jackrackham | gold that's put to use more gold begets

gold that's put to use more gold begets

This morning, as Jack goes through the possible things he could start working on, or learning more about, the little note in his notebook with the address of the archive keeps grabbing his attention. It really is time that he stopped by and found out what's really there.

And there is the matter of a dish that he has to return to Eliot. He might as well do both at once.

The walk is more comfortable now that he has warm clothes to wear, and Jack takes his time walking over to the Archive, the empty pyrex tucked under his arm. It's not a nice day, but it's serviceable, and it feels good to have some small task to accomplish. He's going to return Eliot's dish and, if possible, find his own file.

When he arrives, he steps inside and closes the door behind him. The place is a mess, though he can tell that organization is in progress. It's more or less what he'd expected to find based on how Martin and Eliot had described it.

What he doesn't immediately see is anyone here to greet him. He calls out a hello as he loosens his scarf from around his neck, and goes to look at the contents of the first open box he can see.

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Jack doesn't seem terribly upset by the concept Eliot's raised, but the way he starts to speak is...unsettling, somehow. So Eliot's hands still as he listens, and the file hangs dead in the air between them. It's a simple enough explanation, really; the fallout from one large-scale decision ruining livelihoods. And lives, apparently, though he doesn't know what to make of the breadth between a business failure and losing a parent, but--

Eliot's breath catches, sharp and dizzying. Twelve, Jack says, like it's a testament to his character. He opens his mouth to speak, to fucking say something, but he can't. He just stands there and watches Jack brush his hair out of his face and continue on as if the horrors this document inflicted on a literal child weren't bad enough already. He wishes, more than anything, that there were something he could offer Jack that wouldn't be woefully inadequate. And for a moment he is just silent, considering.

"Thank you," Eliot sighs, "for-for sharing that with me. Regardless of...how far you've come since it seems unbearably cruel, for the City to deliver something like this." Eliot frowns at the file, feeling hateful now toward the fine old-fashioned penmanship. He clears his throat. "Ah, normally we'd like to get as much background information on the file as possible, but if you'd...rather Martin and John not know about all of it I can leave that out of the official record." That can't be all, though, Eliot thinks. It bears reciprocating, as much as he'd prefer to avoid dredging up his own past.

"It's not nearly as dramatic," he says finally, looking at Jack instead of the bloody mess of paper, "but you could look at what the City collected about me, if you like. It seems...only fair."

It takes Eliot speaking for Jack to notice that his entire demeanor has changed over the course of his explanation. He says thank you, which feels strange and pitying, and Jack doesn't like it. As Eliot continues, it becomes clear that he thinks Jack's history is something that deserves discretion, like it's too sad to be told. Eliot doesn't see the blood on the pages as a vindication. Eliot sees it as a unhealed wound.

He wants to grab the file from the air, a petulant retraction of his offer. Instead, he shifts forward a fraction and keeps eye contact, letting his weight settle onto his elbows.

His jaw works forward and back before he speaks. "Everything that I told you is a matter of public record. I don't see why it shouldn't be that way here as well. I am curious to see your file, but you needn't bother if your offer is compensation for how unbearable you find mine."

He only has a moment to register the shift in Jack's posture before he speaks, and Eliot wonders what he could have possibly done wrong here. But then it becomes clear, with a sudden terrible carnival lurch like the floor's dropped out from under him. Jack's angry with him, mistook his sympathy for pity, probably, and there's nothing Eliot can do to walk that back.

"I'm sorry," he says, holding Jack's gaze for as long as he can stand it. His eyes are dark and hard and Eliot has to remind himself that they come from very different worlds, that Jack has likely seen more brutality over the course of his life than Eliot ever will. "I thought..." He sighs, and looks down at the desk, fingers tapping in agitation. It doesn't matter what he thought. He knows what he thought and he hates himself a little for it: that this was something Jack trusted him with, that he'd become someone this famous pirate could confide in, but that's clearly not the case.

