The Pirate King Ch. 04

This is part of an ongoing series - if you find yourself here without reading the first three chapters, please go back and catch up. We'll still be here when you get back:)

Hi all! First off, fair warning that there's no sex in this chapter - words were exchanged last chapter, and they can't be taken back. I know it's long, but I wanted to get it all out in one chunk. I promise to make the next chapter worth the wait ;)

As always, feedback and comments much appreciated.

*****

I wiped my face with the inside of my shirt as I moved down the hall. I felt good, at least for the first few steps. Then the full weight of my proclamation hit my body.

I felt myself going down, right there in the hall. I traced my hand down the wall as my knees buckled beneath me. What was this, this sick ripping feeling passing through my stomach and bleeding into my soul, this sudden void inside my head, the way my lungs wouldn't take air? I gasped, crouched there in the hall, somehow lower than the floor. Lower than the seabed. If this was control, I thought, I didn't want it anymore.

But the damage was already done. I didn't make threats that I couldn't keep, and I didn't say things that I didn't mean. The Captain would never touch me again. The loss was like a sledgehammer to my soul.

I managed to drag myself into the kitchen. Cookie took one look at me and sat me down on a chair, fixing me up a hot bowl of porridge and draping a warm towel over my shoulders. I set down the bowl without touching a bite and set myself to chopping onions. I wanted something to do with my hands, and if tears came from my eyes then the onions were potent and I was not to blame.

Ah, who was I to lie? I cried, there in the kitchen. There is no shame in that. I was a man of the sea. The sea is salty, and men like me are to blame. That was what Minnie always told me when I used to cry in her kitchen over a sunset, or the death of a seal pup I had been nursing. There is no shame in tears shed at sea, by men such as me, because we are the sea and we must return something to her. She expects as much. To do anything else would be sacrilege.

You mustn't cry on land, though. The land is greedy and already steals so much that the sea has to offer. Those years I had spent on land, in the mines, I hadn't shed a single tear. Not through all the horrors I had seen, not through all the pain they had put me through. I had guarded the sea jealously in my chest, and it drove my captors mad. A small victory, maybe, but you can survive on small victories. They can get you through.

I had no taste for victory that day. Everything was loss, and I let myself lose the sea the same way. It wasn't just the Captain; it was the whole of it, the way my plan had fallen to shreds, the fact that I needed a plan at all, the fear that I might never be who I was meant to be again. The pain I had felt for years, with dirt under my feet where there should have been water, stale air where I should have found ocean breezes. The rage at the man who made it so. Who had made me a ghost, who had killed me and foolishly believed that would be enough to keep him safe.

I had held it in for so long and it felt good to release. I was at sea again, Cookie was a friend, the pain was fresh and my soul was raw. Minnie had always taught me that a single tear in a bowl of soup was enough to bring a man to heel. If that was true, the soup we served to the men that night could have brought an army to its knees.

The men must have been surprised to see me there, released again from the captivity they believed me to be under, but they were hungry and my presence in the kitchen meant they were fed faster so no one said anything. I was silent as I ladled out their soup, Cookie in the back making sure we had enough of everything. The crying had done me good; I felt empty, drained of anything I wanted to feel. This allowed me to begin steeling myself, visualizing my plans and trying to understand what would come next. How I would live without the Captain, who didn't love me, who would use me so easily, who now would never do so again. Cookie left me be.

There was quiet chatter through the room as the men ate, obviously hungry after pushing their ship to catch the British charter earlier. But there wasn't the air of excitement that would usually come with a successful capture, and I watched them carefully as they spoke in hushed tones, turning talismen and crossing themselves when they thought the others weren't looking.

When all the men were served, I grabbed a bowl for myself and moved out into the mess to take my seat.

I found Finn in the same place as at breakfast. Breakfast seemed so long ago, so much having happened in the interim. Without waiting for an invitation I settled myself next to him.

There was a pause in the conversation as the men around me took in my bulk, my quiet blankness, the exhausted turn of my shoulders. The man across from me opened his mouth, perhaps thinking of saying something. I met his eyes steadily and he lowered his gaze, if only a little. It was enough for me at that moment, and I put him from my mind. Land boys, I thought. No threat to me. Slowly, as I spooned soup into my mouth, the conversation resumed.

