When In Rome

[J. Alfred Darrow]

14 July 1884

Paul, it seemed, had been right about the natives not attempting to eat them (at least, not yet; Alfred was staying on his toes for any telltale signs that the winds were changing in that direction just in case). That being said, it didn't mean that shacking up with the local tribe had really worked out in their benefit, necessarily. They had been prisoners for a time, and then they had marched off to Merlin-only-knew-where. It wasn't as though they'd had a good idea of where they were to begin with, not really, but now they had come to another coastline and Alfred was really lost, his internal sense of navigation entirely compromised. Also, Alfred wasn't sure what they were trying to get out of staying with these strange people. He'd been too busy trying to convince Paul it was an awful idea when he'd first come up with it to ask about the details, and it hadn't come up since. It wasn't as though they'd been starving on their own--they'd lasted nearly two years without help from any locals. They knew how to survive. Now, Alfred was worried that they might be getting a little too... comfortable, and he wasn't comfortable with the idea of staying here indefinitely.

He'd decided to talk to Paul about it first, because if he could convince Paul it was time to leave (at least in the near future), he was fairly certain Ringo would go along. The boy was young and flexible, and although he would be disappointed not to get his raft and learn to fish, he would follow where Alfred and Paul went. Paul had also been the mastermind behind this scheme with the natives, so if he decided it was time to leave, Alfred was sure Ringo would go along.

"Paul," he said, approaching him as he interacted with a group of the local women and pulling him away from whatever they were doing, "We should talk about what happens next. When we want to leave."

@'Paul Pince' @'Ellory Pendergast'

  

[Paul Pince]

After nearly two years of wandering in the wilderness, all hope of returning to England was lost even to an optimist like Paul. If wizards couldn't find a way to return home or find their lost ones in a year, then what were the odds that they would be found?

If they couldn't return to that civilization, then their second best option was to join a local one. Humans were social creatures. He'd grown to love John Darrow and Ringo as brothers, but how soon before they got sick of each other's company? How soon before they got mad because the other two were the only faces they saw?

It was true that the locals had attacked and killed them. But could you blame them? To them, they'd seemed as enemies. They couldn't possibly know who they were and what their intentions were. For all that they knew, if they didn't strike first, the Sycorax's crew would do so. In all honesty, who was to say that the men of the Sycorax wouldn't attack some primitive people if they had more resources? Men like them were no strangers to doing that.

After studying the temple, Paul was confident that they could make a move to join them. If they approached them like people needing help and shelter, they would help them. They were human and it was human to want to help others, provided that you didn't feel threatened by them.

They managed to get inside and they were gradually becoming parts of it. Paul dared to say that he'd made friends among them!

He was conversing with a group of women when John pulled him away.

"What do you mean, John?" Paul asked, eyebrows furrowing. In his mind, they had no reason to leave. Unless someone had told John otherwise?

  

[J. Alfred Darrow]

Alfred's mouth drew itself into a tight line. He had been expecting this, he supposed, but it was still disappointing. That being said, though, he'd already considered how he wanted to handle this, and he already knew what he wanted to say.

"I mean when we want to go back, to our own people." In his mind, there was a very distinct line between them and the natives. What he'd discovered about the way they lived and their culture in their brief tenure as honorary tribesmen had proven this distinction to him over and over again. These people were wild, and Paul, Ringo, and himself were not. They were British. They simply didn't do the sorts of things that these people did, and they couldn't live among them. "We can't stay here. We're not like them, and we can't pretend to be."

  

[Paul Pince]

Paul and John Darrow were different people. This was evident in how they hadn't become friends after seven years of sharing the same dorm room. They were friends now out of necessity. Because they didn't have anyone else. Beggars couldn't be choosers.

He didn't like the sentiments that John was projecting. He agreed that they were different from their hosts, but that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. He suspected that John disagreed. Out of the three of them, he was evidently the one who was enjoying their stay the least.

"John," Paul started. "Unless you know for a fact that there is a rescue ship waiting to take us back to England, that possibility is very far away." Maybe even impossible. "I see no harm in staying with these people. Do they not feed us, house us and treat us kindly?"