"It was wrong of me," Eliot says after a moment, feeling very exposed, "to assume how you feel about your own history." He glances back up at Jack and weighs the risk of explaining, as he wants to. But he shouldn't make this about himself, not really. "There are things in my own past that I'd rather stayed there, but if this document doesn't bother you, then...it's not my place to be upset on your behalf." He is still upset, of course, because the world has always been cruel to children and there's nothing he can do to fix it. But Jack doesn't need to hear that just now.

He'd almost expected Eliot to argue with him about this. Jack had been prepared to defend himself, and in the wake of Eliot immediately apologizing for his mistake, he feels a little bit at a loss for how to respond. He still feels angry that his file might be something that Eliot might try to hide away out of pity, but also...Eliot seems genuinely concerned that he'd misunderstood Jack's intentions.

Jack holds Eliot's gaze a moment longer, then sighs. "It doesn't bother me, and I don't mind the story being known." He glances down at his hands. "My childhood did have its challenges, but I didn't emerge from nowhere, and I don't have any interest in erasing my own history to make it more palatable." He huffs a short, humorless laugh, and shrugs. "There are far worse things that could happen to a child than coming early to independence." He thinks of Anne, as he first knew her. He thinks of the stories that Charles had told him of his upbringing. Compared to those, what happened to him is nothing. It's easy.

He takes a breath and looks up at Eliot, then sighs at the concerned look on his face. "It's quite alright, Eliot." His gaze falls back to his file, still floating between them. "...do you have to keep it floating like that?"

He takes a breath and holds it a moment, unsure of where to go from here. Jack’s explanation certainly makes sense, and if he’s being honest with himself it’s a healthier approach than he’d expected. The reassurance that it’s all right doesn’t quite dissipate Eliot’s tension, but he nods absently. Better just to let it drop.

“I suppose not,” he says, and sets the file down to rest on the desk, flakes and all. Better to let that drop too, less ominous that way, a metaphorical hovering obstacle in their friendship. He and Martin can clean up later, if need be. “Technically the blood’s part of the file just as much as the document, so I’ll want to collect all the...bits, but it’s a small space, they can’t get too lost.” Eliot sighs, knowing that he’s stalling a bit by thinking about the logistics.

“Anyway,” he continues after a moment, “You’re still welcome to see mine, if you want. Even if just to get a sense of…” Eliot considers the scope of what Martin and John have undertaken, the amount of data they’re currently drowning in. “Well, how just how little sense there is to the things the City puts in them, really. I don’t view my past the same way you do yours, clearly, but even so I feel like my file’s hardly relevant to who I am or why I’m here.” He gives an apologetic little shrug and heads to the door. “But maybe an outside perspective would help? I don’t know.”

Jack nods and stands, abandoning Martin's desk and his own bloody file, and follows Eliot back towards the entrance. As they walk Jack stays a couple steps behind, his eyes settled on the stiff line of Eliot's shoulders, the back of his neck, the crisp fold of his jacket's collar. Maybe his reaction to Eliot's sympathy had been too harsh, he thinks, but also he's bothered by the idea that Eliot might think that he is something pitiful, even if just as a child.

He's bothered even more that any attempt to explain further or tell Eliot more about himself and his past might only cement that impression in Eliot's mind. What will Eliot picture now, when he thinks of him. A man, under a waving banner, or a child running from home? He hopes that he'll remember both—that the latter will make the former a more impressive feat.

Eliot heads to a particular desk and Jack borrows a chair from the other. He sets it at the side so that he can sit and lean a little on the desk without being in the way of any of the drawers. "Does yours contain something from your childhood, or is it some other history?"

Eliot’s startled at first, not expecting Jack to follow him out instead of waiting in the makeshift reading room. He supposes it’s for the best that Martin gets his office back, though. Still, Eliot feels a little self-conscious as they appreach his desk, wondering if it looks too messy to an outside eye, what kind of impression it gives about him. But Jack seems merely curious as he pulls over Kat’s chair, asking about the file.

