his chair filled itself with her presence so silently that he hadn't even been aware she'd left the kitchen behind the bar. And then her hands were on his shoulders, and her voice was by his ear.
"You haven't been sleeping," came her low voice, freezing him into place. He stared down at his half-finished meal for lack of a better place to look. "You're not awake, but you don't rest. You just toss and turn all night, murmuring things that I can't make out. That doesn't sound like 'nothing' to me."
Without thinking, he shifted in his chair, poised to turn on her and ask 'how the hell do you know what goes on in my head?' But when he completed the movement, bringing himself face to face with her, the snarl did not leave his lips. He saw the weary look on her round, pleasant face. The bags under her eyes from countless nights without rest. Always rising early and retiring late to a bed already half-occupied by a husband constantly restless, shifting all night, keeping her from her own rest. While she could do nothing but lie still and pray to all the moons that whatever demons he'd brought with him when he returned from the Rift would just leave him the hell alone.
Strung out and on edge. Because of him.
"I-I-" he mouthed, but the words would not come so readily, now that he saw her, really saw her for the first time in awhile-
He rose from the table and hastily gathered up his meal, gently shaking himself from his wife's grip. He grinned at her, but it came out as an unintended grimace. "I'm sorry, I-" He took a breath and looked directly at her, forcing confidence into his voice. "It's-kind of stuffy in here. I'm going outside for a bit. The Delphinus should be back soon, and Captain Vyse'll be wanting me to help refit it for another run."
He turned away from her and strode purposefully toward the door of the pub, taking care not to look back for fear of catching a glance of his wife's face.
*~*~*~*~*
He sat on the forward lip of Crescent Island, just above the pond, and stared out at the horizon, his empty plate beside him and his strong legs dangling over the edge, not doing much. Remembering, mostly. Or counting clouds. Sometimes he would even shift his gaze down to facilitate a studious contemplation of his navel. Anything, really, so long as his mind remained occupied.
"She's only worried about you," a soft, musical voice came from behind him, its inherent tenderness jerking him into alertness but not startling him. "She's your wife, Robinson. She loves you, and hates to see you like this."
He turned his head and somehow managed a weak grin. "Thanks for the kind words, but as much as I appreciate it-It's really none of your business, Fina."
Fina smiled faintly. He hadn't found it in him to snap at her, regardless of whatever black mood he happened to be enwrapped in at the time. And he wasn't alone in that sentiment. Fina, the third in command of Vyse's crew of Blue Rogues, garnered the affection of virtually everyone on Crescent Island with little effort on her part beyond that which she needed to be who she was. Their respect, she had earned through her actions almost from the day she had first fallen from the stars.
As if he hadn't spoken, she glided up to him and sat down beside him, adjusting her blue bandanna. Robinson shifted uncomfortably but said nothing, returning his gaze to the horizon. He did his best to ignore her unwelcome intrusion, although he was far too polite to simply get up and walk away.
"No, I guess it's not," she conceded, after a brief silence had settled between the two. "But Polly's right. You have been-distant and troubled, to all of us, not just her. It's not our business, but when it starts affecting your work as a crewman, then it will be."
He remained inscrutable, staring out in silence out over the horizon. She frowned, and not for the first time, she wished that Vyse or Aika were there, rather than in the skies with the Delphinus on a mission. She couldn't talk to people like this, not like they could.
"Robinson, we're-"
"It won't affect the way I do my job." The assertion was dead and flat, charged with pent up emotion. "I am handling it."
Fina shook her head, but inside, she was secretly apprehensive. He had never heard that tone from him before. A sign that she was succeeding in bringing whatever demons he carried with him to the surface, where they could be exorcised?
"Robinson, you were in the Rift for years. You can't just walk away from that straight back into a normal life." She swung her legs and grew thoughtful. "After I lost my home and my people, it took me awhile to deal with that loss. But I had Vyse and Aika and Guilder and the rest to help me deal. You've been going along pretending like nothing ever happened and you can't-"
He turned to her, startling her into silence by the suddenness of the movement and the heat in his eyes. "I. Am. Dealing," he growled, enunciating each word and bombarding her with them for maximum clarity, his politeness toward her forgotten for perhaps the first time ever. "I am fine. I feel better with each passing day. I can deal with this on my own." He hugged his knees to his chest, but kept her fixed in his gaze. "I'm the same as always. I don't need you or Pol or anyone else always on my case about something which doesn't affect me in the least!"
