Chapter Text
A hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere
and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles
~ Christopher Reeve
PERCY
God, something stinks. Lifting my head from my hands I look around the dimly lit tap room. Calling it a tap room is generous, I think. It’s an open quasi-dining room with battered tables and chairs set at intervals on a sticky floor. I don’t want to think what caused the stick—or the stink, for that matter; my nose is already setting my overactive imagination into a gallop.
The patrons of this less-than-fine establishment look much the worse for wear with clothes that hadn’t seen a washtub for quite a while. Even from my table in the far corner of the room, I can see faces and hands with days, if not weeks, worth of dirt embedded under ragged fingernails and lining the creases of bodies and faces too long outdoors in the sun.
Of course, I muse, rubbing my own less than spotlessly clean hands over my face, who am I to judge? Ah, that is the question. Who am I? I’m not sure I know anymore. I’ve been so many people in my almost fifty years on this earth.
Almost fifty? Sigh, when did I grow old? No matter. Being old is still better than being dead in my book. Almost fifty, it boggles the mind. Granted, I still have a year or two to go, and I’ll always be younger than—. But no matter, I can’t let it put me off my task.
I look at my surroundings again, circling back to the question—who am I? Really.
I started out as the only child of a Methodist minister. My father was an exceedingly devout man, given to sermonizing from streetcorners. He was doing just that when he was struck down by an errant mail coach and killed. Maybe God didn’t like his sermons, either.
That left just my mother and me—a grossly unprepared boy, as head of the family. As to the rest, well, mother did what she could to bring in money, but it was never enough. I did odd jobs, but as with mother, the money wasn’t sufficient to keep us in room, clothing, and food. We could usually manage one or two out of the three at any given time. But all three at once? Never.
I was fourteen when I found my calling. Well, not a calling, but I found something I could do, something that I almost learned to like, that brought in the money we needed for daily survival. I managed for us until she met the General. He was a good man and, surprisingly to me, never tried to take advantage. Even after mother was gone, he continued to take care of me, watch over me. It was in this role, as my stepfather, that I met the man who changed my life. The man who, in an odd sort of way, set me on the path that brought me to this place today. The man with whom I made the mistake of falling in love.
And, God help me, I still love him. Sometimes I think he loves me, even though he won’t or can’t say it. It’s there in his eyes—ses beaux yeux. He wants to say it but something, or maybe someone, is holding him back. Or maybe it’s all bullshit and I’m deluding myself.
Still, I left him in rather dire straits. And in spite of everything that’s gone between us, I do owe him my life. He saved me from the gallows when he didn’t have to. In fact, it would have been far more convenient for everybody concerned—himself included—if he’d just let them hang me.
But he’s an honorable man, you see. He clings to his honor as if it’s all he has left. Because honor, to him, is a most precious thing. And his honor wouldn’t let him just go away quietly and let me be hanged for a crime he is as guilty of as I.
Luckily for me, he’s also a very clever man. A fact which I knew in the abstract, but hadn’t really had it driven home to me until many years later when we’d become, somewhat unknowingly, adversaries.
I feel my lips rising in a smile despite the gloom and stench surrounding me. That was a fun time.
It was a treat for me, having already grown bored as an intelligencer for the Secret du Roi, to suddenly find an Englishman—an adversary—who matched me in daring and deviousness. And what an added pleasure it was to discover, after six months of intense searching, that Buttercup—such a ridiculous code name for such a man—was none other than my erstwhile savior and stepbrother.
Ah, those were fun years. Matching wits with him almost made up for the ennui of my married life. Yes, Baron Amandine and his sister welcomed me with open arms into their little family, especially knowing how well suited I was to their particular lifestyles, and I did fit right in. But mon Dieu, such deadly boring people. Still, I liked living the life of a pampered French noble and there was the lovely sub-gardener when the boredom became overwhelming.
I even somewhat enjoyed coming to this benighted country as a quasi-ambassador, first for the Baron’s pleasure and then to act as liaison between the Marquis de La Fayette, the Colonials, and the French. And then he turned up again, and again, and again, and again.
What was one to think except that we were fated to be together? Oh, he never saw that—refused to see it, and I didn’t want to, and yet, here were are. Here. Now. Merde.
Which brings me to where I am today, The odor wafting up from my plate grows more unappetizing the longer it sits before me. I’m as undecided about eating as I am about the almost-promise I made to him during our last meeting.
I close my eyes, seeing again the near hopelessness he tried so hard to hide in his. Go and tell my son that I love him. Please. The naked desperation in his voice near tore my cold, dead heart asunder. I want to run, to get away from Richardson and his madness and John and his desperate need. But I can’t.
I’m not strong and I’m not brave. He needs me to be a hero, to deliver his message, and, I think, something else. I could read it in his eyes. “… tell my son…” The unspoken message. Tell my son where I am. Tell my son I need his help. Tell my son to save me.
I can’t.
