he hears the softest mewing of a cat, and automatically turns his head toward the sound’s origin. immediately derailing from his pre-determined destination, Pantalone swiftly strides around the corner—his bodyguards, rightfully confused, following suit—to find a pile of kittens huddling around their mother.
his eyes, once hooded, now fully open—wide, and in awe.
‘ such marvelous creatures, ’ he speaks to no one, but the compliment is clearly directed to the clump of cats, that seem unbothered by pantalone’s presence. his approach slow, cautious; calculated in a manner that tells them he is no threat, but a mere spectator to their lives. an appreciator. if they were an opera, he would spend all his money to behold their shows daily.
the fatui bodyguards turn their heads to each other, and shrug, unsure what to make of this shift in the regrator’s attitude. it’s as if the snake shed his skin and adorned a new face.
‘ those round eyes, so innocent of this world’s filth. ’ Pantalone interrupts the quiet appreciation with words of it verbatim, causing the bodyguards to return their focus upon him.
‘ that tail chidely shifts, yet somehow noble. ’ Pantalone remarks, his eyes dart to the grey kitten that is patting the back of its sibling. it swells his chest with admiration.
‘ those paws, so pale, pink, and perfect. ’ his voice on the verge of squealing, he can barely contain his glee. obsidian gloves tentatively reach out to one of the kittens.
he’s not going to budge an inch, no matter how much the bodyguards protest. they’re doomed to watch the regrator’s restrained jubilance.
There was a woman among Sam's fellow Fishermen with too green eyes that glittered like gemstones and a head shaved to show of the scars of the beast that nearly bit clean through her skull. A lean, mean thing with a fire in her belly that roared twice as tall as she, they called her Carrion not only for being the best baiter among their so-called guild but likewise for how easily she handled their ornery messenger birds.
(Was Carrion that first called him Crow. Told him hearing him croak out a sentence was twice as fine as smelling the smoke and gun oil wafting off of him, and just laughed and laughed when Sam asked if the bärgeist had eaten her good looks along with her common sense with that bite it took.)
Maybe that's why they fell in so easily afterwards, always trading barbs and jostling blows where with anyone else they'd draw steel or let their fists fly if they so dared. Might've been just knowing their own worth within the Fishermen; that no one with any lick of sense would ever want to take her spot as the next to draw a wasserwulf pack into a trap, nor would they ever want to try and muck about with the man that made their blackpowder bombs for their own peace of mind.
Wouldn't explain the long evenings talking about nonsense things, though. Things like owning a little house in Saltpier, where the thrum of people and endless lanternlight kept the lurkers at bay; things like him muttering lowly about a mother whose face he can't recall no more or her about a sister she always meant to go and see. Didn't explain them saving a bullet for one another when the hunts went on too long and the promise of escape wore too thin, nor the way she'd tilt her head towards him and doze a while to the sounds of his tinkering.
Couldn't explain it any other way when they staggered back to the Fells after seeing a dozen men dragged beneath waves and set aflame without ever coming back up, coated up to their necks in stinking mud and black blood yet still reaching for one another. Desperate, hungry, grateful as they ran roughshod over one another to forget for even a few hours what all they'd done and seen that night, and the chance to leave it all in that evening lost when they woke tangled up together and didn't so much as move.
("Carline," she'd muttered into his collar bone, trailing her fingers along the press of his ribs. "My sister called me Carline. Ain't no family name though."
"Samuel Whist." He'd croaked back, settling his chin over her head and counting the teeth marks etched into her skin. "Can have mine, I reckon.")
She gave him a tinderbox with their names etched into the inside, promising with a grin on her scarred lips and another in those emerald eyes she'd teach him to read it whenever he got around to taking a knee. He answered with a gold ring slipped around her finger and a chuckled drawl, asking if she were too impatient to wait the year he'd need to get one of his own.
Didn't have a year, though. Not when the Great Hunt finally came to pass, and not when the Daughters joined together in a dread choir to rouse their mother, the Queen Below rising to drag the isle into the depths as once She swore to. There weren't time for anything more than gunfire and bloodshed, for watching the dead sink only to swim back to the surface with the faces of friends or foes but speaking as Her voice... and when Saltpier burned and the sky and sea alike splintered like shards of glass before Her approach, there wasn't any time left at all.