"I'm telling you," Finn was saying to the small guy across from me. His eyes, in turn, were still on me, a hooded gaze that was taking in every part of my affect. "Weren't natural. All them men, killed just like that. And before we even got there?" He drew back and shook his head, drawing the other man's eyes from me.

"You want me to be afraid of a ghost, Finn? No such thing."

"Then explain the ship."

A third man chimed in. "Aye, or the flag."

Finn leaned forward so far his shirt was in danger of falling into his soup. "Ghosts, boy. I'm telling you, t'were ghosts."

"Naught but one, I heard." They tensed at my voice. Perhaps I sounded different than the morning; perhaps they simply hadn't expected me to speak. Then Finn leaned forward, eyes big, and pointed to me.

"Man knows what he's speaking of."

The man across from me, the small one, grinned and leaned back. "Don't encourage him, big guy."

"Twenty men dead, Natch. All left said they saw him, you can't say that doesn't strike true." Finn turned and spat twice over his left arm, a very old and supposedly very potent guard against evil spirits. I took another bite of soup. "If it weren't the ghost, then what could it have been?"

The small man, whose name must have been Natch, smiled again, a sharp and not at all joyful expression. "The King, I 'spose."

The whole table blanched. There was a second of complete and utter silence, and then they all spoke at once.

"Not funny, boy."

"Cap hears you speakin' like that, he'll have you thrown off for sure."

"The King is in the north and he'll remain there so long as we remain here."

"Aye, and by all the seas we will never return, I want to keep my head, thank you very much."

Natch just shrugged. "Cap won't care much what I say or don't. He's got to be thinking the same thing after the flag went up. And besides, he's got other things on his mind." He chinned air at my form.

I froze as all the eyes at the table turned towards me.

I very quietly put my spoon back into my soup and met Natch's eyes. I didn't like where this was headed, knew from this morning that there were men not happy with the way the Captain had taken to me. Or, I revised my thought, had taken me. It was a more possessive thing than a caring one, and I felt my soul keen even as my body bristled. I wasn't in the mood to fight this fight, not now. "I'm sorry?" I asked, in the least threatening voice I could muster. Finn still pulled away from me.

"You are sleeping with the Captain, are you not?" he asked. His voice held something that I couldn't yet identify, but I kept it close by in case it was dangerous. "Jake and Murr and Ichor saw you."

"I was," I told him.

"Some are saying that it was not your idea," he continued quietly. My eyes darted up to his, surprised both at his directness and at the statement. Not my idea? Then who's idea did that make it? The kid was leaning on his elbow and looking over at me, his eyes bright and light and hiding everything I wanted to learn. The air around us was taut with implications I didn't think I was understanding. "They say he had you tied."

I looked to Finn. He wouldn't meet my eyes.

"Big guy," the lad continued. He was quiet, so quiet, and yet there was something so loud about his voice. It carried over the din of the other men. "I just need to know. Did you say yes?"

I immediately bristled, the implications crystallizing all at once. It felt like an attack on the Captain's character, after all the care he'd taken to ensure the opposite was true. Did these men know nothing of the man I loved? "You have so little faith in your Captain?" I snapped. I couldn't keep the anger from my voice. Couldn't keep the accusation from my eyes. I turned my gaze back to my soup and tried to stay what they wanted me, a prisoner, a nothing, but it was hard when the whole of the sea was pressing against the inside of my skin.

"No," Natch said quietly. "It's just I have so little faith in men."

Those words dropped into my sea so quickly that I almost missed them. But I am not an idiot, not always, and the meaning slowly rippled out, expanding with the way he had said it, the quiet way he watched me. The gentle way he pretended he wasn't just as hard as I had once been, as I had become again.

I swallowed down soup and ocean and brought my eyes up to his. His was a younger face than I'd thought at first, clear blue eyes holding things I was no longer sure I wanted to understand. I nodded to show my recognition of his words, slowly draining myself of the anger and the salty waves I had let rise unchecked. I found myself giving him the truth. "I said yes." I kept this moment between us as well as I could, my grey eyes locking with his brown. "But now it is over."