The last echoes of the shout that his voice had become faded into the wind, leaving a stunned silence.
"I-" Fina began, but what she had wanted to say failed to materialise in the face of Robinson's fierce, taut glare. Then she composed herself and got to her feet abruptly. "The reason I came down here was to warn you. Tonight we'll be having another blackout drill. We don't need to worry about the Valuans so much anymore, but we should practice anyway, in case any Black Pirates come too close for comfort."
Robinson had already turned his gaze back to the horizon had erected his barrier of silent solitude.
"Just so you know," Fina murmured before turning away from him and making her way down the path back to her quarters.
*Don't shut us out, Robinson* she silently pleaded. *I know what you're going through. And I know how much it hurts just to think about it. But if you don't share some of the pain, after years of going insane on your own in that place, you'll go nuts. Just let us in. Let us in*
*~*~*~*~*
When at last Kingsley passed on, Robinson buried him near to Razor in the damp, mossy turf outside of their ship's final resting place. He'd placed makeshift headstones for Max and Haraam as well, even though he'd never found their bodies.
It had taken awhile for him to die. He, like Robinson, had survived the crash, but only just. And the damage to his body, both internal and external, had been so tremendous that recovery was out of the question. He knew that as well as Robinson, which was why his last few days of life had seemed longer. And all through every hour of them, Robinson had stayed with him, begging, pleading and praying to all of the moons for a miracle, any miracle. At first, the boon he begged was for none of this to have ever been, for all of them to be magically returned to Esperanza, where they would collapse into the arms of their wives and girls and never sail again.
Then, as Kingsley dimmed, his prayers were for them to be transported back to a few minutes before the attack, so that they could turn around at once and, as before, return to town and go no further, ever again.
Still later, the prayer was for the moons to change the world merely so that Kingsley had survived the crash. And so it had gone, with each prayer becoming simpler and simpler in the vain hope that, if he made it easy enough, the moons would answer, and grant him his miracle.
But no such miracle came. And with Kingsley gone, he was alone. Alone under a permanently overcast sky, with a thousand breeds of monstrous fish and one murderous mutant eel for company. And the years had passed, one after the other, until hope gave in to boredom, which gave into despair which in turn gave in to nothingness, an impenetrable, mindless bleakness in which he knew, deep down, he would remain---
---Forever.
*~*~*~*~*
This time, when he woke from his memory-turned-nightmare, it was with a violent shudder and a gasp. In the darkness, his eyes roved frantically, searching for any source of light which would comfort him, drag him back to familiarity. He found none.
Desperate, he leapt up from his bed and stumbled in the dark toward the blinds, or at least where a calmer part of his mind told him they were. Trembling fingers fumbled with the latch, before he roared his frustration and jerked it free. The blinds swung outward on well-oiled hinges, and he gripped the sill with both hands and leaned forward---
---and saw nothing. No torches, or night-beacons. And the clouds he'd seen that morning had thickened, covering the night sky in an impenetrable blanket, snuffing out the light of stars and red moon alike.
It was pitch black.
With a strangled cry, he clambered over the windowsill and tumbled out onto the ground beside the tavern. Scrambling frantically to his feet, he swore, louder this time, and first lurched, then ran forward, the direction did not matter. At one point he passed the living quarters. He must have done, because he vaguely registered a door banging open and someone shouting an indistinct challenge at him, but he paid it no mind, and ran on, until, as was inevitable on a place called Crescent Island, he ran out of earth to run on.
Only an impeccable sense of equilibrium honed through years of sailing enabled him to bear up and stop dead before he ran clean off the edge. There may as well have been no land, with the dark midnight sky filling his vision from horizon to horizon the only thing he could see as he perched on the very edge of the forward lip of the island, above the pond, right where he'd been sitting earlier on in the day.
