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((The full story from the last photo I posted. Have some heart break. This was written I think in late 2013 ))

I looked her father in the eye and said I would do everything in my power to make her happy.

That seemed to be all he really needed to hear, because he smiled the way fathers do when they know how you feel, because they had said something similar to someone about their own wives, who had one point been girls head over heels in love.

I wasn't lying, and he knew that. He knew a lot of things about me that I hadn't expected him to know, things I'm not even sure if Sin knows. Nothing he brought up was mentioned in relation to her. Nothing prefaced with 'so, Sin tells me...'.

Liam, I know your life hasn't been easy...

Liam, I know what it's like to be stuck in a life you don't want any part of...

Liam, I know how easy it is to get lost along the way...

Liam, I know what it feels like to be desperate about someone...

Liam, it says a lot about you to be where you are, coming from where you did...

And the whole time I could feel my stomach tightening, because he knows, and yet he has no idea. I wasn't lying to him, and he knew that, except that by not telling him the full truth, I was lying.

I only felt the weight of guilt once before in my life. I never really shed it. I've dragged it along behind me and used it to remind me why it is safer to stay distanced from people. You can't hurt if you don't love them, and you can't hurt them if they don't love you.

But I love her. I love her, and she loves me. Her family invited me into their house to celebrate the holiday. I sat at a table full of loud people so unabashedly in love with themselves and with each other that I couldn't help but love them, too. I smiled, but I had never felt so out of place anywhere before. I think she knew that because her hand slipped under the table to rest on my knee and she kept squeezing it and giving me a reassuring smile. I couldn't have said I need that reassurance if I'd had to, but I didn't have to. She knew.

I only had one happy memory from Wintersday. I was nine. I got a pair of shoes that no one else had ever worn before, and they were actually my size.

This year a man I had only met once before, on a professional level, shared stories of his family, his favorite whiskey and his best cigars with me. A boisterous mother hugged me more times than I can count, and slapped my ass once, much to the dismay of her daughters. A nephew sat on my lap and marvelled at the color of my skin, and asked if I spent too much time in the sun. I found the watchful eye of an overprotective brother trained on me every time I looked over, and though he never once smiled at me the entire day, he shook my hand when I took his sister home...

You sat in my lap in the quiet of your little living room with the sun barely filtering over the horizon, and you knew. It had been a good day, but my heart was heavy and with such tenderness in your voice you asked me what was wrong.

I don’t know, I said, and it was a lie. They’re a little overwhelming, you laughed. I laughed, too, because it’s true, but I told you no, they are great. You are great.

I don’t know how I’m going to keep lying to you, only that I have to. I have to lie to you to keep you safe. I have to be two different people not only to keep my ship and myself and my crew out of harm, but to protect you. I don’t want to see the look in your father’s eye when he finds out I’ve betrayed the trust he put in me when I assured him I would never do anything to hurt you. I don’t want you to ever know what it feels like to hurt so badly that you can’t breathe, that you can’t stand up because your knees are too weak to hold your weight, and to be unable to cry because there aren’t tears enough for that kind of pain.

You stood on the dock and you kissed me and I told you I’d see you in a few days. My crew spoke not a word, except for my Stormsinger. She tossed you a smile and a wave and a few friendly farewells, and as we pulled out of the harbor she turned her back to the shore, to you, and she looked up at me and she asked:

What is wrong with you?

I don’t know, I said. I closed the cabin door in her face and locked it behind me so I could sit alone at my desk. She is my best friend, but there are ghosts between us that neither of us dare speak of. It is easier to look at her through the haze of unspoken truth. It is easier to live with a veil pulled over memory because I know that if she told me everything I would try to kill her, and she would electrocute me or fill my lungs with water. I know there are things in our collective history that would hurt us both if they came to the light, and though there is a disconnect between us, she is all I have had for years, and she is all I will have when I can’t hide this from you anymore.

On the Mesmerizer, I am Liam Gale. On the Wraith, I am someone else. The sea is the closest thing I had ever felt to being at home before I met you. She welcomed me with an emptiness so infinite she made my own feel small. She filled up the nothing spaces in me with sunlight and saltwater and made me feel warm. I didn’t know what warm was until you whispered in my ear that you loved me.

No one had ever told me they loved me before.

You knew nothing about me. You still know only a handful of things, but you love me. I know you mean it. You love what I show you, and what I show you is real. It’s just that there is so much more that I have never shown to anyone and I don’t think I can.

There is this part of me that is only calm when I am destroying. There is this part of me that is merciless and angry and vengeful. There is this part of me that is unflinching and unfeeling. I put on this mask and I am someone else. I stand upon my deck with the wind snapping the sails and cannonfire echoing across the water. I board a ship that isn’t mine and I take what I want from it. I set it on fire and watch it float away.

And as the smoke rises into the sky at my back, and the sea curtsies and sways at my hull, I am connected to something. I am, for a moment, a little boy again looking up at my father as he stands tall and dark behind his wheel, and Lu is singing and when her pale hair snaps behind her I remember the side of my mother’s face and the sound of her voice.

“Captain. A ship ahead. They’ve run up their warning flag. Should we stay back, or flank?”

Any other time we would attack a ship for having the tenacity to warn us, but this ship is different. Through the spyglass I see the mark of your parents, Wheaton Shipping & Transport, and shake my head.

“Run up on them, round to starboard side. Just close enough that they can feel my wind,” I tell my crew. “Keep the cannons stowed.”

My Banshee sings louder and the wind pushes us fast toward the other ship. I take the flag down half so they know we are watching, but we mean no harm. We skim past them, a ship meant to haul mercantiles, not weaponry; the crew lines the starboard side, each man and woman bearing a gun or a spyglass. I stand on the edge of my ship, hanging with one hand in the ropes and I gesture toward the sea so they know she is theirs.

It is a gesture that gets no thanks from the other Captain, but that isn’t why I do it. It is my gift to you. I can keep your family’s fortune safe, even if I can’t protect your heart.

“We do not take any ships bearing any mark of the Wheaton family,” I tell my crew. “And we kill anyone else that tries.”

It is the only safety I can guarantee.

#lost in a fog bank #the wheatons #sin #writing

Did 3rd photo shoot w/ @pixievision for my 2015 calendar for @PHS_SPCA w/ my space Mom-In-Law, @gates_mcfadden today! pic.twitter.com/cdpYMsdPGN

— Anne Wheaton (@AnneWheaton) April 25, 2014

Wil calls her 'Space Mom', she calls him 'Space Son', Anne calls her 'Space Mom-in-Law'. These people are too adorable for words.

#The Crushers #Gates McFadden #TNG #The Wheatons

I've said it before...but I fucking love the Wheatons.

#wil wheaton #the wheatons