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1800titz · 6 months

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Hi friends! I’ve been sitting on this for about 3 months now and had the spontaneous urge to share. More lengthy authors note is over on wattpad. ٩(◕‿◕)۶

This one is going to be a long, chaptered fic, and here's the first chapter!

Also, big thank you to Miss @freedomfireflies for her help brainstorming <3

WC: 6.5K

Harry thinks that prissy, pretty little princesses stowed away in his cabin, tied up with ropes like haphazard, shibari interpretations, outweigh all chests, upon chests, of dainty sapphire emblems and chunky pendants of gold. This particular …treasure, in fact, is worth far beyond her weight in pure gold. A sight for sore eyes, too. Still sopping from the sea, her low-cut neckline clinging to her flesh and her skirt sheerly draped over her parted thighs.

It’s a nice view.

Seren doesn’t know how she’s ended up strapped to some horribly uncomfortable stool in a rocking room that’s wood, ceiling to floor.

Well.

She knows that the boat she was on was a victim of piracy. She knows that the ship, aimed for Holland, met an unsightly demise at some point, in open ocean, between Rotterdam and Harwich. She knows she’d been in a cabin of the Mary when the first strike landed, when flames erupted over the forecastle, when the deck turned to screams and a beautiful morning of calm skies, wisps of white she’d admired minutes prior, meant virtually nothing to the tightening in her chest.

The pirate leans back against the wall. His eyes, like emeralds, wind over her shape. She grits at the balled fabric between her teeth, chest heaving. He’s a man — a man’s man, unlike in appearance to the men she’s used to spending her pastime around, back home. The kinds who wither at the sight of the wrong fork at the dinner table or something, and turn their noses up at the thought of carrying something heavier than forty pounds. The kind whose hair coils pristinely, seemingly solidified rock in place. The kind who carry umbrellas to ward off the glaring rays of the sunlight as they stroll through the courtyard of shrubbery in their fancy shoes and fancy garments. This man is not that type of man.

He’s different, she can see it just in the way he carries himself. He’s not scared to get his hands dirty, he’s not scared to do the work. The crest of his left cheekbone wears a scar, a nick, so small she wouldn’t see it had he not stepped into the buttery beam of the daylight cast through the little window on the precipice of wall and ceiling, particles of dust dancing in the makeshift spotlight. His fingers, adorned with chunky rings, his hands — they’re calloused, like a laborer. She can see it from her view. His garb is simple, clad over his skin for purpose and comfort, solely.

But simple isn’t the term she’d deem best to describe him, not with his myriad of accessories, from the trinkets glinting from his holster, to his plethora of rings, to the mysterious, rusted key that dangled in the glen between his pecs. That one’s highlighted against bare skin in the vale of his haphazardly unbuttoned shirt. From there, she can see ink over his torso, carved in shapes over swarthy flesh. All sorts of pictures; beaks, and wings, lines of careful shading and others of jet emphasis; thicker, deeper sketches in contrast.

He’s clean shaven, which is unlike any pirate Seren’s ever heard tall tales of. His mouth is pink, cushiony in shape, and when the corners of his mouth turn up, dimples wink awake beside the curl. An even slope of a nose, and jade irises that brew with mischief. Seren can almost see the way that the flinty shade would brew with a storm, like the sea. If he wasn't a pirate of the boat that’d throttled her own, sent it spiraling into the ocean as nothing but husks of chipped wood and dying ember, maybe she’d find an alluring quality to him. But it’s not food for thought.

“Should we try again?” he prompts, in his tantalizing cadence.

When she’d heard him speak, for the first time, she was floored. An Englishman. An Englishman, youthful and spry, sailing a pirate ship, and pillaging when so much more could be in the books for such a man. So much potential, wasted. What a crying shame. She’d heard of pirates, of brutish criminals from her homeland, but they were always, for some reason or another, older, unprepossessing, scarred and crude with unkempt beards and a lack of morals, too far gone to redeem. They had eyes much too hungry for riches, and lewd, groping hands that were much too focused on flesh. Seren eyes his hands. They’re colossal. He hasn’t touched her in that way, not like that, but the lazy smirk over his plush mouth, the way his irises rake over her neckline, down the meshified front of her dress — that practically urges her not to count her blessings too soon.

When he squats just ahead of her, watching her in pause, his eyes glinting with this sort of condescension, because she’s indisposed and at his whim, Seren wishes her legs weren’t bound to the legs of the chair. She’d kick him, if she could. She’d scream, and kick, and claw, and—

“Are you going to start shouting again? Is that what you’re thinking about?” he murmurs, the corners of his mouth buckling. When she’s unable to respond, for obvious reasons, the man cups his palm over the shell of his right ear and twists his head a tad, leaning towards her a smidge.

“M’gonna need an answer, if you’d like to me to un-gag you. M’specifically gonna need a no,” the pirate prompts, a jesting air to his tone that Seren would love to crush. Her chest is still heaving from the last screaming fit, from the first time he’d tugged at the rope pressing to her cheeks and pulled the smushed fabric off of her tongue. His mouth twitches wryly.

He plants his forearms onto his thighs, casting his gaze to her as he weighs out the options, lips crooked, but eyes narrowed, just a bit, in a way that wordlessly suggests she comply.

“Let’s give this another go.”

When the man digs his forefinger under the abrasive rope and yanks it down, over her chin, and then plucks at the outside of the makeshift gag, Seren doesn’t nip at his fingertips. She’d tried that, the first time, but he’d retracted before her teeth could come into contact, his mouth jolting at the fire within her he’d underestimated. She expected a smack, she’d expected her neck to twist as her cheek bruised in response to the attempt, but he’d just stuck his tongue against his cheek, all mirthy, until she’d started to scream. Then he’d gagged her again.

So.

That was a failure.

The second the back of her throat meets the air, rather than the garbling cloth, the young woman starts screaming. Again. He’d kind of expected it. It’s a very lovely attempt, she’s quite loud, and all, but unfortunately, her efforts are sort of moot. That kind of thing tends to happen when you’re miles, and miles, and miles out in the open sea aboard a ship of men who work for the opposing team. Harry would clap if he wasn’t putting on a show of tucking a finger into his ear at her shrill cries. Eventually, he just watches her, letting her scream for a bit, and she holds seething eye contact as her help rises in pitch.

“Okay— alright,” Harry shakes his head, balling the cloth, daubed with her saliva, and shoving it past her lips haphazardly. She attempts to spit, but can only wriggle as he presses the rope back over her mouth like the task is effortless.

For a moment, neither of them say anything. The princess can’t. Harry tuts.

His tone carries notes of amusement when he tells her, “You’re quite pitchy. D’you know that?”

Seren stares him down.

“Have you got rocks in your head?” his lips nearly jolt up at the blunt nature of his own inquiry. They don’t. “I tell you not to scream,” he waves with an arm, “you scream anyways. I say, let’s try one more time, because— you know. Maybe you didn’t get the memo, the first time.”

The princess watches him talk, bemused. He gestures with his arm like a tired parent, stressed and lecturing a menacing, little child.

“And you yell again. So I’m wondering, have you got rocks in your head?”

Seren says nothing. She does wriggle in the restraints, like his question has insulted her enough to launch at him. But she stills when he squats ahead of her, once more, her heart hammering behind her ribcage.

“Who’s going to rescue you?” the pirate asks. It’s obviously rhetorical, and he knows she can comprehend that much. When the roll of her chest slows and she settles back, he can see it in her eyes that his point has left her crestfallen. His mouth quirks, and Harry presses again. “Who?”

When he knows that the message has sunk in, when she stares at the wall behind him, blankly, the only evidence of her consciousness being her glazed over gaze and the flare of her nostrils on every inhale, Harry sighs down at his palms and shakes his head.

“I’d just like a chat.”

Seren twists her head away. As much as the binding over her neck and face allows for, anyways. Harry tuts.

“So glum. You’re alive, aren’t you?” he cocks his head, voice low, “You’re not at the bottom of the sea. Not like your little boat.”

Those words hit a nerve, he can see it in the way she side-eyes him, the flame reignited, kindling in her scorching gaze. The pirate nods down at his hands, twisting a ring with a ruby red gem, like a shitty mockery of a moment of silence.

“It can’t possibly be comfortable, sitting with your mouth full, like that. And you must be thirsty, what with all that saltwater you were gargling,” he raises a shoulder, a coy reasoning to his speech.

Seren doesn’t want his stupid water. He’d probably poison her, have his way, and roll her off the ship, back into the raging waters he’d pulled her from. Harry blinks. She doesn’t offer an inkling to show that she’s willing to comply, but he stands and reaches for the rope, digging the pads of his fingers under the binding, over her cheek. His forefinger brushes the corner of her parted lips.

“Third time’s the charm.”

Though, he doesn’t sound the least bit convincing, not even to his own ears. He cradles the square of cloth between his fingertips and listens to her screams for a moment.

And then he startles her when he starts to harmonize with her screeching pleas. The first one is enough for her vocal chords to stutter, for her to jolt back in her seat, alarmed.

“HELP!” Harry calls, stretching the vowel outweighing her own scream in volume as the young woman’s own dies off, and the princess balks, startling in the ropes at the sound. He takes a pause for a deep breath, and screams again, “HELP!” banging on the wooden beams over the ceiling, bumping with his palm loudly, in an outrageous display that’s clearly meant to taunt. The sound of him striking it, alone, causes her to jump in her restraints.

He’s unhinged. Seren is convinced. Her spine straightens out like an arrow, and her shoulders square as she ogles the bizarre display, watching him strike over the ceiling, the walls, stamp the soles of his boots against the floorboards. After a second, he settles down. His hand is crooked against one of the beams overhead, and his gaze roves over her slowly. Purposefully. The corners of his mouth curl up sardonically.

“It’s not a very nice sound, is it?”

He’s deranged. His screws are loose, Seren decides, her eyes still wide as the racing pace of her heart settles in her chest — but any man who sinks ships for fun, in the open sea, who sails and pillages, and murders innocents with a hunger for riches, has screws loose. These aren’t insightful revelations. Maybe she’d just expected him to be less …bizarre, in their interrogation. He was going to get his answers out of her — they were his, they were going to be, and there’s no kidding about it — but the young woman is unsure of what answers he’s looking for or why. Why, why, why. Why did these pirates sink her boat? It was nothing but a small ferry in comparison to the opposing monster of a galleon. It wasn’t even a merchant ship, there were no riches to be stolen. Ironically, the pirate reaches a hand out, and Seren fidgets until his fingers clasp over her ruby pendant. He lifts it from her skin with prodding fingertips and a gaze of scrutiny.

She won’t give him answers, the princess decides. Whatever dialogue he may want from her, she won’t comply. She doesn’t know what he has in store for her lack of subservience, but she doesn’t care. She will not bend her will for this mangy brute.

“This is a pretty piece.”

Loose tendrils, clumped wetly, sway as she jerks her neck to tug the pendant from his grasp. She fails. His digits twitch and flex over the pendant, and the chain digs into the skin at the back of her neck with the faulty motion. The corners of his mouth quirk up as the princess makes an mmph.

That’s a pretty sound.

“M’not going to steal it. What kind of a man do you take me for? We’re good men here, on this ship,” the pirate declares, a sort of vehement passion to his statement, but the crook of his mouth says it’s an unlikely story.

So do the remnants of her boat, somewhere at the bottom of the sea, Seren thinks dryly. Maintaining eye contact, he lets the pendant settle back between her collarbones. It is a pretty piece, Harry wasn’t lying. Real gold, too — no princess would wear something less. But he’s got no need to pilfer it from her. Every molecule of her being, every cell, will pay out tenfold the cost of the necklace. It’s with that thought that he fixes the gag back into place and leaves her, trussed to that chair in the cabin.