Yes. Yes, he'd done this before. Stood on the edge of the land in the Dark Rift, wrestling with the madness of solitude. After Kingsley and the rest had died, and the prospect of an eternity alone in that wretched place had seemed too much to bear. But always, he stepped back, coward that he was. But this wasn't the Rift, surely?
Wasn't it? He'd dreamt so much, so much. Dreams of light and companionship and security. But they seemed to have left him, again, replaced by this cursed blackness. Perhaps that had been the dream, and this was merely the cruel reality reasserting himself after taunting him with a vision of what may have been, however vivid it had seemed.
But he had his wits about him now. Oh, yes he did. No more dreams. No more false hopes and useless prayers.
One his feet shifted of his own accord, closer to the edge than it already was. Yes. This time, he would have the courage.
"Robinson!" The voice cut through his black cloud, and he vaguely recognised the name it called as his own. He ignored it. It had done this to him before, the Rift had, and he'd be damned if he'd succumb to it again. As if he wasn't damned enough already, of course.
"Robinson, WAIT!" came the voice again, more persistent and closer. Against his will, he pivoted again, without moving away from the edge of land that was the last frontier between dark torment and blessed oblivion. It was a girl, of some sort, but he didn't know her. Her blonde hair and nightshirt billowed in the wind that had sprung up as she called out to him again. "Stop it! Stay where you are! Don't move!" He stared at this new apparition, but made no reply, and it wasn't long before she'd moved a little closer, up along the path skirting the pond, and was calling out to him again. "Robinson, you're not in the Rift anymore! You're not living like that anymore! Please don't throw it all away. Not now, not that you have a second shot."
For a moment, he stared stupidly at her. Then he laughed, a bitter, nasty laugh. Hell, she'd almost seemed real! Just like that morning. If THAT had even existed. The apparition stepped forward, flanked by several others of the Delphinus crew - He didn't know them, either, did he? - but all it took was another tiny step backward to stop her dead in her tracks. She spoke again, and that sounded real as well, as did the echoing pleas and cajoling of the assembled crew assigned to the base while the Delphinus was away. But he tuned it all out. No. Not this time.
"Robinson."
The voice was soft, yet his ears picked it out of the wind and voices of the crew. He froze, all thoughts of the Edge dispelled in an instant.
A figure made her way beside Fina. In his maddened state, he vaguely recalled that she had a name, although he couldn't recall it. Not that he needed to. He knew full well who she was. He'd seen her every night and every day for all those years in the accursed rift.
Always. Always calling him back from the edge of the island in the rift. Calling him away from blessed oblivion, back into the solitary hell of the rift.
"Robinson, please, listen to me," she was saying, in a steady, gentle tone, slowly walking toward him. "I don't know what you think you're seeing, but it's not that place. It's not the rift. In the morning the sun'll come up, the Delphinus will be back and it'll be another normal day. Don't do it, Robinson. Not now when you're so close."
Yes. He remembered her now. False hope, she was, then as now.
"You're-you're lying," he said in a ragged whisper, swaying slightly. "No sunrise. Never a sunrise. Just dreams, always just dreams, taken away by the dark."
Now she was right in front of him, arms clasped in front of her apron. Now he could see her face, clearly, a round visage framed by dark red hair and a full figure, some might say too full, although he certainly never would. And those eyes stared straight into his. "Not this time, Robinson, or ever. There'll be a sunrise, and we'll watch it together. Every single morning until you understand. Understand that you don't have to jump at shadows anymore. That I love you, and I won't let you go again."
He stared at her, still swaying at the edge of the island, just him and her. Him and her. Before---it had felt like just him, but now.
He sighed, and believed her. Then he fell, for what seemed a boundless eternity, forward away from the edge until her quick embrace snapped him up before he could hit the ground---
*~*~*~*~*
"I think you handled that well, personally."
Fina smiled weakly at Ilchymis as he made to refill her mug of coffee, and waved the kettle away. She and the alchemist were partners in a midnight raid on the tavern's coffee store, much needed after the drama of the previous hour. "Thanks, but it wasn't me who talked him down, remember? If it weren't for Polly, we'd be a sailor short when Vyse and Aika got back."
