Archive of Our Own

Silver wakes up remembering everything that had happened to him, but for some reason, it’s the excruciating pain in his arms he feels first. Truthfully, his whole body feels like it’s been keelhauled, but his arms, shoulders, and chest feel more like the ship had been dropped on him rather than him being dragged beneath. Like the ship had flattened him into the sand and he’d tried to lift it off himself single-handedly. Like an unbearable irony he can’t shake.

When he opens his eyes, he sees the sunlight rocking steadily on the wooden ceiling. He tries to lift himself up onto his elbows, but he can barely manage an inch, gasping at the pain.

“Shhh.” A hand on his shoulder makes him jump —or makes his heart jump. His body can’t do much more than twitch at the contact. “Lie back now.”

He obeys, and now he sees the sunlight on the ceiling and Mrs. Barlow. Equally pale, equally blinding, tilting with the ceaseless sway of the ship.

Her dress is torn, far dirtier than when he’d last seen it. She’s wrapped in a blanket, which doesn’t quite hide the bloodstains on her nor the sling on her left arm. There’s a long scrape on her chin, but her face is washed and cleaned of any make-up. Her long hair is down, pressed into her face and her neck by the off-white bandage wrapped around her forehead. It also covers her left eye. She looks just like every portrait of Mary Silver has ever seen.

He swallows. All he knows is pain, but he’s suddenly, uncomfortably aware that they are alone in the cabin. He’s desperate to know where Flint is, but he finds he’s afraid of the answer.

Instead, he says, “My arms…”

Mrs. Barlow’s smile is sad but no less true. She sits down in a chair beside his spot on the window seat, graceful despite the sling. “You’re very bruised, I’m afraid.” Her voice strains to be soft, like she’s insisting something left in this world be so. “I understand you had to be held down quite firmly, before… and I suppose after, too.”

It’s a novelty, even before all this: someone trying to be gentle with him. But she’s wrong. She says it like it was one swift second. Before, he had a leg. After, he didn’t. But it hadn’t happened that way. He’d been held down during, by enemies and by friends. There wasn’t anything swift about it. He can’t correct her, though. “Where’s —“

He’s interrupted by his own body wracked with pain, as though the rotation of the Earth proved to be too much movement. He breathes heavily through it, eyes squeezed shut as it flares up from cauterized flesh towards the crown of his head. When it lessens enough so he can feel his soul again, he realizes Mrs. Barlow has touched his hand. Not squeezing it, and adding to his pain, but just resting it there. Grounding him.

He has tried to look at her twice now. Each time his gaze slides away, unable to hold onto the way the bandage curves over her cheek. He has not yet looked at his leg, but he can’t look at her eye either.

When his breathing is normal again, she answers the question he hadn’t finished asking, removing her hand with the same kind of care. “He’s out speaking to his men. He has to do double duty of Captain and quartermaster, I suppose, while you’re in here recovering.”

Her words bring forth the opposite of pain, though it feels no better. He’s just suddenly awash with an absence of sensation, a numbness piercing his heart like true death. “They voted?”

She smiles again, shifting her blanket closer around her. “I think he wanted to be the one to tell you,” she admits. “So please do your best to try and act surprised when he does.”

There’s only one emotion Silver is capable of experiencing right now. From the second his pain registered to the presence of Mrs. Barlow to the knowledge of his new station — it’s all fear. He’s never been more afraid in his life, and he has plenty of moments for comparison. It blends with his agony like blood in the water. He’s so afraid but he supposes, from the outside, that might look a little like surprise.

Carefully, casually, like it could be a mistake, she places her hand back on his. Still, she doesn’t squeeze.

“I don’t believe we were ever properly introduced,” she says. “My name is Mrs. Barlow, but I would like it very much if you could call me Miranda.”

Flint is there, when he wakes up again. He’s got a cold cup of water and warm eyes, and he looks like he hasn’t slept in a couple days. He’s scratched up and bruised but whole, and he looks guilty as all hell about it. But when he sits down next to Silver’s makeshift bed, Miranda’s hands on his shoulders, it’s the closest to relieved Silver has ever seen. “A strong gust has come to this place,” he says, with that voice like the wind itself.

Silver had thought there’d been no more pain left to endure.

What a fool he is, he thinks as he says, “There’s something you ought to know, before we reach Nassau.”

Flint’s smile fades like the last vestiges of a warm night in the bright, hard light of day. When he demands that Silver tell him everything, Silver can’t look at him.

But the only one to look at, then, is Miranda, which is also a mistake. The cold heat in her only remaining eye is so like the glowing metal that had seared his stump. She’s as silent as Flint is when he speaks — his version of a truth, without him in it. It’s easy to work around himself in this narrative. There’s never been any place for Silver in truthful things, anyway.

On his way out the room to hurry their course, Flint kicks a chair. It flies across the room and slams against the wall in time with the door behind him. But the most terrible thing is the way Miranda jumps at the loud noise it makes.

He’s alone again with her — which either means Flint believes Silver’s story, which admittedly isn’t one of his better ones, or he thinks Silver is too pathetic and weak to be a credible threat to her. It’s probably a little bit of both.

Miranda watches him from above the chair Flint had vacated. She’s gripping the back hard in place of his shoulders.

“There something you must know about what occurred in Charles Town,” she says. He wishes she would sit down. “We learned of a betrayal of the deepest sort. Of the most brutal, unforgivable nature. Were James and I better people, forgiveness might have been considered. But we are not good people, not by any measure of the society who betrayed and nearly killed us both. We were not capable of forgiving this injustice, and so when James ordered Charles Town to be burned to the ground, and I watched with the bloody remains of my eyes as a civilization was rendered to ashes, do you know how I felt?”

Silver did not.

“I felt happy, Mr. Silver,” she says. “I felt peace.”

It’s the kind of thing someone might say before storming out a room. But she stays. She stands away from him, watching his eyes. He’s able to sit up today, and he looks down at his leg. He holds it with both hands above the blanket, and he can still feel the fire. His wrists are black with bruise, and he can smell smoke.

He says, still looking at his leg, “What did it feel like?”

“What’s that?”

Silver swallows. “Peace.” He’s still looking at the flat dip on the bed, where his leg just ends.

She doesn’t say anything for a moment, and then she says, “I can’t remember. It passed too soon.”

He keeps expecting her to leave him, so of course she finally sits, sighing deeply as she takes up Flint’s chair. “The betrayal we’ve just endured put things in some perspective. There are worse things to lose in this life than money.”

“Not to a pirate,” Silver says.

“To some of them,” Miranda counters, “there are.”

They sit there silently, Silver holding his leg, Miranda not holding his hand. They can hear Flint yelling at the crew through the open windows. Nothing tangible is clear, but the cadence of his voice would be recognizable to Silver at the ends of the earth. He wants Flint to come back in here. Even if he’s yelling at him, or threatening him, or attacking him, Silver wants him here. He feels the most alive under Flint’s gaze. He feels alive in Miranda’s, too, except in hers there seems to be the added question — but why should you be?

He looks back at his leg and asks quietly, “Can you bring the Captain back in here now?” At least his final act in his life — to die — might bring someone some peace again.

He only looks up again when Miranda rises, but instead of heading to the door, she heads to the desk, where a bottle of rum sat besides two wet glasses. “No,” is all she says. “Not yet.”

A tremor runs through his body. For the first time since he’d woken up again, his vulnerability has stopped poking at the edges of himself. Now, it stands in stark relief beneath his skin, digging deep into his heart. “Why not?”

She gives him a glass of rum. He doesn’t want it, but he takes it anyway.

“I don’t know if you’re ready to say it,” she says. She doesn’t drink her rum either. “But I know he isn’t ready to hear… whatever it is you have to say to him.” Then a look passes over her face, fleeting but Silver sees it, as well as he saw an axe swinging down. It’s pity.

“Besides,” she continues. “I think whatever he might do to you would be exactly what I suspect you might want to happen to you. Which I don’t believe is what you deserve.”

Silver longs to be asleep again. At least he is familiar with his nightmares. Even if he is traumatized, he isn’t surprised. There’s nothing he hates more than surprises.

Of course it’s a pirate like Captain Flint to lead him into uncharted waters, a man too bright to contain his own darkness, so both spill out of him onto anyone in sight. Of course it’s a witch like Miranda Barlow floating out here with him, a woman with a calm voice and now a single, knowing eye. The last thing Silver wants to be is known.

But it works for him now, he supposes, as Miranda just takes one more look at his face, and knows to leave him alone.

She must say something to calm him down, because Flint isn’t as angry the next time Silver sees him. He’s short and annoyed with him, but that’s how he’s always treated Silver before, so that’s fine.

 (Silver never thinks about those few happy minutes when he woke up that morning. He never does.)

They’re only a couple day away from Nassau, and Silver is still in the window in Flint’s cabin. He’s barely moved in days. It’s not entirely hiding from a crew too afraid to venture into the Captain’s cabin, especially one occupied by a woman. But he’d been given a crutch to practice moving, his leg too raw for a peg, and after trying once to walk with it, Silver had thrown it across the room. Flint had gone to get it with a sigh, until Miranda stopped him and said to get it once Silver asks one of them to go get it.

That had been two days ago.

He’s seated by the window, cleaning the stump. He knows they make a conscious effort not to watch him when his leg is bare, but in doing so, they have to look pointedly at each other, which leads to more arguing than Silver would have expected.

