The Pirate King Ch. 17

I paused for a moment, hearing the way those words sat raw behind his voice. He feared, feared in a way that was deep, unavoidable, in a way that had been set into his bones and pressed into his muscles so that he would never quite be rid of it, not physically. Not truly. I had known this, had seen it before the night that he was drunk and even then it had made me want to rip the world to pieces and remake it the way I demanded, but seeing it here, watching him wear this ...

"He hurt you," I confirmed aloud, seeing the truth of it in his eyes, his face. "It was Dreyfus."

The Captain wouldn't look at me, instead casting his eyes down, all those emotions spilling onto the floor. I wanted them to spill onto me where I could catch them up and know they would never again slip into his life. "He hurt many people," he told me. "I'm nothing special."

But I wasn't going to let him turn from this so easily. "The man you dream about -"

He gripped my hand so tight I made a noise. "I dream of you," he said forcefully. "I only fucking dream of you, Sailor." Then he tipped his head back, as if slowly draining something from his mouth down his throat. "I only want to dream of you."

I gently pulled him forward off the chair until he was resting against my chest, his knees on the floor between my legs. His breaths were fast and uneven; I felt his soul grate against mine and wished I could do more.

"Fuck that man," he whispered into my chest. "Fuck him to hell."

My free hand moved around him until it found his spine, could trace up that proof that he was standing, of bone and solidity and the ways things could fit together and become something harder than they were on their own. "We'll send him there," I promised, knowing it was true. Praying it would be right. "We'll kill him."

"We'll kill him," he repeated. "Prophecies be damned."

"Prophecies be damned," I echoed, but Sybil spoke truth not prophecy and I could not stop the worry that bubbled up as I began to wonder what it was that she had said.

***

We headed back to our ship quickly after that. The Captain did not ask to leave but neither did he protest when I told Val that we would be going; his goodbyes were polite and stiff, apologizing to Val for not staying longer, for making him craft a dinner that we would not partake in.

"The apology is mine," Val told him, a beautiful bow sending his scarves fluttering and his braid slipping over his shoulder. "I spoke out of turn."

The Captain neither accepted nor turned down Val's words. When Sybil came into the room I felt him stiffen before me.

"Papa." She tugged him down until he was at her height, then wrapped her small arms around his neck. I saw his hesitation as he slowly put his arms around her frame. "It'll be better next time," she promised him, and her words held both sorrow and such sweet redemption and I don't know who she was redeeming, but I do know that my Captain slowly melted in the face of it and hugged my beautiful, wonderful, daunting daughter back as only she could demand with such parting words.

As we turned to leave, Val grabbed my hand and pulled me aside. "You have to tell him," he hissed. I glanced over at the Captain, already moving towards the beach, his eyes on the ship that would take us from this place where he felt so uncomfortable, so unsafe. "You need to tell him."

I didn't know what Val was referring to exactly but I knew he was right. I sighed and gave him a quick hug before hurrying to catch up to where the Captain waited at the edge of the sea.

The trip back was quick and difficult. The things that spilled from the cracks of the universe tugged at us even as truth ripped at our souls, the Captain sitting stiff and refusing the quiet ways I reached out, and so I settled into turning my shoulder into the winds of the world and rowing us back to the ship.

"You're -" Natch started when we got back to the ship, but the Captain was already past him and headed below decks. Natch turned to me, an expression of confusion and concern on his face.

I sighed and shook my head. "Take us back to the Ephretes." As an afterthought, I added, "And keep the sails trimmed tight. There might yet be a storm."

It had been stupid to send my anger to Dreyfus. He might well lash back.

Natch did not question either my instructions or the way the Captain threw himself into the darkness of the ship, but instead quietly turned and began telling the crew what needed to be done. I was glad for his presence and the trust I could put in it as I turned to follow the Captain to his quarters.

