Chapter Text
LONDON OUTSKIRTS, 1856
He’d recognize him anywhere.
As fate would have it—or whatever cruel thing it is that they’re made of—it’s in a cemetery that it happens.
He has a bundle of half dead flowers clutched in his hands, mostly wildflowers he's pulled from the fields. They wilt with his touch, torn out of the earth they belong in. Lukey’s felt like he’s been stuck in a perpetual state of wilting for years.
People don’t live very long. Word gets around, even when he tries not to hear it. He watched the burial from a distance, nobody except the grave-digger as a witness, fabric draped over his face, a disguise. It’s the first grave he’s visited since he was a little boy; since his mother’s, since he left the country-side. He wonders how many other people he’ll outlive.
All of them, a voice supplies. He ignores it.
Lukey places the flowers on the dirt. Yellow against the textured stone, against the grey-brown soil.
Guillaume P. Deschamps
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Born April 4th, 1822 & Died September 20th, 1847
Lukey stares at those last words until his vision goes blurry, and until his head starts to spin.
He should feel surprised. He isn’t. He almost snatches the flowers back off of the grave. Bastard.
It’s an ornate gravestone. Much more uppity than Guillaume had shown himself to be, and probably costs about as much as his life is worth at all. Lukey thinks such things—that Guillaume was down-to-earth—as if he ever really knew him at all. He's built a profile off of the single time they spoke, years ago.
Almost a decade. And he died before they met. Lukey scoffs, and catches the eye of the gentleman sitting on a bench under the willow, several meters away. There’s been a growing resentment under his skin since he got shot in the head. He turns away from the headstone, and walks over.
He says nothing as he approaches. The guy on the bench looks past him, through him, as if he’s not there at all.
Avoid my eyes, Lukey thinks, serves you right.
His eyes are dark, beautiful. His hair is well-kept. He’s dressed in all black, waist-coat fully buttoned under his frock. A mourner’s garb. He's gorgeous. Lukey wants to punch him in the face.
“Some nerve you have, being here.” Lukey says.
Guillaume’s eyes flick up to him, only for a moment.
He clears his throat, his voice a familiar sound, “I’m paying my respects.”
“Are you, now?” he asks, mocking, “You look fairly well off for a dead man. Say, how much’d you spend on that headstone?”
He says nothing, doesn’t even offer Lukey the courtesy of acknowledgment; so he barrels on.
“I bet it was a pretty penny. I said to myself, someone must’ve really cared about the sod to waste their life savings on a piece of rock,”
Silence. Lukey takes the handle of the knife, twists the blade, digs it in, hoping for any sort of purchase. Begging for a reaction.
“It makes sense now. That you were the one to buy it. I don’t say anybody cares near that much about you to do something like that, right?”
Words have always been his only weapon. They had failed to protect him, shield him, a few years ago—if they can't protect, they have to be able to hurt, surely. They have to be good for something. He has to be good for something. He keeps talking, thinks of anything to pierce.
“Unless it wasn’t for you at all,” Lukey says, remembering the passport that clearly wasn’t his own, “Did you know him? Or does it help you sleep at night if you can convince yourself you mourned the man whose face you’re wearing, at the very least?”
Guillaume looks at him, finally, eyes shooting daggers.
For a moment, Lukey almost feels bad. He sees him in his mind’s eye with a kind smile, gentle eyes. He reminds himself they’ve only spoken one other time. He has to remind himself of that often.
He reminds himself he's never seen him gentle. He digs deeper.
“Does he know what you’ve done with who he was?” Lukey whispers, as if it’s some terrible secret, “Would he forgive you?”
Guillaume shifts on the bench, de-centres himself and moves to sit flush against the right side of it. It's an offering, a gift to remain in his presence, even now. Lukey wants to spit on it, light it on fire and walk away. Still, Guillaume offers no verbal reaction.
Broken, Lukey finally rasps out, “What did you do to me?”
“Nothing,” Guillaume answers quietly, “I haven’t done anything.”