  

[J. Alfred Darrow]

Alfred had prepared for this response, too. "I'm not saying we ought to leave now," he argued. That wouldn't have given them any benefit, at all. "We can stay for now. Maybe we can learn enough of their language to ask them where we are. Maybe they've seen people who look like us before," he speculated with a shrug. "But we can't stay here forever, Paul. This isn't home. Strange broths and mud houses and smiling natives don't make a place home."

  

[Paul Pince]

"There's no harm in enjoying living with them, John," Paul argued. He agreed that it wasn't home. If he had the chance to return home, he'd take it. But he didn't. The chances of returning home were slim at present. There was no harm in trying to get the best of his current situation. "It seems to me like you don't even want to try. Hating it here won't bring you closer to home, John. It'll only make this place unbearable to you, while home is still an ocean or God knows what away from you."

  

[J. Alfred Darrow]

This, Alfred had not prepared for. Paul's words sounded like an accusation, and after everything that the two of them had been through, he was hardly going to sit back and let Paul accuse him of not trying. If, at any point, he had stopped trying to make the best of the situation, he would probably have already been dead. Paul knew that better than anyone who hadn't been through the same thing ever could.

"It seems to me," he retorted hotly, "That you're getting too comfortable here to even want to go home. Maybe you think shacking up with one of those women would be nicer than facing the woods again, hm?" he said, gesturing back at the group that Paul had been talking to a moment earlier and glad that he didn't have to worry about them overhearing him, with the language difference.

  

[Paul Pince]

What could Paul say? He'd missed women. He'd missed being with a woman. He had been on a ship with only men for weeks before ending up in a jungle where he had had to fight with hardships every day. He still hadn't been with one of the native women like that but it was a nice change to be with a female human for a change!

"You don't?" Paul spat back. "Maybe being with just me and Ringo was more your kind of thing?"

  

[J. Alfred Darrow]

Alfred's jaw tightened at the sudden accusation. He of course knew exactly what Paul was implying (when one's job consisted of spending months at a time away at sea with only men for company it was bound to come up at some point or other, and he'd been privy to a case or two in the past where they'd had to discreetly 'deal with' two of the men who'd been caught in that manner), but he didn't like it one bit. That being said, he had never told Paul about his girl back home (even after everything they'd been through together, that seemed like something a bit too close to just give up in casual conversation), and he'd never really been the type to openly chase after cute girls at Hogwarts, so Paul wouldn't have had any evidence, necessarily, that he wasn't that way.

"Don't be an arse," he said rather harshly. "Think what you want, but I'm not letting the idea of bedding some wild strumpet keep me from getting the hell off this damned continent."

  

[Paul Pince]

John didn't necessarily deny the accusation. Paul wouldn't judge him if he was like that. It seemed to him, though, that John Darrow was looking down upon their hosts and he was getting jealous of Paul's and Ringo's growing relationships with the women because he couldn't see that as a positive thing, seeing that he wasn't into vaginas.

"I don't see how the one has anything to do with the other," Paul scoffed. "Unless you think that bedding one would be akin to Persephone eating the pomegranate seed? It's not like they'd force you to marry her and raise her child if that's what you're concerned about!"

  

[J. Alfred Darrow]

The fact that none of these women seemed at all concerned with obtaining any sort of commitment was, in Alfred's mind, part of the problem, and not something to be tossed about as cavalierly as Paul was doing. There was a reason that society was structured the way that it was, and these women were little better than unpaid whores, in his estimation. They were probably just as disease-ridden, too. That was another aspect of life that Alfred was very well aware of from his history as a sailor, though luckily he didn't have any personal experience with that end of things.

"That's the point, Paul, they're like animals," he said rather desperately, not comprehending how his friend could fail to see his point of view. Was he really just that desperate to get off? Fuck, it wasn't as though they hadn't had plenty of opportunities to handle that side of things. They might not have had women, but they had solitude in abundance, and rubbing one out in the grass didn't leave you with syphilis. "If you really think you need to get fucked that badly, we might as well go find you a fucking deer--that's how meaningful it'd be. You need that?" he said, tone full of vitrol. "I could have Ringer catch you one, if it's that important for you to blow a load."

