Chapter Text
It starts with a letter.
Well, first, it begins with a war. It starts with Captain Flint seeing a house filled with Miranda’s things go up in flames. It starts with Eleanor Guthrie dying in his arms.
It starts with Captain Flint looking at Long John Silver and watching the way his face crumples in on itself, the way he mouthed the word no, over and over again. It starts with Long John Silver snarling at Julius in a rough, thick voice, for him to leave if he doesn’t want to fight this war.
It starts with the Maroon Island and the crowd of pirates and other escaped slaves, the Maroon Queen’s face when she sees that her daughter is not with them.
It starts with, Look at me, I will get you through this, as you did with me.
But, really, it starts with a letter.
“I’m sorry, you want me to what?” Flint asks, brow furrowing.
“I want you to save my daughter.”
“Yes, I understood that much,” he says. He wants to save Madi, too. She had become his friend, after they had both thought they’d lost Silver. “But you don’t want me to tell my quartermaster.”
“No,” she says. “I don’t.” Her face is set and her jaw hard.
“He should know,” Flint says. “Your daughter and he--”
“I know what my daughter and he do, Captain Flint,” she snaps, then takes a slow breath. “That is why I don’t want him to know.”
--("I loved her," he’d said, "And I believe she loved me. I think she would’ve wanted you to know that, too."
The Queen had been quiet after Silver’s words, tapping her fingers on the arm of her chair.
"It is very bold of you, I think, to assume that she wanted me to know something I had already realized." She’d met his eyes then and Silver had swallowed, watching her. "You are not subtle." It’s a reproach. "She is, but I taught her everything she knows." Her lips had thinned, taking in his haggard face, drawn lines around his eyes.
She remembers Madi at sixteen, pouring over a book her father had sent her, tracing curious fingers over a drawing of a white man, a hero. She had asked so many questions, never having seen one before that she remembered well. It does not surprise her that her daughter was drawn to one, even if it disappoints her.
"I--" He had opened his mouth for a moment, floundering, and then closed it.
The Queen shakes her head. She can’t say much about her daughter’s choice in men. "My daughter died protecting us. Protecting our people in this war. She died doing what was right." Her voice was cool, flinty. "She did not die for you, or for the Captain, or for me. She died for this." She had gestured, to the island, to the people living on it. She looked at Silver again. "Our people grow up learning to die for this. There is no room in our lives for selfishness. So, yes, you could say she died for something she believed in. But don’t think for one moment it is the same thing you and your Captain fight for."
"Are we not fighting the same war?" Silver had asked quietly.
The Queen gave him a look. "We are allies, yes. But don’t forget how we found you." She stood up, straightening her shawl. She looked regal, like Madi always had, the natural grace of who she was exuded from her entire body. "Your ship sold more than you saved. And I will never forget that."
She began to leave and then paused right beside Silver. She felt her face soften. "She did love you , she says, not looking at him. And I can see you loved her. That does mean something to me. But you were not married under my eyes, so you were not her husband. Not where it matters."
Then she had left with a swish of her skirts, leaving Silver there to contemplate the empty chair she’d left behind.)
--Flint frowns.
“He will sacrifice too much for her,” she says, meeting his eyes. “Neither she nor I would want that. You will rescue her, discreetly.”
“He’ll wonder where I’m gone,” Flint says after a moment. “We don’t usually go anywhere without the other anymore, not for things like this.”
“He will not be able to go,” she says briskly. “His leg, it is infected again. You haven’t noticed?”
He had, in truth. Silver had been taking to sitting for more and more meetings, avoiding putting pressure on his hip. He had no iron leg anymore, thank God, but the day he’d spent with Hands had not been kind to him, and neither had the battle after.
Flint sighs. “I’ll tell him I’m on a scouting trip then, shall I?”
The Maroon Queen nods. “Do so.”
“Let’s take you back,” Flint says and Madi reaches out to grip his shirt.
( How did you find me? She had asked and Flint had mentioned the letter and her mother, the sloop and the small crew of people he’d taken with him for this journey to Nassau, to rescue her.
And John?
He doesn’t know, he’d said, and Madi had nodded, lips pursed.)
“How is he?” she asks.
Flint sees Silver’s distraught face in his mind, hair ragged from where he’s gripped it, eyes bright and luminous blue and wet.
“Distraught,” he says. “Wrecked.”