“He shot me. In the head. Is that nothing?”
His eyebrows fly up, shock ripples across once-stagnant features. “I didn’t have anything to do with that.”
“What? I’m just supposed to believe that, then?”
He looks torn; a thousand thoughts behind his eyes. Underneath it all, Lukey sees guilt.
“Yes,” he says, exasperated. Lukey almost calls it begging, but he knows better. “Yes, because I'm telling the truth.”
“He shot me in the head and I’m still alive, Guillaume.”
“I… gathered that, yes.”
“What do you have to say for yourself?”
Guillaume turns, a sudden fury in his face, “You think I made you into this?”
Lukey just stares, wordless. Yes, he thinks, but cannot possibly say—there's something that stops the words from leaving his mouth. It's the look on Guillaume's face, maybe.
“Why would I ever do that to someone?” he whispers, and the fury gives way into some sort of devastation, “I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy.”
He spits that word, this, as if it’s supposed to make any of it any clearer. He throws his hands out and gestures around them, the graveyard, the yellow flowers against the headstone that isn’t his own.
It does make it clearer, somehow. Just not in the way he'd been hoping. Not in the way he's been praying for.
Lukey gives up, and sits down next to him in the spot that beckons. He’s stubborn, and hates to admit when he’s wrong, but Jesus—he’s exhausted. He's been exhausted for years. The fight drains out of him like someone's stuck a needle into his palm, blood beading out of the wound.
I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy, he said—there's camaraderie in those words. There isn't an answer, no matter how desperately he wants one. He's spent the last however long hanging onto the idea, the fantasy, that someone would have the answer—someone, he, had to be to blame for this. But Lukey doesn't think you can fake that kind of disgust.
“I don’t know,” Guillaume says, suddenly, “If he’d forgive me. You know, for this. I don’t know.”
And fuck, if that doesn’t make him feel guilty, “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Astute,” he quips.
Lukey has to resist rolling his eyes. It's not the time.
“You knew him, then?”
He, not-Guillaume, nods. His fingers, still ring-clad after all these years, wander up to his neck—Lukey hadn’t noticed it before, but there’s a thin strip of leather hanging around his neck, a second matching ring dangles off of it.
Oh.
He’s not oblivious, is the thing.
Lukey’s also not in the business of judging people. They get enough of that from God, not that that’s something he particularly believes in.
He thinks about the shadow that passed over his eyes when Lukey had asked him about a possible woman left behind in France. After the gunshot, after Lukey died and came back to life, he wondered how much of it was real. How much of him was real, how much of him he'd let Lukey believe to be real; he blamed not-Guillaume for months, scrutinized every inch of him he remembered. Which was, every inch of him.
Now, though, he feels heavy with the sorrow of something he didn’t lose. He feels the weight of the ring around his own neck. Guilt eats away at him.
“Your… wife,” Lukey asks, “what was she like?”
“Beautiful,” he says wistfully, immediately, “Perfect. She was everything. I’ll spend the rest of my life loving her.”
Lukey doesn’t ask how long that is. He has a feeling it’s a long, long time.
I wouldn’t wish this on anyone, he had said. Lukey imagines he’ll come to understand that more as time passes, infinite.
“That’s a while, yeah? To miss one person?” he says instead.
He shakes his head, “It never feels like enough. He died saving my life, the idiot.”
The sheet slips, and there’s nobody else in this graveyard to see it. Underneath is bloody, raw. Truthful. Muscle and gore under skin, yet to rot in the ground. He died saving my life. He, he, he. His body doesn't sit in that grave, underneath the soil they rest on, under the bed of yellow primrose. His name may be all that remains of him—stolen, engraved on stone a decade after he died. Lukey can't imagine that not-Guillaume managed to get real-Guillaume's body here, all these years later. He doesn't know what's buried in that grave—maybe a memory, or a heart that isn't his own.
“Did he really?”
When he speaks next, Lukey can’t mistake the guilt in his voice for anything other than what it is. He's riddled with it, every inch of him.
