The Three Musketeers [FanFiction]
Title: The Three Musketeers
Author: Tooks
Pairing: Reid/Ethan/Lil Foyet(friendship), Barbossa, Pintel & Ragetti
Rating: FRT
Summary: When best friends Spencer Reid, Ethan Bellamy, and Lil Foyet work together to get one over on a patron at a Tortuga tavern they all get more than they bargained for.
Notes: Right, so this is the first piece of the Criminal Minds/Pirates of the Caribbean crossover AU I'm calling "Between The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea", but this piece specifically takes place well before the first Pirates movie with Spencer Reid and his friend, Ethan, being children...you could consider it an overall prologue, as it were, haha! I took some of the background given to Barbossa in the books based on PoTC to use to my own advantage. There's some scariness, a bit of violence, and talk of a dark and slightly adult nature throughout all involving children. Beta'd by pink_siamese cause she's awesome to me, haha! :D (And, yes, Lil did work her way into this AU as well cause she's that badass, haha!)
Little Spencer Reid was a scrawny boy of eight with greasy hair that fell into his eyes as he spun his head this way and that making sure no one was watching too closely. This was his job in the crew, given to him by Ethan who promised it was the least dangerous one there was. So far that had held true. This stuff always made the boy nervous nevertheless, but they were starving and without money to pay so what choice did they have? That and the other two stressed that it wasn’t exactly stealing, per say, if the person was too drunk or otherwise busy to take care in keeping an eye on their goods.
Ethan snapped up some bread and rum from the sailors in the tavern who were too busy with their company for the night before he saw the jackpot. Set beside the dark boots of an imposing man was a basket containing apples. Good apples, ones ripe and ready for eating. The temptation was too much, but Ethan wasn’t about to just grab and dash…he was smart, he always examined, staked out, a target first.
This target, the man with the bushel of fresh apples, was imposing even while sitting. A large hat kept much of his face in the shadows, but Ethan could see a bushy beard and long, dark, auburn hair held back loosely with a strip of leather. He was significantly older and it looked like the years at sea had already begun to ravage the man leaving scars and sunspots about the face and body. Still, he was a finely dressed man and wealthy enough to keep the monkey on his shoulder dressed better than most those Ethan saw on the island itself.
The teen boy slipped past the man onto where his other crewmember, Lil, leaned by a post keeping watch as well. She turned her face to him and arches a brow. “Well?”
“I need ya,” Ethan said simply before drawing the young girl’s gaze to the man with the apples.
“On it faster than he’ll be on me,” she teased a touch before giving Ethan a kiss to the cheek and heading over to the man and his monkey.
Like the boys Lil had grown on the island of Tortuga the child of a pirate and a woman…in her case a whore already dead at the hands of a jealous lover. Whether from guilt or just plain pity the madam allowed the small girl to live in the brothel even after her mother’s murder. So Lil was raised in brothels and even at ten capable of working seduction skills enough to catch the eyes of drunken sailors and distract them for Ethan to steal.
That was how it all worked. Little Spencer kept a sharp eye, she a tempting manner, and Ethan a fast hand. They’d done this all long enough to avoid capture when working together and, for Ethan and Lil, to have no real fear in it. Only Spencer held the fear, just as only he held the knowledge of the immorality of the behavior.
Ethan watched as Lil sauntered over to the man, shifted herself into his eye-line, and held his gaze with stormy eyes and teasingly quirked lips. There was always something strange about Lil; how she carried herself, demanded and got attention from all those around her. She was a force and even at twelve Ethan knew she’d only become more so as she developed into a woman. It was as frightening as it was exhilarating.
The young man’s gaze then trailed to his frail runt of a friend still loyally keeping lookout for all of them. Spencer was the virtual opposite. Small, meek, and ever unsure in his steps the eight-year-old was more of a comfort to Ethan than anything exciting. Spencer kept him and Lil anchored to their abilities, stabilized in their emotions, and reigned in from their impulses. Altogether Ethan imagined they were a complete person - heart, mind, and guts - and without the other two he wasn’t sure any would truly survive.
Ethan turned back to the target with his monkey and waited until he got the signal from Lil (a thrumming of fingers on the wooden table) before he tucked his frame in the shadows of swinging lanterns and jostling bodies to snap up the booty. He stuffed a small bag kept on his hip with apples before grabbing one more in hand. He moved out in the next rowdy crowd that passed and headed towards Spencer with a grin, showing off the apple in his hand.
The monkey’s shriek came first, then a string of curses from its owner and a shot from a gun.
