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He’s just gotten the map properly unfurled, the parchment sticking to his wet fingertips as he tries to keep the mist-turned-drizzle off the ink, when it’s snatched out of his hands.
“Hey,” he starts, grabbing for it, a second too late.
The huge man looms in front of him, blotting out what little of the sun is desperately trying to peek out from quick-brewing rainclouds. “Commodore wants to see you,” he growls.
“Give me back my map,” Dylan replies. “The Commodore can wait.”
It was possibly the wrong thing to say, in hindsight.
The man grabs Dylan by his fraying collar and half drags, half carries him down the stairs, below deck, to where the Commodore is ostensibly waiting. Indeed, when they arrive -- a bedraggled pair, both damp and red-faced, though Patrick Maroon from annoyance and Dylan from half-hearted, unsuccessful struggle.
The Commodore looks up, sighs heavily. There seem to be lines around his eyes, though that could just be the firelight playing across his young face. The lamps clank ominously, glass holders bumping against one another as the ship skips a large wave.
“Thank you, Commander Maroon,” the Commodore says, softly. For a moment, he looks back down at the papers scattered over the table, steadies a wobbling bottle of ink. “Leave us.”
Maroon drops Dylan abruptly, leaving him to stumble a bit against the wall in his wake. He tries very hard to put on a humbled face, but the Commodore only has eyes for the Captain. “You too, Leon,” he says, even quieter than before. “This will take but a moment.”
The captain of the ship hesitates for a moment before striding past Dylan, fixing him with a glare. It wasn’t that Captain Leon Draisaitl disliked Dylan, to be fair; oh no. He despised him.
The door swings shut, and there’s a moment of fraught silence.
“Oh, get over here, you terrible --” Connor says, and Dylan’s leapt on him before he can even finish. Their embrace is only broken when the ship lurches again, and they fall apart, laughing. Dylan claps his best friend on the shoulder.
“This isn’t how I wanted to welcome you to my ship, Commodore McDavid.”
Connor wrinkles his nose. “Don’t call me that,” he starts, and then lets out a scoffing laugh, though of course there’s no real malice behind it. “ Your ship, Lieutenant?”
“Never mind,” Dylan grumbles, glancing behind him at the closed door with annoyance. Connor sighs, though there’s less disappointment than before, more fond exasperation this time.
“You should have more respect for your Captain,” he chastens.
Dylan’s laugh, unlike Connor’s, is full to the brim of rancor. “He doesn’t have any respect for me ,” he argues, and before Connor can chime in some stupidly rational response, he continues, “And anyway, he’s always getting angry with me for --” He looks over to where Maroon had half-crumpled his map as he’d thrown it on the Commodore’s desk. “For that.”
Another sigh. Connor certainly sighed a lot, Dylan thought, though from experience he knew that that increased when Connor was around him. “That’s what I’m here to talk to you about, Dylan.”
After a moment, they both speak at once, but Connor’s coaxing is drowned out by protests. “No,” Dylan says, simply, loud. “Don’t -- no, Connor.”
“You know I’m right,” Connor says, reaching out and taking Dylan by the shoulders. “Dyl. Look at me. I mean it.”
“As do I,” Dylan says, and wrenches away from him. There’s something hurt by that in Connor’s eyes, though as he tries to recover his calm, Dylan shakes his head, swallows hard. “You don’t understand.”
“But I do,” Connor insists, stepping toward Dylan.
And instead of letting his best friend counsel him, Dylan steps away. “No,” he says, firmly. “You don’t.”
“Ryan was like a brother to me, of course I--”
“ Like a brother!” Dylan almost spits the words out in his sudden choking rage. “He is my brother! He--” His voice breaks, a little, as he realizes what he’s said.
Connor is silent for a moment. “He was a good man, Dylan,” he says gently. “It makes sense, why you miss him, of course it does --”
“He’s not dead.” Dylan’s voice is so cold it surprises him, even, though clearly not as much as it surprises Connor, from the look on his face. “And he is my brother. You’re not, or you would never want me to stop looking for him.” And with that, he turns on his heel and storms up the stairs, leaving a Commodore of the Royal Navy stunned in his wake.
~*~
After a night of tossing and turning, praying for a moment of sleep, he’s shaken awake by the Captain, of all people.
“I don’t know what you said to the Commodore,” Leon says, every word clipped and tinged with distaste. “He won’t tell me.”
“It isn’t worth repeating,” Dylan mumbles blearily. Leon scoffs.
“Yes, I’m sure,” he replies, “But regardless. A decision has been made.” Dylan just looks at him blankly, confused. Leon seems just a shade away from rolling his eyes at his foolishness. “We dock in two hours,” he continues, “And then you will stay at port.”
Dylan splutters, nearly falls out of his scratchy hammock. “But--”
“We dock in two hours,” the Captain repeats, firmly. “And when we do, you will stay behind, at port. There is no place for you on my ship any longer, Lieutenant Strome.”
And with that, he leaves, swinging the cabin door shut behind him and plunging Dylan back into frigid darkness.
~*~
He ends up in the alehouse, eventually, orders a tankard and sits alone at the end of the bar, glowering at the amber liquid. He’s got no one but himself to blame, is the thing. Connor loved him like a brother -- the commodore had said as much earlier, and Dylan had thrown it back in his face. God. He didn’t deserve brothers, clearly, was what the universe was trying to tell him.
Finally looking up, he meets his own reflection in the warped glass behind the bar. It’s as if he’s sucked back in time, to three years ago, the last time he had seen Ryan.
They had been in the pub for about an hour with Matty, with Dylan wheedling the younger boy into taking a swig of beer and Ryan laughing good-naturedly, waving Dylan off and telling Matty he didn’t have to do anything Dylan said. They’d been shoving at each other, cackling uproariously before long. That was the thing about Ryan, one of the things that Dylan remembered best. His laughter was absolutely infectious.
On their walk home, the mirth had faded slowly, and the memory of it still kept Dylan just as warm inside as it had then, just as much as the beer did. He took another gulp, suddenly having to blink very hard to stave off a tightness that wrapped around his throat. They’d left Matty, sleepy and fending off Mother’s questions, and gone up to the roof. It was a rickety, dangerous trip, but the Strome boys had been making it since father had bought the house on the docks. It provided a spectacular view of the ocean beyond, and the moonlight just illuminated the water out to the horizon.
They’d been silent, for a long moment, before Ryan had cleared his throat. “There’s so much out there,” he said, soft.
“I’m going to see all of it,” Dylan replied, immediate, wistful. He couldn’t wait to put on the jacket that signified he was in the Royal Navy, to have the light blue cloth of the navigators across his back. “I mean it, Ryan. All of it.”
“I know you mean it,” Ryan said, then looked at Dylan, suddenly very serious. “You need to be careful.”
Dylan couldn’t help it; he’d scoffed. That was the last interaction he’d had with his brother, shoving away advice. And before he could say anything, Ryan had smiled, a bit sad, and stood.
“You always were one to jump into a wave you couldn’t see,” he’d said, and ruffled Dylan’s hair. “Goodnight, brother.”