"You kept him from jumping long enough for her to turn up. And in any case, there wasn't all that much you or even Vyse could have done anyway. She was the only one could have finished what you started, and she did, quite admirably so." He brandished the kettle enticingly. "Sure you don't want anymore?"
Fina's reply came as a yawn as she rose and stretched. "I'm done. Still want to grab some sleep before the Delphinus comes home. They should have been back this afternoon. I wonder what's kept them? I hope Lawrence and Domingo haven't got into too much trouble." Then she cast a glare of mock reproach over the Valuan. "And hadn't you better do the same? Vyse'll need restocking when they ship comes in."
Ilchymis grimaced. "Don't remind me-er, Vice-Captain, sir-I swear I don't know how small a gang can devour so much in the way of supplies on so short a trip."
*~*~*~*~*
Robinson awoke to darkness. He felt a moment of gripping panic and made as if to leap from his bed. But then he felt warm arms tightening gently around him in the dark, sleepy breath on his neck and a whisper in the dark by his ear, saying: "Robinson-its four in the morning-go back to sleep, love, hmm--?"
And, suddenly, he was home once again.
*~*~*~*~*
NEXT EPISODE: The crew relaxes with some spare time, except for Brabham, who is haunted by an elusive squeak that threatens to send the perfectionist engineer over the edge into insanity.
Anyway, a few things: Yeah, I guess Vyse does seem a bit out of character. Better keep an eye on that. Also, I was trying to get a 'london street urchin' voice for Marco (Always though that Valua looked like industrial Britain)
Finally, this chapter is more of a drama than the comedy adventure of the first two episodes. Hope you like it anyway and whether you do or not, the humour and adventure will be back next episode. Cheers!
*~*~*~*~*
Episode Three: Whispers in the Dark
*~*~*~*~*
As life-shattering catastrophes went, it didn't really take all that much time to unfold.
He and his crewmates had plunged adventurously into the great and daunting Dark Rift, heedless of the warnings of the older (and somewhat wiser) sea dogs and the pleas of their womenfolk. There was nothing that could have turned them back. When the untold wealth of nations beckoning from just beyond the Rift, there were few indeed who could have quenched his thirst for glory and adventure. Even Polly and little Annie.
So they'd entered the rift, all five of them, Robinson, Max, Haraam, Razor and Kingsley, leaving behind friends and kin alike. They coasted for days therein, doors and portholes bolted up against the swarms of strange and frightening fish with which this strange new world teemed. At least, it seemed like days. They experienced neither night nor day, just an endless dusk, like late afternoon twilight hidden by heavy storm-clouds, promising a downpour which never came. And all the while, the five had regarded in silence the numerous sunken hulks of ships belonging to adventurers more luckless than they.
The worst were the portals. How many there were, they never really counted. It was all Kingsley could do to keep his eyes fixed straight ahead as they sailed from one great grotto to another with the shimmering walls of the passages swirling around them like a monstrous kaleidoscope . And when they'd traversed one portal, they found a grotto almost exactly like it just beyond, with perhaps three more portals leading nowhere.
Once, they'd happened upon a chamber that was markedly different from the rest. It was pitch-black, lit only by the glow of a hundred black stones. The idea of a completely black stone giving out any sort of light at all was curious, to say the least, and yet when Haraam and Robinson had ventured outside and examined the spectacle for themselves, there it was. They were moonstones. They must have been, although it was unclear from which moon they had fallen. Haraam had frequently come across red stones as they fell in the deserts through which he had roamed with his family before seeking a life in the sky, and a silver one had once fallen on Robinson's home island when he was very young. But black moonstones? Where could they have fallen from?
For sure, the mystery had taken their minds off of their disorienting surroundings, but the next chamber held something which jerked their minds firmly back to this alien world.
They only knew it was there, that cursed serpent, when it closed its great, needle teeth on the bow and, with a deft twist of its neck, had sent the little boat hurtling end-over-end through the air. And when they stopped tumbling, there was only time enough for Kingsley to regain his firm grip on the wheel and for Max and Robinson to establish that Razor had struck the bulkhead a little too hard and broken his neck in the tumble before the thing came at them again.