“Yes,” Flint is saying. “Of course you’re staying. In Nassau.”

“James, pretending to be obtuse doesn’t work on me and you know it. I’m staying here.”

It’s been the fifth time she’s said it. Each time Flint had responded with, Silver guesses, genuine confusion. This time, he just blinks at her and says, “No.”

Miranda approaches him, face pinched in compulsory repressed rage. She’s got her hair back up messily, a fresh bandage on her face, and she’s wearing one Flint’s shirts over her bloodstained dress, although the sling is gone. It’s white and billowing, bunched around her elbows. “I’m not going to just go sit back in that house —”

“I’m going to get the gold from Rackham—”

“If I have to garden one more time—”

“We wanted to leave this behind—”

“So help me God, James, if I have to milk a goat another day —”

“Well then, what do you want us to do?” Flint shouts. He’d still sounded confused, before. Now he just sounds frustrated. “What do you think this life is? ”

“It’s my chance for retribution.” Silver had never seen someone get in Flint’s face like this before. To be perfectly honest, it’s lovely to behold. “I’ve been living with this rage inside me for ten years, James,” Miranda says, gripping the front of his shirt, a gesture somehow placating but firm. “I’ve been stuck in that house, waiting for you while you enacted justice, hunted down your vengeance as though it were yours alone! You think —” She suddenly stops, glancing at Silver suddenly, and then drastically lowering her voice, “you think your loss more grievous than mine? That mine suffering is merely incidental? You think I don’t know the horror of your reality? Do you think I can’t see it?”

“No,” Flint says again, hoarse and aching, gripping her arms tightly. “No, of course not. But you must know what you’re asking. In all this time, I have never forgotten. Never forgiven. I’ve just carried it, and used it to do — unspeakable things. That’s what you’re asking to do, Miranda. Unspeakable things. It’s hard work under a harsh sun and days and weeks and months of nothing until suddenly, there’s a ship exploding, a ship full of men and it’s sinking into the sea and you’ll have to cheer for it. You’ll have to shoot and stab and beat at men with wives, men with children, take their lives for nothing more than a few barrels of gunpowder their bosses wanted them to die to defend. You’ll sell and maim and kill men and soon these things won’t even be unspeakable to you. They won’t even be noteworthy. And after what we did in Charles Town, we’ll be hunted. You think they’ll let something like that go by? They’ll be on us for the rest of our days.”

“Let them come, then,” Miranda says, pulling away from him. “And let me decide what acts I deem allowable enough to speak of.”

Flint opens his mouth, but Miranda interrupts.

“You’ve never before tried to tell me what to do, James.”

He closes his mouth. He takes exactly five deep breaths, head bowed towards his desk.

Then he says, “It’s not even my decision to make. The crew would have to allow it, and I don’t think they will. Having a woman onboard is considered bad luck. Having, well… you on the crew — I’m surprised they didn’t fight us on it to go to Charles Town.”

“I’m sure they had plenty of other things to fight you on,” Miranda says coldly. She turns suddenly to Silver, which startles all three of them. Silver sees her glance at the leg, but she’s fired up and would rather make her point than gawk. “You speak for the crew now. What do you think they’d say about me staying on the ship?”

Silver is tempted to start waving his amputated leg in the air, to get both their stares off him. Both seem to be trying to communicate some idea to him, and he can’t decipher either of them.

“I think the crew,” he says, “would rather not get dragged into this argument.”

Both of them huff in unison, in that way people who have been together for so long do, in that way that makes Silver ache.

He aches all over, so much so that he says, against his better judgement, “She could take over Dufresne’s role on the ship.”

Miranda smiles and Flint says, “Absolutely not.”

“Who’s Dufresne?”

“A bastard shitheel of a mutineer,” Flint says, “who shot me once.”

“Also our bookkeeper,” Silver adds. 

It’s actually a perfect job for her. She’s better educated than probably anyone else on this ship, and Dufresne very rarely went over the rail. She had no interest in personal gain, so there’s no worry about her trying to skim off the top, and it seems highly unlikely that she’d shoot Flint.

Although he’s really pushing his luck today. “You….don’t have any appropriate clothes.”

Silver can’t stop the sound he makes, and he smirks at the aborted gesture Flint makes towards him, not quite able to turn to Silver and glare.

Miranda hums. “I believe Miss Guthrie’s wardrobe would be suitable for me, wouldn’t it? I’m about her size, and I don’t suppose she was allowed to pack a bag before heading back to London.”

Flint frowns. “You want me to… steal some of her clothes?”

“Which part bothers you?” Miranda asks. “The theft or the fashions?”

Clearly, it’s not the former that he disagrees with. And Silver can’t believe the image of Miranda in Eleanor Guthrie’s leather would upset anyone .

Flint frowns harder, stroking his beard furiously. Again he says, “The men won’t agree to this.”

Miranda keeps smiling as she sits down in the Captain’s chair. She spreads her hands wide on the desk. “I suppose we’ll just have to ask them, won’t we?”

The men heartily vote in her favor.

Flint’s mistake, really, was in letting her speak for herself.

Silver hadn’t gone up to the deck to vote, but he’d heard her case later: she’d simply agreed with them all that yes, she clearly had certain influences that might be otherworldly (she didn’t say witch , but she didn’t have to) and these influences had kept Captain Flint alive far longer than he had any right to be. Time and again, he cheated death, and it seemed highly unlikely it was God on Flint’s side.

She had stood out on the deck in an orange dusk, in a bloodstained dress, with untamed hair and a beautiful yet marred face, and with her sly yet soothing voice, had offered to protect them, too.

It had been logic none of the men could find fault in. But Silver knows it’s more than her implied witchcraft. Whether they all knew it or not, Miranda represents something they either have never had or haven’t had in a long time — a woman concerned for their well-being. These are men, carved and rotted and bitter, and they long for the matron or the mistress or the spirit of her. 

The crew members who tell Silver about her speech acted as though it hadn’t just been their decision to keep her on board. They believe it had also been their idea.

Silver wonders who taught who to capture men’s minds like this — Flint or Miranda. The only thing he had thought himself capable of doing well, the only thing of worth that he had learned by living his wretched life — of course it was a thing they shared, and did effortlessly.

He wants to offer her his job, but can’t. She can stay on this ship, and he’ll crawl back to live in Nassau. At their house he’s never seen but imagines nightly, unable to move, decaying among the teacups and farm animals. He can just lie out in the garden until he sinks beneath the soil for good.

By the time they’ve finalized their deal with Jack, the warrant out for Flint’s arrest has reached the island. Everyone regards them a little warily, but as far as they know, no one sets out to collect the reward. Yet.

But though they are in town still, the three of them all stay on the ship (Silver still barely moving on the crutch, Miranda afraid to go ashore for fear of Flint leaving her behind) to try and find a way to swing this.

They’ve traded ships and are back on the Walrus . No one says anything when Silver finds another windowseat to rest in. He must be hindering their relationship — they are a married couple, after all, and have not partaken in their marital duties in all this time at sea, unless they’ve fulfilled them while he lay unconscious only feet away (which….is a thought.) But he’s not ready to go back to the men just yet. He’s not ready to know for certain if Flint or Miranda would miss his presence.

Eventually, it’s Silver’s idea to spread the idea that this is a warrant out against piracy itself. True, civilization is always looking to stop piracy, but this is a direct action against The Pirate. The best course is to take Flint’s name out of it entirely, spin it so it’s a declaration of war against them all. Hunt and steal harder than ever before, sack the towns that hang pirates, burn the magistrates and the gallows and the cages. Grind their laws between their teeth until the rules are fine enough to spit out into the dirt.

They’ll issue a warrant of their own. It’s society itself they’ll have in their noose.

Flint’s eyes go a little lost when Silver finishes explaining the idea, gaze angled towards the hollow of Silver’s neck. He doesn’t say anything when Silver finishes his proposal.

Miranda isn’t looking at him at all. She’s watching Flint’s face, and perhaps it’ll be good that she’s here, because she’s able to interpret Flint’s expression far easier than he can. Silver would have been stuck staring at him for hours just trying to figure out what he’s thinking, and he’s willing to try, but then Miranda says, “I think that’s likely the best approach, Mr. Silver. But how do you suppose we go about it?”

It’s simple, really. Let Flint be Flint, and everything else will fall into place. His rage spreads like an infection, so much so that, in a month’s time, the whole crew swears they were in Charles Town themselves when the walls began to fall, even though it had only been Flint, Miranda, and Vane. They wouldn’t even be lying as they swore it, they believe it so much.

Silver sits by the window with the iron leg on, the ties around his stump suffocating. He’d promised Howell he wouldn’t put any pressure on it, and at the time he’d been lying. But just sitting here with the thing strapped on brings a pain both blinding and sharpening. The only thing he can’t seem to focus on is the book in his lap. Instead, he’s maddeningly aware of the sweat itching on his collar, the throb of his leg that reaches all the way up to his hip, the rock and sway of a boat moving forward, the heat from the sun pouring into the window. The clang of steel as Flint teaches Miranda to fight with one eye.

Flint beats Miranda again with a tap of his sword on her shoulder, although it maybe took him a few seconds longer than it had when they first started. Miranda sits down heavily on Flint’s chair, panting hard, sword limp in her hand. She’s not wearing nearly as many layers as she used to, and no corset, but it’s unlikely she ever did this much physical activity since childhood. Silver feels tired just looking at her.