Against my better judgment, I pick up a spoonful of what the serving woman told me was beef and onions with some other suspicious bits of vegetables and hope for the best as I swallow it down. Despite being told repeatedly that I wasn’t a prisoner on board the Pallas, my godsdamned host wasn’t exactly forthcoming with amenities like clean bathing water and fresh food. Still, I was allowed to leave, putting me in a distinctly better position than Lord John.
John. I sigh heavily.
John hadn’t looked well when last we met. He was, for want of a better turn of phrase, decidedly unkempt. But then, I suppose, being held prisoner in a tiny shipboard cabin and constantly threatened for months on end would wear on even the strongest man. John is strong, strong-willed—stubborn was more like it to my way of thinking—and he’d led an active life. Even in the Americas, in wartime, he was fitter than most men of his age. Certainly fitter than I who am a few years younger.
But gods, he looked bad. He was thin, and pale, so pale, even beyond his natural fairness. His beautiful hair was dull and stringy, hanging limply down past his shoulders. The long elegant fingers I so loved to have touch me, were rough and reddened, the skin cracked around the knuckles, and his nails, torn and jagged. It was clear to me that he hadn’t been allowed to have a decent wash in weeks.
At first they’d let him up on the deck to walk, always escorted by a hulking sailor towering over him. But I couldn’t remember the last time he’d been allowed to take the air—certainly some time before I saw him.
God, the last time I saw him, he’d been chained by the ankle to a bolt in the cabin wall. He was barefoot, his stockings were gone, probably shredded weeks ago. I could easily see where the rough shackle had abraded the skin around his ankle. And that beard.
I teased that he looked like a young Father Christmas, but in truth, it shocked me. It came as no surprise that Richardson didn’t let John have a razor but at the very least, he might have allowed one of the sailors to give him a scissors trim. Hell, they could have tied him to a chair if they didn’t trust him. But to leave him in such a condition… this was far beyond any bounds of decency. I knew Richardson was a madman, but to see the depths of his cruelty displayed such almost made me weep.
But I couldn't, not in front of John. He would have hated that, even more than I. We both still had our pride at least. For all the good that did either of us.
I shoveled another spoonful of the questionable stew into my mouth, swallowing it down with sour beer. Go and tell my son that I love him. Please. The words, the undertone of helplessness twined with hopelessness cut me to my very core. I saw something in John’s eyes that I never thought I would see: resignation. He was near to giving up.
All these years, everything he’d gone through—and I’d kept tabs on him, so I did have a fair idea of the life and loves—or what passed for loves—in Lord John Grey’s life. And to now find himself a prisoner—not even a prisoner of war but an innocent, lured via trickery and treachery to a place where he would be kidnapped and used as nothing more than bait in a trap meant for another was beyond mere cruelty. He deserved so much better.
I’d overheard bits and pieces of Richardson’s tirade, the mad stories of slavery being abolished in the future and needing to stop Pardloe from speaking to Parliament. John may have been a bargaining chip in the beginning, but I had no doubt we’d gone beyond that now. No matter what happened, if Richardson stopped Pardloe or not, if he used those cursed documents he’d forced me to sign or not, he would find a way to kill John. Whether he met his death at the end of a hangman’s noose, or in the cabin of that foul ship, I had no doubt that John was doomed.
I’m a coward. I freely admit that. Being a hero is for other men. Men like John or Pardloe or La Fayette. Even when I was a soldier, many, many years ago, when I still believed good and love conquered evil, I was still afraid. I hated being a soldier, being responsible for leading men into battle and, God willing, leading them out of it. But I did it. Not for myself, but for him. I so wanted to be like him, to be with him. I loved him then. Even when I betrayed him, in his own room, in his own bed, I loved him.
I love him now. I told him so, and when I did, and I looked into those pale blue eyes, just for a moment, I thought I saw something. A flicker of feeling directed at me. I don’t know what it was. I think I don’t really care. I know what it wasn’t. It wasn’t scorn or anger or hatred. He seemed to soften for just a brief moment, after he spoke of his son. And he looked at me. Really looked at me. Seeing me, seeing all of me, for the first time, I think, since that horrible day when I shattered our dreams.
And suddenly, I knew what it was I’d seen in his eyes: weariness, surrender to his fate, and forgiveness for my being with Weber. He couldn’t say it. He didn’t have to. I knew with a certainty. John forgave me.
The bastard. He forgave me for betraying him as I did and for everything I’d done to him—whether he knew about it or not— since then. And again, fool that I am, I couldn’t refuse those beautiful blue eyes that captured me and pulled me in from the first time I saw him at Lavender House and haven’t completely let me go to this very day.
I grind my teeth, grasping my glass so hard I’m surprised it doesn’t shatter. The bastard forgave me.
Fuck.
Now I have to save him.
*****************
JOHN
He’s gone.
Percy’s gone.
I’m alone once more and the shakes set in again. It took all my self-control to stand straight, to keep my hands from trembling, and my voice firm and strong. He was my last chance and I knew it.
Goddamned Perseverance Wainwright was my last, best hope of getting off this ship alive. I truly am doomed. And yet, that small stubborn spark of hope within me refuses to die. Maybe this time I could trust him to do the right thing. Maybe…. Please.
