#Hartnell brothers

[xenoanamorph]

(TW: dead body)

Very messy WIP of my John Hartnell reconstruction🫶 Based off an incredible photo from his exhumation (in 1986) that always makes me stop and stare for a while.

It’s a phenomenal photo, sharp and clear as if it were literally just snapped today. The contrast between the digital wristwatches, vinyl gloves, sterile sheets, and a young man who died 140 years ago is so startling yet poignant and sweet. It floored me the first time I saw it. Two worlds over a century apart practically nose to nose.

TW: dead body (the pic in question) ⬇️

[radiojamming]

My favorite niche Hartnell family tidbit that absolute 0.2 people care about is that the T.H. 1844 embroidery on the back of Thomas' shirttail matches the design for the Trinity House Obelisk in Dorset, which was partway between Gillingham and Plymouth where the Hartnell brothers' paternal grandparents lived.

Thomas Hartnell was off duty for the entirety of 1844, in between his last post on the HMS Tortoise and the future Franklin Expedition. It's possible he visited family, and I think it's a fun thought that he might have seen the obelisk and got inspired by it.

What can I do with this information? Nada. I just think it's neat.

[glorioustidalwavedefendor]

Today I learned that for example in Arab countries almost no women adopts her husband's surname when she is married.

Which I like a lot, you should be allowed to keep your own name

But now I just gotta ask

Hey, historians searching historical people and their relatives through historicall documents

How are you doing?

Like e.g. in english records if you find a sarah hartnell that lived in the same area as the Hartnell brothers at aroud the correct time. She will propably be a relative

How does that work if the women keeps her own name?

(same for anyone searching through icelandic documents - while we are at it ... does it make searching harder?)

[corydoric]

Tom Hartnell Burger Time

The context being a tweet I made a while back based on me being at a meeting and craving in n out and then getting emotional imagining myself driving my buddies on the terror through the in n out drive through

[petoskeystones]

"fourth of july" by sufjan stevens + "frozen in time" by owen beattie and john geiger + "sir john franklin's last arctic expedition: a medical disaster" by richard bayliss + the death of john hartnell

you know. when your brother dies of the same illness as your father did a decade ago. and you have to bury him in your shirt in the freezing cold a million miles from home. and then abandon his grave to walk to your own death.

[earthshine-moon]

Just been researching about Tom and John Hartnell and now I’m sad

On 24th December 1837, Tom joined HMS Volage. He spent 4 years on that ship (and presumably participated in the Battle of Chuenpi (1839) in the First Opium War. Tom returned to England and was paid off on 20th May 1841

Tom then signed onto HMS Tortoise on 24th May 1841 (yes, 4 days later) and spent 2 and a half years on that ship. It’s also possible that he was one of the men chosen to participate in a conflict between the Te Arawa tribe and Major Thomas Bunbury (commandant of a convict settlement at Norfolk Island, Australia) but it’s not known for certain

When he returned to England in the winter of 1843, it was to find that John had been on HMS Volage since September 1841. Tom didn’t join another Navy ship until 1845 (presumably to help his widowed mother look after his 3 younger siblings)

John returned to England and was paid off on 1st February 1845 and him and Tom had just over 3 months on land together before they set off on the Franklin expedition

They set sail on 19th May 1845 and had less than a year together before John died on 4th January 1846

From what I can work out, they saw each other for roughly 11 months, 1 week and 1 day in the space of 8 years

Excuse me while I go cry

[jartnell]

Thinking about the Hartnell brothers again. Were they excited when they signed up? Was John prone to sickness his whole life so they both thought nothing of the symptoms until it was too late? Did Tom feel guilty for not noticing something was wrong earlier, because maybe, just maybe, it could have gone differently if he had? How did he feel having to watch the decline in his brother's health, completely unable to do anything about it? Was there a moment of hope where it seemed like John was going to recover shortly before he died? Was he scared? Did he worry about how Tom would cope without him? Was Tom with him when it happened, seeing the light leave John's eyes and his chest finally still? Or did he only find out afterwards, consumed with guilt that he wasn't there in his final moments? Did Tom keep looking over his shoulder expecting his brother to be there for half a second before remembering that he's not there. He's never going to be there again.

