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Polar Explorer RPF - Prompt Post 1
This is for prompts for all things general Polar Explorer RPF.
If you've filled (or started filling) a prompt, please make sure to link it in the comments of the Fills Post. And if you would like to cross-post your fills on AO3, here is the collection!
Under this umbrella you can prompt:
Prompts in line with adaptations of Heroic Age stories can also fit here, for example if you want to specifically prompt Hugh Grant!Cherry from The Last Place On Earth getting wrecked (which someone really should).
No blorbo too obscure for this post! EXCEPT: NO PEARY ALLOWED. God I hate that guy.
Rules:
Regular view: https://coldboys.dreamwidth.org/925.html
Regular view, last page: https://coldboys.dreamwidth.org/925.html?page=999#comments
If you've filled (or started filling) a prompt, please make sure to link it in the comments of the Fills Post. And if you would like to cross-post your fills on AO3, here is the collection!
Under this umbrella you can prompt:
- Historical versions of Franklin Expedition(-adjacent) guys (Rossier, Gore/McClure, etc)
- Madhouse at the End of the Earth/Belgica Expedition
- Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration - Shackleton, Scott, Amundsen, Mawson
- Andrée Expedition
- Karluk Expedition
- etc
Prompts in line with adaptations of Heroic Age stories can also fit here, for example if you want to specifically prompt Hugh Grant!Cherry from The Last Place On Earth getting wrecked (which someone really should).
No blorbo too obscure for this post! EXCEPT: NO PEARY ALLOWED. God I hate that guy.
Rules:
1. Be fucking nice. YKINMATO/KINKTOMATO at all times.
2. This meme is CNTW (Choose Not To Warn) but warnings are highly encouraged.
3. Prompts should use this format in the subject line: [SHIP], [DESCRIPTION]
e.g.
Mertz/Ninnis, sex crying
Solo gen can be prompted as well alongside (a) character name and description
e.g.
Gen, Emil Racovitza, discovering a crazy new fish
4. Fills should use this format in the subject line: FILL: [TITLE], [PAIRING], [RATING], [ANY WARNINGS]
e.g.
Fill: The Very Next Day, Cherry/Birdie, E, cw self-harm
5. One prompt per comment please.
6. Multiple fills for each prompt are welcome!
7. You don't have to be anon for your prompts or your fills but we do encourage it because of the vibe. You're also welcome to deanon your stuff by posting on AO3/Tumblr as you please!
8. Feedback on prompts and fills is AWESOME; please take longer conversations to the discussion post.
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Re: FILL: We Both Go Down Together, Scott/Wilson, 5+1 fic, death, really sad Gen [2/2]
(Anonymous) 2023-09-24 11:01 pm (UTC)(link)Is this how it happens?
*******
5 December 1918, London
“Daddy, look, look!”
Adrian waves a sheet of paper just below his nose, and with a groan, Scott pushes his stiff limbs up from where he was lying on the sitting-room floor, scribbling alongside his sons. He is tired today, but one cannot be tired around children.
“Oh, what do we have here?” He teases. “Is it…an elephant?”
“No-o-o!” Adrian shrieks in amusement, shaking the paper.
“It’s obviously you on a dreadnought, Daddy.” Peter says, not looking up from his own paper, where a somewhat more sophisticated war scene is also taking shape. Long gone are the days when all he would draw was penguins.
Scott wrinkles his nose, bemused, and turns back to his younger son. He takes the paper in hand, turning it sideways dramatically. He squints. “Is that so, Adrian? Well, I don’t have my spectacles, see-”
“Daddy, they’re on your head!”
“Ah! So they are!” Scott makes a show of pretending to find them. “Whatever would I do without you, dear boy?”
“You knew they were up there.” Peter’s exasperation cuts over Adrian’s giggles.
“Peter.” Scott warns. He tamps it down, but he feels rather at sea amidst the judgement of his own child—these antics used to delight Peter the way they do Adrian. In the weeks since Scott’s return from the war, he’s found it difficult to keep up with Peter’s rich new nine-year-old social world, so foreign from the grim death he’s left behind. The trouble is that he had allowed home to remain static in his mind. He keeps forgetting new details, saying the wrong thing. His pangs of guilt are made all the worse for the fact that though such instances provoke ire in Peter they seem not to dampen Adrian’s clamouring for attention at all.
Returning to the bit, Scott slides the glasses up his nose and smiles broadly down at Adrian’s dreadnought. The figure apparently representing Scott on the page has blond hair and twenty-odd fingers on each hand. “There we are, clear as crystal. And it’s rather better than the one I’ve done-” But the rest of the sentence is lost in a coughing fit.