Madi takes that like a blow, eyes closing. “Is he angry?” she asks. “Does he rage over me?”
Flint nods slowly. “He would tear the world apart if he thought it would please your dying wishes.”
She opens her eyes again, looking at him intently. “Then you see why I can’t go back.”
Flint’s brow furrows. “Madi–”
“He is committed to the cause now. A man like John Silver–he didn’t want a war. Not until he had personal stake in the game. You know this, Captain. Don’t tell me you haven’t seen it.”
“You are asking me to lie to him,” Flint says, voice low.
“Yes,” Madi says plainly. “As you have many times before.”
Flint’s eyes flash. “Not about something like this ,” he says. “You didn’t see him–he was–”
“Ruined over me,” Madi says softly. “And now he will fight with you, no matter the end. We both need this war, Captain. And we need him as part of it. This is the only way.”
Flint swallows, looking away from her. She studies the fine tremble of his cheek, the dulled silver of his earring. His mouth curves down, a gentle movement, and she sees, abruptly, what John must see in this man. Loyalty and fierce, desperate anger, come together in a beautiful body honed like a weapon.
“What will you do?” he asks finally.
“I will rule,” she says. “From the shadows, as my father once did with us.” She pulls off a brown bracelet, beads clinking together, and presses it into Flint’s hand. “You will give that to my mother and she will know that I live. Tell her she must not say a word.”
“How will we communicate?” Flint asks, resigned.
“Will you be on Nassau often?”
Flint shakes his head. “There were so many people on the island,” he says. “Pirates, Julius’s people, more escaped slaves. I have to train some of them in the time we have.”
“Rogers knows about the island.”
Flint nods. “We had the moment of surprise last time,” he says. “No more.”
“He won’t have me anymore to bargain with,” Madi replies.
“He won’t.” Flint smiles a little. “I’m sure you’ll be a thorn in his side.”
Madi smiles back at him for a brief moment and then sighs. “There is no easy way for us to communicate. When you are next on the island, I will send Kofi to you.”
Flint nods after a moment, but his brow furrows in thought. “He will never forgive us when he finds out,” he says.
“If he finds out,” she says. “We may die anyway, Captain.”
Flint snorts. “Cheery.”
Madi manages a small smile, looking at him with those serious dark eyes of hers. “You will need to move the cache. Rogers knows of the island now, and it isn’t so big that he couldn’t wipe out my people to find it.”
Flint makes a sound of agreement. “We’ll be back here,” he says. “To release some of the men to raise hell.”
“I will try to send a message then.” She pauses. “Take care of him,” she says softly. Something thick lodges itself in Flint’s throat.
“I’ll try.”
They part with the heavy weight of her beaded bracelet in his pocket, and a kiss on his forehead that he feels long after.
When he arrives back on the island, he’s happy to see Silver up and about, no longer flushed and hectic from fever and disorientation. He still looks vacant, the kind of grief he’d seen in his own eyes when Thomas had been taken from him, when he’d raged and done not much else. There are countless of other people on the island, other pirates ready to join them, and Silver easily talks to them, the perfect figurehead, but he isn’t really all there. It isn’t until later, when he stumbles into Silver in his cabin, hidden away from the drinking and the crowds, that he sees what he’s feeling.
Silver is a shaking thing, torn apart by grief and ferocious anger. Something about him seems delicate now--hair an unruly mess around his shoulders, the curve of his collarbone and hollow of his throat breakable, liable to shatter at the wrong touch applied just a bit too hard.
“I thought,” Silver had said to Flint, hands in his hair, gripping. “I thought that you’d find her.”
So he had noticed I was gone, Flint thinks, absently, watching him.
“I had this hope …”
Flint feels the beads in his pocket like a brand, wouldn’t be surprised if, when he tugged his jacket off, he’d see a smoking hole in his shirt where the pocket of his jacket touches.
Silver turns to look at him blindly. “How did you do it?” he rasps, and Flint can see his hands shaking. Flint’s lips twist.
“You know how I did it,” he says. “You’ve seen me. You know what lies behind my actions.”
“The war for Thomas,” Silver says, laughing bleakly. “I suppose now it’s my war for Madi, isn’t it?”
Flint tries to swallow the thing inside him that wants to tell him, the thing in him that wants to take those shaking hands and kneel between his legs and make Silver look at him. Wants to say, She’s alive, Silver. She’s alive.
