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PART ONE: LORD, WE CUT ALL TIES WITH HOME.
Every hand did curse the day
He signed up for the trip.
And every hand did know
This was no way to run a ship.
Lord, no way to run a ship.
.oOo.
They find the motor carriage on the third day of their investigation.
Kim will remember later that it was early—too early for the city to have chosen what kind of day it wanted to be: Martinaise still undecided, the air pale and thin, the sea stretched flat, a sheet of metal that has not yet been struck. The boardwalk creaks under their weight, old wood and bitumen complaining in a language Kim has learned to understand but never to love. The swing stands on the coast, suspended from its rusted frame like a relic of a gentler lie. Its chains are stiff with salt, its seat worn smooth by years of bodies passing through. Harry sits first, with the careful gracelessness of a man who has learned to distrust gravity, large body carefully folded onto the narrow seat and white hands loose around the chains. He looks out toward the water, not down. Kim follows, adjusting his bomber jacket.
Below them, the motor carriage rests, half-submerged already.
The scene is very silent—not dramatic at all. There is no glint of metal, no sudden shock of recognition. There’s just a pale shape beneath the water’s surface, its roof visible when the light catches it right. The sea has already begun the slow work of claiming it, smoothing its edges, dulling its accusation.
The swing shifts under their combined weight, a subtle sway. Forward, back; forward, back.
Kim is acutely aware of Harry’s physical presence beside him—the heat of his body through layers of fabric, the faint smell of cigarettes and old soap, something mineral beneath it all. Harry smells like a man who has lived hard and recently survived it, but Kim does not allow himself to linger on the thought.
The sea breathes.
For a while, there’s only that. The water and the wood and the faint hum of the city waking up somewhere behind them and around them. Kim is conscious of his own pulse, steady and controlled. He is aware, too, of the absence of certain things: no shouting, no jokes, no sudden emotional eruptions.
Harry is quiet, and that, that unsettles him more than the car. Harry isn’t looking at him and, paradoxically, it makes Kim aware of Harry’s presence; he feels the weight of his body beside him and the way the swing seems to respond more readily to Harry’s movements than his own. Harry occupies space without apology.
Okay. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. What is he supposed to do? Should he tell him now? Should he move things along? They have a case to work on and they don’t have much time. What's more, the neighborhood hasn't been particularly friendly to them so far, not to mention the fact that Harry tends to talk to everyone he meets and try to help them in any way he can. Yes, Kim does find that endearing but that’s besides the point. They need to solve the case fast or it’s going to bite them later, and it’s going to bite them hard, and Kim knows that.
And yet. As the minutes pass, he cannot find in himself the strength to tell Harry to get up and get back to work. The shape of the car protruding from the water tells a clear story and it seems like its ending was near. God. No wonder he found Harry in this state on the first day at the Whirling-in-Rags. And to think that his colleagues couldn't have cared less on the phone. When he dwells on it, it's no wonder Harry seemed so reluctant to work at first—you tried to kill yourself the day before, in vain, and now you're being told to get back to work, on top of examining a seven days old corpse. Dear Dolores. Harry should not be here at all.
What should he do? He doesn’t know what to say or if he should be serious or casual or something else. Harry doesn’t look like he wants to discuss, which is strange and off-putting in a new way. Fuck. How do you form a connection in such a moment. He can’t leave him like that.
And so the Lieutenant finds himself humming before he realizes he has begun.
“ll n’y a que ciel et eau à perte de regard,” Kim sings, “Tu es venue en songe, là-haut… Cette nuit, mon cœur, tu m’as parlé tard.”
It’s quiet at first—barely more than breath shaped into sound. Kim remembers this old tune well. It’s one of those songs that don’t really belong to a time so much as to a place: decks slick with salt, hands roughened by rope, men who sleep with one eye open and dream of land they will not see again. Harry tilts his head, listening.
“Il n’y a que ciel et eau—et jamais tant de solitude. Quand on a largué le capitaine à flot, on a rompu tout lien avec l’habitude,” he continues to articulate the words, breathing through his nose in controlled gasps, the sea air stinging his nostrils with every comma.
Even though the lyrics come easily to his mouth, weirdly enough, Kim doesn’t remember learning it. He suspects he didn’t learn it so much as absorb it—through radios left on too late, through older men singing without self-consciousness in the death of the night, and, maybe, through a culture where male intimacy is permitted only when disguised as labor, violence, or, here, within music. The melody continues, threading itself inside the fabric of the morning air. It feels appropriate here, by the water, with the city held at arm’s length.
And, suddenly, comes another voice next to me, and Harry is singing the last line of the chorus: “Seigneur, on a rompu tout lien avec l’habitude.”
Oh. Yes. Yes yes yes. Heart beating a little faster than necessary, Kim forces himself to keep humming. Harry’s voice is rougher, lower, as if it has been waiting a long time to be used for something other than apologies or commands. He picks up the melody with uncanny ease, like a man remembering a language he once spoke fluently.
And he, Kim, he is acutely aware of the vulnerability of this—this unproductive sound, this sound that serves no function—but he doesn’t want to think about it.
The song continues, their voices barely harmonizing: “On a laissé dériver le tyran dans l’un de ses propres bateaux. Je ne sais pas pourquoi, pourtant, j’ai retenu les gars d’aller lui trancher la peau. Chaque main maudissait le jour où il signa pour ce voyage. Chaque main savait, sans détour, qu’ainsi l’on perd un équipage.”
“Seigneur, ainsi l’on perd un équipage,” Harry sings the line harder, with more confidence—he likes it, Kim notices with amusement.
The swing moves with them now, gently, as though the song itself has weight enough to push it. Forward. Back. “Adieu donc à son âme amère. À présent la cale est à nous. Jamais plus nous ne verrons la terre, ni ne danserons sous le chanvre au cou.” It moves to the weight and rhythm of two men who are not quite in sync but close enough to pretend they actually are. Forward and back. “Il n’y a que ciel et eau. On dort en rêvant de la terre, Mais libres des chaînes de fer, et de la main du capitaine. Seigneur, de la main du capitaine.” The chains creak in quiet agreement; the sea mirrors it, small waves catching light and letting it go.
