The Pirate King Ch 09

This is part of an ongoing series - if you find yourself here without reading the previous chapters, you're probably going to want to go back and do that. Don't worry - we'll still be here when you get back :)

Alternative title: What a dick.

Hi all. First all, no sex in this chapter. These next few bits are going to be the sailor's movements on land as he gets his crew, then his ship, and then makes his way back to the Captain. I'll be marking this section, which we can think of as a bit of an intermission, as

Islands

. If you're not interested in seeing the sailor sans the Captain, skip these next few chapters and come back when you no longer see Islands in the description!

That being said, I think we're going to have fun running around and meeting some new characters. So, enjoy :) As always, comments and feedback welcome. Peace, stay safe, etc, much love.

****

How many times had I made this swim? The ocean welcomed me like an old friend, lifting its currents around my body and tapping against my soul like laughter. I let it, my arms pulling the water past my sides as I moved towards the shore, trying to forget that every stroke took me further from the Captain, not letting myself really, truly believe that I was heading home.

The sandbar was more or less where I remembered it, and I planted my feet in the shifting grains and stood, giving my arms a chance to rest. I turned my body back to get one last glimpse of the ship.

It really was a thing of beauty. I could see why the Captain was attached. The white sails were handsome, pressed up against the sky, filled with a breeze that took the Captain away, away, away, and he was the handsome thing, and he was the sky and I was not pressed up against him as I should be, as I belonged, because he was leaving. Because I had told him to go. I closed my eyes against the sight, but the memory was still there and I tried to breathe.

A force hit my leg and I jumped, my eyes snapping open. At the sight of my attacker, I found my breath again in the breeze and began to laugh.

"Syb!" I scooped the child up out of the water. She squealed, clinging to my arm and managing to settle curled up on my shoulder, somehow. I grinned at the precociousness.

I had thought this would be emotional, or maybe awkward. Three years is a long time to be away from your child. But it just felt - good. Right. "Did you miss me, little one?"

"Da, you got

big

!"

I laughed again, the noise squeezed out by her small arms and demanding eyes. "You're the one who grew, my little seal pup! Look at you!" I grabbed her off my body and tried to swing her around, but she just giggled and made her way back to my shoulders.

"And you put mountains on your back," she commented, patting my scars.

"You always told me I'd carry mountains when I died." Syb had told me many things. Syb would tell me many more things in the years to come. I was sure of it. That was one of the things she had told me.

"Yeah, Da. And now you're dead, and now you've got mountains." I smiled at the way she said it.

Of course

, she seemed to say. It always was with her, everything was just

of course

. The pain of my last three years, the shock of it, the twists of fate that had brought me to where I was, to being what I was.

Of course

. "When's the pretty man going to visit?"

"Hm?" The sudden topic change caught me by surprise, my attention on my footing as I slogged our bodies back to shore, trying to remember where the shallowest path was. It, like the sandbar, seemed to be more or less where I had left it. A lot was still the same, even after three years.

"The pretty man on the boat," my daughter was continuing. I made a wrong step that used to be right and almost dunked us. A lot had also changed.

"Ship, Syb," I corrected her.

I knew she was pulling a face without having to see her, and I smiled. "

Ship

, Da, when is he coming to visit?"

I turned my head to watch the ship leave the protection of the cove. "I wanted him to come today, little one. You know it isn't safe."

She thought about that for a minute. "It's important to keep him safe. I'll tell you when you can bring him."

I nodded, used to taking orders from - I suppose she was eight now. Was taking orders from an eight year old stranger than taking them from a five year old? I supposed I would find out. "Do you know when that will be?" I asked wistfully, knowing full well that if she had known she would have told me.

"Uvu says I'm not to prophesize without good reason," she said primly.

Uvu. I couldn't believe she was still using that name for him. "Uncle Val" had been too hard for her to pronounce, and somehow 'Uvu' had come out of it; ah, well, she had a way of making things hers. Same name, I thought, water back up to my chest, tickling at her legs, and she laughed to feel the wetness. Same name, same house, same actions. I wonder how he will be different?

"But," she continued, and I paid careful attention, "it won't be long. Before you marry him."