And it had hurled them as a huskra throws a toy across a field, again and again. Each time they'd tried to speed away, deluding themselves that their cheap junk-heap could outrun a creature to which they must have seemed little more than a light snack. Even when the creature's enthusiasm had torn one of the walls of the bridge clean off, even as Robinson watched Haraam and Max tumble out of the injured ship and plummet out of sight to their deaths, he still thought, in a manic, desperate fashion, they could somehow still escape.
He was still thinking of what he would say when he was reunited with a stern-faced Polly when the sudden downward tilt of the ship and Kingsley's ashen face told him beyond a shadow of a doubt it would be quite some time before he would have to endure a bawling-out from her.
Perhaps forever.
*~*~*~*~*
The power of the dream was enough to jerk him back into wakefulness, it was so vivid. He lay there, staring in blank terror into the darkness of the bedroom. For a moment, the ceiling was the rotting timbers of a shipwreck and his duvet, ragged sailcloth. Then his eyes adjusted as true alertness returned, and the vision receded with the last remnants of sleep. And suddenly, the room wasn't so dark; a faint, orange light spilled into the room in a thin line from the closed shutters at one end.
He kicked the covers off of him and swung his legs off of the bed. For a few moments, he sat on its edge, rubbing his temples with his thumbs, widened eyes staring into the vanishing darkness of the room he shared with his wife, at the back of the tavern of which she was hostess.
Then he got unsteadily to his feet and shuffled over the shuttered window, skin crawling with every step through the darkened room until he was close enough to fling open the shutters and let the crisp early morning sunlight stream joyfully in, banishing the darkness.
Beneath his thick, bushy beard, Robinson smiled. Then he pulled on a clean shirt and shuffled out of the bedroom. It was a whole two minutes before the bleakness with which he shared his days set in once more.
*~*~*~*~*
"Robinson?"
It was a little while before he even registered that someone had called his name. He looked up sharply, startled, from his breakfast of bacon, eggs and sausages, looking around quizzically for the source of the voice.
"Robinson!" The voice came again, stronger this time, more impatient. This time, melancholy stupor or no, it was unmistakeable, and he grinned sheepishly at the speaker.
"Sorry, luv," he said scratching the back of his neck. "Mind was elsewhere."
From the kitchen of the Crescent Island tavern, Robinson's long-suffering, albeit infinitely patient wife, Polly, frowned and fixed him with a quizzical, of worried, look. "I was going to ask if the sausages are a little overdone, since you stopped chewing them awhile ago-"
Robinson hastily swallowed and coughed. "Sorry, Pol, guess I must have forgot what I was-"
"-But I guess I should really be asking what's going on beneath that matted mop of yours. So, here goes. What's on your mind, Rob?"
Her quizzical visage metamorphosed subtly into the Look. He stared stupidly at her, not certain how to respond. Which was the usual reaction he had whenever she fixed him with That Accursed Look. Finally, he shook himself and answered, stiffly: "Nothing, Pol. Nothing at all. You're worrying over nothing."
He bent over his meal again, and succeeded in skewering a rasher of bacon and bringing it halfway to his mouth before the space behind his chair filled itself with her presence so silently that he hadn't even been aware she'd left the kitchen behind the bar. And then her hands were on his shoulders, and her voice was by his ear.
"You haven't been sleeping," came her low voice, freezing him into place. He stared down at his half-finished meal for lack of a better place to look. "You're not awake, but you don't rest. You just toss and turn all night, murmuring things that I can't make out. That doesn't sound like 'nothing' to me."
Without thinking, he shifted in his chair, poised to turn on her and ask 'how the hell do you know what goes on in my head?' But when he completed the movement, bringing himself face to face with her, the snarl did not leave his lips. He saw the weary look on her round, pleasant face. The bags under her eyes from countless nights without rest. Always rising early and retiring late to a bed already half-occupied by a husband constantly restless, shifting all night, keeping her from her own rest. While she could do nothing but lie still and pray to all the moons that whatever demons he'd brought with him when he returned from the Rift would just leave him the hell alone.
Strung out and on edge. Because of him.
