Jack Rackham (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
jackrackham) wrote2019-11-11 10:39 pm
jackrackham) wrote2019-11-11 10:39 pm
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.
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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It hadn't told him any new information. What it did tell him is that Martin is not entirely aware of what he has here. These files may not be valuable for figuring out how to get out of Darrow, but he can see them being very useful in understanding the people that are here. If he's going to get anything done here with any efficiency, he needs to know who he's dealing with. Not every file will be like his, he's sure, but who knows what sort of useful information he could find.
"Not what I was expecting, but intriguing nonetheless." Jack leans to the side and picks up a small bin beside the desk and then uses the file itself to scrape any stray bits of dried blood off of the desktop. He returns the bin and sets the file back on the desk, then straightens in the chair and looks back to Martin.
"You said that accessing files is a matter of permission. I would like you to obtain permissions for me." Jack dips his hand into the inner pocket of his coat and retrieves one of three golden coins. He'd been planning to take them to exchange later today, but he decides that he can sacrifice one in order to make a significant impression here, now. He sets the coin down on the desk, where it shines brilliantly in the light cast by a slim black reading lamp. "Starting with the staff here." He smiles, offering no room for questions or objections. This is what he wants, and he's offered a substantial incentive. Martin has no reason to deny him. "I imagine that would be the easiest place to start."
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"Well, I'm glad it was—" he starts, trailing off quickly when Jack straightens in his seat and gives him a pointed look.
And then comes... a 'proposition' would be the most delicate way of phrasing it, though it is hardly that. Jack reaches into an inner coat pocket and sets a large gold coin down on the desk as he makes his request, smiling as though it is a done thing.
Martin stares at the coin, and the realization that Christ that's got to be real gold is certainly a piece of his overall takeaway, but so is the simple fact that it is a bribe. If that coin is what he thinks it is, it's probably a very good bribe indeed, but that isn't so much the point. The idea that Martin, his integrity, their whole bloody endeavor can simply be bought is nothing short of insulting, as is the entitlement with which Jack phrases the request, like he expects Martin to just... take care of this for him.
Of course, maybe he's right to feel confident in that. The content of the file had been meaningful to Jack, while he'd barely batted an eye at the blood soaking it through. Martin knows enough about Jack by now to know he is far from stupid, and he must know how the blood looks. Which means that the bribe is made backed by an almost imperceptible but nonetheless implicit threat.
For several long seconds, Martin just stares at the man through narrowed eyes. He refuses to be daunted, not when he doesn't believe Jack actually intends to harm him. Perhaps that's a foolish assumption to make, but he has trouble imagining that the eloquent, inquisitive man before him would turn to outright bullying to get what he wants, pirate or no—and he also doesn't think Eliot would spend so much time on him if that were the case. He might have been more easily cowed a few weeks ago, but after finding John dead on the floor and making his own ill-considered bribe to seek a very proven murderer, this all feels a bit ridiculous.
Still, for all that it is insulting and ridiculous, it doesn't necessarily follow that Martin is going to argue with him. He isn't that interested in pushing a known pirate, and his request isn't wholly outrageous, even if it has been made in such a disagreeable manner.
"Yes, I imagine it would be," he says a bit stiffly, and he looks down at the coin. "I'm going to have to confer with my partner. May I?" At Jack's acquiescence, he palms the coin as though anyone might see it, and considers for a moment how astonishingly heavy it feels.
"Wait here," he says, and leaves Jack in his office.
He approaches John's office at the back and raps lightly on the door, waiting for the soft murmur of invitation before he goes inside and shuts the door behind him.
"Bit of a day today," he says drolly, coming around to John's side of the desk. "Captain 'Calico' Jack Rackham has graced us with his presence. Came to see his file, and now would you believe he'd like to see others as well? I think he's trying to conduct some sort of research, suggested he might start with the files of the Archival staff. With our permission, of course."
Here he sets the gold piece down heavily on the desk for John's examination.
"He was thoughtful enough to bribe me first," he says, the note of distaste clear in his tone. "And might I also mention his entire file is just soaked through with blood. Some of the pages are wet. So bearing that in mind and also setting it aside for the moment, I just wanted to ask you, is this an actual goddamn doubloon?"
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When he wanders back from the stacks it takes him a moment to register the empty, clean pyrex dish sitting on his desk, and another after that to consider what it might mean.
"Martin," he calls, heading towards the manager's office, "did someone come by to drop that off, because I--"
But it's Jack sitting at Martin's desk instead, looking for all the world like he owns the place, and Eliot finds himself grinning.
"Well hey Captain," he says, leaning against the doorframe. "Fancy meeting you here. Did you enjoy the pasta?" It's a casual enough question, but as he asks it Eliot's eye is drawn to Jack's hair. It's noticeably shinier, even under the fluorescent light of the office, and Eliot can only assume from this change that he's stopped using bar soap. It looks good, and he weighs the risk of telling Jack so. He doesn't, though, because he realizes Jack's looking at something on Martin's laptop. It's not as if he's a stickler for information security, but still. "...can I help you with something? He's going to be cranky if he catches you snooping."
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"I asked for a reading room and he put me here, you'd think he'd at least close the computer if he didn't want me perusing its contents." He lifts one hand to gesture at the laptop, and then brings both arms back to rest on the armrests of the chair. He takes a deep breath and lets it out in a rush, punctuating the end of that particular train of thought. It doesn't really matter. He'd only been curious, and there wasn't much to see.