("Don't." Never once has she ever heard him beg, not for anything. Never once had she seen the grey slate of his eyes so alive, so warm as they are now here at the end of everything they'd ever known. Struggling to stand, to so much as speak over the press of Her against reality, Sam shakes. "Please.")
("I'd have liked it." Carline grins, yet the fire of her is snuffed out by the furious storm and howling winds. Her gaze is cold, afraid for the first time he's ever seen as the axe in her hand slips from her grasp. "Carline Whist. It sounded like a good thing.")
Her tinderbox is enough to wound a thing they could've called a god, a cannon set alight to scar the Queen Below and send Her reeling back into the depths. Her pained, enraged throes are enough though, and the isle and all that'd endured for centuries is dragged down in Her wake, leaving behind only a man with a croak in his throat and too-stained hands... for the body of Carrion, of Carline, was likewise dragged into the abyss.
she is staring at herself in the mirror again, not recognizing herself. not accepting the hand reality dealt her. She touches it, a sorrow laden reflection. every crease of her brow, every disdainful twitch of her lips. all small details she monitors, whilst reaching for her lipstick.
you understand that demons are a manipulative species, she recalls, will’s words stung truth. they will use your pleasure for power.
perhaps he is right. perhaps…. they will use her as she pleases. perhaps that is what she wants. to make bed with a demon, to satisfy their every needs. these dark thoughts cloud her judgement. though one question strikes out: is it sinful yearning, wishing, to forget who and what you are ?
her head inclines back to the mirror, forced to meet the gaze of a figure she rejects. not born a fully-fledged woman, deprived of a proper bosom and posterior; of features kept unshaven, that no red hairs will sprout from a clean chin.
no one understands, she muses affirmation, what my death signifies.
it’s asserted, her identity, inserted into every quip or sneer. every rebuke, or pointed correction. but what can pride do for a soul so beset by discrimination, if not internalize their vicious hatred.
“ … I know that they are.” she meekly utters out to herself. alone. as it always has been and will be.
“ It’s better to be manipulated than my love be rejected. ”
beautiful people do not cry in public, they weep in silence. isolated from the world.
She remembers; she remembers that time when she walked home, legs janky in heels that were too high, too sharp for her sobriety that was slowly kicking back in. Whatever swam through her system was slowly wearing off in the early morning hours, and it put her in a bad mood. And as she walked through a dingy side alley as it was faster to get to the Tube station that way, if not more dangerous; three men, still drunk enough, or maybe too stupid for their own good. There was safety in alcohol and numbers, not that they needed it. A sure winner against the maudlin goth just trying to get home.
She remembers the jeering as they spotted her, arms crossed and the filigree gold chain f her purse coming dangerously close to sliding off her shoulder. Smelling like alcohol and misery, lipstick smeared and bleary-eyed, still good enough. But it wasn’t the first time, and she wasn’t in the fucking mood to give into that bullshit. And then–
“Oi, you think you’re better than us? Fucking bitch!”
She also remembers how she grabbed one of them by the back of his neck in a sharp motion, ramming his head into the brick wall, and how his nose and incisors gave in, how he screeched and his friends wanted to push her off as she still held him by his collar now; her free hand grabbing a switch-blade she pulled from her pocket in a swift motion.
“If any of you get closer, I will fucking gut you like pigs! You hear me? Do you fucking hear me!?”
Her temples were pounding and heart was drumming, adrenaline rushing through her system, shaky fist that almost betrayed her. It wasn’t fear of them, or terror of her own actions, how quickly she was to hurt someone over a slight, some meatheads catcalling her as if that hadn’t happened many times before. They nodded, hands raised, and for but a moment she considered making true on her promise because they just put her in the mood; something that was crawling underneath the surface for long enough, and only got free because they managed to get under her skin. They wouldn’t be the first; nor the last. You caught me on a bad day.
She let go of the collar; the poor fucker slumping down; moaning, mumbling something none could understand, before she turned around and disappeared into the next street, leaving his friends to care for him. In a way, they were lucky. Anne wanted to do something worse.
LONELY WOODS
Rated: M
Trigger Warnings: Blood, gore, violence, death.