[gays4vulo]

giving up on my girl irving bc i guess i need to think about him at work tomorrow even tho i'll be way too eepy to even function bc im gonna let my melatonin kick in and im gonna work on my first bingo square bc i'm listening to the hartnell playlist

[maridemira]

"A Tale of Two Brothers"

"Go be with your brother now"

A drawing for the Hartnell Brothers! And for the FE and The Terror fandom!

[skelelephant]

Hartnell posting on main again but I’m reading the book and Goodsir’s description of John Hartnell’s death is just making me think of how awful it would have been for Tom

Your brother seems completely fine but then all of a sudden he stumbles against your side and collapses, coughing up blood, and is dead within 5 minutes.

And then!!! You don’t even get the chance to grieve him for a second before Goodsir and Stanley have carted him off to open him up!!!

“Hartnell’s younger brother, Thomas, began shouting and crying from just the other side of the curtain.” MY BOYYYYY

Christ the fact that Fitzjames had to stand in his way to prevent Tom from rushing in after his brother.

AND THEY BURIED HIM IN THOMAS’ SHIRT!!!!

[johntorrington]

rewatching buried in ice with zero…thinking about those ice mummies again

[shipcestuous-two]

i've been really deep into researching the franklin expedition since i watched the terror on amc, but one thing that the show unfortunately didn't get a chance to touch on was the hartnell brothers! i'm still not sure of all of the details that are out there about their lives, but one of the most well-known things about them is that the eldest brother, john, was buried in his younger brother, thomas's, shirt, which fully sailed their ship to me, lol.

This ask is like looking in the mirror. The same exact thing happened to me!

If I remember right, when Hartnell dies in the show, Crozier tells him to go be with his brother, and it's one of those moments where it's like, "OK I'm already crying and now I'm crying harder, thanks a lot"

For their mother's sake it's a shame they both went on the expedition, but I like to think it was a sign that they were very close.

[radiojamming]

Prompting you for anything with Tartnell

hi i'm DJ and i and i want to write all the missing scenes i wanted to see in the terror.

---

In a memory with no date, they are children. It is a honey-gold day with sunlight playing on the river, a wood-warm scent in the air from the fences around the orchards. John carries Tom on his back down the road from the Burnt Elm farm, the corner of John's mouth still stained purple from the blackberries they picked out of the hedgerow. Tom's fingers are dyed the same shade, and their mother will surely have a few words to say about the stains on their clothes.

But for now, Tom is full, warm, and happy. There is sweetness in his mouth and the sun on his back, his brother to his front, the sound of magpies chattering in the trees around him.

John hums a tune. He's not a particularly good singer, but Tom likes to listen to him anyway. It's a shanty—one that they've heard at the Dockyard when they run down to see their father and walk home with him. Tom thinks it's about ladies; most of those songs are. He tries to hum along, but the sway of John's gait makes him too sleepy to try.

Instead, he yawns and asks, "Can we do this again tomorrow?"

"Sure," John replies, hefting Tom up a little further up his back. "We ought to bring a basket, though. To take some home."

Tom nods and turns his head so his cheek is pressed against his brother's back. He watches the Danbury farm slowly give way to the Simon orchard, and he counts the rows of trees until he gets to the one that was hit by lightning last summer. Eventually, he closes his eyes.

There's not much meaning to this memory. No lessons learned, no part of Tom's life altered. What's important is that John is there—a child, thin, tall for his age, keeping Tom close and safe. Walking so Tom doesn't have to.

No. This memory means everything.

---

They fight only once. Truly fighting; not just the general struggle of being brothers with only two years' difference between them.

