Nobody Likes Fairytale Pirates (29 page)

“So, how about you?  Did you find
your heart?”

“Yes.”  He said emotionlessly.  “I
know where it is and who has it.”

“Did you ‘reclaim’ it?”

“No.”  He swallowed the lump in his
throat.  “It’s better off without me.”

“Harsh.”

“Life.”  He shrugged.  “It’s just a
bedtime story.  Utter bullshit.”

She arched an eyebrow.  “Which is
why you’ve sung that tune almost every day I can remember.”

“Just because it’s utter bullshit
doesn’t mean I can’t believe it.  I think you’ll find that half the religions
and all of the economic systems of this world are based
entirely
on
utter bullshit.  Faith isn’t logical, it’s something you feel.”  He put his
hand to his chest.  “Do I believe in the literal truth of the song?  Not
really.  But I believe in the woman who sang it.  And I believe in the
essential message of what she was trying to say: find someone who makes you
better, who makes you feel good about yourself, and don’t settle for anything
less.” 

She looked uncertain for a moment,
opening her mouth and then closing it again.  “’Rai?”

“Yeah?”

“What…”  She began, then stopped,
as if working up the nerve for something.  “In the story? What
kind
of
bird did the witch change the Grizzwoodian hearts into?”  She whispered like
she already knew the answer, her voice filled with emotion.

The question hung in the air for
several breaths.

“Doves.”  He looked at his
partner’s face, trying to keep his tone completely steady.  “My heart is a
dove.”

They sat in silence for a long
moment.

“I…”  She began, rising to her feet
as if in a daze.  “I forgot Dinner on deck.”  She announced, walking towards
the door.  “I’ll… I’ll be right back.”

“Be careful.”  He told her as the
door closed, recognizing that it was a pretty lame excuse and that her exit was
more about escaping him than locating their misplaced pet.  She had no
intention of actually going up onto deck and they both knew it.  She just
wanted out of this room.

Shit.

He’d scared her again.

Every goddamn thing he tried to do
fell apart.

Everything he had ever wanted was
always
juuuuust
out of reach.

Everything.

He put his face in his hands,
grinding his palms into his eye sockets.

He looked up at the ceiling,
cursing his own stupidity and weakness.  Wishing he were someone else.  Someone
who wasn’t from where he was from and who hadn’t done what he had done.

He started towards the cabinet,
thinking that some more booze would be a good idea right now.  Sitting on the
dresser next to the shelf, however, was a large shaving mirror on a swivel. 

“She doesn’t want you.”  He
reminded his own reflection, his voice harsh and filled with self-loathing. 
“You promised her you’d drop it forever.  You’ll only scare her if you try
anything, and you’ll lose her completely.”  His temper snapped and he put his
fist clear through the reflection.  “Just deal with it and keep your mouth shut,
you useless fucking Grizzle.” 

“Way to break shit, ‘Rai.”  She
laughed nervously as she made her way back into the room.  “You okay?”

“Yeah.”  He said softly.  “Just…
just knocked over the mirror.”  His footsteps crossed the room and he flopped
back into his chair, the old wood creaking under his weight.  “Why do… why do
things never work out the way I want them, Rance?”

“Meh.”  She shrugged.  “It’s just a
mirror.  Wasn’t even ours.”  She found her own chair and returned to it.  “Let
the old lady deal with it.”

He was quiet for a moment.  “That’s
not what I meant.”  His tone was serious and full of emotion.

“I’m… I’m too drunk for existential
questions, ‘Rai.  Or for… anything heavy.”  She admitted nervously, terrified
where this conversation could lead them and wanting to just pretend it hadn’t
happened at all.  That’s why she had basically run from the room.  “I’ll come
up with something to say about that too, tomorrow when I’m sober, okay?”

“That’s fine.” 

His voice was utterly flat and it
broke her heart.

“Listen,” she began, “about what
you said?  I think…”

“What do you have there?”  He
asked, cutting her off because he didn’t want to talk about it anymore than she
did.

“Oh.”  She held up the small box. 
“I stole it from the galley earlier.”  She slid it across the table to him. 
“It’s some kind of pudding, I think.”

“Ah.”  His voice was still dead. 
“It’s rice pudding, Dove.”  He informed her, the nickname hanging in the air
for a moment, a reminder of their previous conversation and how much it had
frightened them both.

Or frightened
her
at least.

Her entire life hinged on the idea
that Uriah was her partner and friend.  Her family.  And sure, she sometimes
suspected that he might feel something for her-- or at least that he
thought
he did-- but it wasn’t serious or anything.  It was just misplaced feelings of
responsibility.  He’d always suffered from an excess of emotions about stuff,
and this was just another example.

But the idea that it might be
bigger than that terrified her.

Gave her something to lose. 
Someone to let down.  Something which could really hurt her if it went wrong.

The only color she had ever seen
was his blood.  Just… gallons of it.  Coating her hands as he bled out in front
of her.