“RUN!!” Lil screamed to her boys as she grabbed a knife up off the table and slashed at the target.
The man cursed, struck out, and knocked the girl to the floor.
“Ethan?” young Spencer’s eyes became saucers as his older friend started a full dash to him.
“Run!” Ethan grabbed Spencer’s arm and the two boys began to move as fast as their legs could carry them out into the crowd that was the streets of Tortuga.
Spencer could barely keep up, tripping over his own legs and those of others. “Ethan, what…” he couldn’t get the words out as his friend began to virtually drag him. “Ethan…Lil…” What had become of their third party? Had the man gotten her? Was she okay?
Ethan took a sharp turn, grabbing hold of a fruit cart and pulling it down as he did. The curses from the vendor followed them, but what was more important was that sounds of a scuffle did as well. The man with the monkey was now busy arguing with the vendor.
At the second shot heard young Reid let out a squeak of nerves. He wanted to eat, yes, but not get shot in the process. The fact that Ethan only seemed to enjoy this, the danger of the chase, just made him more nervous. “Ethan…Ethan, maybe we should, uh, just give the apples back and…beg pardon?”
The older boy pulled the younger into an alleyway and dropped his voice low. “Men who shoot first and ask later don’t pardon, Spencer.”
“Wha-what about Lil, Ethan?”
The older boy almost smiled. “Lil can care for herself, Spencer, you know that.”
“But -“
“I think he’s a pirate,” Ethan’s adrenaline had already forced a switch of topics.
“A proper one?” As opposed to those lowlifes who boasted without ever making good that littered Tortuga in greater numbers than the whores.
Ethan nodded. “The only way we get out of this is to run, hide, or try and parley.”
“But…we’re not pirates.”
“Not yet,” the older boy smirked some.
Both boys had parentage in piracy, but only the elder wanted to carry on the legacy. Spencer Reid saw his father’s piracy as a form of abandonment; William Reid preferred theft on the high seas to his family and the youth had no interest in becoming like him. Spencer aimed to use his intelligence for good, to help others, and never to bring misfortune. The truth was he wasn’t comfortable stealing, or even keeping watch over Ethan and Lil when they did, but there weren’t many options being the only son of the Mad Woman of Tortuga.
Ethan felt differently; the bastard son of pirate legend “Black Sam” Bellamy he wanted nothing more than to share in the life. He adored the stories he heard from the sailors, Navy and pirate alike, and hoped someday there’d be stories told about him. Being a pirate sounded thrilling and he could never understand how his friend saw it differently. While he had a set of morals, it was already skewed towards piracy. Young Bellamy did what he had to in order to survive, to thrive, and had ease about him when it came to the underhanded and devious.
Spencer sighed some. “Can’t we just hide then? I can’t keep running like this.” He hadn’t the physicality of Ethan.
“Fine, you hide,” Ethan pulled out a few of the apples and stuffed them into his friend’s pockets. “Keep these with you.”
“Where are you going?”
“We should spilt up anyway,” Ethan replied simply. The truth was Ethan sort of still wanted to continue the chase though. Hiding wasn’t his style except as a last resort.
Spencer frowned, “Oh. Okay.”
“Just…stay in the shadows and tuck yourself behind the pigs outside The Faithful Bride, okay?” It was where they usually met up at the end of the night if they didn’t spend all the hours of the day and evening together.
“Aye.”
Ethan smiled. “Don’t worry, I’ll find you. You and Lil.”
Spencer just nodded then watched as his friend dashed off out the other end of the alley. The small boy stayed hidden where he was for sometime before he began to take back routes to the pigsty, searching for their Lil as he did.
***
Ethan took a few more sharp turns and random routes before he realized there was no one chasing him anymore. The young man let out a sigh that bordered on disappointment as he looked at the apple that, miraculously, had remained in his hand. He took a bite, savoring the juice that exploded into his mouth with the piercing of its skin before swallowing it down. The chase was over, time to enjoy the spoils. Ethan set his teeth into the apple again as he began to head out towards the water’s edge.
He was half through the last alley and his apple when a dark figure appeared, blocking his way. Perched on the figure was the outline of a monkey that screeched at him angrily. Ethan froze a moment before he stepped back and turned on his heel to make another run for it. No dice this time as two others blocked his way. A tall, thin, fellow partnered with a stout one who held his pistol out and at the ready to fire.
“It’d be unwise to make yer run, boy,” the monkey-man remarked just on the edge of amused.
Ethan spun back. “Parley!”
