Chapter Text
The storm was raging just outside of Shane’s window, but inside his small cottage, he was warm and safe with a merry fire going. He wouldn’t have to crank the beacon for another hour and didn’t have any plans of moving until then, flipping through a battered copy of Macbeth instead. While his eyes roamed the tiny print, his mind decided to turn to the errands he needed to run the next day.
While John was kind enough to drop by the oil for the lamp, Shane still needed to go to the market to buy some vegetables, milk, and maybe, if he was careful with his coin, he could even get a trinket or two. When he started keeping the lighthouse, the city was still new and commerce was just starting to pick up speed, but now it was known as one of the biggest merchants cities in the area and one of the safest to live in.
Fat drops knocking on his window broke through his reverie, and upon noticing he hadn’t turned the page for some good five minutes Shane decided to give up on the tragic king for now, trading him for the powers of nature. The storm only looked like it was getting worse and soon he wouldn’t be able to cross the small distance to the entry of the tower. Steeling himself with a put-upon sigh, he gathered his coat and hat and quickly made his way across the patio, breathing in relief when he was safe inside the lighthouse.
Shane painstakingly climbed the stairs, remembering humorously how tired he used to get going up when he had just started at his job. Reaching the watch room, he gave the beams a crank just to be safe and settled down cross legged on the creaky chair, resting his eyes in the roaring ocean below. If you asked him, Shane would say that watching for ships was almost like meditating. Breath in, the wave hits the rock; breath out, the water returns to the depths. He couldn’t say how long he had been there, but a figure crawling over the rocks grabbed his attention.
It took him some time to realize that the figure was a man, and it took him even more time to understand what that actually meant. Shane jumped from his chair. A man! Goodness, he needed to help him! He gave the beam another crank to be sure and bounded down the stairs reaching the rocks in record time
The man was laying on his back, looking for all like a drowned rat. He was wearing only an undershirt and a simple pair of pants, no boot, hat or belt on sight. Shane gave his cheek a light pat dreading the idea of having to breathe life back onto him, but thankfully, the man opened his eyes sluggishly and immediately turned on his side vomiting salt water.
“Hey.. hey there buddy” Shane rasped, voice rough with disuse, propping the man up and rubbing circles on his back. He still looked disoriented, but the colour was returning to his face.
“Fuck.. where am I?”
“The..uhm, lighthouse” Shane answered dumbly, pointing uselessly to the tower “Hey, what’s your name?”
“.. Ryan” he looked troubled with a frown between his brows.
“Hi Ryan, I’m Shane. Do you know what happened..?”
“Uhm..” he shook his head “everything is kinda fuzzy”
“Well do you know where you came from? Or where you were going?”
“Shane, I..” Ryan’s widened, reflecting Shane’s worries “ I can’t remember anything”
Ryan was quite a pleasant company once the panic had passed. Shane offered for him to stay at his cottage for a while until either his memories return or someone comes looking for him. He gave Ryan leftover stew, and when he was clean and tucked away in a spare mattress, Shane went back to the tower to finish his watch. The thought of him being a thief did cross his mind, but he quickly banished it. There was no way Ryan could be faking the drowning, and even if he was, it’s not like Shane had anything of value to be stolen.
The next day, they agreed to post an ad at the paper, asking for anyone who knew a short, Asian man, named Ryan who had recently gone missing, to come to the lighthouse. With that done, they made way for the market, passing through many stalls selling everything from, clothes to cheap jewellery, to vegetables and cheeses, which were the day’s goal.
Shane watched amusedly as Ryan bounded from stall to stall, looking like a crow attracted by shiny things. He took a piece of paper from his pocket with a chuckle, and soon Ryan was unsuccessfully trying to peer over his shoulder to catch a glimpse of its contents.
“You know how to write?” he looked up curiously.
“Well, uh.. yes.” Shane said confusedly “Ryan, we did just put an ad in the paper”
“You weren’t the one doing the writing!” he huffed with a smirk “anyway, where did you learn? No offence but you don’t really scream upper class”
“Oh. I was a teacher once” and with this Shane’s eyes turned sad and distant and sad, and Ryan could read well enough to change the topic.
“And what does it say?” he nodded to the paper, “I think I never learned”
“It’s just a shopping list. Milk, flour, hard cheese” and from there the conversation took merrier paths.
If Shane decided to look back, a thing he was not really prone to do, he could tell you that the signs were there, but still, they were quite too abstract to even start to give a concrete figure. He and Ryan had reached a comfortable routine, sharing meals, fixing engines, and watching the sea together. Sometimes Ryan would walk around the city alone, but hey, the guy had his own life, even if he didn’t remember most of it.
Still, sometimes he did some weird things, looking high strung and jumpy as if expecting to be attacked at any moment. Sometimes, dark sayings tumbled out of his mouth, going against his cheery demeanour.
On one occasion Shane wakes up to Ryan’s hand covering his mouth, with eyes wide with alarm and the other hand holding the biggest kitchen knife Shane didn’t know he had. Ryan’s palm slowly leaves Shane’s lips, and he crowds closer to whisper in his ear.
“Be quiet, I think someone broke into the tower”
He slowly retreats, bringing his pointer finger to his mouth to emphasize his point, and now it’s Shane’s turn to have his alarm colour his features, just awake enough to start to understand the gravity. Ryan silently backs away and moves to jump the back window so as to not draw any attention to the cottage.