I smiled, feeling warmth trickle up through my stomach, my head floating up after it to rest on a pleasant haze. So I would marry the Captain.

"But after the next time you do the sex."

I tripped over nothing, surprise making me clumsy, and the infernal child laughed as we dunked into the ocean.

***

The house looked different than I remembered. I stood on the shore, staring at the doorway and trying to decide what to do about it.

"Da, you need to go in," Syb said for the third time.

I gave the place another hard look. "Is it the roof?"

"We haven't changed anything. Just burned the bits that were you, cuz you were dead and stuff. Come on, you need to come see Uvu."

Ah. That was it. My crest was gone from the walls; blankets that should have hung, embroidered with my name, were missing; the post where I had scratched a note was hacked from it's original position.

"Da-

aaaaad

."

I sighed and stepped inside. There was nothing to do; my name had been taken from me by the sea. I should not have been surprised that this would be the physical reaction, that my existence, my past, would be scratched away, but that didn't make it any less strange. Any less unsettling.

Why should I feel unsettled? This was my home. I walked into the main chamber and cast my eyes on the interior.

The feeling of discomfort didn't go away. If anything it settled heavier on my stomach, turning into a thick lining that made me feel a little sick. I shook myself to try and dislodge it, causing Sybil to laugh.

"Syb," a voice called, and the voice made me freeze, sent warmth through my core that immediately began melting the discomfort that was trying to take up permanence in my body. Out, I thought. Out. I am home, this is family. "I told you to be quiet - I'm trying to divine, here."

"Val," I called quietly, aware of how my voice sounded in this space, listening to it explore all the spaces that I used to fill. There was no response, and I started to get nervous again. Three years was a long time, so long, and there was nothing of me in the house, but Sybil had remembered me, Sybil had known my face...

Then a man appeared in the doorway and I froze.

Val looked the same, the same in so many ways. That skinny body that I'd heard others describe as lithe, the way he walked around so relaxed and easy hiding the sea behind jokes and smiles, because Val was of the sea, because he was the sun glinting off the waves, because he was the way the ocean captured moonlight and sent it back against your skin in new and sensual ways, and because we were brothers. I had seen this stupid boy grow up and he had all but raised me, protected me until I had protected him, until he had left for the land and made his own way and his own protection and this was

Val

, his bright flowing clothes popping out against his dark skin, somehow managing to have so much cloth and cover so little of his body, fashion he picked up from his years running the brothels, his arching brows and sparkling eyes always making him look like he was about to con you from your money and you would be happy to let him and I was happy because he was here, because I was home, because

god

I'd missed him so much.

I almost moved forward, laughing, to take him in my arms like no time had passed but then I saw it. The same, and so different. His eyes still sparkled, yes, but I thought there might be more granite and less sun glinting from the water; and was that grey in his thick black braid? I watched him sag against doorway, his mouth parting, his eyes holding things I no longer recognized, and the lines on his face made a map that I had never traversed and I didn't even know what part of the world it was referencing, and wondered what I must look like to him.

Three years, I thought. Three years is a long time.

I resettled Sybil on my back and waited.

Suddenly his body was moving - I remembered that, how he could be so languid and then so

fast

- and then his crossbow was in his hand. He held the bolt pointed at me, breathing hard.

"Val," I said quietly. Three years, I thought and I didn't know what emotion to put with it, and he was still doing the same old shit. I was not concerned for me so much - I'd had this crossbow pointed at me many, many times before - but Sybil was still on my back. The man before me stared me down, and I saw the crossbow shake. "Brother."

The crossbow dropped dropped with his eyes, his gaze ripping away from mine to slam into some other place. As he moved his arm down, a bolt fired wildly, missing me by a hair. I raised a brow and followed its motion, watching it sink into the wall behind me, taking its place with near forty other bolts.

I blinked at the wall, having somehow missed this addition to the decor on my first sweep of the house. "You need to work on your aim, Val."

