Originalfic: DecoVerse - "Six White Horses", the DecoFiremen
More of the Decofiremen.
A young Silky, before he was Silky (Thomas Castor), waits for his injured crewmate, Josiah Henry Birch, in the halls of the city hospital.
...
No one will ever say there's been any love lost between a fireman and a doctor
Each, to the other, a necessary cruelty, inflicted at random and under duress.
The doctors, Tom Castor knows, all think that they - the firemen - are mad. They believe the coppers are madder still. Tom Castor has seen them, sometimes, the bluecoats, with their gaze on nothing, and with a chill up his spine, a strange sensation across his eyes like holding the card of a panogram at arm's length. The past spills over into the present, and the scent of sparks fills your nose and throat.
But the coppers, at least, hold the firemen in a tenuous respect, their madness neck and neck as horses down Manhattan avenues.
The doctors in their funny masks and pale coats, with their blood-dappled laps and sun-smeared waiting-halls, they have no such mortal qualms as compassion, Tom Castor thinks. No such qualms at all.
For he sits in the wan and smoky light of a high window, clutching himself inward, teeth clenched, keeping just a wit about him for the coming of his brothers, or the doctors or the coppers or anybody else to intrude. His brothers, of course, would understand. He's achin'. God he's achin'. It's not so bad, perhaps, as it was hours ago, in the nighttime, when the red busted out the seams of the ceiling above, when Josiah had crossed the threshold, the ember-blazing posts and lintels, when Tom could feel him strong in the hips and belly and steady in the heart, and then -
Pain seizes him him again. As if his very skin is struggling to leap off. He gasps for breath and tastes the recollection of another's blood in his mouth. The clop-clop of -
Horses?
No. Doctors at the far end of the hall. Those black and brass doors where men don't come back from. They swing wide, they swing open, they slam shut. It hurts. It hurts so bad.
He can feel their thinking, inside him. What's he got to cry for, what's he got to clench up his limbs, he ain't hurt, he's nothin' but a dirty smoke eater, nothing but a spark chaser, nothing but a sway-back draft from the livery stables waiting for the harness.
Tom feels more alone, in that moment of locking eyes with the doctors, than he's felt in almost his whole life. More alone, even, than before the day he went through Wynantskill's gates, and before he was assigned a company. More empty in his heart than he's felt since the day he woke up from his Seardark, his body a reeking, fever-creaking mess, and Josiah by his bedside, taking his hand up and saying boyo, look at you son, you made it, didn't you? Welcome back home.
Josiah, he thinks, oh, 'siah, come back, come back home.
The pain doubles him. He feels like someone's shoved a hot poker up his legbones and twisted it. He bites back the cry.
The smell of hay and petrolene comes to him then. Just before the white doors at the opposite side of the hall clatter open. Those are the light doors, the bright doors, the doors you walk out of into the clean foyer of Bellevue City Hospital and out into the light. Three men in dark coats with smudged faces and matted hair come through those doors, the youngest at a jog, the oldest at a more stoic pace.
"Tommy! Oy, Tommy, good God, how's 'Siah? Chief Darley had us all at quarters for an age, you wouldn't believe, he wanted a rundown from everybody about the fire, he thinks it was an arson, Tommy, is Josiah alright? God Tommy - "
That's Peter Langeley. He's the station youngest. Barely out of rookdom, barely broke his Sear some six months back. He's taking it hard. Tom looks down at his hands and sees Pete's heart in them, trembling and bleeding over his scorched fingers. When did he scorch 'em? Was it when he tried to tear the flaming plaster off Josiah's back? Was it on the handle of the door that near locked them in?
Tommy's no veteran, but he feels about a thousand years old. He thinks back to a yarn he heard from an old Lufty at Wynantskill, about a man who rode from his magical home on the back of a shining white horse, but who turned to dust when he climbed off to breath the land of his birth, for the magical home was not a mortal place, and the earth was. Tom Castor feels like if he leaves this bench, he'll crumple to the tiles, and if he leaves the hospital, he will never again feel Josiah's heart racing in time with his. It's so distant now already. And the pain. God help him, the pain.
"Lay easy, Pete, lay easy, Tom's been through a world of hurt, let him knock his thoughts down before you go askin' him a hunnert questions."
"Cap'n - " Tom blurts, his lips dry and his hands shaking. "Cap'n, Josiah's - "
"Hurt bad. I know it, lad. You done a brave thing, gettin' your brudder out safe."
"I don't think - he's - that he's - " The hurt seizes him again like the hand of God, throwing his soul against walls ablaze.
"Easy, lad." Their engineer, a Lufty named Ratty Parker, with a scar like a map of the Adirondacks down his face, moves swift - swifter than you'd reckon - to sit at Tommy's side, and the pain seems to ease. It surges, and eases. Tom's leg is straight and unbroken and strong, and feels like it's been skinned.
