The Pirate King Ch. 14

"You have nothing to be sorry for," I told him softly. "We won't do it anymore."

"But." His words sounded muffled coming from up from under my chin. "You like it."

I didn't see what that had to do with anything. I pulled back to look at him. "But you don't."

He looked away, and I frowned. That had not be the reaction I had been expecting. I kept my hand in his, waiting. There for him.

"What if I did?" I heard him whisper.

"What?" I wasn't sure if I had heard him right.

"What if." He paused. "What if I did like it? What if I like hurting you?"

I remembered early in our relationship, his guilt over my bruises. The way he had reacted to my bite marks. I sat up fully, pulling him up with me. We were long past due a conversation about this. "What is this about?"

He was still not looking at me.

"Captain." I squeezed his hand. He never had to tell me anything he didn't want to. If something was important, I trusted him to let me know. But this was hurting him, and I could not let it go. "You know you can never hurt me."

"I know." He sighed, then repeated his words again, softer. With more understanding. "I know." His eyes flicked up to mine for just a moment before returning down to the bed. The shadows of that expression were still there in the creases of his eyes. Lurking.

"My love." I raised a hand to his face, letting my fingers rest on his chin. I wanted to press every last trace of whatever he was holding away. He leaned into my touch, eyes fluttering. "These things, they are pleasure for me. Is it not then a good thing? Is it not something that you should enjoy as well?"

He didn't respond. I could see him fighting with something within himself. I waited, letting him know that I was there with gentle touches.

"I just." He wasn't looking at me. "There was someone, once. A place in my life. Where these things were done to me."

I squeezed his hand gently. I needed him to remember that he wasn't there; that person was gone. He was with me now. He was safe, always safe with me.

That person was gone. If they were not dead already, they would be soon. I promised this to him silently. It was simple. It was truth.

I think he understood, his body relaxing even as his voice stayed tight, so tight. "I just don't want you to feel the way I did." He looked up to me, those dark eyes darker with memories and conviction. "Ever."

"My love." I drew his lips to mine. Our kiss was gentle, brushing. A reminder of the things we held within our bodies. Between our souls. When it ended, he sighed. His forehead drifted forward to rest against mine. His arm came up and wrapped around my neck, fingers softly finding their way into my hair.

"Okay?" I asked him. I had said everything I had needed to say.

"Thank you," he breathed. I pressed a kiss to his nose, then another to his cheek. He was my everything. He was my world.

"Thank you."

***

When they came down to fetch the Captain, we were entwined in a wondrous tangle of limbs and love and lungs and heartbeats. Neither of us moved when the knock sounded, unwilling to emerge from the cocoon of safety we had spun around each other, a new strand each breath, claiming our space with every exhalation.

But as much as the Captain was mine, he was still the Captain and his duties were sacred. I sighed deeply as he pulled his head from my neck, feeling the way the outer atmosphere rushed into our space and hating it. He pressed a soft kiss to my shoulder and I groaned, rolling onto my back.

The knock sounded again and the Captain finally looked back at the door. "I have to go get that," he said.

He didn't move.

My arms tightened around his waist, unwilling to let space grow between our bodies.

The knock sounded a third time.

"I'm fucking coming!" snapped the Captain, working to disengage my hands and free his body. I smiled and let him move away, knowing, trusting, that he would be back.

He took the time to dress before opening the door, finding his breeches on the floor. That was unusual for him, and so I watched him with some amusement as he tripped over himself, cursing, in his haste to pull the tight garment back onto his body. I think he was still delicate, bare in more ways than just body, and therefore unwilling to let anyone see him in such a way. Whatever the reason, he did not open the door until he had the breeches on and tied up.

"Aye?" He managed to hide whatever his feelings were behind frustration as he addressed Finn. Finn seemed used to it, not even blinking at the brusque tone.

"Ready to head, Cap. Just need to know where to." He shifted. "And what to do with the old ship, bless her dear ole heart."

"Burn her." The Captain looked back to me. "Send Natch down. We need to look at the maps."

Finn was staring at him, mouth hanging open, when the Captain shifted his gaze back away from me to the steward. "What?"

"I. You said."

"Burn the ship, Finn. Unless there is some reason not to?"

"Aye. I mean, nay, Cap. It's just." He swallowed. "She's our ship."

"Not anymore, she isn't. And she'll never be another's."

I understood, intimately, what the Captain was doing. That ship had been a part of him. To have another man command it?

Never. Better to let it burn. I stood, catching the Captain's attention. "Ichor and I can take care of that. We'll ghost it from a distance."

"Ichor?" Finn squeaked.

The Captain frowned. "Ghost?"

