Harry Goodsir did not dream of hellscapes and nightmares. Instead, he dreamed he was standing in the road outside his flat on Lothian Street. It was an uncommonly beautiful day, with not a cloud to be seen in the sky above, and only a light breeze tugging at his hair. Silna was next to him, taking in their surroundings with wide eyes. Despite the incongruity of her clothing - what Goodsir thought of as her summer parka, the smooth-skinned layer she wore beneath the furred outer parka - none of the passersby seemed to take any notice of her.
"Is this England?" she asked, as she turned in a slow circle.
"Even better," he replied proudly. Stuffing his hands in his coat pockets, he rocked once on the balls of his feet and beamed at her. "This is Scotland. Edinburgh, to be precise. My home."
And how good it was to be home, he thought, drawing in a deep lungful of Scottish air and exhaling it with satisfaction. How he had missed it here: the cozy rooms he shared with his brother John and friends Edward and George, the banter and camaraderie around the hearth, being surrounded by brilliant minds of all fields. His work as conservator of the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh had not been without its share of difficulties and annoyances, but such was the lot for any man of science these days; you accepted that funding would always, inevitably, be funnelled elsewhere and continued on with your endeavours as best you could. None of it made him love the city itself any less. He had been happy here. And he was quite excited to show it off to Silna - to prove to her that his homeland wasn't such a terrible place, that there were good people here.
"Edinburgh," she repeated, carefully, working through the unfamiliar syllables with a slight narrowing of the eyes. "All of this is your home?"
It was clear that she had no frame of reference for putting everything that surrounded them into context. The pavement beneath their feet, the tenements rising four storeys high on either side of the narrow little street, the shops with their wares in the windows on the ground floor - none of it was within her realm of experience.
(Funny, how she could speak the English language so fluently, and understand him perfectly well, yet have no working knowledge of what many of the words she used actually meant.)
"Not quite. I live here." Goodsir removed his hands from his pockets and gestured to the door marked 21. "You've got to climb a few flights of stairs first - we have half the top storey, there's a lovely view of Holyrood Park..."
Silna had moved to approach the door, and was very slowly pressing her palm to the bricks on one side of it, eyes following the pattern of mortar between them up the building's front. After a moment, she pulled her hand back, and rubbed her fingertips over her palm, as if studying the texture of the grit deposited there. Then she turned around to look at him. "You do not move with the seasons?"
"No," he replied. "It isn't necessary to, not here. Our shelters are permanent; they're built to withstand all the seasons. We haven't got to hunt to survive. Do you see, just down there?" And he went to lightly take Silna's elbow and turn her in the direction he was pointing. "That's a butcher's shop. You can purchase fresh meat from there. No hunting required at all - oh, well. Not for me, at least, and others like me who live in the city. There are some who do still hunt, but it's mostly for sport now."
She regarded the butcher's shop with an impassive expression on her face. "You live very strangely in Scotland. I do not understand it."
Goodsir huffed a soft note of amusement. Hunting for sport and not survival. The concept had to be as alien as the surface of the moon - just as distant as he had thought of Edinburgh from Nunavut. "It's alright. I might say the same of you."
Glancing sidelong at him, Silna did not reply for a long moment. Then, quietly, she said, "You must think my people very uncivilized, in comparison to yours."
"No." All his gentle mirth drained away in an instant; he swung around to face her, heart suddenly in his throat just as it had been when they were forced to part ways, the expression on his own face just as painfully earnest as it was then. The pedestrians on the street continued to pass them as if they did not exist. "I don't think that at all. You are different, but no less civilized. I think -"
And the bile curdled in his gut, remembering all he had bore witness to in the Arctic, the slow and grinding breakdown of order and class and morals. The loss of any semblance of human decency. Survival at the cost of one's own soul. All of them, all the men of the expedition, products of the supposedly superior empire he and Silna now found themselves stood in the heart of, representatives of the supposedly superior civilization... reduced to even less than the so-called savage races they looked down upon.
