Chapter Text
“There’s a storm on the horizon, Captain.”
This is what Haknyeon says when he gently opens the doors to Younghoon’s quarters, letting in a breeze that tastes thick and heavy with rain, tense air flooding the room along with it. Slowly, he puts down his quill, wiping dark ink from the nib and laying it down on his desk, and abandons the map he’d been poring over; it can wait.
“How far?” He asks, standing to join the other man. They walk, side by side, out onto the deck of this ship, where electric energy crackles so intensely in the air that it makes Younghoon’s skin crawl.
“Eric says it’s about a mile out,” Haknyeon says, his lips set into a thin frown.
“And coming on faster than any storm I’ve seen before!” Eric shouts down from the crow’s nest. “Nasty looking one, too.”
“Do me a favor and get down from there then, would you?” Younghoon glances in the direction that Eric’s pointing in, and quivers at the sight of it; the clouds are stacked high and heavy on the eastern horizon, so dark they cast a long shadow on the sea stretched out in front of them. He cannot tear his eyes away from it, he finds, riveted to the way the thing devours the clear blue skies like some kind of vicious behemoth, flickers of lightning flashing from within.
“Captain,” Haknyeon urges him gently, tapping his shoulder, “there’s not much time.” Eric scrambles down the mast, deftly navigating the ropes as he has a thousand times before.
Younghoon remains fixated on the quickly approaching storm for one more long moment.
“Hak, go below deck with Eric. Tell Chanhee and Jaehyun to stay down there, too.”
“But-”
“Go on, now.” Younghoon gives him a reassuring smile. “I’ve guided this ship through more storms than I can count, have I not?”
“You have,” Haknyeon shifts on his feet uncomfortably, “but. . .”
“Go.”
Haknyeon sighs, but heads for the cabins anyways, pulling Eric along with him.
The wind starts to pick up, lifting the edges of Younghoon’s jacket and pulling at his hair. He takes up his position at the hull, feeling the waves start to pick up as the ship shifts beneath his feet, sails flapping protest as the gusts start to rip and tear at them with angry, sharp claws.
Younghoon knows the sea better than he knows himself, but the novelty of knowing the water as intimately as he is this: to truly understand the things that are whispered on the crests of waves, to hear the echoes that resound from the deep, is to not understand it at all. For in its very nature, the ocean is an unpredictable creature, one who thinks not, and knows only hunger and greed. To sail the sea is to be at its mercy; should the depths really and truly decide to claim your soul, then your soul belongs to them, and that is that.
It’s with this in mind that he grips the cold wood of the steering wheel, and with a great tug, aims the bow of the ship directly into the storm.
The clouds approach so rapidly that when they finally overtake the vessel, it feels as though somebody had simply turned out the lights; a startling calm settles over him, deceptive in its comfort.
And then.
It feels as though the ship has been slammed by a solid wall at first, wind and rain crashing down on him all at once, the darkness swallowing him up and rendering him nearly sightless. Younghoon grips the wheel for dear life, angling the ship slightly to its port side, hoping to steer them out of the worst of it while avoiding being crushed by the waves.
The rain is freezing, pelting down so hard that it stings, and his muscles burn already as he struggles to keep the ship under his control; the wheel shudders, protests, the current far below attempting to rip it from his hands. He knows that should he let go of it, he and his crew are as good as dead.
Flashes of lightning illuminate the surface of the water, just long enough to reveal the violent mosaic it has become, massive, jagged waves rising up like mountains ahead of him and frothing like wild dogs at the mouth, mindless, and only wanting to kill.
Gritting his teeth and setting his jaw, he pushes back against the force of the storm, nearly slipping when the ship crests over a wave and tumbles back down, sending a massive spray of water sloshing across the deck. Weathering a storm, alone on deck, the sole pillar standing between his crew and the belly of the sea, is almost less of a physical battle and more of a mental one. His entire body trembles, yes, and his fingers feel numb where they’re wrapped white around the wheel, but he remains steadfast nonetheless; the sea is excellent at giving life, but just as good at leeching it away, at tearing up resolve and hope like nothing more than paper.
The next flash of lightning, forking ferociously in the sky above, is followed by a rumble of thunder so deep that it shakes the very ocean itself, booming so loudly in Younghoon’s ears that it makes him flinch.
While the sea is lit up, Younghoon catches sight of something else, too solid to be a cloud and too steady to be a wave, lingering on the horizon.
He thinks nothing of it; a mirage, perhaps.
But when the next flash comes, it’s much closer, much clearer, so clear that Younghoon can see its massive wooden sides caving through the waves, so that he can see its tattered sails illuminated by the light, the snarling tiger figurehead arched against the bowsprit defined against the cloud-choked sky behind it.
He’d recognize her anywhere, having seen the ship countless times sailing through his nightmares with just as much animosity as she does now, and with tenfold what she used to carry with her before Younghoon sent her sinking to the seafloor.
Which is where she should have remained.
Younghoon squeezes his eyes closed, shaking the hallucination from his mind, because that’s what it must be.
And yet, when the next lightning strike pierces the waves just off of his own ship’s starboard side, sparks scattering like gunfire, the Howling Gale is still there, so close that the two vessels nearly collide.
Younghoon’s heart stops in his chest when for a split second, the raging seas remain alight, and he can see onto the deck of the other ship, his gaze dragging painfully up to the hull, where it stops, and lingers.
There’s a man behind the wheel, one that Younghoon knew so well and who plagued him so terribly that he drove his sword through his heart. He should be dead, and the Gale should be rotting at the bottom of the ocean, and yet Younghoon cannot tear his eyes from the other captain’s sharp, piercing stare.
How he loathed Ji Changmin.
Why else would he go through such terrible lengths to see his ship shot through and sunken? Why else would he personally slaughter him, rid himself of a mortal enemy for good, and watch his blood paint the planks of the deck beneath him red? Younghoon had made fully sure that Changmin died the death he deserved to die, a bloody, painful death that sent him straight to damnation where he belonged.
Ghost ships, Younghoon tells himself, aren’t real.
And yet.
As clear as the storm will allow, he can see him, standing tall and slender at the helm of the Gale, and if he’s not imagining it he thinks there’s a red stain on his chest where Younghoon’s blade had pierced it so many months ago. There is something horribly unnatural about how the ship slices through the water with such ease, as though the bow is not quite splitting the waves, but rather the waves are parting for it , and no visible wind blows through the sails.
He knows, suddenly and innately, that this is no normal storm.
Darkness falls over the sea again and thunder roars in Younghoon’s ears, and real, sickening fear roils in his stomach when Changmin and the Gale disappear from his sight, because he feels completely and utterly defenseless, and-
Guilty.
“You killed him,” a horrid voice chants in the back of his mind, “ you watched him bleed out and die, die at your own hands, and now he’s come back to kill you, you bastard.”
“You killed him.”
Lightning slashes through the air so close that he feels it singe his cheek, and the accompanying flash reveals the sea once more, but there’s nothing.
No ghostly ship.
No Changmin.
“You killed him, Kim Younghoon,” the voice whispers wickedly, the angry sea lashing at the flanks of his ship,” and now you must pay.”