Granted, most of that was her own
mind filling in the blanks, pairing a shattered image of blood from her
forgotten previous life, with her very real memory of those first few days on
the island.  She had no way of knowing if what she thought was “red” was
actually
red, or if her brain had simply stuck in some other color in its place. 
She honestly didn’t even remember the color itself when she awoke or even what
it had looked like specifically, just the sheer horror it brought her.

She was blind, but she still had to
watch him almost die every night, the blood nightmare being the worst of them.

Her brain couldn’t imagine
everything though, since it had so little to work with.  It was only able to
salvage that one color from her memory banks, laying it down on top of her sense
of touch and hearing.

A cloud of red, coating her
partner’s unseen back and floating in midair like a ghostly specter of death. 
Showcasing each and every gaping wound that he had been given, as the hot
sticky blood dripped down to reveal more and more of the world around her which
she couldn’t see. 

Until her whole world was blood.

His
blood.

Her helplessness.

And his pain.

He had gotten an infection on the
island.  Because she wasn’t as good at closing his wounds as he’d been about
closing hers.  She’d messed up.  The rough sutures she’d blindly applied to the
open gashes covering his back had broken open due to the swelling, his entire
back and shoulder area becoming one mass of burning heat.  Coating her fingers with
blood when she touched him, reminding her of how delicate her world was.

He’d almost died.

Uriah had come very, very close.

And Ransom was left with the
nightmares which accompanied it.

A helpless, guilty terror.

Knowing that if she’d done a better
job, he wouldn’t have been dying in front of her like that.

Feeling his blood covering her body
but being unable to see it.  Unable to clean it off her skin, because she felt
it everywhere and she wasn’t sure what was real and what was imaginary.  Unable
to help him, no matter how hard she tried.  Hearing him scream, echoing in her
dark world…

And… and she couldn’t risk that
again.  She still had nightmares about his pain when he was a
friend,
she
couldn’t imagine what would happen if she…

He didn’t love her.

And she didn’t love him in that
way, because if she did… that’d be the end of her.  The idea was just too big
and frightening to even be entertained as a possibility.

No matter how hard it was.

“Generally, I prefer baked desserts,
but thank you.”  He said softly, beginning to eat his treat with none of his
usual gusto.

She put her face in her hand, still
desperate to change the subject.  And also still simply wanting to hear the
reassuring deep baritone of his voice, reminding her that he wasn’t hurt and
that she was safe.  Tonight’s nightmare had been among the worst she’d ever had
and she was still shaken.  “What is it with you and desserts, anyway?”  She
asked conversationally, wanting to talk about anything but blood and their
previous conversation.  Something light.  Something to help her calm down.

He took another bite of his food. 
“Are you going to remember this?”

She shook her head.  “Probably
not.  I drank a lot.”

He finished off the small can of
dessert and was quiet for a moment.  “When I was seven, I killed a man. 
Strangled him.”

She waited for him to elaborate,
but none seemed forthcoming.  “Well, it all makes perfect sense then.”  She
said sarcastically.  “Desserts.  Obviously.”

“I killed him,” he continued,
“because he tried to take a basket of fruit from my sister, Bradley.  By
force.  And I was seven, so I had seen plenty of people die, obviously.”

She frowned slightly at that
reasoning.

“But I’d never killed someone
before.”  His voice took on a faraway quality.  “And it messed me up for a
while.  He… he took a long time to die.”  He cleared his throat.  “So, my
mother and Bradley… they used the fruit to make me a pie.  And my mother, she
pulls me aside and she says to me: ‘Uriah, never be sad or ashamed about things
you have to do.  There’s a lot of stuff in life that you wouldn’t do if you had
a choice, but sometimes, people don’t give you one.  So you need to do what you
have to do and not worry about the consequences.  I’m proud of you for standing
up for you and yours.  Don’t ever be ashamed of that.’”  There was the sound of
him wiping his hands together.  “And so, I got a pie.  And desserts have been a
passion ever since.”

“Huh.”  She hadn’t heard that story
before, which was amazing, since she thought he’d told her about just about
everything over the years.  He was a man that liked to talk and she was a woman
who liked to listen to him.  And vice versa, truth told.  “That’s probably the
first thing she said that I’ve ever actually agreed with.  Most of her little
pearls of wisdom you constantly spout are downright scary.  Or contradictory.” 
She leaned back in her chair.  “She still around?”

“No.”  His voice was sad, sounding
regretful.  “She died a week after she made the pie.”

“Really?  What happened to her?”

“Nothing good.”  He said simply. 
“Nothing good ever happens in the Grizzwood, Dove.”  He sounded a million miles
away.  “Those damnable trees.”

They both were silent for several
minutes.

He cleared his throat, obviously
trying to regain himself.  “As it turned out, the man I killed had friends.”

“Ah.”

“When they…  When it was over, they
hung a little sign on her body where they posed it, which read…”

“’Deceitful Whore.’”  Ransom
guessed, finishing for him.  She’d always thought it was a strange thing to
call a ship which was supposedly named after his mother.