He was already on our bed, curled up around himself so tight I had to stop myself from drawing in my breath. I quietly closed the door behind me, watching his shoulders move with his breath, remembering the way he had come to this pose the night I had thrown a chair across the room in anger and wondering how much of that night he had lain awake thinking of losing me and how much he had lain awake in fear, but that thought was too much for me and so I put it from my mind and instead began to walk forward.

"Love." He didn't move at my quiet call. His form shifted at the gravity of my weight settling on the edge of the bed, but that was all. "Sir."

He did not look at me, but one arm went up in the air, a hand questing about for something. Perhaps contact. I gave him my hand and was immediately pulled towards him until my arm was wrapped around his chest, my face nestled into the tangle of his thick black hair. I used my free hand to reach up and uncover the skin of his neck until he could feel my breath, my lungs giving him warm reminders of my presence, of my calm. He pulled me tighter in response.

We laid there for a long time, warmth spreading from one body to the other and back, before the Captain spoke.

"Are we headed North now?"

"Just back into the Ephretes." I placed a careful kiss on the back of his neck and felt him sigh. "I wanted to leave that decision to you." I paused, wondering how much to say. "To wait until you felt ready."

"I'm ready," he said instantly. We laid in silence a bit longer, my arm rising and falling with his breaths. Then he sighed again, shifting slightly. "No. I'll never be ready. But fuck him and fuck that and we have to go some time, so we might as well just fucking do it now."

There was such bitterness in his voice I skipped a breath, waiting to see if he would continue. When he did not, I tried a careful approach, wary of his fragility and the way that might explode and hurt him. "We don't have to go at all, my love."

"Your revenge," he reminded me. Still sounding bitter. "Your death."

"Is less important than you." He was silent at that and I pulled him closer. I needed him to hear this. I needed him to know this. "Nothing will ever be as important to me as you."

"We still sail North," he decided. "I can't keep running from him forever." He turned suddenly, his body pulling slightly from my arms so that his head could turn and look at me. "How did you know? How did you. I mean, I never said anything. And I thought I acted." His eyes flicked over my face, dark, his lips twisted with the taste of something I didn't dare to kiss away. "Was it Val? Did he find out, use his fucking network or whatever, spy on me? Didn't trust that I was on the level having sailed with your mortal fucking enemy?"

I thought about how to answer that even as I winced at the way he spoke of my brother. It had been Val, partly, but it had been so much more. So, so much more.

You need to tell him, Val had said. Well.

"It was the way you talked about him." The Captain pulled away slightly more, his brows drawing even closer. "The way you knew so much. You must have spent time close to him to know him so well." Something flitted over the Captain's face, gone before I could pull it away and kill it forever. "And I recognized the way you talked about him. I'd seen it before, in the people he'd done this to -"

The Captain pulled back before I could finish my sentence. "You saw it before and didn't fucking stop it? You just fucking watched it happen, sat back and fucking -" I sat up as he pressed a hand to his face, words abruptly stopping with the application of his palm. My stomach was churning uncomfortably; I tried to breathe to settle myself but found the oceans within had other ideas, tied to the Captain, always the Captain. My body waited to see what he would say next.

"I'm sorry," he said, which made me feel no better. He didn't take his hand from his face. He looked defeated, tired. I wanted to gather him to me and keep him safe in my arms.

I didn't move.

"You couldn't do anything. He's so fucking powerful, he was the King, and I don't know what you were back then. I don't know who else was there and I just." He gave a heavy sigh. "What could you do against your commander?"

You have to tell him. My stomach churned. I slowly moved so that my hands pressed against each other, my eyes tracking down to watch them. "He was not my commander."

I could feel the way that made the Captain freeze even as I did not dare to look at him. My hands pressed against each other so tight they looked white. "If not your commander," the Captain said, his voice slow and very, very careful. "Then what?"

"He was." I paused. But in the end, there was no way to say this other than the way that it had been, and so I said it. "I commanded him."

There was silence. Silence and the roaring of an ocean that feared for the first time since I was a child.

Then; "What?"