“Again,” Flint says. To keep things fair, Flint has one of his eyes covered with a scarf. Silver finds his gaze drifting back to his face time and again and he’s not sure why.

Miranda scowls. Her face is no longer so heavily bandaged, but still she keeps her eye covered. She’s smarter than any man on this ship combined, and doesn’t try to push her recovery by risking infection for the sake of appearance. “I need a moment,” she says, one hand pressed into her stomach, the other resting on her brow.

Flint makes a half amused, half annoyed sound with his mouth. “You’re on my crew now, Mrs. Barlow. Crewmembers don’t argue back when their Captain issues an order.”

She freezes. Face still obscured by her hand, she says, “You’re giving me an order? ”

Silver winces, wishing he had a white flag to signal to Flint. His captain is an incredibly intelligent and accomplished man, but one thing he had apparently never learned how to do was to yield.

Flint does that trick with his wrist, making the sword spin in a way that is more distracting than the pain in Silver’s leg. “The only way we agreed this would work,” he says, somehow missing her tone of voice completely, “is if you behaved like any other member of this crew. That means listening to my instruction, and that means being able to defend yourself, being able to fight. I need to have at least one person I can trust to have my back out there.”

Silver looks down at his book, trying to find where he left off. Even though they’re all in this small cabin together, he isn’t a part of this conversation and he shouldn’t be listening.

Miranda takes a moment to respond, and when she does, she doesn’t actually say anything. She stands, so abruptly that Silver can’t help looking back up at her. But then she places her sword gently down on the desk. Silver didn’t think her the type to just quit, and they’re out at sea now. She can’t just quit.

“Miranda —”

“Just a moment,” she says, approaching Silver. She reaches for the bucket of water by his seat and grabs a clean rag. “We’ll begin again. I just need to clean my wound, I think the practice has reopened the stitches.”

Along with the bullet hitting her eye, she’d also been shot through the shoulder. Silver hadn’t seen the injury, but he’d heard it had been pretty straight through and no cause for alarm. But he feels alarmed now, watching as Miranda unbuttons her shirt right in front of Silver, pushing it off her shoulders to hang by her waist, fully exposing her breasts.

He gets a single flash of heavy, pale, soft skin before his eyes close, his head jerking up to the ceiling. His book falls to the floor.

He hears Flint give an aggravated sigh and says again, “Miranda. Honestly.”

“What?” The voice of an angel. Like Lucifer.

Silver opens his eyes again, but keeps them trained on the ceiling. He waits impatiently for it to fall on him. He can see out the corner of his eye that neither of them have fucking moved an inch. Miranda stands by the desk, half turned to face them both, idly pressing the wet rag into her healing wound. Flint just stands there with his shoulders slouched, still holding his sword tightly. He drags the scarf off his eye and, still gripping it, tugs at his beard. He has made no movement to cover her up, or to do the honorable, decent thing of killing Silver.

Miranda, toplessly, says, “I’m just another member of your crew, sir. Keeping this body free from infection to better serve your cause, sir. Besides, I’ve seen your other men far less dressed and far dirtier than I in my time on this ship, and it hasn’t bothered anyone else.”

“What? ” Silver asks the ceiling at the same time Flint demands, “Who? ”

“What difference does it make?” she says. “I’m just trying to be the best fighter for you, sir.”

“You’re being ridiculous.”

Another pause. “No. I’m being thorough. Mr. Silver?”

Silver looks at her instinctively, and immediately regrets it. She’s approaching him calmly, but the way her breasts sway with each step feels like an assault. He looks back at the ceiling, but then she’s right next to him, and he can’t not see her, no matter how far he cranes his neck. She drops the wet rag into his lax hands, spins around, and balances herself precariously on the thin edge of his windowseat. Her backside presses softly against his good knee.

“Do you mind bathing the other side?” she says loudly, like there’s either chance the two of them aren’t listening to a word she says. “I can’t reach it so well, and I believe I felt the wound reopen.” 

It hasn’t. The drops she felt sliding down her skin were likely sweat, not blood. The puckered hole is healing nicely, not even needing to be bandaged any longer, but Silver does as requested and brings the rag to her shoulder. He has no other move to make. It’s not like he can just get up and walk away from the two of them. And he isn’t a good enough person to refuse.

Somehow, her bare back, her tapered waist over her billowing skirt, seems more obscene than her nude front. He tracks the drops of water over her sharp shoulder blade, and it’s too intimate, too vulnerable. He can’t look anymore so he shifts his gaze to Flint, still at attention with his sword in his hand.

Flint’s in all black, standing in the kind of dusty shade that only exists beside bright sunlight. But Silver can still see his slim waist, his rising chest, the flush sitting high on his cheekbones. The way his bottom lip hangs slightly as he stares at Silver, touching his wife. No, as he stares at Miranda, her naked skin beneath his Quartermaster’s hands.

No. As he stares at Silver and Miranda, together.

There seems to be some kind of argument, some kind of dialogue happening between the two of them that Silver can’t understand. Miranda shifts her body slightly, moving her shoulder against the rag held still in his hand.

Flint opens his mouth as though to say something, and the closes it with a huff, finally looking away.

It’s the end to whatever conversation they’re having. Miranda shoots up suddenly, shrugging her shirt back on as she stomps towards the door. Flint doesn’t watch her.

“I’m going to get something to eat,” she says to the room, before exiting with an angry slam.

Tension hangs in the air like the wet cloth in Silver’s hand. He lets it slip to the floor, and it narrowly misses the book he’d dropped. The sound of it slapping makes Flint turn abruptly back at him. Something he sees makes the anger bleed out of him, because he just sags, throwing his sword down next to Miranda’s with a lot less care than usual. He collapses into his chair, rubbing his eyes with one hand.

Without looking at Silver, he says, “You think she’ll be alright out there?”

Choosing his words carefully, Silver says, “I don’t think you have to worry about her with the men.”

Flint snorts, dragging his hand through his hair, unsettling his ponytail. Strands come loose, hanging in his face as he says, “I don’t understand what she wants from this. She wants to be part of the crew, but doesn’t want to be treated like part of the crew? It cannot work like that.”

Silver shifts in this seat, trying to relieve some pressure in his leg. He doesn’t say anything.

“Whatever it is you want to say,” Flint says, “just say it.”

“What makes you think I have anything to say?”

“Your eyebrows speak even when your mouth is shut. Just say it.”

Silver scratches at the back of his neck, feeling unusually short of breath, and it’s not because he’s unexpectedly seen a set of breasts, because he isn’t twelve anymore. It’s just the two of them here, which is rare. He likes having Miranda here. He feels less likely to be strangled or to beg to be strangled.

But with just the two of them here, he feels able to uncoil just a little. Just enough to undo the straps on his iron leg. Miranda might soon be more familiar with such bloody cruelty, but she doesn’t have to be introduced to it by him. Flint already knows.

Slowly undoing to ties, and not looking at Flint, Silver says, “She wants the crew to see her as one of the crew. You and she have too much history for you to ever see her as anyone unimportant to you, and she’s smart enough to know you’ll never actually see her as just another pirate. So you treating her like you treat the rest of us, is just you treating her with disrespect.”

The boot falls to floor beside the book, beside the rag, and Silver sighs with relief even as the fresh air stings the raw skin. He’ll put it back on in a little bit. It just needs to breathe, but then he has to put the leg back on. He must.

“And you?” Flint asks. “How do you treat her?”

Silver stops leaning down to pick up the rag. Flint is staring at him now, but he doesn’t look angry. Silver is only learning how to read Flint’s face, but one of the first lessons had been angry or not angry. He doesn’t know how Flint is feeling, but mad isn’t it.

“I treat her like a member of my crew,” Silver says plainly, turning back to his leg with the cloth. “The contentedness of whom is of the utmost importance, which is the only reason why I’m telling you what I think.”

Flint doesn’t say anything, but he makes a sound that has Silver looking up. It’s a — chuckle, almost. More of a shake of his shoulders and a stuttered puff of air than an actual noise.

It is, on the whole, more shocking than Miranda’s breasts. “What? ”

“Nothing, I’m sorry,” Flint says, smiling slightly. “I just. Well, I guess I had nothing to base it on, but I had always gotten the impression that you didn’t know a thing about women.”

“What's to know?” Silver treats all women like how he used to treat a mark. The most important thing to remember is that they probably know more than you ever will. A man says one word and means it. A woman says one word and means three. “She's part of my crew.”

Flint hums, but it's a contemplative noise, not a dismissive one. Silver continues to bathe his leg, sure that if Flint had anything else to say, he'd just fucking say it.

“Miranda and I—” Flint stops. He's looking straight ahead, at the shapes of light on the wall, opposites of shadow streaming through the window. “We have a different relationship than other people.”

“....I'd gathered.”

“We've been together for a long time, and we love each other,” Flint says. “But there are certain things.... certain needs....”

Silver stops bathing his leg.

“We have an understanding,” Flint continues, toying with the fringe on his belt. “And I can't help but notice... If she wants... and you want... well, I won't take offense. Or try to interfere.”

What? “What?”

Flint sighs, finally looking his way. “Her happiness is always a concern, but an area I've too often neglected. We have — different needs. We’re both well aware of it. And I have no intention of intruding on what happiness she can find for herself, from whatever corner it comes.”