"- I think you must be more civilized than us," he finished weakly. "Look at what we became in the absence of all this."
Silna regarded him in silence for several beats, face still impassive as it almost always was; her eyes, however, had softened into a sad sort of kindness and - dare he think it - affection.
"You are a good man, Harry Goodsir," she said, placing her hand lightly on his chest.
Suddenly, she was the only thing in the whole entire world that mattered.
"I tried to be. I tried my best." He wanted to look away, in shame, but now his eyes seemed to be tethered to hers by an invisible string. The rope with which one tossed a life ring to a drowning man, perhaps. And it hurt. He didn't deserve any of the kindness or the affection he saw there. (He didn't deserve her trust or her regard.) Not after he had betrayed his entire sense of self in what he had done to William Gibson.
(They weren't really in Edinburgh, were they? He wasn't safely home, and Silna wasn't there with him. They never would be.)
"But my best wasn't good enough." His heart was beating very fast, hammering against his ribs, all the self-hatred he had been too numb to truly feel before now clamoring to be let out. "My best didn't matter. It made no difference at all."
"It mattered to me," Silna replied. "It made all the difference in the world."
And she smiled, very slightly. Goodsir felt like his rib cage was cracking open of its own accord.
"Even if you only helped one person — if you only saved one person," she continued, "does that not hold any meaning for you?"
He sniffed a laugh again, utterly devoid of sound and humor this time. "You never truly needed my help. You never needed saving."
"No," she agreed readily. "But you do."
Goodsir opened his eyes to darkness, and the sound of wind beating at the canvas walls of the tent. It was enough like being suspended inside an enormous beating heart — and he was as warm as if he were contained within some giant being's chest cavity — that for a moment he was supremely disorientated. Then a little bit more awareness trickled back into his consciousness, and he remembered where he was. Not in Edinburgh. (Of course not.) He was, as ever, still on King William Island. Surrounded not by the familiar streets of home but by miles and miles of nothing but Arctic shale. Breathing in Arctic air, under an Arctic moon (the same as an Edinburgh moon, but it never felt that way) -
...no, he was breathing in Silna's hair. Even more so than when he'd closed his eyes; she'd nuzzled a bit closer against his shoulder, and his head had lolled fully to the right, while they slept. Her hand was still laid on his arm, but now her arm was crooked to nestle in the space between his arm and his side. And he was fairly certain the light spot of pressure against his thigh was one of her knees.
He wasn't bothered.
The concept of physical contact with a fully naked woman was, he found, slightly easier to digest when one's mind was fogged over with sleep.
Idly, breathing slowly in and out, he wondered what had woken him. The wind? The stiffness in his neck, perhaps. (Carefully, so as not to disturb Silna, he turned his head back straight, and tried not to wince at the protesting ligaments and tendons.) Or the pain in his injured shoulder: a deep, pulsating knot of heat in the vicinity of the joint, gently throbbing in time with the beat of his heart. Maybe the warmth? He was incredibly warm - almost uncomfortably so, in fact, beneath the fur blanket. His long johns were starting to stick to his legs, his feet felt damp in their socks, and there was a trickle of perspiration forming where his arm in its sling was resting against his stomach. Goodsir hadn't been so uniformly warm since… well, since that last summer before the expedition set sail. Not even his bunk on the Erebus had been so toasty.
Silna's disrobing was beginning to make a great deal of sense, in retrospect.
It wasn't so embarrassing now, sharing his bed with her while she was undressed. He was simply grateful for the companionship. After three hellishly long months of intentionally isolating himself from the rest of Hickey's band, and the gnawing loneliness giving way to numb emptiness… knowing she wasn't averse to physical closeness… it was startlingly easy to imagine rolling onto his side and gathering her against his chest, the way a child might clutch at a favorite toy as they slept. He might have even actually done it, were it not for his shoulder, and not wanting to disturb her.