They sing together, not looking at each other yet sharing the verses.
It’s Kim's turn to sing the part where the sailor catches a fever after being punished by the captain, who tied him up on the ship: “ll m'a attaché à une grille pour les neuf griffes du chat. Et maintenant j'ai de la fièvre, mais je n'y pense pas.”
And it falls to Harry to sing the end of the song, and his voice has such a final, solemn tone that Kim feels as if the sailor, high above the water, has just died when the melody fades away: “Je vogue haut au-dessus des eaux. Je dors en rêvant de la terre, libre des chaînes de fer et de la main du capitaine. Seigneur, de la main du capitaine.”
The song ends. It feels as if the melody circles back on itself once, twice, before giving up. For a moment, Kim says nothing. He has this urge to fill the silence, to explain himself preemptively, to justify why he started singing in the first place. He resists it. Harry is still here. Harry has not pulled away. That will have to be enough.
“What do you think it’s about?” Harry demands, his words a bit hesitant like he’s afraid to talk to his partner after what just occurred between them.
Not paying attention to his wild, wild heart, Kim adjusts his grip on the chain, metal cold against his gloved palm. He chooses his words carefully like he always does.
“I think,” he says, “that the song is about responsibility.”
Harry tilts his head: “Go on.”
“The captain is a tyrant, that much is clear. He runs the ship badly and everyone knows it. Everyone suffers for it.” He pauses. “But killing him is going too far, and letting him go does the same thing anyway, which is fixing the ship. They don’t have to kill him if they can avoid it.”
Harry opens his mouth, then closes it again. He lets Kim continue.
“The sailor intervenes,” Kim says, “because maybe the captain deserves mercy, and because murder would make the crew complicit in something worse. It would bind them to that act permanently."
Harry’s brow furrows: “You think killing him would’ve been worse than letting him live?”
“I think,” Kim answers evenly, “that it would have changed who they were. And not for the better.”
The swing creaks, slowing slightly.
“The sailor understands that,” Kim goes on, “He understands that some lines, once crossed, cannot be uncrossed. Even if crossing them feels justified.”
“That’s one hell of a moral victory.”
“It’s not a victory, it’s a sacrifice.”
“Okay, okay…”
“And, also, that’s the most popular interpretation of this song. At least I believe it is.”
“So… Everyone thinks it’s about mercy,” Harry murmurs more for himself that for Kim, staring out at the horizon, “and about being better than the tyrant...”
Kim watches him from the corner of his eye. Harry’s face is open in a way Kim doesn’t trust. He doesn’t look or smell like he’s drunk, and his conversation doesn’t seem performative either. No, he is intellectually engaged. This is Harry thinking. This is when he is most dangerous, including to himself, Kim suddenly realizes. So much for distracting him from his car.
“But that’s not what happens,” Harry says, “Not really.”
Here we go. The Lieutenant turns his head slightly. “What do you mean?” he asks.
Harry shrugs, broad shoulders rising and falling: “He stops the others from killing the captain. Sure.”
“That matters,” Kim says.
“Does it?” Harry asks, glancing at him.
The look is brief but direct. Kim feels it like a touch. He frowns.
“Of course it does.”
“Because the captain doesn’t kill him,” Harry keeps going, and there’s something like malice glinting behind his pupils, “I mean. Not directly, I suppose.”
“He has him lashed to a grating.”
“Nine lashes,” Harry nods. “This is all very procedural if you want my opinion.”
Kim hears something in his own voice when he responds: “That is still violence.”
“Of course it is,” and Harry smiles, “I didn’t say it wasn’t. Or maybe,” he adds, voice casual in a way that sets the Lieutenant’s teeth on edge, “it wasn’t even the captain.”
Kim’s head turns around to look at him. They’re close to each other. Compared to his own body, the width of Harry’s shoulders is a bit impressive. His knee nearly brushes Kim’s with each arc of the swing and Kim forces himself not to move away. He doesn’t move closer either. He holds himself precisely where he is, balanced on the edge of allowance.
“What?”
“The lads,” Harry says, “The crew. His own people.”
Kim feels irritation flare, sharp and defensive; his jaw tightens.
“That’s conjecture.”
“I guess. So is most of history,” Harry shrugs.
Kim looks away, out at the water. He thinks of the RCM. The locker rooms, the jokes that are not jokes and the ones that stop when he enters. The silence that stretches just a little too long—and the fact that silence can be enforced without orders. Kim learned, early on, which parts of himself to keep folded away.
“You’re projecting, Detective.”
“Am I?” Harry asks.
The swing creaks. Kim thinks, absurdly, of Oui À l’Amour, that one stupid homo-sexual magazine with the too-graphic cover, and of the way he had noticed it immediately at an underground kiosk, loud and defiant and titillating, and then pretended not to. The relief and the fear had tangled together in that recognition. Desire, once named, becomes evidence, and he can never risk that, no no no. He had not bought it and he had not lingered. He had registered it, filed it away, moved on. He has always been good at moving on.
Closed systems don’t require explicit prohibitions.
“He chose restraint,” Kim says, forcing himself back to the argument, “He chose not to kill. That matters even if it costs him, I think.”
Harry hums thoughtfully: “But it does cost him.”
“Yes.”
“And the captain lives.”
“Yes.”
Harry leans back, head tipped toward the sky. His posture is careless, open. Kim’s gaze flickers to the line of Harry’s throat before he can stop himself.
“Then what did he actually change?” Harry murmurs.
Kim opens his mouth before closing it. He doesn’t know what to add.
“He died,” Harry continues, quieter now, “He died in the cold, feverish and alone.”
The word alone resonates in Kim’s chest in a way he doesn’t interrogate. The thing is, he usually loves when Harry talk. He’s smart in a way that few people are. He’s smart in his own fragmented way, and it’s so unique that it makes Kim wanting to listen to him all the time. And he can be so tender when he speaks, too. Kim enjoys that. But right now, he really wishes for Harry to just shut up.
“The ship went on,” Harry says.
Kim feels something rising in his esophagus. Not disagreement exactly. Recognition, perhaps—once again.
“Maybe,” Harry continues, “the song isn’t about mercy at all.”