“This is always how it goes. It's like I said, it's life, right? It's all just... perfecting the art of letting things go. I've never been good at it.”
“… Always?” he asks, and doesn't expect an answer. He doesn't get one.
His fingers twitch. Lukey imagines a cigar pinched between them, smoke billowing out of his mouth. How bitter it is, to die for someone who’ll come back. Beautifully tragic, to die for someone who can appreciate the weight of such a thing more than any other person.
“I see him everywhere,” he confesses, “It’s unbearable.”
“Kind of beautiful though,” Lukey hums, “Though I've always been one for the more tragic types of poetry, I suppose.”
His friend shakes his head, “You can only do it so many times before it becomes hideous. Everything’s poetic, until it isn’t.”
Continuing, he says, “I waited, to save up for a gravestone. I couldn’t do another burial and be the only one to remember who’s in the grave.”
Lukey doesn’t know what to say. He'd like to offer back the hand that was extended to him, some sort of distant-understanding, but he can't. He cannot pretend to understand. He stares, and does what he hates most—he says nothing at all.
Not-Guillaume turns to him, deadly serious, “I wouldn’t ever do this to you. Never fucking—don’t think that for a second.”
He regrets it, and regrets saying it, but he can't find it in him to blame himself for that assumption, not completely; call that what you'd like. He doesn't regret where it's led him.
“It made sense, at the time,” Lukey admits sheepishly, “I guess I was trying to make sense of nonsensical things. I shouldn't have lived, back then. You were the only thing that... filled that gap in my understanding.”
He doesn't apologize, because he knows he won't mean it, never entirely.
“If I had it my way, you’d have died from that bullet," he tells him, cold.
A smile tugs at Lukey's lips, “Wow, okay. That's quite rude.”
“It’s a mercy,” he stresses, “I’m glad you’re alive. Truly. But I wish it wasn’t like this.”
Like this. This. Being the only one left. Burying the ghosts of bodies, remembering names and faces with no other proof they were ever there at all. Lukey wonders how many graves have been dug, filled, walked over, that have only one person that knows who's in there. Only one person who knows it's there at all. How many times has he saved up for a headstone; how many times has he made his own; how many times has he carved the name he's chosen to be called onto a wooden cross, and stuck it into raw earth. How many times has he been all that's left? How many times has it been like this? How long has it been this?
“Guillaume Deschamps,” he says, surprising himself. “I can remember that, easy.”
“Excuse me?”
He clears his throat, “It’s quite a tacky headstone, in all fairness. I’ll remember his name, so you don’t have to continue to look at such an eyesore to prove he was alive.”
The man doesn’t answer, but he spins the ring around his finger. It’s the most Lukey can offer him. It's dancing around the core of it, skittering around the edges; he doesn't claim to understand, would never dream of being able to—but he takes this shared curse between them and ties it into something that cannot, will not, die—I will remember, someone will remember. It's the only good he can make of it.
It's also the least he feels he can do without apologizing. Which, of course, he won’t do.
He can see heavier clouds rolling in over the hills. Rain is coming, and fast.
Not-Guillaume stands, brushes off his trousers, straightens his coat.
“I’m leaving,” he offers, “I don’t know when. Soon, hopefully. I can’t guarantee that I’ll catch you again before I go,”
Lukey's been chasing him for months, years. He tried to find this man in the fold of every elbow, in the crease of every eye; he always leaves too soon. Always, always, always. Every time he's ever gotten a scent of him, it's gone before he can pin it down. He wonders if maybe he's only ever been meant to chase, never able to arrive at a single satisfying conclusion; not to settle, not to die. It's sad to let him go—Lukey imagines this will be far from the last time he'll have to.
Still, he smiles. “Don’t be a stranger.”
He doesn’t smile back, but Lukey doesn’t consider it a loss.
"Thank you for the flowers," he says.
