Disclaimer: The graphic novel the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was created and is owned by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neil. The film adaptation is owned by 20th Century Fox. No illegal infringement is intended.
Author's Note: As I have not had a chance to read the comic book, this fiction is based on the movie verse, and any inconsistencies in characterization I apologize for now. I have, however, read all the source novels, because I have too much free time. This story is rated T for now, but could go up in the future.
Chapter One: We are the Hollow Men
Beyond the railing of the deck the sea stretched an unbroken, infinite sheet of glassy, placid obsidian, relinquishing the horizon to a depthless gray mass of oppressive heat mist. The pale coin of the sun peeked through black, bloated clouds that were pregnant with the storm that, hitherto, had only managed to bunch the air with suffocating, leaden humidity, pungent with the acerbic taste of brine.
She advanced from the hatchway, rested her pale hands on the hot metal of the railing. A few moments exposed and her clothing felt twice the bulk and burden, hugged her thin frame; her hair clung damp and sticky to her temples, the nape of her neck. Regardless, she made no motions to retreat. Below was cool, as always -- the temperature of the Nautilus' bowls controlled by some electrical mechanism she didn't understand and the inferior man had yet to harness -- but the gentle hum of the machine did little to ease the stagnancy of silence. Among her table of jars and phials, with only that and the sharp, mathematic clicking of the standing clock in accompaniment, she had found concentration impossible.
Here, however, there was no reprieve in the form of a gentle breeze, of screeching gulls, of clanging bells and whistles that had accompanied every other voyage in recent memory (before the sword of the sea had put them all to shame). Not even the tender touch of the sun, which, in a black disposition such as this, she could bring herself to endure. Atmosphere airless with bitter heat, water torpid, the ocean was tune to their unrest.
A sudden crack shot. Overhead, thunder clamored on heavy barrel rollers, strobes of lightning flashed just above the cloud cover. A red dot drifted far off, unmoving, shrouded by the fine heat fog.
" 'e's been at it all day." Mina startled, turned. Since the fire his scent had changed, from leather and muted cognac to that of clean bandages, salve, the sweet perfume of cooked flesh, all overlaid with the acidic smell of raw, animal pain. She hadn't recognized it with the dilution of the sea air.
"Mr. Skinner." He was lounging in a deck chair, nestled in the crook just left of the projected doorway. Clad in the familiar black trench coat and nothing else, for once Mina could not rebuke him for lack of dress; he needed no other aids to establish visibility. Revealed through the open front of his coat were bandages that encircled his chest, back and torso, bandages that extended to the arms beneath the jacket's sleeves and emerged from under the cuffs to cover his hands. He looked the part of a mummy whose head and legs had been lopped clean off. The sight might have been amusing, under separate circumstances. "I was of the impression you didn't know how to read."
The book drooped in the wrapped hands, his shoulders shifted slightly as the unseen head presumably glanced up. Skinner replied in a light tone of mock offense, "It'd break my sweet mum's 'art to 'ear you say that."
Obligatory quip exorcised, Mina's smooth brow furrowed. "What are you doing up here?"
"Same as you, I imagine." He closed the book, placed it on the floor with wrapped hands that were clumsy and stiff. "Jekyll's shut 'imself up on account of his rather undesirable roommate, Nemo's too busy pourin' over maps to share a chap 'good day', Sawyer's worked 'imself up into a tizzy, and you've," the tone turned impish, "takin' to lockin' you're room when you're in it. Which wouldn't be a problem . . ."
Skinner raised one hand like a useless piece of driftwood. "Not quite up to lock pickin'," the fingers curled slightly, abated with a clear flinch from the figure, "on account of recent events and all."
Without pause, the same hand redirected to the floor on the other side of his chair, tone instantly rebounding. "Plus, below all you can 'ear is the rats scurryin' about in the walls. Not the most pleasant of music, in my opinion."
"Best you not let Nemo hear you speak of his lady so." Skinner sniggered, raised an amber filled tumbler from the deck. Mina frowned.