Silver is generally smart on the uptake, but it takes him too long to understand what happiness Flint is referring to. In his defense, it's been a long time since he's been associated with anyone's happiness.

“Captain,” Silver says, louder than he'd intended. “Do you take me for a stupid man?”

Flint blinks. “No. I mean. Not recently. I'm not trying to trick y– ”

“Do you think,” Silver interrupts. “given the man I was up until recently, that I would have survived as long as I have by ever getting involved with a married woman? Are you insane?”

“I'm giving you permission,” Flint insists. The tips of his ears are turning red. “I'm just thinking about what she might want.”

“And what about you?” Silver says without thought. “What is it that you want?”

The look Flint gives him this time is not unreadable. Instead, Silver translates a thousand different meanings in the tick of his cheek, the movement of his eyes, how quickly he looks away and how quickly he looks back. Every one makes Silver's heart expand like a full sail, stretched taut and liable to tear before an unrelenting wind.

“That's my concern,” Flint says, standing up suddenly. “I must go check on Miranda.”

On his way to the door, he adds without turning around, “I'll fetch you some fresh water.”

And then Silver is alone, his heart still rippling in his chest. He has no idea which direction it's blowing in. He has no idea where it's taking him, and he's helpless to do anything but stay the course.

A day later, Silver steps out onto the deck for the first time on one leg. He leans heavily on the ropes, glaring at anyone who comes forward with a hand extended. The salt stings in his lungs with every measured breath, as though his insides are all torn up, too. But he stands, for a little while.

After the first hour, he knows for sure the warmth he feels on his stump is blood.

By the end of the day, he swallows his pride and asks Flint and Miranda for a moment alone to get ready for bed, so they don’t see him weep as he struggles to get the blood-soaked boot off.

By the second day, he can barely get it back on, his stump is so swollen. His vision dances and greys several times throughout the day. First it’s just when the ship rocks heavier than usual. Then by nightfall, it happens whenever he inhales.

He can’t remember what happens on the third day.

He wakes up, in his spot by the window of the cabin, but he thinks he might also be in the ocean itself. The pillow beneath his head rolls and breathes like the sea.

“Water,” he breathes. He doesn’t know if he wants it or if he’s in it, but it’s all he can think about. He can’t keep his eyes open. “Water, please.”

“Miranda— ” say the waves lapping at his face.

“Here.” A songbird, swooping overhead. Does that mean Silver is close to land, or this bird is too far from home? “I’ll get Howell.”

Something hot and wet falls from his forehead, and he’s no longer sure where he is. He forces his eyes to stay open, and above him is Flint, upside down and nervous. His hair flutters unusually, stroking his face and his eyes. Silver still has no idea where he is.

Flint urges him to sit up far enough enough so Silver might drink from the cup in his hand. It’s tepid and perfect, spilling down his neck, soaking his collar. He can only manage a few swallows before he has to fall back and breathe.

What he mistook for the sea earlier is actually Flint’s thigh. No wonder he’d been so confused, because it makes no sense either.

“Why are you—” he starts.

“You were trying to hurt yourself,” says Flint.

That, at least, makes a little bit more sense. “How?”

Flint jerks his chin to the side. Beside his face is a missing panel of glass from the window, which is why his hair is whipping with the wind, even though they’re still inside. A few small shards stick to the pane, and behind it is a pale purple sky. “You had to cut something out, you said.”

Silver swallows. “Cut — cut what out?”

“That, you didn’t say.” Flint palms Silver’s hand, which had been resting on his chest. It’s bandaged, wrapped all the way up his wrist. But it’s clean, so he sets it back down again. “You were pretty adamant about doing it, though.”

Flint sets the cup down and puts a fresh rag on Silver’s forehead. It’s cooler than the drinking water, smelling strongly of the sea.

Silver feels like he’s been dragged through a fire. There are parts of his body he hadn’t even been aware of that he can feel now in agonizing detail, although the strongest are the throb of his bloody knuckles and, as always, the leg. He can also feel Flint’s fingers brushing his damp hair from his temple, smoothing out the cloth so the water won’t drip right into his ears.

“I thought you said you were a smart man,” Flint says.

“Only an idiot would say something like that,” Silver says. He presses his hand over Flint’s, over the rag, like he can force the fever out. Flint’s hand feels cool and damp like it had been in and out of water all day.

“I’ve put the iron leg in my safe,” says Flint. “You’ll only get it back once Howell says you won’t nearly die. ”

Silver closes his eyes and smiles. “That’s darling.”

A pause. “What is?”

“That you think I didn’t figure out your combination within a week of joining your crew.”

A longer pause. “You’re bluffing.”

Silver’s dying. He doesn’t think he’s over the worst of the fever. He might think he’s right in the fucking middle of it, except for some miserable reason he’s lucid enough to feel himself burning from within.

He stops pressing Flint’s hand, but he can’t move it away yet. He keeps holding on to him as he opens his eyes again. Flint is watching him. He doesn’t look like he’s slept in awhile. There’s the faintest nick on his jaw, like any man gets when they shave, but Flint isn’t any man, and he can handle himself with a blade. It’s pink around the edges, raw and new.

“I have something of the utmost importance to tell you,” says Silver, because he can’t fucking take it anymore.

“Later,” says Flint.

“I might be dead later.”

“You won’t be.”

“I stole the Urca from you.”

“I know.”

“I lied to you.”

“I know.”

“I cheated you,” says Silver, ”and if I hadn’t lost my leg, I intended to leave you with nothing.”

“I know.”

“I—” Silver stops. He blinks. He forgets what he’s about to say next, as Flint tries to tuck a lock of loose red hair behind his ear. Then he remembers. “You know?”

“I do,” says Flint patiently.

“How do you know?”

“This is the sixth time you’ve confessed this to me in two days,” Flint says. He’s leaning over Silver, and the hair falls back in front of his face, dancing again with incongruous wind.

“Oh,” says Silver.

“Along with a few other things,” Flint adds.

The problem with fevers is that they’re a slow death. “....Oh?”

Flint hums, moving the cold rag down to Silver’s neck. “Did you really impersonate a priest to get out of debtor’s jail?”

No liquor, no opiate, no sexual gratification can or will ever match the feeling of relief that occurs after unloading a terrible burden, except the relief that occurs from holding onto a hopeless and painful secret.

“No,” says Silver, voice hoarse. “I pretended to be a nun. It took me awhile, growing up, for my facial hair to come in.”

The corners of Flint’s mouth turn up. Or down. It’s a little confusing at this angle, as is the whole idea of Flint smiling, after everything.

“Did I tell you why I did it?” Silver asks.

“Yes.”

“Did I apologize?”

“Every time,” says Flint. “You cried sometimes, and other times you bragged about it. Mostly you did both.”

“I’m sorry,” says Silver.

Flint touches his forehead with the back of his hand. He glances towards the door, and no one comes in, so he turns to hand over, his palm soft against Silver’s flushed skin.

“I was livid the first time you told me,” Flint admits. “You were delirious, and I tried to pretend it was only the fever. I mean, I’d always suspected you were a part of some plot, as did Miranda, but for you to tell me when I couldn’t even rage at you — I think I was madder about that.”

“I’m sorry,” Silver says again.

“One would think hearing a betrayal confessed over and over again would be more damaging,” Flint goes on, “but somehow, I felt calmer with each iteration. It seemed like proof of sincerity.”

He puts a little pressure on Silver’s head, just enough to tilt his face upwards to look at him. “One thing I could never get you to tell me though,” Flint says, “is what you did with your share?”

“I haven’t got one,” says Silver. “I gave up my claim to it.”

Flint looks like he’d already figured that out. But still he asks, “Why would you do that?”

Some days, Silver knows exactly why he gave up his share. Other days, his reasonings are foreign and absurd and he rages at himself for being so fucking foolish all the fucking time. Mostly, he tries his best not to think about it.

“You know why,” Silver says, not really knowing for sure but just praying that he does. “You must have guessed by now.”

Flint doesn’t say anything, so perhaps Silver was wrong. If Flint had known, he definitely would have something to say.

“Why would you ever forgive me?” Silver asks. He’s afraid he might start crying again, and even though he’s apparently done that in front of Flint a few times now, he’d rather not have to remember it.

Flint’s hand slips down to his cheek. His other hand, which had been resting on his shoulder, now moves down the front of his chest, flat against the opening of his shirt. Silver can feel his heart railing beneath his waxy skin, desperate to curl up against Flint’s palm.

Flint says, “You know why.” He leans down towards Silver, and it may be the only strength Silver has left but goddamn it, he’s going to use it to move up closer.

But then Flint stops moving with only a half a foot left between them, frozen and startled. He must hear something Silver can’t, the sound of his blood rushing too loud in his ears, for he draws back swiftly, even going so far as to slide a real pillow under Silver’s head before Silver can do so much as blink.

Flint’s just starting to stand when Miranda comes back in, this time accompanied by Howell, Billy, and Muldoon.

“Is he awake?” Billy asks, even though Silver clearly is, blinking at everything in complete and total confusion.

“More or less,” says Flint, shouldering past them. “Howell, please ensure that my Quartermaster’s brains aren’t any more addled than they were two days ago. Billy, how far out are we from Port Royal?”