"I -"

"No, I fucking heard what you said. I just." I could hear the Captain's voice shaking. "Sailor. What are you saying? You commanded - you commanded that man? You, you were in charge of him?"

"As much as anyone could have been." He had always been rogue, had always been prone to mutiny. But he had still sailed under me, had still sworn fealty... "He was my first lieutenant."

"Your first..." The Captain trailed off into silence filled with uneven breaths. "Sailor, were you the fucking King?"

I had been the Pirate King. I was proud, I was the sea incarnate, I was the Ghost of the North and seawalked to kill those that dissented with me, I rode the crests of waves and my enemies trembled at the whisper of my names.

I nodded, very slightly, and felt like I was going to throw up.

"Holy fuck." The bed shifted as the Captain removed his body from the same space as mine; the sea within me began to keen. "Holy fuck. When were you going to fucking tell me?"

I opened my mouth; I am dead, no longer this man. It didn't matter. But it mattered, it mattered so much and so obviously that I closed my mouth again and shook my head, a quiet submission that felt like dying all over again.

"Sailor, when you going to fucking tell me?" His voice had an edge that felt dangerous to no one but me; it felt like boiling water, like he would eventually make me dry and nothing but salt to crack and blow away. I shook my head again and heard him begin to pace. "You weren't going to tell me? At all?"

"It didn't seem important," I whispered. I don't think he heard me; I was glad for it. "I just wanted to be."

"You, the fucking King." His voice got louder and quieter as he moved around the room. I hated both; louder, his voice hurt more, quieter meant he was farther away, and my soul screamed for him to come back only to have him loud and painful once again. "You. I should have seen this, I should have. Shit. Do you know what they say about you, about the Kings? Do you know, and the way you use men, the way we're just fucking ants to your games - fuck. Holy fuck. Is that why you're going back North? To claim the fucking crown again? Taking me along for the ride, a convenient ship, some fucking idiot you convinced to fuck along the way? Jesus. Oh my god." His words were like knives to my soul; I flinched each time one hit even as I felt the sea swallow them whole, hungry for the punishment, deserving this. "Am I nothing but an easy ride to you, Sailor?"

I crossed my hands over my stomach at the edge in his voice. At the things he was saying.

"Fuck, I'm such a fucking idiot. From the bed of one King to another, a fucking idiot, a fucking. Fuck. I should have seen it in your power, in the way you're so fucking. He can do the same things as you, you know, and I just thought, I just. I wanted it to be better. I wanted you to be better."

My body curled around my arms, bringing my forehead down to the bed. All I had ever wanted to do was be better than Dreyfus. All I had ever tried to be was the version that was better, better than what my father had tried to create, better than the world had set me up to be.

"Fuck." He had stopped pacing now. I could feel his eyes, hard and accusing on my form. I didn't dare look up. "And why didn't you fucking stop him, then? If you were the fucking King, why didn't you fucking stop him?"

"I'm sorry," I told the bed. "I couldn't."

"Fuck, Sailor!" He was shouting into my whispers. "Yes you fucking could have! You, the fucking Pirate King, the most powerful man on the sea! The fucking sea itself! You could have fucking stopped him!"

I turned, then. I had to see him. Had to know what it was that he saw in me.

His eyes were dark. His face was open, and lost, and there was so much pain I wanted to cry.

But I didn't. Instead I said, "My love." And I watched the way that made his eyes close and his brows draw closer together, like the word caused him further discomfort and I hated myself for so selfishly saying it. "I couldn't."

He held my eyes, begging me for something. Asking me for more than I could give, and I wished that wasn't true, hated myself for making it so. "Why didn't you kill him when you had the fucking chance?"

I breathed in. I breathed out. You have to tell him.

And so I did. "Because he is my brother."

His eyes flew open as he took a step back, his hand going to his hip and I knew he was looking for a knife and I wished in that moment that he could find one but he had taken off his blades before he had gotten into bed and so he grasped at air and it didn't matter, I found, because just watching him make that motion hurt so bad I made a noise.

Without another word, the Captain turned and left the room.

***