Kim’s pulse quickens.
“Maybe it’s about what happens when you do the right thing in the wrong place. You know what I mean? Like… when you refuse to be what the ship wants you to be, what a system needs you to be.”
He looks down at the water. You can see the pale shape of the car beneath it and above it and, around it, the reflection of the sky, broken and rearranged.
“You’re assuming futility,” Kim answers at last, “That moral action requires visible results.”
Harry turns to him. His gaze, more grey than green under the cold sun, is sharp, searching—and unexpectedly gentle. What? Why?
“I’m assuming consequences,” Harry says, and he has a little sad smile that stretches the wrinkles around his pink lips in such a lovely way.
The swing slows to a stop and they sit in silence. Kim feels the warmth of Harry’s body beside him, close enough to matter but far enough to remain unacknowledged. He wonders, not for the first time, what it would be like to exist in the world the way Harry does. He wonders, distantly, why the thought hurts.
“His pharisaical behavior lost him,” says Harry, his voice quiet like the singing of the bird within the calm of the early morning, “His pharisaical behavior lost him,” he says, “and for what?”
To that, Kim knows his heart holds no answer.
.oOo.
PART TWO: AND (NEVER) SO ALONE.
There's only sky and water
As far as we can see.
You came in a dream last night,
Dear heart, you spoke to me.
Something very unusual happens at the Sea Fortress.
Kim will later attempt to catalogue it as exhaustion caused by the… post-tribunal shock, let’s say. The natural psychic recoil of a man who has been shot at, who has nearly bled out, who has stood between violence and its inevitable consequence and survived by a margin so thin it might as well have been imaginary. He will attempt to give it a procedural explanation and, ultimately, he will fail. Later, Kim will also remember that the air inside the fortress felt wrong: not stale, not exactly, but contained, as though the wind itself had been arrested at the threshold and forced to linger in place. It doesn’t circulate so much as it settles. Salt clings to the back of his throat. The walls, pitted and uneven, seem to absorb sound rather than reflect it. Even their footsteps, although measured and careful, are swallowed whole before they can become echoes. And Kim knows that all of this has nothing to do with superstition and everything to do with political abandonment—stone swollen with salt; corridors too narrow, then too wide; angles that refuse symmetry. It’s a building that has outlived its purpose and that is perhaps aware of it. The whole place feels alive, pulsating like a heart. The sea presses against it from all sides, a thought that refuses to dissipate.
It is, Kim thinks, a place where things go to remain. Not to die, because dying would imply movement, a transition from one state to another and, no, it doesn’t fit the Sea Fortress. This is a place for suspension—for unfinished gestures, for projects that cannot resolve themselves, for men who outlived their wars and didn’t know what to do with the aftermath. And so, maybe it was the perfect place for them, after all.
Harry falls asleep half sitting against one of the interior walls, barely curled up inside the blanket they found on the makeshift cot. The patchwork of the throw seems to parody Harry's eclectic outfit—he’s still wearing his frog visor and piss-colored bell-bottoms—and, despite the fact that the ensemble is truly hideous, Kim finds the picture almost… cute.
Harry snores softly like a baby black bear. His head is tipping forward, unevenly shaved chin to hairy chest and mouth slightly parted. His fur coat is still on, damp at the hem (where on earth did he find it?). His hands rest on his thighs, fingers twitching every so often as though grasping at something invisible. There is a tension to him even in sleep—his shoulders are hunched, his jaw, tight—as if rest is something his body does not fully consent to. But he needs it all the same.
Kim tells himself he is only making sure his partner is alright. And, well, of course he is, there’s no reason for him to ignore the detective in such a moment. Idly, he notes a certain pallor in Harry’s skin. There’s a faint tremor in his fingers as well. His breathing is shallow, but regular, profound. He’s doing risk assessment, he tells himself one more time. If the detective were to stop breathing, he would need to notice immediately. He doesn’t acknowledge the fact that he has been watching the rise and fall of Harry’s chest for several minutes now without blinking. His upper body is so much bigger than his own and—
The fortress keeps humming around the two of them.
Besides the few doors they need to be open, there’s no electricity nor machinery still working, so Kim can only assume that what he hears is the wind threading through hollow corridors and broken apertures, and the sea striking stone and withdrawing—striking and withdrawing, again. There is a rhythm to it, he supposes, some kind of persistence.
While he’s still looking at Harry, the Lieutenant takes the time to adjust his glasses and cleans them a little bit. His head is still pounding with his migraine and injuries but the repeated movement of cloth against glass makes him a little more awake, at the very least. He allows himself to feel slightly relieved. Harry could be even more disabled than he currently is, so he reckons there is cause for relief. Himself still feels groggy, but his injuries are superficial, annoying at worst.
They have almost closed the case.
He exhales slowly through his nose: they should continue. They should move forward, locate the suspect, finish what they came here to do. There is no operational justification for allowing Harry to sleep in a place like this, at a time like this, in the middle of—oh, but who is he kidding? Now that Harry is finally getting that rest—sleeping after getting shot doesn’t really count in Kim’s book—what is he going to do? Wake him up? The tribunal is over; the bodies are dead in the ground. Nothing about this situation is ideal but the worst of it has already happened.
They are safe.
And, just as he starts to think that, maybe, they truly are, Harry’s breathing changes.
It happens subtly at first. A hitch, a sharper inhale. His fingers curl into his palms as though bracing against impact. His brow furrows and, shortly after, a faint sound escapes him—too low to be a word yet too strained to be neutral.
Kim straightens immediately. After having spent two whole days at his bedside taking care of his wounds and fever, Harry’s breathing has no secrets for him.
“Detective?” he says quietly.
No response comes as Harry’s head moves side to side. His mouth shapes something that does not fully form, and Kim’s chest tightens.
He should wake him up. He hesitates. He doesn’t know why. There is something profoundly intimate about watching a man fight something you cannot see.
Harry’s breath quickens; his entire body tenses as if he is about to run, and he moans, hurt, in his sleep.
“Harry,” Kim says again, firmer now.
Nothing.
.oOo.
The dream begins with a pedestrian crossing under the sea.