"Take a breath, son," Captain Doyle says, kneeling. Pete Langeley paces and wrings his hands and smoothes his uniform coat and wipes the soot on his face with soot-grimed fingers. "Take a breath, I know it hurts, let out to him. Like hose off the back of a cart, d'you feel it?"
"I got him," Lufty Ratty Parker says. "Listen, you got his heart in you, listen. I know you're closest on the team, find him out."
"Hurts," Tom says, so threadbare a voice. Josiah's bunk at the house comes to him, stripped and empty, and a sound comes heaving out of him like a horse struck with an ember. He wheezes against the tightest.
"Listen to me, son." Captain Doyle lays a hand on his knee. "Petey, you c'mere, too. You got to listen for him. He's gone under the laudanum, I 'spect, but listen. Close your eyes, son."
"I don't hear nothin'."
But Tommy closes his eyes, obediently. He isn't focused on Kenny Doyle's hand on his knee, or Pete's trembling heart, or Ratty's crooked face. He's out looking. His soul in a fine green place. Wynantskill in the middle of spring, the river shot up and foaming with mountain snow, the crocuses sneaking up between the cobbles of the training yard, the whole world breathing deep. His heart is walking the worn floorboards of their home quarters, smelling hay and oats and bacon fat and petrolene, smelling sweat and sleepy men and wool blankets. His mind is leaning on a sloping ceiling, laughing at Josiah's jokes.
Listen for him. Under the laudanum. Beyond the cackling river. Beside him in quarters on off-shift, dreaming. Tending the horses after a hard call. Tending the horses and talking.
He can see Josiah lying in bed, hooked up to medical machinations, and the doctors call them the mad ones, surely, there are tubes inside him, there is a mask on his face of leather and rubber. Josiah. The doctors and attendants move about him in shifts, pale blurred photographs overlaid one on top of the other and Josiah only stays clear, stays firm in his sight.
"I got him," Tom whispers. "I got him, Cap." Opening his eyes and seeing Pete leaning across his shoulder, balking.
"He's there."
"See? He's gonna be alright, son. Long as you feel him, hurt or awake, he's there."
Tom Castor nods. "I got it, Cap." I got him, he thinks. And though Josiah does not turn to him, as he does in quarters to wake him and tell him some foolish thing in the seconds before the alarms wake them all, though only his chest rises and falls, and though he is pale and clean as no fireman ever is, Josiah is there.
Tom Castor shudders at the empty bed in his mind.
But Josiah is there.
A young Silky, before he was Silky (Thomas Castor), waits for his injured crewmate, Josiah Henry Birch, in the halls of the city hospital.
...
No one will ever say there's been any love lost between a fireman and a doctor
Each, to the other, a necessary cruelty, inflicted at random and under duress.
The doctors, Tom Castor knows, all think that they - the firemen - are mad. They believe the coppers are madder still. Tom Castor has seen them, sometimes, the bluecoats, with their gaze on nothing, and with a chill up his spine, a strange sensation across his eyes like holding the card of a panogram at arm's length. The past spills over into the present, and the scent of sparks fills your nose and throat.
But the coppers, at least, hold the firemen in a tenuous respect, their madness neck and neck as horses down Manhattan avenues.
The doctors in their funny masks and pale coats, with their blood-dappled laps and sun-smeared waiting-halls, they have no such mortal qualms as compassion, Tom Castor thinks. No such qualms at all.
For he sits in the wan and smoky light of a high window, clutching himself inward, teeth clenched, keeping just a wit about him for the coming of his brothers, or the doctors or the coppers or anybody else to intrude. His brothers, of course, would understand. He's achin'. God he's achin'. It's not so bad, perhaps, as it was hours ago, in the nighttime, when the red busted out the seams of the ceiling above, when Josiah had crossed the threshold, the ember-blazing posts and lintels, when Tom could feel him strong in the hips and belly and steady in the heart, and then -
Pain seizes him him again. As if his very skin is struggling to leap off. He gasps for breath and tastes the recollection of another's blood in his mouth. The clop-clop of -
Horses?
No. Doctors at the far end of the hall. Those black and brass doors where men don't come back from. They swing wide, they swing open, they slam shut. It hurts. It hurts so bad.
He can feel their thinking, inside him. What's he got to cry for, what's he got to clench up his limbs, he ain't hurt, he's nothin' but a dirty smoke eater, nothing but a spark chaser, nothing but a sway-back draft from the livery stables waiting for the harness.
Tom feels more alone, in that moment of locking eyes with the doctors, than he's felt in almost his whole life. More alone, even, than before the day he went through Wynantskill's gates, and before he was assigned a company. More empty in his heart than he's felt since the day he woke up from his Seardark, his body a reeking, fever-creaking mess, and Josiah by his bedside, taking his hand up and saying boyo, look at you son, you made it, didn't you? Welcome back home.