After that, Dylan had stayed on the roof, just looking at the sea. He drifted off at some point, because the light of the sun coming up had shaken him from a restless sleep, and that’s when he’d heard the crash of glass from two floors below him as his mother found Ryan’s room empty and his dagger abandoned and blood on the floor, and dropped Father’s crystal pitcher.
A similar crash in the present jars Dylan from his memory, and he looks down the table, annoyed. A group of men are roaring with laughter as a young man with cropped dark hair holds out huge hands in front of him, smiling coaxingly at the bartender.
“I hardly think that glass was worth much, anyhow,” he says, in a softer voice than Dylan would have expected. The bartender crosses his huge arms over his chest.
The men around the one trying to explain hoot with laughter. “It was a good try though, Auston,” says the one with the ponytail. “Here, Willy. You’ll settle our debts, won’t you?”
“There’s a good lad,” says another, clearly older than the rest, though only by ten years or so; he’s got a face that manages to look worried even as he smiles.
The boy they’re talking to, Willy, pouts, crosses his arms over his chest, somehow a mirror image of the bartender, though terribly slight in comparison. He puffs out a frustrated breath that lifts his white-blond bangs. “Why me ?” He asks.
The older man beams, the lines around his eyes deepening. “Because you’re a real good friend.”
Laughing, the others start to filter out as Willy reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out a purse clearly heavy with coin, talking quietly with the bartender. Dylan’s just looked back at his drink, glad that the rowdy group is leaving, when the man with the ponytail stops at the door, calls to one of his companions. “We’re leaving, Marner!”
“Well, I’m not done yet,” a teasing voice calls back, and something about it makes Dylan look around, try to find the source of the sound.
The man is young, probably about Dylan’s age, but shorter, and slighter, with dark hair sticking up everywhere and a wide smile. His eyes are light blue, the color of clear water. Ocean eyes , Dylan thinks, and then shakes his head.
There’s absolutely no reason for Dylan to want to know what the stranger is saying, really, only that he sort of just wants to watch the man talk, gesturing wildly with his hands as those eyes sparkle with laughter, giving away a joke before he tells it. There are several people clustered around his table, clearly as entranced by the story as Dylan is, and more than one of them is gazing at the youth with such clear adoration that Dylan has to fight back a snort as he turns back to his drink for a moment.
It’s only when he mentions something in passing -- a ship with a fisherman at the hull -- that Dylan finally allows himself to be less subtle in his looking, and maybe chokes on his ale a bit as well. “You know that ship?” he asks the stranger, who raises his eyebrows in surprise.
“We’re chasing it down,” he replies, then looks Dylan up and down, takes in the ragged jacket and slashed sleeves. “Probably not something you’d be able to keep up with, though.”
It probably says a very bad thing about him that he can’t resist a dare to save his life, which is how he ends up staring at the St. Patrick’s Escape later that evening. “You want to catch a pirate ship in this ?” he demands, but the answering shrug still isn’t enough to scare him off. Not if he could catch those wretched pirates.
Mitch Marner just looks at him, then shrugs. He’s sort of hot and cold, this Marner fellow, Dylan thinks; there had been times on the walk down to the docks that Dylan had made pathetic attempts at jokes, and Marner had laughed anyhow, but now he gets a little cooler in his defense of the ship. “Nobody’s even asked you aboard,” he points out. “Doesn’t make much sense to be calling it rubbish already.”
“I never said it was rubbish,” Dylan argues, and he hates that all the fire goes out of him as he smiles in response to Mitch’s laugh. “Ugh. Will you, though?”
Mitch blinks at him, eyelashes nearly brushing his cheekbones. “Will I what?”
Dylan shifts from foot to foot awkwardly, not quite knowing how to word his request. He wanted more than anything to go along with the privateers, but he couldn’t quite invite himself onto the ship, even if it did look fairly close to sinking at any given moment.
“You know. Ask me aboard.”
Mitch keeps looking at him, very serious, for a long moment, before he laughs and honest-to-God grabs Dylan’s hand to pull him toward the ship. “You’re far too pathetic to leave behind, I think.”
~*~
The crew of the St. Patrick’s Escape seems, on the whole, entirely unimpressed with his presence, even after Mitch has given him the glowing review of “that poor sap at the bar.”
“We don’t have the room,” Auston says, sounding much more gruff than he had in the bar. Mitch had quickly told Dylan that Auston was the captain, practically too young for that, and constantly making sure no one was undermining him.
“No one would ,” Mitch had explained, like it was obvious. “He’s really great at what he does, but we’d never tell him that. It’s much more fun to have him pretend to be all stodgy and professional. His nose wrinkles up and he looks a complete fool.”
This had all been said in a very fond, endeared voice, but Dylan is having some trouble conjuring up those feelings for the young captain. He’s of a height with Dylan, for sure, but broader, and the way Auston is glowering at him makes him more than a little nervous.
Mitch scoffs. “We do too have the room,” he says, somehow shoulders his skinny way past Auston, dragging Dylan with him.
Willy is the next to speak. “Just so you know, Marner,” he says, in a lazy voice emphasized by the way he’s lounging across a barrel and several navy-painted trunks, “If anything was to happen, I don’t see his name on the letter of marque.”
“So you’d just hand a perfect stranger over to the authorities, Nylander,” Mitch snaps back, then regains some of his teasing composure. “And, Auston, if we do need the room, I see a couple trunks full of Swedish silks to get tossed overboard.”
“Don’t even joke,” Willy says, dead serious, then shrugs. “And all I’m saying is, Shanahan wrote in that we’re allowed to --”
“Never mind all that,” says the tall man with the long hair -- Matt Martin, Mitch had told Dylan earlier, and something had gone sad in his voice. “Either he’s staying or he’s going, but I’m pulling the anchor.”
“I vote he walks the plank,” Willy mutters, but that just starts an argument over whether or not there is a plank to walk on the ship, and by the time the St. Patrick’s Escape ’s sailors have reached a quasi-agreement, they’re far enough from shore that to Dylan’s eyes, all the individual lanterns on the dock have blended into one shallow tongue of fire licking up to the stars.
~*~
He ends up in the hammock nearest Mitch’s, which Dylan thinks is a blessing for only a moment until he realizes that there’s nothing about nighttime that says Mitch stops talking .
“Why have a parrot when we have Marns,” Matt had said as Dylan had finished choking down a ration of hardtack he’d doused in beer. The sad part is, it hadn’t really rung true until just now.
The only thing more annoying than the constant chatter is the fact that, in his heart of hearts, Dylan really doesn’t mind at all.
“And so basically, the only reason Bozie is here is to make sure none of us fall overboard,” Mitch finishes up.
The quartermaster looks over from his own hammock, puts the book he’s been squinting to read in the half-light down. “Don’t say that like it’s such an easy task,” he cuts in. “Especially you, Marns. I’ve got half a mind to tie you to the mast so you can’t hop in after any shiny thing you see.”
“Oh, you’re so funny,” Mitch snaps, shoves Dylan when he laughs. “Stop that! Anyhow, the only one who gets distracted by shiny things is Willy and we all know it.”