Shane struggles to get up quietly, and starts to quickly put on his shoes thinking about the oddness of life, and how dangerous things can come up unexpectedly on a normally uneventful tuesday morning. Wait. Tuesday? Oh. Oh no. He sprints into a run across the patio, throwing the door to the tower open violently and bounding up the stairs, still being able to hear the echo of Ryan’s footsteps that reach the watch room.
When Shane finally reaches the top is to the sorry sight of poor John with a kitchen knife to the throat being threatened by his companion.
“Ryan, stop! It’s John! He comes by every tuesday to bring oil for the lamp!”
To Ryan’s credit he immediately lets go of the man, and turns sheepish, not looking at any of them, hiding the knife behind his back, as if not knowing what to do with it.
John, still quite visibly shaken, takes the opportunity to quickly leave, barely sparing Shane a glance.
“Oh, sorry. I think I might have overreacted” Ryan says embarrassed, still not meeting Shane’s eyes.
“Hey, it’s ok buddy. Who knows what kind of life you led before, right?”
“Yeah, who knows” he says flatly, and Shane starts to worry he had made offense, when he smiles candidly and pats him on the shoulder “Thanks, mate”
They start turning to go, when Ryan spots two blurry figures in the horizon.
“Shane? Can I borrow the spyglass?”
He nods and hands it to Ryan, from where it had been seating neatly in a nearby table, who in turn takes it and moves outside, leaning close to the railing.
“What is it?”
“Uhm, apparently two medium ships. No colours.” he furrows his brow and looks up to Shane “Is it weird to see two ships sailing so close together like that?”
“A little uncommon, but not unheard of” he answers, motioning for Ryan to hand him the spyglass, so he can have a look too.
“How long do you reckon it will take for them to get here?”
“Maybe nightfall, give or take” Shane says pensively, and closes the glass with a satisfying clink.
They return to the cottage where the promise of a warm breakfast awaits them, and for now, that is the end of that.
Later that day, Shane is seating in the small area in front of his house, playing a tune on his harmonica, when Ryan approaches him. He had been skittish ever since the encounter with John, always fleeing the space when Shane entered it, so he appreciates the fact that Ryan seeked him out, and stays very still, afraid to spook him away.
“Don’t you think it’s bad luck to play certain songs?”
“Uhm? Of course not, they’re just songs” he answered with a chuckle “I heard it at the pub the other day, though I’m afraid I don’t know the words”
Ryan simply nodded, and Shane took it as his cue to keep playing. Soon after, Ryan joined him with vocals.
“Yo, ho. All together, hoist the colours high” he moistened his lips, and locked eyes with Shane, his tone getting lower with each word “Evil. Thieves and beggars. Never shall we die”
There, in the ever approaching twilight, with the sea breeze caressing his hair, Ryan looked distant and ethereal, and Shane was overcome with a morose feeling.
“I’m going out tonight, don’t wait up for me. Lock the doors to the tower before your watch” and with a pat to his shoulder, he was gone.
To say Shane was worried was an understatement. This was not Ryan’s first night away, but it felt different somehow, like if they left off on the wrong foot, even though they never fought. Shane sat with a leg under him, bouncing the other up and down and watched the dark night unblinkingly, even the sea incapable of soothing him.
Later he would be happy that his nerves kept his eyes sharp, because it was then that he saw the two ships from earlier round the corner of the bay side by side. Shane watched in horror as they hoisted their colours and instead of the flag of a nearby country, two jolly rogers grinned mockingly at him The one closest to the shore sped up, yellow skeleton against a black background flapping at the wind, and fired her cannons against the buildings closest to the beach, a fire starting right away.
Oh no. He had to go and find Ryan! If they hid in the basement of the tower they would be safe, the heavy doors would protect them. So Shane got up and ran to the main street at once frantically looking inside every pub and bar he knew, at one point he took up shouting Ryan's name in the middle of the street, masses of panicked people rushing past him with fierce looking men running after them.
Shane was running out of breath from both the exhaustion and the smoke from the fire getting in his lungs, he was disoriented, foggy eyes still searching for Ryan in the crowd, when suddenly there was a knife on his neck, and a gruff voice whispered in his ear.
“You better be very careful now Mr. Tinsley, we need you to come with us, but the wrong move, and it will be your last”
“You sure it’s him Zach?” a voice to his right says “He don’t quite look fancy to me”
“Must be a barleybun, plus he matches the description cap gave us”
“I’m warning ya, we get the wrong guy, and it’s your balls that we be throwin to the fishes”
“Aye, aye. I hear ya”
Shane was watching the exchange with rapt attention. He is surely not Mr. Tinsley, who Shane believed was the mayor, yet panic locked the words in his throat and he kept quiet throughout the whole thing. Soon it would not matter, because a bottle hit his head and unconsciousness met him.
Shane’s senses slowly came creeping back at him and he found himself kneeling in moving wood? Probably a boat then. He moved to steady himself, but found his hands tied behind his back with a thick rope and a bag over his head that smelled faintly of dirt. He could hear the waves as a backdrop to loud goading voices and yells. From what Shane could gather there was a discussion over certain parts of the treasure, who would get what and how much of it. So he was captured by the pirates then, no doubt about it.
Suddenly an unnatural hush fell over the deck, and Shane heard heavy footsteps in the wood that came ever close, until it’s owner stopped right in front of him. He heard shuffling behind him as if the men were too anxious to keep quiet. If even these hardened criminals were afraid, Shane was not eager to meet the person in front of him.
“So this is the mayor. Well, allow me to meet Mr. Tinsley then, boys!”
Shane knew this voice. No, it could not be. His ears deceived him, he would not believe it true...But then the bag was yanked out of his head, and his eyes met equally surprised ones.
Ryan.