“Parley?” one of the two groaned behind him.
The man before Ethan just laughed some as he began an unhurried approach to the teen. “Ye got no right to parley lest ye be a pirate, boy.”
“Well, I am,” Ethan insisted stubbornly to the man he now realized was the leader of the crew. The moonlight caught blackened blood on the man’s face from Lil’s knife and Ethan stepped back with shaken nerves. “By birth, anyhow.”
“’Ow’s that?” the skinny one spoke up almost curiously.
Ethan’s back hit the stones of a building as the three pirates closed in. “My father is Black Sam Bellamy, surely you’ve heard of him.”
The three men and one monkey looked at one another seeming to debate the lad’s truthfulness and their next step before the leader gave a cackle. “Right then boy, I’ll give ya the privilege of parley. Now what’s it ye need to say?”
“I’d like to say it to the captain.”
“I be him,” the man replied simply as his monkey grinned. “Captain Barbossa of the Cobra. Now…” Barbossa closed in on the thieving boy, made the oozing blood on his face something Ethan’s eyes couldn’t avoid as he brought a pistol up under the boy’s chin. “Speak!”
Ethan shook under the hot, rageful, breath of the pirate captain, but spoke nevertheless. “I wanna join your crew.” It was the one thing he could think of that might prevent his death and finally get him what he always wanted…a chance to be a real pirate.
The two men to his right seemed stunned, the monkey ticked its head in utter confusion, and Barbossa simply leaned back a touch to appraise the bold youth. “How old are ye, lad?”
“Thirteen, sir. Captain. And I’m still growing.” In truth, from malnutrition and general poor living conditions, the twelve-year-old Ethan hadn’t even truly started growing. “I know plenty about ships and I learn fast. I’d make a good member of your crew. A loyal one too.”
Barbossa considered the offer in silence as he continued his appraisal. True, the lad was slight in build, but being on the cusp of puberty and given enough food he had plenty of room to grow. Ethan’s fast hands and quick thinking could certainly be of benefit as well. “Ye ever worked a sword or pistol?”
“No, Captain,” Ethan confessed with a touch of shame. “But I’ve fought by hand, with small blades, and won more than once. More than I’ve lost.”
The monkey gave Ethan a smile that announced Barbossa’s decision before the man did. “Ye owe me payment for my apples and for the handy work of that lil’ lass o’ yers. You’ll work it off on my ship.”
“Yes sir.” Then Ethan looked to the other two pirates before his eyes went to the bloody gash of the captain’s. “The…the girl…”
“Yers, yes?” Barbossa smirked some.
The boy avoided the question, worried what an answer could bring to Lil. “She alive?”
The monkey heaved out the squeals of a laugh with the men. “She were when I left her,” Barbossa grinned out. The man hadn’t the time to trouble with the girl much beyond the slap.
“Now, ye pay off yer debts…” Barbossa gave a wicked smile, “and we’ll see if ye ‘ave what it takes to be a true pirate after that.”
“Aye Captain,” Ethan smiled back, not seeing the evil glint of Barbossa’s eyes through his own excitement. “I’ll do ye proud, I swear it.”
***
Lil rolled herself under a table after the hit, playing possum until the coast was clear. The bar now emptied of her troubles the girl picked herself up off the floor and began to examine her state. Her straw-colored hair was more wild than usual, her hands red with pirate’s blood, and her cheek still stinging but otherwise she was fine. She’d live to fight another day without troubles or worry.
After wiping her hands on the cloth bits that were her dress the girl grabbed an unattended bottle of run from a table and a lost apple off the floor before heading out of the tavern as she drank and ate. Whatever the boys might think, this was a victorious night in Lil’s book.
The girl wandered for a bit, adjusting her posture to appear her most non-threatening and uninteresting in hunched shoulders and hung head. She swung the bottle back enough times that her legs grew unsteady as she approached their usual meeting spot, The Faithful Bride. There were no signs of her boys so she began to call out to them. “Spencer! Ethan!”
A mop of scraggly hair poked up from behind a few of the pigs where they dozed in slop and their own filth. “Lil?” Reid’s voice mixed equal parts relief and concern.
“Aye. Where’s Ethan?”
The younger shrugged as he worked his way out to street where Lil remained, bottle and apple in hand. “He said he’d meet us here when he could. Are you okay?” As he got closer, out in the lights trickling from the bars and brothels around them, he could see the angry red handprint across Lil’s face.
“I’m fine.” Lil had gotten far worse over the years and the pain still there was dulled by liquor now. “You get anything to eat?”