Privately, Dylan doubts that; Nylander is the only member of the crew who comes from money, real money, and as evidenced by his multiple outfit changes since Dylan had stepped aboard that morning, he probably has an overabundance of shiny things already.
Before Mitch can continue arguing lightheartedly with Bozak, Dylan taps his elbow lightly, bringing the boy’s attention back to him. “So, remind me,” he says, still more than a little confused. “Why is it that you all can’t, you know. Chase the shiny things?”
“Loot and plunder, you mean?” Mitch asks.
Tyler sighs wistfully. “Those were the days.”
“They were absolutely not.” Everyone in the conversation jumps a bit, with Mitch’s hand flying to Dylan’s shoulder and Tyler trying very hard to look unruffled as he tries to regain his place in the book he’d dropped. Matt Martin toes his boots off before flinging himself into a hammock.
“Why not?” Dylan asks. Martin turns a cool gaze on him, none of the affection from earlier, when he’d been tussling with Mitch and Willy, easily fending the two off with one hand as he drank their rum.
“Because Royal Navy bastards get the go-ahead to shoot pirates in the face, is why not.” He tilts his head, his long hair falling over his shoulder. “Isn’t that where we picked you up, Strome?”
Mitch sighs, patting Dylan on the head. “Don’t hold it against him, Matty. Besides, he’s really no good to them, either.”
Dylan wants to protest, but figures its best to distance himself from the Royal Navy bastards as soon as possible. “Yeah,” he agrees pathetically, and Matt just snorts, turns over in his hammock, signifying the conversation more than over.
He doesn’t really like the silence that follows, so he turns back to Mitch and lowers his voice. “I didn’t even know there were, you know. Pirates like you all.”
“Good ones?” Mitch chirps, then giggles as Dylan starts to get flustered, tries to explain himself. “No, I know what you mean. We’re lucky Brendan Shanahan thinks privateers can get shit done that the Navy can’t, and we’re lucky he’s been right, so far.”
From Dylan’s very, very limited understanding, this mysterious Brendan Shanahan might be the only Navy official who thinks that paying certain pirates to catch others is a good plan. Dylan’s sort of hesitant to think Shanahan’s right, because apart from the crew of the St. Patrick’s Escape , he doubts many pirate ships could handle the responsibility of a signed letter of marque to hunt other pirates down.
Regardless, Auston’s crew seems to be fairly good at it, as the Fisherman’s Scourge is only the latest in a long line of pirate ships they’re chasing. It seems a bit odd to Dylan that the crew tries to move on quickly in conversation from their current mark, preferring to discuss previous ships they’ve captured.
“The best part is,” Willy explains, “That we take all the loot we want, and if we’ve caught a ship worth half of anything, there’s usually quite a bit to split amongst us.”
“We have to hold Willy back from taking more than his fair share,” Bozak adds, and everyone but Willy laughs over the youth’s self-defense.
It’s nice, in a way, to listen to these pirates-turned-pirate-hunters talk and laugh, and Dylan knows he should feel woefully out of place. The most rational thing to do would be to stay as far away from these men as possible, but it’s harder and harder, the more they talk, the more they seem just like normal people, just like him. And there’s the added element that Mitch Marner is one of them, and so they can’t really be all that bad.
As if on cue, Mitch leans into Dylan’s shoulder, starts telling a story about a pair of boots Willy had stolen off a sleeping pirate’s feet, and Dylan doesn’t feel anything close to out of place, here amongst the privateers.
~*~
The next time Dylan sees Matt Martin, it’s from across the ship as the older man stands alone, looking out across the water. The air is clear and brisk, the sea smooth as glass beneath them, and as Dylan approaches Matt, he sees a look of frustration painted across his face.
Matt’s wrenching a necklace off from around his neck, vexation causing him to pull hard at it before simply lifting it over his head. He holds it still in his hand for a moment before starting to pull, straining the fine metal links as he tries to undo the catch.
“Stop it, you're going to break it,” Dylan finally says, trying to grab the chain from Martin’s hands. “I mean it, Matt. You’ll snap the clasp.”
“Damn the clasp,” Matt growls, “And damn the chain, and damn --”
“Alright,” Dylan cuts in, as soothingly as he can.
He tries to be gentle as he takes the necklace from Matt, but the larger man holds tight to it, hesitant. Dylan notices how dark the circles under Matt’s eyes are, and a moment later, that the eyes themselves are red-rimmed, not quite wet still, but nearly. “You're sure you know what you're doing?”
Dylan nods. “My father is a smith,” he explains, “And sometimes he works on bits of jewelry like this. I'm sure it just needs a bit of help.”
The problem doesn't end up being the clasp at all, but the fact that the silver has developed a little patina from being splashed with seawater so often.
“Don't you ever take this off?” Dylan asks. Matt looks at him like he's grown a second head and shakes his head wordlessly.
Finally, the pendant slides along the chain smoothly as butter, and then the next order of business is examining the locket itself. It's made of fine silver, to be sure, with a curving double C engraved on the front, and an arrow on the back, pointing to the sky.
Dylan’s just about to figure out the locking mechanism when Matt tries to snatch it back. “Thank you,” he says, hastily. “It's just -- I don't need to open it, right now.”
“But don't you want to see what's inside?” Dylan’s a bit dumbfounded that Matt would suddenly let go of this so easily. He maintains eye contact, but keeps his fingers working nonetheless.
“I know what's inside,” Matt starts, reaching out again, and then Dylan gets the locket to spring open into Matt’s open hand and they both fall silent.
The locket doesn't have any portraits in it, like the triple-faced one Dylan’s mother has with tiny ink drawings of each of her sons. Instead, there’s just a lock of golden blond hair, tied together with a bright blue ribbon so thin and delicate that it looks out of place in Matt’s huge palm as he cradles the curl in his hand.
“Could you close the locket, please,” he says, and his voice is very low and hoarse all of a sudden.
Dylan doesn't think his fingers are shaking, or anything, but it's harder than it should be to get the locket to close again, and when he finally succeeds, it shivers in his hand before springing open again.
“I said --”
“I know what you said,” Dylan says, trying to force the locket closed again. “But it won’t --”
“Just close it!” Matt demands, voice rising and almost breaking as he wrestles the locket fully away from Dylan’s grasp, the long chain slithering through his fingers. It’s a testament to his strength, probably, or at least the strength of all the emotion he’s feeling that he manages to slam the faces of the locket shut again.
They’re both silent for a moment, and Dylan’s about to say something, anything, to break the sudden hush, but then Matt is turning on his heel and storming away, necklace gripped tight in one huge fist.
None of the shocked tension has dissipated from Dylan’s shoulders by the time someone touches him gingerly on the arm. He whips around, and is really only half surprised to see that it’s Mitch.
“Shouldn’t even have tried to help,” he mumbles, and scuffs his boot along the water-warped wood of the deck. “Just end up looking stupid, anyhow.”
For once, Mitch is speechless for a long moment, and they both look out over the calm water, such a contrast to the storm that had come and gone with Matt Martin. Then, Mitch’s fingers tighten around Dylan’s wrist, just for a moment, and Dylan looks over at him.