“Yes.”  He was then silent again as
he thought the matter over.  “That basket of fruit killed that man.  And my
mother.  And ruined the lives of everyone in my entire family.  It just… broke
us to pieces.  It… it made my life worse than you can possibly imagine.”  He
leaned closer to her.  “But the thing of it is?  The part that keeps me up at
night?  If I had it to do over again… I’d
still
kill that man.  Because
that fruit basket didn’t belong to him.”

She tried to swallow the lump her
throat and failed.

“I’m… I’m,” she began, brushing a
tear from her face, “I’m still just a little too drunk and emotional for this
conversation right now, Uriah.  I’m sorry, I know I should say something, but…”

“No need.  I don’t really like
conversations where I sit around and feel sorry for myself.  If I would make
fun of someone else for saying it, I try not to say it.  Besides, I’ve come to
terms with all of this already anyway, don’t worry.”

It didn’t sound like he was over
it, no matter what he claimed.

“If I remember this at all tomorrow
morning, I swear I’ll have a really nice and comforting thing I can say which
will make you feel better.”

“Well, that’ll be nice.”  His voice
now had its familiar touch of good humor.  “You’re going to be busy tomorrow.”

“So it would seem.”  She arched an
eyebrow teasingly, trying to lighten the mood.  “Any other tales of loss and
unrelenting pain you want to share for ‘story time’?  We can get them all out
of the way at once, just for laughs.”

He thought about that.  “Well,
there’s the standard ‘drunk father used to beat the living shit out of my
siblings and I’ sob story, which I won’t bore you with.  Frankly, I lived it
and even
I
think its clichéd.”  He paused, as if remembering something. 
“I told him that once, but he didn’t appreciate the observation, obviously.  Or
maybe be just didn’t understand the definition of the word.  In either case, he
blamed me for the fruit basket thing, you see.  So, he drank.  And I don’t just
mean that he was a drunk, I mean the kind of drunk where you can smell him
before you see him…  The kind of stink that sticks to things long after he’s
gone, you know?”

“I know.”  She nodded.

“To this day… to this day, I can’t
stand the smell of alcohol.”

“And yet you drink all the time.”

He was silent for a long beat.  “I’m
a complicated man.”  He finally admitted, his voice once again devoid of life. 

“Huh.”  Was all she could manage.

“My mum died when I was 7, spent
the next 15 years or so trying to take care of my siblings, until they made it
abundantly clear that they didn’t really want me around anymore.  So, I became
a pirate.”  He shook his head.  “Never had anything.  Nobody ever really liked
me.  Always been in one fight or another, my whole life.  Always been alone.” 
He cleared his throat.  “And then I saw you… and I thought to myself: ‘That
one.  That one is special.  We’re either going to be best friends or we’re
going to fucking kill each other and destroy the world in the process.’”  He
paused.  “And I already had a nemesis at the time, so I figured I’d try
something new.  What did I have to lose?”

“I think it worked out alright.” 
She nodded.

“Yeah.”  He sounded sad again.  “So
far, anyway.”

Her brow furrowed as she tried to
figure out what
that
meant.  Her partner was never dreary and very
rarely cryptic unless it was part of some sort of prank.  But something was
bothering him and it wasn’t just their long overdue “feelings” conversation.

Then it hit her.

He was worried she wouldn’t choose
him.  That if she remembered everything about her life… she’d leave.  Which was
just stupid.  No matter
what
was in her past, she’d go with him anyway. 
As long as she was alive and could remember him, there was no choice at all. 
He was the only man she’d ever care about.  It was him or nothing.

She tried to think of a way she
could subtly let him know all that to keep the conversation from getting
awkward, but then decided to simply blurt it out instead.

Being kinda drunk had its
advantages, after all.

“I’d pick you, you know.”  She told
him flatly, like she was discussing the weather.

“Huh?”  He sounded confused.

“If it came down to it.”  She
clarified.  “If I suddenly remembered that I had a family or whatever.  If it
turned out that I had some other job or friends or… or a husband.  I’d still
pick you.”  She fidgeted in her chair, suddenly nervous and second-guessing her
decision to tell him this.  “You’re my family.  You don’t need to worry about
that.  No matter what happens, you’ll always be my best friend.  And my captain. 
I’ll pick you over
anyone
, Uriah.”  She paused for a beat to drive the
point home, but lost her nerve and somehow only managed to whisper it.  “Anyone.”

They were quiet again, both trying
to decide whether or not to acknowledge that statement or pretend it had never
happened.

Moments ticked by in silence.

Uriah finally spoke, pushing aside
the table between then and toppling it over.  “Come here.”  He commanded.  His
voice firm but gentle and she was surprised by how much she liked it.  It had a
no-nonsense and authoritative quality, which turned her on.  She wasn’t really
someone who took orders, despite her place on the crew, but this was one she
was eager to obey.

She made her way towards him and he
took her hand, as she sat down on his lap, straddling him.

“This doesn’t scare you, does it?” 
He asked seriously, his voice still deep.