Chapter Text
“I'm so sorry, Captain, there's no…well, nothing here,” says Gil, and the beach is silent for a moment when even the waves seem expectant, ready for Uma's fierce response, and though Harry sees the emotions draw and blur on her face, like the luminescence that appears and disappears in the reflection of the sea, in the end she takes a deep breath, purses her lips, and nods.
"We have to go back to the town then," she informs them. The crew seems uneasy too, “tomorrow we'll get a boat and look for the Revenge. Now it is too dangerous to stay here”.
Desiree looks miserable, though she tries not to let her expression show it so openly. She doesn't try to apologize again, or come up with an excuse, but Harry notices that she works twice as hard as the others, looking for branches to start a fire to carry them back, carrying the cutlasses and a few other things. Before turning onto the beach path, however, Uma catches up with her. She remains silent, even in her presence of haughty rock; she holds out her hand, her open palm, for Desiree to hand her something, the branches, the cutlasses, whatever.
Harry, who is carrying Nerea in his arms, kisses her soft curly hair, still short but definitely inherited from Uma. His gaze slides over the languor of the torch fire, over the tide of blue braids. He knows he's the only one who can understand the full significance of her gestures, but even without quite knowing why, Desiree absolves under her touch.
Gil deliberately delays to get to the back of the group with Harry, trying to be discreet.
“Do you think it was King Triton?” he asks quietly. There doesn't seem to be a trace of his drunkenness in his voice, nor in the frown. Harry purses his lips.
"Maybe," he replies. "But don't worry, Gil, the storm is on our side".
And she is, without a doubt, and Harry is sure that he will never tire of drowning in her, and he has no doubt that Uma will always choose him as her personal castaway when, arriving in town, in the right light from the dock, she searches with her eyes for her most precious treasures. Harry smiles because there is something like fire in her eyes, and because the sky is wide and the sea would never betray a pirate queen.
“So, will you go find them?” Mal asks, and her tone takes on a nuance that Ben fears he won't be able to quite decipher. It's like the walls of thorns that rise around her and are so difficult to break down because, although his mind tells him that she is only worried about him, something he knows, he intuits that it is about Harry and Uma and the years of her life that cannot be erased.
He would never think of lying to her though, so Ben nods, caresses her cheek gently.
“I have to, Mal. Before this gets out of hand and Triton makes a decision I'd have to oppose. I promise I'll be fine”, and the words are as clear as Ben himself. He doesn't know exactly why, but he has a strange soft spot for his pirate friends. A sincere affection towards them. He would never turn his back on them, and even if he had to stand against the Sea King to help them… it's not a reasonable decision, Ben realizes. He's acting like a friend and not a king, but even if there's something wrong with that he just won't stop.
And that is terrifying.
Could he bring his kingdom to ruin just for the love of his heart? Is this the weakness that all VKs fear, that the villains taught them to reject?
The truth is that these are questions that Ben doesn't want to answer, too afraid of what the honest answer would be. Scared of himself.
"I'm going with you," says Mal, finally, as if giving up. “It is too dangerous. You need my help".
However, this time, Ben denies it.
“I need your help,” he agrees, “here. You can't let anyone know, Mal. Not the Fairy Godmother, not the Royal Council, not even my parents".
You know what they think of her, what they've always thought, he means, although he's not quite sure if this statement is true, if Mal has noticed how cavalier they are with Uma and her people, how they're always on the lookout, waiting for the slightest slip to accuse Ben of being gullible, too soft, too naive.
How it seems, sometimes, that they are waiting for the slightest slip from Ben, something to reproach his decisions, especially those that have to do with the Isle of the lost and its inhabitants. It's ridiculous, he thinks. It's just stress that makes him think all this, but still, he feels a little guilty.
“You don't have to do everything alone, Ben”. Something in Mal's tone, like the faint note of a wound, makes Ben feel a pang in his heart. Then when she continues, she sounds openly hurt. "Why don't you want me to go with you?"
“I can't trust anyone else for this, do you understand?” He kisses her forehead. "I fully trust you that everything here is in order, I know you will take care of our people like the magnificent queen that you are".
And at least the expression on her face softens, and even a slight smile appears on her lips. Ben hugs Mal and stays there, with her in his arms, long enough to gather strength and begin preparations for the trip.