“Sometimes it’s all you can do, is try to help,” Mitch counters gently, then takes his hand away to shove it through his hair, leaving Dylan’s arm feeling clammy and cold in his wake. “We all do, I suppose, but. It’s hard. I think because Matt doesn’t know what it is that he needs, or,” he drums his fingers on the side of the ship. “Or because we can’t really give it to him, no matter how much we’d like to take some of his pain.”
Dylan still doesn’t know who Matt Martin was before he’d joined this crew -- hell, he barely knows even now that the large man is as much a part of the ship as anyone else -- but he’s sensed from the moment they met that there’s something just a step off about him. He doesn’t press, and he’s lucky that Mitch is such a sucker for telling a good story that he keeps talking without any prompting from Dylan.
“Matt was on another ship, before he came to us,” he starts. “He’d been on that crew for a good long while, knew all the men like the back of his hand. He really trusted the captain, I think, and it’s hard to trust another captain as much as you trust your first, you know?”
Honestly, Dylan doesn’t. He somehow trusts Auston and his ragged band of privateers more than he’d trusted anyone in the Navy, less Connor, perhaps. But he just nods, hoping that Mitch will go on.
“Anyhow.” Mitch narrows his eyes a bit as the sun hits a wave just in front of them, casting the dancing shapes of the water’s edge across his face, into his pale blue eyes. “Matt lost his ship. His captain, his crew. He was the only one to walk away, and I think we all know that he wishes he hadn’t.”
Dylan just blinks at him. He’d heard of too many good soldiers lost in raging storms or to faceless enemies -- the thought of pirates, like these , flashed through his mind quicker than he could think anything against it -- to believe that. His father had once told him that every time the sea let a man come home alive, she had only postponed taking him until the next trip, or the one after that, that the sea was an unforgiving, harsh mistress.
“He’s lucky,” is all he says, and Mitch lifts one shoulder in a half-shrug.
“He doesn’t see it that way.”
“But he is,” Dylan argues, and Mitch finally turns to face him head-on.
“He lost the most important person to him,” he explains, “And worse yet, he lost that person without knowing if they knew , that that was how Matt felt. And now there’s not a single thing he can do about it.”
Dylan opens his mouth to speak, but his mouth has gone suddenly dry. Somehow, he doesn’t think the person Mitch is talking about is the most important how Ryan had been to Dylan, his very best friend, but something even more, and for some reason, the thought of losing, say, Mitch, because of course that’s who Dylan’s mind jumps to, makes him swallow hard, makes him want to pull Mitch away from the ship’s edge.
He remembers the contents of Matt’s locket, the hair, the ribbon, and wonders if that was the last Matt had of this person, this person that the sea had taken from him. Then, it’s like a bolt of lightning, because he remembers the locket turning in the sun, how the rays had flashed off the back, the arrow, and he had seen that arrow before.
On the map.
He opens his mouth again, to tell Mitch what he’s realized, that if there’s any chance that Dylan’s brother is still out there, that if Matt’s locket is connected to the map, that Matt’s crew might be, too, when the bell clangs behind them, signaling the handing out of evening rations.
Mitch jumps slightly at the sudden noise, then allows himself a smile, still not breaking eye contact with Dylan; he takes his hand again, and Dylan feels warm once more. He pushes the thought of the map aside for a moment.
“So now you know,” Mitch says. “Don’t be too hard on him, you know?” He starts to pull his hand away, but Dylan holds fast, and Mitch looks down at where they’re joined, and his smile grows wider. Dylan’s only a bit ashamed of how quickly his smile grows to match.
“It’s a terrible thing to wait until it’s too late,” Mitch says, suddenly very quiet, a very small voice amongst the sound of the waves gently buffeting the ship. “To tell someone, what they mean to you.”
And Dylan doesn’t really get a chance to reply, with words at least, because suddenly the deck is full of crewmembers clamoring for their hardtack and rum, but he thinks the way he squeezes Mitch’s hand, hard, is enough, because Mitch squeezes back, and it doesn’t feel too late at all.
~*~
Dylan intends to wait up for Mitch, he really does, even sits himself down in Mitch’s hammock with the map out, because Mitch is helping Willy repair a sail, and won’t be back until after dark, probably. For his part, Dylan is exhausted; he’d tried to endear himself to Matt by helping him move barrels in the belly of the ship, and had probably succeeded -- not because he’d actually, you know, helped at all, but just because Matt had laughed and laughed at Dylan’s spindly arms trying to push everything around. Hmph .
The thing is, the exhaustion coupled with the soothing swaying of the hammock, as well as the fact that everyone else is still above deck, making the sleeping quarters quiet for once, and worst, or best, of all, the fact that everything smells like Mitch, sweet and warm -- can Dylan really be blamed for falling asleep. No, he cannot.
And when he eventually startles awake, it takes everything in him not to sit bolt upright in bed once his fingers close around empty air, the map missing from his lap.
Shit. Shit. Shit . The map was gone and he hadn’t gotten a chance to show Mitch and he hadn’t gotten a chance to save Ryan --
The only thing that stops him from jumping out of the hammock to paw desperately at the ground is a voice from across the room.
“I’m not saying you’re wrong, Mitch.” Auston’s low grumble is rough with tiredness. “It’s just --”
“It’s just that you’re saying I’m wrong,” Mitch snaps back. He sounds far too awake for the darkness. “You saw it too, and you’ve heard tales of it your whole life, Auston, is it really so far from the realm of possibility that I might have a lead on it?”
There’s silence for a moment. “No,” Auston finally admits. “It’s not. It’s just -- it’s a bit of a leap, Mitch, and we don’t even know if this map is the real thing.”
“It is,” Mitch insists. “It has to be. It matches the locket, and you must remember as well as I do, what Matt said when we first found him.” More silence, and then Mitch’s frustrated sigh. “That he didn’t have that locket before, Auston! That he washed up with it, but he’d never seen it in his life.”
“It just seems terribly convenient,” Auston mutters. Dylan hears the sound of a paper being folded, and unfolded. They have my map , he thinks, and for a moment a rush of panic attempts to close his throat, but then he thinks: Mitch has it. It’s going to be alright .
“That isn’t always a bad thing,” Mitch says, then, in almost a singsong way, “I’m just saying what you’ve always said.”
Auston snorts. “Don’t remind me.” He stomps back up the few steps, swinging the door open and letting a stream of moonlight in. Dylan clamps his eyes shut and tries very hard to look like he’s asleep. “Just because I’ve said the Island wants to be found doesn’t mean I’m right, Marner.”
“There’s a first time for everything, Matthews,” Mitch chirps. “Just think about it,” he adds as the door swings shut, thrusting the room into darkness once again.
Dylan’s really not a very good actor, but maybe Mitch even more tired than he looks when he finally maneuvers his way to his hammock and sees Dylan there, asleep-but-not-really. “This really is rude,” he murmurs, but his hands are soft on Dylan’s waist as he pushes slightly, rocking the hammock from side to side.
