I hadn't planned on this one being the first Harcourt/Riley fic I publish but it was the one that practically wrote itself and I guess I just really like my drama llamas. Anyway, this is my virgin fic in this fandom and it seems as if practically no one aside from me ships those two (this is what always happens to me, so don't feel bad) so naturally I had to write them. And yes, it's probably not going to be the only one, I just haven't found the right name for a series yet but I'm taking suggestions!

Also, it has to be said, it's all pingulotta's fault!

We Ran Aground

„Wir sind gestrandet
Wie Flaschenpost
Ins Meer geworfen
Der Wind kommt von Ost
Wir sind abgetrieben
Wo ist das Licht
Das Licht, das einst so lodernd brannte
Wir sind gestrandet."

Santiano feat. Synje Norland, „Gestranded"

"So," Tom says, standing in her doorway, awkwardly kneading his hat with his fingers, "that is it, then."

It half sounds like a question to her ears, and he can't even look her in the eye properly. Behind her, she hears the feint squabbling noises her son likes to make when he is about to wake up – she still suspects falsehood behind the exclamations from all around the covert that at present there would be no other room available that forced her to accept the cradle put in her personal quarters – but she ignores him for the sake of the present conversation. Tom deserves that much, she supposes. "Yes," she says, holding her head high and doing her damndest to disregard the lingering fatigue that has her so engulfed since the last weeks of her pregnancy, "that is it."

He nods, almost meekly, and still keeps averting his eyes. She nearly rolls hers. It is growing tiresome; nearly enough that she wishes a repeat of last night. At least then, he had been able to look right at her; eyes ablaze with anger and his voice loud enough that both Chenery and Warren had unabashedly and worriedly poked their heads into her quarters at some point, but at least he had been looking at her.

"Well," he says after another moment of trying to look anywhere but her face, "then I…" He hesitates, and it nearly drives her to the same blazing anger last night's heated argument had brought her to. She is of a mind to briskly ask him to say his piece and leave her be when she sees a strange transformation happening right before her eyes.

Tom Riley, as she had learned fast on the Allegiance, wears his heart on his sleeve – one of the qualities that had endeared him to her in the first place – so she does not have to hear him say a thing to see that he came to the conclusion that maybe, after all, that was not it.

She hopes… well, she is not quite sure what it is that she hopes but it is irrelevant, anyway because he has pulled himself fully together, as it seems; standing tall now, looking right at her, a faint tinge of red on his cheeks – Tom Riley blushes prettier than the most freshest of debutantes, she is almost sure of that – and his voice is steady and fast when he ventures, "Are you quite sure that you want this to be the way it is going to be, Catherine?"

She would answer him if she knew exactly what he meant with "it" in this precise circumstances and she is about to enquire it of him but she feels her patience waning. She is to meet with Laurence and Berkley for dinner and her wet nurse has taken ill so she has to take care of her son, as well. "Yes," she replies, with more certainty in her voice than she feels, "it is. Do you not need to catch a courier to Sheerness, Tom?"

That was rude, even by aviator standards, and she feels genuinely sorry for it the moment it leaves her lips. It is just that since last night, since they shouted at each other about duty and marriage and dragons, even looking at Tom makes her blood boil, and in the same instant makes her overcome with a terrible aching tiredness.

Jane Roland, it seems, had the right of it, after all. Marriage indeed is proving itself more of a nuisance each day. She should have insisted on leaving things bloody well as they were. Damned sailors and their wretched sense of propriety.

"Catherine…" Oh, she hates it when he does that.

She hates it so, because it makes her reconsider everything she decided, and she does not like reconsidering anything. "Please don't, Tom."

Oh, hell. It was not supposed to come out like that, all tired and pleading, in such a small voice. "Catherine, please, can we not…"

He would do that, of course; see a weakness and push right into it. He is a military man, after all, and sufficiently well versed in strategy to know when to go forward. Not that he would ever hurt her intentionally, but he would try and sway her, would he not? "No. No, we can't, Tom. We went over this just last night and, if I might remind you, it did not end in sweet nothings for either of us!"

In fact, it ended in Tom storming out of her quarters, after being thrown out for calling her clearly and wholly unfit to raise any child, be it girl or boy. It was true, she had not taken well to her son at first, but she… "All I wanted for us was not to part on such bad terms, Catherine. All I wanted… was for us to part like married people, not strangers. Why can we not even do that?"