“Oh, yeah,” Reid’s lips curled up a touch as if he remembered his pockets had been stuffed with his share of the apples. He pulled one out and started to eat. “What should we do now, Lil?”
Lil finished her apple and tossed the core to the pigs before offering her friend some of the rum. The boy declined with a shake of his head to which the elder girl shrugged, drank some herself, then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand before finally answering. “I say we wait it out till dawn, then start searching.”
“Okay.”
Because Lil refused to sleep in the muddy shit of the pigs the two children tucked themselves in the doorway of a closed shop nearby. Lil laid herself across its length and had Spencer rest his head in her lap for comfort as he curled up into himself.
Despite those instincts that told Lil her little friend was too weak to survive, that being rid of him would be the wiser thing for her to do, she kept him as close as she did Ethan. Something about the weedy boy was precious to her, something that went beyond his advanced intellect. It was his innocence, that purity of the soul he clung to even as those closest to him - Lil and Ethan - willingly discarded or had it torn from them bit by bit each day. She did not understand how or why Spencer held to it, but the fact he did fascinated her.
The young girl began to run her fingers through Spencer’s hair as she hummed, then sang. “We extort and pilfer, we filch and we sack, drink me ‘earties, yo ho…”
***
The morning brought nothing but sun and angry hollers from the shopkeeper for the little urchins to be gone from the front of his store. Too tired to do anything more Lil and Spencer left without argument and took to roaming the streets in search for any signs of the eldest of their crew. They came across none. Ethan had simply vanished in the night.
When they reached the whorehouse where Lil stayed the girl offered Spencer a share in her tiny attic of a room, but the boy declined. He wanted to be home, to see if his mother was all right and if perhaps Ethan had somehow ended up there or at least left word somehow.
“Lemme know if he did?” the girl requested as the sun lit up the colors of bruising on her cheek as it rose higher in the Caribbean sky.
“Of course.”
Lil smiled bright and bubbly a moment, then nodded a touch before heading inside. No one was waiting up for her, no one worried or cared. The morning crowd of exiting men simply walked around her as she made her way up to her straw heap of a bed to sleep.
By the time Spencer reached home his mother was to ill to even speak with so the small boy took to wandering out in back of his shack of a house. There were no signs Ethan had stopped by in the middle of the night; the only sign of his best friend’s existence at all was Iggy, their shared pet iguana, relaxing in the shade of the foliage grown wild on the property.
“Hey Iggy,” the eight-year-old noted with a frown as he settled onto the ground. The iguana seemed to sense one of its owners, or smelled the fruit, as he crawled out into the sun over to Spencer. “You seen Ethan?”
The iguana made a gutteral noise in reply.
“Thought not,” Spencer replied back before pulling out one of the apples and biting off a hunk. He took half into mouth and pulled the other half out to hold out to Iggy. The iguana snapped his jaw, taking the apple from the boy’s fingers. “Guess it’s just you and me now.”
The iguana tilted his head some as he chewed.
Reid sighed some already missing his friend deeply. Spencer only had two, Lil and Ethan, and now one was missing. He worried too…had Ethan been found? Had he been jailed or, worse yet, murdered over their group-effort theft? Lil didn’t seem concerned, but then she very rarely was. In all his years of knowing the girl Spencer couldn’t recall a single time she’d cried or even shown fear. Not when that drunken lout had tried to take her behind one of the taverns, not when she’d been whipped for stealing, and not last night when the monkey-man caught them.
Spencer bit his lip, looked down some, and let his wavy locks fall into his face as he debated crying over the seeming loss of his friend, his best friend. He shook with the thoughts of it. Then he felt the rest of the apple being yanked from his possession.
“Hey!” the boy snapped to attention as Iggy scurried away with the last of the trio’s prize. The last thing Ethan had given him, the last memory of his friend before the older boy vanished in the Tortuga night. Spencer wanted, needed, that last bit of apple back. “Stupid iguana! Stupid…blimey…bloody…” the boy cursed aloud as he made chase, tripping over rocks, roots, and his own feet in attempts to catch the animal. He skittered to a stop when the lizard dived into a hole in the dirt that the boy couldn’t follow him into. “You’re just like Ethan, ya thieving bastard! Stupid Ethan!”
Exhausted and enraged the boy lay by the hole and began to cry. “Stupid Ethan,” he muttered, face and fists in the dirt, until he drifted off to sleep with the tropical sun beating down him.