Opening one eye, Dylan tries very hard to look sleepy and pathetic, which isn’t as difficult as he’d thought, now that he’s presented with the very real possibility of having to go back to his own cold, empty hammock. But apparently that’s not something that had even crossed Mitch’s mind, as he clambers in right beside Dylan, poking him in the ribs. “Shove over, won’t you?”
“You take up a lot of room for someone so small,” Dylan grumbles, but it’s nice, more than nice, to be pressed up against Mitch, even when the smaller boy does fall asleep and stretches out, encroaching on Dylan’s half of the space, arm flung over Dylan’s chest. It’s a combination of that protective weight and the rolling waves that send Dylan back to sleep, one hand locked tight around Mitch’s hip, lest a particularly strong gust of wind jars the boat enough to separate them, God forbid.
~*~
Auston Matthews, it turns out, does much more than think about the possibility of the map being a solid lead on the Island. He flatout asks -- well, demands is probably a better word for it -- Dylan to hand the map over the next morning, and spends the rest of the day charting a new course for the ship.
The St. Patrick’s Escape turns hard to port, following the new course her captain has so painstakingly plotted out, and while the crew is in as high of spirits as they have been since Dylan came aboard, he can’t help but feel warring giddy excitement and sick dread fill his stomach.
If they’re approaching the Island, that means they’re approaching Ryan . He wants to believe that, knows his heart is screaming with the truth of it. But his head isn’t quite so cooperative. They’re following a map that he’d stumbled across in the wreckage of his brother’s disappearance. They’re looking for an Island that only exists in pirate lore.
They’re probably heading to a watery doom , he thinks gloomily, looking over at the members of the crew. But then again, these men are pirates, and only the good die young, he’d heard.
He keeps a careful eye on Mitch after that, because if any of them are good it must be Mitch, and Dylan will absolutely not have this boy drown because of his map and wild goose chase, thanks very much. It doesn’t seem that Mitch minds Dylan following him around like a lost puppy, either, so there’s that at least, though the men do tease him for having picked up a stray, after all.
They sail for days on end, three full days and nearly four full nights, because just before the sun comes up, Auston lowers his spyglass and mutters something about the position of the stars, whipping the map out and lifting it to the sky to compare.
Dylan stands with him until the sun is high in the sky and they’re both sweating through their shirts, trying to see any landmark in the miles and miles of open sea to identify their position, to say that they’re anywhere near where they’re supposed to be.
“But there’s nothing there ,” Auston says, eventually, breaking the long lasting silence. “Honestly, Strome, I don’t like it either, but I think your map is wrong.”
Dylan clutches the creased paper so tight he feels some of it flake away. “It’s not wrong,” he says stubbornly. “And Matt said it was this way --”
Auston snorts. “Oh, so now we’re trusting Martin’s navigational abilities?”
“But look ,” Dylan cuts in, stepping up next to the ship’s captain. He holds Matt’s locket up. He’d asked for it the night before, when he’d sensed they were getting close to the Island. There’s something about the necklace that’s inexplicably connected to the pirate legend, Dylan knows it. Matt must know it too, because he had just handed it over, wordlessly, and Dylan had promised to keep it safe.
Now, it will hopefully reveal its strange connection when they need it most. The locket spins once, twice, three times, and then trickles to a stop, bouncing back and forth, the side with the arrow facing this way and that.
Auston pokes it. “I don’t really understand what I’m supposed to be looking at.”
“Step aside,” Matt says gruffly from behind them, startling them both. In the short time that Dylan has known Matt Martin, he’s decided that he is, on the whole, not the kind of person to push his crewmates around in anger, only jest. It’s like he thinks the fact that he is, hello, enormous, is a big joke.
Now, though, he’s clearly furious. He snatches the locket from Dylan’s hand and shoves Auston aside, causing the younger man to stumble a bit. The locket pendant swings back and forth, then suddenly catches a ray of sun and glows in the golden light. Or at least, that’s what Dylan thinks is causing it, until the sun disappears behind a cloud and the locket is the only thing glowing in the hazy half-dark.
“That’s what you’re supposed to ge looking at.” Matt’s voice is solemn, as quiet as Dylan’s ever heard him be. And then, in the distance, the clouds -- the smoke, Dylan realizes, hovering just over the water’s surface -- begin to smolder apart and break.
There’s a moment of heavy silence before the young captain sighs. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he says. Then he turns, looks at the crew. “Well, get on with it!” he calls, raising his voice as the wind starts to pick up. “Sails open, men! Heave ahead!”
It feels like they sail toward the smoke for hours, though somehow, the sun stays frozen in its place in the sky. The heat beats down on them as the wind carries them closer and closer, and Dylan shivers as the smoke fades over the water. The breeze is too cold for how warm the surrounding air is, and it’s making goosebumps dance across his clammy skin.
Even though he’d been looking out over the water, back to the rest of the ship, he doesn’t jump at all when he feels a hand, soft, on his lower back. He doesn’t need to turn, either, to know who’s approached, just clears his throat, launches right into what he’d been thinking about since they’d seen the fog for the first time. “You know the stories as well as I do.”
Mitch scoffs. “Better, probably,” he replies. “I am the real pirate between us, after all.”
The joke falls flat, for once, and Dylan finally turns and looks at him, hopes he can convey how dead serious he is. “People don’t come back from chasing the Island,” he says.
“Oh, please,” Mitch says, and cuts Dylan off as he tries to continue. “I mean it, Strome. You won’t go and get all sentimental on me all of a sudden.”
“It’s not all of a sudden,” Dylan argues. “I really do mean it.”
Mitch just looks at him, and they hold eye contact for a long, fraught moment, before it’s like the ship hits a brick wall, slamming forward before coming to a grinding halt. They both stumble against the side of the ship, reaching for each other almost involuntarily, and that’s how Auston finds them a moment later as he rushes down.
“It’s true,” he says, dark eyes alight with excitement, despite the fact that his ship seems to have reached quite the impasse. “All the legends, saying there was a force around the Island to keep people out. I followed the map exactly , Mitch, and that must mean --”
“The Island’s right here,” Mitch says, faintly, and Dylan pulls the map from the captain’s hands before he can think twice.
He totally ignores Auston’s protests as he scans the page quickly, knowing exactly which bit of tiny, slanted writing he’s looking for, before thrusting the map back out into common view. “Look, here.”
There’s a long, tense minute where no one speaks.
“This says burn the gift ,” Auston says, finally. “Strome. There is no way in hell I am letting you light a fire on my ship.”
Mitch waves that concern aside with a flippant hand. “Besides that, what’s the gift ? What are we supposed to be burning, here?”
“ Nothing ,” Auston interjects, “We’re burning nothing here, Marner --” But then he falls silent again as Dylan makes one fluid motion, bringing his hand up to eye level.
The locket dangles, turning faster and faster even as he stays stock-still, in his fingertips.