"I was not aware Dr Jekyll had given allowance for alcohol, in your condition."
Skinner's hand paused midair, and Mina thought if he had been visible, she would have seen him wink. "Our little secret, then?"
"Perhaps," she crossed the deck with deft swiftness, removed the glass from his brittle grasp before he was in full realization of what was occurring, "you should remember who it was that dragged your lifeless body from M's fortress before you take your care into your own hands." She returned to the railing, and despite rouge's protesting bleats, poured the amber liquor into the sea.
Another crack shot. A jet spray of water yards from the floating red buoy burst into the air.
Mina returned the empty glass to the invisible man, who eyed it mournfully. "You wound a bloke, lovey."
"Return to you room and stay there, before I inform Dr Jekyll of your absence." Her voice softened minutely. "You're in no condition to be up and about."
Skinner stood slowly, woodenly, tucked the book under one arm, grumbling under his breath as he started back toward the hatchway. ". . . treat a mate like a bloody leper . . ." He opened the door and paused, turned to regard her with that strange, empty gaze.
"It'll do no good," he muttered under his breath, words for her sharp ears only. " 'e told me to bugger off, and I saved 'is life." The shoulders of the jacked shrugged. "That's gratitude for you." A moment later and his figure disappeared down the ladder, the door shutting with a metallic clang.
She hadn't seen the youngest member of the League either, at first, though advancement found him at a spot just past her own, hidden behind the wide cylinder that was the crown of the conning tower. He was alone, the target launch loaded but unmanned, his shoulder turned against her at a distancing angle. Whether he had heard her and Skinner's conversation was indeterminable by his hunched stance.
She took a few steps in approach, halted far enough away to reduce the palpable sensation of the blood rushing through his jugular, carotid from a torrent to a distant thrum. The small, irregular beat that suddenly interrupted the rhythm of his heart told her he knew of her presence, though he failed to turn and formally acknowledge it. His focus remained trained on the distant target, the barrel of the gun following its mass as the Nautilus sped on.
He fired, the shot sharp and deafening.
A spout of water, just behind the buoy, jettisoned into the air.
Tom swore, twisted, gun clenched in on white knuckled hand, his mouth a tight, frustrated line. He pitched the gun back against the hollow of his shoulder, took aim on the mirror water once more with eyes that were hooded and unreadable. She waited.
"I'll not coddle you, Agent Sawyer."
Another shot. The buoy remained whole and unmolested.
"No one asked you to."
Silence pervaded the air between them, tension building with the electricity of the mounting storm.
"It's been over two months."
"Yeah, and you know what?" He turned on her, his green eyes blazing. At her unlined, cold countenance the fire dimmed; he seemed to shrink back, to buckle to the stability of the gun in his hands. "He hasn't even been in the ground a week, Mi . . ." His eyes had been away from hers, on the floor at his feet; they flickered up to connect, just as quickly jerked away. "Mrs. Harker." He amended quietly.
A sharp sigh of exasperation escaped her. "You are mourning, it's understandable. However—"
"Yeah, God save the Queen." The bitter note was back. Mina bristled, her tone remained level but clipped.
"As I recall, you were not offered anything in return for your services. You have nothing to gain from our exploits, and are therefore free to leave if it suits you, Agent Sawyer."
At that he flinched, looked at her with eyes that were wounded and she instantly regretted the words, but veracity dictated and she offered no apology.
"It's not that." He muttered finally, rubbing the back of his neck with one tanned hand. He remained in distant silence so long she thought he wouldn't continue; when he did, the words came if being purged. "Quatermain is dead, Skinner's just barely to the point where his bandages can be changed without him screaming like a wildcat, Ishmael and the other crew members haven't even been buried, and Gray . . ." Perhaps sensing the thin ice he tread he trailed off, looking back into the sea.
"It . . . it just doesn't seem right, is all." The conversation capped with his dejected shrug. He turned and sidled past her, the rifle still in his grasp, faded from her peripheral vision and she did not turn to watch him go.