"Friends hold both the power to excel your life, or destroy it." ~ Adam Murphy
Author: Tooks
Pairing: Reid/Ethan/Lil Foyet(friendship), Barbossa, Pintel & Ragetti
Rating: FRT
Summary: When best friends Spencer Reid, Ethan Bellamy, and Lil Foyet work together to get one over on a patron at a Tortuga tavern they all get more than they bargained for.
Notes: Right, so this is the first piece of the Criminal Minds/Pirates of the Caribbean crossover AU I'm calling "Between The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea", but this piece specifically takes place well before the first Pirates movie with Spencer Reid and his friend, Ethan, being children...you could consider it an overall prologue, as it were, haha! I took some of the background given to Barbossa in the books based on PoTC to use to my own advantage. There's some scariness, a bit of violence, and talk of a dark and slightly adult nature throughout all involving children. Beta'd by pink_siamese cause she's awesome to me, haha! :D (And, yes, Lil did work her way into this AU as well cause she's that badass, haha!)
Little Spencer Reid was a scrawny boy of eight with greasy hair that fell into his eyes as he spun his head this way and that making sure no one was watching too closely. This was his job in the crew, given to him by Ethan who promised it was the least dangerous one there was. So far that had held true. This stuff always made the boy nervous nevertheless, but they were starving and without money to pay so what choice did they have? That and the other two stressed that it wasn’t exactly stealing, per say, if the person was too drunk or otherwise busy to take care in keeping an eye on their goods.
Ethan snapped up some bread and rum from the sailors in the tavern who were too busy with their company for the night before he saw the jackpot. Set beside the dark boots of an imposing man was a basket containing apples. Good apples, ones ripe and ready for eating. The temptation was too much, but Ethan wasn’t about to just grab and dash…he was smart, he always examined, staked out, a target first.
This target, the man with the bushel of fresh apples, was imposing even while sitting. A large hat kept much of his face in the shadows, but Ethan could see a bushy beard and long, dark, auburn hair held back loosely with a strip of leather. He was significantly older and it looked like the years at sea had already begun to ravage the man leaving scars and sunspots about the face and body. Still, he was a finely dressed man and wealthy enough to keep the monkey on his shoulder dressed better than most those Ethan saw on the island itself.
The teen boy slipped past the man onto where his other crewmember, Lil, leaned by a post keeping watch as well. She turned her face to him and arches a brow. “Well?”
“I need ya,” Ethan said simply before drawing the young girl’s gaze to the man with the apples.
“On it faster than he’ll be on me,” she teased a touch before giving Ethan a kiss to the cheek and heading over to the man and his monkey.
Like the boys Lil had grown on the island of Tortuga the child of a pirate and a woman…in her case a whore already dead at the hands of a jealous lover. Whether from guilt or just plain pity the madam allowed the small girl to live in the brothel even after her mother’s murder. So Lil was raised in brothels and even at ten capable of working seduction skills enough to catch the eyes of drunken sailors and distract them for Ethan to steal.
That was how it all worked. Little Spencer kept a sharp eye, she a tempting manner, and Ethan a fast hand. They’d done this all long enough to avoid capture when working together and, for Ethan and Lil, to have no real fear in it. Only Spencer held the fear, just as only he held the knowledge of the immorality of the behavior.
Ethan watched as Lil sauntered over to the man, shifted herself into his eye-line, and held his gaze with stormy eyes and teasingly quirked lips. There was always something strange about Lil; how she carried herself, demanded and got attention from all those around her. She was a force and even at twelve Ethan knew she’d only become more so as she developed into a woman. It was as frightening as it was exhilarating.
The young man’s gaze then trailed to his frail runt of a friend still loyally keeping lookout for all of them. Spencer was the virtual opposite. Small, meek, and ever unsure in his steps the eight-year-old was more of a comfort to Ethan than anything exciting. Spencer kept him and Lil anchored to their abilities, stabilized in their emotions, and reigned in from their impulses. Altogether Ethan imagined they were a complete person - heart, mind, and guts - and without the other two he wasn’t sure any would truly survive.
Ethan turned back to the target with his monkey and waited until he got the signal from Lil (a thrumming of fingers on the wooden table) before he tucked his frame in the shadows of swinging lanterns and jostling bodies to snap up the booty. He stuffed a small bag kept on his hip with apples before grabbing one more in hand. He moved out in the next rowdy crowd that passed and headed towards Spencer with a grin, showing off the apple in his hand.
The monkey’s shriek came first, then a string of curses from its owner and a shot from a gun.