He doesn’t immediately answer. As innocuous as the question was, as much as they’ve already delved into psychological baggage with Jack’s file, Eliot still hesitates. The information (if he’s being generous enough to call it that) which the City had compiled on him isn’t exactly irrelevant, but it’s still personal, and he realizes now he doesn’t have a good grasp on how Jack might react.

“A bit of both,” he says eventually, grunting as he leans down to open the bottom desk drawer where his folder’s currently stored. For a moment he debates just getting out the scotch along with the file and having done with it, but that feels...a bit crass. Conversational blunder aside, Eliot doesn’t think they’re so far gone as to need that kind of a crutch to get through his personal history.

Eliot smiles, apologetic as he straightens up and hands Jack the file. “This might be underwhelming, actually.” And it’s true: there’s nothing magical or otherwise improbable about the two sheets of paper, low-resolution copies of documents that don’t exist in this world.

He’s able to sound nonchalant well enough, sitting back in his chair as he explains what Jack will find. “The top sheet’s older, from before everything,” he says of the death certificate of Brian Landis, age 15. “And the other one is something from the world I came from.” The map, an 11x17 folded sheet in greyscale and scattered with jpeg artifacts, is easier to talk about. “Neither of them give any insight as to why I was brought here, though, at least none that I can discern.”

"I don't think my file gives any insight into why I was taken, either. If this place cared about the information there, neither Anne nor I would have ever been brought here." Jack frowns, thinking that it's entirely possible that he wasn't far away from following Charles to the gallows. But if there was a chance at all to do what Charles wanted, and to do what he had wanted for the sake of Nassau- he still would rather be back home than here.

The map draws his attention first, being a more familiar item, and he folds it out. It's what looks like a medieval map- rudimentary and stylized, showing just a loose guess at the location of a handful of islands. At the top of the page, the words The Voyage of the Muntjac are emblazoned. Though he doesn't know what a muntjac is, he follows the line of its namesake as it heads out to sea. The line doesn't come back to the mainland. "Were you taken while you were on this voyage?"

He's curious and intrigued by the idea of the trip itself, and both show readily on his face. From the map, it seems like the sort of trip from far before his time...one of discovery and sailing into the unknown. There's something Romantic to the idea that definitely appeals to him.

Edited 2020-10-06 15:40 (UTC)

Jack remains difficult to read; he frowns, but it doesn’t seem to Eliot that the expression matches his speculation. It’s true he doesn’t know much about the world Jack and his partner came from, or the specific circumstances of their exit. All Eliot has, really, is a layman’s understanding that it was a dangerous time, a more violent time than this one, and he’s hard-pressed to think of a reason why Jack would look so…regretful about being taken from it.

It’s easier to study his face than look at the documents, and Eliot finds himself smiling at the immediate interest Jack takes in the map. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, he supposes. Something that, if not familiar, is at least comprehensible to someone who’s been at sea.

The question manages to startle him, and Eliot laughs a little, leaning closer to look at the map before he answers. “Ah,” he says, quiet. “No, this was...a few years ago, it-” Eliot looks at the point where the journey seems to stop, the rest of the voyage unmapped, and his expression grows somber. “It didn’t end there, though I see why you’d think that. We...lost our cartographer along the way, this is…unfinished.” He gestures to the void out beyond the island they’d named for Benedict. “I’ve been trying to fill the rest in, off and on, but working from memory when it’s not my area of expertise, well…” He can only shrug.

The change in Eliot's tone isn't lost on Jack, and he thinks first of the rarity of a cartographer before he considers that the loss was most likely not the completion of a map. He wonders if Eliot and this cartographer had been close, what event had ended his life, and why this map had been as important to Eliot as the bloody papers sitting on Martin's desk are to him.

Jack's voice softens a little when he replies, "I've never made a map myself, but I gather it's difficult to do so even with the actual land-masses at hand."

He takes a quick moment to look at Eliot's transformed expression, then looks back down at the map again, this time with greater context. Now the extra space beyond carries more weight than just the absence of a further journey out. He wonders, again, about just what Eliot's magical world must have been like. "I'm sorry about your cartographer."