“Ta,” the pirate bids in his slow roam towards the door, a glance aimed over his as he tucks his fingertips into the belt holstering his array of daggers, one handle bejeweled. The look he fixes her is sure, the kind that’s relaxed, but showcases that his word is final and will be the outcome. “Chat soon.”

Fun fact; being tied to a shoddy, little wooden chair for hours on end fucking blows. Especially when your hands are bound, in such a way where the rope weaves through the pegs of the back of the chair, keeping your joints wrung together tightly. It’s really aggravating to have a coarse rope, its weaving splintered with pinprick-y tufts, stuck up over your cheeks to hold some sordid rag in place between your teeth.

It’s safe to say that the experience is not one of Seren’s most favorite past-times. She’s not sure how much time has passed before that heavy wooden door creaks open on its hinges, again. Only a few hours, it must be. The crack of a window behind her hasn’t broken with nightfall, though the light cast through its opening has dimmed, if only a little.

It’s the same pirate as before. All glimmery jade and the bare vale of tanned skin from the unbuttoned sector of his shirt, where she makes out a faint dusting of chest hair, between his pecs.

The princess is still a gorgeous view, in Harry’s opinion. Her thighs are still splayed, but her cream dress has dried some, now, and so has her hair. It’s wild, mussed and frizzy. A half-soaked clump rests over one of her eyes.

“Hello to you, too, darling,” he says in response to the glare she fastens him with through the one that’s visible, like instant daggers. The corners of his mouth crook. He ambles toward her with a steel cup of …something. Something mysterious, something unknown, something she eyes warily up until the point where he’s towering over her. The young woman tears her gaze away, casting it up to his handsome face, instead.

He pries and tucks his digits up under the rope that’s settled over her cheeks and drawn ruddy hues, but he pauses before he pulls it down.

“Y’gonna get loud?”

Seren doesn’t say anything. In fact, she sort of can’t, which is quite nice, Harry thinks, but she doesn’t even make a garbled sound to appease or amuse him. The captain is thankful for what little fragments of peace he’s been granted before he’s forced to endure her ludicrously grating screeching. He weighs his options for a moment, but ultimately, tugs.

Of course, the second he’s pulled the cloth out, the young woman is screaming, of-fucking-course she’s screaming. And at this point, it’s so obviously a ploy to irritate him, and Harry would laugh if the whole display wasn’t so vexing. There’s a tick in his jaw when he sets the lip of the tin cup to her parted, strawberry mouth, roughly — and he wouldn’t be so rough if she wasn’t so fucking loud — and tips. Instantly, that shout is garbled by liquid. It morphs into a cough and a much more tolerable string of sputters, as water leaks over and drenches down her chin, her chest, the front of her dress.

“There we go,” the pirate says, the smooth baritone of his cadence louder over the fit of her coughing, “Attagirl. That’s much better.”

He doesn’t tip more of the beverage into her mouth — a ransom on a princess who’s drowned in her own lungs is worth virtually nothing — and lets her cough and sputter a little longer. She strings together a sequence of breaths he deems good enough, before he smushes the rim of the metal cup back against her bottom lip.

“Drink,” Harry advises and nudges the tin back in a way, again, so that the liquid sloshes and spills out into her open mouth.

This time, she doesn’t cough. She expects it, the water. The princess affixes her top lip lower to siphon the beverage and takes a few swallows. Harry watches her throat bob, and he watches a little rivulet escape, too, dribbling down the corner of her mouth in a little streak. It drips down her chin, down her neck. His pupils follow the trail. He gives her a little break part-way, once the tin is close to empty and her neck is craned back with the swallows. He draws it away. Good. That was good, nice and easy. As easy as it could be, given the circumstances.

Except she fixes him with this horrible glare, again, as he pulls the cup away. This glare that speaks volumes, this glower that should warn him of his error before he lets it happen. Harry doesn’t catch the drift. Only a glimpse of her cheeks puffing before she puckers her lips and spits the remnants at him, coating the bottom-most half of his linen with a mist of the water. His belt too, and a bit of his trousers.

And then her mouth is empty and she’s just scowling at him, head tipped down in a way so that the chunk of her frizzy tendrils settles back over an eye. Harry doesn’t waste a second before angling the cup, miffed, and flinging what little water is left in the cup right back in her face.

And the way her eyes screw shut, the way her lips fall open in silent appall the second he returns the energy, (except, he’s far more polite, in his humble opinion. He doesn’t spit at her like an improper animal), when she’s doused in the chilled liquid, and it coats the face-framing layers of her hair, her lashes, and drips down her chin — that’s the highlight of his day.

He doesn’t instantly fix the gag back into her mouth, or slip the rope back over her irritated skin. He watches her, his jaw set, and when the young woman opens her eyes, she sees that storm brewing, manifesting — the kind she’d only imagined prior, in the flinty green of his irises. Like he’s harnessing his own composure. But then he takes a step back, and just. Leans against the closed door. Like he’s scoping her with his gaze. Like she’s just this shiny thing for his sight to pore over.

And Seren thinks that feels worse than if she were to face the bite of his skin against her own, the swat of his palm against her cheek. She’d rather that, honestly.

Her skin is cold from the water. She’s still sort of reeling that he’d done that, to begin with. He’s drumming the pads of his fingers against his bicep, over the nearly-sheer, cream sleeve of his shirt when he asks, a serious note of authority to the molasses of his speech, “Do you know who I am?”

Seren curbs parroting the question wryly. As much as she’d love to tell him her father will torch the ship he rides upon and hang every member of his crew, him and his stupid fucking dimples included, she’s sure that all she’ll receive in response is a grating twitch of his pink mouth.

“Hm?” he prods, making a show of cupping a palm behind his ear and steering his torso forward a smidge, half-expecting her response to be a series of shrill cries, for the hell of it.

Her answer is not one he expects. Frankly, the man doesn’t expect an intelligible response, the history of her opting for incoherent shouts, considered. But she speaks, afterall. It’s soft in decibel, feminine, and pleasant — her voice, unlike the aimless yelling he’d become accustomed to. Even still, it carries that undeniable note of derision.

Seren tells him, “Someone …terribly disturbed.”

Harry almost can’t help the way his cushiony mouth quirks.

Almost.

“Disturbed?” he scoffs, sardonically mirthy, “She spits at me like a fucking …filthy animal, and I’m disturbed. Aye, I’m disturbed.”

The princess makes daggers with the gaze she sends in his direction. He lets her simmer in the wake of the light insult, for a moment, just drumming over his bicep, his mouth twitching in a kind of way that doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

“I’m the captain of this ship,” Harry supplies softly, jade narrowed.

There’s a twitch to her face then, something that slots by and withers in the blink of an eye. Something like recognition. And, fucking finally, Harry thinks — he can practically hear the angels croon at the crumbs of reception, from her, to his authority.

“That means,” he motions out with the cup, his other arm still crossed, fingers wrapped about his waist now, “I’m in charge.”

His voice is soft-spoken, a croon that spells it out for her, if she hasn’t already caught the drift.

“I’m in charge of this ship. This crew,” he takes a step forward, ducking his chin as his eyebrows tip up a bit, “And you. And that means I’m in charge of what happens to you. So don’t you think it’s in your best interest to behave?”

If he expects her to bow down and kiss the toes of his scuffed boots, the young woman doesn’t bite the bait.

“You’re nothing but a mangy sea brute,” Seren declares, then, her chin held audaciously high, despite the ropes binding over her breasts and the foreboding ocean that sways beyond, with ravenous threat. He could lug her off onto the deck and chuck her off the plank, tied just like this.

He doesn’t.

He just stays leant against the wall, arms crossed over his bare chest.

“Mangy sea brutes,” the pirate weighs her words, nodding slowly as he purses his lips in deliberation. And then his brows pinch together, “that’s quite insulting, actually. I take pride in my appearance, I’ll have you know.”

“Mangy,” the young woman confirms, venom in her tone.

The pirate props himself up and off, taking a languid step, each syllable of his cadence laced with condescension, “Now, rugged—“ and open mouthed smirk, a nudge with his chin, “I’ll accept. You don’t think I spend time in front of the mirror, darling? Mangy. What a rude word. I wasn’t aware that Siren, Princess of Essex was so abrasive.”

There’s a flicker of something in her eyes when they flash to him — something like sharp surprise, mottled with pique. Like she didn’t expect him to know who exactly he was harboring upon his ship. The corners of his mouth crook. She’s seemingly appalled that he’s done his research. The glint of shock is gone, as soon as it shows itself.

“Oh,” the captain takes a slow step forward in this sort of way, as if his body language is entirely meant to taunt her, hand in hand with his tongue, “I see. You thought I didn’t know who you were. Just some nameless, pretty little thing on my ship.”

It’s a purposeful dig — the mispronunciation of her name. It’s only a vowel off, it could be chalked up to simple error, but it’s blatantly to mock her. Really, it’s a funny little dub since she enjoys spending so much screeching like the nuisance of a blaring alarm that just won’t shut off. It’s meant to demean her, to belittle her, because not even her name, blue-blooded and all, is worth correct pronunciation. That’s what she seems to hone on from the whole revelation, Harry finds.

“Seren,” she corrects with bite, that same glower she’d worn prior reincarnated.

The man takes another step. He cups behind his ear, and Seren promises herself that the moment she’s freed, she’ll personally chop off his stupid fucking ear for all the times he’d cupped behind that shell of it that way, so condescending. “What was that?”

“Seren,” the young woman scowls, “Seren, Princess of Essex.”

He pauses, a cinch in his brows with this patronizing nod, like he’s weighing her correction, and then he tells her, motioning with an arm as the cinch relaxes, “Siren, Seren. Tomato, tomato.”

He motions with his palm nonchalantly. She wants to bite at his fingers. She doesn’t.

“How dare you?” the young woman says instead.

Harry’s mouth quirks. How dare he? What a pompous inquiry, molded by prissy lips.

“How dare I?” the pirate repeats, and then just lifts his shoulder in a casually apathetic shrug. He takes a third step forward, raspberry lips smug and curled, “I just… dare.”

And before the princess can voice her obnoxious protest, he shoves the cloth into her mouth and tugs up the rope, plucking a garbled sound of anger from her in the process.

The silence is wonderful.

By the time Harry returns to her for the third time, it’s well past nightfall. Light stops leaking from the crack of the window. Seren watches the shift, the way it rolls as the hours tick by, in the room. It morphs from behind her, its bright gold slipping into a darker orange, mottled with pink, and then dimmer, and dimmer, and dimmer, as minutes leak away, until all that’s left is dusk and the glow of the moonlight.

The door creaks. She almost doesn’t see it, but she hears the pad of his boots over the wood and twists her neck to catch the sight of his legs as he steps through the threshold.

“Honey, I’m home,” the pirate calls.

Her eyes strain their sockets to catch the moonlight cresting off his cheekbones as his head dips, the dimpling that rises awake beside the corners of his mouth as they turn up at his own jest. He’s holding something. The captain winds around her, through the coat of darkness, and settles somewhere she can’t see. A thump, like something being set onto a table. Then, soft breaths fill the void of the silence. A strike of a match. Her eyes are forced to adjust to a warm, buttery glow as the little beam of fire, merged to a lantern, and then another, sends gold bouncing wall to wall.

That’s when Harry sees that she's managed to make a home for herself on the floor, the chair she’s been restrained to tipped on its side. He almost doesn’t think anything of it, for a split second, but then, as the pads of his digits work buttons through their slits to disrobe, the pirate casts his gaze up for a double take. A twisted coil of satisfaction blooms in his chest as he observes her, the thought that whatever faulty maneuver she’d made to escape had resulted in this, and, well. That makes something joyful and mean bud.

Seren listens to his boots, the step of them slow against the floorboards, until she sees him towering over her, in her peripherals. Her pupils shift.