I winced. I had forgotten the crew did not know that Ichor was back. And it made sense that the Captain did not know what ghosting was; the only time I had done it in his presence, I had hidden it from him. I moved towards him, gathering my pants along the way. "I'll explain it when Natch gets down here." I looked over at Finn. "Find the Russian. Tell him we need Ichor as well."

"Ichor?" the man repeated. He looked to the Captain, as if hoping the Captain would contradict me.

The Captain ignored him. "Does this have to do with your nickname?"

"The nickname was coincidental," I told him, not believing it for a minute. Names are rarely given out without reason. I turned to Finn. "You should go."

"Ichor," he repeated a third time. His fingers began sketching sigils in the air, Christian crosses mixed in for good measure. "Cor. Christ. Fuck." He turned and began to walk away. As the Captain closed the door, I could hear him mutter, "Ichor."

"Well," the Captain said. "The whole ship knows now."

I shrugged. They were going to learn at some point.

Ichor made it first. Probably Finn had run into the Russian on his way to find Natch in the riggings. He slipped in the door when the Captain opened it, not waiting to be invited in.

"Too many," he told me gruffly as he made his way to the far corner of the room. He squatted down there.

The Captain looked at me in shock, but I just shook my head. "You look comfortable enough here." He did. His eyes were even closing as he leaned his head against the wall.

Now they opened again as he gave me a strange look. "Well, you two aren't people," he told me, as if it were the simplest thing in the world. Then his eyes drifted shut again.

I let him be. He needed a moment of peace before he had to deal with the rest of the ship.

The Captain was beckoning me over to him. When I reached him, he grabbed my arm hard and pulled me farther across the room.

"Are you sure about him?" he whispered harshly.

"Ichor?" I looked back at him. "He was your man first."

"No, I mean." He passed a hand over his face. "Are you sure about him now."

I looked down at him, confused.

"With him." He sighed, a quick huff of annoyance. More at himself and his inability to communicate than anything else, I think. "The way he is."

"Brought back?" I was surprised; I had thought the Captain would be alright with this. "Of course. I have worked with many men like this. He's the same." I looked over the where Ichor sat, crouched in the corner. "More or less."

"More or less."

"He's more," I admitted. "But he is still Ichor." The Captain did not look convinced. "Is there a reason for your concern?"

He took a moment to sit with his worry before sharing it with me. "The King had many men like this."

"He did?" I was surprised. I had thought, after what Sneg had told me, that my men all would have abandoned the sea since I was not there to maintain the bargain with Dave. That, or they would have been reclaimed. Dave had a tendency to do that.

"Yes." The Captain was keeping one eye on Ichor as he spoke to me. "He always told me, 'These are the only men we can trust. I bought them at a heavy price.' And then he would laugh." He shuddered after saying that.

I gave the Captain a hard look for that. I had always assumed that he had been part of the fleet the way that most captains were part of the fleet - peripherally. Generally. Most captains never meet their King, they simply send tribute and receive instructions, make their intentions known and are punished if they stray. It is not a good thing to meet the Pirate King.

But here was my Captain, speaking as if he knew Dreyfus personally. As if they spoke colloquially, regularly. That was not the relationship between a captain and his King. That was a Lieutenant. That was a General.

The Captain jumped when he caught the intensity in my gaze. "What?"

Just how well did you know the King? I wanted to ask, but it wasn't a pertinent question and if it was important, the Captain would tell me. And in the end, he could not know him more personally than I did, and so what was the point of it all?

"I did not buy Ichor," I said instead. "I asked a man to take his place, and he did so willingly."

"You can't just. You just made a trade?"

"Yes. A deal, silver and a man for silver and a man."

"Fuck, Sailor. How do you know how to do that shit?"

But I wasn't listening, my mind caught up still on the King and his men.Had Dreyfus done new deals since I'd left? It seemed unlikely; he and Dave hated each other. It was more than mistrust. It was animosity. "Do you remember the names of the men the King had?"

"Homer," he answered with hesitation. "Uni. Rex."

"Rex?" I was surprised to feel a little hurt. Rex had been someone I had considered a friend. "I'm going to have to talk to Dave about this," I murmured.

"Who's Dave?"

A knock on the door interrupted that line of questioning. The Captain shot me a look as he made his way over to let Natch in.

"Alright," he said as he came back. I moved the three of us over to the desk in the room, already equipped with maps and instruments. But the Captain had something else in mind first. "Explain to me this ghost shit."

"Oh," Ichor said from the corner. He stood, eyes popping open. Natch gasped as he realized he was there for the first time. "We're ghosting?"

"Not yet," I told him. "Go back to sleep." He nodded and crouched back down."

"What the fuck," I heard Natch mutter. I ignored him, my eyes on the Captain. Where to start? What the say? He knew of me, knew of the ghost of the north. Knew of my legend, or at least that one. How much to say?

What was important?

I sighed. "Take a seat," I told the Captain. "And then I'll begin."