He tucks the necklace underneath his shirt, and turns away. The rest of the world isn’t privy to such a thing. Lukey tries not to ruminate on how he’d let him see it, how he didn’t tuck it back close to his heart when he saw him approach. He fails.
It’s only as Lukey watches him disappear down the road, does he remember that he forgot to ask for his name.
WEST LONDON, 1849
Lukey wipes the blood off of his face with a rag he’ll burn later.
Dipping it into a bucket of water, melted snow from outside, he rings it out with shaky hands—crimson liquid drips from the cloth.
He takes a deep breath in, and then out, and hears the death rattle in his own throat.
He shouldn't be alive.
Having to mop up the blood that's spilled from your own head wound is a strange feeling. Lukey has to remove himself from his body, his brain, to get the job done; his shirt is stained red, there's dried blood underneath his fingernails, and everything smells distinctly metallic. He wipes a mug clean and sees his reflection in the glass, eyes sunken in, corpse-like—he drops it to the floor, and it shatters in the smeared remains that he's yet to clean up.
He shouldn't be alive. He wasn't. For a moment there, he was dead.
His heart beats an erratic rhythm in his chest, still beating. Still beating.
I'm alive, he soaks up the rest of the blood with his rag; I'm alive, then throws the broken glass into the bin; I'm alive, he taps his foot into the gunpowder sprinkled across the floor.
He runs his fingers through his hair, a nervous tick, and they snag on knots; he knows what it is, that's knotted it together. I'm alive, I'm alive, I'm alive.
It's almost like he's the last person left on earth, and it's almost like everything else moves through him. It's a lot like waking up, in those early, groggy stages. Half-stuck in the dream that'd swept you away, one foot left behind in another reality.
Nobody comes to help him clean up his own mess. He does it on his lonesome, and then disappears up the creaky stairs into his room above the pub.
He peels off his blood soaked clothes and pulls on clean, white ones—he layers every jacket he owns over himself, hoping to push away the chill in his bones, hoping it's just the cold. He starts to sweat, still shaking. He piles item upon item into a bag he finds under his bed; every cent he has, his clothes, the necessities. A box of matches, to burn the clothes, the rag, in an alleyway somewhere. As he packs, he comes to a conclusion, an idea, a truth. People don't come back to life; the living cannot be re-animated. He's holding onto his humanity with sweaty palms and weak hands.
He quickens his pace, and starts to shove things into his bag haphazardly.
He lets himself indulge in a single sentimentality. A pocket watch, a reminder of who he was before; a reminder that time has kept moving.
Frantic, nearly manic, he descends back onto the main floor—he finds a piece of paper, an inkwell, a pen, and begins to scribble something out. It's un-even across the page, a vague apology for leaving so suddenly. He writes, "I have something I must do," and leaves it at that.
Lukey had decided, with sudden clarity, that he's living on borrowed time. One day or another, the bullet will catch up to him.
It's impossible to prolong the inevitable, Lukey knows this, because he's a man of new science; there's no delaying nature, the circle of life. He can only run so far.
So, why not chase?
The scythe, the long reach of death, the Devil's grip, what have you—is following him. Will follow him, will continue to follow him until its strong jaw closes around his lungs, his heart, his head. Why not lead it to another victim, and why not kill two birds with one bloodied stone? People don't come back to life, so he lets go of his humanity. At his very core, he's missing what makes him a living thing; he's dead. He's not human anymore, why parade around in a facade of what he used to be—of what he thought he was?
In a way, it's a type of interest; something chooses to let him live, and lights a path of purpose in-front of him. He has been given a gift, and with it, a debt. He doesn't know how to repay it, but he knows who can. He knows what he must let go of to reach it.
We'll meet again. We'll meet again. We'll meet again.
It takes very little for a promise to become a threat.
Lukey locks the pub door behind him, leaves his note on the counter, and hunts.
DOVER FERRY PORT, 1867
There's a nice breeze on the dock; there always is, by the ocean. He looks out at the steam-boats, the ferry lines, scattering the harbour. Freedom, or some sort of it, sits at the tip of his tongue. It tastes like salt. His ferry will be boarding any second now.
