(no subject)
He gives her something to eat because her face is dirty but still beautiful and because she looks hungry and haunted and it just goes downhill from there.
Cara doesn't sleep with him, because she never goes with anyone she has to see more than once every six months. And she never closes her eyes. Because that's dangerous. That's a tip from Cass, who had been a whore for longer than her, because her lover died
Cara never had a lover. Cara goes to sit by herself when she can to stare at the water and try to remember what happened before her father threw her overboard tied to a crate. Cutting off her long, pretty hair was hard to do, but she has to convince herself it was worth it because at least on the ship she's treated like useful shit, rather than just pretty shit, for decoration.
And there's this man, with red hair and green eyes that treats her like...something that's not shit at all, and she doesn't know why or how, but she likes the way he grins and never tells anyone her secret.
The other sailors talk about him. He's one of the younger ones, and has good teeth and few scars. Mercer, Owain Mercer, they say. He was on Morgan's ship, they say. He's got the look of one made hungry, they say, made hungry enough to never stop looking for something that fills him halfway up.
He treats her like she's a princess sometimes, and like she matters other times, and it's so different that it's hard to believe that he's real sometimes. He walks on the edges of the ship's railing after his work is done, singing to himself, and he can hold his liquor better than anyone else on the ship.
It's hard not to trust him, but it's hard to let him close, because all she knows about closeness is fucking and bruises and trying not to get cut up on her face too bad. So she starts sleeping with the youngest crew member, because why not? He's like her, in a way, and as long as she keeps spreading her legs he'll keep his mouth shut about what's between them.
"You're a fool, Vorne," she tells him, in the darkness, where she can feel his eyes staring at her like glowing teeth in the light from the moon.
"Move your legs," he says.
He's got black hair and dark eyes and he's smart enough to keep his mouth shut. But she can't help but wonder about the other man, the one who looks at her with a combination of sympathy and something else, but not pity. Never pity.
The waves rock the ship, and when she glances at the water she sees her face twist. She wants, she wonders, but there's nothing looking up at her from the water worth dredging up for him. She nearly falls in, trying to walk on the rails when almost everyone else sleeps, and she climbs the rigging to feel the wind go through her short hair. He finds her up there one morning, staring at a point next to the sun, and helps her down.
"You'll catch your death," he says, that grin at the tips of his mouth, "and this is the last place a lady such as yourself should be dying."
So she hits him, but not hard, and curses a blue fog. He raises an eyebrow and says that she shouldn't dirty her mouth with sailor talk.
"Sailor cock, then?" she asks, setting her hands on her hips and sticking her bright pink tongue out at him
"Better shut that away," he says, shielding his eyes from the rising sun, "before something eats it."
She sighs, tosses her cropped head, and flounces off as best she can in breeches. She avoids him until the sun goes down, when he shows her the Southern Cross.
"Taking a liking to the boy, have you?" says Vorne to him one evening, and the difference is that one is in her bed and one is not.
"I'm supposing," the other says, and grins his grin, and has the other man by the collar and against a wall within seconds. "I can suppose other things."
Cara doesn't know why they start treating her differently, later, why the bruises on her hip swell and spread over her stomach and between her legs and why his grin gets so flat when he sees the boy with dark hair
One day he takes her by the hip to swing her to the crow's neck and doesn't miss the small wince and noise, even though she's good at being discreet. She fell, she says, and cracked her hip, but she won't let him see, even when he swears up and down the fishwife who raised him taught him how to mend a bruise in a day.
She won't let him see, but he places a hand gently on her waist and feels blindly, but gently, until she does cry out, and his gaze darkens. "You fell," he says.
"It was a hard fall," she replies, and looks him straight in the eye. She's not half the liar she thinks, or she doesn't care if he knows.
"A hard fall indeed," he says. Vorne comes to the crew's stew that night with his mouth bleeding and bruises down his cheek. When asked, he says he fell. That night she waits in the powder room, but he doesn't come that night or the next, and she knows enough not to talk to him, but not enough to be glad he didn't come. She expects bruises; it's the kindness that makes her flinch.
-------
They hit land to get food and whores one night at a pirate's town, filled with whores and desperates, and it's all too familiar for both of them.
He takes her to a pub, one with a brothel upstairs as is often the case, and the music and fun is lively enough. Ever drank before? he asks.
No, she says, yes. You?
Can't live without it, he says, and orders a beer for the "lad".