Harry knows it’s a dream because the white stripes are too clean. They cut through the water in perfect symmetry, stretching into the horizon like the promise of the future and the threat of change. On either side, the sea lies flat and absolute—no current and no tide, and no reflection of the sky. The water is completely dormant, a held breath within inexistent air.
He stands upon the crossing.
He is wearing his coat. He is wearing his shoes. He is wearing his body.
Good.
Good.
He takes a step. The sound echoes. It should not echo.
The crossing continues forward, always just slightly longer than it should be and always receding by a fraction of a fraction. There is a figure at the far end. It’s here because he needs it to.
Harry can make out everything about her even from this distance. He sees the blonde hair, and the familiar tilt of a head, those shoulders that he has traced in memory so often that the image feels carved into him. Dora, Dora, Dora. Dora and her crown of laurels formed in gold in the dusk of a new day. Of course it is Dora.
Kim does not know this, but if he could see it, he would recognize the way Harry’s entire posture changes in the dream. Longing rearranges him; guilt bends his spine; the faraway leftovers of anger and fear make his eyes more black than green.
Harry begins to walk, and then he runs, because he is always going to run if he catches sight of her.
The crossing stretches. Dora remains where she is.
“Wait,” he calls.
His voice sounds thin and unconvincing but still she turns around. Her face is exactly as he remembers it. She doesn’t seem aged by time and she doesn’t look not distorted by ire. The wax muscles of her visage look simply… finished. Composed. This is the expression of someone who has already made peace with what he has not, and, by God, does he know this expression all too well, because it’s the same he sees when he looks in the mirror after having cried for hours, the cold sensation of the metallic barrel still lingering on his temple.
Harry stops in front of her, lungs full of breath.
“You came,” he says, as though she has chosen to.
“You came,” she corrects, voice gentle like the wind.
He laughs, sharp and unsteady.
“That’s not fair.”
She does not argue. He tries to touch her. His hand passes through something that feels like warmth but offers no resistance. No friction to create. No skin to reach out for. He pulls back.
“You’re here,” he insists.
“No,” she says.
The word lands softly and shatters anyway. The water ripples, circularly, to the rhythm of these debris. He wants to argue. He wants to accuse and to beg, beg, beg. Spit his saliva until rotten teeth come out of his distorted mouth, the cleft of a harelip that never existed rendering him mute forever.
Instead, what comes out is:
“I miss you.”
“I know.”
He hates that she says it like that, like it’s manageable. It isn’t. Harry wakes up everyday with his limbs heavy as lead and he has to move around until he cannot with the certainty that he will never be loved again in this lifetime, and so, to sleep and to drink is all he can do because it’s the closest he can be to ataraxia; the promise of nothingness is always out of reach for those who cannot bear the consciousness that physicality entails.
“I did everything wrong,” he says.
“Yes.”
The honesty is unbearable. Everything is unbearable. This body is unbearable.
“I loved you,” he says.
“I know.”
“I still—”
He cannot finish. Dora looks at him the way one looks at a gaping wound that bled all night.
“You don’t have to stop,” she says.
“Stop what?”
“Loving me.”
He laughs. He feels hysterical.
“That’s not how this works.”
“It is,” she says with calm, “You just don’t like it.”
His chest tightens. He looks at the water. It is perfectly still. He understands, suddenly, with a clarity so sharp it hurts, that he could step off the crossing and it would not ripple. The sea would accept him without disturbance.
“You left,” he says.
“Yes.”
“You left with—”
He cannot say daughters. He cannot say unborn. He cannot say anything that would make it real in the way it already is.
“That wasn’t your fault,” she says.
“I killed them,” he insists.
“No.”
“I did.”
“Harry.”
“I did.”
She looks at him for a long time. And then, she says the worst possible thing.
“I forgive you.”
He recoils. No no no no.
“I didn’t ask for that.”
“I know.”
“I don’t want it.”
“I know.”
She steps back—just one step. The crossing stretches. The distance grows.
“No,” he says immediately. “No, don’t—”
“I have to,” she says.
“Stay.”
“No.”
He tries to run after her. His legs will not move. She turns. She walks away. He stands alone above a sea that does not move. He thinks, distantly, that it would be easy.
One step. Just one.
.oOo.
Harry’s eyes snap open.
The fortress does not return to him gradually—it crashes back all at once, stone and salt and the low, continuous murmur of the sea forcing itself into his awareness with a violence that feels almost physical, as though reality itself had been waiting just behind his eyelids, impatient, ready to reclaim him the second he loosened his grip on it. For a fraction of second, he doesn’t understand where he is, and worse, he doesn’t understand who he is in relation to it; the dream clings, viscous and insistent, Dora’s outline still imprinted against the inside of his vision, her voice lingering somewhere between memory and hallucination, and the dissonance between that impossible stillness and the movement of the real sea around him is enough to make something in his chest seize completely.
He inhales too fast. The air doesn’t reach where it’s supposed to go. It stops somewhere halfway down, splintering into sharp, insufficient fragments that leave him more desperate than before, and when he tries again the result is worse, a stuttering, panicked attempt that only confirms what his body has already decided—that there is not enough oxygen in the world, that something vital has been removed from him without warning—that he is in immediate and irreversible danger.
Kim sees the exact moment it happens.
It’s not dramatic at first, not in the way panic is often described, but it’s unmistakable to anyone who has learned to observe rather than simply look; the shift occurs in Harry’s breathing before anything else, in the sudden irregularity of it, the way his chest expands too quickly and not deeply enough, followed almost immediately by the tension that floods his body, every muscle tightening as though preparing for impact. His hands curl into themselves, fingers digging into his own palms with a force that suggests he is trying to anchor himself through pain alone, and when his eyes open there is no recognition in them at all, only a kind of raw, unfiltered terror that makes something in Kim’s stomach drop in a way he cannot quite rationalize.
He moves before he has time to think about it.
“Harry,” he says, and his voice comes out steadier than he feels, controlled through long practice, shaped into something that can be relied upon even when the situation itself cannot.
There is no response—at least, not one that resembles comprehension. Harry’s gaze flickers past him, unfocused, searching for something that is not there, and when he tries to speak the result is fragmented, the beginnings of words that collapse under the weight of his own breathing.