Tom doesn't recall his exact words. All he knows is that he's angry. Angry that John keeps himself cloistered in the same job that's slowly killing him, that he exhausts himself day after day to make ends meet without a care for himself, that Tom's certain he'll come home on leave only to find John's headstone beside their father's in the churchyard.

(He's scared; not angry. But it's so much easier to mask it as anger than to ever admit he's frightened.)

But Tom's words are coarse, scoured over with years on the Volage and deckled on the edges with every gunshot or dying wail of a comrade in his ears. He curses in a way their mother would scold him for, but he can't take the words back even as he sees John go milk-pale at the sound.

He remembers only one sentence. The only one that matters.

"You're so selfish," he snarls.

(It's not true. It's never been true. John doesn't know how to be selfish. His life has always been attached to someone else, for someone else's benefit. His mother's, his brothers', his sisters', Mister Sarge's, Jane's. Selfish people don't lose sleep like John has, don't wince when they move their hands the way he does.

But all the other words Tom wants to say don't come out. They change shape, consonants, vowels. They turn into something awful.)

He sees the whites of John's eyes, and as soon as his brother takes one step forward, straightens himself out of his perpetual slouch, Tom remembers how much taller John is.

"Shut your mouth, Thomas," John says. His voice has always been low, a little scratchy like he's in need of clearing his throat.

And never—never has he used Tom's full name.

John takes another step forward.

(Where they are, Tom can't remember. There's a wall of a building. Home? Church? The Inn?)

And another.

(He remembers John's shirt, stained at the wrists. Shoemaker's black.)

And then John's hands are on Tom's shoulders, and he shoves. Tom reels back, catches himself before he can hit the ground. He knows he should step back and apologise. He knows there's so much more he could do or say that could fix this. But he's a sailor, and there's this awful crashing noise in his head that he simply can't quiet. He balls his fists and before he can think clearly, he swings.

At his fucking brother.

(He remembers crying into John's shirt at their father's grave.)

He has to aim up because John's so much taller.

(Remembers John standing under the lychgate into St. Mary Magdalene's, fist pressed to his mouth, biting his knuckles so he wouldn't cry.)

His fist connects with John's upper lip and nose, causing his brother's head to snap back. Something crunches under Tom's knuckles, and his stomach twists in a fierce knot at the feeling. He sees blood—orchard fruit bright red—on his hand when he draws it back.

(Remembers John in bed, gasping with breath that simply wouldn't come. A bloodstained handkerchief clenched in his fist. Their mother weeping as she watched their father dying of the same affliction.)

John doesn't make a sound. No yelp of agony, or gasp, or curse. Just silence. Agonising silence that makes a minute into an hour. Tom only sees him stagger a little, blood pouring freely out of his nose and onto his mouth, his shirt collar.

(Their mother scrubbing blood out of his shirt.)

It drips onto the ground. Slow. Raindrop-heavy.

(The bed linens on the line. A blossom of blood visible, drying in the breeze.)

He says nothing. Instead, he raises his head and sniffs once. Hazel eyes in skull-deep sockets. Exhaustion bows his back again as he nods.

"Alright, Thomas," he says. Another sniff. "Alright."

And he walks away.

(Where does he go? Where does this happen? Tom wishes he knew, wishes he would have run after him and begged his forgiveness. They never fight again after this, but Tom can't shake the memory of his brother's blood on his hands.)

---

They join up together. It's easier this way—two incomes flowing into their house, right when Charlie's on the cusp of joining up as well.

"I can help," says Strickland. He bounces on the balls of his feet as John signs his name in the allotment book. "Mum says she doesn't need the full amount or nothin', but I think Aunt Sarah would like it."

"No," says John, mostly to the book and to Mister Helpman who's watching the whole family scene with amusement. "Good Lord, Stricks. Why would we make you do that?"

"You're not makin' me do nothin', Harts," Strickland retorts. "I'm contemplatin' doin' a kindness, you joyless thing."