She kicks him gently - and out of the corner of her eye she sees a girl draped across a man's lap, laughing a bright, hard laugh she knows too well. Blonde hair, long, and she starts to turn away - that's not her, anymore, she's no one's toy.
------
She doesn't tell him where she goes, when she slips off her stool and takes the girl's hand - but comes back later, quieter.
He watches her come back, and doesn't ask, but is close enough to shield her view from the rest of the place.
She can't hold her liquor half as well, as the night drags on and the blonde girl doesn't come back to sit in anyone's lap.
She can't sing, either, and she proves it loudly.
Dawn's coming up over the edge of the horizon as he has one arm underneath hers, and indulges her by singing with her, and they make an unlikely duo .
You, she slurs, you are fanthasthic. Jusht - fanthasthic, and then she throws up in the street, next to a few other people doing the same. He puts his hand on her forehead to hold back hair she doesn't have .
And he slings her over his shoulders, piggy back ride style, and tells her to hold on and to not toss down his back because that would be unfortunate and he's only got this shirt decently clean, and he tells her pleasantly that she needs to work on keeping her liquor.
She cuddles up against his back drowsily and curses. Doan - doan fuck me, while 'm shleeping, kill you, she threatens.
Wouldn't dream of it, he says. Well, alright, that's a lie, but there'll be none of that.
'Kay, she says, in a sleepy-little-girl voice, and passes out on his back. She's much more vulnerable looking when she's unconscious, with a string of spit hanging off her bottom lip
By the time he gets back to the ship, the other men laugh at him, and at her sleeping on his back. The boy have too much? Can't hold his liquor, eh? Leave 'em alone, the kid's obviously daft. Knocked in the head, that one.
He carries her to her cot and smooths back the hair she still has from her face.
The hangover the next day is as pretty as the ribbing she gets from the crew, and she gives him a sharp, wary look when she sees him.
Do you owe me money, she asks.
No, he tells her, but I owe you this, and gives her a bottle with surprisingly clear liquid in it. Well water.
She takes it without saying thank you and stalks off past a knot of men who fake sleep as she passes, and she lifts her head only once to glare at them.
She finds a patch of shadow and sips the water, then chugs it. It's no where near cold, but it's fresh and nearly washes the taste of Cass mouth from her mind
He finds her later in the day, hat laid low over his eyes, and stretches out beside her on the deck. So, he says.
So, she snaps, peevishly, head pounding
He looks at her quietly. So, he says, what's her name?
Her name is Cassandra, she says, and looks away, jaw set.
I see, he says, and then, did she need the money.
Cass never needed the money, she says, crossing her arms, she needed a crack across the jaw.
Even better, he says, and smiles at her, and this is a smile, not a grin.
I kissed her, she says, not smiling at all, I suppose I wanted to know why she had so many devoted customers. She didn't know it was me, she adds softly.
He looks at her, and plucks his hat on her head. There are better things to be doing, he says, softly, than moping and not doing your chores.
She should have known, she says, touching the brim of the hat.
Yes, lad, he says, his hair sticking straight up in the back, you should have. And because he is prone to idiocy at times he leans forward and kisses her forehead under the brim of the hat before he leaves.
She keeps the hat, and won't give it back, no matter how nicely he might ask.
-------
The next day, there is a storm.
It's a bad one. Her hands shake, and not all of the salt on her face starts as spray, but she's fast and sure and stronger than she looks. She bumps into him on deck, running to tie down something else - always something to tie and make fast, sliding across the deck trailing sheets of water.
Fancy meeting you here, he calls to her over the wind, and then there's no time to think anymore because a wave comes over the deck that washes under their feet and he grabs her waist so as not for both of them to slip. As it is, both of them slide to the side, hitting the railing rather hard.
She screams, breaking the low pitched voice she'd worked so hard to perfect, and her hands dig into his shoulders like claws.
He hisses in pain at that, but no one cares enough to look and he wraps that arm tighter around her. He'd tell her to hush, but it's no use. Another wave slams onto the deck and he grabs onto the railing with his other hand.
She nearly sobs, but her hand flings out the side to take hold of the railing herself and locks in place, splinters digging into her palm. Don't let me drown don't let me drown oh God don't let me drown, she chants.
No one is going to drown, he says through clenched teeth. Another wave crashes over them. His eyes sting from the salt. Not while I'm here.