“I can’t—”
Kim closes the distance between them without hesitation now, one hand coming to rest on Harry’s shoulder, firm enough to be felt, he hopes, and deliberate enough to be grounding, and when that does not seem sufficient—when the tremor running through Harry’s body only intensifies under his touch—he adjusts, his other hand moving to the back of his neck in a gesture that is, in any other context, far too intimate to justify, but here feels not only appropriate but—necessary.
“Look at me,” he says, more quietly this time, but with more insistence.
Harry tries, and Kim can see the effort it costs him, the way his eyes struggle to settle, to focus on something external rather than whatever internal landscape is currently overwhelming him. When they finally do land on Kim’s face there is a brief, fragile moment of connection that Kim seizes immediately, holding his gaze with a steadiness that is as much for himself as it is for Harry.
“Breathe with me,” he continues, slowing his own breathing deliberately, exaggerating the movement just enough to make it visible and to provide something Harry can follow without needing to think, “In through your nose. Slowly.”
At first, it doesn’t work.
Harry’s attempt is too sharp, too fast, his body still locked in the rhythm of panic, and when he shakes his head—he’s violent he’s desperate—Kim feels a flicker of something dangerously close to helplessness rise in his chest before he forces it down with practiced efficiency, because this is not the time for that, this is not the time for anything that does not directly contribute to stabilizing the situation.
“Yes, you can,” he answers to the unformulated question, and there is something firmer in his voice now, something that edges into command without fully becoming it, because he knows instinctively, without needing to articulate it that Harry responds to structure even when he resists authority. “You’ve done it before. Do it again.”
Harry inhales, again and again and again. It’s still uneven, still insufficient, but it’s better, and Kim adjusts immediately, refining rather than replacing, guiding him through it step by step, breath by breath, until the sharp edges begin—very slightly—to dull.
“I’m going to die,” Harry manages, the words dragged out of him between gasps, and Kim recognizes the sincerity of the statement, the absolute conviction behind it; he supposes that panic doesn’t allow for metaphor; it reduces everything to immediate, bodily certainty.
“You’re not,” Kim replies without hesitation—hesitation would imply doubt, and doubt would only reinforce the narrative Harry’s body has already constructed. “This is a panic attack, Harry. Harry. It will pass.”
He doesn’t know if the explanation is useful, but he offers it anyway, something factual to counterbalance the irrational, something structured to oppose the overwhelming.
Harry laughs, and the sound is wrong—it’s high and fractured and bordering on hysteria and Kim hates it, he hates it—and then the words begin to spill out of him in a way that is both disjointed and strangely coherent, fragments of memory and experience colliding without transition: the phone call, the Pale, the church, the Pale inside the church and the man that was there too, the oranges, and beneath it all, threading through every other thought with a persistence that is almost physical—
Her.
Kim doesn’t interrupt.
He listens, and, as he listens, he becomes acutely aware of the fact that this—this moment, this unfiltered outpouring of everything Harry has been carrying without structure or restraint—is something he has not been trained for, for that is something that exists entirely outside the parameters of standard police procedure, and yet his body responds to it with a certainty that feels older than training, older than discipline, something closer to instinct.
Harry’s hands find his jacket. He keeps talking but now he’s looking at Kim, so Kim clings to that. Harry’s hands. Harry’s hands are immediate and forceful and unrestrained on his body, and Kim feels the pull of it not just physically but conceptually, the way Harry latches onto him as though he is the only fixed point available, the only thing that can be relied upon to remain where it is. Kim allows it. More than that—he accommodates it, shifting his stance slightly to absorb the force, to make himself more stable, more present, because if Harry needs an anchor then Kim will be one, of course he will be, regardless of what that implies, regardless of how difficult it might be to disentangle himself from that role later.
“She was there,” Harry says, and his voice breaks on the word was in a way that makes Kim’s chest tighten unexpectedly.
“Dora,” Kim answers, because naming things has always been his way of making them manageable.
Harry nods, and then the contradiction follows immediately—hate and love existing side by side, irreconcilable and yet inseparable; “I hate her, I love her, I miss her,” he says and he keeps saying—and Kim finds that he doesn’t attempt to resolve it and he doesn’t offer interpretation or reassurance beyond acknowledgment, as some things are not meant to be resolved in the moment, some things simply need to be held. Embracing Harry as tightly as he can, Kim considers his options.
There are, theoretically, several approaches he could take here—maintain distance, provide verbal guidance, allow Harry to regulate himself with minimal intervention—but each of them feels insufficient when measured against the reality in front of him, against the way Harry’s body continues to shake, against the intensity of his grip.
And so Kim makes a decision that he knows, even as he makes it, will complicate things.
“I think,” he says slowly, choosing each word with care despite the urgency of the situation, “you need to not be alone right now.”
He closes the remaining distance and pulls Harry into him, the movement deliberate and unambiguous, leaving no room for misinterpretation, and the immediate response—Harry’s body going rigid for the briefest possible moment before collapsing fully into the contact—confirms that the decision, however questionable from a professional standpoint, is the correct one. Kim adjusts his hold instinctively, one arm secure around Harry’s back, the other remaining at the base of his neck, maintaining that point of contact that seems to ground him most effectively, and he becomes acutely aware of the physical reality of him in a way that is difficult to ignore: the weight and the heat, and the way his breathing, though still uneven, begins to shift in response to the proximity. Against his will, he blushes, but doesn’t move away.
“You’re here,” Kim says, his voice lower now, closer, shaped by the reduced distance between them, “You’re not there.”
You exist in this moment. It’s a simple statement, almost reductive in its clarity, but he senses that complexity would only hinder rather than help, that what Harry needs in this moment is not analysis but orientation, not interpretation but presence. Yet Kim knows it’s more complicated than that—you exist here and also there and because you exist in both of these moments, you have to hurt until you hurt less, and even when you hurt less, you still have to exist. It’s infuriating, Kim knows that probably as much as Harry.