Word Count: 2425
Summary: Cosmo makes a final stand. While escorting two shifters to a safe rendezvous, Cosmo is attacked and wounded by a pursuing hunting party.
He hated the sensation of being shot. The combination of both searing hot pain that burst around the edges of the entry and exit wounds, and chilling cold that raced up the length of his spine and flooded through his blood, making his hands shake and his teeth chatter, set his teeth on edge every time.
He breathed in deeply through his nose, and out through his mouth as he ushered the two kids ahead of him with an impatient wave of his hand. The forest was dark and full of shadows and Cosmo needed them to lead him through the dark, but they were young, younger than Stiles had been when he had faced down a man with a gun, younger than Scott had been the night he was bitten. Skinny and scrawny, more afraid than anyone their age should have been, and far too young to be chased through the woods by armed gunmen.
Cosmo dared to glance back over his shoulder at their pursuers. The flash of their torches burned through the dark in shades of bright white and pale blue, he could hear the hunters shouting, calling out to each other. They were far enough that Cosmo and the two shifters could weave between the trees and hide themselves in the dark, but they wouldn’t get far. Cosmo hissed a sharp exhale when his foot hit a tree root, just barely managing to keep himself upright as he fell into one of the trees with a frustrated grunt. He was losing blood fast, the pain was getting worse, and while the kids were stronger than most their age, the fear crippled their ability to use their power to their advantage. He closed his eyes, let the cold night air sooth his skin, and slowly sank to the forest floor, turning enough to lean against the tree trunk as he did.
He needed to think.
“Please, we can’t stop here!”
Cosmo snorted. Did she think he didn’t already know that?
He opened his eyes only when he felt one of the shifters kneel down beside him. She was the oldest of the two but Cosmo couldn’t stop thinking about how small she was. Small face, small nose, small hands that grasped at his arm and tried to haul him up to his feet but only succeeded in irritating him. Cosmo pushed her away and reached into his pocket for his cellphone.
“You’re gonna take this,” Cosmo started as he unlocked the screen and pulled up the route that would see them out the other end of the woods. From there, the directions would lead them to the rendezvous point, to Scott and Stiles. “You’re gonna follow the directions, no deviations. You’ll see my brother, my twin, we’re identical. And you’ll see my friends. That’s when you’ll know you’re safe, okay?”
“I don’t understand!” There was a desperate lint to her voice as she took the phone with both hands. Her hands were shaking. Cosmo took a hold of them with his own and he let his Sight out of its cage.
Beneath her skin was a wolf. It rubbed up beneath her flesh but didn’t dare to break out, but he saw it. Buried beneath the fear, the self-loathing, the panic and desperation.
“It’s okay,” Cosmo said, his voice soft and barely above a whisper, “take him and go.”
She hesitated and Cosmo couldn’t help but smile. For a moment, he could almost imagine the life she would live if she made it out of the woods. She’d take her friend, her packmate, they’d find his brother and his friends and they would find a place that they could call home, that they could call safe. They wouldn’t believe it at first, but eventually they’d come around. They’d breathe, they’d live, they’d move forward.
“I’m gonna stop them,” Cosmo promised, “I’ll be okay.”
Her wolf was too young and too scared to pick up on the way that his heartbeat jumped.
“Go.”
Together, they ran.
Cosmo didn’t watch them go, instead, he turned his gaze upon the approaching torches. Six. No way to count those in between without torches until they were closer, until the light bathed their silhouettes, until they were close enough to see him too. That was always the trouble, Cosmo had spent his entire life Seeing things that could always See back.
Cosmo slipped the knives from his armbands, a pair of twin black daggers that had served him well over the years. Sharpened into a lethal edge and coated in oil laced with mountain ash. Cosmo could always have armed himself with a pistol, but he’d never felt safe with a gun so readily available to him. Had always felt as if it would make him too easily provoked, had worried about how easy they were to use and how easily he could use them.
Knives took more effort, knives meant getting close enough that the person on the other end could also get close. Cosmo had liked to think that it evened the playing field, or that some other power would interfere if he needed it to, if his judgment wasn’t quite right. He almost regretted his weapon preference as the torches grew closer.