I don't want to disturb you… please don't go…
His thoughts, only half-conscious at most, were already drifting again; the excess of warmth was ultimately a very minor annoyance in the grand scheme of things.
...stay with us… I'll talk to the men and… and make it safe for you…
...we owe you that…
...I...
...I can't go on alone…
There were clouds in the sky now, great billowy white ones, scudding across the horizon. (and shirts like billowy clouds) The breeze was just as gentle as it had been in Edinburgh, and carried with it not the odor of the city, but the tang of salt. Goodsir was sitting in the grass on a low hill above a narrow crescent of sandy beach, watching the waves roll in against the rocky outcrops that bordered it, contentment on his face and in his heart. This place was as familiar to him as the back of his own hand, and dear beyond measure; even more so than Edinburgh could or would ever be, it was home.
"I like it better here," Silna said.
He looked aside at her. She was sat to his right, weaving long stalks of grass and wildflowers into a braid. As she worked, her eyes kept returning to the vista before them, squinting in the sunlight. Her summer parka still looked out of place, albeit less so than it had in the city, and yet she seemed more… at ease, somehow. A bit more like she belonged there. Goodsir wasn't at all surprised. They were surrounded by the natural world, a stone's throw from the sea; it might not be her natural world or her sea but it was still the kind of environment she was familiar with. She could fit into it much more easily than she could a city street made of cobblestones and dusted in coal.
"We call it the Firth of Forth," he replied, indicating the expanse of water with a slight tilt of his head. "The Romans called it Bodotria." A quiet sniff of amusement and a small, self-deprecating smile. "I gave that name to a new genus of crustacea I discovered in it."
Bodotria arenosa. A suitable name for a tiny creature found in the sandy banks of the Firth of Forth. He had thought himself quite clever.
"And this?" Silna asked, indicating the general vicinity of their patch of grass.
"Billow Ness." Goodsir's smile turned fond. "I spent a great deal of time here as a child, with my brother John."
Silna's fingers went still, and she looked past him in the direction of the village he knew lay a short distance away down the shore. Then she focused her gaze back on him and said, thoughtfully, "This is the place of your birth, then. This is your home."
He nodded. "It is." Or as much as one's place of birth could still be called home when you no longer lived there, anyway.
"What is your name for it?"
"Anstruther. Fifeshire."
She repeated the names, slowly, like she had done before with Edinburgh - funny how he could remember that, he didn't usually recall much of his dreams - gaze traveling over the Firth, and the beach below their hilltop, and the arc of grass and rocks and sand leading to the village, as if she were seeing it all with new eyes. He wondered how the revelation that he had been born and raised here made it look any different to her.
"It is beautiful," she said quietly, at length.
The sight of her - sitting comfortably in the thick grass as if she did belong there, Scottish wildflowers twined in her hands, the afternoon sun making a halo of the errant wisps of hair fluttering about her face - seized a sudden hold on his heart, with an ache so strong it made him catch his breath. But out of what emotion, it was difficult to say.
And her…?
This place is beautiful to me, even now.
...this place is her home…
This is your home.
Goodsir blinked, and neither Silna nor the Scottish countryside vanished like so much smoke into a winter sky, leaving him alone in a gray void, as he had abruptly feared they would. Fear? How odd. For a fraction of a moment - he had almost thought - but no. Not a variant of affection, then. She merely made a lovely tableau he would hate to see go. Tentatively, he tried to resume breathing. Fear. Odd. "There is no land more so," he replied. "I would be a sorry son of Scotland if I professed otherwise, but I do truly believe it."
She was looking down now at the braided flowers still in her lap, which she had deftly finished into a crown while he was speaking. After a beat, she held it out to him.