Josiah, he thinks, oh, 'siah, come back, come back home.
The pain doubles him. He feels like someone's shoved a hot poker up his legbones and twisted it. He bites back the cry.
The smell of hay and petrolene comes to him then. Just before the white doors at the opposite side of the hall clatter open. Those are the light doors, the bright doors, the doors you walk out of into the clean foyer of Bellevue City Hospital and out into the light. Three men in dark coats with smudged faces and matted hair come through those doors, the youngest at a jog, the oldest at a more stoic pace.
"Tommy! Oy, Tommy, good God, how's 'Siah? Chief Darley had us all at quarters for an age, you wouldn't believe, he wanted a rundown from everybody about the fire, he thinks it was an arson, Tommy, is Josiah alright? God Tommy - "
That's Peter Langeley. He's the station youngest. Barely out of rookdom, barely broke his Sear some six months back. He's taking it hard. Tom looks down at his hands and sees Pete's heart in them, trembling and bleeding over his scorched fingers. When did he scorch 'em? Was it when he tried to tear the flaming plaster off Josiah's back? Was it on the handle of the door that near locked them in?
Tommy's no veteran, but he feels about a thousand years old. He thinks back to a yarn he heard from an old Lufty at Wynantskill, about a man who rode from his magical home on the back of a shining white horse, but who turned to dust when he climbed off to breath the land of his birth, for the magical home was not a mortal place, and the earth was. Tom Castor feels like if he leaves this bench, he'll crumple to the tiles, and if he leaves the hospital, he will never again feel Josiah's heart racing in time with his. It's so distant now already. And the pain. God help him, the pain.
"Lay easy, Pete, lay easy, Tom's been through a world of hurt, let him knock his thoughts down before you go askin' him a hunnert questions."
"Cap'n - " Tom blurts, his lips dry and his hands shaking. "Cap'n, Josiah's - "
"Hurt bad. I know it, lad. You done a brave thing, gettin' your brudder out safe."
"I don't think - he's - that he's - " The hurt seizes him again like the hand of God, throwing his soul against walls ablaze.
"Easy, lad." Their engineer, a Lufty named Ratty Parker, with a scar like a map of the Adirondacks down his face, moves swift - swifter than you'd reckon - to sit at Tommy's side, and the pain seems to ease. It surges, and eases. Tom's leg is straight and unbroken and strong, and feels like it's been skinned.
"Take a breath, son," Captain Doyle says, kneeling. Pete Langeley paces and wrings his hands and smoothes his uniform coat and wipes the soot on his face with soot-grimed fingers. "Take a breath, I know it hurts, let out to him. Like hose off the back of a cart, d'you feel it?"
"I got him," Lufty Ratty Parker says. "Listen, you got his heart in you, listen. I know you're closest on the team, find him out."
"Hurts," Tom says, so threadbare a voice. Josiah's bunk at the house comes to him, stripped and empty, and a sound comes heaving out of him like a horse struck with an ember. He wheezes against the tightest.
"Listen to me, son." Captain Doyle lays a hand on his knee. "Petey, you c'mere, too. You got to listen for him. He's gone under the laudanum, I 'spect, but listen. Close your eyes, son."
"I don't hear nothin'."
But Tommy closes his eyes, obediently. He isn't focused on Kenny Doyle's hand on his knee, or Pete's trembling heart, or Ratty's crooked face. He's out looking. His soul in a fine green place. Wynantskill in the middle of spring, the river shot up and foaming with mountain snow, the crocuses sneaking up between the cobbles of the training yard, the whole world breathing deep. His heart is walking the worn floorboards of their home quarters, smelling hay and oats and bacon fat and petrolene, smelling sweat and sleepy men and wool blankets. His mind is leaning on a sloping ceiling, laughing at Josiah's jokes.
Listen for him. Under the laudanum. Beyond the cackling river. Beside him in quarters on off-shift, dreaming. Tending the horses after a hard call. Tending the horses and talking.
He can see Josiah lying in bed, hooked up to medical machinations, and the doctors call them the mad ones, surely, there are tubes inside him, there is a mask on his face of leather and rubber. Josiah. The doctors and attendants move about him in shifts, pale blurred photographs overlaid one on top of the other and Josiah only stays clear, stays firm in his sight.
"I got him," Tom whispers. "I got him, Cap." Opening his eyes and seeing Pete leaning across his shoulder, balking.
"He's there."
"See? He's gonna be alright, son. Long as you feel him, hurt or awake, he's there."
Tom Castor nods. "I got it, Cap." I got him, he thinks. And though Josiah does not turn to him, as he does in quarters to wake him and tell him some foolish thing in the seconds before the alarms wake them all, though only his chest rises and falls, and though he is pale and clean as no fireman ever is, Josiah is there.
Tom Castor shudders at the empty bed in his mind.
But Josiah is there.