"You're dead," he whispered. I turned back to him and found him leaning on the crossbow, his shoulders bowed, his knees bent. Leaning in the doorway that I knew would lead me out to the balcony that overlooked the sea, overlooked the beach I had chosen to raise my daughter. The sand that was ground down by the seas that had been my comfort, my base, the only rock I had ever needed. He sunk down to the floor, the floor I had built, the wood I had cut and sanded and he pressed his face against his weapon.

"I'm home," I said, because I was, and because I didn't have anything else to say.

"You," he repeated, "are

dead

."

I shrugged. I didn't really have much more to add. He was right; I was dead, and I was home. These were facts. These things just were.

But facts were hard, sometimes. And I had lived this, and had watched it all unfold, but Val had lived a very different reality, a much different life. If facts were stars, he had been sitting in a different part of the world - the constellations that I thought were so clear had never even made it to his eyes. "The sea mourned for you." His gaze still wasn't on me, it was on the floor, or maybe on the past. Maybe on stars that didn't line up like he'd always believed. "I mourned for you."

I shifted, uncomfortable. There was pain here, and it was too tangible. The same; so different; I had never seen my brother so raw before, his emotions so clear. He was a very careful person, always hiding what he truly thought behind a smile and the flutter of a scarf. But this? There was no hiding this, and I didn't know what to do, what to say in the face of it. "I'm here now," I tried.

"Three fucking years, brother." Why wouldn't he look at me? "Three years I thought you were dead."

"I am dead." His head snapped up to me.

"But..."

I let him think about it, watched his eyes search my face for clues and hoped that he would find the maps I had left there more informative than I had found his.

Sybil broke the silence, climbing down from my back and walking up to put her hands on Vals face. He tolerated it, not moving an inch. "I told you Da would come back."

"I know, baby, I know. And I should have believed you, it's just." He gathered her in his arms. "I couldn't. I couldn't let myself." He watched me from over Sybil's shoulder. "How, brother? All of this, you standing before me.

I watched the sea bury you

."

I shrugged. "The sea." It was all the explanation Val should need. He should understand, better than anyone else.

He shook his head. "Of course," he said, but he sounded bitter.

I walked over to the wall filled with crossbow bolts, following the path the wild shot Val had made. "Target practice?"

He sighed, using the crossbow to stand. He patted Syb on the head and she wrapped her arms around his leg. "Syb told me that I would shoot the wall. And so I did, because I didn't want to do it again. And then she laughed at me because I was going to have two bolts instead of one in my wall, and at that point it just seemed pointless to try and fight it so -" he shrugged. "Target practice."

I smiled, letting my hand drift over the various fletchings. "You know you can't preempt fate."

"I know." His scowl was everything I had missed in this world. To me, it was better than his smile because I knew that when he scowled, he meant it. Especially when I got him to scowl at me. "But it's so damn tempting."

I turned and let my smile pass towards him, but he moved away. "I can't. It's too much, to have you here like this. You were dead, I thought you dead. Gods, you

are

dead. How are you not getting that?

I buried you

. I let you go, I tried so hard to let you go, to get to to stop haunting me. Do you not understand what you did to us? To me? I went out in a boat, every night, for a

year

, and cried for you."

I was silent. There were no words for this.

"And now you're back, acting like nothing has happened, pretending everything is the same, but nothing is the same,

brother

, everything is changed, look at you covered in fucking scars and even your name is gone from my tongue -

gah

." He made a frustrated noise and spun away, moving out the doorway he had come through.

Sybil walked up to me. I crouched down and let her wrap her arms around my neck. It was incredibly unsettling to watch my brother act this way, to see him be so angry. I had seen him frustrated; I had seen him mad; I had even seen him livid before. But all those times, he had smiled a dangerous kind of smile and then destroyed what needed to be destroyed, and rebuilt what needed to be rebuilt, and my brother was not the kind of man who wore his emotions so clearly. To have pushed him to this...

Syb sighed in my ear. "I always knew you'd come back."

"I know."

She settled into my arms. "Uvu will be okay, I promise."

It felt odd to receive encouragement from a child, but my life was odd, and this child was not like any other. I smiled and kissed her on the cheek. "Thank you, little one."

She giggled and climbed over me to settle back on my back. When she was good and hooked I headed out to find my brother.

"You have a hundred names," he told me angrily.