Of course, the change is gradual. There is no clear moment where the panic breaks, no definitive point at which Harry transitions from crisis to stability, but Kim feels it nonetheless in the subtle shifts—the way the tremor loses some of its intensity, the way the grip on his jacket, though still firm, becomes less desperate, the way the breathing begins, slowly and unevenly, to approximate something sustainable. Harry’s voice, when it comes again, is muffled against his shoulder.
“I feel like I’m going to fall apart.”
Kim doesn’t hesitate this time.
“You can,” he says, and the words come out with a certainty that surprises him, not because they are untrue but because he has spent so long structuring himself around the opposite principle, around containment and control and the careful management of everything that might otherwise become unmanageable. It’s true, he realizes then.
“It’s okay, Harry. You’re allowed to.”
Allowing someone else to fall apart—allowing it, and remaining present through it—feels like stepping outside of something he has relied on for years. I’ll be with you regardless, he wants to add, but he doesn’t. Harry lets out a sound that is almost a laugh and almost a sob, and Kim feels it against him, a physical manifestation of something internal shifting.
“Don’t let me do something stupid,” Harry murmurs after a moment, and there is something in the way he says it that makes Kim’s jaw tighten almost imperceptibly.
“I won’t,” he replies, and he means it in a way that goes beyond the immediate situation, beyond the scope of this single moment.
“And if I try?”
Kim pulls back just enough to look at him, to ensure that the words he is about to say are received fully, without distortion. Harry’s eyes are a powerful green in the darkness and the outline of his pupils shine with unshed tears like so many large irregular stars in a sea full of algae.
“I’ll stop you.”
There is no room for negotiation in his tone, no suggestion that this is conditional or subject to change, and when Harry searches his face for doubt Kim does not allow any to surface, holding his gaze with the same steadiness he had used earlier, offering certainty as something tangible. I’ll stop you, I’ll stop you, I’ll stop you—I want you to live.
The shift, when it comes, is subtle but undeniable: Harry’s breathing steadies further and his shoulders lower slightly. The immediate, overwhelming edge of panic recedes just enough to reveal something else beneath it—exhaustion, perhaps, or the remnants of whatever the dream had stirred in him.
Kim becomes aware, then, of their proximity in a different way. The intervention is done; he should step back. He knows he should.
Instead, he lifts his head, slowly and deliberately, and presses a brief kiss to Harry’s brow, the gesture so natural in the moment that it bypasses his usual mechanisms of analysis entirely, existing as action before it can become thought, and when he follows it with another, softer still, against Harry’s scarred knuckles, he feels the way Harry stills under the contact, how something in him quiets further in response.
Kim doesn’t say anything. He simply remains where he is, close enough to feel the residual tremor in Harry’s body, close enough to ensure that if it returns—if the panic resurges, if the dream reaches for him again—he will be there to counter it.
“You’re alright,” he says finally, and though the statement is not entirely accurate, it is true enough to serve its purpose.
Harry nods slowly as though testing the motion, like he’s confirming that he is indeed capable of it.
“I think… yeah,” he whispers. His tone sounds both relieved and grateful, and that makes Kim happy, if only a little bit, in this moment of respite between the present and memory.
Kim inclines his head, accepting the approximation without correction, and for a moment longer—just a moment—he allows himself to remain exactly where he is, suspended between what is necessary and what is not, between what can be justified and what cannot, aware that whatever this is, whatever it becomes, it will not be easily undone. Kim doesn’t let go of Harry immediately. He tells himself it is to make sure the panic does not return. He knows he is lying.
.oOo.
PART THREE: FREE OF CHAINS OF IRON.
There's only sky and water.
We sleep and dream of land,
But free of chains of iron,
And the captain's iron hand.
Lord, the captain's iron hand.
.oOo.
The boat cuts through the water slowly.
Too slowly, Kim thinks, and then immediately hates himself for it. He has spent the entire case wishing for efficiency and for forward motion and for conclusions that arrive on time. Now that the island is behind them—the fortress receding into fog and distance, the Deserter left with his ghosts and the wonderful if not terrifying Insulindian Phasmid—he finds himself wishing, irrationally, that the engine would stall, and that the sea would demand more time from them.
Turned toward the horizon, Harry sits at the front of the small boat, thick coat flapping slightly in the wind, face redden by the cold and the alcohol. He looks lighter somehow—not healed, because Kim is not that naïve, but unburdened in a way that feels new, as if something old and corrosive has finally been set down.
Harry keeps babbling. It’s not constant or frantic, he just… makes pauses and starts talking again every now and then. He makes observations about the water, about the color of the sky, about how the city looks different from this angle. He hums between sentences, scraps of melody Kim recognizes immediately.
Sky and Water. The song on the swing. Kim listens.
The sea stretches around them, vast and indifferent, and yet Kim finds comfort in its consistency, because he knows that it doesn’t judge and that it doesn’t remember. The boat rocks gently beneath them, and Kim adjusts his posture automatically, compensating for Harry’s movements without thinking. They have learned each other’s rhythms over the past days, Kim realizes, and that realization lands harder than he expects. Dear Dolores, he feels so silly.
Unaware of his turmoil, Harry leans back, squinting at the sky. “You know,” he says, “I think I like it out here.”
Kim raises an eyebrow: “You had a panic attack on that island.”
“Details,” Harry grins, unapologetic.
Kim exhales something close to a laugh. He watches Harry as he does it—the way his face opens when he smiles and you can see the little gap between his front teeth and the way emotion moves through him without permission, with his skin quivering because of his inner life. Harry is not contained and perhaps he never has been. Kim has spent years learning how to make himself smaller, quieter, less legible, so that he could be less visible to those who wanted him dead while retaining enough authority to be listened to and acknowledged when he needed to be. Harry does the opposite, and the world bends around him anyway. It is unfair as much as it is magnetic.
Kim looks away, back toward the city. Martinaise slowly emerges from the mist, its familiar contours gradually coming into view with its coastline and cranes, the low, industrial silhouettes of the buildings casting long shadows on the sea foam. And there—unmistakable even from this distance—the RCM motor carriage parked near the shore. The 41st precinct and the future—Kim’s chest tightens.
Harry notices the change in his posture almost immediately, the bastard.
“What is it?”
“We’re almost back,” Kim shrugs like everything feels normal.
Harry follows his gaze. He goes quiet. The boat keeps moving.