But then he hears Madi’s voice-- If you do this, all we’ve worked for will be lost.
“I suppose it is,” is what Flint says instead, gentling his voice. “If you want it to be.”
Silver stares at his hands, his breathing slow. Flint watches the rise and fall of Silver’s shoulders, the small curve of his ears peeking out from beneath his hair.
“She can’t have died for nothing,” he says tonelessly, eyes closing. Flint reaches out like he did before, and squeezes his shoulder. Silver leans into it and they stay like that, quiet, for a very long time.
“Mr. Silver,” Julius says, looking up when Silver’s shadow falls over him. He is peeling a mango, the juice dripping from his fingers.
“Julius,” he says. “How are you enjoying the island?”
“Idyllic.” He squints as he looks over at some of the Maroon men talking to each other. “Peaceful.”
Silver watches him. “You weren’t keen to join this fight.”
“No,” Julius says, taking a bite of a mango slice. “I want my people to survive.”
“You don’t think we can win,” Silver says and Julius watches him warily. He’s grief-torn, this man, and Julius doesn’t want to be near him when he starts to lash out.
“I don’t think we can win, now. Like this,” Julius corrects.
Silver twirls a dagger between his fingers. He looks distant. “Captain Flint and--Madi thought we could.” His voice catches on her name. Julius didn’t know the girl personally, only knew what he’d heard. That she was young and intelligent but idealistic. A girl who grew up sheltered, in an island of paradise. He has never met a person like him with no scars. It looks like he never will. Visible scars, anyway. He knows even if Madi was raised for the majority of her life away from under the white thumb, she will still feel the pain of her people.
“Captain Flint doesn’t care about the costs,” Julius says carefully. “He would rather burn this entire island to the ground before giving it up.”
Silver clenches his jaw. “What is the point of her death then, if we give up?”
“I can’t tell you that,” Julius says, tired. “I can only say that when you spend your whole life fighting, when your existence itself is a war, that continuing to do so when there is a chance at peace, at rest, for even just a decade, is too sweet to resist.” He eyes him. “You have not experienced our struggle. But I sense that you have struggled in some way, your entire life. You are too afraid of war to not have.”
Silver swallows hard, fingers clenching around his crutch until his knuckles turn white. Julius doesn’t need to know John Silver’s past, in fact is patently uninterested in it. But he knows Silver has the ear of the war general they’ve put in charge of this, and he’s clever and shrewd in a way that Julius respects. It is good to keep a man like Silver as an ally. He watches as Silver forces his fingers to unclench, the color slowly bleeding back into them.
“I can’t--” He shakes his head. “It has to be worth it,” he says grimly. Julius sighs and shrugs one shoulder.
“Perhaps.” Perhaps when Silver has wallowed in his grief enough, he’ll come to see it differently.
"Captain," the queen says, watching him quietly.
Flint holds out the bracelet, the brown beads only slightly stained by the sea. Something flickers in the queen's eyes as she takes it, running her thumb over the design on the biggest bead.
"She is alive," Flint says, head bowed under the low tent ceiling. "She wanted you to know."
"And yet, she isn't here."
"A martyr is better for war than a second leader," Flint murmurs. "So she said to me."
The queen sighs, lifting her eyes briefly to the heavens. "Of course she did. So she remains on Nassau."
Flint nods. "She seemed to have some sort of plan that runs parallel with ours."
The queen shakes her head. "Yes, I'm sure she did. She is much like her father in that way."
"If she is anything like him in keeping secrets, she should be fine."
"I think my husband's success in that was less about his talent for playing spy, and more that your kind don't expect secrets from us. You think us no more than barn animals."
Flint dips his head in acknowledgment. He won't argue with her about that. The queen squeezes the bracelet again.
"Well, I suppose we have no choice but to trust her. And to hope that one day we both see her again."
Flint nods. "There was one thing she mentioned. About the cache."
In between training the new men and planning their next round of attack, they spar together. Silver seems to find solace in it, in being able to pick up a sword and unleash his fury onto Flint. And he’s getting better, able to unhand him more than once during a round.
“You know,” Silver says, the day before their next parting to Nassau. He’s panting, sweat dripping down the dip of his neck and collarbone as he parries Flint’s sword back. “You never tell me about your childhood. What was your mother like?”
Flint startles and Silver flicks the edge of his sword to Flint’s throat, eyes bright with energy and cunning.