He watched me carefully, maybe looking for signs of me lying. Then I watched tension drain from his body, tension I hadn't even noticed him holding. It was as if my words had reached out and pulled a small plug from his shoulders, allowing the thing he had been carrying within him to run out. His face returned to the boyish calm he had carried earlier. I don't know that anyone else saw it; it was a subtle change in a gregarious person.

"Good." He smiled, a bright and careful symbol fading into relief. "Ah; that's very good."

He explained it me later, after we'd become friends. He would have left the ship if I had told him that the Captain had taken me without consent. I've no room in my life for men like that, he'd said. Men who take without asking. Not anymore. All of those spaces have already been claimed.

At that time, all I knew was he was hard, and bright, and knew how to hide the things that grew inside of him until he needed them. I respected that. I reached across the table to shake his hand.

"Natch, right?"

He nodded. "Didn't catch your name, big guy."

I shook his hand and smiled soft.

He smiled back into my silence. "This is what's real, boys. Flesh and blood and large as life. Larger, even."

I let my smile fade and turned back to my soup. I wasn't real, not truly. Not anymore.

"You're the only ghost here, aren't you? Coming aboard with nothing, making your way through our rank. All silent and brooding."

One of the other men laughed. "Maybe, but at least if he attacks we'll always be able to see him coming!"

I met Natch's eyes for only a moment more before dropping them back to my soup. Let them have their jokes. They had no reason to know they should fear my hands.

Conversation soon turned back to the ship and the flag that had flown.

"It's the King's, alright." Natch ignored Finn's attempts to shush him. "Or some version of it."

"Made up in blood," one of the other men added.

Natch nodded, face very serious. "The King wouldn't like that. Waste of precious materials he'd rather drink up."

The man he was talking to looked like he wasn't sure if he should believe him or not. I felt a smile tug at the corners of my mouth.

Finn, a more serious expression on his face, spoke up. "Wouldn't much like the survivors either. Or that we left the ship standing. He's a cruel, cruel man, the king."

"I heard he once took a slave ship, and killed the entire crew and still sold the slaves at port."

"He killed a sea god, you know. Drank his blood. Made him immortal."

I ate quietly as they spun tales around me. If these men conflated the old King with the new, what was it to me? They probably thought there was only one king, had only ever been one. The illusion was carefully kept; it had to be. Power must pass quietly, or people might view the new king as weak. I took bite as another story that was a mix of the two men landed on my ears. The Pirate King is dead, I thought quietly. Long live the Pirate King.

"He slept with a hundred harlots, just to father a son."

"Nonsense; you're thinking of the sirens, boy."

"They say those that lay with him are condemned, that his semen contains the souls of the innocent he's killed."

"Bullshit."

"No, Finn's right. You mustn't drink the Pirate King's cum."

"As if you'd ever get the chance."

"If I did get the chance, I'd take it."

"To what? Sleep with the Pirate King?"

"And you wouldn't?"

"What about the cursed semen? What if it were true?"

"Christ, lad, then I'd spit!"

Eventually they wore themselves out of gossip and campfire stories, and the men began to file from the mess to their respective evening duties. I began to gather various bowls and cups left strewn about, getting ready to help Cookie with the cleaning.

"Hey, big guy." I didn't answer at first. Why would I? Who would want me in this place? When the voice called again, more insistent, I looked up to find Natch leaning in the door frame. "Since we didn't get a fight today from the ship, couple of us guys were going to head to the deck and whack at each other. You in?" He smirked. "The guys are curious about the man that keeps the Captain's interest. Figure this is the only way they can touch you without Cap right about killing them."

Keep the Captain's interest. Not anymore, I thought. I looked down at the dishes in my hands. My muscles ached from my long swim and the battle I had stolen from these men; it would be foolish to go and make up the fight I had already single-handedly contained.

"Yeah," I heard myself say. "I'll be up in moment."

He beamed, rapping on the doorframe. "Awesome. See you up there, Ghost." He was gone before I processed what he'd decided to call me.

"Cap will kill any of them if they hurt you," Cookie said from behind me. I shrugged and handed off the dishes, apologizing for not helping. He looked aghast that I would even consider such a task my duty. Even so, only when all the dishes were stacked next to the sink did I head up to the deck.