Cosmo used the tree at his back to help himself back up to his feet. The pain remained, searing right through him as if someone were pouring boiled water into the open wound but he took his awareness of it and tucked it away in the back of his skull. With his Sight blown wide, Cosmo’s eyes were swallowed entirely by his pupils. Black as shadow, the forest around him seemed to come alive in shades of colour he didn’t have names for. There were wisps of energy, of power, tucked beneath the roots, buried beneath the earth, humming inside of the trees. There were faces in the bark, old and weathered, and watching, and something in the branches whispered.
Cosmo exhaled a slow breath as the first light shone on him, and then he blinked.
The forest became a dead gray shadow, emptied of sound, of smell, of texture and movement. The trees were still, the earth was still, there was no wind, no whispering, no faces. It was a shell, a poor copy, the mirror realm.
Cosmo rushed forward twenty paces and blinked again. The world came back in a burst of sound and colour, his eyes burned, he buried his knife in the back of the neck of the hunter whose torch had found him first. Beside him were two more, one with a torch, one without. The one without turned towards him and Cosmo drove his second knife into his face. He screamed, light snapped towards him, Cosmo blinked and the mirror realm welcomed him back with open, starving arms.
Cosmo lunged to his right, ducking as low to the ground as his injuries would let him and blinked. He slashed out in a sweeping arc, his knife caught the back leg of another hunter who fell to his knees with a cry, the rifle of his gun swung around and Cosmo blocked it with his arm, bringing his knife down in a counter arch and buried his knife into the man's shoulder. More light, someone fired, bullets hit the ground around them, one hit the hunter, Cosmo blinked and barely escaped a bullet of his own.
He didn’t let himself slow, didn’t dare to linger in a crouch even in the mirror realm. Cosmo darted forward, recalling where the hunters had stood, mapping their locations from memory, attempting to predict how they would move, where they would run. Pain split across his skull, his eyes burned, he blinked and caught an elbow to the chin. He stumbled, lashing out and catching another hunter somewhere on his body. The hunter yelped, someone fired, someone else screamed, muzzle flash and frantically waving torches, three hunters that he could see. He barreled forward, catching one hunter around the waist and driving them both to the forest floor.
He squashed him under his weight, pinning the rifle in the hunters hands between them, he fired off a shot that split through a forest trunk and Cosmo slashed open his throat with his knife. A hand caught him by the back of his neck and hauled Cosmo off of him, sending him into the air. Cosmo blinked and he slammed into the mirror realms forest floor with a soundless cry that tore his throat and seared his lungs as he felt the vessels in his left eye burst.
Cosmo rolled onto all fours, hot blood dripped down his face, and lunged forward again. When he blinked again, he charged directly into a stream of light. Cosmo closed his eyes and dropped just as he heard the trigger bull and the blast of fire whizzed over him. The momentum of his running start saw him slide across the ground, slamming his heel into the hunters knee. The hunter fell, a howl of pain tearing from him, and Cosmo bolted back upright.
Something hit him in the shoulder with enough force to send him crashing to the ground. Cosmo blinked and felt the mirror realms uneasy embrace tighten around him. The pain was getting harder to ignore, his body was shaking, his legs felt weak and he knew without examining his shoulder that a hunter had gotten another clean shot right through him.
How many were left?
How many more could he take out?
Cosmo gritted his teeth, hauling himself to his feet. His left arm hung limply at his side, trying to lift it only caused his knees to buckle from a pain that shot along his shoulders and up into the base of his neck.
Cosmo gasped and panted without sound, limping five steps left, three steps forward. He blinked, lashing out with his good arm and cut open a hunters coat, shirt, and belly, a spill of blood and thicker things splattering at his feet. He blinked before the hunter's body hit the forest ground. The mirror realm seemed to expand around him, then constrict. He opened his left eye and his vision split between a dark tunnel and a mess of black and gray fog.
He blinked, the world returned, footsteps crunching over dried leaves, the panicked shouts of men, the flash of torchlight as they searched the forest for their assailant. Cosmo sat knee deep in a man’s spilled guts and watched as two surviving shapes came together back to back. He searched the dead man at his knees, dropping his knife in favor of stealing the hunter's gun.