“I didn’t know her well,” Flint says after a moment, tipping his chin up and trusting his life to Silver’s blade. “My grandfather raised me.”
“Surely you remember something.” Silver raises his eyebrows.
“Surely you do too,” Flint counters and Silver’s sword arm trembles before he drops it, handing Flint the waterskin.
"You know that I--"
"I know," Flint says gently. "But I've given you the most important part of me. Don't push me for more."
Silver feels stung, though he knows it isn't fair of him. But he has grown used to being able to drink from Flint, to know more and more about him. As if the more he knows about Flint, the more he can bury himself in Flint's story and forget he ever had one.
"Tell me about the plan, then. Explain to me how letting the men loose on Nassau like a pack of wolves helps us."
Flint snorts. "Well, it certainly can't hurt, can it? Keep Woodes Rogers distracted, and maybe if we're lucky, one of the men will kill Billy for us."
Silver sighs wistfully. "God, I hope so."
Julius and the queen meet often during that brief time between the pirates coming to the island and all of them leaving with Captain Flint and Silver.
He finds the Maroon Queen smart and practical, more than willing to hear what he has to say.
“I told her to think about what she was doing,” she murmurs one day. “My daughter. She is-- was smart and a good leader, but she was still young.”
“She was,” Julius agrees, a growing suspicion in his mind. “I am curious, Isheba. You do not act like a woman mourning.”
She gives him a dark look. “Do not make me regret allowing you the use of my name,” she says, voice low.
Julius raises his hands, placating. “I am only curious. You seem on the verge of something. News--anything.”
The queen shakes her head. “Perhaps one day I will tell you,” she says. “When I trust you more.”
Julius is amused by that. “Fair enough.”
“You look tired,” Flint murmurs and Silver presses his knuckles to his eyelids.
“It feels hopeless,” he admits. “Like I’m drowning.” Flint reaches out and touches his shoulder, and Silver leans into the touch.
"I suppose you’d know a little something about drowning, wouldn’t you?” he murmurs.
“So would you,” Silver counters, snorting. “We’ve both done our fair share of it.”
They’re quiet for a long moment and there’s a commotion outside, as tents are slowly packed up and things are put away, the dawn of leaving for Nassau nearly upon them. Flint lets go of him and Silver nearly begs for him to touch him again.
“I’d better check what the men are up to now,” he says, sounding reluctant, and leaves him in their tent.
Silver is quiet for a long time, then reaches into his pocket to pull something out. A long, thin letter, water-damaged but legible.
John Silver,
This is proof that I am who you think I am--Thomas Hamilton, though I don’t go by that name anymore. I have heard of you, Mr. Silver, though I can’t imagine why you’ve heard of me. I look forward to meeting you one day to ask these questions in person, even if you are trying to ransom me. I should warn you, my father sent me here, and even if he were alive, he would have no desire to save me.
-T. Barlow
When Silver dreams, he dreams of Madi. How she must have looked at the end, skin dirty, breath straining and weak in her chest. How the ash must have turned her skin grey.
He dreams of Madi burning, the flames licking at her clothes, of her mouth open and soundless, eyes wide and terrified. Nobody had been there--Flint had come back too late, only long enough to watch the house collapse and to hold Eleanor while she died.
The letter has been burning a hole in his pocket for a week now. The war, the long slog of training, of knowing he's sending men out to their deaths--he knows that this was Madi's dream, that it is now Flint's. But he already lost one person he loves.
"If you had a way to make things end, even if it tore you apart from the last person you have, would you do it?" Silver asks the cat that wounds its way around his ankle, purring softly. The cat just rubs its face against Silver's hand until Silver pets it, scratching gently behind its ears. He sighs.
He pulls out a piece of paper and dips his quill in ink, writing something quickly. The cat jumps onto his bed, curling up in the warm spot his body has left behind and falling asleep right there as the ink dries on the paper. Under the bed, he grabs a small bag of gold. Even if he doesn't decide to go through with this, it's good to have it in his back pocket. An option, just in case.
It is an interesting place, the island of the Maroons. Idyllic, and Julius thinks of those he couldn’t save with an ache in his chest, imagining his son running through forest, splashing in the creek water, his laughter echoing against the trees. Right now it is filled with pirates and former slaves alike, and everything is in uproar ever since word reached that their princess was alive. Julius makes his way through throngs of people, stopping next to Silver’s familiar figure, standing away from the crowd with a pensive look on his face.