And that, right there, is the reason why they should never have gotten married in the first place. They might be a perfectly good fit in the bedroom but very clearly, they are not fit for anything outside of it. She had been so sure that he had been here to lecture her once again on her – utterly lacking – qualities as a mother and she had been ready to fight him on it once again, on fighting him not to take her son away with him just yet, and he had only come to say a proper goodbye. As it seems, they do not even speak the same language.

She drags herself up once again, drawing on her last ounces of strength to tell him the truth, tell him what he so obviously seems to be blind to. "We cannot do that because we are still more strangers than married people. That is the utter truth of it, and it will never change. Truly, you must see that yourself."

During her speech, something amazing and truly frightening happens. It is not pronounced or all encompassing but even she, better trained to read Lily than any man she might ever encounter, can see something in him break, right before her. It is something in his eyes, a flicker, a blink, and suddenly they seem a little duller, his face a little greyer, his shoulders a little lower.

She has seen this before, once, in the captain of a Parnassian of the Edinburgh covert who made it clear to his captain that he would rather live in the breeding grounds than be further ordered about. It is the look of a man who just lost something very dear to him and does not even know why. It confuses the bloody hell out of her. "Tom…"

"No," he says and it sounds as if it takes every last ounce of his strength to do so, "it is perfectly fine. I had hoped that maybe your regard for me… but no, I will, of course, not impose on you any further." What had he hoped would happen to her regard for him? What? "Very well, Captain Harcourt, I must take my leave, then. May I just… say my farewells to my son, for a moment?"

The utter dejection and flat civility of his voice takes her aback so much that it takes her a moment to register what he asked of her. Mumbling, "Of course," she steps out of his way then and does her best not to look at father and son sharing a last moment before they will very likely not see each other again for several months – she forbade herself to even think of the alternative – but she cannot help but sneak them a look or two. The hardest, most cutting thing about this is that very clearly, Tom will always be twice the father than she is a mother.

And yet, she cannot bring herself to let him take her son away with him, and she does not even know why.

When he is done, he walks past her, putting on his hat and giving her formal, business-like nod. She nods back, trying to keep her voice level when she tells him, "Fair wind and following seas, Captain."

It seems to cut him, again, but really, he started this one, and she will not have it said about her that she lacks even the barest civilities. "The same to you, Captain," he replies, his voice oddly rasping and for a moment, just a tiny little moment, she wants to throw all caution and formality to the wind and give him the goodbye he deserves as her husband… and then he is out of her door, out of her life. She thinks she should feel relieved.

She thinks so and she tries her hardest, and yet, all she can do is walk over to her son and take him out of his cradle and hug him towards her, breathing in his strange baby scent and a faint trace of Tom's cologne lingers on in the faults of her son's swaddling.

She is not crying, not per se because all she ever wanted, all she will always want is Lily and the bond they share; Lily and their bond and feeling the wind whip at her cheeks when they are high up in the air, just up in the air, and she will never want anything else, will not want anything else more than this. And yet she is still holding her son, her son who is still smelling faintly of Tom, her son who has Tom's clear blue eyes and wisps of bright red hair on his head.

Her son who she so desperately did not want to give away because he will remind her of Tom, every time she looks at him.

"Little fellow," she rasps into her son's ear, "shall we see if Lily has learned to bear with you yet? Shall we see?" The little boy looks at her with big blue eyes, looking uncomprehending at first and then a small smile spreads across his face and he gives her a gurgling little laugh and she feels so sorry that the parent better suited to the duty of bringing him up will be at sea for the better part of his life. Just because she could not bear to part with the one thing that will never cease to remind her of that parent.

She tries to smile back, bravely and tells him, "Very well, little fellow. Let us visit her and see if likes my little egg a little better now."

Her son gurgles at her again and she hoists him up, gripping him a little more firmly to carry him down to the clearing, in the hope that Tom's courier has come already so she will not have to endure his censure of her exposing their son to the presence of an acid-spitting combat-weight dragon. So she will not have to bear seeing him fly off to months and months at sea. She can bear everything, only just now, she could not bear that.

At least, she has Lily, will always have Lily, and maybe, if only for a little while, her son, as well. And she will be fine with that. She will have to be, and she knows her duty. She knows her duty, so bloody well.

"We ran aground

Like a drift bottle

Thrown into the sea

The wind is coming from the east

We drifted off

Where is the light

The light that once blazed so bright

We ran aground."

Santiano feat. Synje Norland, "Aground"