“I don’t think you can burn that,” Mitch says thoughtfully, as Auston groans in aggravation at the fact that they really are going to end up burning something, right here on the deck. “I mean, not the locket, anyway, you could probably burn whatever’s inside of it, but it’s Matt’s, and I don’t think he’d want us to --”
“I think Matt would want you to do whatever it goddamn takes to get back there,” Matt says, having burst into their conversation yet again. One day, Dylan would stop jumping whenever Matt Martin suddenly growled behind him. Hopefully.
Mitch just blinks those pale, clear eyes, so full of concern for someone twice his size. “You’re sure?”
And Dylan’s not totally sure where they rustle up the matches -- “Goddamnit, Willy,” Auston complains, and is met with a not-very-apologetic, “Well, my candles are the only thing that keeps the underneath of this ship from smelling of actual rot, Auston” -- but they do, eventually, and it’s Matt, actually, who puts the flame to the pale curl inside the locket.
For a moment, nothing happens except for the fire slowly eating away at the ribbon and the slight scent of burning hair filling the air, making Willy wrinkle his nose and Mitch turn away. Auston watches the water, the fog. Matt and Dylan keep their eyes locked on the embers.
It’s utterly silent.
Then, the sea erupts.
Whatever invisible wall that had been blocking them must have been as tall as a mountain, judging by the height of the waves rising so quickly they barely have time to jump away from the edge of the ship, like that’ll do them any good. The first gush of water rocks the St. Patrick’s Escape with such force that the topsail with its green clover emblem rips free from the mast. The next wave is somehow upstaged by the fork of lightning, careening across the same sky that had been so clear and blue moments before. Dylan looks around, wildly, can’t see any of the crewmembers around him. He can’t even hear full words of the shouts he knows are filling the air; only bits and pieces reach his ears.
But then: another wave crashes over the side of the boat, and Mitch stumbles against Dylan again. Dylan holds on tight.
“I didn’t mean to,” he yells, trying to be heard over the din of the storm. “I didn’t think this is what would happen!”
Mitch yells something back, but it’s drowned out by a sickening crack of thunder. When he tries again, the second sail makes a long ri-ii-iiiip as it comes undone from its ropes, and the St. Patrick’s Revenge tips and turns like a teacup thrown into a hot, soapy wash.
Dylan’s just shaking his head to try and tell Mitch that he’d missed his response again when Mitch screws up his nose, and apparently decides to give up entirely on verbal communication as he surges up and presses their mouths together.
It’s terribly convenient that the next wave tosses the ship so violently that Dylan falls backward, so he will never, ever have to admit that that first kiss knocked him right off his feet.
“I know, you idiot,” Mitch says into his ear, though to be fair he’s probably shouting. “I know you didn’t, and I actually think you’re right --”
But before Dylan can either kiss Mitch again or, better yet, cackle in glee at Mitch admitting he’s right for once, a wave as tall as a mountain swallows the boat whole, and there’s suddenly only water, and dark.
~*~
Waking up is one of the worst experiences of Dylan’s life, somehow even worse than every other time he’s ever had to wake up. The wet has soaked into his bones, and it makes everything ache. After a certain point, everything has become one blurred paintstroke, except for one thing. The last solid thing he remembers is Mitch’s hand in his, clutching, holding tight, until --
He sits bolt upright in bed, pain crashing into his head a moment later. His neck cracks as he looks around wildly, but Mitch is nowhere to be found. Neither is anyone else from the St. Patrick , he realizes.
Dylan is in a short bed -- or perhaps a regular-sized one, but his feet hang off the end -- with a coarse, warm blanket over him. He’s in new clothes, blue breeches and a cream shirt with orange embroidery. He has to squint to make out the monogram -- a cursive JT on both wrists -- before something catches his eye. A glittering silver dragon’s head is over the doorway, mouth open in a roar, but it’s the emblem on the tapestry beneath that makes him stare. He’s not sure if there’s a door behind it, or if he could just tear through it and run, if his feet would just cooperate -- but the fisherman stares back at him, holding his staff aloft as if to fight Dylan should he try to flee.
He thinks to call out, but there must still be some seawater somewhere in him because the only noise he lets out is a garbled, waterlogged cough. His choking must be louder than he thinks, because a thick wooden door pushes the tapestry aside, shattering any plans of escape. The young man who peers around the fisherman has blond hair and bright blue eyes cushioned by half-moons so dark Dylan isn’t sure if the boy hasn’t slept in a year or has just lost a particularly rowdy barfight.
“Step aside , Casey,” someone demands from behind him, but Casey stands firm long enough that the familiarity of the voice hits Dylan harder than any of the waves from last night, and he doesn’t even feel himself falling as darkness overtakes him yet again.
~*~
So it’s not even a surprise, really, even though it should be, that when Dylan wakes up, Ryan is at his bedside. The thing is, he can’t really tell if he’s not shocked because he had heard Ryan’s voice clear as day before he’d fainted, or if, finally, that feeling deep in his bones for the past three years had been confirmed. There was his brother, alive and well, rosy-cheeked and youthful as ever, though perhaps looking a little tired, a little more than a little worried as he shifts through a stack of books on his lap.
“Ryan,” Dylan croaks, and their embrace is a flurry of papers and blankets and tears, which makes them both laugh, a bit, when they draw back from each other. “I knew --”
“Of course you did,” Ryan breathes, ruffles Dylan’s hair as he sits back, then gives a small gasp as Dylan grimaces. “I forgot, sorry --”
Dylan shakes his head. It feels like he’s got shards of seashell rattling around in his skull, the sharp edges cutting into him every time he moves. “I’m fine, really.”
Ryan fixes him with an unbelieving look. “You hit your head awfully hard,” he says. “John said the bleeding was pretty bad.”
“Who?”
The rosy cheeks become full-on brick red. “Never mind.” Ryan leans over and rearranges the blankets around Dylan’s legs, pulling an extra one from the floor to cover his feet, which are sticking out. “I’m just glad you’re alright now.”
“Where are we,” Dylan says, before his brother can deflect any further.
Again, the look Ryan gives him says more than words could, though he says, quiet, “You already know, Dylan. I knew you’d figure it out.”
“The Island,” Dylan confirms, and Ryan nods.
So it was true. Everything he’d pieced together on the St. Patrick . The fabled ship of lore -- gone, or in hiding, very well hidden, because three years of looking had turned up nothing at all. And Mitch had been right, about some sort of magic surrounding the Island, making it invisible to all the cartographers who didn’t quite believe, but had helped them --
Mitch.
Dylan’s throat closes up for a moment, and his hand spasms out, the one that had been holding Mitch’s so tight that the fingers ached a bit, even now. “Ryan, where is my crew? They were on the boat with me and if I was hurt, they could be too, and --”
“Your crew is just fine,” Ryan cuts him off. “Really, Dylan. Please don’t worry. The only reason they’re not here is because I’m being terribly selfish.” He wrinkles his nose. “Actually, me and Casey, both.”
The vague memory of Casey peering around the tapestry at him sparks something in Dylan’s mind. “So Casey was the key, wasn’t he?”
“He might still be,” Ryan agrees. “It just depends. I can’t quite figure out if the Island is finished with us, yet.”