"You see beauty everywhere, in everything," she said, as he accepted the flower crown and carefully turned it about in his hands, inspecting it. Celandine, heather, sea pink, oysterplant. Not all of them were immediately at hand, not where they were sitting. How - where - had she acquired them? "I admire that about you, Harry Goodsir."
He couldn't help himself - the tips of his ears blushed scarlet, as his lips quirked in a pleased little smile. "I wish you'd call me Harry."
I might just call you doctor.
(Dr. MacDonald had said that. Dr. MacDonald hadn't seen what he had become. Dr. MacDonald wasn't here. He was -
- he was -
"I should be going too, only I don't know if Dr. Peddie's gone to Terror or Erebus. I didn't see him to ask."
"Captain… I heard Tom Hartnell say we lost Dr. Peddie as well.")
Goodsir's smile faltered at the unwelcome intrusion of memory; in an attempt to hide his twinge of disquiet, he delicately balanced the flower crown on the tips of his fingers and and lifted it to place on top of Silna's head. (He had too much hair for such things. And flowers suited her far more than they did him.) "There," he said, before she could say anything in reply. "Beauty for beauty."
His old friend Edward Forbes would be laughing, to hear him make such a pronouncement. But he meant it sincerely. Of course Silna was beautiful. Why wouldn't she be? Just because she wasn't English, or fair-skinned, or civilized, didn't mean -
Unlike him, Silna did not blush. She simply smiled, and for a moment that seemed to suspend itself between heartbeats, they were both smiling at each other and nothing else needed saying out loud.
He found himself wondering if he ought to reevaluate the conclusion that he'd just caught his breath only out of a sudden and illogical fear. Odd.
Then she got to her feet and the moment was over. "Are you ready to leave?"
"Leave?" He frowned up at her. He hadn't been planning on leaving their relaxing spot for some time. There was still plenty of light left in the day, and nothing else that needed doing. "I don't follow. Are you taking me somewhere?"
She looked toward the sea, and said, "Home."
Goodsir's frown deepened. "We are home. I mean - I am."
"Not yet." This time, when Silna turned to him, her smile was also gone, and her eyes had taken on an almost sorrowful cast. "You have to survive first."
And she began to walk away, down the slope of the hill towards the crescent of sandy beach below, where the water had suddenly gone dark and abnormally still.
The twinge of disquiet came back as a sharp pang, curling around the pervading contentment in his heart and pushing in roots there; Goodsir scrambled to his feet and hurried after her. The breeze was picking up, and the temperature was dropping, while the sun turned from gold to silver. By the time Silna reached the sand, the ground had become an unending spread of flinty, gravelly rocks, and he could see the heat of his breath in the air. The water was now thick with pancake ice. And instead of the distant Lothian shore across the Firth, there was a looming tower of a landmass that resembled, rather disturbingly, Beechey Island.
How had they traveled so far in only a handful of meters?
Silna didn't stop when she reached the water; she stepped right out onto one of the disks of ice, then another. Incredibly, they supported her weight, bobbing gently in place.
"I - I don't -"
Goodsir was gasping for breath as he stumbled to a halt at the water's edge, and not just from the burst of exertion. Dread had his entire chest in a vise now - dread, and fear, and the creeping realization that he must still be dreaming. He wasn't in Anstruther. He wasn't in Edinburgh. He wasn't in Scotland, period. He was still lost in the Arctic, and Silna was crossing the ice without him - leaving - going back to her life, her people, her home - he would never see his home again -
"Wait!" he blurted, and once more did not have it within him to feel ashamed at the amount of despair coloring the plea. But she was already turning around to face him again, now dressed in her heavy furs. When he looked down at himself, he was (inexplicably) in full officer's dress, complete with Welsh wig, cap, greatcoat, muffler, and half-mittens.
"I am not leaving you," she said. "I will not leave you and Aglooka to die. I will see you safely home. But you must allow me to. I cannot lead you if you will not follow."
He was struck by the strangest impression: that although he could still understand her perfectly, she was no longer speaking in English.
