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In 1821 a young girl in a white dress marches herself across the winding little path through the garden of roses, the most colorless little thing amongst the blooming flowers of every shade. She picks at her ringlets with dirty nails and listens to the buzzing of the bugs like a little orchestra. Behind her follows a smaller boy with mussed-up hair and a streak of dirt across his cheek. No doubt they would be chastised once they return- but at the moment they have seemingly forever between here and the front door, to complete their mock adventure.
William turns to her.
“Would you marry me someday?”
The girl doesn’t know how to answer. “Why?”
“When a boy and a girl are very close,” he says, “Wouldn’t they marry?”
She laughs and laughs and laughs and then claps the boy in the back hard enough to be a blow, and then he laughs too, though he doesn’t get why. When they stop she takes a moment to catch her breath, and her lip trembles. She pictures herself in a white gown and William by her arm- perhaps an officer, by then, or a politician, or something of the sort. William plays army games; She pictures bouncing a babe on her leg while another one stirs in her belly. Mrs. Coningham, for real, this time, not a Fitzjames.
Does that make her happy? The flowers smell so sweet that it’s outright unbearable.
“William,” she starts, looking down- she thinks that she’d like for him to be smaller than her forever, though he might outgrow her one day- and then pauses. “Aren’t you my brother?”
“Not really,” he shrugs. Casual. Uncruel.
“It’s- it’s like,” she flounders, “Brotherhood, you know? Like in the stories. We’re not actually brothers but we’re still…” She trails off. Something strange comes over her eyes. William does not notice. He’s already staring intently at a particularly strange bug on a branch.
For a moment some sort of anger flashes over her so hotly that she wants to kick him into the thorns, she wants to pummel her fists into his head. How dare he? How dare he just… And then it was over and she was looking at the bug too, a big green-yellow-brown-white thing covered in fur as it spins silk around itself.
—
In 1842 a young man bleeds and bleeds and bleeds. If he strains his mind he thinks he can feel the phantom sensation of musket ball scraping against bone. The pain is brilliant and it carves into him down to the very soul and for a moment he does not think until he sees the glint of the shears.
“Please.” He doesn’t know what he is asking for.
The surgeon motions for his assistant to fetch for something with a long name that James does not quite understand. Dr. Stanley treats him like how he treats any other; a disobedient child who does not know what is good for himself; he bats at his flailing arms and tsk-tsks and sighs, looking almost petulant despite his massive bulk and the rockiness of his features. It contrasts quite strangely with the blood soaked into his sleeves.
James asks again, and remains ignored again. Stanley pushes through the feeble, unintelligible pleading and strips him of his layers with brutal efficiency, and then stares dispassionately at the unexpected layer underneath, which binds his chest. He opens his mouth to explain and his doctor shoves a rag into it; ostensibly to stifle the screaming from the procedure. James’ hands rises instinctively to cover the himself and Stanley doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even look him in the eye, he just manhandles him and James feels the him curse and tug at the cloth ineffectively, and then cold shears press against his skin and he thinks please, God, no, not like this, why can’t I say anything, and then his bandages, too, flops wetly with blood onto the floor.
Stanley clacks his forceps. If he feels anything beyond that initial shock which seeped into his eyes, he does not show it. James heaves with a cocktail of pain and panic and a cocktail of tonics, hyper-aware of the rise and fall and swell of his chest, and then suddenly not anymore because now all he can see and feel is the agony and the stretch of more metal entering him, twisting around in the bullet hole until it feels pried open and apart again like he’s been shot a second time. He huffs into the cloth, and refuses to look at anything but the ceiling as the probe, still warm from the previous patient, slides in and follows the path of the wound, almost an inch deep.
The bullet extractor comes next, and Stanley sticks it into the wound with little warning, pushing on until the screw finds itself poking into the musket ball, which he knows is no bigger than a plum stone but feels infinite in size. Lodged right there in his flesh, stretching out the fibers of the muscle and the fatty tissue at the lip of the wound that Stanley is poking into mercilessly and with an expression of absolutely no concern, no delight, nothing at all. He just grits out, “quit squirming,” one big thick-fingered hand grasping at his side and another turning the handles of the tool, digging and grinding the bullet deeper in his attempt to pierce it, musket ball and bone squishing a layer of tender muscle in-between. Metal grinds against metal. “There we go,” he says, a little pleased with himself. Then, a spurt of blood, a wet squelching pop, and the blasted thing is out.
James spits out the rag in his mouth. He covers his chest with one arm and the other is pinned down before he can do anything with it. The assistant’s footsteps grow closer and closer; Stanley barks at him to wait outside as he finishes working on the wound.
He doesn’t dare to ask- did he know? Will he be exposed? What will become of him? Instead, he allows for Stanley to hand him his clothes, before rolling his sleeve up. The hole in his bloody arm burns at the slightest brush of fabric.
“You may come in,” he calls. “Help me with his arm, will you?”
—
In 1848 James Fitzjames is dying, and he knows it because he can taste the death at the back of his tongue like rot and he can smell death like blood in the air and he can feel death, and it’s cold, it’s just cold that penetrates the dead numbness of his extremities.
But still he walks. He writes. He turns his head.
He asks- “Are we brothers?”