"Where are you off to?" A voice asks behind him, and Lukey spins around.
Plain as day, he always looks the same when they see each-other. His hair has grown out, more free—but his face remains the same. In public, with bodies bustling around him, his voice comes out in an English accent. It's obvious, to Lukey, that it's fake; nobody else seems to bat an eye.
He smiles. It's a welcome surprise, even if it is a confusing one.
"France," Lukey says, "I have some business to attend to there."
There's no real business at all, but nobody else needs to know that. See, you can only stay in one place so long before people start to notice the distinct lack of aging. No smile wrinkles around his eyes, his mouth; he's almost fifty years old. He looks the same as he did twenty years ago, and that never fails to raise suspicions. There's no forever for someone who can't die; as it turns out, home is characterized by mortality, humanity—two things he cannot possibly possess. The only thing he can rely on is living, nothing else lasts nearly as long.
He's shocked to see him here. Last time they'd spoke, he mentioned leaving. Though, there is never a time where his presence is entirely un-shocking.
Curious, he asks, "What about you? I'd assumed you were long gone."
The crowd of people move around them, time-flowing. Lukey feels stagnant. Nobody doubles back as they pass the pair of them, or gives them a second thought. Nobody knows the history behind their words—characterized by three total conversations over the course of several decades.
"I couldn't bring myself to leave," he says, "I don't know why. There's never been much here for me, I've been everywhere I could go."
He hums, "And where exactly are you headed?"
"Denmark," his accent wavers on the vowels, Lukey is the only one to notice, "For who knows how long."
Strange. "What's in Denmark, for you?"
"Something," he says, quietly, "I don't know what, yet. Something."
There is something telling Lukey, deep and guttural, that he does know what he wants from there, or what he expects to find there. Maybe he's uncertain, has only a skeleton of an idea. Maybe he truly has no clue, and this is something that Lukey, and Lukey alone, knows. Maybe he's denying himself the right of thinking about it long enough to know. Maybe he's just too afraid to say it out-loud, to curse himself by jinxing it. Regardless, Lukey doesn't pry, perhaps the most uncharacteristic thing he could do.
"I hope you find it," he tells him, completely earnest.
His friend still wears the ring around his neck, the matching one adorns his finger.
Lukey can't look away from it when he says, "I really hope you find it."
He nods, "Thank you. You as well."
The conversation lulls into a momentary silence, before Lukey starts wondering out-loud,
"... Can you even speak Danish?"
"Can you speak French?" he answers.
Lukey groans, "Alright. Fair."
Overlooking the water, wind pushing his hair out of his face, the man says, "I can learn, can't I? I'm willing to."
"Rather time-consuming, is it not?" Lukey asks, knowing that it's impossible to consume an infinite thing in any way that matters.
"I think it's worth it. Do you know how... intimate, I suppose—do you know how intimate it is, to write someone a letter in a language you've learnt for them?"
"I can't say I do."
Lukey thinks about the letter he was writing in his bar, ages ago. He supposes that the longer you live, the more willing you are to do things that take years to perfect; it's no more than a blip in time, really.
He points to the bag slung over his shoulder—the same worn leather he'd slipped that letter into, "You do, though."
Not a question, but a statement. He sighs.
"That's... different. Similar, but different."
"They're written in your mother tongue?" a tongue, which, Lukey still doesn't know of. He knows nothing of where, who, or even what, he is—he does not know his mother. He doubts he ever will.
He shakes his head, "No. I don't send those ones, they're not... they're not the same thing, no."
"How do you mean?"
A seagull lands on the post to Lukey's left, settles there. It's completely silent. It feels, for whatever reason, like an interruption—a crude descent back into reality from the two-person bubble they've crafted themselves. The noises of people milling about, the sounds of the water against the ships, are suddenly much louder.
He gets no answer. It's almost starting to become something he expects. Almost.
"Are you docking in Calais?" he asks Lukey, and the seagull flies away at the sound.