“Comfortable?” his brows climb with emphasis. The work of his fingertips over the buttons on his shirt are sluggish. Tired. She notes that motion, too — that fact that he’s actively shedding clothes. Nonchalantly. And it must show in her eyes, then. Something vulnerable, something uncomfortable, something raw, and petrified, because, yeah, she’s a petulant, little princess strapped to a chair in his cabin, against her will, and she fights him tooth and nail in every instance that he comes to visit her. But she’s a princess strapped to a chair, against her will, and it’s nightfall, and his skin is growing more bare, square inch by square inch, as the seconds pass.

He must note that — whatever that shows, because the quirk of his priorly mirthy, strawberry mouth slips a tad. And then his features shape something relaxed. Something tired, again. Like he’s too worn.

The sarky comment has those same traces of exhaustion seeping into it as his dismissive gaze disengages, honing on the work of his digits as he loops the final button through, “Don’t flatter yourself, sweetheart. You’re not my type.”

The cloth slips apart, showcasing more skin. A line of hair from below his belly button, in soft, dark wisps that melts off behind his belt. Sturdy muscles of his abdomen that ripple as he moves, chin ducked—

His palms cup over the belt of holsters, and that clinks as he discards it, too, winding around to, she assumes, set it somewhere. And then, more skin to pore over when he returns, the sharp cut of a V, decorated with laurels, emphasized by the low hang of his trousers. He cocks his head down at her, like he’s contemplating. Contemplating what, Seren’s unsure. He moves out of her line of sight again.

Her arm aches. She’d tipped over onto it what felt like hours ago, and it’d taken the brunt of the fall, lodged against the side of the chair with the situation of her joints being married in the bindings, behind her. She’d managed to roll forward on her shoulder, just a tad, so that the press against it wasn’t constant, but it still fucking hurt. Her palms, down to the tips of her digits, were numb, she had this heinous crick in her neck, and she’s sure that the moment she’s able to stand her tailbone will hurt like hell. If she’s ever allowed to stand again. Maybe he’ll hurl her into the open ocean, strapped to this godforsaken chair, afterall.

For now, he just hauls her up. His touch — warm — skims the opposite arm before his palm wraps over the beam over the back of the chair and tugs, leveling her with ease. The young woman squeaks against the gag as she hovers, terrified to drop straight onto the limb again. She doesn’t. The pirate sets her straight with a tired grunt. His sight scales her arm, the one she’d toppled onto, and Seren can’t see, but she assumes it’s not in the most pristine condition. And then his touch smooths over the ache, a crease over his brow bone as his eyes pry, and she bristles.

His mouth twitches, but it’s tired. Tired after having to deal with her, tired from whatever he’d spent his time doing beyond the cabin. Tired after sinking her ship and taking her hostage, Seren thinks bitterly. How exhausting. And Harry takes his hand away.

From her new, upright view, she can see that little metal cup — the same one he’d brought her hours earlier. He’s set it onto the table, and she knows it wasn’t there before, which means he’s brought it with new water. Seren turns her head to face it. It’s the most she can manage given that she can’t tell him what she wants, what with the gag and all.

“Thirsty?” he notes, chin over his shoulder in her direction as he shimmies the sleeves of his shirt off. Seren eyes the expanse of naked skin as it expands, from cuts of muscle to ink sunk into the flesh of his arm. Certainly, if she wasn’t before.

The princess doesn’t answer. She can’t, and she’s not going to resort to a string of pathetic hums to get his attention. The captain sets his shirt onto the table in a pile of disarray, beside his belt, and takes the cup. When he makes his way over to her, Seren’s eyes don’t follow his figure. And for a moment, there’s only a deliberative sort of silence. She doesn’t look until he talks, until his tone is far more serious than she’s heard thus far.

“If you spit it at me again, I will personally make sure you lick it back up, off the floorboards.”

And wisely, she doesn’t spit the liquid back up at him when he tugs the gag free and tips the rim of the cup against her mouth. Seren doesn’t doubt he’s the type of man to follow through on his words. But that’s not why she drinks — she drinks because she’s fucking thirsty. Her tongue’s gone dry, and the back of her throat pinpricks with an uncomfortable soreness, and because the lukewarm liquid feels good spilling down her throat. She cranes her neck back, throat bobbing, and doesn’t stop until he’s pulled the cup away himself, and a little rivulet of water dribbles down the corner of her mouth. She takes a big gulp of air and expels it.

And then, with angry sorts of eyes, the princess declares, “I’m hungry.”

“You’re hungry,” the pirate mirrors, but it’s only wryly amused — his tired, sardonic smile doesn’t reach his eyes, and he sets the cup back onto the table with little urgency to get her food. “We don’t offer room service.”

“You haven’t fed me once today,” Seren declares indignantly when he winds behind her, out of sight. And then there’s a sigh and a creak, the kind that seeps from mattress springs compressing. “This is— this is cruel, I’ll have you know. This is torture, this is—“

“Thank you for your honest review, we’ll make sure to take your feedback into account,” Harry chimes at her in true, facetious fashion, scrubbing over his eyes with a palm as he knees his way onto the bed. And then the pirate tells her, with a more serious note to his drawl, before she has a chance to interject with another complaint, “If you’re going to talk all night, I’m going to put your gag back in until the morning.”

Seren doesn’t say anything. Finally, she doesn’t say anything at all, and it’s splendid. It’s peace and quiet, and all he hears, for a perfect moment, is the creak of the wood and the subdued roar of the waves.

“I don’t want to stare at the wall,” the princess speaks, eventually, like a petulant child. “Why am I staring at the wall?”

“Because …that’s the way the chair’s facing,” Harry responds, matter-of-factly and almost instantly, sure that a note of irritation has managed to teem into the words despite his best efforts. He will not let her know that her efforts of poking are chipping at his composure, he won’t.

And for another moment, Seren doesn’t say anything. He lets his eyes drift shut.

“I want to face you,” the princess says, eventually, and her tone implies she’s taken the bridge of silence to build the phrase up into something more demanding, something royal and authoritative. If he wasn’t so fucking tired he’d laugh.

“You want to watch me sleeping?” she hears the pirate from behind her, his honey-smooth drawl grown raspy and lower from, seemingly, exhaustion, “That’s an odd request.”

Her brows furrow as a scowl paints her mouth. The bed creaks in the gap of quiet. Every hair stands on end when, suddenly, he’s inches from her, his presence looming and warm from behind, with calloused fingertips brushing the side of her neck in their venture towards that godforsaken gag.

“Just turn me!” Seren shrieks, “Just turn me, and I’ll be quiet!”

He doesn’t put the gag in. He winds around her, hand still on the rope, his features shaped with apathetic seriousness, “If I turn you because you want me to turn you, what good am I at putting my foot down? Hm?”

Seren blinks up at him.

“Please,” the princess tells him, hushed and earnest, “I don’t feel …safe.”

His brows twitch. There’s something that blooms in the jade at her admission, but it flits by, gone as quickly as it’d appeared. And then his brows furrow, and he looks absolutely exasperated, the subtle downturn at the edges of his mouth emphasized with the roll of that same jade. The pirate scoffs, and his boots stomp over the wood, each step an inclination that his frustration has leaked into his body language.

“I told you—“ the legs of the chair screech against the floorboards — he doesn’t even grunt as he maneuvers her with ease, the motion rough like it’s a chore, “—that you’re not my type. Not everybody wants to fuck you, your highness.”

Seren blinks, pupils poring over the priorly unseen sight of the opposite end of the room. A slit of a window, brushing the edge of the wall that merges into the ceiling. A bookshelf of literature and knickknacks. A dresser, a queen-sized mattress on the floor. The pirate still looks absolutely miffed when he walks toward the table with the lantern, bare shoulders squared and the muscles in his back rippling. He sets the light out, kicks off his boots, and falls into the bed unceremoniously.

It’s a victory.

And for a moment, Seren thinks he’s just going to wordlessly roll over to avoid her prying gaze. He doesn’t do that. They bask in the crash of the waves outside, the darkness, and their quiet breaths. He’s got this knack — Seren’s learned. This skill of morphing from sarcastic and teasing to broodingly serious, and it’s mercurial, sort of. She wonders if this brooding side’s what’s brought him to lead an entire ship.

“Be quiet now,” the pirate drawls from the sheets, in that broodingly serious cadence, “If I hear another word, I’ll personally carry you out onto the deck, and you can sleep in the chair out there.”

The man rolls over to face the wall. Seren doesn’t say another word for the rest of the night.

#pirate!harry #pirate au #piraterry #harry styles fic #harry styles fanfic #harry styles smut #harry styles writing #harry styles x oc #dom harry styles #harry styles #harry styles dirty fanfiction #enemies to lovers #harry styles enemies to lovers

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uglypastels · 9 months

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Not Wholly Evil |X| pirate!Eddie au

a/n here it is. the final chapter. I am so excited to share it with you all, just as much as it pains me that it actually is coming to an end. I've worked on this story for almost a year, and it had been a risk I had no idea how it would play out, but seeing how much everyone has enjoyed this story and supported me in my little experiment really made all the days I say in front of my computer screaming worth it <3 thank you all so so much for trusting the process

Series Masterlist

word count: 14.3k

"semi dark fic" - READ the warnings:. (gun/sword)violence. blood. mention of severe wounds. minor character death. allusions to suicide. kidnapping. imprisonment. alcohol. open and deep sea. near-death experiences. hanging. men are pigs: implied mentions of past abusive experiences [of background characters]. malnourishment and weight loss. paranoia. mention of poisoning. abuse. manhandling. lying. prison. capital punishment.

there will be several mentions of other ST characters in this chapter, and some instances might not be the most favourable of portrayals, but this is not to indicate my opinion on them. I am simply intertwining universes. there is also a name spelled differently than in the shows and that's just for the sake of the setting.

Chapter 10: Lock and Key

“Some pirates achieved immortality by great deeds of cruelty or derring-do. Some achieved immortality by amassing great wealth. But the captain had long ago decided that he would, on the whole, prefer to achieve immortality by not dying.” ― Terry Pratchett, The Color of Magic

Everything went into chaos, happening so quickly that you genuinely got the sensation of being frozen in time and space, just letting everything around you go by, unable to intervene. Your mind could not work at that speed to understand everything that was happening, too far down into a shock to catch up. But when you finally did, you screamed.

‘No, father, no.’ You tried to push yourself away from him, but his grip was too firm. Even if you had, the chances of getting past the barricade of armed bodies to Eddie was impossible. ‘You can’t do that!’ you trashed around in his arms like a wild fish out of water.

All your father did was pull you closer, further away from Eddie, who you could just make out from between the uniforms and bayonets. The glimpses you got of his face showed a stoic expression. He wasn’t even trying to fight it. The last thing you saw before you were turned around and practically handed over to someone was the chains on his wrists.

‘Take her away from here,’ your father told his closest guard, ‘she’s hysteric.’ And perhaps you were, as you kept screaming at them to let go of you. The pleas quieted down the further from the harbour you got, changing into silent sobs by the time you reached the gardens of your home.

‘It’s alright, miss,’ the guard tried to calm you as best as possible. ‘You’re safe now.’

The pearly white building towered over you as you entered its shadows, and as soon as you did, you saw almost the entirety of the house staff standing in the main hall, awaiting you. Their faces blurred with their welcoming greetings and sweet words of comfort. A woman took you from the guard, immediately guiding you up the stairs, mumbling something to him and shouting about to the rest of the people around. You could not place any name to her face, and having always been quite good with remembering people, you could only assume she had been a new addition to the staff since you had last been home. Looking over everyone around you, most of them must have been.

That’s right. Your father had always been keen on replacing the staff but usually had been around to witness it, take in the new batch from the beginning, and, most importantly, say goodbye to the old ones.