"I-I-" he mouthed, but the words would not come so readily, now that he saw her, really saw her for the first time in awhile-
He rose from the table and hastily gathered up his meal, gently shaking himself from his wife's grip. He grinned at her, but it came out as an unintended grimace. "I'm sorry, I-" He took a breath and looked directly at her, forcing confidence into his voice. "It's-kind of stuffy in here. I'm going outside for a bit. The Delphinus should be back soon, and Captain Vyse'll be wanting me to help refit it for another run."
He turned away from her and strode purposefully toward the door of the pub, taking care not to look back for fear of catching a glance of his wife's face.
*~*~*~*~*
He sat on the forward lip of Crescent Island, just above the pond, and stared out at the horizon, his empty plate beside him and his strong legs dangling over the edge, not doing much. Remembering, mostly. Or counting clouds. Sometimes he would even shift his gaze down to facilitate a studious contemplation of his navel. Anything, really, so long as his mind remained occupied.
"She's only worried about you," a soft, musical voice came from behind him, its inherent tenderness jerking him into alertness but not startling him. "She's your wife, Robinson. She loves you, and hates to see you like this."
He turned his head and somehow managed a weak grin. "Thanks for the kind words, but as much as I appreciate it-It's really none of your business, Fina."
Fina smiled faintly. He hadn't found it in him to snap at her, regardless of whatever black mood he happened to be enwrapped in at the time. And he wasn't alone in that sentiment. Fina, the third in command of Vyse's crew of Blue Rogues, garnered the affection of virtually everyone on Crescent Island with little effort on her part beyond that which she needed to be who she was. Their respect, she had earned through her actions almost from the day she had first fallen from the stars.
As if he hadn't spoken, she glided up to him and sat down beside him, adjusting her blue bandanna. Robinson shifted uncomfortably but said nothing, returning his gaze to the horizon. He did his best to ignore her unwelcome intrusion, although he was far too polite to simply get up and walk away.
"No, I guess it's not," she conceded, after a brief silence had settled between the two. "But Polly's right. You have been-distant and troubled, to all of us, not just her. It's not our business, but when it starts affecting your work as a crewman, then it will be."
He remained inscrutable, staring out in silence out over the horizon. She frowned, and not for the first time, she wished that Vyse or Aika were there, rather than in the skies with the Delphinus on a mission. She couldn't talk to people like this, not like they could.
"Robinson, we're-"
"It won't affect the way I do my job." The assertion was dead and flat, charged with pent up emotion. "I am handling it."
Fina shook her head, but inside, she was secretly apprehensive. He had never heard that tone from him before. A sign that she was succeeding in bringing whatever demons he carried with him to the surface, where they could be exorcised?
"Robinson, you were in the Rift for years. You can't just walk away from that straight back into a normal life." She swung her legs and grew thoughtful. "After I lost my home and my people, it took me awhile to deal with that loss. But I had Vyse and Aika and Guilder and the rest to help me deal. You've been going along pretending like nothing ever happened and you can't-"
He turned to her, startling her into silence by the suddenness of the movement and the heat in his eyes. "I. Am. Dealing," he growled, enunciating each word and bombarding her with them for maximum clarity, his politeness toward her forgotten for perhaps the first time ever. "I am fine. I feel better with each passing day. I can deal with this on my own." He hugged his knees to his chest, but kept her fixed in his gaze. "I'm the same as always. I don't need you or Pol or anyone else always on my case about something which doesn't affect me in the least!"
The last echoes of the shout that his voice had become faded into the wind, leaving a stunned silence.
"I-" Fina began, but what she had wanted to say failed to materialise in the face of Robinson's fierce, taut glare. Then she composed herself and got to her feet abruptly. "The reason I came down here was to warn you. Tonight we'll be having another blackout drill. We don't need to worry about the Valuans so much anymore, but we should practice anyway, in case any Black Pirates come too close for comfort."
Robinson had already turned his gaze back to the horizon had erected his barrier of silent solitude.
"Just so you know," Fina murmured before turning away from him and making her way down the path back to her quarters.
*Don't shut us out, Robinson* she silently pleaded. *I know what you're going through. And I know how much it hurts just to think about it. But if you don't share some of the pain, after years of going insane on your own in that place, you'll go nuts. Just let us in. Let us in*
*~*~*~*~*
When at last Kingsley passed on, Robinson buried him near to Razor in the damp, mossy turf outside of their ship's final resting place. He'd placed makeshift headstones for Max and Haraam as well, even though he'd never found their bodies.
