(Untitled)

[milkbonesoldier]

[OOM: Even when Annie Wells is doing the cooking, there are some things food can't fix. Millitimed to the evening of March 15th, after this.]The Council wants more girls in the field quickly, so Wells is going to be testing the top four girls by the end of the week. Might as well get this dealt with before the moon gets too close to full. At least

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[pirate_gibbs]

Gibbs is at the bar for a refill on his morning tea and rum, and nods at the man.

[pirate_gibbs]

"Liquor can only help so much, Wells. But I'm not one to hide if I can help it. Nor is the captain.

"Usually." Gibbs can look the other way. It's not like he blamed Jack for running from Davey Jones.

[milkbonesoldier]

"I did say most. Bit hard to stomach the prospect of wolf-men who can't be harmed by guns nor knives coming after you with intent to make you supper. We held out as long as we could, but when the enemy just won't fucking die, well..." He shrugs lightly. "Bad business all 'round, that."

[pirate_gibbs]

"Wolf-men?" That gives Gibbs pause. And rings a bell.

"I met a man who said he was a wolf-man last week. A former soldier, in fact. Poor sod said his doctors in the army made him that way."

[milkbonesoldier]

"Ah, that'd be Spoon, I bet you," says Wells. "Scars all down one arm, smokes like a fucking chimney? That's my man Spoon. He served under me right up to the mission with the fucking wolf-men, and then it all went to shit."

[pirate_gibbs]

More bells go off. "You're his sergeant...he told me about how you and your wife took him in. Pretty brave of you." He means it as a compliment. Any fear of such beasts as wolf-men is not meant to be evident.

[milkbonesoldier]

Wells nods. "That's me," he says. "I don't know that you could call it properly brave, though. I mean-"

He tugs his shirt loose from his trouser waistband and rolls it up a little, just enough to show the beginnings of the claw scars that slash across his abdomen.

"-the damn things got me, too."

[pirate_gibbs]

"Got you...good lord, you're one as well?" He knows the tales. And he knows that men can be come monsters with far too much ease, from Barbossa to Bootstrap Bill.

[milkbonesoldier]

Wells nods, tucking his shirt back in. "Ever since that night three years ago," he says. "I never meant to leave that place alive, once I knew. Meant to take the whole fucking pack down with me and save everyone around me the trouble of putting me down like a mad dog. Only I wound up here instead of being blown to bits, and I made it out alive afterwards. I've spent every day since then keeping it in line as hard as I bloody can, 'cos the alternative's not worth thinking about."

[pirate_gibbs]

"And all the things in the legends, like the full moon and the silver and the rest, they're true?" Never hurts to verify the facts.

[milkbonesoldier]

"I wouldn't say all," Wells says. "The full moon, yeah, and the silver, but the bit about the eyebrows that join in the middle's just superstition. I haven't got to eat people, either. Mostly when full moon's coming I get myself the fuck away from everything and everyone human before the sun goes down. That way it's just animals that get hunted, and nobody gets put in danger but me. And Spoon, these days, as I take him with me when I go."

[pirate_gibbs]

"So I best be stayin' on the ship when there's a full moon." That would explain some of the noise from the woods those night. But not the others. But then,. he knows how odd the woods are, too. "And if there a way to lift the curse?"

[milkbonesoldier]

"Yeah, that's the safest place, most likely," says Wells. "I dunno if we can swim when it happens. I don't always remember the next day."

At the question, he shakes his head. "None that I know of. I've gone through the books, believe me, but all the counter-spells and curse-breaking rituals they've got out there're just so much bollocks. That, or me and Spoon've got intractable cases, but the end result's the same."

Privately he's convinced that any cure would've had to've been applied before he first killed a man with the wolf's natural weapons, and that even if they're effective in general, they wouldn't work on him now.

[pirate_gibbs]

"That's a real shame. Even soldiers deserve better," he says with a bit of cheek. "But at least you don't revel in it, the way some do. What makes a monster, I think, isn't the shape but the soul. And some monsters lost their souls long before they lost their shapes."

[milkbonesoldier]

That first bit gets two fingers stuck up in Gibbs' direction. "Know what you mean, though," he says. "About the real monsters. I've met a few along the way who wore fancy suits and spoke with posh accents, and I doubt they ever got so much as a spot of blood on their hands in their lives, but I'll tell you- anyone who could give the orders they did without turning a hair's got to've been more of a monster than a mere beast that walks like a man could ever be."

[pirate_gibbs]

"Never met men like that, though the captain's talked about such. Slavers. That sort. And there are always the men who give the orders to sergeants and midshipmen who never pick up wosrd or pistol and send us to our glorious deaths in the name of king and country." Bitter much, Gibbs?