"I did." I walked up beside him on the porch, staring out over the ocean, my eyes unable to stay away from the Captain, his ship. They had made good distance, but I could still see the sails on the horizon. "I am not that man anymore."

"Then who are you? Are you my brother? Are you some shell, a ghost that has come back to take our names, add them to your new list?"

I raised a brow quietly. He of all people should know that tale wasn't true.

"Then what?"

I opened my mouth, but before I could respond Sybil spoke from where she sat, perched upon my scars.

"He is a ghost, Uvu. He's come back to get revenge."

"Revenge?" Val scoffed. "What revenge? Dead men are dead, they don't get revenge."

I think he meant it as a joke, or sarcastically, but I had never been much for sarcasm so I simply responded, "I will."

Val scoffed again. "Against who."

"Against the man who killed me."

Val looked at me for a moment, silent and intense. I could see him working through my declaration. "Tell me you're not going after the King."

I raised a shoulder towards the sky ever so slightly.

"Shit," he said. "Fuck. Drey will kill you."

"He already did." My eyes were on the receding sails.

"And so you're giving him a chance to do it again? Fuck, brother. That is the stupidest shit I have ever heard."

I raised my shoulder to the sky again, watching the ship move into the sunlight. I watched as two of the sails were pulled down and imagined Natch running through the riggings, laughing, Finn nervously watching below; imagined Cookie in his kitchen, preparing lunch alone; imagined the Captain, luxurious and extraordinary and resplendent as he commanded his ship to safety.

Away from me.

I sighed.

"Do you even have a plan? Or were you going to just run in and go, hey, Drey, glad you're king now, got command of the entire fleet or whatever, who cares because you killed me so now I'm going to kill you? Gods, you're being a fucking idiot."

I sighed, pulling my attention back to Val. "It's going to be alright."

"Don't. Don't you do that to me." Val pulled back and turned to me, face twisted in anger. "Don't come back and pretend that everything is okay, that you can still protect me. You never have been able to, you never will."

I searched his face, confused. "Val..."

"No. I'm your older brother, I'm supposed to." He drew in a sharp breath. "

Drey,

" he said again, and I didn't like the way he said it.

"You couldn't have known," I tried, knowing what he was thinking, but he was already shaking his head.

"I should have gotten you out of there."

I didn't like where this was headed, didn't like the weight he was pulling into his voice. "You know you couldn't have."

"But I should have seen it. I could have told you."

I reached out to him. "Brother, there was nothing you could have done. We were blinded by false trust; he fooled us both."

But Val pulled away. "I should have

known

, brother! I had the space, I wasn't so close to him, and I had the information, all my boys said the same things about him and I didn't, I wouldn't listen, and." He bit his lip, fighting to control his emotions. "You can't go back there, you can't face him again."

I frowned. "Val, I have to."

"No." He said it with force, and I felt the sea in him reach out to me. "You won't."

I sighed. Val couldn't command me, and he knew it. I let him try for just a moment before reaching out and resting my hand on his shoulder. I wasn't sure what to expect and was glad to see him turn into the contact. "I'm sorry," I said quietly. "It isn't just about me anymore."

And it wasn't. It might never have been, because there were so many men who could have had better lives under another King's command, who could have had lives at all, but I had never been a hero and I had never done things for others that wasn't also for myself, and so this had always been about me. But now it was also about the Captain.

I would not suffer to see him live in hiding for the rest of his life. And he was not going to live in fear, not if he was going to live with me. He had nothing to fear when he was with me; had I not promised him that? If I needed to kill a King to make him feel safe - well, then, what was a King to me?

"You can't go," I heard Val say before me, and pulled my thoughts back to now. Back to here.

"Val," I said quietly, "I have to."

He turned and looked out over the water. "But I don't want you to."

I frowned, looking at him closer. It was not like Val to voice such desires. He felt my gaze and cast a glance in my direction, and I blinked at the pain that it held.

"I just can't lose you again," he choked out, and I forgot that he was mad at me, forgot that things were different, this was my brother and he needed me and so I grabbed him and pulled him tight to my chest and the three of us were back together, my family reunited, and it felt so good to be home.