Tom doesn't have to see his brother's face to know he's rolling his eyes.

"Well, tell your mum so," John replies, then steps back and gestures to Tom just as Mister Helpman turns to a fresh page. "You're next, Tommy."

Tom walks up to the book and tells Mister Helpman all the details he needs to know. Where his pay goes, to whom, what's the relation, where does he hail from. He watches Helpman's quick hand neatly record every word.

"Sign here, sir," Helpman says.

Behind Tom, Strickland grunts in a way that suggests John has him in another headlock—his favourite method of subduing anyone. "Lemme go, you big oaf!"

"Come now, Mister Strickland," John says primly. "Is this any way for a member of Her Majesty's Navy to behave?"

"I'll show you Her Majesty!"

"That doesn't make sense. Actually, that sounds right obscene." John pauses, just as Tom finishes signing his name. "I'm just sorry, Mister Helpman. He's usually a good boy."

Helpman stifles a laugh and shakes his head. "Well, you lot will surely keep the ship entertained. Now, please release Mister Strickland so he can give me his details."

"You heard the gentleman, Stricks," John says, releasing Strickland who darts forward, sand-brown hair a mess. "Do we need to remind you how to spell your name again?"

Strickland gives him a very unkind gesture behind his back where Helpman can't see.

Tom returns to John's side and grins at his brother. People often comment how they look nothing alike, save for their smile. John gives him a perfect reflection of it now—playful, tilted up at the left corner, eyes squinting in happiness.

"You gonna behave yourself on this trip?" he asks John.

"Of course," John replies. "I have to be the responsible older brother, don't I?"

They laugh.

As if John's been anything else.

---

John starts to get sick in November.

It comes on slow. Coughs stifled in his fist or elbow. A wheeze he can pass off as simply poor lungs struggling in tight quarters with far too much pipe smoke in the air. Begging off early for bed even when they're deep in a game or a book.

Then he falls off a ladder, and Tom knows something's wrong.

John's never been particularly graceful. Uncle Hoar used to compare him to a colt that wasn't quite sure of its own legs. But in the rigging, he's a different creature entirely. It's as though he's waited his whole life to get off the ground, to see the world from some place higher than the world he'd been relegated to. His grip is always sure and steady, his footing secure. Only a few years in the Navy and he's done well by himself.

But it's the ladder—the damn ladder that does it. Just the one to maintain the lamps on deck. Only a few rungs. A few steps. It's not so very far to fall.

(It is. It's only ice and hard wood under his back when he lands. He's in so much pain by the time Tom, Sullivan, Tadman, and two Marines on duty get to him that he can't speak.)

He recovers for a few days in the sick bay until he can stand without wobbling on a weak ankle again. Doctor Stanley gives him some concoction and a few terse instructions. Mister Goodsir diligently follows up a few minutes later to advise on the dosage and how much rest John should get.

John improves.

And then he doesn't.

December comes in with a howling gale that sings in the lines holding the tent to the deck. And it comes with an awful sound rattling up from John's lungs.

It comes with blood on a handkerchief.

(Scrubbing it out of a shirt.)

---

"They say one of the stokers on Terror's got it, too," Tadman tells Tom in confidence. "He's barely conscious."

Tom stares down hard at the floor.

"You don't think he's been sick all this time?" Tadman asks.

Tom's quick to say, "He hasn't. He'd have been sent back by now."

Outside, on the stony shore of Beechey, two men sent by the captains of both ships make note of a particularly flat spot of land. Good for graves, they say.

"He'll make it through," Tom says.

---

In the doorway, Tom watches as Mister Weekes makes measurements of John. His height, the width of his shoulders, the width of his knees side-by-side. As he does, John sleeps fitfully, a pinch between his brows and sweat beading his top lip.

Weekes doesn't know Tom's there. He finishes his work, penning some numbers down in a little pocketbook. Then, he turns and sees Tom at last. His eyes go wide.