She buries her face in his chest, eyes screwing shut, and the water won't stop crashing down and trying to suck them off, and she's so small and slight and easy to tug one way or another. But her arm is strong, wound with muscle she never had before, and she has an anchor besides.
You're not going anywhere, he says into her ear, locking them firmly in place. The waves crash and burn, but slowly begin to lose their harshness.
I know, she says back, barely loud enough to be heard over the waves even as they fade, and she pushes back enough to remind him that there's a ship to ride the storm out on, and a crew manning it. A crew that doesn't care to stare, but sees all the same.
And he reminds her that they already believe he prefers those who have the same equipment of he, and they don't much care. You don't care, out on the sea, and you don't care who goes to which brothel. Or who you take attention to on your ship, if you keep it to yourself.
Ship, she says, we have to tend the ship. Let go.
First, he says, clutching her fingers, first tell me you'll be alright.
She stares, and lies as well as she always has, placing her hand over his fingers. I'll be all right. First storm, that's all.
He squints, eyes still burning with salt, and kisses her fingers fast and hard. Go, then, he says, and spits out saltwater to the side of her.
Gone, she says, and scrambles away, hand in a fist near her chest. Her head twitches once, as if she might look back, but doesn't. The splinters in her hand stings less than the kiss.
----
The night after the storm, something alive hits the side of the boat and is pulled up, because Mercer's on duty, and he manages to get Verne to care enough to throw a rope over the side and haul the figure up.
A girl.
The girl is haunted.
The entire ship can feel it, and the men murmur with disgust and interest. Her eyes are almost sunken into her head: she's gaunt, deathly thin, and wavers like a doll, with long black hair falling down her back in curls flattened by seawater. Cara ran to the deck at the single mention of girl.
Bad luck to have women aboard, is the unsaid, but no one will say it.
The girl has a pirate's brooch around her neck, wrapped tightly against her breasts, what little is there.
Je veux ma mère, she whispers, shaking and pale, grabbing the side of the ship, looking as if she wants to jump off.
Votre mère n'est pas ici, Mercer says, gently brushing her hair out of her face. No one knows when he got there, but he is, and he has a bottle with him. Ne sautez pas, si vous plait.
The girl's eyes open at him with a shock, the pupils swallowed in lovely brown eyes, and she slowly begins to swallow the water that he's given her from his bottle.
Carolina's stomach swims with something bitter.
Cara doesn't sleep with him, because she never goes with anyone she has to see more than once every six months. And she never closes her eyes. Because that's dangerous. That's a tip from Cass, who had been a whore for longer than her, because her lover died
Cara never had a lover. Cara goes to sit by herself when she can to stare at the water and try to remember what happened before her father threw her overboard tied to a crate. Cutting off her long, pretty hair was hard to do, but she has to convince herself it was worth it because at least on the ship she's treated like useful shit, rather than just pretty shit, for decoration.
And there's this man, with red hair and green eyes that treats her like...something that's not shit at all, and she doesn't know why or how, but she likes the way he grins and never tells anyone her secret.
The other sailors talk about him. He's one of the younger ones, and has good teeth and few scars. Mercer, Owain Mercer, they say. He was on Morgan's ship, they say. He's got the look of one made hungry, they say, made hungry enough to never stop looking for something that fills him halfway up.
He treats her like she's a princess sometimes, and like she matters other times, and it's so different that it's hard to believe that he's real sometimes. He walks on the edges of the ship's railing after his work is done, singing to himself, and he can hold his liquor better than anyone else on the ship.
It's hard not to trust him, but it's hard to let him close, because all she knows about closeness is fucking and bruises and trying not to get cut up on her face too bad. So she starts sleeping with the youngest crew member, because why not? He's like her, in a way, and as long as she keeps spreading her legs he'll keep his mouth shut about what's between them.
"You're a fool, Vorne," she tells him, in the darkness, where she can feel his eyes staring at her like glowing teeth in the light from the moon.
"Move your legs," he says.
He's got black hair and dark eyes and he's smart enough to keep his mouth shut. But she can't help but wonder about the other man, the one who looks at her with a combination of sympathy and something else, but not pity. Never pity.
The waves rock the ship, and when she glances at the water she sees her face twist. She wants, she wonders, but there's nothing looking up at her from the water worth dredging up for him. She nearly falls in, trying to walk on the rails when almost everyone else sleeps, and she climbs the rigging to feel the wind go through her short hair. He finds her up there one morning, staring at a point next to the sun, and helps her down.