Dylan shakes his head. He can’t possibly take in any more information about this damn magical island. He just wants to see Mitch and possibly go back to sleep for several more days.
It’s like Ryan reads his mind when he puts a hand gently on Dylan’s shoulder and squeezes. “I’ll send for Marner,” he says, and just as Dylan’s going to laugh at how well Ryan knows him, his brother adds, “He’s been asking for you.”
For once, Mitch doesn’t say anything when he enters the room, just clambers up in bed on top of Dylan and kisses him, again, and when he pulls away his eyes are damp. “Don’t,” he says, hoarsely. “You stupid -- I can’t believe you didn’t listen to me --”
“I can’t believe you can’t believe that,” Dylan mumbles, and presses their lips back together.
It seems like they kiss for an eternity, though for poor Ryan it must seem longer than that, because he finally clears his throat, looking steadily at the floor until he’s sure they’ve broken apart. “Now that you’re both here, I want to talk to you,” he says.
Dylan doesn’t like the sound of that. He’s had too much ominous in his life lately. Mitch, on the other hand, seems very eager to hear what Ryan has to say, sitting cross-legged at the end of the bed and leaning forward attentively. Dylan knows his brother must have a lot on his mind, and is just trying his best to collect his thoughts, but he can’t take it any longer. It’s been three whole years .
“What happened ,” he finally bursts out, and Ryan looks at him like he’s gone mad. “ Ryan , you just -- you just vanished, what happened , are you alright, who --”
“Dylan,” Ryan soothes, offering a slight smile, “Listen to me. I was fine, I’ve been fine.”
“You’ve been gone,” Dylan points out, and that sombers his brother more than a bit.
“Yes,” he replies. “It’s just -- it’s like this, Dylan,” he starts, and though he doesn’t go into too much detail (which, later Dylan will be thankful for that but right now he just wants to know everything ), he explains enough. Just enough.
He tells a long, winding story, condensed down, of how he had met a young, idealistic captain docked in their harbor four years past. How the captain hadn’t told him until Ryan had pieced it together himself, going off contrast between the man’s ragged clothes and heavy, gold-filled purse, and the man’s knowledge of far-off parts of the world, and the way the man’s eyes always looked a little beyond what he was seeing, how he was yearning for more.
The man was John Tavares. John Tavares was a pirate captain, the leader of the bandits known as the crew of the Fisherman’s Scourge .
And it wasn’t anything like the stories, Ryan says; it wasn’t anything like that. He wasn’t forced at sword point onto the ship. “More like I made him take me along,” he admits, coloring a bit. “He kept telling me that it wasn’t safe.”
“It wasn’t ,” Dylan agrees, and even though he truly, desperately wants to hate this pirate captain, there’s something about how soft Ryan gets in his eyes and his voice when he talks about him that’s holding him back. But only just , because Dylan is very good at holding a grudge.
Ryan’s still fairly pink, has been the entire time he’s been talking about John. He waves Dylan’s concern away. “No less safe than what you were doing in the Navy,” he points out. Dylan wrinkles his nose and chooses not to dignify that with a response.
“So you’ve all been stuck here,” Mitch cuts in, prompting Ryan to continue describing how they’d washed ashore, all except Matt, and found the Island to be already populated with other pirate crews -- each less one member.
“That’s how the curse works,” Mitch says slowly, and Ryan nods. Dylan looks back and forth between them a few times, but has to stop, because his head protests far too loudly at such a quick movement. “That’s why Matt came to us.”
Ryan looks down at his papers, though it’s clear he’s not reading a word. He clears his throat. “The way the Island works,” he starts, slowly, as if he’s talking to a child, “It swallows the ship, and the ship’s heart, too.”
Dylan doesn’t understand for a moment, but then he remembers something Connor had told him once. The soul of the ship may be the captain , he’d said, talking to a bunch of young cadets, But the heart is its crew. Without a strong heart, a ship won’t go very far at all .
“But Matt was part of the crew,” he argues. “Why didn’t he get -- stuck?”
Mitch laughs, soft, everything coming together. “That’s how the Island retains power,” he explains. “It has to be. It’s all rooted in belief of it, and who’s going to believe in an island nobody ever speaks of?”
“I don’t understand,” Dylan admits, though for once Mitch is too focused on something else to tease him for being slow to the point.
“The Island lets one person go,” Mitch says. “That way, there’s someone who’s seen what the Island can do, and they tell the world about it, and the Island stays alive.”
~*~
Dylan meets the captain of Fisherman’s Scourge before the sun has set, and although Ryan does his best to fill the painfully awkward silence, he doesn’t help much.
Finally, they make some headway when Dylan glances down at the embroidery on his sleeves again, and says lamely, “Sorry for getting blood on your shirt,” and John finally laughs, which is something that Dylan wasn’t quite sure he was capable of doing. Ryan’s look of relief says it all, probably.
After that, it’s like the whole room gets warmer, and Dylan finally feels like he can relax, like he can sit back against the pillows without feeling ready to jump to his brother’s defense at any moment. A few times, Ryan gets carried away telling Dylan a story about something or other that had happened during their three years apart, and it’s not like Dylan should be judging other people, really, but the way John looks at Ryan is sort of pathetically sentimental. The funniest bit is he tries to look like he’s not looking, when Ryan glances over, but Dylan’s brother’s cheeks remain pink the whole time he’s there, so it’s clear Tavares isn’t doing a very good job of it at all.
Dylan sort of doesn’t want to trust the man, but somehow, even after everything, he thinks he could understand, what it was that had made Ryan run off with him in the middle of the night. Well, to be fair, the middle of the night thing still confused him a little.
But -- still. It does make some sense. And at least Dylan’s brother doesn’t have terrible taste, after all, though honestly, only someone like Ryan could like someone so serious and grown-up .
“I did want to talk to you, about your map,” John says, some time later. Ryan’s gone off to bed, and honestly, as soon as Tavares left, Dylan was pretty sure he’d be asleep immediately. This makes him perk up, though.
Strange enough, the map had survived being submerged in the seawater as he’d been tossed from the boat and finally arrived at the Island. It’s been sitting on his bedside table ever since, and he hasn’t been able to bring himself to look at it, so he’s glad when John picks it up and examines it, instead.
“We’ve been here a while,” he says, eyes fixed on the paper, “So I’ve had the time to read up on this.”
“Read up on what?”
John finally looks up from the map, gestures around them. “None of the crews before us built all this,” he explains. “The Island is just like this, always has been. One of the rooms is filled with books, some of them about the Island’s beginning.” He shrugs. “It’s not all in a language any of us can understand, but I think the Island doesn’t want to be this way anymore.”
Dylan leans forward, gathering the blankets around him. He’s suddenly very cold. “How do you know, that it doesn’t want to be?”
“Things I couldn’t read last year make sense now.” John looks back down at the map. “I think the Island wants to let us go.”
~*~
John, it turns out, has spent the last year collecting notes on the ritual that will release all the trapped sailors. The rest of his crew has spent the last year trying to convince him to forget about it.