"The pasta was an unexpected pleasure, and much appreciated. Thank you." A small furrow forms between Jack's eyebrows as he considers Eliot, and considers why he's been so kind to them. He doesn't like to consider Eliot thinking that they're unable to feed themselves, but he's beginning to believe that maybe Eliot does kind things just to be kind, for its own sake. "I think I've got the hang of putting a meal together in this place, but..." He trails off, and shrugs. "I'm a decent cook. That was something else."
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He wants to explain, perhaps, that the Archive isn't so much a public resource as a kind of slapdash X-Files, but that would require more of a tangent than he thinks he can deliver at the moment. And anyway once Jack starts in about the pasta, he can't manage to think of much else at all, startled as he is by the barrage of compliments.
"Oh, well," Eliot smiles, feeling quite warm and pleased that the dish went over so nicely, "I'm glad you enjoyed it, I'd be happy to give you the recipe I found, if you like. Cooking's a favorite hobby of mine, really, and being stuck here I have more time to spend on it, so." He drifts a bit, thinking of the feasts at Whitespire, and how they were decadent but not as pleasing as making something himself, a small comfort among friends. "I just thought you and Anne might appreciate something you didn't have to work at, since I'm sure it's taking enough effort just...settling in."
He clears his throat, and offers Jack a smile. "You look well, though. Did...did you come to see your file? I'm not sure how much use these things are, to be honest, lots of them are entirely incomprehensible."
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The corner of his mouth ticks up at the compliment, and he redirects his focus to the tabletop. "Martin told me that too, about the files, but I found mine perfectly comprehensible." Jack hesitates a moment, considering whether or not he wants Eliot to see his file. Martin had seemed shocked by its contents, and he doesn't want Eliot to be worried about having him as a friend. Still, Eliot knows that he's a pirate, he's at least familiar with some of his exploits. He knows he's killed men, and he didn't seem to mind.
...and more than that, he finds that he doesn't want to hide who he is from Eliot.
He leans forward in the seat to grab for his file and slides it towards him. "...if you want to look, you can. I knew my history was bloody, but...maybe not quite this bloody." He lifts his gaze from the file and raises his eyebrows at Eliot, offering.
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"Hm," he says, "I don't know if you should count yourself fortunate on that front, if it makes sense to you. And Darrow does seem to have a macabre sense of humor about these things sometimes..." He peers at the file a moment, then looks back at Jack to meet his gaze. He would have looked at it eventually anyway, whether or not Jack had come in, just in the course of his work. But it means something that Jack's offered. So Eliot nods at him, and smiles as he picks up the folder.
"Oh you mean literally." Because of course it's blood, he thinks as soon as he opens the file and the smell hits him. It's too soon after the morning spent in John's apartment, cleaning up that horror, and for a moment he feels like he's back there, but he shakes his head a little and the feeling passes. "Okay," Eliot murmurs, "so yours is going to need special storage, obviously...I just want to make sure we keep all the...bits contained." It takes barely a thought to make the file float up from his hand and hover neatly in place, and the dried flakes that come loose when he telekinetically turns the pages stay in a respectful orbit around the whole, away from the tabletop. He wonders if that's where Martin's gone, to get some gloves or a bag or something.
At first the condition of the file overwhelms all consideration as to its contents, especially once Eliot realizes the interior is still damp. He wonders if it'll stay wet by some means or eventually all dry out, but that's not a question Jack can really help with. And surely when Jack said it was comprehensible he meant more than just 'I have done crime, this has blood on it therefore.' So he keeps flipping through until he finds some pages that aren't entirely soiled, to glean some meaning from the mess.
It appears to be a legal document of some sort, all odd spelling and those curly esses that look like effs, but Eliot had to read enough of that in Fillory that he can start to parse it. "This is about...trade regulations?" he asks, squinting at the page. "Of textiles? Didn't you say that's the business your family was in?" He looks up, eyes wide as a grim thought occurs to him. "God, Jack, you think this is your actual blood?"
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"Mine?" Jack frowns thoughtfully, considering Eliot's question. "That document was bloody before I ever stepped foot on a ship. I may have contributed, but in that case I've contributed more than my blood to its illustrious pages." Jack smiles, quick and sharp. He likes the idea of his actions filling the pages until every word is completely blotted out, whether its his blood or blood he's shed along the way hardly matters.
"It's an embargo on the sale of fine cotton, enacted because the men who import wool have the ears of the men who make laws. It's enacted, calicoes disappear, and without them my father's business withers and dies. He-" Jack lets out a short sigh, mentally skipping over all of the events between the failure of his father's business and his father's death. He doesn't want to describe to Eliot how it felt to watch his father kill himself with drink and lose himself in his own anger. It was a point he'd wanted to make to Rogers, to show him where he'd come from. Here, it feels like it would be sharing too much.
"Well. After his death, I was determined to rebuild the family name. I was twelve, but I had a plan." He huffs out a laugh and tips his head down to look at his hands. When he does, his hair slips forward from behind his ears, obscuring his eyes. He lifts a hand to push it back, then returns his attention to Eliot. "It didn't account for men demanding I repay my fathers debts. If I'd stayed they would have put me in a workhouse. Working at the production of textiles." His smiles, tight-lipped, and redirects his gaze to the floating folder.
"If not for that document, England could have had a tailor in me- another in a line going back generations. Instead-" He gestures to the bloody pages. "I decided to rebuild the family name another way."
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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."
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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."
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"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.
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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?"
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“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.”
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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?"
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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.”
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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.
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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.
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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?"
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“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.”
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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?"
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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.”