“RUN!!” Lil screamed to her boys as she grabbed a knife up off the table and slashed at the target.
The man cursed, struck out, and knocked the girl to the floor.
“Ethan?” young Spencer’s eyes became saucers as his older friend started a full dash to him.
“Run!” Ethan grabbed Spencer’s arm and the two boys began to move as fast as their legs could carry them out into the crowd that was the streets of Tortuga.
Spencer could barely keep up, tripping over his own legs and those of others. “Ethan, what…” he couldn’t get the words out as his friend began to virtually drag him. “Ethan…Lil…” What had become of their third party? Had the man gotten her? Was she okay?
Ethan took a sharp turn, grabbing hold of a fruit cart and pulling it down as he did. The curses from the vendor followed them, but what was more important was that sounds of a scuffle did as well. The man with the monkey was now busy arguing with the vendor.
At the second shot heard young Reid let out a squeak of nerves. He wanted to eat, yes, but not get shot in the process. The fact that Ethan only seemed to enjoy this, the danger of the chase, just made him more nervous. “Ethan…Ethan, maybe we should, uh, just give the apples back and…beg pardon?”
The older boy pulled the younger into an alleyway and dropped his voice low. “Men who shoot first and ask later don’t pardon, Spencer.”
“Wha-what about Lil, Ethan?”
The older boy almost smiled. “Lil can care for herself, Spencer, you know that.”
“But -“
“I think he’s a pirate,” Ethan’s adrenaline had already forced a switch of topics.
“A proper one?” As opposed to those lowlifes who boasted without ever making good that littered Tortuga in greater numbers than the whores.
Ethan nodded. “The only way we get out of this is to run, hide, or try and parley.”
“But…we’re not pirates.”
“Not yet,” the older boy smirked some.
Both boys had parentage in piracy, but only the elder wanted to carry on the legacy. Spencer Reid saw his father’s piracy as a form of abandonment; William Reid preferred theft on the high seas to his family and the youth had no interest in becoming like him. Spencer aimed to use his intelligence for good, to help others, and never to bring misfortune. The truth was he wasn’t comfortable stealing, or even keeping watch over Ethan and Lil when they did, but there weren’t many options being the only son of the Mad Woman of Tortuga.
Ethan felt differently; the bastard son of pirate legend “Black Sam” Bellamy he wanted nothing more than to share in the life. He adored the stories he heard from the sailors, Navy and pirate alike, and hoped someday there’d be stories told about him. Being a pirate sounded thrilling and he could never understand how his friend saw it differently. While he had a set of morals, it was already skewed towards piracy. Young Bellamy did what he had to in order to survive, to thrive, and had ease about him when it came to the underhanded and devious.
Spencer sighed some. “Can’t we just hide then? I can’t keep running like this.” He hadn’t the physicality of Ethan.
“Fine, you hide,” Ethan pulled out a few of the apples and stuffed them into his friend’s pockets. “Keep these with you.”
“Where are you going?”
“We should spilt up anyway,” Ethan replied simply. The truth was Ethan sort of still wanted to continue the chase though. Hiding wasn’t his style except as a last resort.
Spencer frowned, “Oh. Okay.”
“Just…stay in the shadows and tuck yourself behind the pigs outside The Faithful Bride, okay?” It was where they usually met up at the end of the night if they didn’t spend all the hours of the day and evening together.
“Aye.”
Ethan smiled. “Don’t worry, I’ll find you. You and Lil.”
Spencer just nodded then watched as his friend dashed off out the other end of the alley. The small boy stayed hidden where he was for sometime before he began to take back routes to the pigsty, searching for their Lil as he did.
***
Ethan took a few more sharp turns and random routes before he realized there was no one chasing him anymore. The young man let out a sigh that bordered on disappointment as he looked at the apple that, miraculously, had remained in his hand. He took a bite, savoring the juice that exploded into his mouth with the piercing of its skin before swallowing it down. The chase was over, time to enjoy the spoils. Ethan set his teeth into the apple again as he began to head out towards the water’s edge.
He was half through the last alley and his apple when a dark figure appeared, blocking his way. Perched on the figure was the outline of a monkey that screeched at him angrily. Ethan froze a moment before he stepped back and turned on his heel to make another run for it. No dice this time as two others blocked his way. A tall, thin, fellow partnered with a stout one who held his pistol out and at the ready to fire.
“It’d be unwise to make yer run, boy,” the monkey-man remarked just on the edge of amused.
Ethan spun back. “Parley!”
“Parley?” one of the two groaned behind him.