She took a step backwards, onto another circle of pancake ice that somehow did not sink beneath her weight. Goodsir flinched, an aborted, instinctive move to catch her when she fell, because the ice failed to ditch her into the sea as it rightfully ought to.
"I-I can't," he protested. "The ice won't hold me, too. It isn't possible. I - I'll drag us both down."
"Harry," she said.
He felt his heart thud to a stop, breath caught once more on an ache he was unable to assign a name or meaning.
Silna extended a mittened hand, and asked, "Do you trust me?"
(He could hear her, but her mouth was not moving.)
"Yes." There was no hesitation to his response. He absolutely trusted her. With his life, and Crozier's. And not just because she knew how to survive here, and he did not. "Yes, I do."
Without moving a single facial muscle, she replied, "Then let me guide you home."
He looked at the ice, then her hand, and then her face.
I lied. I am afraid.
You need not be afraid any longer. You are not alone.
Heart hammering back to life with a roar of blood in his ears, Goodsir reached out to grasp her hand, and took a trembling step onto the first disc of pancake ice.
He opened his eyes to the absence of warmth, rather than too much of it, and in the midst of sucking in a breath of loss that felt like a physical blow to the chest: immediately awake, very conscious of where he was, yet somehow more disorientated than before. Christ, he didn't want to be here, he wanted to be home, he wanted to be where everything was familiar and made sense even though he wasn't at all certain that it was or did anymore - but he didn't want Silna to - he didn't want her to - what did he want? - he'd wanted to hold her and never say goodbye again - but where was she, she had just been right next to him, she'd said she wasn't going to leave him - he wasn't alone - no, that was only a dream, she didn't say that, she can't say that -
A hand touched his chest, palm gently pressing against the rapid beating of his heart, and he saw that Silna was in fact still next to him. The difference was that she was awake now, sitting up, and - from what he could discern, in his prone position and in the dark - fully dressed again. Above her head, the sliver of sky visible between the sections of tent was just beginning to lighten with the coming dawn.
So they had slept through the night, then. Goodsir couldn't recall the last time he'd had that many hours of uninterrupted sleep, and deep sleep at that. He didn't think it was customary for Silna to sleep for so long, and yet she had stayed anyway.
You are not alone.
Drawing in another, slower breath, he swallowed past the aborted sense of panic and despair choking his throat, and reached up to cover her hand with his own. (On his bare chest, he realized, belatedly. She had folded the fur blanket down. But that was fine. He still wasn't bothered. Once again, gratitude for the contact was overriding what remained of his sense of propriety.) If her expression changed at all, he could not see it; after a moment, she lightly patted his chest, once, and withdrew her hand. Then she got to her feet and moved away
- Leave? I don't follow -
to undo the flap at the tent's entrance, carefully and quietly drawing it back and securing it. Settling down on her haunches, she turned so she was silhouetted against what little pre-dawn light there was to be had, and after waiting to be certain he was watching her - where else would he look? They had no other means by which to communicate, and she clearly had something to say - pantomimed throwing something, then raising something to her mouth.
Eating? Food. Throwing something? Or slashing with something? Either way - hunting. She was going out to hunt for food. It seemed a reasonable interpretation, seeing as there was no food to be had here in the camp. He didn't want her to go, not with his newly-acquired and utterly pathetic fear of being left alone, but… needs must. When Silna came back to his side to peer closely at him, trying to ascertain whether or not he had caught her meaning, he nodded.
"Be safe," he whispered hoarsely.
(He had said that to her, once. She had seemed to understand him then. Maybe she would now.)
She might have smiled, just a little. It was next to impossible to tell. Then she touched his chest again, as if urging him to remain where he was; stood, and left the tent. Goodsir could hear her footsteps crunching on the rocks outside, soon accompanied by the rustle of her sled, both receding into the distance until the only sound was once more that of the wind beating against the canvas walls.