It had taken awhile for him to die. He, like Robinson, had survived the crash, but only just. And the damage to his body, both internal and external, had been so tremendous that recovery was out of the question. He knew that as well as Robinson, which was why his last few days of life had seemed longer. And all through every hour of them, Robinson had stayed with him, begging, pleading and praying to all of the moons for a miracle, any miracle. At first, the boon he begged was for none of this to have ever been, for all of them to be magically returned to Esperanza, where they would collapse into the arms of their wives and girls and never sail again.
Then, as Kingsley dimmed, his prayers were for them to be transported back to a few minutes before the attack, so that they could turn around at once and, as before, return to town and go no further, ever again.
Still later, the prayer was for the moons to change the world merely so that Kingsley had survived the crash. And so it had gone, with each prayer becoming simpler and simpler in the vain hope that, if he made it easy enough, the moons would answer, and grant him his miracle.
But no such miracle came. And with Kingsley gone, he was alone. Alone under a permanently overcast sky, with a thousand breeds of monstrous fish and one murderous mutant eel for company. And the years had passed, one after the other, until hope gave in to boredom, which gave into despair which in turn gave in to nothingness, an impenetrable, mindless bleakness in which he knew, deep down, he would remain---
---Forever.
*~*~*~*~*
This time, when he woke from his memory-turned-nightmare, it was with a violent shudder and a gasp. In the darkness, his eyes roved frantically, searching for any source of light which would comfort him, drag him back to familiarity. He found none.
Desperate, he leapt up from his bed and stumbled in the dark toward the blinds, or at least where a calmer part of his mind told him they were. Trembling fingers fumbled with the latch, before he roared his frustration and jerked it free. The blinds swung outward on well-oiled hinges, and he gripped the sill with both hands and leaned forward---
---and saw nothing. No torches, or night-beacons. And the clouds he'd seen that morning had thickened, covering the night sky in an impenetrable blanket, snuffing out the light of stars and red moon alike.
It was pitch black.
With a strangled cry, he clambered over the windowsill and tumbled out onto the ground beside the tavern. Scrambling frantically to his feet, he swore, louder this time, and first lurched, then ran forward, the direction did not matter. At one point he passed the living quarters. He must have done, because he vaguely registered a door banging open and someone shouting an indistinct challenge at him, but he paid it no mind, and ran on, until, as was inevitable on a place called Crescent Island, he ran out of earth to run on.
Only an impeccable sense of equilibrium honed through years of sailing enabled him to bear up and stop dead before he ran clean off the edge. There may as well have been no land, with the dark midnight sky filling his vision from horizon to horizon the only thing he could see as he perched on the very edge of the forward lip of the island, above the pond, right where he'd been sitting earlier on in the day.
Yes. Yes, he'd done this before. Stood on the edge of the land in the Dark Rift, wrestling with the madness of solitude. After Kingsley and the rest had died, and the prospect of an eternity alone in that wretched place had seemed too much to bear. But always, he stepped back, coward that he was. But this wasn't the Rift, surely?
Wasn't it? He'd dreamt so much, so much. Dreams of light and companionship and security. But they seemed to have left him, again, replaced by this cursed blackness. Perhaps that had been the dream, and this was merely the cruel reality reasserting himself after taunting him with a vision of what may have been, however vivid it had seemed.
But he had his wits about him now. Oh, yes he did. No more dreams. No more false hopes and useless prayers.
One his feet shifted of his own accord, closer to the edge than it already was. Yes. This time, he would have the courage.
"Robinson!" The voice cut through his black cloud, and he vaguely recognised the name it called as his own. He ignored it. It had done this to him before, the Rift had, and he'd be damned if he'd succumb to it again. As if he wasn't damned enough already, of course.