My mind shifts back over the years, past the anger and the hurt, back to when I first met him. No, not those first sexually charged flirtatious few moments at Lavender House, but to the day Hal and I met our future stepfather for luncheon and he brought along his stepson. Hal was annoyed at the General’s presumption, but he managed to hide it reasonably well.
Me? I was caught off guard, and that’s not something I let happen very often—says the man kidnapped off the waterfront in Savannah. The shock of recognition I saw in his eyes when I turned to meet him, I hope to God I managed to cover my own better. I think so. At least I didn’t get the side-eye from my damnably perceptive brother. And Percy recovered quickly as well.
That’s not really so surprising, as most men in our position have, by the time they’ve reached their early twenties, learned to school their faces and choose their words judiciously. Come to think of it, I wonder if his seemingly flustered mistake of addressing Hal as ‘Your Grace’ was actually a mistake or an attempt to cover up his reaction to seeing me? Hmm. No. Upon further reflection, it was an honest mistake, I think. It was probably one of the last honest reactions Percy had in his life.
That’s unfair. Not that he wasn’t a liar. We all are—we sodomites. We have to be. But I do think he’s always been mostly honest with me. I think that’s why it hurt so much when I saw him with Weber. It wasn’t that he was with another man, or even that he was with another man in my bed. It was that I believed we had something beyond the superficial. I believed him when he said he loved me. If I’d said it back to him, all those long years ago, would it have made a difference?
Well, he didn’t exactly say he loved me. But I know he would have come to it. That first night in his rooms in London when we spoke of love—that scared me. More than I cared to admit. Looking back at it now with the stark honesty of knowing my days are severely numbered, I was terrified of falling in love again, of feeling responsible for someone loving me.
I’d had that and lost it on a battlefield. I never wanted to feel that pain again. So instead I wrapped myself up in the fantasy of loving a man I knew I could never have. I let myself fall into the trap of being in unrequited love. That way, I could have entanglements—sexual encounters, but they wouldn’t really mean anything. They’d never touch my heart. And if they never touched my heart, then it couldn’t be broken again.
So that long-ago night, when I looked into Percy’s eyes as he lay sated and naked on the bed we’d just shared, and the conversation started wandering into dangerous areas, I cut off any talk of serious feelings by stating that I thought he was not in love with me. And implying that I liked it that way. He wasn’t in love with me. I wasn’t in love with him. We could enjoy each other’s company and bodies and leave it at that.
I was such an arrogant fool. I’d gone on to ask him if friendship and sincere liking was not enough for him. He answered ‘no,’ and then moved over me, grasped me tightly on the breast and made a remark indicating that adding willing sex into the bargain would make it sufficient for him.
As I said, we were both liars.
The cabin door bangs open suddenly and Ezekiel Richardson walks in. Waves of anger, so intense I felt them break across me as rough seas break against jagged rocks, roll off his body. I have just time to register it before his fist connects first with my midsection and then with my face. I’m on the floor before I can pull in a breath.
“Don’t get any ideas, my lord,” he sneers. “Wainwright won’t help you. He’s too scared.”
“I didn’t ask him to help me,” I say, trying to shake off the pain and getting to my knees. I’m going to face him on my own two feet if it kills me, or before he kills me, for I’m sure my end has come.
“Oh, I know,” Richardson, says, kicking me hard in the thigh. “Did you think I wouldn’t have a man outside your door listening? ‘Tell my son I love him.’ He mocks disdainfully. ‘I love you, John.’ I could puke.”
I wasn’t sure I’d heard that word before, it sounded vaguely Shakespearean, but it wasn’t hard to guess the meaning. It hurts, knowing our conversation was overheard and reported, and yet I’m not surprised. Richardson may be a madman, but he is a smart madman. The most dangerous kind. I get to my feet, pressing my lips together, determined not to show how he hurt me, and simply stare at him. There is no point in trying to deny my words. I just thank God that I hadn’t said aloud the other words screaming through my mind at the time.
“He won’t go see your boy,” Richardson continued, calmer now that he’d spent most of his anger on my helpless body. “And if he does, regardless of whether or not he reveals your location, I will know.”
“Of course, you’re having him followed.” It doesn’t take a brilliant strategist to figure out Richardson’s plan all along was to use Percy as much as he could. I just hope Percy worked that out for himself and acts accordingly. I have so many deaths on my head already that one more or less likely wouldn’t make a difference on the tote board of my sins, but I just didn’t want that one to be Percy. Not after all the trouble I went through to keep Percy’s neck out of Hal’s hands and the army’s noose.
Another look into those cold dead eyes, then the realization hit me. “You’re going to kill him anyway.”
He smiles and for the first time since he’s taken me, I feel my balls shrivel and my guts clench. I feel fear. True, bone-deep fear. Not for myself, but for him. Percy is going to die too, and there isn’t a damn thing I can do to stop it.
In that moment I swear that I will kill Richardson. Even if it means grabbing him, jumping into the sea, and pulling us both down to the depths until we’re dead.
I will end him.
*****************