"Ah," he says. "Mister Hartnell."

Tom doesn't reply. Anything polite is caught in his throat. He only nods.

Weekes seems sheepish, apologetic. He fights for his words, but in the end only says, "A good evening to you," before walking by Tom.

Tom silently walks to John's side, looking his brother over now with new eyes. His height (for the coffin's length), his shoulders (for its width), his knees (tied together). But his eyes move restlessly under their lids, his cheeks are flushed, his fingers twitching as he dreams.

Then, he jerks away. He gasps, sputters, coughs. His glassy eyes cast about the sickbay until they catch on Tom's image, and immediately he settles.

"Tom," he croaks. Even sick as he is, he manages to smile. "S'dreamin' of 'alifax."

Tom forces a smile and pulls up his usual chair. He hasn't slept in two days, afraid of sleeping through what now seems inevitable. "Were you now?" he replies.

"Mm."

"Which part?"

John closes his eyes and grins. "You much for guessin'?"

"If it's what I think, then I'd rather not."

"Hah." He coughs out a laugh, and Tom tries his damnedest to ignore the rim of red on his bottom lip. "No. I was dreamin' about 'olystoning a bloody deck."

"You were dreaming about work?" Tom asks incredulously.

"Right?" John cracks an eye open. "I'm dyin' in a sickbay and that's what I dream about. S'awful."

Tom goes quiet then. John's never said anything about dying before. Up until now, it's been quiet reassurances that he'll make it through this again. As a veteran consumptive, he knows all the right strategies. He's made jokes about it.

John looks at him, his expression hard to read. If anything, he seems to try to read Tom's, searching his face for something. He clears his throat and looks away. "They plannin' anything for Christmas out there?" he asks.

It takes too long for Tom to comfortably respond. Eventually, "Yeah. Full-on feast or the like." He cringes, but manages to wrangle it into a weak smile. "Don't suppose there's a Goldner's Christmas Meal in one of those cans, d'you think?"

John laughs again, and it crackles in his throat. "I'd love to see it if there was."

"You will," Tom says. Maybe a bit too fiercely, too defensively. It takes him by surprise as much as it seems to take his brother. But he reiterates it, "You will."

"Sure, Tommy," John says. He nods, and a single drop of blood drips out of the corner of his mouth. He doesn't seem to notice. "I will."

---

By Christmas Eve, Mister Goodsir kindly tells Tom and Strickland that John's not doing well. It's soft sympathy, meant to cushion a blow that Tom's felt continually since November.

"He's not taken much by way of meals," Goodsir says. He fidgets with the cuffs of his shirt, apparently eager to do something with his hands. "I've managed with a little broth and some medicine, but he's gotten... Well, he doesn't seem particularly pleased with it."

He's gotten combative, Tom thinks. He's seen John's reactions lately, the way he strikes out at nothing, snarling at the ceiling like something there personally offends him. Tom can only imagine John trying to hit Goodsir as the man feeds him, like a temperamental, colicky child.

Strickland's hat is in his hands, and he's squeezing it so hard that Tom worries he'll crush it.

Goodsir goes on, saying they'll keep him comfortable, try to keep him fed, medicate him as needed.

Never once does he say John will get better.

---

They bury the stoker on New Year's. Tom doesn't see it—no one sees much of anything from the ships, as dark as it is. But he hears about it from Billy Orren.

That's how he learns about the open grave right next to the stoker's.

---

Tom sews a pillowcase. His hands are quick at this sort of work, learned from years of watching his mother and sisters, his aunts and cousins. He's always had a knack for sewing and mending, which is why some of the men on Erebus come to him for repairs. John was always—

John is good at it, too. Shoemaking and all.

He uses his fingertips to crimp the frills around the edges of the pillow, sewing them firmly into place. He's already got some cast-off rags and such to stuff it with, provided by some of the other Chatham boys who felt they needed to contribute somehow.