The man before Ethan just laughed some as he began an unhurried approach to the teen. “Ye got no right to parley lest ye be a pirate, boy.”
“Well, I am,” Ethan insisted stubbornly to the man he now realized was the leader of the crew. The moonlight caught blackened blood on the man’s face from Lil’s knife and Ethan stepped back with shaken nerves. “By birth, anyhow.”
“’Ow’s that?” the skinny one spoke up almost curiously.
Ethan’s back hit the stones of a building as the three pirates closed in. “My father is Black Sam Bellamy, surely you’ve heard of him.”
The three men and one monkey looked at one another seeming to debate the lad’s truthfulness and their next step before the leader gave a cackle. “Right then boy, I’ll give ya the privilege of parley. Now what’s it ye need to say?”
“I’d like to say it to the captain.”
“I be him,” the man replied simply as his monkey grinned. “Captain Barbossa of the Cobra. Now…” Barbossa closed in on the thieving boy, made the oozing blood on his face something Ethan’s eyes couldn’t avoid as he brought a pistol up under the boy’s chin. “Speak!”
Ethan shook under the hot, rageful, breath of the pirate captain, but spoke nevertheless. “I wanna join your crew.” It was the one thing he could think of that might prevent his death and finally get him what he always wanted…a chance to be a real pirate.
The two men to his right seemed stunned, the monkey ticked its head in utter confusion, and Barbossa simply leaned back a touch to appraise the bold youth. “How old are ye, lad?”
“Thirteen, sir. Captain. And I’m still growing.” In truth, from malnutrition and general poor living conditions, the twelve-year-old Ethan hadn’t even truly started growing. “I know plenty about ships and I learn fast. I’d make a good member of your crew. A loyal one too.”
Barbossa considered the offer in silence as he continued his appraisal. True, the lad was slight in build, but being on the cusp of puberty and given enough food he had plenty of room to grow. Ethan’s fast hands and quick thinking could certainly be of benefit as well. “Ye ever worked a sword or pistol?”
“No, Captain,” Ethan confessed with a touch of shame. “But I’ve fought by hand, with small blades, and won more than once. More than I’ve lost.”
The monkey gave Ethan a smile that announced Barbossa’s decision before the man did. “Ye owe me payment for my apples and for the handy work of that lil’ lass o’ yers. You’ll work it off on my ship.”
“Yes sir.” Then Ethan looked to the other two pirates before his eyes went to the bloody gash of the captain’s. “The…the girl…”
“Yers, yes?” Barbossa smirked some.
The boy avoided the question, worried what an answer could bring to Lil. “She alive?”
The monkey heaved out the squeals of a laugh with the men. “She were when I left her,” Barbossa grinned out. The man hadn’t the time to trouble with the girl much beyond the slap.
“Now, ye pay off yer debts…” Barbossa gave a wicked smile, “and we’ll see if ye ‘ave what it takes to be a true pirate after that.”
“Aye Captain,” Ethan smiled back, not seeing the evil glint of Barbossa’s eyes through his own excitement. “I’ll do ye proud, I swear it.”
***
Lil rolled herself under a table after the hit, playing possum until the coast was clear. The bar now emptied of her troubles the girl picked herself up off the floor and began to examine her state. Her straw-colored hair was more wild than usual, her hands red with pirate’s blood, and her cheek still stinging but otherwise she was fine. She’d live to fight another day without troubles or worry.
After wiping her hands on the cloth bits that were her dress the girl grabbed an unattended bottle of run from a table and a lost apple off the floor before heading out of the tavern as she drank and ate. Whatever the boys might think, this was a victorious night in Lil’s book.
The girl wandered for a bit, adjusting her posture to appear her most non-threatening and uninteresting in hunched shoulders and hung head. She swung the bottle back enough times that her legs grew unsteady as she approached their usual meeting spot, The Faithful Bride. There were no signs of her boys so she began to call out to them. “Spencer! Ethan!”
A mop of scraggly hair poked up from behind a few of the pigs where they dozed in slop and their own filth. “Lil?” Reid’s voice mixed equal parts relief and concern.
“Aye. Where’s Ethan?”
The younger shrugged as he worked his way out to street where Lil remained, bottle and apple in hand. “He said he’d meet us here when he could. Are you okay?” As he got closer, out in the lights trickling from the bars and brothels around them, he could see the angry red handprint across Lil’s face.
“I’m fine.” Lil had gotten far worse over the years and the pain still there was dulled by liquor now. “You get anything to eat?”