For a while, neither of them speaks. Harry’s humming fades, replaced by the sound of the engine and the water beneath their feet. Kim feels the weight of the unspoken pressing in—everything that has happened, everything that will not be said, everything that will end as soon as they step onto land. He doesn’t feel trapped at sea because he knows that the earth will be his cage, and he immediately feels foolish for thinking that way.
Harry breaks the silence first: “Hey, Kim?”
“Yes?”
“You want me to put something on the radio when we get closer?” Harry asks, “SpeedFreaks, maybe,” he smiles, “Get the blood pumping and all that jazz.”
Kim grins back but doesn’t answer right away. He can tell himself Harry is worried about him, although it might just be entertaining his fantasies. He watches the coastline draw nearer, the figures on shore becoming clearer and more defined. The return of structure, of roles. There’s bile in his throat when he thinks that way, because how could someone like him ever doubt of who he is? He cannot afford that. Worse, he knows the world will always remind him of who he is. His identity is a collective noun inside everyone’s mouth like the name of a broken monument ready to be spit out and built again on fertile soil. Structure? Roles? This is stupid. This is conjecture. This needs to stop but this has already started. How can you stop the machine of a conscious mind? Kim wonders to no avail.
“No,” he answers.
Harry steals a glance at him, surprised. “No?”
Kim swallows. This is the moment, he realizes. He hates doing confessions or declarations, and so he decides that this isn’t one. It can be a futile moment of vulnerability during which he can ask his understanding and caring colleague to do something mundane for him, knowing that it would make him—make them both—feel better. His teeth grit in the corners of his jaw—even this is hard. Asking this with so much effort is already pathetic enough in itself, but…
“Would you,” Kim asks carefully, “sing again?”
Harry blinks. “Sing?”
“Yes,” Kim says, and he keeps his voice even, “You know. Sky and Water.”
For a second, Harry just stares at him; and then, his face breaks into a smile so open and bright that it almost hurts to look at.
“Yeah,” Harry beams, “Yeah, of course.”
He doesn’t hesitate; he never really hesitates when he sets his mind on something, which is both incredible—how can a mind so unstable be so ferocious over the most mundane things?—and frustrating—why does he never listen?—to the freak control that is Kim Kitsuragi.
Harry starts softly, voice carried by the wind and by the movement of the boat. Kim joins him after a moment, but not immediately—he wants to let Harry take the lead this time.
Il n’y a que ciel et eau, the words familiar now, worn smooth by repetition just like the seats of the swing. On dort en rêvant de la terre.
Kim feels something loosen in his chest as they sing. The song is no longer an argument or a question. It’s a social statement—perhaps some sorts of reckoning.
“Libre des chaînes de fer”, Harry sings, voice steady and luminous, “et de la main du capitaine.”
Kim closes his eyes.
He thinks back of the man Harry was when they met. He was a broken and brutal creature, sometimes mean but mostly self-destructive, convinced he was beyond redemption. Eyes wild by an old anger he couldn’t even remember, he was an animal cornered by his own past. He thinks back of the days that followed, of Harry’s relentless curiosity, his kindness, his unbearable sincerity, and he thinks back of the way he listened and of the way he cared. It makes him grin again: it was so surprising to see such a gentle and empathetic man flourish beneath the false carcass of alcohol and the much more real carcass of sadness. He was much more open to people and things than Kim could ever have imagined, and this surprise slowly but surely turned into fondness. You can never guess what life turns people into, he thinks absently, his tongue teasing the still-raw slit on his lip.
Adieu donc à son âme amère, they sing together.
Kim understands, then. Perhaps this line is not about the captain. Maybe, for them, it never was. Perhaps it’s about the version of Harry that needed to die, the Harry who drank himself into oblivion and who hurt himself because he didn’t know how to stop hurting others—the animal Harry no longer wants to be.
The boat slows.
The shore is close now. Jean Vicquemare’s posture is unmistakable even from here, rigid and braced for disappointment. There’s the woman that Harry once compared to a horse standing beside him, unreadable, although the dark circles under her eyes betray the difficulties of the past few weeks. Another man is with them (and from this distance, he really looks like the father with his son behind the Feld building in Land's End… Wait a second), younger and less dull, looking as if he was already preparing a lecture, so far from the usual picture of the veteran RCM officer. Kim swallows again; he doesn’t know what to make of these waiting silhouettes.
Harry finishes the last line, voice trailing off into the wind. They don’t sing again after that.
Finally, the boat bumps gently against the dock, the engine cuts, and the world, their world, rushes back in. Harry stands first, offering Kim a hand without thinking. Kim takes it before he can reconsider. Harry’s grip is warm and solid and real as they step onto land. Kim straightens his jacket while Harry squares his shoulders. The roles slide back into place with practiced ease as soon as they let go of each other’s hands: Lieutenant and Detective; officers of the RCM. Yet something has shifted, and Kim feels it in his bones.
Harry glances at him once more before they walk toward the others. There is gratitude in his eyes, something like hope. Kim nods, just slightly.
And as they walk toward the waiting car, Kim knows—with a certainty that surprises him—that Harry du Bois is capable of change.
.oOo.
His dear Coupris Kineema waits where Kim left it, immaculate and patient, its baby blue frame catching the late light. The sinuous streets of Jamrock and Saint-Batiste and Villalobos awaits beyond it, the familiar roads and routines and the safety of distance. Kim reaches for his keys automatically, muscle memory guiding his hand.
“Kim!”
He freezes. The voice is breathless, urgent. Getting closer.
Kim turns just in time to see Harry jogging toward him, coat flapping, hair a mess, eyes wide with something akin to panic or resolve—maybe both. As he approaches, he skids slightly on the gravel, then straightens as if embarrassed by his own momentum. His arms are bare to the elbow—strong, corded, marked with old scars and new bruises, big hands flexing as if he doesn’t know what to do with them. Kim’s attention catches there involuntarily, traitorous and immediate.
The detective stops in front of him, a little too close; he smells like the sea and sweat and cigarettes and something alive and warm. Sticking his gloved hands in his pockets, Kim forces himself to remain impassive in front of this oh so endearing mess of a man.