You wanted to protest at every corner you turned up to your room, but the group of maids that had accumulated around you was like a forcefield, unbreakable. One of them opened the large double doors that led to your room. There was barely any time for you to sink in the feeling of being back in it after so many weeks as you were pushed through another pair of doors. There, a bath had already been prepared, the water steaming hot. You let yourself be dragged to the centre of the room and mechanically put your arms up for the ladies to take your dress off. Had they always been this rough?

They mumbled about the state of your dress to one another as if you weren’t even there, and in their defence, you weren’t. Your mind was miles away, barely aware of what was going on. The only thing that pulled you back into the room was the gasp of the women as your dress fell to the floor. You looked down at where all their eyes had locked in on.

‘Did they do this to you, miss?’ One of them asked, pointing in fear at the scar on your ribs. It had gotten much smaller over the weeks, but compared to the rest of you, you could imagine how grotesque it might look to people like them.

‘Uhm, no,’ you mumbled, ‘I tripped. On our ship.’ You barely recognised your voice as you spoke, too tired to put any emotion into them. The women looked at each other hesitantly before continuing on with their tasks.

You just about felt the hot water burn as they got you into the bath or poured it over your head to wash your hair. The scrub of the cloths over your limbs did practically nothing. All you could do was stare out ahead of you at the hawk engraved into the wood panelling on the wall across from you and how you had always seen it as a sign of comfort but now noticed how angry its eye looked. Staring directly at you at all times. You lulled your head slowly, trying to get it to look away, but it just followed you around until someone grabbed you by the side to stop you from twisting.

‘Sorry, miss. Just trying to get out this knot.’ One of them said as she combed out your hair, tugging your entire head back against the edge of the bath.

You had not even realised how much grime came with being on a boat full of pirates for weeks. Even though you had tried to wash yourself regularly, there was never enough fresh water. By the time the ladies were done, the water had gone cold, and your whole body was red and sore from the scrubbing. You could barely feel your fingertips, but your nails were perfect again.

Trembling, you got out of the bath and quickly were wrapped up in linen to soak up the water. Like any other day, they began to put your undergarments on, preparing you for a dress that you could not even think about the weight of, but no matter how many layers they put on you, you were still shivering.

Someone, you had no idea who, pulled a blanket over your shoulders and put a large cup of lemon tea into your hands. It used to be your favourite, but the sips tasted bitter no matter how much sugar you poured. You stood in the middle of the room, holding the cup and felt all their eyes on you, drinking your tea with a shaky hand. No matter how you held it or steadied your arms, the porcelain clinked together louder and louder until it smashed onto the ground, the hot liquid pooling around you. Before you could apologise, someone was on their knees cleaning it up.

‘I am so sorry,’ you cried out, tears already threatening to return despite it being only a few minutes since they had dried up. With water pouring over your face and hair in the bath, the tears would have been washed away, but now there was nowhere to hide them.

‘No worries, miss,’ one of the maids said. She looked you up and down, a corset in her hands, clearly seeing a mess of a woman in front of her. ‘We should get you ready; there is a meal waiting downstairs and I am sure you’re famished.’

‘I am alright, I just want to—’ you wanted to disappear. Get out of everyone’s sight. You wanted to lock yourself in your room or run away, just be anywhere but here, surrounded by these strangers. You wanted Eddie. Where was he now? He must have been dragged into the dungeons.

You pushed back the next load of tears that were breaking through.

‘Miss, we must insist.’ The maid said, somewhat concerned, and hesitated. ‘The food will do you good.’ And yet, the idea of eating now made you feel quite ill to the stomach.

‘I would really just like to be alone now.’ If you had more energy, your statement might have come out more pointed, giving you more edge over the staff. You would have fought them until you’d slam the door behind the last one, but instead, you let yourself be trapped into a dress—a beautiful green garment that the women were not shy to praise as they put it on you—and sent you off to the dining room.

Once, you would have walked these halls alone, with your head held high and letting the steps of your heels announce your presence in any room, but now the clicking against the marble floors made you wince and the presence of the maids and guards following you certainly did not help to put your mind at rest.

The dining table was set, filled from one end to the other with dishes, but you could barely stomach a spoonful. The same happened at dinner. You could not think of eating these extensive meals knowing that Eddie was kept locked up somewhere, most likely not given anything to eat since he had been arrested. Your mind was whirring with ideas, but each and everyone was immediately halted when you saw that there was nowhere in the house you could go without onlookers. The chances of you being allowed into the dungeons and speaking to him were close to zero.

Having eaten exactly two bites from your plate, you excused yourself back to your room, where people were ready to get you out of your dress and into your nightgown. Once done, one of the maids was prepared to blow all the candles out, but you quickly stopped her.

‘Wait,’ you called, ‘could you leave one on, please.’

The woman nodded and left one of the candles in the holder burning before leaving the room. You sat down on the edge of the bed, trying to catch your breath, but the room felt so stuffy—a ridiculous thought considering the room was bigger than Eddie’s quarters, possibly the double of it. The candle only gave light to its nearest surroundings, letting the rest of the space, and you with it, be eaten up by the night. It was overwhelming, together with the hot air swallowing you whole. As your chest tightened, you ran to the window, pushing it open. You greeted the cool night air with a sigh.

Nights at home were never quiet, but unlike in Saint Claire, it was not drunken brawls that kept the shores alive but the rustle of waves and the chirping cicadas. The streets buzzed with the sounds of nature, illuminated in silver by the moon, now an almost complete sphere.

You had always loved the view of your room, but now it felt more like a cruel joke as you could look out at the harbour and the gates of Star Port. It was like a million pinpricks stabbing into you. The Hellfire was nowhere to be seen. You didn’t expect anything less. With Eddie arrested, it would have been mad of the crew to stay behind, risking their own capture.

Still, the feeling you got at the sight of the empty harbour sank deep into your stomach, not helping with how you had felt before opening the blinds, and when you closed them again, the room seemed to have grown in size. Large, cold, empty, with you standing in the middle staring at your bed. Sitting on it, let alone sleeping, was impossible. The second you touched the mattress, you were scared you’d sink straight through the cotton, and the sheer size of it…

You lay there for hours, deciding whether to curl up and make yourself as small as possible or to spread your arms out in a poor attempt at taking up some of the space meant only for you. Every time you moved, your hand would grab for the sheets, hoping that one of those times, you would feel more than air. If you opened your eyes, you would see him sleeping peacefully by your side.

Most of your pillows had met the ground as you threw them in frustration. You had spent years in this bed, perfectly fine, and only several days with Eddie. So, why were you feeling this profound loss over his absence besides you? It wasn’t fair.

Eventually, you managed to fall to sleep, quite literally, as pure exhaustion tipped you over and made your head finally hit down. There were no dreams, nightmares or memories to haunt you, as you were awoken before any of them could take shape. Firm knocks on the door announced your maids, and they filled the room in their designated corners.

‘Good morning, miss.’ They said chirpily as they got you dressed and ready for another day. All you replied with throughout the entire process was a mumbled ‘’morning,’ which you hoped could be blamed for having only been awake for a few minutes.

‘Breakfast will be served soon,’ you heard. The mention of food again twisted at your guts, but an idea began to bloom in your mind.

‘Will my father be there?’ He seldom dined with you, leaving you to eat your meals in the company of the staff, but you assumed he would want to see you after all these weeks.

‘I assume so,’ the woman brushing your hair said. You nodded curtly, as much as possible, when someone held on to your head. The prospect of speaking to your father face to face brought a new energy into your step.

You walked out of that room determined and with your head held high, only to be disturbed by footsteps parallel to yours. Two pairs. At first, you thought it was a coincidence, and they just happened to be walking there, too, but they followed you down the hallway, around all the corners. By the time you reached the dining room doors, you had grown tired of it.

‘I am quite capable of walking on my own, thank you,’ you said, coming to an abrupt stop, making the two men behind you ‘have done it all my life, in fact.’

‘Yes, of course, miss,’ said one of the guards who you bumped into at your sudden halt. ‘It is just—’

‘Just what?’ You crossed your arms.

‘Well, your father—’ he stopped speaking at the sight of your unimpressed, somewhat annoyed expression. He cleared his throat, clearly uncomfortable with the confrontation. ‘We are here to protect you.’

‘From what exactly?’ This was ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous.

‘From any danger, miss.’

‘I was not aware this house was so full of threats.’ You rolled your eyes. ‘I appreciate the efforts, gentlemen, but I doubt you will be needed.’

‘But your father, miss.’ The other man tried to argue, but you were not having any of it.

‘I will not be patrolled in my own home!’ You shouted, pushing the doors to the dining room open. Your father sat at the opposite end of the large table, fork mid-air to his mouth. ‘Father, this is absurd.’

‘I think it is perfectly reasonable to want to protect my daughter. What is absurd,’ much to your annoyance, he spoke in his usual collected and cool-toned manner. He waited to continue speaking until you sat at the table. ‘Is you being held hostage for weeks at the hands of some barbarians.’

‘They are not barbarians, Father,’ you ignored the hands that spooned food onto your plate. ‘They took rather good care of me, actually.’ You bit your cheek, trying not to think of the days you spent in a cage. But even considering that, you were aware of your fortune with the circumstances you had been put under. Many more people had encountered enemies at sea, and few had been able to return home and live to tell the tale… or the preferred version of events, at least.

‘Is that why you look so sick and frail?’ he spoke bluntly, taking you back. ‘Because of how well they treated you?’

‘They did their best with what they had,’ you believed. It was your choice to starve yourself for the first days on board, refusing to eat anything they gave you. And you could hardly expect a feast such as you held in front of you now, every day in the middle of the deep waters. Even on board the Red Tail, the meals had been somewhat shoddy. ‘I just do not think that…’ you stopped yourself from using his name. ‘That man deserves to be in prison.’

‘Of course not.’ Your father took a bite. ‘He will be hanged for his crimes.’

‘W-what?’ Your fork clattered onto the ground. ‘Father, you cannot— I know he had tried to take money from you but—’ Murder and high treason. That is what he was arrested for. Had your father somehow found out about the Red Tail? But how could he… there were no survivors.

No survivors. He killed them all. He had—

‘Do you know who that man is?’ Something in your father’s voice sounded sharper, more pointed.

‘I thought so,’ you hesitated. Yes, you had spent your days and most tender moments with him, but what did you know about Eddie Munson?

‘Then you should understand the severity of this situation.’ Only if you were to believe hearsay and talk of the people on the streets that shaped this image of a blood-thirsty monster that roamed the seven seas, killing everything in his path. It is what you believed him to be yourself until not very long ago until practically every fibre in your body had been proven wrong.

Or at least, God, you hoped you had been wrong.

Your father sighed, ‘I know it is difficult, after all you must have spent a lot of time with them on that ship, and I do not know what lies they had fed you, but these are serious matters that begun long before any of this and need to finally be taken care of.’

‘Well, explain it to me because I would like to know what is happening.’

At this, he scoffed. ‘All you need to know is that man is a dangerous criminal and should be treated as such.’ But then, what about everything Eddie had told you? What about all the pieces you had managed to gather of the crumbs he and everyone else left you? There was more to it all, and maybe you did not understand yet, but you would.

‘When?’ you plucked at your food on the plate, defeated, ‘when is the hanging?’

‘In four days.’ If you had been well enough to eat, you would have choked. You had barely come to terms with returning home, if at all, and now this. Prisoners were usually held for weeks before a date was set for an execution. They were clearly adamant about taking care of him quickly.

For the sake of everyone else, you ate a bit of your breakfast, each bite sticking uncomfortably heavy in your throat. After that, you got up without saying another word. The two guards who had walked in with you were on high alert again, ready to follow you, but stopped to look nervously at the governor when you glared at them.

‘Let her go,’ he waved them off, ‘but keep an eye on her.’

You huffed out a breath and walked away.