He leaves the cabin without so much as a backwards glance to Silver, Billy quick on his heels. Howell and Muldoon approach the window seat to fuss over him. He struggles to respond to them, and perhaps that’s the fever. Perhaps it’s the fever as well, that makes his eyes slide back to the closed door again and again. The way Flint had spoken of it, the way Howell and Muldoon fuss over him now, Silver thinks the fever might have actually be pretty severe for awhile.

Although, maybe it hadn’t been that serious. Miranda doesn’t look too worried, at any rate, about his fever or why the Captain stormed out of here suddenly in such a haste. He can see her over Howell’s shoulder, idly tidying up Flint’s desk. She’s not looking at him at all, but she’s smiling to herself, occasionally tapping her finger against her lips as though trying to stop it from growing into a full-on grin.

They aren’t that close, but Silver has some understanding of people and he doesn’t think she’d be smiling if he had been nearly dead. So perhaps he’d actually been fine, this whole time. He can’t tell. All he knows is pain, which is bad, and warmth, which….isn’t.

Silver hadn’t been a sickly child, so to feel this way now is altogether disorienting. He had no idea one could be so close to death, yet feel so alive at the same time.

The fever passed, and now it’s late. Only a few candles are lit. Miranda has her arm threaded through Silver’s as they walk, and with the hush in the air, Silver can almost imagine they are simply young lovers on a romantic stroll through a seaside veranda. Unable to say that final good night, unable to have one last kiss before parting.

He can almost imagine it, if it weren’t for the excruciating pain in his leg. If they weren’t just circling the inside of the cabin, Miranda’s nails digging into his elbow so hard he can feel it through his shirt. If they didn’t jerk every time their anchored ship swayed, every time they heard the muffled booms of gun and cannon fire.

Flint went over the rail tonight.

It’s the first time since the warrant went out, since they in turn started to spread word of their declaration of intent against society. They raided a couple ships in the meantime, nothing too big but enough to keep the mens’ spirits raised. Miranda had told him that before, Flint rarely ever sacked towns when he went hunting. It feels different. Flint is a seamen down to his bones, more sure-footed on a rocking ship in a storm than on land beneath a clear blue sky. On an enemy ship, there are only so many opponents, only so many outcomes. The possibilities on land are infinite.

Waters where Captain Flint is lurking are known to be dangerous. It is known. People on land, therefore, think they are safe.

So certain changes had to be made. Robbing another sinking merchant vessel did not, exactly, make waves any longer. So when the magistrate of New Carthage had decided to be bold, the crew of the Walrus had decided the same.

After news of Charles Town, and who had perpetrated those events, had spread, everyone had condemned pirates, but no one wanted to be the first to publicly target them. Caught pirates were hanged as usual, but — quietly.

New Carthage, along the Cape Fear River, decided that just wouldn’t do any longer. Close to water but far enough from the Atlantic, they proudly proclaimed the capture and execution of Captain Lovett and twelve of his rowdiest, violent buccaneers.

Flint had never heard of Captain Lovett. But New Carthage isn’t nearly as far inland as the town had assumed. The Walrus maneuvered the river easily.

There’s no end goal here tonight but carnage. They aren’t out there looking for anything specific, there’s no cache or mountain of jewels. The only mission is the message: piracy may not be sustainable, but we’ll take as many of you out on our way down.

Flint has nothing to do out there but survive.

Silver and Miranda have nothing to do but wait.

And walk.

There had only been a minor argument when Flint left Miranda behind. Silver thinks she’s a little nervous to leave the ship, which Silver understands. He’d heard she’d held her own when they raided those merchants, but… a town is different. Anything can happen.

Silver had presented no argument for himself. Flint had just told them to keep an eye on each other, and the ship. Then he went over.

Silver had been walking with Miranda in silence for almost an hour. He thinks about each step. Unless he’s thinking about Flint, but he’s trying not to do that, so instead he thinks about each step. More than a thousand of them, crackling through his body like lightning striking the same spot over and over.

He’s never been this quiet in a woman’s presence before. He hadn’t thought himself capable of it. He’s always known he had to work hard to keep a woman’s attention, for the minute he relaxed would be the minute they truly saw him, and would quickly depart. A woman he doesn’t need to impress — truly, might be incapable of impressing — but still to find him at his side, is so remarkable he wouldn’t believe it if he couldn’t feel her next to him.

A dull explosion far off outside and they both jump at it. Silver hisses at the pain rattling up his thigh all the way to his teeth.

Miranda stops walking, and so does he.

“They should be back soon,” he says, eyes on the window. It’s just black and unhelpful outside. “Someone should ensure the men are ready to leave with haste.”

“They’re ready,” says Miranda, clutching his arm tighter. “You made sure they were ready as soon as he left. Do you need to sit?”

“No.”

“Let’s sit.” Even though Silver had protested, he can’t make it all the way to his usual seat. Instead, he counts the six steps it takes to collapse in Flint’s chair. Miranda perches herself on the arm, hand firm on his shoulder. It’s a weight both welcoming and overwhelming. It’s what he imagines a religious man might feel, believing the eyes of God to be on him all the time.

Silver doesn’t know how to be in love with a woman like Miranda. She’s the kind of woman every man falls in love with at least once in their lives: beautiful, intelligent, out of reach, a dream. She’s a woman men fall in love with purely to get their hearts broken, so that they might later write poems about her and use her as an excuse to descend into alcoholism. She seems to exist to be the One -- the One that got away, the One that started it all, the One that made you a man, the One that ruins you for all other women.

He’s loved and been loved by women before, when he’d been selfish and didn’t realize how lucky he’d been to have someone look at him like that. He doesn’t think Miranda is in love with him, but she’s still able to look at Silver, and to him, right now, it’s the exact same thing.

“You’re worried about him,” she says. He hand shifts, her nails edging lightly against his neck.

Worry is a good word for it. Consumed would be another, and it has nothing to do with tonight’s endeavor. It is only partly to do with tonight’s endeavor. It is partly to do with warm thighs beneath his cheek, fingertips at his jawline, forgiveness he understands like a foreign language.

“This is the moment that decides our fates,” says Silver with half a shrug. “Whether this stupid plan holds any merit. Whether we know if this was a worthwhile plot or if we should have just cut our losses, if you’ll pardon the pun, after Charles Town and ran while we still could.” He pauses. “Actually, nevermind. I know we should have just hid after Charles Town.”

“That’s always your solution, isn’t it?” Miranda’s hand on his shoulder, as soft and unbelievable as divine intervention. “Running and hiding?”

Her voice is lighter than it’s been all night. For some reason that makes Silver even more tense. “One time, I didn’t. And you might have guessed how that turned out.”

It’d be so easy to make his current anxiety over his leg. His men are out there fighting, running, probably dying, and he’s strolling around the cabin with a beautiful woman like an infant king, fat and warm and learning to walk again, with soft hands to comfort him when he falls down. His men -- his Captain -- have no comforts out there in the dark.

But Miranda refuses to let him be maudlin about his leg. Just like whenever he catches her staring off at nothing, faintly brushing the side of her face, the hole there, and he’ll have to draw her away from herself with a joke or a question or a request. They are kindred spirits this way; she exists to be engaged with.

She leans over to the desk and pointedly pours herself a drink without standing. From her position, he can’t see the simple black patch on her eye, which doesn’t cover the scarring on her face, and he knows she sat that way specifically. She’s no less beautiful for her wound, but that is abdifficult thing to convince yourself of.

“I like that you worry about James,” she says, sipping some rum. “It was always a source of apprehension for me, before, that he might not have anyone looking after him out here. You might have guessed, but as far back as I’ve known him, James doesn’t make friends easily.” She slips the glass into his hand.

He take a drink. “I haven’t been here that long,” he says. “But before me, I suppose there was—” He stops talking.

But Miranda says, quietly, “Gates.”

Silver swallows more rum.

“He told me about Gates,” she continued. “He told me how you found him, and helped him. He’s told me everything about you.”

That’s not true, Silver knows. Because Flint barely knows anything about Silver.

“Well,” says Miranda, “everything he has to tell.” She takes the glass back and finishes it off. She sets it down on the table and leans back against the chair. Against Silver.

The rum does nothing to quell his nerves. It only spreads warmth to the fire that’s already scalding him from within. There haven’t been any more explosions outside. Somehow the silence feels more threatening.

Especially when Miranda runs her hand up his shoulder to cup his cheek, making him look up at her. Especially when she pulls him up by his jaw so she can kiss him better.

It’s already the gentlest kiss he’s ever had, and the deadliest. Silver finds himself clutching her arm, hanging on for dear life even though their lips are barely brushing. Silver doesn’t believe in witchcraft, and he knows the stories of Miranda Barlow are untrue, but he understands how they could have been started. He feels wholly bewitched, cursed, just from the nearness of her neck.

They part, and Miranda’s eye is still closed as she says, “Just to be sure, you are actually attracted to me, right?”

Silver is still clutching her arm. “Unfortunately, very much so,” he says. “I’m also unbelievably fond of you, which is a combination I’ve never fully experienced before.”

She smiles, eye still shut. “Thank God,” she says, leaning forward again. She only opens her eye when Silver pulls back.

“I am not, however,” says Silver, “in love with you.”

Her mouth quirks at that. “I hadn’t taken you for the kind of man who needed to be in love to take a woman to bed.”

Silver’s mind flips at the way she says love, the way she says woman, the way she says bed. He’s unable to keep from looking at the bed she shares with Flint, nor the door where Flint could be walking in at any time. Neither are particularly helpful to him right now.

