Fic: O'er The Deep Rolling Sea
Title: O'er The Deep Rolling Sea
Author: speak_me_fair
Play: Henry IV, Part 1
Characters:, Aumerle, Richard II (past tense)
Warnings: mention of canon death, morphine, bad dreams, loss
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Esperance!AU. Set a couple of years after 'O Du Mein Holder Abendstern' (found HERE ) Edward tries to hold more than his own memories.
A/N: Here is 'Blow the wind southerly' sung by Kathleen Ferrier: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-IQMXoH2WE
Morphine is addictive. He knows it. But he is not sure that the addiction is merely physical, for he craves the peace of his aching limbs (here, the pain reminds him, is where your ribs broke and your muscles tore. Here, when you breathe, is the scar tissue on your lung. Here, in the wet and cold and the ache of your walk, is the memory of that crushed vertebra in your back, long since removed. Here. Here. Here-) craves it incessantly, the more so when he fulfils his command aboard the flagship, Henry's duplicitous forgiveness that made him Third Lord of the Admiralty and condemned him to sea for the duration of a never-ending war.
Perhaps it isn't punishment for both their failures - his to save Richard, Henry's to protect him. But it feels it.
Perhaps it was Henry's answer to his question, the song that he now hears sung around him -
"Oh, dear, what comfort can I find?”
"None this tide,
Nor any tide,
Except he did not shame his kind -
Not even with that wind blowing, and that tide."
Not even with that wind blowing. Not even then. Not even the wind that stopped every attempt he made (and made again and could not stop making even when he tasted blood rising from his throat). Not even then.
Morphine, morphine, at the end of his watch. Morphine, and the dreams that are not his.
He dreams of Robert, whom he scarcely knew. Of Anne. He dreams of the sweet relinquishment of their bodies and the deliquescent, rot-filled horror that follows completion.
They are not his dreams.
They are the last he has of Richard; nightmares not of his own begetting.
But they are Richard, they are Richard's demons, they are Richard's legacy and his to keep, more than his title, more than his responsibility for his men, they are his because they were Richard, and he clings to them, to the feel of Anne's tomb-breath against his mouth, the dry and somehow clammy feel of Robert's hand.
He is in love with a ghost. He is in love with the dead, with memories that are not his -
None this tide,
Nor any tide-
They and they alone are his addiction, and the sweet slow push of the syringe is only his facilitating of it.
He would rather love the rot and decay and stench of his worst dreams than let Richard go from him.
And his ship crosses the waters where he lost all love.
The morphine sings like a siren in his veins, and he welcomes it, lets it drag him down for those few hours of his very own mental crypt.
Thy bones and thy putrescence and thy once-consuming fear, Richard, they comfort me.
His dreams are his rod and his staff.
The waves are his expected, wanted, longed-for benison.
When the dreams fade from him, he lights cigarettes, one after the other, emptying and then refilling the silver case Harry Percy gave (returned) to him as though it were as much a part of his duty as obeying the ship's clock.
Richard's emblem, lying in his hands. Never Henry's.
Admiral Sir Edward York keeps his men safe. He prays for his own life to be the price of that.
Richard, he thinks at the advent of every storm. Richard. Please. Let me come to you.
But the winds blow (southerly, southerly) and the waves cry and crash and their swell warns him, darkly, of shoals and shores, and he saves them all again and again, and yet his prayer is never answered.
The syringe glitters blackly in his unlit cabin, waiting for what dreams may come.
Richard.
**
Author: speak_me_fair
Play: Henry IV, Part 1
Characters:, Aumerle, Richard II (past tense)
Warnings: mention of canon death, morphine, bad dreams, loss
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Esperance!AU. Set a couple of years after 'O Du Mein Holder Abendstern' (found HERE ) Edward tries to hold more than his own memories.
A/N: Here is 'Blow the wind southerly' sung by Kathleen Ferrier: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-IQMXoH2WE
Morphine is addictive. He knows it. But he is not sure that the addiction is merely physical, for he craves the peace of his aching limbs (here, the pain reminds him, is where your ribs broke and your muscles tore. Here, when you breathe, is the scar tissue on your lung. Here, in the wet and cold and the ache of your walk, is the memory of that crushed vertebra in your back, long since removed. Here. Here. Here-) craves it incessantly, the more so when he fulfils his command aboard the flagship, Henry's duplicitous forgiveness that made him Third Lord of the Admiralty and condemned him to sea for the duration of a never-ending war.
Perhaps it isn't punishment for both their failures - his to save Richard, Henry's to protect him. But it feels it.
Perhaps it was Henry's answer to his question, the song that he now hears sung around him -
"Oh, dear, what comfort can I find?”
"None this tide,
Nor any tide,
Except he did not shame his kind -
Not even with that wind blowing, and that tide."
Not even with that wind blowing. Not even then. Not even the wind that stopped every attempt he made (and made again and could not stop making even when he tasted blood rising from his throat). Not even then.
Morphine, morphine, at the end of his watch. Morphine, and the dreams that are not his.
He dreams of Robert, whom he scarcely knew. Of Anne. He dreams of the sweet relinquishment of their bodies and the deliquescent, rot-filled horror that follows completion.
They are not his dreams.
They are the last he has of Richard; nightmares not of his own begetting.
But they are Richard, they are Richard's demons, they are Richard's legacy and his to keep, more than his title, more than his responsibility for his men, they are his because they were Richard, and he clings to them, to the feel of Anne's tomb-breath against his mouth, the dry and somehow clammy feel of Robert's hand.
He is in love with a ghost. He is in love with the dead, with memories that are not his -
None this tide,
Nor any tide-
They and they alone are his addiction, and the sweet slow push of the syringe is only his facilitating of it.
He would rather love the rot and decay and stench of his worst dreams than let Richard go from him.
And his ship crosses the waters where he lost all love.
The morphine sings like a siren in his veins, and he welcomes it, lets it drag him down for those few hours of his very own mental crypt.
Thy bones and thy putrescence and thy once-consuming fear, Richard, they comfort me.
His dreams are his rod and his staff.
The waves are his expected, wanted, longed-for benison.
When the dreams fade from him, he lights cigarettes, one after the other, emptying and then refilling the silver case Harry Percy gave (returned) to him as though it were as much a part of his duty as obeying the ship's clock.
Richard's emblem, lying in his hands. Never Henry's.
Admiral Sir Edward York keeps his men safe. He prays for his own life to be the price of that.
Richard, he thinks at the advent of every storm. Richard. Please. Let me come to you.
But the winds blow (southerly, southerly) and the waves cry and crash and their swell warns him, darkly, of shoals and shores, and he saves them all again and again, and yet his prayer is never answered.
The syringe glitters blackly in his unlit cabin, waiting for what dreams may come.
Richard.
**