"You'll catch your death," he says, that grin at the tips of his mouth, "and this is the last place a lady such as yourself should be dying."
So she hits him, but not hard, and curses a blue fog. He raises an eyebrow and says that she shouldn't dirty her mouth with sailor talk.
"Sailor cock, then?" she asks, setting her hands on her hips and sticking her bright pink tongue out at him
"Better shut that away," he says, shielding his eyes from the rising sun, "before something eats it."
She sighs, tosses her cropped head, and flounces off as best she can in breeches. She avoids him until the sun goes down, when he shows her the Southern Cross.
"Taking a liking to the boy, have you?" says Vorne to him one evening, and the difference is that one is in her bed and one is not.
"I'm supposing," the other says, and grins his grin, and has the other man by the collar and against a wall within seconds. "I can suppose other things."
Cara doesn't know why they start treating her differently, later, why the bruises on her hip swell and spread over her stomach and between her legs and why his grin gets so flat when he sees the boy with dark hair
One day he takes her by the hip to swing her to the crow's neck and doesn't miss the small wince and noise, even though she's good at being discreet. She fell, she says, and cracked her hip, but she won't let him see, even when he swears up and down the fishwife who raised him taught him how to mend a bruise in a day.
She won't let him see, but he places a hand gently on her waist and feels blindly, but gently, until she does cry out, and his gaze darkens. "You fell," he says.
"It was a hard fall," she replies, and looks him straight in the eye. She's not half the liar she thinks, or she doesn't care if he knows.
"A hard fall indeed," he says. Vorne comes to the crew's stew that night with his mouth bleeding and bruises down his cheek. When asked, he says he fell. That night she waits in the powder room, but he doesn't come that night or the next, and she knows enough not to talk to him, but not enough to be glad he didn't come. She expects bruises; it's the kindness that makes her flinch.
-------
They hit land to get food and whores one night at a pirate's town, filled with whores and desperates, and it's all too familiar for both of them.
He takes her to a pub, one with a brothel upstairs as is often the case, and the music and fun is lively enough. Ever drank before? he asks.
No, she says, yes. You?
Can't live without it, he says, and orders a beer for the "lad".
She kicks him gently - and out of the corner of her eye she sees a girl draped across a man's lap, laughing a bright, hard laugh she knows too well. Blonde hair, long, and she starts to turn away - that's not her, anymore, she's no one's toy.
------
She doesn't tell him where she goes, when she slips off her stool and takes the girl's hand - but comes back later, quieter.
He watches her come back, and doesn't ask, but is close enough to shield her view from the rest of the place.
She can't hold her liquor half as well, as the night drags on and the blonde girl doesn't come back to sit in anyone's lap.
She can't sing, either, and she proves it loudly.
Dawn's coming up over the edge of the horizon as he has one arm underneath hers, and indulges her by singing with her, and they make an unlikely duo .
You, she slurs, you are fanthasthic. Jusht - fanthasthic, and then she throws up in the street, next to a few other people doing the same. He puts his hand on her forehead to hold back hair she doesn't have .
And he slings her over his shoulders, piggy back ride style, and tells her to hold on and to not toss down his back because that would be unfortunate and he's only got this shirt decently clean, and he tells her pleasantly that she needs to work on keeping her liquor.
She cuddles up against his back drowsily and curses. Doan - doan fuck me, while 'm shleeping, kill you, she threatens.
Wouldn't dream of it, he says. Well, alright, that's a lie, but there'll be none of that.
'Kay, she says, in a sleepy-little-girl voice, and passes out on his back. She's much more vulnerable looking when she's unconscious, with a string of spit hanging off her bottom lip
By the time he gets back to the ship, the other men laugh at him, and at her sleeping on his back. The boy have too much? Can't hold his liquor, eh? Leave 'em alone, the kid's obviously daft. Knocked in the head, that one.
He carries her to her cot and smooths back the hair she still has from her face.
The hangover the next day is as pretty as the ribbing she gets from the crew, and she gives him a sharp, wary look when she sees him.
Do you owe me money, she asks.
No, he tells her, but I owe you this, and gives her a bottle with surprisingly clear liquid in it. Well water.
She takes it without saying thank you and stalks off past a knot of men who fake sleep as she passes, and she lifts her head only once to glare at them.
She finds a patch of shadow and sips the water, then chugs it. It's no where near cold, but it's fresh and nearly washes the taste of Cass mouth from her mind
He finds her later in the day, hat laid low over his eyes, and stretches out beside her on the deck. So, he says.