He can't take a ship from the Royal fleet without it being too conspicuous, so he decides on a sailing boat; it doesn't require as many manpower, and it is fast and accurate.
And as he says goodbye to Mal and heads to the pier, Ben doesn't want to think that maybe his plan is really naive, and tries to ignore the little voice that tells him that tracking down Uma probably won't be the easiest thing in the world.
In town, the crew finds a hostel to sleep in, and though the frightened owner is a bit surprised when Desiree hands him the coins to pay for their lodging, in the end they have at least a roof over their heads, which is saying more that many of them had when they were children and lived on the Isle of the Lost.
The wharf is kept alive, even at night, by the yellowish lights of the taverns, so the street is not silent, but instead catches the echo of the laughing night voices (and there is something vivid and fiery about the sound of this laughter), so far from the streets of the neat cities in Auradon, with their silence like an empty grave, in which Harry could never sleep because he was too used to noise on the Island.
In the sea there is never silence. Amid the lost immensity of the silver and cobalt horizon there is never silence.
So, even with the weight on her heart, the trepidation of getting her ship back, as if she had an extensive part of herself to recover, Uma knows that she must rest, as do Nerea and Harry, and the rest of the crew. She's furious with whoever stole the ship and, she has to admit, some of her fury is directed at Desiree, but the anger is hidden under the blanket of something else, a strange gratitude to her pirate for calling her to attend the stingrays.
And that is something that still puzzles her. Uma knows, like something instinctive, that what happened to the stingrays is not fortuitous; she must have something to do with it, something that she needs to figure out, in all this mess that has been caused since they arrived in Atlantica. The sea is accurate with the direction of its currents.
She is looking at the sea through the window of the small room, and she must be very tense because Nerea is impatient in her arms, and Harry, who has just taken a bath, approaches her. His long, rough, stealthy fingers slide between Uma's braids, worshiping each one, so sacred. The skin on her neck is now more exposed and Uma moves her head slightly for Harry to kiss her.
The touch of his avid mouth on her sensitive skin is the most effective offering for her to exhale, release all the tension of the day, and the chaotic hurricane of her desire ignites in her belly, and suddenly Uma just wants to feel him under her, hearing him moan her name, seeing what a wonderful sight is Harry undoing himself for her.
“You're worried about the ship,” Harry says, without the slightest hint of accusation, because he loves the Lost Revenge as much as Uma does, so he wants it back right now, too.
"And you're still worried about your father, aren't you?"
Harry has never been ashamed of the way Uma owns every thought of him. Even from those who hide from himself.
“Old Hook will have to wait a bit, lass,” Harry replies, his voice like the wind through the sails, like an agonized exhalation. The sea blue of cool breezy waters in his eyes is stirred by his emotions, which Uma is able to perceive. It's like the first time they sailed on the real sea, when the sky on the real horizon melted into the endless ocean and there seemed to be nothing but the waves under the Revenge and the wind carrying them to the end of the world. "I swear to you, Uma, I will not rest until I find the Lost Revenge".
"I know".
“But this isn't all you're worried about, is it, Captain? Is it something about Atlantica?”
Even inside the hostel, in the village, Uma can hear the waves crashing against the boats on the dock, the perpetual roar of the sea.
"You felt it too, didn't you, Harry?" she asks at last. "Something in those animals".
Her first mate nods.
"Yeah, I just don't know what it is".
Apart from a need to protect Nerea, as if they were seeing themselves in a mirror. Or the determination to do anything, anything, for their daughter. And some anger and rage, brewing inside Harry. How dare Triton…? He would never allow anyone to look down on Nerea or Uma.
“We'd better try to rest,” she says, turning away from the window at last. It is strange to sleep on land again, after spending a few months at sea. She misses the unquenchable dance of her ship with the waves, but at least she can hear the foam crashing and the sound of palm trees under the coastal wind.
“Aye, captain,” Harry murmurs.
Lying in bed, Uma thinks that several nights have passed since she first felt something else separate from the air, and that the tides would begin to turn. It's just that she now suddenly realizes that finding Harry's father, and the Lost Revenge, is imperative, because something in her blood and her heart warns that King Triton has kept the sea still for too long.