Work Text:
It’s just after James tells Thomas everything. About Singleton, about Gates. About every soulless decision he’s made over the last ten years in the name of a dream that died beating and bleeding in his hands. Everything he did first for Thomas, then Miranda, then no one at all and finally, very briefly, for everyone.
When he tells Thomas about Miranda herself, his voice shakes. Not just about her death but about her life. The loneliness he hadn’t admitted she must feel. Her anger. Her sorrow. All the things he has only now started to realize he left with her when he went to sea. All the things she held for him. All of her own things she dropped, to hold his.
Thomas stays silent until the end. Doesn’t say anything for a long while, instead simply rubbing a thumb over James’ knuckles thoughtfully. James tries to cherish the touch - knowing it is likely the last one he is ever to know like this.
When Thomas draws away and moves towards the windowsill James readies himself. Thomas will be angry, will ask James how he could have been so blinded to let love slip through his hands not once but twice. Instead of loosing harsh words or rejection, Thomas lifts up a piece of the sill that had been tamped down to reveal a cubby. James watches as he roots around in it before pulling out a gold band and James’ breath catches at the familiarity. In London, Miranda had worn it as the second part of her wedding band.
When she had shown James the now incomplete ring on their journey to Nassau, explaining that Thomas held the other part as a reminder of them, he remembers the bitter longing to have something that joined him to Thomas so. Miranda had still been wearing hers when she was killed and he had thought with some comfort that they might have something to lead them back to each other.
Now, Thomas brings this half back to where James is sitting. He sits back down next to James, still silent, staring at the ring as he turns it over in his hands. It feels like there is a weight on James’ chest so large it prevents even the smallest whisper of breath. He will wait for Thomas’ judgement - surely soon to come - holding desperately to these last moments and also dreading that the next could bring his destruction.
“I asked her to keep a promise I had no right to demand of her.”
Thomas’ words bring James out of his panic. They are devoid of anger, still with the same introspective quality Thomas has been turning the ring over with.
“Thomas?”
“I asked her to take care of you. To keep you safe.” Thomas looks at him, and James is stunned to see there are tears in his eyes. “It was selfish, but you were all I was thinking about. In that moment-”
He made me promise him that you and I would take care of each other -
“You wanted us safe when you were uncertain-”
“I wanted you safe.” Thomas’ interruption stuns him. “I was foolish, and selfish. I didn’t mean to be, and I hope she knew that. But I knew she could take care of herself.” Thomas’ eyes still haven’t left his and in the silence that follows, James hears more.
I feared what you would become if left alone.
James can’t even argue to himself that Thomas is wrong. He thinks about how he leaned on Miranda when news of Thomas’ death reached them. How he had let her guide him to revenge, use their anger and his strength in tandem. He thinks about the months after her death. How unmoored he had felt. How deeply he had sunk. How desperate he had been for any semblance of caring.
“She didn’t deserve that burden.”
More silence, as Thomas contemplates that.
“Is that how you see yourself? A burden?”
“A danger.” While he doesn’t believe the words John Silver had said to him, exactly, there is a certain risk he cannot deny in standing as close as the people who love him do. He feels it, still, the strength of those convictions. Of his desire to see the world made better than it is. He wants to believe he would deny that for a chance to be with Thomas, but it is still there. He will never stop being angry and bitter at a world that has told him over and over that he should not exist. He will never stop wanting to make a world that does not make others feel that way.
The fire that Thomas himself had lit in James, all those years ago - that Nassau had banked. That Madi and her Maroons had stoked into a wildfire. It will always be there because James has no true desire to put it out.
Thomas has dropped his eyes back down to the ring. It gleams in the light that comes through the window.
Thomas takes James’ hand, slips the ring on his finger. It is just slightly too big, but it is warm from being held in Thomas’ fingers for so long and James reflexively curls his fingers to stop it from sliding off even as a confused, lost thing of a sound escapes him.
“I made Miranda promise me something I had no right to ask, so now I am going to fulfill it myself. In her memory, and because I want to,” Thomas says simply. His fingers curl around James’ and the ring presses against both of their hands. What expression he wears James cannot see on account of the tears that spring to his eyes, blurring his vision entirely.
“Thomas...”
“You see yourself as a burden, for caring too much about a world that seems impossible to achieve. I want to help you build it.”
It isn’t until that moment that James realizes that he hasn’t lost Thomas. Somehow, through everything else that has been ripped from him.
He still has Thomas. And Thomas sees it, the need for that other world.
“I...” he is trying to order his thoughts. Every eloquence he has that always comes to him in the form of an argument is struck dumb by Thomas’ simple acceptance.
“Will you let me?”
That answer, at least, is easy to give.
“Yes.”