They've all been to see John—anyone who knew him in any capacity. Any man who didn't know him directly but who hailed from Kent and felt they needed to see their man off properly. Mister Armitage came the night before, offering his quiet condolences to a fellow St. Mary Magdalene congregant.

They paid their respects.

Tom swallows hard, blinks harder, and keeps sewing.

Then he pricks his finger with the needle, hissing at the contact. It stings, and he immediately sticks the tip of it in his mouth until he tastes copper. It seems to spread in his mouth, at the same time he notices the pin-sized droplet of blood on the pillow.

He stares at it for a long while as the bow of Erebus creaks and groans around him, as the sound of men enjoying the New Year carries down to his ears, as blood spreads across his tongue.

---

He doesn't want to remember this.

The high pitch in his ears, drowning out the ship, the Arctic, the world. His heart rampaging in his chest, throttling itself against his ribs like a prisoner. Tears ember-hot in his eyes.

No.

No, he doesn't want to remember this.

(He remembers it in sections now.)

The grief—

(John, still. Cold. Bloodless.)

Good God, the grief—

(Hands cold in Tom's. Unmoving. Callouses on his index fingers and thumbs from all those years of work.)

The way he cries out to nothing, to no one—

(Lips still, but slightly open. The barest shine of his teeth. Like he got caught on his last breath and forgot to shut his mouth after.)

The way his knees hit the floor—

(The blankets are damp with the sweat of a dead man.)

The way his whole body shudders, wracked with an animal noise—

(He can't look at his brother's face.)

And his forehead in his hands, like he's trying to hold himself together—

(Or the blood on his clothes.)

---

Tom shaves John's face. Orren trims his hair. Strickland cuts his fingernails. They wash him down, quietly trying to find something to joke about.

"God, remember when we were in Plymouth together?" Strickland says. His voice wobbles as though he's caught on a laugh and a sob. "That whole time he was trying to get Betsy off the breakwall. Like watchin' someone try to get a cat out of a tree."

Orren snorts and trims a piece of hair from behind John's left ear. "I heard about that," he replies. "The same time he fell in the water, yeah?"

"Absolutely," Strickland says.

"I'd have paid good money to see it," Orren goes on, brushing the hair off John's gansey. "This poor scrump absolutely soaked like a drowned rat."

It's easy to disguise a sniff as a laugh. "He's hardly a scrump, mate," Tom says.

"Eh, it kept him humble to say so."

They keep working in silence. Tom carefully shaves away the last of John's dark red stubble, the only part of him other than a smile that he shared with his brothers. He's clean-shaven save for some whiskers on his chin that he would no doubt be damned to see off.

Quietly, Strickland says, "I think he looks right proper, eh?"

Orren agrees. "Hardly a sailor no more. Looks more a'like one of those ponces in the high parish."

Tom silently agrees. Something about seeing John like this—shaven, trimmed up, relaxed—it almost doesn't look like him. For a moment, Tom thinks of what his brother would have been like if he'd been born anywhere else, to anyone else. If he'd just had more of a chance to be a child, to have a job he didn't hate and only find one he loved when it was far too late.

He hears Strickland sniffle beside him, and he wonders what he must be thinking. Of all their cousins, Strickland looked up to John the most. Proud to share a name with him, to sign his name alongside his, eager to follow him anywhere.

And now this.

Tom clears his throat. "He's to be buried in the morning," he says. "Sir John wants to say a few things then an' have a proper service."

"Feels wrong to just leave him tonight, though," Strickland replies quietly. "Should one of us stay?"

"No," says Tom. "I need— We need the rest, I think."

"Right," says Strickland at the same time Orren says, "Of course."

---

Fucking Christ, he doesn't want to remember this.

He sees his brother's chest open, blood bright on Goodsir's hands. He sees—

A heart.

His brother's heart.

Gore has to hold him back—

(Graham Gore, handsome and proud and practically glowing on the deck of the Volage. "You're a good man, Mister Hartnell," he'd once said.)