The rest of the day you spent walking around the town, mainly the alley of the market that led to one of the entrances to the dungeons. You had no idea why you were there, considering there was nothing you could do. Besides the fact you could clearly see the new set of guards appointed to follow you around the streets, they seemed utterly futile, considering all eyes in the street were on you. Every person there was highly aware of your presence.

You used to walk around the market nearly daily, making polite chats with the salesmen as you bought fresh fruit to later eat at the shore or in the garden. Most people knew that you had decided to join the Red Tail on their voyage primarily because of your enthusiasm to finally leave the island and go on an adventure.

It must have taken quite some time, they would say in some form or another, to convince your father.

I can be quite persuasive when I have to be; you remember how proud you had felt. After months of begging everyone around you to let you go, promising them that you would be safe and careful and not get in the way of anyone, finally, they let you go. Under Admiral Carver’s watch, you spent weeks enjoying the breeze and the waves, awaiting what the rest of the world would bring.

The ship sailed for four weeks to another naval post. You did not know their exact business, nor did you care, as you now had a whole new land to explore. The city was larger and nothing like home. The people looked different and spoke an entirely different language, but you still managed to get around and on the market behind your house. It had been excellent and eye-opening, only making you more eager to see what else to discover. But unfortunately, there was only so little time, and before you knew it, you had to return home. You remember the last day. It had been raining, but it did not stop anyone from loading the new supplies. Somehow it seemed like much more needed to be brought on board for this half of the journey than the first.

What’s in those barrels, you asked, but no one ever replied. They barely ever did. It wasn’t your place to ask questions in these matters. You were simply a passenger on the ship, verging on stowaway, spending your days in the quiet of your own room for the most part until…

It was the middle of the day, and the sun burned above you brightly, yet you shivered. You had always known to trust your father’s judgement and his decisions, but there was no possible way in which this was right. That this was how it would end.

The alleyway practically screamed at you for you to go and run in and get him out of there, but with so many people watching, it would be hopeless. The guards would get you before you had even reached the stairs. You would have to wait.

‘It’s good to see you again, miss.’ A voice pulled you out of your thoughts. It took you a few slow blinks to realise who it was.

‘Oh, you too, Mr Bowman.’ you smiled towards the merchant as he smiled at you through his bushy beard. He was sitting next to his table of… you were not sure what to call them. The man was quite the eccentric, and you had barely ever seen him actually make a sale on any of his products, but you doubted he was there for business anyway. ‘Have I missed much in the past months?’ You could always count on him for good stories about the townsfolk. The man had all his senses on sharp, constantly vigilant of everything around him.

‘I think your return is the biggest news we’ve had in a while.’ He scratched his beard, ‘That, and well, the upcoming execution, of course.’

‘People already know?’ You blinked, not having expected that to be public knowledge yet. Then again, it is an event like no other. Preparations have to be made.

‘Edward the Banished gets arrested, and you expect people not to know?’ He laughed almost mockingly as he usually did, but you looked at him blankly.

‘The Banished?’ you had heard much about Eddie, but this name was new to your ears.

‘Yes, ridiculous name, if you ask me,’ he waved it off, ‘Pure sensationalism as it rolls smoother on the tongue than deserter or runagate, quisling, traitor—’

‘I understand,’ you stopped him nervously. ‘But how did he get this name? What did he do?’

‘HA!’ he startled you with volume. ‘What didn’t he do, you should ask.’ This caused many of the other merchants around you to weigh in on the subject.

‘I heard he abducted the governor’s daughter.’

‘That’s her. She’s right here.’

‘Oh. Well, he had attempted to assassinate the king of England!’

‘The Prince, you blockhead. And he did kill him!’

‘He has burned entire islands down. All over a game of cards.’

‘Stole an entire fleet and handed it over to the Spanish, just like that.’

‘He drinks the blood of his enemies!’

‘Sold his soul to the devil!’

Everyone looked at the old man that shouted this out. You were afraid to ask more questions, so let the others do this for you. ‘What do you mean, he sold his soul?’

‘He did! Did all those things to offer himself to Satan and do his dirty deeds here on earth. He is cursed to sail the seas in his wicked ship with the unrighteous crew for all eternity.’

‘Well, that eternity won’t last much longer.’ Someone commented, resulting in a chuckle around the street. Most of the people laughed, but you stayed quiet, your mind going back to Eddie, his body covered in unexplainable scars. The wind suddenly grew stronger.

‘I’m telling you,’ the man continued, ‘we won’t get rid of him yet! Not until Hell freezes over!’

‘Someone give the man a hat; he’s had too much sun,’ Mr Bowman called, rich coming from him, whose balding head was burning bright red. He then turned to you, shrugging as the rest had clearly proven his point. ‘And that is why I do not mess around with pirates, deary, no matter how charming they may seem.’

‘Excuse me?’ were the first words coming out of your mouth in the last few minutes, and you quickly regretted having them form into another question.

‘I saw you two yesterday at the arrest.’ Of course, he had. Nothing around here ever escaped this man. He looked proud of himself for having witnessed the events. ‘It was quite dramatic, seeing lovers have to be broken apart like that.’

‘I think you might have had too much sun today,’ you tried to sound casual as you laughed it off.

‘I am not here to judge,’ he said, putting his hands up in surrender, ‘simply to advise.’

‘Thank you, Mr Bowman.’ You smiled politely, ready to escape the conversation. You had been used to him often throwing around false and farfetched accusations, and even listening to this conversation, you knew it was nothing if not complete nonsense, just gossip gone too far along the years. So now that he had actually been correct, it stunned you, even maybe scared you. What would the people around you think if they knew what happened between you and Eddie? How would they react if they knew how you felt about his death sentence? You would be deemed mad.

Of course, the not-so-inconspicuous guards followed you back to your room, where you stayed for the rest of the day until it was time for dinner. Your father did not join you this time. As hunger finally struck you, fighting nausea caused by the stress of the last few days, you ate everything served to you.

On the ship, you had thought that once you came back, you wouldn't be able to stop eating all the things you had been missing for months, but nothing tasted as good as you remembered. In fact, nothing was as good as you remembered. The food was bland, the flowers not as vibrant, and the people not as joyous. Once, you had heard laughter and chatter, but it seemed like the streets grew cold and silent, leaving you alone to your thoughts.

After your meal, you walked out of the room but turned left instead of taking the right towards your room. People immediately caught on.

‘Miss? Where are you going?’ A guard called out.

‘Oh,’ you attempted to sound like you had not expected this exact conversation when you moved, ‘just thought of going on a stroll. The night air does me rather well.’ You grinned in a way you hoped would come off naive.

‘I do not think that’s a good idea.’ The guard said. ‘I would suggest that you return to your room,’ he spoke in a tone telling you that it was not a suggestion at all. Not in the slightest.

‘Am I on house arrest?’

‘See it more as a curfew.’

You scoffed at the idea, or more that you had very little choice but to obey. There was a moment in which you stared up at the guard, switching between expressions to get him to crack and let you go, but to your disappointment, he cocked his head toward your room.

How were you ever supposed to get to Eddie if they constantly watched you? The question kept you up another whole night and the next day. Just for the sake of it, since they so desperately needed to be with you at all times, you decided to sit in the library for about four hours with no book in sight, just staring out the window, letting them stare at you. At a certain point, you had caught one man actually yawning.

‘I am absolutely certain that there are at least fifty things that would be more productive for you to do then this,’ you broke the deafening, maddening silence, still looking out the window. You had counted all the leaves on the tree branch that kept hitting the pane in the breeze and had recollected every corridor and door in the house. In the reflection of the glass, you could see the guards glance nervously at each other, and with a smile, you turned to face them. ‘You can just go. I won’t tell anyone.’ But they stood their ground. With a groan, you sank back down into the chair.

It would take much longer for them to break, so much more time that you—that Eddie—did not possess. Three days left before the execution. Three days left for you to take the chance and do something. Save him. There were a million ideas, one worse after the other, with so many risks and problems that it could eventually end in your own hanging.

You shut your door at the end of the day, and it must have sounded through the entire house. Another day gone, and you had gotten nowhere. You could see the shadows of their feet come through the gap underneath your door, and they would be there the next morning when you awoke. Sleep deprived from tossing and turning as long as the sun was down. The bed still felt too big for comfort. At one point, they had run into the room at the sound of muffled screams, just for you to pull your head out of your pillow to yell at them to get out.

You walked towards the dining room for breakfast, this time wearing a rose gold dress, surprised not to be followed by a parade of footsteps but halted at the sound of voices coming from inside the hall.

‘I think it is safe to say that she does not require any supervision, sir.’ one of the guards said. You never bothered to learn their names, too frustrated to care, but you learned to recognise their voices from the amount of squabbling you had done.

‘Is that so?’ your father munched away.

‘She does nothing but mope around all day, quite harmless, I’d say… uhh, sir.’ The other added.

Mope? You did not mope, if only because they sucked your life out with their constant “supervision”. As much as you wanted to burst into the room, you composed yourself and listened on.

‘Does she seem well, in the head, I mean?’ Your father asked, but they did not reply. Not verbally, at least; you could imagine them looking at each other in the way they did, and just the idea made you clench your fists until they turned pale.

‘She’s stubborn, a bit immature, a bit aggressive.’ One of them chose his words carefully and slowly.

‘So that’s a no, I take it,’ your father concluded. You took this as your opportunity to announce yourself with a few loud steps, moving back a few paces to repeat them with exaggeration.

‘Good evening, father,’ you said as you took your seat, not giving him or the other man any more of your attention. The guards glanced at you nervously before leaving the room.

‘Terrorised the guards, I see?’ he asked.

‘No more than they did me,’ you replied in the same emotionless tone as you ate.

‘I just wanted what’s best for you. It had been a tumultuous time, and you had gone through quite– ’

‘Is that a reason to… to lock me up and have me followed around like some kind of—’ You were at a loss for words, so instead, opted for a frustrated groan and stuffing your face with a forkful of lamb.

‘Well, you’ve proved me wrong. Clearly, you can still care for yourself.’ he wiped his mouth with a napkin and stood up. ‘I’ll make them let you be from now on,’ and with that, he walked away. You couldn’t suppress the smile that rose to your lips once the doors closed behind him, immediately knowing the first place you were heading to with your newfound “freedom”.

The kitchen.

Well, that is not exactly the first thing. You had to wait for all the dishes to be cleared from the dining room, so you wandered around the corridors and then headed down the stairs as quietly as possible to not raise any attention to yourself.

As suspected, the kitchen was empty. Most of the food on the plates still untouched. Quietly, you grabbed a basket and began picking things out here and there, those that would go unnoticed by anyone walking in to grab a midnight snack. The only thing that might have caught someone’s attention by going missing was one of the larger bottles of rum stacked on a shelf.

You placed a napkin over the basket's content and grabbed one of the staff member’s hoods to cover yourself up with before heading outside. It would help against the cold night air and hopefully make you a bit less noticeable, as the grey hood did not stand out as much as your extravagant dress. As you took the first steps out into the garden, the idea came to you that maybe that was another idea of them trying to keep you inside these walls. After all, while you had always had nice clothing, it did not compare to the dresses you’ve worn since your return. It could be seen as a welcome home gift, but it was undeniable that the dress you wore now could be spotted from miles away.

You pulled the cloak tighter over yourself.

Besides a few men who were too drunk to notice or care who you were, the streets were also empty. The men standing at the prison doors were half asleep, and either way, you were not too anxious about them as they were usually more preoccupied with keeping people in than out. You slipped through the shadows into the alley and only dared to breathe once inside. The steps leading further into the building were uneven, especially in the dark. The only light was half-burned-up torches lining the path. A crinkly small corridor that eventually led to a crooked staircase. You could barely keep yourself up straight, almost tripping over your feet. Reaching the bottom of the stairs, where the dungeon's entrance stood, took almost longer than the walk to the building across town as you held onto the cold wall, doing your best not to fall.