He glances at Julius. “I think I’m open to hear what you have to say now,” he says, and of course, Julius thinks, amused. Anything to keep those you love alive. That, he can understand. “But I won’t kill him.”
“That wouldn’t work anyway.” Julius leans against the tree nearby, watching Silver’s expression. “There is no better thing to keep a war going than a martyr. And Flint’s death will do nothing but incite more fighting. No, it will be better if he is alive. If he gives up.”
Silver snorts. “He’ll never do that.”
“Wouldn’t he?” Julius asks. “He is a man like anyone else. Find the weakness inside him, and expose it.”
Silver is quiet, a soft frown on his face. “There might be…” He trails off and frowns more, then shakes his head.
“I can handle the Maroon Queen,” Julius says, raising his eyebrows. “She doesn’t seem overly fond of you.”
“No,” Silver murmurs. “She isn’t.” He turns to look at Julius. “So, tell me, how does one stop a war and keep anyone else from dying?”
Julius smiles.
Silver still hates sailing. He hates how unbalanced he feels on one leg, how he has to use ropes to navigate the deck. He hates how he can't even climb the rigging anymore, the only thing he had enjoyed before he lost his leg.
He closes the cabin door behind him and sits on the chair across from Flint with a grunt. Flint doesn't glance up at him.
"How are the men?" he asks, making marks on the maps.
"Fine," he says. "Ready to be unleashed."
Flint snorts. "Good. And the Maroons?"
"Happy enough to also fight." It's harder without Madi there to make them feel welcome, but no other incidents have happened since the last time, when Silver made it clear just what he would do if he caught the Walrus men acting up.
Flint finally looks up. "And your leg?" he asks. Silver makes a face.
"It was easier when I had the iron leg."
"That leg also gave you infections. Forgive me for not being upset that it's gone."
Silver sighs dramatically and looks at his hands.
"Do you miss Madi?"
He's never asked, though he knows Flint and Madi became close when they thought he had died. Flint stills, a strange expression on his face.
"I do," he says quietly. "She was my friend."
"You just miss having someone to talk books with," Silver replies with forced lightness.
"Can't talk about them with you, can I?" Flint asks wryly and Silver throws a piece of bread at it, grinning when Flint laughs. It feels good to laugh, to remember that he can be happy still, even with the grief still suffocating him some days.
Of course, that's when everything completely falls apart.
"Man overboard!" Silver yells. They'd barely arrived on Nassau Island, a far, desolate corner where they'd been sure nobody would be--but they'd underestimated Woodes Rogers's paranoia. The Walrus is untouched anchored far enough away, but men drop from the tender, their blood staining the water crimson. Silver looks around wildly, catching a glimpse of Flint's beard. They make it to land and the men onshore attack, a small militia full of mostly lower class Naval men and pirates who betrayed them, their fighting messy and unfocused compared to the last battle in Nassau proper.
Silver snarls at one as he stabs him through the chest, a dark, pleased feeling in his chest at the fear on his face when he dies. Suddenly, Flint is next to him, and the two of them fight side by side and back to back, Flint moving like he's dancing, pure poetry on land. There's a sound of pain and Silver's heart beats through his throat.
"Captain," he says, and Flint just stabs the man who'd slashed at him in the throat, watching impassively as he dies.
The skirmish is short and brutal, and the beach is streaked with dead bodies and blood, though most of their men have lived.
"There goes our surprise," Flint says, panting hard as he watches a few stragglers make a run for it, back to Nassau proper. He jerks his head at the bodies. "Might as well burn them."
Silver grips his wrist. "You're bleeding," he says, letting the men collect the dead.
"I'm fine," he says automatically, wincing when Silver tugs at Flint's shirt to reveal the chest wound.
"Shut up." Silver cleans the cut as best as he can, his heart racing. It had been so close to his heart, any lower, any deeper, and--
He bandages Flint's skin a little roughly, not noticing his hands shaking until Flint grasps his forearm.
"I'm fine."
Silver glares at him. "You could easily have not been," he snaps, jerking his hand from Flint's grip and stomping away to help the men, not noticing Flint staring at him as he leaves, something soft and fragile in his expression.