“Oh, yeah,” Reid’s lips curled up a touch as if he remembered his pockets had been stuffed with his share of the apples. He pulled one out and started to eat. “What should we do now, Lil?”
Lil finished her apple and tossed the core to the pigs before offering her friend some of the rum. The boy declined with a shake of his head to which the elder girl shrugged, drank some herself, then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand before finally answering. “I say we wait it out till dawn, then start searching.”
“Okay.”
Because Lil refused to sleep in the muddy shit of the pigs the two children tucked themselves in the doorway of a closed shop nearby. Lil laid herself across its length and had Spencer rest his head in her lap for comfort as he curled up into himself.
Despite those instincts that told Lil her little friend was too weak to survive, that being rid of him would be the wiser thing for her to do, she kept him as close as she did Ethan. Something about the weedy boy was precious to her, something that went beyond his advanced intellect. It was his innocence, that purity of the soul he clung to even as those closest to him - Lil and Ethan - willingly discarded or had it torn from them bit by bit each day. She did not understand how or why Spencer held to it, but the fact he did fascinated her.
The young girl began to run her fingers through Spencer’s hair as she hummed, then sang. “We extort and pilfer, we filch and we sack, drink me ‘earties, yo ho…”
***
The morning brought nothing but sun and angry hollers from the shopkeeper for the little urchins to be gone from the front of his store. Too tired to do anything more Lil and Spencer left without argument and took to roaming the streets in search for any signs of the eldest of their crew. They came across none. Ethan had simply vanished in the night.
When they reached the whorehouse where Lil stayed the girl offered Spencer a share in her tiny attic of a room, but the boy declined. He wanted to be home, to see if his mother was all right and if perhaps Ethan had somehow ended up there or at least left word somehow.
“Lemme know if he did?” the girl requested as the sun lit up the colors of bruising on her cheek as it rose higher in the Caribbean sky.
“Of course.”
Lil smiled bright and bubbly a moment, then nodded a touch before heading inside. No one was waiting up for her, no one worried or cared. The morning crowd of exiting men simply walked around her as she made her way up to her straw heap of a bed to sleep.
By the time Spencer reached home his mother was to ill to even speak with so the small boy took to wandering out in back of his shack of a house. There were no signs Ethan had stopped by in the middle of the night; the only sign of his best friend’s existence at all was Iggy, their shared pet iguana, relaxing in the shade of the foliage grown wild on the property.
“Hey Iggy,” the eight-year-old noted with a frown as he settled onto the ground. The iguana seemed to sense one of its owners, or smelled the fruit, as he crawled out into the sun over to Spencer. “You seen Ethan?”
The iguana made a gutteral noise in reply.
“Thought not,” Spencer replied back before pulling out one of the apples and biting off a hunk. He took half into mouth and pulled the other half out to hold out to Iggy. The iguana snapped his jaw, taking the apple from the boy’s fingers. “Guess it’s just you and me now.”
The iguana tilted his head some as he chewed.
Reid sighed some already missing his friend deeply. Spencer only had two, Lil and Ethan, and now one was missing. He worried too…had Ethan been found? Had he been jailed or, worse yet, murdered over their group-effort theft? Lil didn’t seem concerned, but then she very rarely was. In all his years of knowing the girl Spencer couldn’t recall a single time she’d cried or even shown fear. Not when that drunken lout had tried to take her behind one of the taverns, not when she’d been whipped for stealing, and not last night when the monkey-man caught them.
Spencer bit his lip, looked down some, and let his wavy locks fall into his face as he debated crying over the seeming loss of his friend, his best friend. He shook with the thoughts of it. Then he felt the rest of the apple being yanked from his possession.
“Hey!” the boy snapped to attention as Iggy scurried away with the last of the trio’s prize. The last thing Ethan had given him, the last memory of his friend before the older boy vanished in the Tortuga night. Spencer wanted, needed, that last bit of apple back. “Stupid iguana! Stupid…blimey…bloody…” the boy cursed aloud as he made chase, tripping over rocks, roots, and his own feet in attempts to catch the animal. He skittered to a stop when the lizard dived into a hole in the dirt that the boy couldn’t follow him into. “You’re just like Ethan, ya thieving bastard! Stupid Ethan!”
Exhausted and enraged the boy lay by the hole and began to cry. “Stupid Ethan,” he muttered, face and fists in the dirt, until he drifted off to sleep with the tropical sun beating down him.
"Friends hold both the power to excel your life, or destroy it." ~ Adam Murphy