He didn’t have time to check the clip, raised the pistol, and fired at the shapes. The first dropped, the other dodging, Cosmo kept firing, a blind spray until the gun clicked empty. He heard the hunter return fire and he blinked, his vision flooded black and red, his skull felt as if it were being split open with an ax, and the mirror realm heaved.
Cosmo shoved himself to his feet, dropping the gun to the dead forest floor and rushed forward towards where he had seen the last hunter. Twelve paces forward, two to the left, he blinked and crashed directly into the shaking, shivering form of the last of the hunting party.
Together, they hit the ground in a tangle of limbs. Cosmo felt a thumb bury itself into his shoulder, he screamed and swung out blindly with his only mobile arm. His fist connected with what felt like a jaw, bone cracked, Cosmo swung out again and hit again. A knee drove itself into his guts, Cosmo hurled himself forward and smashed his forehead into the hunter's nose. He felt the bone shatter, and heard the man cry out in a strangled, bloodied scream.
He leaned back, and brought his head back again with as much strength and ferocity as the first hit. Again and again. Each time the bones cracked and shattered, each time the sound got wetter and wetter until the only sound was a gurgled, wet, choking sound of a man struggling to breath through the blood and bone fragments.
Cosmo sat there listening to the sound of him dying. Curled forward and leaning against his heaving chest, unable to move. He swallowed back his Sight, the feeling of his pupils constricting feeling as if he were plunging a thousand needles into his eyes at the same time.
The hunter died under him with a pathetic rattle, and Cosmo listened for survivors.
Listened for the loading of a magazine, the click of a trigger, the shattering sound of a gunshot, something that told him that he wasn’t the last man standing, just one of them, but no such sound came. Only the wind brushing through what was left of the leaves on the forest branches, only the skitter of nocturnal bugs, only the slow heave of his own breaths.
Cosmo sat up slowly.
A painfully long process that hurt and kept hurting.
He crawled away from the dead bodies around him and found himself a spot to sit with a tree at his back. He wondered absently as he made himself comfortable, if it was the same tree he used to support his weight at the start of the fight.
Around him, he could see the carnage in his wake, the bodies of the hunters, some dead quickly, others that had died slow. It was messy, and he doubted that he looked much better. He could still feel tears of blood running down his face, and part of him was still hesitant to try and note where else he was hurt. Shoulder, stomach, leg. All paled in comparison to the pain of his eyes and skull. A pounding which felt as if his head was seconds from exploding.
Cosmo turned his gaze away from the forest floor, from the bodies and the dark, and turned his eyes skyward. Through leafless branches, he could see the night sky dotted with starlight. Blurred and out of focus, but better than what was on the ground. An almost pleasant cold spread through his body as he watched the sky and listened to the sounds of the woods. The pounding of his skull seemed to synchronize with the beat of his heart in his ears that grew slower with each passing second.
He hoped the kids made it.
He hoped he’d done enough to help.
To help them, help Stiles, help their dad, help his friends.
Rating: M, for violence, blood, gore, implied child abuse, patricide.
Summary: On the hunt for Captain Hook’s treasure hoard, Harry Hook and the crew of the Lost Revenge ambush the Jolly Roger.
The Jolly Roger was an intimidating vessel of experienced might. A terror that had once plagued the seven seas, indiscriminate in it’s victims and leaving few survivors until it and it’s crew had disappeared. While the ship had vanished, the tales hadn’t, and when it and it’s Captain had been marooned on the Isle of the Lost, those tales had only gained traction.
Even docked, even shackled to the doomed island of the unwanted, the Jolly Roger had been a nightmare made real. Black with a dense and tangible hatred that seemed to suck all pleasantness from the air. It was that darkness, that extreme sense of terror, that made it so easy for the Lost Revenge to sneak up on them. Neither the Captain, nor it’s crew, ever thought anyone would take them on, especially on the water.
They had attacked with the sun at their backs. Blinding the Jolly Roger crew to their approach until it was too late and while the number of cannons at the Jolly Roger’s beck and call was devastating, the Lost Revenge was nimble, and quick. She slid across the water with an improbable smoothness and with Gonzo’s innovation, her ability to bank, and change direction mid-route had the Jolly Roger scrambling.