"Robinson, WAIT!" came the voice again, more persistent and closer. Against his will, he pivoted again, without moving away from the edge of land that was the last frontier between dark torment and blessed oblivion. It was a girl, of some sort, but he didn't know her. Her blonde hair and nightshirt billowed in the wind that had sprung up as she called out to him again. "Stop it! Stay where you are! Don't move!" He stared at this new apparition, but made no reply, and it wasn't long before she'd moved a little closer, up along the path skirting the pond, and was calling out to him again. "Robinson, you're not in the Rift anymore! You're not living like that anymore! Please don't throw it all away. Not now, not that you have a second shot."
For a moment, he stared stupidly at her. Then he laughed, a bitter, nasty laugh. Hell, she'd almost seemed real! Just like that morning. If THAT had even existed. The apparition stepped forward, flanked by several others of the Delphinus crew - He didn't know them, either, did he? - but all it took was another tiny step backward to stop her dead in her tracks. She spoke again, and that sounded real as well, as did the echoing pleas and cajoling of the assembled crew assigned to the base while the Delphinus was away. But he tuned it all out. No. Not this time.
"Robinson."
The voice was soft, yet his ears picked it out of the wind and voices of the crew. He froze, all thoughts of the Edge dispelled in an instant.
A figure made her way beside Fina. In his maddened state, he vaguely recalled that she had a name, although he couldn't recall it. Not that he needed to. He knew full well who she was. He'd seen her every night and every day for all those years in the accursed rift.
Always. Always calling him back from the edge of the island in the rift. Calling him away from blessed oblivion, back into the solitary hell of the rift.
"Robinson, please, listen to me," she was saying, in a steady, gentle tone, slowly walking toward him. "I don't know what you think you're seeing, but it's not that place. It's not the rift. In the morning the sun'll come up, the Delphinus will be back and it'll be another normal day. Don't do it, Robinson. Not now when you're so close."
Yes. He remembered her now. False hope, she was, then as now.
"You're-you're lying," he said in a ragged whisper, swaying slightly. "No sunrise. Never a sunrise. Just dreams, always just dreams, taken away by the dark."
Now she was right in front of him, arms clasped in front of her apron. Now he could see her face, clearly, a round visage framed by dark red hair and a full figure, some might say too full, although he certainly never would. And those eyes stared straight into his. "Not this time, Robinson, or ever. There'll be a sunrise, and we'll watch it together. Every single morning until you understand. Understand that you don't have to jump at shadows anymore. That I love you, and I won't let you go again."
He stared at her, still swaying at the edge of the island, just him and her. Him and her. Before---it had felt like just him, but now.
He sighed, and believed her. Then he fell, for what seemed a boundless eternity, forward away from the edge until her quick embrace snapped him up before he could hit the ground---
*~*~*~*~*
"I think you handled that well, personally."
Fina smiled weakly at Ilchymis as he made to refill her mug of coffee, and waved the kettle away. She and the alchemist were partners in a midnight raid on the tavern's coffee store, much needed after the drama of the previous hour. "Thanks, but it wasn't me who talked him down, remember? If it weren't for Polly, we'd be a sailor short when Vyse and Aika got back."
"You kept him from jumping long enough for her to turn up. And in any case, there wasn't all that much you or even Vyse could have done anyway. She was the only one could have finished what you started, and she did, quite admirably so." He brandished the kettle enticingly. "Sure you don't want anymore?"
Fina's reply came as a yawn as she rose and stretched. "I'm done. Still want to grab some sleep before the Delphinus comes home. They should have been back this afternoon. I wonder what's kept them? I hope Lawrence and Domingo haven't got into too much trouble." Then she cast a glare of mock reproach over the Valuan. "And hadn't you better do the same? Vyse'll need restocking when they ship comes in."
Ilchymis grimaced. "Don't remind me-er, Vice-Captain, sir-I swear I don't know how small a gang can devour so much in the way of supplies on so short a trip."
*~*~*~*~*
Robinson awoke to darkness. He felt a moment of gripping panic and made as if to leap from his bed. But then he felt warm arms tightening gently around him in the dark, sleepy breath on his neck and a whisper in the dark by his ear, saying: "Robinson-its four in the morning-go back to sleep, love, hmm--?"
And, suddenly, he was home once again.
*~*~*~*~*
NEXT EPISODE: The crew relaxes with some spare time, except for Brabham, who is haunted by an elusive squeak that threatens to send the perfectionist engineer over the edge into insanity.