They make camp on a deserted stretch of the island, a skeleton crew on the Walrus. After Silver walks off his fury, he barely leaves his side, and when he does, it’s only to make his rounds with the men again. Flint disappears to piss, and nearly jumps out of his mind when a hand claps him on the shoulder, hand going to his pistol.
“ Christ,” he says, recognizing Kofi. “How is she?”
“Safe.” He hands him the note and squints out at the men.
“Are you safe?” he asks.
“There was a skirmish," he says, skimming the note. "I'm sure you saw the fire."
“And the cache?”
Flint looks up and Kofi just watches him patiently. Madi had not told him where it was, but she had told him of it.
“On the ship,” he says after a moment. Kofi frowns.
“Safe?”
Flint arches an eyebrow and Kofi shrugs.
“If I know anything about your quartermaster, is that he always has three plans behind the one everyone thinks they’re using. It would not surprise me if he did that to you, as well.”
Flint looks out at the men, watching Silver talk to Hands, and he frowns deeply, in thought, then shakes his head a little.
“Tell Madi I’m glad she’s well, and thank her for the message.”
Kofi inclines his head and disappears into the night.
“I miss her still,” Silver says softly as Flint settles down beside him, staring out at the night sky. The men are settled, talking quietly amongst themselves or splitting a bottle of rum. Tomorrow, most will stay, dispersing themselves among the island, while a core crew will leave. They don’t know that yet, but tomorrow, Flint will tell them. Tomorrow, Flint will tell Silver. The wound on his chest throbs.
“I still miss Thomas,” Flint says honestly.
“Does it ever get better?” Silver’s eyes glitter under the starlight, the moon turning strands of his hair silver. Flint can’t stop staring, his heart caught in his throat.
“No.” Flint twists a ring on his finger. “It hardens, scars over, but it never goes away.”
“It’s been years,” Silver says softly and Flint smiles faintly.
“I might just be bad at moving on,” he admits and Silver laughs, a hurt sound.
“What would Thomas think about this? All of it?”
“He’d hate it,” Flint says, voice low. “He’d hate who I’ve become.”
Silver watches him again, then looks down, their hands so close that if his finger so much as twitched, they’d be touching pinkies. He wants, as he always has with Flint near him. It had been so easy to ignore before, so easy to lose himself in Madi. Madi, who aches inside him like a phantom limb. He exhales softly.
“Then why do it?” He thinks of Julius, of Madi’s mother, of a treaty folded neatly in his jacket, tucked right next to a letter burning at his skin. And the second copy, with them, just in case.
Flint pulls a ring off his finger to look at it, the moon glinting silver against the metal.
“When I was a boy in Cornwall, I used to go to the docks and watch the fishermen bring in their catch.” The fish had been slippery and slick, and the men, their skin brown and leathery from the sun, would haul the nets up, arms thick and ropey with muscle. “Everyday they’d go, rain or shine, no matter what was happening in their lives. I always dreamed of taking Thomas there, one day, after his plan with Nassau had settled.”
He sighs and twists the ring so that the moon shines off of it. “I know now that Thomas’s idea for this island were flawed. That my own were. Madi and her people have shown me many things, and my decade on this island has showed me even more. But I would like to think that the end result of this is exactly what he would have wanted. A free Nassau.”
He takes Silver’s hand and Silver nearly jolts in surprise, watching with wide eyes as Flint puts the ring on his palm.
“Try it,” he says. “It’s too big on me.”
Silver slips it onto his finger finger, where it nestles against his knuckles. A perfect fit. Flint smiles faintly, mostly hidden by his beard.
“Like I thought. It suits you.” He gets up, wincing when his knees crack. Silver makes a soft sound mostly hidden by Flint’s bad knees.
“Get some rest,” Flint says, mostly avoiding Silver’s gaze, resolutely ignoring the noise he’d made and the sharp way he’d inhaled when Flint had touched his hand.
“Captain,” Silver calls and Flint pauses, turning back to look at him. His heart is pounding at the look in Silver’s eyes, and he knows this is a bad idea, can feel the weight of Madi’s beads as if they’re still in his pocket and not tucked safely in his satchel. But he can’t help it, can’t say no when Silver takes his hand, when he tugs him to his tent, the sun fully set so that he can just barely make out Silver’s eyes.