Restraining him by the chest, pinning his arms behind his back. Someone's hands are on Tom's shoulder, and someone else is yelling in his ear.

He feels delirious with it. The sight of Goodsir holding his brother's innards in his hands like he's simply been playing about in his chest. Oh, look what I've found, he imagines Goodsir saying. A liver. Ought we check if he drank overmuch?

Rage now.

(Not fear.)

Pure, bloody fucking rage.

(What could he be afraid of?)

He gnashes his teeth and wails. He snarls. He begs. He tries everything he can just short of clawing his way past all the men holding him back to shove the doctors and surgeons away and let his brother fucking be.

("They say men don't go to heaven if parts of them are amiss.")

Then he's on the floor, half-compressed under Gore's weight as he bodily holds him in place. "Hartnell, I know. I know," Gore says into his ear.

(Which Hartnell? he wants to snarl.)

"It has to be done. You know it does."

The person behind him hauls him back by the shoulders, and only then does Tom see that it's Armitage, his own eyes wide and face sickly-pale. He doesn't say a word to Tom, but Tom knows he's just as appalled. Only he's trying to keep Tom from getting a lashing or worse for acting out like this.

Tom moans in agony, the weight of this crushing him. He's steered away, the last sight of his brother open on the table like he's nothing more than a specimen to be studied.

Blood on the fucking linens.

---

Tom feels nothing on the day they bury John.

He's spent too much of himself. He feels like a candle guttering on its last supply of wax. Just smoke and air, now.

All he thinks to do is help cover John up a little more. His shirt, monogrammed, dated, wrapped around John like it'll keep him warm in the grave. That maybe something will change if he carries Tom's name on him to wherever it is he goes.

("They say men don't go to heaven—")

He doesn't hear Sir John's service, or the words of sympathy the officers give to Tom. He hears them say how John was a good man, and Tom wonders how they could possibly know that. How could men who scarcely leave their comfortable bedrooms and wardroom, who grew up in gilded halls with servants and cooks who made them wholesome meals that no one had to share—how could they know?

That's uncharitable. They're being kind.

But they don't know how this feels. The sensation of a heavy stone in his hand that he has to throw onto the navy-blue coffin lid, listening to the sharp tock as it makes contact, resounding in the half-filled hollow below.

He hopes to God they never have to bury one of their own.

---

Much happens after. Too much, too quickly. The world ends. A gun goes off.

Nothing happens at all. Not in this part of the world.

---

"Go be with your brother now."

---

John is carrying him back up the knoll. The air is summer-sweet, birds singing in the morning air. It rained last night, and John leaps over puddles while Tom shrieks in laughter.

They get to the hedgerow, still dripping with rain. John carefully lets Tom down and hands him the basket. "Remember to mind your fingers, Tommy," he tells him.

Tom eats more berries than he stores away. They stain his mouth and fingers again, and when he looks at his big brother, he giggles at the sight of berry stains on his face as well. They laugh together, their smiles identical.

When the basket is half-full, John pats Tom on the shoulder and motions for him to hop up on his back again. "Let's go home," he says.

[cipher-fresh]

💬 suffering-academy-student Follow

does anyone else wish u could regenerate but not change and not use up a regeneration. just like do a hard reboot

#i'm gonna call myself The Sufferer

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💫 constellationon-kasterborous Follow

what is it even like to not be a time lord do you like get impaled by rebar at 45 years old and just die. couldn't be me

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🚀 silvertraveller Follow

_____👶 timelordtoddler Follow

_____playing with a roentgen radioactive brick in the nursery rn

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🔉 gallifreyballifreyshmallifrey Follow

i love this website because its the only place you can say you have interfered with the natural flow of time and you won't get investigated by the CIA

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😉 winkles-wonderland Follow

who up lording they time

#no I don’t need to add any extra tags thanks I trust my audience will find it

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👦 theresponsibilityavoider Follow