So, she snaps, peevishly, head pounding
He looks at her quietly. So, he says, what's her name?
Her name is Cassandra, she says, and looks away, jaw set.
I see, he says, and then, did she need the money.
Cass never needed the money, she says, crossing her arms, she needed a crack across the jaw.
Even better, he says, and smiles at her, and this is a smile, not a grin.
I kissed her, she says, not smiling at all, I suppose I wanted to know why she had so many devoted customers. She didn't know it was me, she adds softly.
He looks at her, and plucks his hat on her head. There are better things to be doing, he says, softly, than moping and not doing your chores.
She should have known, she says, touching the brim of the hat.
Yes, lad, he says, his hair sticking straight up in the back, you should have. And because he is prone to idiocy at times he leans forward and kisses her forehead under the brim of the hat before he leaves.
She keeps the hat, and won't give it back, no matter how nicely he might ask.
-------
The next day, there is a storm.
It's a bad one. Her hands shake, and not all of the salt on her face starts as spray, but she's fast and sure and stronger than she looks. She bumps into him on deck, running to tie down something else - always something to tie and make fast, sliding across the deck trailing sheets of water.
Fancy meeting you here, he calls to her over the wind, and then there's no time to think anymore because a wave comes over the deck that washes under their feet and he grabs her waist so as not for both of them to slip. As it is, both of them slide to the side, hitting the railing rather hard.
She screams, breaking the low pitched voice she'd worked so hard to perfect, and her hands dig into his shoulders like claws.
He hisses in pain at that, but no one cares enough to look and he wraps that arm tighter around her. He'd tell her to hush, but it's no use. Another wave slams onto the deck and he grabs onto the railing with his other hand.
She nearly sobs, but her hand flings out the side to take hold of the railing herself and locks in place, splinters digging into her palm. Don't let me drown don't let me drown oh God don't let me drown, she chants.
No one is going to drown, he says through clenched teeth. Another wave crashes over them. His eyes sting from the salt. Not while I'm here.
She buries her face in his chest, eyes screwing shut, and the water won't stop crashing down and trying to suck them off, and she's so small and slight and easy to tug one way or another. But her arm is strong, wound with muscle she never had before, and she has an anchor besides.
You're not going anywhere, he says into her ear, locking them firmly in place. The waves crash and burn, but slowly begin to lose their harshness.
I know, she says back, barely loud enough to be heard over the waves even as they fade, and she pushes back enough to remind him that there's a ship to ride the storm out on, and a crew manning it. A crew that doesn't care to stare, but sees all the same.
And he reminds her that they already believe he prefers those who have the same equipment of he, and they don't much care. You don't care, out on the sea, and you don't care who goes to which brothel. Or who you take attention to on your ship, if you keep it to yourself.
Ship, she says, we have to tend the ship. Let go.
First, he says, clutching her fingers, first tell me you'll be alright.
She stares, and lies as well as she always has, placing her hand over his fingers. I'll be all right. First storm, that's all.
He squints, eyes still burning with salt, and kisses her fingers fast and hard. Go, then, he says, and spits out saltwater to the side of her.
Gone, she says, and scrambles away, hand in a fist near her chest. Her head twitches once, as if she might look back, but doesn't. The splinters in her hand stings less than the kiss.
----
The night after the storm, something alive hits the side of the boat and is pulled up, because Mercer's on duty, and he manages to get Verne to care enough to throw a rope over the side and haul the figure up.
A girl.
The girl is haunted.
The entire ship can feel it, and the men murmur with disgust and interest. Her eyes are almost sunken into her head: she's gaunt, deathly thin, and wavers like a doll, with long black hair falling down her back in curls flattened by seawater. Cara ran to the deck at the single mention of girl.
Bad luck to have women aboard, is the unsaid, but no one will say it.
The girl has a pirate's brooch around her neck, wrapped tightly against her breasts, what little is there.
Je veux ma mère, she whispers, shaking and pale, grabbing the side of the ship, looking as if she wants to jump off.
Votre mère n'est pas ici, Mercer says, gently brushing her hair out of her face. No one knows when he got there, but he is, and he has a bottle with him. Ne sautez pas, si vous plait.
The girl's eyes open at him with a shock, the pupils swallowed in lovely brown eyes, and she slowly begins to swallow the water that he's given her from his bottle.
Carolina's stomach swims with something bitter.