It's almost as if the bird hadn't noticed they were there at all, until he spoke. As if they were just simply part of the background, a constant.
"I am," he says, "Supposed to be a fast trip, they say. Eighty minutes or less."
The man snorts, "That's not true. Do you believe everything you're told?"
"Clearly not, on account of," he gestures between the two of them, "You know,"
The man scoffs, but reaches down into the pocket of his frock, digging for a minute; his hand emerges with a small, brown, cloth bag in its palm. It rattles with the sound of whatever's inside.
"Here," he offers, and Lukey takes the bag, "Filberts. In case you get hungry. Shouldn't be any longer than five hours, but who can say."
Lukey smiles, "Thank you. That's very kind."
The man smiles too, opens his mouth to speak, but the sound is lost under the blaring of a boat's horn; Lukey spins around. It's the warning for boarding passengers, they've started letting on the line of people stood outside the ferry to France. No better time than the present, he supposes, slightly disappointed. It's weird, being the one to leave this time around; he's going to be the one walking away from—
"Safe travels," the man says, and then more quietly, "Not that it matters for us, no?"
Chuckling, he says, "No, I suppose it doesn't."
It's as good as a goodbye as any. Lukey tucks the bag into his pocket, smiles over his shoulder, and begins to walk away.
"Do write to me in French, once you've learned it," he shouts, and Lukey spins back around, "I assume you'll find the time to learn."
"How do you expect me to send it to you?"
"I never said anything about mailing," he says, smiling, "We'll meet again. Bring it with you."
A threat. A promise.
"Don't eat them all at once," he continues, pointing to his pocket, "They'll make you ill."
What a scene they're making, shouting to each-other across the shipyard as Lukey walks backwards towards the line of people for the ferry. Ridiculous, laughably so.
"I wasn't planning on it. I do have a decent head on my shoulders, I'll let you know, mister."
"I find that hard to believe, uh...?"
He trails off, questioning; and Lukey realizes that he's asking for his name.
"Lukey," he tells him, "and you?"
"Lukey," the man repeats, grinning, and that's the last thing he says—he turns around, and disappears into the crowd of people on the dock, leaving another question without an answer. Lukey can't help but think it's becoming a song and dance between the two of them, back and forth, the music never fully stopping.
He stands there frozen, for a minute, before he shakes himself from his reverie; he should expect this, by now. It'll never be any different. The man—because, what else is there to call him—is unpredictable. The filberts are a comfortable weight in his pocket.
He boards the boat with little fanfare. He sits far in, back to the wall, and settles onto the bench. Lukey dreads the journey, but it shouldn't be that difficult to make talk with the people around him.
He taps his foot against the floor, and waits as the rest of the passengers file onto the boat. Continues tapping it as they get underway, and as the people sitting around him refuse to engage in any sort of small-talk. In the grand scheme of things, it's an eye-blink of time; as it's happening, it feels like forever.
Lukey is immensely grateful for the snack, suddenly, not because he's hungry—but because cracking open a few filberts is something he can do to pass the time, easily. When he slides the brown bag out of his pocket and into his hand, it feels like a gift from an angel.
He pulls on the draw-string keeping it together, and spots a sliver of white among the neutral-toned nuts in the bag. It looks almost blinding in contrast. He raises an eyebrow, and fishes it out.
His eyes scan the paper, and it hits him that these weren't the man's own snack that he'd so kindly gifted to him, but instead something meant for him. He'd piled these nuts into this bag, written this note, all with the intention of giving it to Lukey. It feels slightly surreal, that he'd expected to find him there. Lukey blinks at the three words written on the paper, reading the last word over, and over, and over again. It's impossible to expect anything, but Lukey can't help himself from thinking that it's about time.
He reads the note again, one last time, and tucks it into the pocket of his undershirt; closer to the warmth of his skin. He cracks open the first filbert, and can almost see the words written on the inside of the shell. He smiles.
Pace yourself.
- Pili