I was skipping school hanging out in a clearing and some guy exited a portal from a CONFESSION DIAL 😭 and he was like “Go to the city. Find someone important. Tell them I’m back. Tell them, they know what they did. And I’m on my way. And if they ask you who I am, tell them ‘I came the long way round’” 😭😭😭 what the hell

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💬 oneofthegreathouse Follow

if you have a fetish for people being born through bodily reproductive systems KEEP IT TO YOURSELF!!!! nobody needs to see that on their dash

__♻️ callmeweaver Follow

__Ok Puriteen you need to get on my level. sexualize looms OR ELSE!!!!!

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💫 thecurator Follow

the high council of gallifrey: got some straight gas 🔥😛 this strain is called “the timeless child” 😳 you’ll be zonked out of your gourd 💯

Me: yeah whatever. I don’t feel shit.

5 minutes later: dude I swear I just saw some pre-Hartnell doctors

My buddy the Master pacing: the Time Lords are lying to us

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🏠 somegrandolgallifrey Follow

I heard some kid crying himself to sleep in a cabin. COULD not be me

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♾️ thatacademygraduate Follow

Went to a museum today! I saw a lot of really cool stuff but something I couldn’t stop thinking about was this horrifically busted up Type 40 TARDIS that literally looked like it was held together with duct tape, chewed gum and prayers 😵‍💫😵‍💫 girl kill that thing I’m so sorry….

#i think it was even still alive. please put it out of its misery for the love of rassilon

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🥽 howsitgoinghowitgoes Follow

Bruh my best friend and I tried to play a prank on my brother but it went wrong and he hit his head so badly he REGENERATED i need to go into hiding

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😐 the-hybrid Follow

Who am I

#please for the love of god help me

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🔹 thetasigma Follow

Koschei and I skipped school today and went stargazing. We agreed to visit every single one together when we leave this stupid planet. I love them so much. We're going to be together forever.

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💭 siblingofkarn Follow

Why do I keep having nightmares about Gallifrey being destroyed in like 5 different ways, that could literally never happen

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🤖 pompousandstuffy Follow

I literally hate children soooo much like today some ninety year old tried to speak to me. KILL YOURSELF THIRTEEN TIMES ‼️

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👽 cheapandnastytraveltime Follow

For a Time Lord I have such a bad sense of time. if chamelon arches were real i would make myself literally any other species

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😍 starstartwinkletwinkle Follow

I have to stare into the untempered schism tomorrow. Any advice?

[petoskeystones]

joseph gordon-levitt on his older brother + the hartnell brothers

(do you guys think he was glad to be with his brother again or disappointed he couldn't find the passage and go home to take care of their family for him)

[hacash]

Not to be morbing on on main but imagine an world where after everything the crew find the passage and return to Britain, only to realise they are men who now no longer fit…victory parades and presentations where Blanky is delicately left out because seeing his amputation would ‘upset’ the audience…parties to which the officers are invited but lower ranks are steered tactfully away because they wouldn’t enjoy such formality, don’t you know…Crozier’s name is still spoken mud-tinged and with half a laugh by better-born men, who mention him as a mere footnote after lengthily eulogising Sir John...Fitzjames finally receiving every glorious accolade he ever dreamed of, only to feel it all turn to ash in his hand...Silna's part in their story both exoticized and sexualised, turning Goodsir speechless with rage whenever he hears it... Irving feeling that he has never been closer to God nor further from his fellow believers, and not knowing what to do with that...Tozer insisting on visiting the family of every Marina he ever commanded, and not realising he's been shaking from a full-blown panic attack through every visit because that would mean he's weak, and he's not, he's a soldier…Hartnell nearly killing a man for calling his brother one of the ‘honoured dead’ because he wasn’t, John Hartnell died because a greedy industrialist wanted to save a pound or two and has never answered for it... just instance after instance of men coming home and realising that something happened out there and the Empire never truly cared for them, it just wanted to eat them up and spit them back out