Hello, all. First things first, this is part of an ongoing series. I recommend going back and reading the previous chapters before jumping in here. Don't worry, we'll still be here when you get back :)
Alternate title - "that's the death shit taken care of"
Hope your holiday seasons are treating you with gentleness and compassion. Stay safe and remember your power - you have a right to be happy. Find that happiness and hold onto it. In a world that tells us our joy should come in very specific ways, we are all varied and beautiful individuals who deserve our own distinct paths. Don't let people tell you that your path doesn't exist just because they don't want to see it.
Peace, love, happiness. Joy and a family that loves you and is willing to take care of you at your worst as well as your best.
*****
The days passed.
They did not pass slowly or quickly, they simply stretched out, endless and eternal, the beginning of one blending into the end of another, no start and no finish in the endless turning of the sun. It would have been tolerable if we had been on our way somewhere, if we had a destination. If we had set our bow North and held our revenge tight in the palm of our hands until it drew blood.
We did not sail north.
We did not sail anywhere, not truly. We merely moved through the seas in a meandering path, catching what currents would carry us and whatever winds filled our sails. We took no ships, docked at no ports, had no clear objective and yet still we sailed.
The men seemed content with this. Their days were the same no matter our destination, tasks the same, duties constant. Their nights were filled with training, led now by the Russian at the request of Thron. I came to watch, worried that he might take this as seriously as he took anything else, but he seemed manageable. The men at least did not seem frightened of him as he lifted them above his head and threw them across the deck, choosing to come back for instruction rather than run for cover. In fact, they seemed satisfied enough by his tutelage that I heard not a single man complain about our current movements,
Cookie, too, held no anger at our current course. "Near no work for me," he told me happily. "Only protections we need here are the ones we need near everywhere. And," he added, a knife suddenly pointed in my direction, "the ones we took on when you came aboard."
I shrugged. I was not concerned for the men on my behalf. They would find a way to be safe or they would not.
I was, however, concerned about the Captain.
Of all the people on the ship, he had the most control over our actions. In truth he had complete control; any other Captain would have had to rely on the winds and the ocean waves to comply, but I was the winds and the ocean waves and so much more besides and all he had to do was ask and a path would be made for him. He could go anywhere. He could do anything.
He did not. At night he sat up, staring at his maps, one hand on his sextant and the other on a compass that was so battered I trusted it innately. When the oil ran so low in his lamp the light was flickering, when he could no longer see for the darkness that surrounded him he would sigh, leaning back in his chair. He would sit like that for some time. Silent. Alone. And then he would come to bed.
I wish, how I wish that him coming to bed meant coming to me, that he would return to my arms and my warmth and find comfort in my presence. A week ago, it would have. Before he had found out about my past, certainly. But now?
Since that night in the riggings he did not touch me after dark. He would come to bed so late he must have thought me already asleep and lay his body down a perfect distance away from mine. I was not asleep; I could not sleep without him, not anymore. It was foolish of me to even try. And so I would lay awake and listen to him rustle maps and scratch notes, the sea outside rushing against our tiny home, the wind brushing the tops of reaching waves. I would listen to the Captain sit alone, so alone, and I would will him to hear the stars sing.
If he heard, he did not show it. He would come to bed, settling in so that the bed creaked and we did not touch and I would hear him sigh, would wait until his breathing settled, and then, only then could I try to find sleep for myself.
He was not a morning person, my Captain. He had not been a morning person so long as I had known him. Yet every morning in that week I woke to find myself alone in an empty bed.
The distance was dizzying. It was painful. We would interact in the day as if there had been no change, he would laugh and smile and flirt, his hand would dance across my forearm or my shoulder and the world would stop but it couldn't stop, not truly, and night would fall and he would close himself to me as if I had never held him, as if we had not found each other on the endless sea. As if he did not love me.
I begged the stars to sing louder and settled exhaustion in my bones.
We sailed like that for days. In the day, all was well. I fought with the men when I needed release and listened to the way my Captain could laugh at other's jokes. At night I pretended to sleep while he laid too far from me, and in the morning I woke alone to begin it all again.
Natch offered no advice. "He's working through some things," was all he would say. "Be patient with him." And I was patient but I was also worried, and he did not sleep nearly enough and he did not touch me and I could only wonder at the reasons why.
One night I could no longer take it. When he came to bed I turned to him, opening my eyes. He froze, body half in and half out of bed.
Something began to hurt deep within my stomach. "My love," I murmured.
He did not look at me.
I sat up, the bed moving beneath my form. I had taken to sleeping in clothes, hoping that this would make the Captain more comfortable with me, noticing that he no longer undressed before coming to bed and dreaming, wishing the solution was so simple, and so my shirt rustled as I made my motion. The Captain did not move in reaction; he was a statue, a dent in the bed that I wanted to smooth out.
"My love," I called to him.
He did not respond.
"Love." This was more insistent. Still, nothing. Then, quietly, so quietly I could allow myself to believe I had not said it at all, "What have I done wrong?"
The Captain did not turn. His body did not respond. I waited long, so long I thought I would burst, and then I took my wishes and love and expectations and wrapped them up tight within my chest, laid back down, and tried to sleep.
When I woke the next morning, the Captain was already gone.
****
The Captain had fallen into a routine with breakfast. He would brush in, grab his food, brush a kiss over my cheek, and brush back out. This was one of the few times I got to touch him in those days and it was something I clung to like flotsam.
That morning, the Captain forsake this routine and left me to drown.
There were a thousand reasons why this might have happened. Natch was also missing, as was Ichor and Finn and Hamms, any of which might have had a meeting with the Captain or might have met up with him and delayed him or all of which might have been isolated incidents. I ladled oatmeal and tried very hard not to read into his absence.
Thron smiled up at me when I sat down across from him, Gret sliding over to make room for my musculature. Beside him, the Russian was halfway through a tale that I did not think to pay attention to until I realized that it involved me.