Now, you could only pray that the final door was not locked. The handle wiggled and creaked open.

You hesitated. What would await you inside? This whole trek had been based on your intuition that he would be put in one of the isolated cells, away from the petty criminals. But what if they kept him somewhere else? What if they had done something to him and… well, there was only one way to find out.

As you stepped into the caved-out room and almost instantaneously, never before had you felt such a cold fall over you. Maybe it was due to the thick walls absorbing all sound or how the slit-like windows below the ceiling only let through the tiniest slivers of moonlight, obstructing any of the day’s heat from entering the room. Or maybe it was the sight of him in the pale torchlight that chilled you to the bone.

He was seated on the ground, framed by a cell jagged from rock and steel bars. The moonlight managed to just about frame his face, exhausted and fragile. His eyes were closed in pretend sleep. You could tell that much as his brows furrowed at the sound of your footsteps. You tried to call out to him, but your throat was stuck. But you didn’t need to say anything. He called your name in a weak voice, in a hesitant manner, as if he was making sure that what he saw was real. If you were really there.

‘What are you doing here?’ he asked in disbelief.

What were you doing here? You had been asking yourself this the entire walk up to the cells, trying to find a reason why it meant so much to you to see him again, to help him, and yet you still could not come up with anything. There was no response besides holding up the basket with a weak smile and saying, ‘I thought you would like some dinner.’

Eddie sat straight, pulling himself up by one of the cell bars. As you walked up to his cell and sat down on the ground beside him, you could feel his eyes on you. Pure disbelief at your presence, the food. You held the meat out to him, but he did not move.

‘It is not poisoned,’ you smiled sheepishly, ‘if that is what you’re wondering.’ Even when you handed him the food to eat. He did so slowly, apprehensively at first, still unable to look away from you. Perfectly understandable. You had barely gotten used to this. How the beading and frame of the dress poked at you from every angle. Your feet hurt, and your hair had been pulled into an intricate hairstyle, causing you to walk around with a headache for hours. Not that it was anything to compare to Eddie’s circumstances. He sat in his cell, too small to stretch his body out in, with no bed, just the cold hard ground. They had removed his jacket and belt, leaving him to sit out the cold of the night in just his shirt. You also noticed a new bruise forming on his jaw, which certainly had not been there when you last saw him. All this to break him down, yet the way he looked at you—you could have sworn you were still lying together in his bed, far away from all this.

He glanced down at your dress, how it pooled around you, almost leaking through the cell barriers up to him in all its opulence. ‘How the tables have turners, haven’t they, princess,’ he chuckled, and you had never thought to be so happy from hearing such a simple sound. The nickname felt deliberately chosen at this time, too. You pulled at the edges of your dress, collecting it closer to you.

‘I know, I look ridiculous.’

‘I think the word you’re looking for is beautiful,’ he said between bites, but you ignored the compliment, knowing that if you let it get to you, it would come together with a shower of tears. As he kept on eating his food, you sighed, letting your side hit the wall as you leaned up to him. You handed him more of the food that you had brought him and the rum, then let him finish in silence. His mere presence beside you already was more than enough. The sound of his deep calm breaths was enough to put you to rest, and it pleased you that the sea had not left him just yet. He still smelled of it. That fresh sea salt air was simply stuck in his hair. You refrained from combing your fingers through it.

This was already so far from what you had expected things to go like. You had thought that once you came home, even with his request for a hefty payment, he would still be welcomed as a hero. That you could make things work and somehow, maybe, naively, be together. Even now, you thought that if he saw you here, you would have some kind of moment of clarity where everything became crystal clear and easy to understand. That you would know exactly what to do, and it would be glorious. You thought he would be happy to see you. Never had you imagined him asking you again, ‘What are you doing here? Really.’

‘I wanted to see you,’ you said, but he could read past all your layers. ‘And… over the past few days, I have heard things. About you. Things that I can hardly believe to be true and yet are seen as such by the majority of people, so I hoped you could clear some things up for me.’

‘You don’t believe your own people but would believe me?’ He took a swig of the rum, already handing it back to you, but you declined, giving it back.

‘I have given you my trust more times than I should have, and so far, it has not led me down any dark paths, but I can only hope that you will not break that bond now.’ After all that you had been through? Was he in any position to do so? ‘So I hope you will tell me what really happened. I—I remember you, years ago, meeting with my father and Carver. You were in the military, right?’

Eddie let his head roll back, hitting the wall behind him with a shallow thud. ‘You remember me?’

‘It came to me during the storm. A memory of you walking with them in the garden. For the longest time, I could not make sense if it had been real or if my mind playing tricks on me, but I realised now what it was. You looked different, but it was you, wasn’t it? You were like them?’

‘Turns out, maybe I still am, and more than you’d think,’ he sighed, ‘or less, depending on how you look at it.’ He took another sip of the drink.

‘Will you tell me, please?’ You pleaded, eagerly awaiting the answers to what you had been trying to figure out long before you had returned home. Eddie looked apprehensive.

‘What good will it do?’ He turned his head in your direction, still leaning against the wall. You moved over to be closer to him, your legs almost touching.

‘Perhaps nothing, but—’ you sighed, ‘All my life, I’ve been protected. I’ve had everything handed to me without any trouble. I had spend most of my years never further away than these shores and always under someone’s watch. I had never had the space to make risks or mistakes. There was no such thing as danger. Even now, I had been under constant watch. No one will answer my questions or even listen to me because they want to protect me. Because they think I’m fragile and cannot handle it.’

At this, Eddie scoffed. ‘If anything, they cannot handle you, darling.’

‘Meanwhile, you,’ you smiled, ignoring the heat burning over your cheeks, ‘Well, perhaps not all your methods were ideal, but you never treated me like I was made of glass. You pushed me, and it actually, for once, made me feel alive and like I am worth being in the room with.’

Eddie reached for your hand. ‘You’re worth so much more than that,’ he mumbled against your knuckled as he kissed them. He held on to you as he began talking slowly, choosing his words wisely. ‘I had joined the navy younger than anyone should have—my parents couldn’t afford me, so I had to make myself useful quickly, and that felt at least somewhat commendable, no matter how it would end.

‘Started right at the bottom, but I wanted to prove myself. I followed orders, did everything what was asked of me, and more, and I moved through the ranks. As I gained more of a position, I got more of an insight into the men I was working for and with.’

As he spoke, you watched his eyes pale, haze over with memories. The dam he had built around them had broken up, flooding out, and he could not stop it anymore. He wanted to continue, but he hesitated, glancing your way, but you encouraged him to go on with a nod of the head. Even then, he scratched at his face nervously and took a deep breath.

‘We would find ourselves everywhere around the world, and a certain power comes with wearing a uniform. It is universal, one that everyone understands and is willing to abuse. It was easy to see yourself as better than the poor locals, to excuse yourself from the import taxes and all the bureaucracy around the travel. I had done it myself, flashing a grin with the mindset of superiority.’ He hid his face in his hands, groaning. You reached out for his arm.

‘Hey, it’s okay,’ you hushed, but was it really?

‘When you get that taste of power when it hits right, it is hard to let go. It had never sat well with me; every time I got away from a port without paying for my ship, I stayed up entire nights as the guilt ate away from me, but it had been what everyone else was doing, and you don’t want to fall behind. It had become a pressure to boast your power over those who did not have any.

‘And this power…. it turned darker as simple actions of business turned to abuse. Swindling merchants of their products, conning drunks with games, and stealing their money. Taking advantage of… everyone. It had become a sport to them.

‘I was aware of it, but it had somehow never seemed that serious—it happened so gradually—until one day I saw one of the commanders with this girl…’ his breath hitched. You squeezed his hand to remind him that you were there, that you were listening. ‘She was just a child, and when I saw what he—I lost control of myself, lashed out at him. It had been stupid trying to argue with someone that outranked me. There was no one I could tell that would do anything about it, not when they were all just as bad.

‘Then Carver came up to me one day. Said that together we could make a change.’ Eddie’s jaw clenched. ‘I should have known better. He had always been too close with the rest of them, but we planned on making a change.

‘But on the day we were about to tell your father about everything that happened on our voyages—the day we saw each other in the garden, in fact,’ he squeezed your hand back. ‘We never got the chance because I was sent away.’ Something in you caught your breath, making him smile lightly.

‘There had been talk of a war, and so I was sent out with a fleet to take charge. Carver had promised me he would take care of everything in my absence, but—’

‘He didn’t,’ you finished the sentence for him.

‘In a way, he did. Of course, it was all a hoax. He had needed an excuse to get rid of me. It took me three months to get back, having found no signs of possible ambushes, and when I did, I returned to the news that Hargrove, the commander I had attacked, had been found dead that same evening I left. And there was the missing gold and the rumours of a coup, among other things. Somehow, he had convinced everyone I had gone above and beyond in betraying our country, but the murder charges hit the heaviest. They thought I had killed one of our own.

‘The only people on my side had been those on the ship with me, and they had given up all they had by giving me their trust. They were marked as traitors just for standing up against the accusations. I already had lost everything I had to lose and could not stand by it, so I left. I took my ship and my crew, and we sailed off.

Bowman’s words rang through your mind as Eddie said this. Deserter. Runagate. Quisling. Traitor. You still wanted to ask him so much, but you let him speak before interrupting.

‘The sea was a liberation. We were free to do whatever we wanted, so we did, but I always felt like I was tied back to this place. Like…’ he laughed, ‘like a rope was hanging around my neck, dragging me back here. At first, I thought it was guilt, so I did my best to reprimand everything they had done. I wanted to do something for all those men and women we had hurt, give them some form of protection against those uniforms.

‘But no matter what I did, who I helped, that feeling did not stop. In a way, it grew worse. I got angry and felt like the only thing that would help me was revenge; I stayed up most nights thinking of unimaginable things. I got lost in the darkness of it. If it wasn’t for Harrington, I don’t know what would have become of me.’

‘Harrington?’ You could see how that would happen, but the mention of him somehow startled you. It's another piece of the story that made it feel so real.

‘He had been in a similar position as me. His commanding officer had been asking him to do all these dirty jobs until he had had enough. It had only been a couple of days since he had given up his post when we met one night at a tavern. He wouldn't have joined us if it had not been for a game of cards. Neither would have Robin.’

You had no idea how long you had sat there, just enough for your body to grow cold and stiff on the ground, but you could not care less about any of that, too focused on his story. As he mentioned Steve and Robin, his smile reached his eyes for the first time since you had arrived, revitalising you, knowing that there was still something in his life that left fond memories behind. You leaned forward, resting your chin on your hand as you listened on.

‘Either way, I had fallen into a deep, dark pit, and Steve pulled me out. He showed me what I was doing did no good for anyone but them. It was eating me alive, killing me from the inside.’

‘But you still killed them all.’ The words left your mouth sooner than you could think them through. Knowing his reason behind it all made you understand, but it did not lessen the impact of the deed.

Hearing you say that, Eddie quickly turned his entire body to you, pulling himself as close to you as possible, almost pushing himself through the bars. His eyes were full of an intensity that burned through your soul.

‘I am not trying to make excuses. I did what I did—I led my crew towards the Red Tail and let them sink that ship, but not for myself. That is what Harrington made me realise. I did not need to see them die, but they needed to pay for everything they had done. For ruining all those people’s lives. You must understand that?’

He didn’t need to see them die. Moments flashed before you of your very first seconds on the Hellfire. Of Eddie walking up to you, the words he spoke in front of you.

– Carver? Where is that pesky little bilge rat?

– Bled out on the ship.

– Shame. Would have like to have seen that. ‘You weren’t even there.’ you whispered.