Adrian stops his excited fidgeting, and his little face grows dark. “Daddy? Have you got Enza?”
“No-” Another cough. “What?”
“A bad bird.”
“Well, your brother’s the expert on birds, when Uncle Bill’s not around-”
“Enza’s not really a bird.” Peter says as if it is the most obvious thing in the world. “It’s from a song the kids sing at school.” And he sings, tunelessly “I had a little bird / it’s name was Enza / I opened the window / and in flew Enza!”
“Peter, no.” This time, Scott does not hold back his sternness, and the boy deflates under the weight of his words. “It’s not that. I feel just fine. Only my throat’s been a little ticklish this morning.”
But nightfall brings a fever, and the next morning Wilson comes up to see him—outside in the garden, because he has been working in the influenza ward at Aldershot since returning from the war himself. He confirms the diagnosis. The cool pressure of his hand on Scott’s burning forehead is an oasis in the desert, despite the latter’s ripping headache. “I’m sorry, Con. I’ll do my best to lower your fever, and we can try a vaporiser. Do you have some good reading material? The bookstores are all overrun just now.”
Scott is put up in the guest bedroom, bored to pieces staring out from the bed every day. Time blends together, punctuated occasionally by a concerned Adrian pushing drawing after drawing under the door. Kathleen tries to dissuade the boys going inside the sick room, making them wear cloths over their faces whenever they do. She takes no such precautions herself, even pecking her husband on his flushed cheek. He coughs and coughs and sneezes up what seems like endless foul-coloured sputum into a bowl.
In a relatively lucid moment of wakefulness, Scott opens his eyes to see Wilson lying in the bed next to him. At least, he thinks he does. He is so dizzy and his heartrate so fuzzy he does not quite trust his senses to tell him the truth.
“Am I dreaming?” he whispers out.
“She’s brought me here against my will.” Wilson winks, and coughs. He is stronger than Scott, perhaps because his lungs are acclimatised to such torture by past trial. “I haven’t a place to stay in the city besides the hospital, and your Lady wife thinks I will die in there. Ory is coming down from her sister’s.”
Between bouts of delusion, Scott is aware of Kathleen’s rough hands, her hands that have manufactured electric coils and rebuilt men’s war-gouged faces, forcing a trickle of soup down his throat. Peter brings him tea, and Scott feebly tousles the boy’s hair, wanting to take back his harsh tone from earlier but too hoarse to speak. He sleeps. He feels rather than sees Kathleen change the bedsheets. He hears Wilson hum, hears him and Kath discuss a bird seen out the window, sees a blurry Oriana looking down at him in concern.
It’s when he upsets the bedpan that Wilson decides to finally break them free of their prison, under pretence of getting some fresh air, but really because “I’d rather not die in there, would you?”. If in their minds the two are naughty schoolboys sneaking out past their commanding officer, to a passerby they must look a sad sight, two aging men barely able to walk and breathe without swaying, liable to fall over in the faintest breeze. A gargantuan effort and a haze of delirium sees them through to the garden, where the sun is so hot on Scott’s face it burns, despite it being December. Has everything always moved this much? Where are his snow goggles? Ah! There is the cairn. Wilson stumbles forward quickly, towards it. Scott coughs, and Wilson hushes him, “You’ll scare the snow petrel, Con,” and Admiral Egerton is there, and Scott hasn’t seen him since the war, or perhaps since the Victorious? Egerton asks would he like to go vagabonding in Greece, and Scott replies no, thank you, he is rather tired and would very much like to take a nap in the sun, but first would he like to see a charming drawing his son made and does he perhaps have a cup of cocoa handy?
Wondering when he will awaken from such an odd dream, Scott falls asleep next to Wilson, below the tree at the end of the garden, in a pile of frost and dead leaves.
*******
Is this how it happens?
*******
17 July 1948, Kirriemuir
Callum minds the counter, watching the two old men who have just entered the shop out of the corner of his eye. They seem perfectly harmless, but Da always told him to keep an eye on customers, especially strangers. They’re English. What brings them up here? They are chummy, laughing and debating the wares and pointing things out to one another. The shorter one walks with a cane, and the taller one hovers a hand by the small of his friend’s back, just where he can’t see it—but it’s there if needed. They remind Callum of his grandparents.