“It’s dangerous as hell, and they’re all scared,” Casey says, from where he’s nestled into Matt’s side. The rest of his crew erupts in arguments and complaints. “See? They’re terrified,” he continues to Dylan, as the men of Fisherman’s Scourge keep defending their honor.
To be honest, Dylan can sort of see why someone would be frightened to attempt this. John gets very focused when he talks about it, a sort of crazed intensity about him. If it was possible , Dylan thinks, John Tavares would rescue his crew just with sheer willpower .
Unfortunately, that’s not going to be enough. There are a few distinct elements to this, this spell , basically, that John wants to cast so that they can all escape. Dylan’s unclear on certain aspects of it, but he’d heard John talking to Casey about blood , and that was when Dylan had hurried away from their strategy meeting.
He steps closer to Mitch, who’s deep in discussion with Ryan. “Are we really going to do this?” he whispers. They’re in one of the beach caves, the middle one out of the three, and seawater laps over his boots. He tries not to slip on the pebbles beneath him.
“Looks like it,” Mitch replies, and somehow knows that Dylan really, really needs him to hold his hand right now.
Across the cave, men are filing out -- members of John’s crew, and those from the St. Patrick’s Escape , and even those who Dylan doesn’t know, the ones who have been here even longer and are nearly translucent in direct sunlight.
John stays behind, of course, in full captain mode; Auston is like that, too, across the cave mouth from the older man. Casey and Matt stay, too, and Ryan, Mitch, and Dylan.
A cold breeze runs through the cave, making the hair on the back of Dylan’s neck stand up. John clears his throat and steps up to a large, flat-topped rock in the middle of the cave. He looks back at Matt and wordlessly holds out a hand. Matt hands over the locket.
Except for a char mark here and there, the locket looks perfectly fine. Dylan would not be surprised if the thing was actually indestructible.
John sets the locket down gently on the rock, then looks over at Auston, who steps forward and draws a small glass bottle from his jacket pocket. He pours the water out over the locket and rock, then looks back at John, a little unsure, and steps back.
“Water from the surrounding sea,” John mumbles, “And the gift. Now we need earth from the Island itself.”
Matt reaches down and grabs a handful of sandy dirt. “Should be good enough,” he says, dumps it on top of the locket.
“And blood of the key,” John says, still quiet, like he’s half in a trance. Before Dylan can fully process what’s happening, Casey’s stepped forward, slides his hand against the jagged edge of the rock.
“What the hell ,” Auston says, loud. It echoes off the cave walls as blood drips from Casey’s palm onto the dirt, mixing with the seawater as it runs off.
Mitch elbows Dylan, and he looks up, realizes John’s been talking to him. It sounds like there’s water roaring through the cave, though there’s nothing but the ankle-deep water. “The map, Dylan,” John repeats.
As he sets the map down on the rock, he tries to focus on the fact that Mitch is stepping up next to him, reaching into his pocket for something, and as Dylan steps back from the rock, he hears the strike of metal against rock.
Sudden sparks drop onto the map just a few at a time, and then in a flurry, falling like bright, burning snowflakes onto the paper. For a moment, nothing happens, and then one corner curls in on itself for just a second before the entire paper bursts into a column of flame as high as the cave ceiling.
Dylan’s natural instinct is to shy away from the rippling heat, but as the column widens, he sees home as if through a veil of steam. The vegetable patch, the pebbled path. Farther away, the sea.
He looks back at Ryan, only for a moment, and notes how drawn his brother’s face is at seeing their home for the first time in years. Ryan catches his eyes and nods.
“You go first,” his brother says, and Dylan swallows hard before stepping forward. Then: “And don’t look back, Dylan. Keep going.”
This isn’t what they’d discussed, though to be fair, they hadn’t been quite sure of how the passage away from the Island would present itself. John had been very firm in wanting Ryan to be one of the first ones off the Island, and because the map had chosen Dylan, it was understood that he would go, too.
“You’ll be --”
“Right behind you,” his brother finishes with a wan smile, and then Dylan is in the flames, or maybe is the flames, he can’t quite tell.
It’s like stepping into a scalding bath, both in how shockingly hot it is initially and how quickly he grows accustomed to it. He smells smoke and the sea; he hears birdsong and branches snapping and crackling in the smoldering heat.
Something flashes before his eyes, and he thinks it's just another tongue of fire, but it isn't. It's a butterfly. Or, no -- a moth, twirling around aimlessly, then drawn suddenly to the bright light of the portal.
Dylan has just turned to watch it disintegrate when he sees Ryan again, stepping toward the portal to follow him. But he doesn't follow him.
Instead, Dylan’s brother reaches to the side and grabs Mitch, shoving him through the open door between the Island and the rest of the world.
And as Mitch crashes into him and Dylan does all he can to hold on, he knows that his brother is the moth. Just like the men of the Ranger , John Tavares and his crew and the man who loves him will slowly become nothing but wailing wind and dust and sand.
~*~
There's a long fraught moment when the portals have sealed, and there's only darkness around them. It's dead silent, and the only coherent thought Dylan can stand to form is how glad he is that Mitch is with him.
Then there's a burst of light and they're spilling back onto the cave floor, crashing into their friends in a dirty (Matt), wet (Auston), and bloody (Casey) heap.
Save for Casey’s coughs echoing around the cave walls, a stunned silence still fills the space. That is, until Willy runs in, the legs of his breeches wet and a fresh sunburn across the bridge of his nose.
“I don't know what you did, but it worked,” he gasps, leaning over as he sucks air, clearly having sprinted from the far end of the beach.
“What do you mean, it worked,” John says, not even close to a question.
“I mean,” Willy says, nearly wheezing, “The wall, it’s just, gone .”
Dylan whips around to stare at Ryan, who's got a tiny, triumphant smile playing around his mouth.
“You mean --” John starts, disbelieving, and Ryan cuts in, grabbing the captain’s arm in excitement.
“There's only open sea,” he finishes, and slowly but surely, cheers go up from the assorted ships’ crews as dead men find life again in the open ocean.
~*~
They must make quite a sight, two pirate ships sailing into harbor, docking near the Stromes’ house. Even after the joyous reunion at home, and a myriad of introductions, they’re all full of too much energy to stay in.
It’s such a strange sense of deja vu, even now that his brother is back, to be sitting in the pub again, listening to the crew of the St. Patrick’s Escape yell to be heard over each other. Mitch is doing much the same as he was the first time Dylan saw him; he’s got a circle of people around him, totally captivated by his stories of their travels.
Someone scoffs from the back. “That’s not true,” he says. “There’s no magical island, that’s just seamen’s lore.”
Mitch is quiet for a moment, then smiles. “Yeah, you’re right,” he agrees. “Just an old pirate’s tale.”
When Mitch comes over to sit in Ryan’s recently vacated seat, after Dylan’s brother goes to drag John outside, to show him the town where he’d grown up, he’s still got that big smile on his face. “I think we’re in the clear,” he says, gleefully, kicking his feet a bit. “The less people that believe in the Island, the better.”
“You’re too smart by half,” Dylan mutters, but he must admit that when their mouths come together, his smile is as big as Mitch’s.