the Dalaverse

Hornblower drabble series, six of 'em, exactly one hundred words each. Set at the end of "Retribution," so the angst...yeeeah.



Continental Drift


1.
“See?” he says. “Better already.”

His voice is weakening and the stretch of muscles makes his face feel like wet clay. He scarcely notices, because Horatio is laughing. It’s weak and shaking, uncertain of its footing, but it’s a laugh nonetheless. Dark eyes are cast to the floor in an attempt at concealment. That doesn’t matter. It has always been more about what they have left out than what they have said.

Now the dear face is blurring to muted grays, and he knows himself to be rounding the bend.

There is no fear. He has made Horatio laugh, this one last time.


2.
The breath stills in his throat as blue eyes go dim, as though he now follows where once he led. Then the ache in his lungs compels him to draw another breath, and he understands that he must keep doing this one thing or it all becomes meaningless. Beyond that, he is lost.

His eyes are dry, which stirs shame in his heart even though he knows tears to be unmanly. This emptiness, this void, surely it is betrayal.

Or perhaps it’s his punishment. To feel entirely too much for so long, and now to feel nothing – there is a symmetry to it.


3.
He watched a brilliant mind fail, blaming his own inadequacies on some days, the unbending madness of those conducting that farce of a trail on others. Worst were the days on which he blamed the captain himself.

It was a horror that crept upon him in the night. Helping the boy has eased it somewhere, as has the ascent of Sawyer into the peace he so needed and deserved.

But this – the young man with his head bowed, staring at his hands in his lap, his face pinched tight and pale...

He fears how this image will wend itself into his dreaming mind.


4.
He’s the strongest of the prison guards, so it comes as no surprise when the doctor asks for his help in removing the lieutenant’s body. They’ve been calling him traitor in the streets, but he doesn’t look dangerous, he merely looks young – no older than his own Peter, surely.

He waves away the flies that have already begun to swarm in this heat, one eye on the still, silent man in the chair.

Tonight the younger children will ask him what the dead man looked like, and he will answer, Not half so sad and terrible as the one yet living.


5.
Clive and Bush are standing by the door when he arrives. A jerk of the doctor’s chin indicates the reason why.

Damned idiots, he thinks fiercely, fingers clenching on the papers in his hand. When he approaches the chair, however, he understands their reluctance.

He smooths out the orders, forcing his hand to relax. The boy will have need of this commission in more ways than one.

“Mr. Hornblower, it is time to leave this place.” Horatio looks up at the gentle touch on his shoulder. Muscles tense enough to break – if his eyes are any indication, he already has. “Come along, son.”



6.
He watches Pellew succeeding where he and Clive have failed these past few hours. He’s glad of it, for the sooner Horatio leaves that room, the better. His heart contracts nonetheless. On the Reknown he had thought the three of them might – but they had both withdrawn from him. Time left only for each other, even before they realized how short it would be.

Eventually Horatio succumbs to Pellew’s coaxing, wobbling on cramped legs like an newborn colt, blinking at the prison windows as if he never noticed the sun going down.

And he flees, unable to bear that blank stare again.