The taller one strides up to the counter, delicately releasing an armful of goods—a sausage, a loaf of bread, chutney, cheese, plums. His newly-freed arms rest on his hips, elbows out at jaunty angles. He wears a light-coloured suit, clean and practical, and a pair of Zeiss binoculars hangs around his neck. “Excuse me, young man,” the stranger beams down at Callum with a twinkle of mischief in his eye. “You wouldn’t happen to sell any chairs, would you? I’m afraid my friend’s knees are no longer up to sitting down on the grass for a picnic.”
The friend in question toddles up behind him, indignant at this accusation. “Since we’re asking, do you by chance sell any sunhats? I’m afraid my friend here used to be ginger and the weather today is decidedly un-Scottish.” This man is completely bald, and dressed a bit sharper than his companion. The frown lines in his face are just as deep as the smile ones. “There’s no need for a chair, really.”
“My goodness, Con, I’m not sure I have the strength to pick you up after a picnic anymore!” the first one says, with that unabashed candour characteristic of the very young and the very old alike.
“Ehm-” Callum starts, hesitantly, before he is subject to more old man retorts. “We don’t sell chairs, but I could go and ask my Da if we could loan you one if you’re just needing it for a picnic?”
“We don’t want to be any trouble.” The bald one says quickly, definitely. “Is Mrs Aitken’s shop still around the corner? She had chairs. We can ask her.”
“You knew Mrs Aitken?” Callum asks in surprise.
“‘Knew’?” The tall one raises his eyebrows.
“It was ’22 we last saw her, Bill. Just before you left for New Zealand.”
“She passed when I was five.” Callum says with the flat normalcy discussing death of one whose childhood spanned the Second World War. “Yous have visited Kirriemuir before?”
“Oh, yes. We’ve spent many a summer at Burnside with the Reginald Smiths.”
They must be rich friends of the Smiths, then. Old Mr Smith was always nice enough, Callum thinks, offering “I was sorry to hear about his passing.”
“I hope the new owners are looking after the place.” The bald one drums his fingers on the counter, lightly, as Callum starts to wrap up their purchases.
“They are, sir, from what I’ve seen.”
“Do you still get shrikes up in the meadow?” The taller one asks eagerly.
“Aye, shrikes and all sorts—are you off bird-watching?”
“What gave me away?” He holds up his binoculars suggestively. “You as well, son?”
“Oh aye, sir, I spent about a half hour watching a goshawk yesterday. Didn’t even hear Ma calling me in for supper.” Callum blushes slightly. He could gush about birds all day. Usually he holds it in, seeing as Ma disapproves, but a customer is a golden opportunity for conversation.
“Good lad!”
“Is this what you were like as a boy, Bill?” The crankier one cuts in.
“Certainly not! I always came in for supper. I rather think my mother failed to appreciate when my pet buzzard also came in for supper, however.”
As Callum rings them up, the taller one throws in a bouquet. “For Mrs. Aitken. We’ll call on her at the cemetery. I want to tell her one last time how darling her scones were.”
As they’re about to leave, Callum remembers what he forgot in the haze of birdwatching excitement. “Oh, sirs!”
They turn round.
“Your chair! You can borrow mine, I don’t need it at the counter. You’ll bring it back this afternoon, right?”
“Oh dear boy, there’s no need-” The bald one starts.
“I insist, sirs, from one birder to two others.”
“I’m afraid I’m a poor substitute for Bill’s favourite birding partner.” The bald man grins wryly, “Besides, we hardly want you in trouble with your father.”
But the taller one has other ideas. “We’ll pay to borrow it.” He sets some coins on the counter. “We’ll be back by half four.”
Callum walks the lightweight stool round the counter, and the taller man hoists it up, the other man carrying the picnic basket.
“Can I take your names, sirs? Just to tell my Da who to expect back later?”
“Of course.” The tall one waits as he gets out a pencil and paper. “This is Robert Scott, and I’m Edward Wilson.”
They’re common enough names, sure, but something about them—and them together in particular—itches at Callum’s memory. Has he read them in a book somewhere? He asks as much. A strange look passes over both the old men’s faces—the look of people becoming aware suddenly of the gulf of history. They exchange a glance, and the bald one—Robert Scott—answers.
“You may well have. We went to Antarctica a few times when we were young.”
“Wow!” Callum’s eyes grow huge. “Like Shackleton?”
“Yes,” Robert Scott answers, bemused. “Like Shackleton.”
Re: FILL: We Both Go Down Together, Scott/Wilson, 5+1 fic, death, really sad Gen [2/2]
(Anonymous) 2023-09-25 10:51 pm (UTC)(link)Re: FILL: We Both Go Down Together, Scott/Wilson, 5+1 fic, death, really sad Gen [2/2]
(Anonymous) 2024-08-16 02:52 am (UTC)(link)