Warnings: heavy spice, hurt no comfort, angst, graphic description of dead bodies, character death
A/N: Please do feel free to scream with me in the comments.
If he never says it, it isn’t true.
His stirs from his dreams clinging to the taste of foreign words that have no business in the waking world. Half-conscious, he reaches over the warm patch beside him, grasping after a companion who isn’t where she ought to be.
As he blinks awake, taking in the daylight and the empty space under his arm, he resigns himself to weeks of old habits. He’s done it before. When he leaves, he’ll start each day this way, reaching for someone he expects but will never find in his quarters aboard the Red Force.
But he isn’t aboard yet, and he expects a cuddle. Maybe one last game beneath the sheets before he departs, too.
Grumbling, he listens to the little morning sounds of a bubbling kettle and warm liquid rushing into cups. So, that’s where his companion has gone. He knew she wouldn’t be far. Her home is only one great room. But she’s still too far away, and he whines.
“Don’t be like that.” She’s onto his games before he’s properly begun. “I’m just making some coffee.”
Lessons learned over long nights and aching mornings have given her foresight. Perfect creature.
His hair’s in his eyes, and the sun glints on the window, blinding him to anything but her silhouette. But even still, he sees the pause. It rolls through her like the space between waves, a chance to glimpse the shiny things beneath frothing surf. And just like that, it tumbles away, dragged under the tide of their usual song and dance, and she’s scoffing, a little laugh that tilts her head back and bares her throat for the kill.
“As if you’d ever settle.” She returns to bed, sitting beside him and combing back his tousled hair. Her touch knows him, follows comforting trails away from his face, over his scalp. “You’re very pretty, Red-Haired Shanks, but the sunsets here are prettier.”
He nuzzles into her hand, giving her a lopsided smirk to hold in her palm. There’s nothing else he can let her keep.
For every dismissive laugh and taunting remark, he’s adding years to her life’s count. The leagues he puts between them are measures of peace he could never gift her. He’s not a man for real romance, anyway. He’s never lied about what he can and cannot offer a woman, and he’s never broken his word – in either regard.
This is the same as every other lover he’s charmed to sharing more than drink.
Even if he’s found so many reasons to stop at the little island in his territory – for more booze, or fresh rations, or simply because the men need time ashore in a secure port. And every time, he finds himself in her bed.
People have started to notice. He comes ashore and the locals giggle behind their hands about how “the Emperor’s girl” will be scarce the next few days. Beck has started giving him looks, waiting for the other shoe to drop, or maybe just waiting for his captain to realize it already has. There’s a principle that guides his trysts. Better a broken heart than a still one.
He turns his smirk into a kiss, smelling coffee and sugar on her skin.
It’s past time to make this the last time.
He gives her hand a cheeky lick, and she jerks away, sputtering through a laugh, and lets the moment pass in a breeze of levity. She accepts his cruelty so kindly.
What a woman to love. What a woman to keep. If only the seas were kind and men were honest, what wouldn’t he give to have her in his own bed, in his heart and soul?
Sliding back under the covers, she gets her revenge, pinching his side, and he throws himself into teasing kisses. He’ll drown her in them, fill her with enough passion to bury promises never made but ever desired.
He growls, sucking bruises across her chest, groaning with every tug of his hair. She meets him measure for measure, giving and singing and making his name beautiful. She’s his sunny day, a comfort after storms, and despite everything, he feels that debt.
If this is to be the last time, he will make it the best.
Who needs dreams when he’s between her thighs, licking her silly? Who needs forever when he’s living eternity in her eyes, buried to the hilt in her heat. Only when she’s boneless, sated beyond her limits, does he stop. Only when he’s pleasured her every way he knows and enjoyed her every way he can stand.
He cleans her, thanking the swells and dips of her flesh for safe harbor as she drifts towards sleep. He rests with her. Holds her. Sends her back to sleep.
When she’s lost to the world, he rises.
The coffee, waiting patiently on the stove, tastes like home. He sips, watching her breathe, studying the sunlight and shadow tangling in her hair.
When he’s finished, he washes his cup and puts it back on the shelf.
He has no appetite when he returns to the ship. They set sail, and he watches the island shrink. It’s a small place in a big world, after all.
He avoids lunch, refuses dinner. When the booze comes out, he laughs, and talks, but he doesn’t accept a drop.
He goes to bed treasuring the lingering ghost of her coffee on his tongue.
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If he never says it, it isn’t true.
They’d sailed far away, and by the time he learned, the fires had burned out and the culprits had sailed away. Beckman stepped up to his captain when word first reached the crew, presenting the report. The first mate hadn’t even been smoking. Mourning his captain’s loss, perhaps. Acknowledging what couldn’t be said with all the gravity he could manage.
Now Shanks stands on ruined dock, cold ashes in his mouth carried by the wind – the last living thing in town.
If he doesn’t say it, it isn’t true, but he sees and hears and smells too much.
The townsfolk who didn’t burn in their homes had fled to the water. Crabs pick over families, the tavern keeper who most often hosted his crew, the gaggle of children who’d courted Monster’s affection with fruit and sweets. The monkey sits by them, petting their heads, groaning as the hair slides off their rotting scalps.
The pillagers left their Jolly Roger.
It’s tied like a cape around her neck, over the rope that suspends her from the cargo crane to welcome the island’s protector to its ruins.
He doesn’t say it, simply asks Beckman to cut the ropes as he gathers her in his arms. He sits on the dock so she can rest across his lap, against his chest, the way she did the first night he won her favor.
Matted blood has turned all her hair to shadow. Even the midday sun can’t bring it to life the way he remembers.
He reads her body. This is how he’s always found her pleasure, brought her to bliss. It takes understanding to share that kind of joy.
Torture, pain, humiliation. A slow death, looking out to sea. Looking for –
His crew has gathered the bodies they could find. Men carry shovels from the ship, digging new homes for old friends in the sand.
His commanders gather around him, grave as stone.
Beckman’s hand rests on his gun and he asks, “Orders?”
A wind blows in from the sea, and the ashes stir and rise. He sees lost souls in the haze. Imagines the other world where she’s gone is not so far at all.
He draws her in, cuddling her like the morning he left. Her skin isn’t right under his hands. Too dry. Too sticky. Too cold.
Her shirt is torn so all can read her crime, carved over her heart with knives.
It’s ugly. It’s wrong. It isn’t true, and he says it.
His commanders listen, taking his pain as theirs, letting the agony and guilt stew into something darker. Something useful.
Lucky Roux answers for them all. “We know, Captain.”
He holds her close, chest ablaze, the world smearing with tears.
Beckman asks again, throwing his captain a lifeline, “Orders?”
The flag her killers left behind is all he needs to pursue justice. He hands the fabric to his first mate. It’s good enough.
His men give him space, but keep an eye. They’ll sharpen the blades and review their charts so the hunt is ready whenever he can bear to put her down. Set her in the earth.
He’d thought it would be kinder.
He still doesn’t want to say it.
But – well, what could it hurt now?
He stayed too long and loved too well.
He never said it, and it was true.
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