Title: Requiescat in pace
Author: Redrikki
Fandom: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
Character/Pairing: Jonathan Strange, the Neapolitans
Rating: PG-13/T
Challenge/Prompt: #127: Sleepless
Warning(s): None
Word Count: 413
Summary: In which Jonathan Strange discovers that returning the dead to their natural state is more difficult than he would imagine.


Jonathan Strange awoke to a hand stroking his hair. In that moment he imaged himself transported to his bed in Soho-square and that the hand was that of his wife. “Bell,” he murmured with a sleepy smile. The hand, however, did not belong to Mrs. Strange, but rather to a dead Neapolitan soldier whom Strange had revived the previous day. He was deeply dismayed and absolutely horrified to discover this fact upon opening his eyes. Strange skittered backwards with an unmanly shriek only to collide with the legs of yet another dead Neapolitan.

Strange scrambled to his feet as the dead closed in. They crowded him into the farthest corner from the door, tugging at his clothes like a pack of beggar children. “Per favore, signore,” they cried. “Per favore.”

“Whyte!” Strange bellowed. He was greatly relieved when the young captain appeared and shooed away the Neapolitans like a flock of especially pesky seagulls. Freed of their grasp, Strange attempted to scrub off the feel of their clammy hands. “What do they want?” he asked.

“The same thing they wanted yesterday,” said the captain with a shrug. “They want you to restore them fully to life.”

Strange shook his head. He would if he could, but he had not the first clue as to how. Mr. Norrell, the only magician of the age to perform such a feat, was notoriously miserly with the details of how it was accomplished. The best Strange could hope to do was to return the Neapolitans to the eternal slumber from which he had awoken them.

And so Strange began to labor to return the dead to their proper state. He tried spells to undo other spells, spells to remove magic, spells to remove life force, but none of it worked. In an act of desperation he had some of the men form a firing squad to put the Neapolitans out of his misery but to no avail.¹ The dead still followed him, begging, pleading, touching. The smell was intolerable and it seemed as though Strange could scarcely think over the din of their endless per favores.

Finally, at some point on the third day, Strange drifted off over one of his books. He awoke to a cold, dead hand gently stroking his hair.

^{1.The solution was to remove their eyes, tongue and heart. Had he known this, Strange might have initially been squeamish, but become considerably less so after days of unceasing torment. ↩}