The crack of cannons, the splintering of wood, the crashing of waves. All of it paled in comparison to the pounding of his heartbeat and the swell of adrenaline in his veins. He felt like a bolt of lightning contained within meat and bone. The feeling of it seared right through him, and unbeknown to him, twin pinpricks of red glowed within his eyes. He screamed orders, and the crew responded, an extension of his limbs, his mind, and his will. He spoke, and they answered, he moved, and they moved with him.
The two ships circled each other. The Jolly Roger, a hulk of manmade devastation, and the Lost Revenge, skirting across the waters like the reflection of the sun, flying, burning. Harry looked out across the rolling waves and he saw the familiar crimson of his fathers colours and the wild mane of his raven black hair. Together, Harry and his father raised their left arms, sunlight shining across their hooks, and they smiled.
Suddenly and without warning, there was a crash like rolling thunder, a crack that seemed to split the air in two and out from behind the Jolly Roger, Harry watched as two jade blue tentacles burst from the waters and latched onto the galleon. He heard the crew roar with glee, but their cries were nothing compared to the sound of their Captain’s laughter. The Jolly Roger had come to a halt on the water's surface, Uma having broken the ship's rudder, pinning it in place and Harry banged his hook against the steering wheel.
❝ Take the ship! ❞ the words burst from his lips in a guttural growl and the crew responded in kind. They could hear the cries of the Roger crew, screams of Kraken and Witch, but he could hear their equal snaps and bites of fury, of the grit and steel which made them pirates of the seven seas. He watched Uma wrap her cecaelian limbs around brutes whose names were seared into the backs of his eyes, and hurl them off the ship and into the air. They were chaos made manifest. Promises hissed into the dark made tangible. Harry had been moving towards this moment since the day he was born.
Harry boarded the Jolly Roger in a blur. He couldn’t remember bringing the Lost Revenge alongside her, couldn’t remember grasping the roping lines and swinging onto the Roger’s deck, it all moved like a dream. The sting of steel pulled him from that feeling, pain splitting across his shoulder and reminding him of the stakes and the world dropped into clarity. All around him, there was the clashing of steel, the smell of gunpowder and sea salt, and the tang of blood. He plunged his hook into meat, sliced his cutlass through flesh and bone, but then he saw his fathers face.
A demon. A monster. Hair like shadow, skin white as bone, and his eyes. Red. Red with hate. A hate so tangible, Harry felt it like a cold knife against his throat. Hook was like the dark spaces in the hull of the ship. A black stain, a blindspot that made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end, that made his blood freeze in his veins and his heart leap into his throat.
Harry had never feared anyone or anything, like he feared Hook. Since he had been a boy, that fear had been with him, nursed in the way that Hook would hit him. In the way that Hook would drag him across the deck by his hair, by his throat, by his arms or his legs. How he’d throw him around like he was nothing and no one and never knowing why or for what. Harry knew what it felt like to have his fathers Hook buried into his skin, to have his head stuck between the deck and his boot, to be punched and kicked and slapped around. He knew what it was like to be beaten black and blue. To be so hurt and so scared that he vomited or pissed all over himself. The fear was still there, a festered rot in the center of his chest, but the anger was worse. It burned the fear into ash and dust and Harry lunged.
The father and the son fought with such ferocity that all around them, both friend and foe, flinched away as if scorched. Some fell over themselves just trying to get out of their reach as they crossed the deck in a flash of movement and the clashing of steel on steel. Inside that deadly dance, it felt as if the world was holding its breath, as if the sun and the moon, the sky and the sea, were watching with fevered reverence.
Harry screamed when his fathers hook plunged into his left arm and wrenched him forward. The pain was so intense he lost his sight. His own hook slipped from his fingers and clattered to the floor and he swung blindly with his cutlass only to feel himself pulled off his feet by the hook buried in his arm. Harry hit the deck hard and was dragged several paces forward. Against the pain, Harry swung his legs around and used the momentum to hoist himself back up to his feet, swinging his cutlass in an upwards arc and catching the edge of his father’s prosthetic hook with the cutlasses edge.