“I—” Harry starts, then stops. He rubs a hand over his face. “Sorry. I just—”
Okay. Kim’s heart is pounding. He hates that Harry can do this to him so easily. He hates that he doesn’t hate it.
“Is something wrong?” Kim asks, voice steady through sheer force of will.
Harry laughs once, sharp and nervous: “No. Yes. I don’t know.”
He looks at Kim like he’s afraid Kim might disappear if he blinks, and Kim doesn’t know what to make of the leash holding him back, because he’s supposed to disappear, and he might get hurt if he doesn’t. Harry is both stronger and softer than him. It’s weird, the way he understands this without being afraid at the same time.
“You’re leaving,” Harry says.
“Yes,” Kim replies, “That… was the plan.”
“Right,” Harry nods, “Yeah. I know. I just—”
He steps closer. Kim does not move away.
“I don’t think I can let you go without…” Harry trails off, searching for his words. “I don’t think I can let you go like that.” His hands lift, hover in the empty air—those hands, capable and restless—then drop again, frustrated. “I keep thinking if I don’t do this now, I never will.”
“Harry—”
Harry leans in and kisses him.
Oh.
Harry misjudges the distance slightly; their noses bump, and there’s a half-second of startled stillness where Kim could pull away. He doesn’t. He tilts his head instead, just enough, and Harry exhales—a sound that feels like relief against his teeth—and tries again.
Their mouths collide hard enough that Kim gasps, surprise dissolving instantly into heat. Harry’s hands come up this time without hesitation, gripping Kim’s jacket, pulling him against his chest in as if afraid Kim might slip away. Kim’s own restraint snaps decisively as he grabs Harry back, fingers curling around his forearms.
Dear Dolores. His arms. Solid and warm and fucking alive under Kim’s eager hands. Kim has noticed them before (because of course he did)—noticed the way Harry fills space, the way his body insists on itself like a revolution—but this, this is different. This is allowed. Kim drags his hands up, thumbs pressing into muscle, feeling the body hair standing up on the scarred skin and grounding himself in the undeniable fact of Harry’s presence, who makes a low, surprised sound into the kiss.
The second it happens, the kiss deepens. The world narrows. Harry’s grip tightens. The rising of his chest is honest against Kim’s clavicle; it’s urgent as if the detective is afraid Kim is going to change his mind. Kim feels it—the strength in his arms, the way he holds on like this matters (like Kim matters), and so he presses closer without thinking, chest to chest, the line of Harry’s body fitting against his in a way that makes his breath stutter. Fuck. Harry is hot.
They break apart only when they have to breathe.
Harry stays close, forehead almost touching Kim’s, eyes dark and searching. “I— wow,” he says, voice wrecked, “I’m sorry, I just—”
Kim cuts him off by kissing him again. Whatever. He can have this. He deserves this. This time, he leads.
It’s slower but no less hungry, deliberate in a way that makes Harry shiver. Kim’s hand slides back to Harry’s arms—he can’t help it—thumb tracing the line of muscle there, memorizing it. Harry exhales sharply, fingers digging into Kim’s waist, needy for the contact.
When they finally pull apart again, both of them are breathing hard.
Harry laughs softly, disbelieving. “Okay,” he giggles, “Okay. That… yeah.”
Kim straightens his jacket with hands that are not entirely steady but he doesn’t step back. He just cannot do it yet. “You appear,” he says dryly, “to be coping.”
“Barely,” Harry admits. He looks at Kim like he’s trying to commit him to memory. Nobody has ever look at him like this, Kim distantly realizes. “You’re really going.”
“Yes,” Kim answers as he licks his lips. Harry tastes like artificial smoke and the sharp air of the sea wind. He wants to suck on his mouth again. Wants to suck him again and again.
There’s a beat before Harry starts again, rubbing the back of his neck: “I’m sorry if that was— I mean, I didn’t plan it, I just—”
“It’s all right,” Kim says quickly. Too quickly. Ah. He clears his throat. “You did not… misread the situation.”
Harry’s eyebrows lift. “I didn’t?”
Kim hesitates only for a half a second.
“No,” he says, “You did not.”
Harry’s smile is slow, disbelieving. “Oh.”
They stand there, two men who have stared down corpses and cryptids and ghosts, suddenly unsure what to do with their hands. Kim feels his ears burning, but he keeps his head low enough to avoid staring at the sudden peony-colored blush on Harry's nose and cheekbones. It makes him want to giggle and he scoffs to himself.
“So,” Harry says after a beat, “We’re both going home.”
“Yes.”
“And… after that?”
Kim considers him. He really looks at him—this man who has survived himself.
“I imagine,” Kim says carefully, “that we will see each other again.”
Harry nods, earnest. “Yeah. I’d like that.”
Kim allows himself a small smile. “So would I.”
They look at each other for a moment, revelling in the warmth that comes from understanding each other so easily, and Kim thinks to himself that it's really stupid of him, a man of almost fifty, to stare at another man of almost fifty like that. But hey, it happens. Kim goes to his Kineema, opens the car door, pauses, then looks back. The detective stands motionless, and his dilated pupils do not leave the lieutenant. He would almost look scary but he doesn’t. An intense man, a dangerous man at times but—not with him.
“Harry.”
“Yeah?”
Kim hesitates only for a second before leaning in and pressing a brief, firm kiss to Harry’s mouth—a promise, not a goodbye, he tells himself, and he knows it’s the truth and, with that truth, comes a relief.
“Take care of yourself,” Kim whispers. For a second, he’s so close he can see between the gap between the detective’s front teeth, the pink tip of his tongue and, in his peripheral vision, the shadow created by the dimple on his chin, and it makes him feel lightheaded. Okay, he really needs to leave.
Harry watches him go as he gets inside the car, arms loose at his sides, still warm where Kim’s hands had been. He’s beaming, his smile all teeth, and Kim cannot stand to look at him any longer or the sun of Harry’s mouth is going to melt him. He starts the engine, pulls away. In the rearview mirror, Harry stands watching like a guard dog until the road curves and he’s gone.
Kim drives away. He’s smiling; his heart is pounding. He’s already missing him.
This is ridiculous.