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She isn’t quite sure when she first became aware of it, or when it actually happened.
She supposes it must have been one of the numerous times she’d had to patch him up, as happened far too frequently for her liking. Hell, their first real meeting of any consequence had involved her cleaning up his wounds and bandaging them, though he had seen it as unnecessary. As became habit for them, she insisted, despite his grumbling, and had patiently and carefully cleaned the gore from the cuts, neatly bandaging the wounds with the only clean linen she’d been able to find.
On occasion, when she thought about it, she wasn’t even sure why she offered, that first time. She’d stridden into the captain’s cabin aboard the Fancy, murder being the first thing on her mind, but what she found instead had been a wounded, bloody Charles Vane, the head of the man she had planned on killing herself clenched in his fist. So how did it come to pass, that after he had settled the business of making Ned Low a warning to all who dared cross him, she had followed him and nearly demanded that he allow her to see to the wounds, instead of allowing him to settle down with a bottle of strong rum and drink until the pain stopped? She still isn’t sure. But she had done it, and he had allowed her, and that was what had mattered.
After that, they became more like friends, almost. Perhaps it was something about her having seen him wounded, or perhaps it was as simple as the both of them spending more time ashore, and running into each other more often. On occasion, Charles would be bloodied from some scuffle or another, and she always asked him to let her take a look, patch him up again. Time wore on, and it happened that more than once that they were involved in the same fight. She could be as stubborn as he was when it came to asking for help with her injuries, and she usually took care of hers on her own. It wasn’t long before she realized that she was spending more time with him than with her own crew, but that didn’t stop anything. The crew could handle themselves, after all, and it didn’t stop her from successfully leading them whenever they did take to the sea.
Eventually, somehow, it became habit for her to camp where he did. Of course, this started no small amount of rumors, though those were fairly quickly put to rest, with the amount of times she found herself walking back into the town proper in the evening, because Charles had a whore with him who was simply far too loud, and if she heard one more gasping cry of his name she was going to go mad, simply from sheer annoyance. Still, her tent was never too far from his own, and there was no issue in that, not when they were able to get their crews working in consort toward greater prizes.
On one of the occasions in which she was tending to various cuts and bruises he had acquired, she was struck with a thought that made her pause, made her press the cloth against the wound just a bit too harshly. She’d die for this man, she realized, if the situation called for it. It was no secret, anyone messing with either one of them was met with swift reprisal from the other, but even so, to realize this, it was a surprise to her. Thinking on the subject later, she noted, with some small amount of humor, that it might happen sooner than she would like, given Charles’ proclivity to devote himself so entirely to a cause that he was ready to die for it at a moment’s notice. She supposed that was exactly why she’d be willing to die for him, actually. The passion he had for his purpose, for fighting to ensure that Nassau remains free, it was alluring, and all the same, she simply could not bear the idea of allowing it to kill him.
Still, though, she couldn’t pinpoint that as the moment in which it happened. It seems to her, almost, that whatever it was, built up slowly, in such a way that she wouldn’t notice it until it became entirely unavoidable, until it was so concrete she could not deny it.
No, she isn’t quite sure when it happened. But she’s sure of one thing.
That she loves Charles Vane.