***

The sunset stretched thick and heavy across the sky as I emerged from the ship. I had never seen such a tangible sky, so close and physical. Reds bled into orange with a texture that I breathed in deeply, trying to cement them into my soul. I wanted to climb into the ropes and become one with the dripping colors, press myself up until I no longer existed as a body.

Natch caught sight of my form and broke away from the moving figures on the deck. I didn't pay them any attention; the sky was indistinguishable from the sea, and I was the sea, and I was trying to figure out if that then made me the sky.

Natch noticed my concentration and traced it up to the highest reaches of the sails. "Ah," he said. "You a ropes guy?"

There was irony in that statement, maybe, or at least a double entendre, but I only heard the meaning that mattered to me then. I nodded.

"We'll get you back up there in no time." He pulled me over to the sparring men, and I was given a wooden blade and set up against a mediocre fighter. I fought well, but not too well. If he had a good thrust I let it land; if he had a good block, I let it hold me at bay. There was no need for these men to see what I was capable of. This was temporary. I would only be with them until they dropped me off at their next stop, or decided to kill me.

If they decided to kill me, it was important they did not expect me to be what I was.

Besides, the sky was distracting. It shifted colors around me, holding my interest better than any of these men ever could.

When they tired, we all made our way back below decks. Natch slid up to me, his grin flashing as sharp as any sword.

"Impressive."

I shrugged. It wasn't really.

He caught me still staring up into the ropes. A sly grin crossed his face. "You want to go up?"

I nodded.

"Come on, then."

He led up me to the base of the rigging and we climbed to the sky. Night had come to pass while we were training, the first stars beginning to show. I moved through the ropes behind Natch, only letting myself move as fast as he did, trying to make my movements look like his. He climbed well, for one not born to it. I almost could believe he was born for the sea.

But I was a child of the sea, and these men had nothing on me. I settled at his pace and my soul ached at being constrained.

He stopped halfway up and fashioned himself a sort of hammock from the ropes. I watched him, leaning comfortably a bit away against the mast. I waited for him to speak, but he was quiet watching the stars appear. I appreciated his silence and turned my own gaze to the sky, finally feeling myself begin to relax.

After a long time, he spoke. "You climb well."

I shrugged. He had seen nothing.

"Where do you come from?"

"The sea," I told him truthfully. He smiled at that.

We sat for a little longer in the creaking of the ship. Then he turned to me. "Where will you stay tonight."

"The Captain's quarters, I suppose."

"I thought you said it was over."

I did not allow my face to change, did not allow my body to react. "I have nowhere else to stay."

I felt his eyes take in my body. I am neutral, I told myself. I washed him from me in the sea. I cried his salt from my soul.

"If it's too much, we could find an extra hammock in the barracks."

The thought of sleeping without the Captain filled me with panic. "No," I quickly answered. Natch blinked. "No," I repeated more slowly, more in control. I leaned back and closed my eyes.

"Damn," Natch said quietly. I heard him chuckle. "You've got it bad."

If someone had spoken to me like that three years ago, I would have taken their jaw from their face. But here, I felt powerless. And wasn't it true? I simply scowled in the face of his words as he shook his head.

"Well," he said, stretching. "Let's get you back."

***

When we reached the deck, he looked over to me. "You'll come train with us tomorrow?"

I shrugged. I was lost on this ship. I didn't know where I would be tomorrow, let alone what I would be doing. "If I'm still here," I finally confirmed.

He laughed at that. "Okay. See you then, Ghost."

I stayed up on deck a little longer, watching the last threads of red light drift into the curtain of night sky. The darkness did little to relieve the heaviness that I was feeling. Going back in felt like a terrible idea; the only thing waiting for me was the Captain's bed, and I had no intention of returning there.

But where else could I go?

I sighed and pulled myself up. There was nothing for it. I needed to sleep, and that was where I slept. I made my way to the Captain's chambers.

I was saved the indignity of knocking by Finn bustling from the door, leaving it ajar behind him as he rushed down the corridor. He caught sight of me and shook his head. "Cor, boy, avoid him if you can. Mood as sour as the sea in heat."