Harry stumbled. His whole left side of his body was shaking uncontrollably. He glanced down at his arm, his fathers Hook was still buried in his forearm, but it was no longer attached to his fathers stump. He blinked through the pain, watching as his father scrambled to regain his balance. They were both panting. Spit and bile spluttered from his fathers mouth. Harry could see where he had managed to catch him during their duel. His left leg, his right side, there was a deep wound on the side of his face, his upper lip was hanging off of his face from where Harry had managed to jab his hook into his cheek and tear.
Harry used his thumb to grip the prosthetic hook in his arm and wrenched himself free from it.
❝ That’s the last time you ever hook me, old man, ❞ Harry hissed, his teeth bared and bloody.
Violence, at its core, was ugly and sloppy. It reeked of blood, sweat, piss and shit. People liked to dress it up, make it into something palpable, honorable even, but it was only brutal. Father and son fought brutally. Mindlessly. Exhausted, only hatred and muscle memory compelled them forward and for a time, they were evenly matched. Two terrible things slashing at each other's throats. But Harry was younger, and James was old.
Harry slashed open his father’s stomach and in a single fluid motion, buried his cutlass up to its guard in the pirate Captain’s chest.
Silence held as the Hooks sunk to their knees. It held as they stared at each other, as their mirrored red eyes faded back into forget-me-not blues, and Harry for the first time noticed the wisps of silver in James Hook’s black hair, the deep groves of age in his pale skin and the years in the dark circles beneath his eyes. Blood spilled passed James’ lips as he opened his mouth.
❝ You... ❞
Tell me, a small voice said in the back of Harry’s head. A voice that belonged to a boy. A boy that had once trembled in the dark, alone, clinging to the sound of his fathers voice and hoping for love. Longing for his father to call his name, to tell him he was everything he wanted him to be and more, that he was better than he could have hoped, that he was proud of him, that this was what he wanted. Harry choked on a sob as his father raised his hand and touched his blood stained fingers to Harry’s cheek, tell me.
❝ My― ❞
Harry screamed. A deep, low, guttural scream as he wrapped his hand around Hooks throat. Whatever words that he had been about to utter were lost to a hacked gasp. He jerked, trying feebly to pull out of Harry’s grasp but it was futile. Harry threw Hook to the deck of the ship, using his own weight to help him press against his throat and neck. Hook kicked. Twisted. Struggled beneath him. His eyes bulged in his head, his mouth opening and closing, opening and closing, gasping for a breath that never came.
Despite the pain, and the way that he still couldn’t feel much of anything beyond pain in his left arm, Harry curled his left hand around Hook’s throat as well and he squeezed. Squeezed until Hook stopped struggling, and stopped gagging. Squeezed until he stopped doing anything at all and then he kept squeezing.
For a long moment, the only sound he could hear was the sound of his own ragged breaths, but slowly, so slowly, the silence broke. The sound of the waves licking the side of the ship. The groan of wood, the sound of loose cannon balls rolling across the decks and hitting the walls of the ship, the creaking of a mast threatening to break and the shuffle of bodies around him. Harry looked up and saw the remains of their two crews. The Jolly Roger, and the Lost Revenge. They had cleared the main deck, circled around him and Hook and watched.
Harry uncurled his hands from around Hook’s throat slowly, the bones of his fingers cracking as he did. He grasped his cutlass and as he pushed himself to his feet, he wrenched the cutlass from Hook’s chest and pointed the bloodied point at Mr. Smee.
❝ Surrender. ❞
The first weapon dropped before he had finished speaking the word.
beneath the cut is a drabble recounting guinevere’s actions in lannisport and casterly rock, most revolved around the ironborn agreement with @kingvmorra and @maidensbxne.
the hallways were as golden as she remembered; though she seemed to walk through them like a ghost these days, rather than the girl who would run to her wing, trying to ensure she was in bed before her mother and her septon checked in. the caverns and coves of casterly rock were a sanctuary to many of the lannister pride in their youth; including guinevere herself, who would sneak to the shore beneath the shade of the cliffs – aided regularly by the lion king himself. it was in the belly of the beast guinevere took to spend most of her time thinking, about many things, many people, many emotions; though the ironborn matter pressed upon her conscience more than others.