‘It wasn’t about me.’ He shook his head. ‘Besides, if I had been the one to kill them, it would have only satisfied them. To see me become what they had told the world I already was. All I wanted was for them to be gone. Just gone.

‘None of this,’ his eyes darted over your face. ‘Was meant to happen to you. My men were simply looking for the things in the office that had already been stolen. But then they saw you under that table, they couldn’t leave you. You were innocent.’ His hand reached out to brush over your cheek. Only at his touch did you realise that you had started to cry as he wiped down your tears. ‘And to you, I am truly sorry for everything I put you through.’

You had nothing to reply with but a kiss, pulling him close to you. The steel bars of the cell caused an awkward distance between you, yet you never felt closer. It was as if now, you finally, truly, knew who it was you were touching. The kiss had been brief, but the silence that followed stretched on. The two of you sat there, sinking away from reality, but the questions you still had kept you grounded. Just as Eddie had said, a noose dragging you back.

‘Eddie,’ you called him carefully. ‘What about the letter?’

‘What letter, princess.’ His hand kept rubbing over your tear-stained cheek.

‘You know which one I mean,’ you pulled back slightly to be able to look properly at him. ‘Who was it for?’

He laughed, the saddest laugh you had ever heard come from him, and it pained you from within. ‘What does all this matter? I will be dead soon. The less there is left of me here, the better.’

You watched him pull himself up again to sit, tap his knuckles on his knee. His answer had angered you. ‘Because…’ you took a deep breath, taking the leap you had been too afraid to take. ‘it just gives me that much less time to know the man I have fallen in love with.’ You wanted to keep as much of him as possible. That is what you could do by listening. To give him that voice in his own story.

Eddie fell silent. His mouth opened to speak, but no voice came out for several tries. He searched for the right words until he finally blinked slowly and looked up at the ceiling. His jaw clenched once again, in the way that he sucked in a deep breath. As he released it, he said: ‘Her name was Christina.’

‘Your wife?’ Again, you thought of what he had told you earlier. I already had lost everything I had to lose. He must have had people who cared for him before all this had happened.

‘Fiancée,’ he corrected, not that it mattered to either of you. ‘We had known each other our whole lives, having grown up on the same streets. We kept each other strong with this promise that one-day things would get better. That we would escape from all the burdens and create our own paradise. She was the reason I—’ he couldn’t speak of it out loud, and you didn’t need him to. You didn’t tell him to continue the story when he eventually did.

‘Foolishly, I had not told her anything of what went on. I told her things would finally be good for us when I returned. We would leave and never turn back. I thought I was protecting her by keeping it all from her, but it was the final nail in my coffin.

‘She had been the first person I saw after my return, and I could sense that something was wrong. Then the guards knocked on the door, and she opened it like she had been expecting them.

‘I could only assume it was Carver. That he told her what he told everyone else. She wouldn’t look at me, touch me, speak to me. No matter how hard I tried to prove myself, he had poisoned her with his words. In the end, she only saw me as a monster.’

The last word stung you in your chest, knowing how often you had used that exact word to describe him yourself. How often have you called him a monster or even worse? But his openness triggered more memories to come up. Your conversations with the crew of the Red Tail. Their stories and lives.

‘Christina…’ you mumbled the name with familiarity. ‘That was… that was the name of the admiral’s wife.’

‘It does not come to me as a surprise,’ he chuckled that sad laugh again. He had clearly expected to hear those words eventually. You looked at him, feeling the sting in the corners of your eyes. The tears were coming right back, but he quickly wiped those too. ‘Please, don’t. I do not need your pity. I have told you everything there is to know about me, and that is all I could or ever will ask of you again.’

‘I don’t—’ you wanted to speak, but he quickly went on. As he held your face in his hands, his thumb brushed over your lips,

‘And I will cherish these moments, every second I spent with you, until my last breath. I will think of you as the sun sets, I promise you.’

‘What—what are you talking about?’ your voice choked between sobs.

‘I never expected you to come here,’ he kissed you, passing all the feelings he had voiced earlier over to you with the touch of his lips, ‘but don’t come here again.’

‘What? No!’ You pushed yourself away. This wasn’t the plan. You were going to help him. You were going to get him out of here. As you got up to your feet, so did he, reaching for your hand again.

‘Listen to me.’ he gritted his teeth in desperation. ‘There is no way out of here, and it will only get worse for me.’ As he said so, your eyes flashed back to the bruise on his pale skin. ‘I do not want you to see me like that. Let this be where we say our goodbyes.’ He held your hand, finger over your knuckles, soothingly. You hated that he was comforting you at this moment.

‘No,’ you whimpered, head shaking. You turned your hand around in his to grab onto his fingers. One of his skull rings slowly began to slide off, and so you stopped before it dropped.

‘Please,’ he squeezed your hand.

‘No!’ you shouted, not caring if the guards outside could hear you. They might storm inside any second now and drag you out, they could try, but you wouldn’t let them. ‘I won’t let you die.’

‘It’s okay.’ He said. With every sentence he spoke, a new piece of the puzzle had been allotted to its place, but the final picture still blurred before your mind. It only seemed like even more gaps needed to be filled in, but it was slowly coming together, and when it did… You wanted to cry out.

Eddie held you as best as he could through his restraints, the faintest smile painted over his lips.

‘You knew, didn’t you?’ you stood there, defeated. ‘That if you would come back here with me, that this would happen. You knew you would be arrested and hanged.’

‘At least now I truly deserve it.’ All the crimes he committed at sea trying to help others, what he had let happen to the Red Tail. ‘So, please, just go. I promise, it will be alright.’

You wanted to scream at him. Hit him, punch him, and much more for all of this. You wanted him to hurt as much as you did as he told you to leave, but in reality, you doubted anything you could do to him would match even half of the pain you felt as you stood there. You wanted him to hurt, but all you could do was take one last step forward and pull him in to kiss you.

When you left, you could still feel him on your lips. That feeling let you move step by step out onto the street. Everything else felt not quite right, not quite real. You walked mindlessly across the empty market, barely aware of your surroundings, until you suddenly stood in front of your room door. You dropped the empty basket at your side and practically floated onto the bed.

It was late; you had no idea what time exactly, but too late for anyone to help you get out of that corset. You lay on the bed, now unable to get up, unwilling to move even if you could, staring up at the ceiling. Maybe you never stopped staring or fell into a slumber, but the next morning you still lay on your back, barely changing position over the early morning hours.

You sat in your room, looking at the tide coming and going, pushing the sand and the rocks through the hours. The hours blurred; days became night, and the moon turned into the sun. The following two days passed, and you spend them in silent disbelief and confusion, just fighting to not return to the prison cell.

There must be something you could do. People you could convince or pay or bribe in any other way to not let the execution take place. Help him escape.

This could not be the end.

But Eddie had made his final wish clear. You were not to see him again, and what could you do when no one would listen to you? When everyone on the island had his mind set on what Eddie was? You were paralysed with helplessness, and no matter what you tried to do or what to think about, it just would not go away. It grew inside you, impossible to ever leave you again, and you were slowly making peace with that. Your own price to pay for not being able to do anything for him when he truly needed it.

Even when you arrived at the square, which was filling up with an audience hours before the event, were you trying to look for escape routes, but the more people arrived, the more challenging a wall they created to penetrate. You would never be able to run through it, but you thought of it. Holding his hand, never looking back.

The sun that afternoon was flaming hot, burning through all the layers of your dress that pinned into your ribs as you sat down. The governing families got the best seats on the raised platform in the house, with plush chairs to wait on while everything was prepared. There was only the cool breeze of your fan to cool you down, but it did nothing on your nerves. They burned within just as much as the sun's rays.

You had not been sure if coming was a good choice or if you were prepared to witness Eddie’s death, but your absence would surely be questioned and… and you could not pass on the ever last possibility of seeing him. The dubiety ran through you with a threat of tears.

But more and more people came around to see, and you traced each face to find someone who could help you. Someone on your side. A familiar ally, but no luck. They were all prepared to see a man die tonight. The mumbling amongst them turned into chatter, and the conversations of local gossip turned to absolute mudslinging.

‘I heard he has killed over a thousand men with his bare hands.’

‘Well, I heard he had planned on taking over the army in order to become the next king!’

‘And I heard—’

‘I heard—’

I heard… One thing after the other, each one worse than the last. Could they not see this? All of it nothing but hearsay. They were putting a man on death row for things overheard at the market. Of course, no one would listen if you were to say this.

The sky slowly turned a warm orange, glowing on the buildings like a soft fire. The bell in the church tower struck seven times, half through instinct and half through custom, people’s heads turned in one direction. All but yours because as they all looked at the procession—the court man carrying a large scroll of parchment, followed by the executioner, who pulled the chains that were locked around Eddie’s wrists and the two guardsmen behind him, weapons at the ready—you stared ahead at the gallows. The rope hanging on it looked short and could only mean one thing.

A slow and painful death.

The clanking of the shackles echoed through the entire square with each step Eddie took. He was barely visible through the crowd, but the length of the executioner in front of him ensured everyone could follow the death march.

Eddie looked ill—pale and fragile. His steps were shaking, not improved at all by the heavy chains that pulled him forward. He stumbled around up the stairs to the gallow. You could see his eyes look up in fearful amazement at the construction of the gibbet. His Adam’s apple choked up and down, and then his eyes caught sight of you.

Everything began to move at a slowed-down pace.

He must not have expected you to come or hoped you wouldn’t because the brave and confident facade cracked for the tiniest moment. The sadness dominated his features for a glimpse of time, but it was all you could see. Too occupied by his view, he had missed his call to step up. The hangman shouted something from underneath his black hood, kicking Eddie forward. You flinched as Eddie kept his balance not to fall to the floor. You couldn’t do this. You could not watch this go down, but you did not want to leave him behind. Not ever. This could not be the end.

The court man stepped forward, unscrolling his parchment as he cleared his throat. It was enough for the people below, standing on the pavement, in the shadows of the buildings, on the balconies, to quiet down and listen as he read:

‘On this day,’ his voice carried through the entire square, ‘we bear witness to the punishment of Edward Munson, pirate, for his admitted crimes of theft, perjury, extortion, abduction, desertion, high treason and murder, sentencing him to death as decided by the governing council.

‘He shall hang here for God to give his final judgement and remain a reminder for any wrong-doers and sinners to come!’

You glanced at your father, who sat by untouched. Was Eddie’s body here to stay forever? You could not imagine having to walk around this town every day just to see his body be taken by the elements.

The sun was nearly at the horizon, shining bright at all of you, its heat still heating your skin.

The people cheered as the rope was put around Eddie’s neck, who waved to them as if they were not cheering on his demise. One hand pulling the other up, making the chain between them clink. A smile pulled at the corner of his lips, and it astonished you to see that he managed to stay his entertaining self even now. Always playing a role for the other man. Here to entertain. To provoke. To distract.

But the smile faded, body stiffened as the noose was pulled taut.

‘That’s a bit tight,’ Eddie commented, and in response to that, the hooded man pulled it even tighter. It dug into his skin. He looked down at where the floor would soon disappear from underneath him, then up at the sky and with a slight choke, he spoke out his final words, embellished by the last spark of his life:

‘To reign is worth ambition though in hell: Better to reign in hell, then serve in heaven.’

People gasped, mumbling amongst each other once more until hushed to silence by the hangman walking up to the lever that would set everything into motion. As Eddie took his final breath, everyone held theirs in anticipation. Your hands were shaking; every breath you took felt like a betrayal to him and like a stab in your lungs. Your fan moved faster, the small gushes of wind barely doing anything to cool down your face. This could not be the end. Not this. Not now. It couldn’t be—

The arm was pulled, and it was as if it had removed the ground from underneath your feet; that’s how deep the drop in your stomach was as you saw Eddie fall. It was as much as you could bear seeing before you turned around, hiding your face in your hands, hiding your tears from everyone else.

