Will Stutely (sly_stutely) wrote in nevermore_logs, @ 2020-08-19 22:15:00 |
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Entry tags: | will stutely |
WHO Will Stutely
WHERE Little John’s apartment
WHEN Tuesday night
WHAT Night terrors
WARNINGS Descriptions of waterboarding, battlefield violence, trauma
Will Stutely drowns in dreams. The water burns as it rushes into his nasal cavity. He tries to hold the meagre breath in his lungs, make it last as long as he can. Tries not to think about Gisborne’s weight pressing down on his chest, about the ache in his lungs the fire catching through his sinuses the panicked working of his throat against the sick trickle of water the fuckfuckfuck not yet not yet don’t— He gags. Coughs water. Instinctively opens his lungs to suck in a breath. The wet cloth clamps tight against his mouth and nostrils like a smothering hand and the panic lances through him hot and sharp. He’s thrashing against the weight pinning him, tries to buck against the torrent and manages only to crack his head against the edge of the board. The water floods into his lungs, the fire races along his nerves, and he’s not sure if he’s going to drown or burn alive first. Then all at once the deluge ends, the weight lifts and he’s being shoved off the board to heave and splutter on the concrete. A figure’s crouched by him, an indistinct smudge in his blurred vision, and Will squints desperately. “Let’s see if that jogged your memory at all.” Gisborne’s voice, contemptuously smooth. “Where is Robin Hood?” His vision swims, clarifies, and it’s not Gisborne but the Sheriff who’s looming over him, smile as sharp as a knife’s edge. “Or do I need to give you a little more incentive?” Will recoils, but his body isn’t obeying, and when he starts coughing again it’s not water he heaves from his lungs, but blood. The air’s choked with smoke and gunfire and the screams of horses and his entrails are pooling in the dirt around him and no no no not here not again. It was supposed to be a new holy war, Crimea. A fight against Russia’s designs on the Holy Land. Will had never given an arse about such things in the past — what should he care about some squabble over crumbling temples with far-off infidels when his own people were hurting and the boot on their necks was an English one? — until the writers and storytellers had gone and made Robin a crusader, made the Merry Men servants of King and Country, and all of a sudden war was pulling at him, singing in his blood, calling him to arms. But there’s nothing holy about war. And in this filthy, brutal bloodbath, he’s seen no glorious sacrifice, only ordinary working folk being thrown against one another again and again till they break while the monied officers drink their tea from behind the lines. Death doesn’t take him quickly. Around him, the cavalry continues their pointless charge, riding headlong into the Russian barrage with sabres brandished, as though a pointy stick is any sort of protection from artillery shelling. To his right, Will sees a rider’s head taken clean off by a round shot; the decapitated corpse hanging on in the saddle another thirty-odd yards before gravity takes it. He finds he can’t rightly remember any more what possessed him to put his name down for this. Was it patriotism? Piety? Was it the story in him spurring him on, or was he just following the others’ lead? It bothers him that he doesn’t have an answer. Death is slow; the way back even slower. It’s months before he finally makes it home, clad in a stolen man’s clothes and boots still caked with the violence of the front. There’s an urgency that grips his chest as he pushes open the door of the brownstone— (—no, that’s not right, it was a gate, the back gate behind the cottage—) —then he’s through and she’s there, hanging out the washing (wait, but—), dark hair bound tight, face drawn tighter. The gate clinks shut and she whirls around, drops her basket, and Will’s not sure if it’s hope that brims in her eyes or despair because it’s gone too fast, replaced by a sudden surge of anger. “How dare you come back here!” —and the words are Lucy’s, but the voice, the face, is Clio’s— “It was you, you and those stupid boys. You made him think he was immortal, too!” And his throat closes up and the water floods his chest and it’s worse than the musket ball that exploded his gut, worse than drowning over and over under Gisborne’s ministrations, because that’s the moment he understands. That despite his admonitions, despite their conversations, despite his emphatically forbidding it, Robert had, after all, followed him into war. Had followed him into death. (They were killed, he’d later learn, within days and miles of each other somewhere outside of Kamara, never knowing it was only a short rise that separated them.) “Lucy…” But it’s not Lucy, and this isn’t Edwinstowe. That’s the past. That was all in the past. His throat works, swollen and hoarse with the memory of water. He tries again: “Clio.” The brownstone’s just as it was on the weekend, books stacked in odd corners where they wouldn’t fit on the shelves, Ella’s pencils and drawings scattered across the coffee table, the remnants of breakfast waiting to be packed away. But Clio’s not looking at Will. The door behind him closes with the quiet finality of a coffin lid and he jerks around to find the Sheriff smiling at his shoulder. “Well. Isn’t this sweet.” Will wakes thrashing against the thin sheet that covers him. He’s sucking in ugly, croaking gasps, gulping down air to no effect at all, and fire blooms behind his eyes and he’s convinced for a mad instant that there's water in his lungs, filling his throat, choking his breath. He manages to drag himself off the couch, staggers to the bathroom and collapses over the toilet bowl. Then he’s heaving, gagging, desperate to clear his airways, but all that comes out is a thin stream of bile, and it’s only then that he understands. He’s not drowning. He’s just forgotten, somehow, how to breathe. Will sits back on the tiles with a heavy thump. A panicked eye darts to the open door, but the room beyond is silent; nobody else seems to have stirred. He nudges the door closed with his foot and slumps back against the wall, scrubbing furiously with the heel of his hand at the hot tracks of tears streaking his cheeks. Then he screws his eyes shut and tries to focus on the cool of the ties beneath his feet, on the solid wall at his back, on the slow drip of the leaky faucet. Trying to remember how to breathe. |