“I’m not,” he admits, closing his eyes. “And I could see myself, one day, probably falling in love with you. I imagine it would be very easy to, in time. But since I’m not in love with you now, I don’t even have that as an excuse to do what we be the most assuredly stupid thing I could possibly do in my entire rotten life, which is filled with stupid things I’ve done, but none of which would hold a candle to sleeping with my Captain’s woman. I wouldn’t -- I couldn’t do that to him.”

“On the contrary,” Miranda says, and he can tell she’s moved closer again by the way he feels her words on his lips, “this is exactly what you want to do to him.” She kisses him again.

He’s a little slower to pull away this time, trying to understand what she meant, trying to remember the last time he felt truly wanted, the last time anyone had to convince him they wanted to be close. He struggles with it all, and pulling away from her is like ripping air from his lungs.

“I can’t.” It takes him a couple times before he’s able to drag himself upright, but she doesn’t stop him nor help him. His heart throbs like a severed leg. The look she gives him reminds him of his fever, reaching inside to shake every inch of him. Feeling lost and inflamed, he stumbles to the other side of the desk, running a hand wildly through his hair. He already feels a little safer with it in between them.

“Now, I know what you must be thinking,” he starts.

“You’re in love with Captain Flint,” Miranda says.

Silver blinks. “Okay, I had no idea what you were thinking,” he says. “You were thinking that? ”

“Aren’t you?” She slides down behind Flint’s desk, her posture perfect, hands resting lightly on the arms of the chair. It’s a good look on her. “I may be new to this life of piracy, Mr. Silver, but there are some things I am practically an expert at by now. He told me you two spoke of our potential relationship—”

“Which I firmly rejected,” Silver interrupts.

“And since I am convinced you two will miserably dance around each other until the end of time ,” she says firmly, “it once again becomes my duty to do what is best for James, as I know he’ll do anything but , and discuss your potential relationship.”

Silver suddenly knows exactly how the maiden carved into the front of a bow might feel — cut of splintering wood, fully exposed, cold and alone with no means of escaping the relentless blow of freezing water. He says, not able to look at Miranda, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She huffs, crossing her legs. The movement makes him look back at her with a start. The dim candlelight dances on her leather vest, on the sweat cooling at her collarbone, on the whiteness of her teeth when she smiles at him. He has to remind himself again that she’s not a witch.

“I’m only telling you this because, lately, I’ve had to reconcile the fact that I must become okay with killing a man,” she says. “It would pain me a great deal to kill you, as it would pain him immensely, but I believe it would be necessary, if your reaction proves to be one I don’t anticipated. But to keep him safe, I would do it. So I’m going to tell you plainly: your Captain feels just as you do. I’ve tried to tell him this, but he doesn’t believe I know you well enough to read. But I know that you know that I know him that well, so I can trust you to believe me now.”

Silver’s head hurts. Above, on deck, he hears men yelling orders to each other. He says, “I thought you were going to tell me plainly.”

Miranda pours herself with a drink with a sigh. “I won’t tell you his history, because it’s for him to tell. But I will say that you wouldn’t be the first man he fell for. He wants you, as I want you, as I believe you want us. You’re afraid, and I understand. On the surface, there is much to be afraid of. But tonight, the first night of our attempt to alter the face, if you’ll pardon the pun, of civilization, I will grant you this kindness of pulling back the veil on our situation and showing you how very simple it all is. How very simple it can be. How very good.”

Good. In her mouth, the word sounds different. It sounds like forgiveness. It sounds like peace.

“And if your summation of our relationship is wrong,” he says hoarsely, “you intend to kill me.”

Above now, the voices turn to cheers. Boots hit the deck like heavy rain, and the ship shudders to life. Miranda smiles, shoulders sloping with a sudden easiness Silver envies more than he’s ever envied anything before in his life.

“I won’t let his story be used against him,” she says, drinking her rum. “I won’t let it be used to hurt him. But for all my life, Mr. Silver, in the many years of high society, I was often scorned and shamed for one of my leading character flaws. For a woman, you see, I am far, far too confident.”

Above, as they start to cut through the Cape Fear River towards the sea, Silver is able to hold one voice apart from the rest. He can’t make out the words, but the sound of it pierces his chest as directly as if he had swallowed it. He watches the ceiling, tracking the voice, picturing perfectly the graceful flurry of movements that come with command, and even though he’s in here having his whole paradigm shifted, some of the tension falls from his shoulders with the ease of falling in love. Which is to say, not very easy at all, but there’s no stopping the slip once it starts.

Miranda leans back in the high chair, nursing her drink against her breast. “My brand of confidence only comes from being right, Mr. Silver. Now you’d best head on up there. You should go see what your Captain wants.”

Silver goes. He doesn’t think about his steps the whole way up.

It’s a month later, and Silver can’t count anything right now. The cabin door opens with a bang, the wall shuddering with the force of it. Or perhaps that’s just the ship finally heading underway, thundering through the dark seas like a man running away from a murder.

Miranda enters the cabin first, hand splayed to keep the door opened. She’s stooped over, Silver too heavy where he’s pressed into her side. He’s got his arm around his shoulder and his blood on her waist, and he tries to keep most of his weight on Flint, who’s propping up his other side and can handle the extra load.

The door slams shut behind them as they lurch further inside, struggling around the table like a crippled, demented spider.

“Honestly,” says Silver, as they start stripping him of his gun belts, his coat, dropping them to the floor as they walked. “I’m fine. You need to see to the men. I can barely feel it.” He’s not lying, for once. He’s trying very hard not to step on either of their toes with his iron leg.

“The warmth spreading on my side begs to differ,” says Miranda, while Flint just grunts, “Stop talking.”

The oddest thing had just occurred. They’d been sailing, a week after a raid, less than a day from Nassau, and they’d been hailed by another ship. By a pirate ship. It had approached suddenly as the sun fell over the water, the sea already red before the fighting even began.

The other ship had raised the black — to signify themselves as an ally, they’d thought. They’d gotten close, and then the other ship’s gun ports had opened.

It seemed someone had finally decided they had no interest in Flint’s crusade, and that they’d rather just collect on his ransom. Silver, logically, should have only been surprised it had taken so long for someone to make the attempt.

But watching Flint as he’d fought for his life, Silver just couldn’t understand why anyone would think they ever stood a chance against him.

Silver had fought, because there’d be no hiding below deck now. He hadn’t even thought of it. While he knows there’s no going over the rail for him (at least, not yet), he’d found his blood rising at the audacity of this other pirate crew, attacking his ship. Their ship.

He hadn’t recognized the sailors on the enemy vessel, but when they were aligned and the fighting had spilled out onto both decks, Silver’s first thought hadn’t been on his own survival. Later, he’d find time to marvel at that. At the time, he’d only concerned himself with finding the best spot to fight and be able to stand. He’d ended up at the helm, because though he was walking better every day, there’s no way he’d be able to stay upright in a sword fight without leaning on something.

He’s found he quite likes using guns, instead.

His men had proven helpful in this favor. He’d stood on the deck, strapped with as many pistols as he could wear, and someone would be near to defend him while he quickly reloaded, or handed him the guns off of dead men.

No matter where or why or what he was doing in his life, Silver never takes long to develop a better way for himself to do things. He appreciates having a system.

The fight had been bloody, and the light had begun to fade. But only at one point in the battle did he catch a glimpse of them, beneath the wave of smoke and spray.

He’d seen them fighting near the bow, back to back, blood dripping from the tips of their swords like the beads of a broken necklace. Miranda had been panting roughly, a streak of powder down her neck, and as he’d watched, she’d blocked an overhead blow from a pirate’s blade, locked him there, and then kicked him forcefully down the stairs. A snarl had been carved into her face, her skirts tied up around her knees. Silver, watching, had only thought about how he couldn’t wait to tell her how ferocious she looked, how dangerous and wild.

While Miranda had seemed feral, Flight in a fight is almost aristocratic. Even at the height of his brutality, there is a thoughtless kind of grace he exhibits nowhere else. As the main target of this attack, men had clamored to get to him, and he had fought each one with a terrifying accuracy and with barely any malice. Silver had felt indignant at this affront, Miranda had felt enraged — Flint had felt unsurprised. People fight Flint. That’s what people do. So he’d cut them down without a secondary glance, dancing around to the next like a bird changing direction mid-flight. Flint embattled is focused, relentless, and utterly beautiful.

Silver had seen them for only a moment, behind his own personal cloud of gunpowder smoke. He’d never been a man to cling to his past, to cherish things, to fondly recall times gone by when the nights are endless and cold. But this moment. Should he live that long, he will see this moment even when his sight has gone completely, when his bones —- what’s left of them — are crumbled to softened ash, when his mind has returned to seafoam, formless and fading. This moment — that image.

The fight had ended when the men did, crawling back to the smouldering remains of their ship. The dead enemy had been thrown overboard, and the dying enemy after them. A cheer had erupted over the Walrus, and Silver had stood at the helm, feeling like a prince and a shark, like both the hurricane and the ravaged, bombarded town it hit.

Flint had given the order to Billy to get them underway, Miranda had approached Silver, taken one look at him and, apparently seeing something he hadn’t even noticed, called out to Flint in alarm. One minute, Silver had been lost in the sight of them all in a golden twilight hour, and then next he’d been shuffled below deck, layered in shadow and dust as they’d toted him to the cabin.