Thunder exploded overhead, the humidity broke with the spectacular climax of the sound, with the suddenness of a rope finally snapping under unbearable strain; raindrops came abruptly and in sheets. She remained, looking out into the water at the abandoned buoy, floating a single crimson bulb against the stretch of liquid iron whose veneer shuddered with manic invasion.
They were broken. Whatever cautious trust acquaintanceship had first brought was obliterated by Mongolia, by M and the revelation of their exploitation, by the personal salt of Dorian's betrayal to augment the dagger wound already in their backs, by the death of Allan Quatermain. Had they been anyone else -- dedicated to a life of servitude in the name of the Queen, honorable men and women, friends, even -- perhaps they would have pulled together to mourn, to heal.
They were not. They were criminals, murderers, monsters, thieves, already subject to the ravages of lives of deception, torment, catastrophe and loss, none of which seemd to have adequately braced them for their most recent misscarriage. In light of this new disenchantment, the walls of self-preservation around them loomed high, barbed, well fortified as they licked their discarnate wounds. Hunted or shunned, most of them remained for no reason other than they had nowhere else to turn.
Bureaucracy, then, had swept down with the arrogance only a government could contrive and torn their wounds anew, had summoned them -- regardless of the fact that their so called League had never actually existed -- to port for an urgent audience. Unfortunately, there were too many of them with something to gain that only the Crown could offer. They were bleeding raw again, in the memories of tribulation.
And Tom Sawyer's so called extraordinary talent of unfailing optimism had apparently deserted him. They all knew, in their line of work, it would happen eventually; Mina just didn't think it would be as tragic to witness as it was.
It was sometimes easy to forget how young the agent was.
She wished she had the strength to offer him something other than hard words and harsh realities. But she lay maimed as well, and was too self-serving to allow her own grief to lay open, exposed to the harsh light of day and let to bleed its poison. That, perhaps, had been her first mistake.
Jonathan . . .
And on the coattails, "Dorian."
Sometime during her musing she had found the edge of the dock, had taken the wet railing in her hands. Looking down, she found the fingers contracted, knuckles seared white around the metal in a flesh garrote; she released the baking metal abruptly with something like embarrassment. Inward slopes marked where ghost fingers still clenched.
A heavy sigh escaped her. When did things manage to get so complicated?
Behind her, a small flapping noise, and the rain landed short of her figure with a soft pattering. She frowned quizzically, looked over her shoulder.
Behind her stood Henry Jekyll, smiling faintly, holding an umbrella over her with one hand. The other fiddled with the pocket watch. Newly exposed, dark spots began to color his duster; his auburn hair began to brown with water.
He looked terrible.
Hyde had not been seen again since the day in M's fortress, and containing the beast was not so much wearing on the doctor as it was obviously killing him. His face was gaunt, wan, eyes lusterless and sunken, red-rimmed with apparent lack of sleep. Already thin, his weight had diminished further – his clothing, neatly pressed and well tailored as always, hung loosely from a wasted, skeletal frame. It was the first time she had seen him in some time; he emerged only from the locked confines of his quarters to tend to his invisible patient.
Thunder detonated a cannon blast. The skittish man jumped nearly from his skin. He offered a shy, nervous smile upon recovering, shouted over the sound: "You'll catch your death out here, Mrs. Harker!"
A rueful smile touched the corner of her mouth. "I've not had that worry in some time, Doctor."
He flushed, stammered something inaudible; in the next breath he jerked sharply, eyes flashing from hers and turning inwards, his face pulled in something like despair. She reached out to him and he just as quickly straightened, withdrew, forced a look of composure that failed utterly.
"Nemo sends word that we are about to submerge." He stated finally, and offered his arm. Much to her own surprise, Mina took it, hooking her arm through his with a gentlewoman's tact. His figure was ungainly and stiff, hers remote, and the hold was awkward and disconnected.
It was with this tacit detachment the two returned to the courtroom silence of the Nautilus' womb.
The next chapter should be out sometime within the week, hopefully. Reviews, comments and criticism are always greatly appreciated.