Silver’s hands on him are a revelation, the steady, heavy weight behind them, the possessive splay of his fingers on Flint’s hip, holding him down. Flint feels like he’s splintering, damp with sweat and panting against each other. Silver looks wide-eyed and dazed, eyes hot on Flint’s mouth. His other hand slides up and presses on the swollen lower lip, tingling from Silver’s own teeth sinking into it and sucking.
Flint parts his lips because those hands, those incongruously large hands on Silver’s lithe body, so big and strong it feels like they could press him down and force him to take it. Silver’s finger gleams with Flint’s saliva and Flint can still taste the metal from his ring, the ring that he gave him, he realizes with a thrill.
“Captain,” Silver says and Flint kisses him, trying not to think of Madi, trying not to think of betrayal, and the hurt look in her eyes when she finds out. But, god, he wants. He wants this in a way he hasn’t wanted in so long, their clothes discarded next to them, skin to skin, hips pressed together.
“Have you ever…?” Flint asks and he can feel Silver swallow though it’s too dark to see the look in his eyes.
“Not like this,” he says and Flint presses their foreheads together, the two of them breathing, and touching Silver is what he imagines refinding faith is like, that moment when, after so long not hearing His voice, you hear God again. The relief. Flint drinks in Silver’s soft cries, the trust of his body under his like the sacrament it’s made to be.
He takes it, greedy, and he falls.
“So, she is alive?” Julius asks, unsurprised.
The queen eyes him. “She is.”
“John Silver does not know.”
She shakes her head. “Captain Flint saved her, I know that. But at this point…” She sighs. “We have lost much. I don’t have a lot of hope for this war.”
If Madi ever comes back, he’d like to meet her one day. The loyalty she has inspired from even the most disloyal men is something indeed. “But this will give her more time to become the leader you want her to be.”
“If it doesn’t break her spirit first,” she sighs. “You do not know my daughter, Julius. You make good points, but you have not seen her when she has something set in her mind. This will hit her worse than a blow.” She shakes her head. “She will survive, but I don’t know in what way that will be.”
“Will you follow your daughter’s wishes, or what’s best for your people?” Julius asks.
She gives him a sharp look. “Don’t presume to tell me how to rule. Your people respect you, but my people have been listening to me for far longer on this island. I know very well what I must do.”
Julius raises his hands. He won’t argue with that.
“There is something you should know,” Flint says, watching Silver as he wakes up, the way he scrunches his nose and yawns, the slow slide to awareness that only happens with Flint. It makes him feel warm.
Silver glances at him sleepily.
“Eleanor told me something before she died. That Madi told her. She said we needed to move the chest. That Woodes Rogers would come for the island now that he knows where it is.”
Silver props himself up on his elbows.
“That’s why you put the chest on the ship,” he says, and Flint looks at him in surprise. Silver smiles wryly. “You didn’t think I’d notice a large chest next to the potatoes? I used to work down there, remember?”
“I thought you’d avoid it,” Flint says with a grin. “Bad associations and all that.”
Silver snorts but he watches him. “So where are we taking it?”
“Have you ever heard the tale of Henry Avery?”
Silver is vibrating anxiously next to Flint as Nassau creeps further and further away.
“How do we know Eleanor wasn’t lying?” he asks Flint.
“She was dying,” Flint says, the lie tasting sour on his mouth. “What would she have to lie about?”
Silver exhales sharply, the horizon clear and blue as far as he can see.
“I don’t like this.”
Flint can’t help but agree. Every moment closer to Skeleton Island feels like stepping closer to damnation.
Whether that is his own, Silver’s, or the end of everything--he doesn’t know.
Skeleton Island is something out of a nightmare, creeping in from the fog. There's a silence to it, oppressive and heavy, that feels final. That feels like a resting place. Where men go to die and ghosts are born.
Even the men are quiet, usually rowdy when they sight land. DeGroot and Dooley exchange uneasy looks the closer they get.
"James!" A voice cries out in the gloom and Silver lifts his head, white as a ghost. He mouths Madi's name silently.
Suddenly, the fog lifts, and a ship appears. "James, watch out!"
Madi is by the ledge, alive, gloriously, wondrously alive and Silver doesn't even notice Woodes Rogers standing near her, doesn't notice the cannon coming towards them until Flint knocks him down, the ball just avoiding the ship and crashing into the water next to them.
Woodes Rogers has Madi by the throat, a gun to her head.
"Gentlemen," he calls. "I've come to take what's mine."