“It’s a glancing blow,” Silver says now as they settle him down on the bed. In order to do that, with his arms around their shoulders, they have to sit beside him, too. “Don’t fetch Howell, he has to see to the others.”

“We’ll let you know if we need to get Howell,” says Flint angrily. “You’ll be the first to fucking know.”

Silver doesn’t even remember getting cut, but to be frank, there’s no intelligent reason why he hadn’t been killed out there, so he’s counting it as a blessing. “I think I can tell which wounds are cause for alarm,” Silver says, but faintly. Flint had started to undo the buttons on his shirt, and with his arm still around his broad shoulders, it brings them very close. They curl towards each other like the corners of an old book. Flint isn’t looking at him.

Miranda, very gently, removes Silver’s arm from her shoulder and stands. “Let me go get something to clean that.”

“Always with the bloody wet rags,” Silver mutters, watching Flint untuck his shirt from his trousers and not helping him in the slightest. “I might as well walk around in just wet rags, it would save me some troub—” He cuts off with a gasp.

Flint, seeing no other way to get Silver’s shirt off without pulling it over his head, had instead chosen to rip it all the way down. It looks like he’d done it without thinking, and then as soon as he’d done it, could only think about it, frozen as he grips the two sides of his ruined shirt in both fists. His knuckles brushed against Silver’s heaving stomach.        

Silver’s eyes meet Flint’s. There are freckles in the green that match the ones that dust his nose. He can only see what the moon illuminates, filling in the shadows from memory alone, but it’s easy. Flint has a face he’ll never forget. The room slowly blooms to an orange life as Miranda lights the lanterns. It’s finally night.

Flint stops looking at him to look at his wound. He lets go of the shirt, one of his hands flat on Silver’s belly. He jumps, and even though his whole life has been spent avoiding touches, every one of Flint’s makes him yield. He moves when Flint moves him, twisting him slightly at the waist to get a better look at his injury, which pivots him close enough to breathe in Flint’s neck.

Flint hums. “It’s not too bad,” he says, thumb grazing the sensitive skin. “I’d thought…”

“I told you,” Silver says, but he doesn’t sound too forceful. The wound has stopped bleeding but his skin is still slippery with it. Flint’s hands move away from his ribs but never leave his body. His nails drag up Silver’s exposed chest. He strokes and then clutches Silver’s neck, pulling him close but not close enough.

Flint is trembling. Or maybe Silver is. Or maybe the ship is. Either way, the bed shakes with unused energy, the vibration spreading over them like madness. Silver opens his mouth, brushes his top lip against Flint’s bottom one, and the insanity only grows when Flint’s tongue tentatively flicks out, licking the edges of his mouth. Since he’s already lost his mind, Silver kisses him, and Flint’s groan, his eager response, is enough to ensure he’ll never find it again.

Miranda’s kiss had been soft, but Flint’s is even softer — more like they’re just breathing each other in. Flint kisses like how he imagines mountain air would taste, which is only fitting. Silver has never seen a proper mountain, but he imagines they look a lot like Flint.

Then Flint has to go and remind him human he is, in the best way possible as he deepens the kiss, tugging him closer and sucking on his tongue. Silver feels no pain, none. Perhaps pain is something only the sane can experience.

He jumps again at the feeling of cold water on his body. There’s a slight sting, but still no pain. He breaks from Flint’s mouth to see Miranda on his other side again, cleaning the cut on his ribs. She smiles at the slack-jawed look on his face, pressing a chaste kiss to the corner of his lips as she wipes away blood.

“Now that we have these revelations out the way,” she says, sounding, as usual, very assured, “I think it’s best if we get a few more things cleared up before we continue here.”

Flint is stroking Silver’s neck, nuzzling behind his ear. Miranda is now needlessly wiping his whole chest, thumbnail grazing his nipple. Silver is unable to move, afraid to scare this away. He’s surrounded on all sides by more and more madness.

“I don’t know your past, Mr. Silver,” she continues, easing the remains of his clothes off one shoulder and planting a kiss there, “but James and I have some experience with this. The most important thing is that jealousy cannot invade us. We may all be together, or some variation of the two alone together. But whenever that occurs, we can never let jealousy com between us. Do you understand?”

Silver does, and he doesn’t. He manages to speak. “I’ve never been jealous of anyone before.” He’s being honest. He’s wanted what others have, but in order to be capable of actual jealousy, one must have had something at least once in one’s life, and Silver has never had anything before.

Miranda smiles again. “I was speaking mostly to James.”

Flint mumbles an agreement into where he’s slowly been bruising Silver’s neck. It would take him all night with the pressure he’s currently using, but he seems willing to give it a try.

“We will respect each other,” Miranda kisses him, “and trust each other,” Miranda turns his head so Flint can kiss him, “and we will care for each other. And if we can’t entirely do so out in the world, in here, together, we will be equals. Does that sound good to you?”

That word again, good. Silver thinks he might have developed another fever. He thinks this time his brains really are damaged beyond repair. There is no realm outside of delusion where such a thing as this may be so freely offered to him, but his only hope is to ride it out, to live in this hallucination until it finally kills him. He prays for a slow death as he nods and says, “Yes. Yes. ”

Miranda kisses him again, and this time it’s fierce and overwhelming — kisses him how the pirate he’d seen fighting earlier tonight would kiss. Flint sucks hard on his neck, hard enough he has to break away from Miranda to gasp, but Flint’s there immediately to replace Miranda’s lips.

She leaves them to it while she slides his other arm out his ruined clothes, and then two sets of hands roam his body. It’s a little like that night at the brothel, except it’s nothing like that night. The feeling that you would swiftly kill anyone who dared interrupt is a new, exhilarating sensation.

“I need you in my mouth,” Flint hisses into his ear. “I’ve needed you there since I first saw you, please let me.”

Silver hadn’t noticed when the blade had struck his side, but he figures it might have felt how Flint’s words feel now as they’re breathed into him — piercing and shocking, hot yet shivery, probably scarring him for life. “Anything,” he gasps. “Always.”

Flint and Miranda withdraw together, again moving simultaneously, like wings taking flight. They strip efficiently, their eyes hungry on Silver.

Which means they see him hesitate as he goes for his own trousers. They see his hands clench, wondering how he can do this without ruining everything.

Miranda sits next to him, all soft skin and perfect breasts that he remembers from his dreams. She has a knowing look on her face, a gentle hand on his neck, the other on his waistband. Dread is filling him when it has no business being here, but maybe he can avoid it altogether by leaning down and taking one of her nipples into his mouth. 

She gasps, arching up into him. Her hands tangle in his hair as he rolls the bud firmly under his tongue. Her slim waist fits perfectly beneath both hands, and he’s content like he’s never felt before, breathing her in. She smells like a woman after a long, hard, gruesome fight. It’s not a smell he recognizes but one he finds he loves. 

She clutches at him a second longer before pulling him off. He can’t help but drag his teeth a little as he goes, savoring her moan. She keeps hold of his face, keeps him close, but she says, “Look at him. Watch him. Let him take care of you.”

Silver turns his head, and there is Flint, standing upright in front of them. He feels Miranda smile against his cheek at the way his breath catches in his throat. Flint stands, hair loose and spilling onto his bare shoulders. The light dances over the dip in his belly, the sharp angles of his hips, the dusty hairs on his chest. He’s still streaked with sweat, dirt, and blood from the fight, his lovely cock half-hard and nestled between thighs steadier and thicker than a ship’s mast. Silver has slept on those thighs, dreamt of those thighs, wants nothing more than to be held tight by them, to have those knees dig into his ribs, those ankles locked behind his back. Flint juts his jaw out, breathes deep under their gaze, hands twitching as he lets them look. There’s no pride in his stance, nor is there self-consciousness. This is a man who feels more shame at what his body is capable of than with the tool itself, and even that shame is mostly rare, often fleeting. In the time they’ve known each other, Silver has feared that body, has admired the strength of it, has longed for the taste of it. In this moment, he feels all three.

Flint tires of looking and not touching, and so he falls to his knees in front of Silver. He kisses his belly with a wet open mouth, rubbing his beard along the hard flesh but always mindful of the fresh wound. Without lifting his face, he deftly unties Silver’s shoe and throws it to the side. Then he leans up and kisses Silver properly, distracting him long enough to finally get his trousers untied. He breaks away quickly, and while Silver is still processing the kiss, Flint presses his face into Silver’s crotch and breathes deeply, sliding his hands behind Silver’s ass to pull him even closer with a delirious, happy moan.

Silver grips Flint’s shoulders tightly, not sure what else to do but hold on. Miranda is stroking both their backs, kissing Silver’s neck, his collar, his shoulder. Flint lifts him up slightly to get his his pants down, and only withdraws in order to gently remove them altogether.

And then, all that’s left is the iron leg. It hangs from his body like an anchor. The stump has mostly healed, the boot no longer reopening anything and causing infection, but everyday it throbs and swells with the heat and the strain.

But Flint ignores it at first, kissing the crease of his thigh, running his lips over his balls and up his cock, not really doing anything but savoring the first taste. Silver breathes like he’s been submerged for hours, lost in the sight of Flint spreading his own legs wide to better kiss under the head of his cock. He licks the tip quickly, like a promise to return, before focusing on undoing the straps of the boot. He’s delicate with removing it — far more delicate, to be honest, than Silver ever is with himself. It falls to the floor with a thud, but Silver can’t even focus on it, because as soon as it’s off, Flint’s mouth is on his leg, kissing and licking at the hot skin.