***

Natch was staring at me, hand in his hair, eyes wide. Mouth open. I reached out and lightly used my fingers to close it before he started drooling.

"So?" I asked lightly. "Any questions?"

"Yeah," the Captain said. "What the actual fuck?"

I smiled. "I know it's a lot to take in."

"No, no." He pressed his hands to his eyes. "It makes perfect fucking sense with who you are. I don't know how I didn't see it before. You, the ghost of the North." He moved his hands and stared at me hard. "You have any more big, crazy past life shit?"

"Yes," I told him. I was the son of the King. We killed the King. I was the brother of the King. I chained the King to an island eternal. I was the King. The King killed me. Long live the King.

Among other things.

"Fuck." He leaned back. "Fuck."

There was a moment where he just sat there, eyes on the desk before him. I assumed he was processing everything I had told him. I wondered what he thought of it, the violence I had just laid in his lap. The memory of the ship I had ghosted while in his care.

I remembered that day. Remembered him coming back to his room, shaken and frightened. He had thought me the King.

I smiled to think of that now. As if the King could do such a clean job of it.

"What are you smiling about?"

And so I told him. "You thought me the King."

"Fuck, Sailor!" he exploded. "You killed twenty men! Disappeared!"

"You thought he hadsea-walked," I needled him.

His eyebrows went up, but I could see his smile. "You put up his fucking flag."

Any joy in my body disappeared with the reminder of the theft, the things that flag had come to represent. The way it had caused my love, my Captain, to fear. I felt my face grow dark. "It was my flag first," I told him softly.

"Yours?"

"Mine," I repeated with the kind of emphasis only the slowest, darkest kind of rage can bring.

"Huh." He watched me for a moment, his face catching all the mine was sending out and holding it so gently, so sweetly. How could a man make rage look so beautiful. "Let's make it ours again, then."

Ours. I smiled slow at that.

Ours.

"Alright." He stood swiftly. "First order, I want to watch you ghost that ship. I'll be on deck. Will that suffice?"

I shrugged, still smiling. That word,ours, was pinging around in my body, making my muscles sing. I wanted to fight someone. I wanted to fight the goddamn world. I wanted to rip the fabric of the universe apart and put it back in the ways I so decreed.

"Good. Then we sail east."

"North," I told him, my muscles so fucking ready. "We go north."

He knew what I wanted, wanted it too. I saw it on his face, in his fingers as they balled into fists. His shoulders as they hunched forward in anger. But his head was shaking. "I'm sorry, my love. But it was part of the deal I made with my men to keep them."

"Deal?" I repeated. I was a thing of rage; I had no need for deals.

"We need to go see a witch. She lives in the east. She's the one who took my name from me when I first began." He gestured. "The men want to know that my name remains gone."

"You are unnamed," I told him, sure of it. I didn't know his name. If the sea couldn't tell me; if Sybil couldn't tell me -

But he was shaking his head again. "The men need more than your reassurances, my love."

The men should need nothing. The men should follow; it was what land boys were good for. I pulled my lips back and snarled before taking a breath, then a second. The Captain reached out and took my hand, again pressing the sea from my skin with just his touch. It took longer this time, but the sea receded until I was simply twitching muscles and anger and not the eternal raging unforgiving expansive ocean.

"Okay," I told him.

The Captain smiled at me, thanking me for my understanding. I didn't understand, not at all, but this was the way it would have to be and that was that.

Then he surprised me. "Why don't you take Natch with you? Teach him to. Ghost?"

I considered it. It was a very good idea for a number of reasons, not the least of which was it would look much better to the rest of the crew if we had the first mate along with us. Ichor and I, while technically part of the old crew, were still new. Fresh. And it could not be ignored that we were both unnerving. Having someone along that was unmistakably a part of the Captain's old, human crew, and such an integral part of the life of that ship.

Yes. That felt right.

I turned to Natch. "Can you swim?"

He nodded, still seeming a little stunned.

"Can you swim as well as you climb?"

That got a smile of pride from him. He nodded again. "Been swimming near all my life."

"Good." Many sailors chose not to learn to swim, superstitious nonsense that lead to many men dying when they didn't need to. Pirates were better about that then merchants, but. You never knew. "Ichor." The big man was on his feet instantly at his name. "Let's go."

He nodded and headed to the door, shedding his shirt along the way. The Captain gave me a look.

I pulled him in for a kiss. "Get up to the deck. I'll be back soon."

He pulled me back as I tried to walk away, kissing me deeper. "I love you," he told me when our lips were no longer engaged. "I missed you."

I smiled at him. My love. My world. We were not going north, no, but I was here with him. The world was right; he was my world, and it was wondrous, miraculous. Incredible. Everything.

"Deck, my love," I told him, and then I headed out the door.