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   Paul Pince

[Paul Pince]

It really wasn't a surprise that John regarded their hosts as animals. That was what their people believed about those kind of people. Hell, they even regarded some of their own as lesser human beings!

Paul wasn't a man who was easy to anger. He tended to take everything light-heartedly and move on. To have those people insulted like that, combined with all that bestiality profanity, was too much.

Fuck this. Paul punched at his friend's face then grabbed at his mane to shove him away. "If you're so ungrateful of their hospitality then you're free to leave, John! Why don't you swim all the way to Great Britain? The sea's over there!"

  

[J. Alfred Darrow]

Alfred saw the punch coming and tried to duck, but Paul's blow still glanced off the side of his head and set his ear to ringing. His hair was long enough, by now, that there probably wouldn't have been any way to avoid the second part of the attack. He stumbled and ended up on one knee briefly before struggling back to his feet. With a look of contempt, he started off in the direction of the coast--though he wasn't planning on swimming, to Britain or anywhere else.

Instead, he approached the group of women Paul had been talking to a moment ago (who had stopped what they were doing to stare at the two of them since they'd first raised their voices) and grabbed the nearest one by the arm. The woman--little more than a child, really, probably around sixteen or eighteen if he had to guess--was too startled to resist. The other women let out little indignant noises that Alfred had no idea how to translate, but didn't move to stop him.

"Well?" he challenged as he approached Paul again, the rather startled young woman still trailing behind him. "Let's get your fucking problem taken care of so you can maybe try and find your brain again. Should we take her to the hut without a door, or do you want to do it right here?" he asked, gesturing at the grass beneath their feet. "Maybe her friends would like to watch."

  

[Paul Pince]

Paul stared wide-eyed at the scene that unfolded. For a second, he thought that John would take him upon his aggressive suggestion and actually try to swim away out of spite. What he actually did was much, much worse, though.

There was a part of Paul that wished John had swum off and drowned. Or maybe not drowned. Bitten by an aggressive fish.

He stared helplessly at the woman and her companions behind them. He couldn't believe that John Darrow was capable of doing that to a poor innocent girl! He was appaled. By him and for him. There was also a part of him that really hoped the locals wouldn't take this as a slight.

"Let her go, John," Paul demanded but then added in a calmer way: "You should be ashamed of yourself, Mr. Darrow. You pride yourself on being a civilized man, but who is acting like an animal between the three of us? Would you treat your mother like that or a sister? Shame on you. I thought that you were an honourable man."

  

[J. Alfred Darrow]

Alfred let go of the girl's arm rather quickly. Despite his words, he really didn't have the slightest interest in watching Paul ravage a villager, now or ever; nor was he particularly inclined to try and encourage his apparent interest in them. He'd been trying to make a point, and he felt that he'd made it much more clearly than he could have with words alone.

"She's not my mother, or my sister," he pointed out. "She's different. That's the point. We belong with our own people--and with our own women," he stressed. "You can lecture me about honor, but you're the one who said shacking up here wouldn't be so bad. Is that the kind of life you want? You want to live like they do, sharing women and children and not ever having a family?" He let his hands fall to his side, feeling that he'd made a point and Paul would have no choice but to agree with him now. "We have to leave. We'll never belong here."

  

[Paul Pince]

Paul was relieved to see John let the girl go, not that he really believed his friend would do anything... drastic with her. He liked to think that he knew John Darrow. He wasn't like that.

He was disappointed in his narrow-mindedness, but he supposed that he couldn't be too surprised. If anything, Paul was the strange one for his beliefs.

"John, it's more likely than not that we won't return to England," Paul stated in a calm tone. "Ever. I want to go home and see my mother and my father and my friends but - That may never happen. If we leave those people, we will be back to roaming in the jungle and eating coconuts and frogs until we all die. I would rather live out my final days in a community, however foreign, rather than the wilderness."