When hanging a person, two types of noose could be used. With the longer drop, the fall's impact would cause the neck to break and bring instant death. The shorter rope prolongs the act of dying as the rope digs into their throat, cutting off their air. During this, the square is filled with the sound of choked gasps, encouraged by the hundreds of onlookers.

If you had been one of them, down there on the ground, with easy access to the podium, you would have stormed it. Cut the rope loose. But you sat on the balcony, surrounded by your father and the other gentlemen and guards, unable to move anywhere. So you could only hope that there would be someone to do what you wanted to do. That someone would show up and save him like you wish you could. But when no one came, and his strangled groans became more sporadic, you had had enough. You couldn’t do this. You could not sit by and watch or even listen to what was happening before you.

Your father’s call of your name was muffled by the public, and your own internal screams as you ran out. Arms reached for you, but you pushed past them all. As soon as you were out of everyone’s sight, the tears started to flow, and they would not stop no matter how far you ran. And you wanted to run as far away as possible, as far away as your legs could take you. Off this island, away from these people. Yet, you eventually carried yourself back to the square. Each step made you dizzy through the corridors and down the stairs, but you could not stand still.

You had thought you were faster, but as soon as you pushed the heavy doors open and saw the stream of people walking away, the truth sank into your bones. You pushed your way past the crowd back to the open marketplace. As soon as it was done, people lost interest and continued with their evenings as if nothing had happened, ready for whatever next was to come eventually. By the time you reached the foot of the gallow, there was practically no one else around you.

The sun was saying its goodbyes, and his body was a dark shadow across the obscuring sky, hanging limp, still swinging from side to side but with every second coming closer to its final halt. Something about the movements looked so serene that you could not come to terms with that this was really it. Just like that… he was gone, but it happened so quickly, so easily. Too quickly.

You stood in front of him as the last people left, and the sun disappeared at the end of the world until the real darkness fell upon you, and your tears finally dried out until your throat screamed for water and air, and you could barely stand up straight.

This could not be the end.

And you were one of the first people to hear of it.

First, there was the prickling of the fire in the reading room, the flipping of the pages as you stared ahead at the words of the book, making yourself seem present in the room as your father sat by. Then there were the rushed footsteps in the hallway. The hushed whispers of hesitance behind the closed door as the men contemplated what to do. A creak of the door as they walked inside towards your father and leaned in to whisper so you would not hear what they had to say.

But the room was so quiet, you heard it quite clearly.

‘Sir, there is an…a problem.’

‘What is the matter?’ Your father, as always, did not find much need to express himself largely, but at the guard's response, his eyes grew wide, and for a moment, the glow of the fire seemed that much cooler.

‘The body…. It’s gone, sir.’

‘What do you mean,’ he composed himself quickly, ‘he is gone? How can that be?’

The guards never looked so small. ‘We do not know sir, but he is. It is like he has disappeared into thin air.’

‘Absurd,’ your father got up, and so did you. Before you got to say a word or take a step forward, he quickly stopped you. ‘You stay here.’

‘Absolutely not.’ Was all you replied as you rushed out of the room ahead of anyone else.

You had already made your peace with never stepping a foot inside the town square ever again, not if you would have to be reminded of that afternoon, of everything that happened in the last months, but as you walked back up to it, you could not have been happier that you had returned.

Only the rope left was where his body had hung and where it had meant to hang for days to come. Its perfectly knotted noose swayed like he had the last time you saw him.

Everyone else was right behind you, but just before they reached the platform with you, you noticed something in the corner of your eye. A shine against the moonlight on the wooden beams. You could just barely reach it, but with a stretch of the arm, your fingertips just about managed to get a grip on it. Before you could look at it, you heard your father shout orders at the guards, making them search everywhere in the nearby surroundings. Maybe whoever had taken the body was still somewhere nearby.

Whoever took it… was that what happened? Before you could look around for more signs that could clarify the situation, you were called to return back home. It would do little good to argue now, so you followed the guard tasked with escorting you to your room. Only when he closed your door and you sat down at your drawing desk that you opened your fist to reveal what it was you had found beneath the rope.

The pair of hollowed-out eyes of the skull ring stared back at you. There was no possible way for you to know what this meant if it even meant something, but you couldn’t help but smile. The ring was loose on your finger, but you kept it on.

This could not be the end of Captain Eddie Munson.

It wasn’t.

For most people, he lived on as a ghost story, and as you had learned from a very young age, dead men tell no tales. The living pass their stories around, mouth to mouth, page to page. Blurring the truth with their urgency for clarity, they try to make sense of things they cannot understand. Secrets become myths and legends that barely resemble the truth.

In most cases, it takes years, decades, if not centuries, but here, on this small island, the conversations on the street already trickled with gossip and rumours the following morning.

I did not want to believe it, but it must be true, what they say. He did sell his soul to the devil! And it came to retrieve his body.

I told you! It is useless to try and kill the unkillable! No, did you not hear what he had said? “Better to reign in hell!” But he is the devil incarnate!

Well, I’m surprised they caught him in the first place! Why he must be a ghost. The lot of them on that wicked ship. All cursed, and now he will return to haunt us for the rest of our lives!

Who was to say out of all of them what happened on that square once darkness fell? No one was there to see it or tell the truth, as all who could had long left the island.

They left at night, days after everything went down after the search for Eddie’s missing body had been called off, “officially” said to have been stolen but never confirmed. Those who knew what happened to it stayed in hiding until it was safe to come out until all suspicions were blurred with the gossip and basically forgotten. Quietly, they ran to the harbour, unseen by anyone, swift as the wind.

Unnoticed by anyone…but you.

Like most of the nights, unable to fall asleep, you had been looking out your window out at the harbour and the sea. The ships that calmly stood anchored there and the waves that pushed against them. Slowly, they put you to sleep, and so at first, you thought it was just a blur of your tired gaze, the dark spot in the far distance. It wasn’t a ship. And there, on the shore, there were no people preparing a boat. Not this late…

You rubbed your eyes, trying to better understand what they were doing. Packing in a hurry, throwing things into the bottom of the rowboat. As you watched, you told yourself that it was just the exhaustion speaking, that you were fooling yourself with this hope, but you could not let the chance pass you by.

You left your room without bothering to put anything on over your nightgown. Quietly to not gain any attention, but still as quickly as you could manage. Who knew how much time you had left before they would leave? Then once out of the house, you ran as fast as you could. The past few days, it felt like it had been all you had been doing, running to and from things, running after something without even knowing what you were looking for, but now you knew. You ran until your lungs began to burn from the warm and dry air. Until your feet were ready to give in and until you reached the sandy beach.

As much as you wanted to scream and shout, you kept quiet. You walked carefully up to the two figures at the shore until they noticed you next to them. It happened when you were only a few feet away; they heard the scuffle of your feet or your shaky breath and pulled their guns out. They were ready to shoot, but the second they needed to notice you in the dark saved your life. That is when you locked eyes with the man in front of you.

‘Eddie?’ you cried. Before he could say anything, you took the final few steps and closed the gap between you, pressing your lips against his. Just to know it was real. Just to make sure you had not gone completely mad. You pressed yourself against every inch of him that you could.

With the need for air, you pulled back, and instinctually, your palm met the side of his face. ‘How? I saw you—’ You both breathed heavily, chests raising drastically as he turned back to face you with a smile and press his lips against yours again. Like the last pieces of the puzzle, his hands fit on your body perfectly.

Then he pulled you apart, with his hands on your face, wiping away the tears that had formed along the way. ‘I know,’ he whispered, but the words were so close you could feel them. You could feel him. Just the feeling of his fingertips on your cheeks assured you that this was real and that it was really him. ‘And I’m so sorry.’

‘But why?’ You were trembling in his arms.

‘I had realised very early on that the only way to truly escape this place was to die,’ he smiled the smile you thought you would never see again, ‘but, well, I was not ready for that just yet.’

‘But I saw you— I watched it all happen there—how did you—’ his being broke you. You could not stop staring at the man in front of you. At all the little knicks and cracks in his skin. The fading bruises, the scars, and the long red gash along his neck that proved everything that much more.

‘I told you everything would be alright, didn’t I?’ And he never broke his promise. But still, as the truth settled in around you, it opened up a space for a new kind of hurt.

‘Why didn’t you tell me? Why let me believe that you were gone?’

‘It was the one thing that actually killed me, believe me,’ he pushed the loose hair out of your face, ‘but I needed you to believe it like anyone else. If you believed it—it would make everything so much easier.’

You wanted to ask him what on earth that was supposed to mean, but that is when you remembered the boat at his side. And when you noticed Steve waiting impatiently behind him, the oar already in his hand.

‘You’re leaving.’ It wasn’t a question. Of course, he was. He couldn’t hide here forever. Out there, in the waters, he would be genuinely free.

‘It’s all for the best, and with me gone for good, you could live on; move on,’ he said somberly.

‘Do you think I could forget about you that easily?’ Your fist had clamped onto the material of his shirt. ‘Do you really think I think so little of you? That I had not spend every minute of the past days mourning you? Missing you?’ and now you had him… just to lose him again.

‘But it would all pass. You can find someone else, someone better, and be happy.’ He looked down at your hand to see the ring you had kept on your finger for the past few days. He kissed his ring and then looked back up at you. ‘Let me go, darling.’

‘No,’ you shook your head, much like you had in the dungeon, but this time, you were more adamant this time than ever. ‘I won’t let you. Not this time.’

He mumbled your name, trying to argue, but you were ready with a rebuttal before he even said anything.

‘I do not want to spend another day without you. Not if I know you are somewhere out there—’ you had been looking at the ring too, but then looked at him again as an idea formed in your brain. ‘Take me with you.’

‘I can’t do that,’ his smile was airy and light but filled with regret. ‘You belong here.’

‘No, I don’t. Remember what I told you when I came to see you?’ You pleaded with him. ‘Do you remember?’ You pushed the words out when he didn’t say anything.

‘Yes.’

‘So, please, don’t leave me. Not again.’ At this point, you punched every word into his chest weakly as you began to cry again, and he let you. Then, when you were finally done, he held you, telling Steve off when he tried to put this to an end, even though he was right. There wasn’t much time left. The sun would come up soon again, and people would awake and see you, and it would all have been for nothing.

‘I wish I could give you the world, darling,’ he said, ‘I call you a princess, but we both know you should be treated as a queen and get anything you ask for, but I can’t do that for you. I am not the man you should be with.’ He kissed the top of your head. ‘Please, forgive me.’ And with that, he let you go.

You had let him do many things in the past, but not this time.

‘Well, I don’t forgive you.’ He had already turned around to get to the boat, but you just stepped past him, stunning him and poor Steve, as you got in. ‘If you wanted the easy way out, Munson, you should have thought twice about who to kidnap.’

The two men looked bewildered momentarily, too stunned to respond, but Steve was the first to respond. ‘She’s right,’ and he followed you in. The boat rocked from side to side. You sighed as you looked at Eddie as he stood in the sand.

‘I’m not scared, Eddie.’ you reached out your hand to him. ‘I want this.’ You wanted him. You wanted this life with him. You wanted to travel the world and have a life of adventures. You wanted to be free.

Eddie looked at you, still in apparent shock at your sudden assertion. You might have thought you had changed so much, but he still saw the same stubborn woman as that cursed day when you were hauled aboard his ship. On the contrary, he had been the one that changed, and he realised that as he cursed himself there on that beach. He knew he might come to regret this, but he thought he had regretted most of his choices, most of what he had done in the past months, and yet, he could not have been happier with where his life had led him, as it all led him to you. So, he took your hand and pulled himself into the boat.

You dropped the weights that had kept you anchored and made your way out into the sea where the Hellfire lay by patiently, waiting for her Captain and his Princess—despite what their titles actually may be—to return home.

The End.

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