she had buried herself in it, this matter; to the point one could consider it unhealthy. but if she did not bury herself in this matter, she would bury herself in the assassination attempt she had escaped; narrowly. how many times would she survive? did she even want to? she slept little, looked over numbers by candlelight in the middle of the night, and was on a mission to find that green tea that helped lull her into slumber. there was none that seemed to work as effectively; nothing that was the same. how could anything be the same?
in the weeks leading up to battle, the ironborn had kept up communication with guinevere lannister through letters, both factions updating the other of witness testimonies, names, and estimated numbers through a census that had been run over in the iron islands. the lioness of lannister had a direct guest list to work through regarding the impact on nobles, a guest list of the banquet in lannisport that had soon resulted in bloodshed and slaughter. the list of noble names in attendance were familiar, though one in particular caused her heart to drop to the pit of her stomach; there was no way to run from the sense of blue that came at the name tarbeck. guinevere saw many a ghost that day, including her own reflection by the end of that night. one thing had become startlingly obvious within the correspondence of the women; there was an obvious discrepancy in numbers. for it seemed as though every family in lannisport had lost a woman or child that night, the numbers creeping devastatingly high; numbers that did not correlate with the figures of the ironborn.
and so, where were the rest?
a laundress spoke to her of whispers, whispers of foreigner raiders being at the docks of lannisport that day, with a ship that bore no flag; though it were not the ironborn, judging by the different accent and the darker features. it seemed most of the common folk swore they were from across the narrow sea, but what would the essosi be doing, loading the most beautiful women into a vessel amidst a sack in the westerlands – the opposite side of the continent? only for those ships to start course in a different direction to those which belonged to the ironborn; she trusted the words of the mothers who screamed to the gods on the harbour docks, as those ships carried away their daughters over the horizon. she knew the sides of the dance of dragons well enough, how they haunted her now more than ever; the essosi, as broad and varied and different as they all were did play somewhat of a part.
a swordsmith spoke to her of a sigil sewed into the tunic of one of the men, a sigil he did not know; a sigil he would not see again as an axe blew across his knees, and he was no longer able to wrestle his daughter from the hands of the iron blooded animals. “chequered, aye, vairy and chequered; black and green. i could hardly forget..”
neither could she.
guinevere paced up and down, her gaze fixed on another piece of parchment she had ripped from the enormous volume sat on the rock she was previously sat on, the water sweeping to the bottom of her chiffon gold skirts, her own lioness pacing a few lengths across the cavern in an iron cage. the volume was old, and dusty, and immense, containing the sigils of all the houses of westeros. chequered, vairy, black and green. emerald green fell on serpent green; the sigil of house blacktyde seemed to stare back at her from the page; the face of gysella blacktyde, sat across from her at a table, floated to the front of her mind. had she been betrayed?
a dark growl caused her to momentarily lift her gaze from the parchment toward the cage, where the lioness seemed to bare golden orbs back into her own; and there was something human staring back at her. how betrayal brought them all tumbling from the top of the world. “call for the serving girls to fetch me parchment and a quill.” guinevere spoke to the guard stood near the steps leading back up in into the rock, closing the distance between herself and her lioness. “and the fastest raven.” for there was an update for the king; a tale of krakens.
Weary coals for eyes burning up at her from where his own flesh has humbled him, laid him low from the strain this transformation has taken on him. His mandible hangs together but by a mere few strands of meat and bone, between the dread maw echoing a rumble that ripples the pooling saliva and blood. His spine arched and broken into a gruesome shape, an arm torn to pieces by the muscles that grew overtop to make it fiercer... his will isn't shattered but it's a close thing, and the results are a preview of what is to come.
Of what he'll become before their hunt is over.
Does she judge him from where she stands above, favored rifle held in steadfast hands? Does she scorn the sight of her companion, as he once did to so many less monstrous than he himself is now?
No, no, the green that greets his gaze is sorrowful, deep wells of sympathy as she shoulders her rifle and kneels aside the half-muzzle of his wretched head. The hands that cradle his face even claw-tipped are kind, and the rumble becomes a keening whine as she makes to carry his pitiful bulk back to her clinic. To put him back together, to tend to the wounds of the flesh as she already has the scars on his mind with her kindness.