Silver keens, face pressing into Miranda’s neck. She soothes him, holding him while he bucks under Flint’s attention, as he goes from the end of his leg, back up his thigh, before finally reaching his cock and taking it in his mouth.

He jerks and shudders under the attention, gasping, stretched apart. He’s got a hand in Flint’s hair and a hand in Miranda’s and he still feels like he’s about to fall. “Please,” he breathes, not sure what he’s begging for. “I can’t,” he says, not sure what he cannot do.

Flint holds his gaze, his eyes bright and proud, and Miranda strokes his back and says, “You can, you’re doing so well, Silver. You’re doing so well for your Captain. You feel so good in his mouth. He hasn’t had this for so long and you are doing so perfect for him.”

But Silver’s shaking with inactivity. He’s never been able to just lie there and let someone work, not that there were many opportunities for it, but especially here, like this. To let them bring him off, to sit here and just take it and have nothing else to do but feel good — he can’t stand it. Tears are threatening in his eyes as he clutches at them, completely overwhelmed, not sure what he wants until he hears himself say, “Please, let me, let me — let me taste you. Let me taste you both, I need to, please, oh, fuck.”

Flint sucks hard, going as far down as he can before pulling off with a pop. He says, a little hoarse but also a little petulantly, “Later. I’m busy.”

Miranda flicks his shoulder hard.

“I mean,” says Flint, “ladies first.” Then swallows Silver again, eyes closing blissfully.

She holds Silver’s face again, in a way he likes and in a way he can’t stand, because he likes it so much. She kisses him again, thumbs close to the corners of his eye. When she pulls back, she’s caught the tears before they fall.

“I suppose a little rearranging is in order,” she says, inching back up the bed.

Silver forgets for a moment what he’s trying to do, left alone now with nothing but the heat of Flint’s mouth, the brush of beard between his legs. He curls over Flint’s face, ready to let himself be consumed by him completely, until Miranda politely coughs behind him.

He turns to her on instinct, as does Flint, moving off his cock. The sight of her slouched low against the ship wall, legs partly spread, hair wild and one eye wilder — once again, Silver isn’t sure this isn’t madness. Each movement feels dulled and formless, like he’s moving through deep, dark water, but it’s worse not to move. He has to do something. He has to give something back.

Silver starts to twist fully to her, which makes Flint grumble.

“Well, now I can’t get to —” Flint stops. Silver’s on his belly now, his bad leg still resting on the bed with his good one propping himself up on the floor. “Actually,” Flint says, squeezing Silver’s ass, “I can make this work.”

Silver can feel Flint’s eyes on him, watching his every move. He knows this because when he pushes Miranda’s legs open, he feels Flint spread his ass wider. When Silver leans in, licks once at her cunt, he feels Flint do the same to his asshole. He and Miranda moan in unison, her hands tight in his hair, his hands gripping her thighs hard enough to bruise.

Flint can’t see exactly what Silver is doing, so eventually Silver just starts mimicking what Flint’s doing to him — sucking at her folds as Flint sucks on him, fucking her cunt with sharp, short jabs as Flint pushing through his tight ring with his tongue. Both slip their fingers inside, curling and discovering and opening. Silver can’t breathe, Miranda so wrapped around him, riding his face, but he finds he can’t care about it, moaning deeply into her while working himself back onto Flint’s tongue.

Miranda is loud when she comes, loud enough the whole crew probably heard it, but none of them care, least of all her. Her fingers are so entwined with his hair it takes a moment for her to untangle them, which keeps his face pressed into her as he swallows every bit of her. She shudders and groans through it, hips pumping weakly into it like she needs to back away but can’t make herself. Finally, she lets him up and shifts up a bit, so Silver’s face falls between her legs, pressed into the mattress. Flint is still fucking him with his tongue and fingers, utterly relentless. Without Miranda to muffle him, Silver’s as loud as she was, fisting the sheet beneath them and moaning into them.

“Please, Captain.” Silver’s cock is aching, come leaking on his thigh. “Please, I need you here, come here, fuck, Captain.”

Flint draws back instantly, and with some coaxing from Miranda, Silver’s able to turn onto his side. Flint slides up to him, wrapping himself around Silver and licking his face clean of Miranda’s taste. He does the same to Flint, tasting himself on Flint’s tongue and beard. Their cocks drag together, their thrusts somehow both idle and frantic — desperate to come and desperate to make it last.

When they do finally come, it’s within seconds of each other, groans indistinguishable, lips pressed together. Silver has his bad leg thrown over Flint’s hip, and Flint’s hand is there under his thigh to keep it up. Their heads are between Miranda’s open legs, and she’s been stroking their hair, watching them be together.

Silver rests his forehead against Flint’s, waiting for his body to come back to itself. Waiting for the pain to return. He knows he’s exacerbated the cut on his side. He knows even Flint’s hold won’t stop the throb of his stump, like an undying, sickly heartbeat. But all he can feel at this moment is Miranda’s fingers carding through his hair, and when he’s able to open his eyes again, Flint is already looking at him.

“What you said before…” Flint trails off.

Silver’s not even sure he remembers the English language, so he just repeats, “What I said before?”

“You said, anything,” Flint says, tucking a strand of hair behind Silver’s ear. “And always.”

Silver rolls his eyes. “I’m pretty sure I was referring to you blowing me,” he says. “Though I’m not surprised you’d hold that against me.”

Flint smiles, close enough his beard brushes Silver’s. He lightly rubs himself against Silver, their stomachs slick and solid. He looks like he’s about to fall asleep. “Anything,” he repeats, eyes closing. “Always.”

Miranda snorts. Silver looks up at her. She’s shining with sweat, more fondness bright in her single eye than any woman has ever shown him.

“He used to think I didn’t know a thing about women,” Silver says to her. “What do you think?”

“I think you know at least one thing,” she says, grinning. “And I’ve never been convinced a man needs to know much else.”

They lie there in silence for a while. Even though Flint is drifting off to sleep, his hand never slackens from holding up Silver’s leg. Miranda keeps stroking them idly, lost in thought. Maybe the whole day’s events are catching up with her — what happened, what she did, before she got distracted by Silver’s injury. The lives she took, the blood she spilt. Perhaps, from the hazy look on her face, this interlude with Silver had been nothing but a distraction against the reality of this life she chose to follow Flint into. Perhaps she’s lying there and remembering all her mistakes.

But then she catches Silver looking at her, and the haze disappears from her eye. She smiles at him, her lax fingers stroking once more.

“I’m so terribly happy,” she says, “that I didn’t have to kill you, in the end.”

Flint grumbles into Silver’s neck, and then he rears back with a sharp hiss. Miranda says, “Sorry, darling,” and continues to stroke his head, gentler than before, soothing.

Flint rubs his own scalp, too. “My hair’s getting too long,” he mumbles. “I think I need to cut it.”

“Don’t you dare,” Silver says, as Miranda says, “Not on your life.”

Flint frowns at them both, but it’s not a proper frown. It’s not something Silver’s ever seen before: Captain Flint pouting. “What happened to anything?” he asks.

“Anything but that,” Silver clarifies, tugging him by the red strands for another kiss.

Silver squints against the early morning light as he makes his way up the steps to the middle deck. He’d been alone in the cabin when he’d awoken, but while he’d slept, someone had bandaged his side, and moved both his crutch and iron leg within reaching distance.

He never feels compelled to leave the cabin in the morning. He normally has to force himself to move with each breaking dawn, and only rising out of necessity. This morning, however, he dresses faster than he has since Charles Town.

He finds Flint alone by the railing. He hasn’t tied his hair back, even though it’s almost shoulder-length now, and it whips around his face with the breeze. He stands at attention, hands clasped behind his back, watching the sea. Silver had forgotten how, at this hour, the water doesn’t look steely gray or murky green. At dawn, the ocean reflects the sky, purple and orange and boundless.

Flint hears him approach, of course, and turns to him. He doesn’t smile, because the crew is around, but all the lines on his face smooth out, relaxing at the sight of Silver approaching.

“Mr. Silver,” he says. “Sleep well?”

“Yes, Captain,” Silver says truthfully. “Best sleep I’ve had in a long time, actually.”

Flint still can’t smile, but Silver sees it in his eyes, as clearly as he would have seen a booming laugh on his face. It isn’t that hard to read him after all.

“I know the feeling,” Flint says. “A fight is good for that.”

Silver leans on the rail. It’s too early for his leg to really hurt, but there’s no need to push it. “Where’s —”

Flint cocks his head, turning inward. Silver also spins to look.

Miranda is standing with Muldoon, who’s manning the helm this morning. He’s explaining something to her, and looks proud to do so, happy as she listens with careful consideration. She’s dressed in her leather jacket, her hair half down, her eye patch clean and straight. The handle of the sword at her side shines in the rising sun. She says something to Muldoon, who pauses, looks around for a second before stepping away from the wheel.

Easily, she steps up to it, back straight, chin high, placing her hands on the spokes. Silver can see her say, “Like this?” but the sound of it is lost in the blow of the wind.

The ship doesn’t lurch under her hands. It stays steady, tall, true, on course, full speed, nothing standing it its way. Still, Flint sways a little, as though the ship tipped. Just a little, just enough so that he brushes into Silver, just so he could gently stroke Silver’s fingers.