He refolds the map, and tucks it back in its folder while he asks, "So it was a trip to map the area? Or...an exploratory mission?"

Eliot nods in thanks. Thus far his efforts at filling in the map have amounted to rough guesses scribbled on sticky notes, and he never manages to get much done at a time before he succumbs to the insidious nostalgia. He did so much back then, in Fillory, and it was important, and he’s done nothing like that here. But he feels he owes it to Benedict to try, at least.

“It was...a quest,” he says after a moment. That’s a simple enough way to start. “Magic was starting to fail, and we--it was my friend Quentin’s quest to begin with, really, but we needed to find out why magic was leaving the world, and secure a means of preserving it.” Eliot smiles a bit, trying to think of how it all sounds to someone on the outside. “Kind of silly fairy story stuff, on the surface, but we had to find seven golden keys and sail to the end of the world and unlock a door with seven locks. It took a year.” He sighs. “The effort was not without its setbacks.” Just one more instance in the history of Eliot coming out of trouble unscathed and having to live with others paying the cost.

“Is that…” He looks at the folder, then back up at Jack. “I don’t know, does that even make any sense to you? I haven’t really spoken about this much to anyone.”

"It makes sense to me." He pauses then tips his head, admitting that that's not entirely true. "As much as I understand magic existing at all. But it doesn't seem silly. A sea voyage to the ends of the Earth to find seven gold keys? To save magic itself?" He looks down at the paper again, wishing that he could see the original map, and also that he could have seen what Eliot looked like then, on the deck of a ship pursuing a magical quest. "I'm sure it's not as simple as it sounds, but it sounds fantastic. I think I would have liked to have been there."

He smiles a tight, wry smile. He'd certainly been on his own crusade, and Charles had had ideas about making Nassau something to believe in, but neither of those things was anything like what Eliot's world is like.

"Nothing where I came from could ever be so noble." He flips the page and looks at the second piece of paper. "What's this one?"

Edited 2020-11-26 12:32 (UTC)

He’s glad Jack’s able to follow along as much as he has, and it’s nice to know they have some point of common ground. Or, sea. Eliot thinks back on the quest, trying to fit Jack into the picture beyond being professionally suited to the environment. He would have been useful, Eliot thinks. Perhaps it could have been accomplished without so much loss, if they’d had another fighter. But it’s difficult to imagine the voyage happening differently, because it ended so definitively and the journey itself forced him to grow up so much.

Jack’s question pulls him out of his thoughts, and Eliot frowns just the slightest bit upon seeing the other sheet. He’s not yet willing to delve into it, much easier to think of better times, when he was better.

“Oh,” Eliot laughs, sidestepping the question and considering instead how Jack described the voyage. Fantastic, yes, certainly, but perhaps not entirely noble. “It certainly wasn’t all grand adventure. There was one island where, and I can’t explain how this would have formed, but the beach was actually made of keys. Hundreds of thousands of them, and we spent two weeks of just...drudgery, trying to find the right one. Fucking uncomfortable to walk on, too.”

The self-deprecation is enough of a buffer that he’s able to consider the other document, and Eliot sighs. Once more into the breach.

He barely even has to glance at it; the dry typewritten description made an indelible impression the first time he looked at the file. Cardiac arrest, it reads, as if that can really convey the weight of what happened. 80% surface area burns.

“So, this,” Eliot says, gesturing to the page, “is apparently something I’m not allowed to forget, if we can ascribe any sort of consciousness or intention to Darrow.” He swallows, suppressing the knot of anxiety, and wishes he’d gotten the scotch after all. “I did that. I was a little older than you were when you were...left on your own.” Eliot looks out into the middle distance for a moment, trying not to remember the scene too closely. “I’d no idea magic was real, at the time, but that’s what it was. Apparently that can happen on occasion, for people with the aptitude. But I…” He takes a breath and lets it out slowly. “I killed him. It was an accident.”

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