Work Text:
“Alphinaud, G’raha…” Remeraux heaved a sigh, and motioned to her fellow scions to step aside. “Lemme talk to Sicard, one on one, eh? We go way back.”
G’raha’s ears lowered, looking between the two of them, trying to piece together the kind of past the two must’ve shared. Someone from her piratical days? He’d read Remeraux’s histories of course, when all he had in the First was endless time and even more endless books, but they hadn’t mentioned a Sicard. But then again, surely not every brigand and sailor was committed to the annals of history.
Whatever it was, he could ask later.
“Of course. We’ll be right outside should you need us.” He offered, with a nod, and he and the rest took their leave. Sicard gritted his teeth, and waved his own men away as well.
After a few moments, it was just Sicard and Remeraux; them, and the distance between them.
"Why are you doing this, Rem?" He clenched his fists. “Why side with her against your own?”
"Sicard…” Remeraux pinched the bridge of her nose. “Admiral's right, ya know. Navigator knows we can't keep this up forever."
"Is that so?” Sicard chuckled in disbelief. “Rich talk, coming from a washed up marauder who ain't gripped axehandle in- what is it now? Seven years? Easy for you to say; turn your backs on the oaths we swore. But now you’re tellin’ every sod who stayed the course to fuck off as well?” Remeraux opened her mouth, but to her own surprise found herself speechless. Sicard took the opening to press on.
“Or is that how you see us now, do ya? Oh, Your Excellency, The Warrior of Light? We must look like unruly children to you; misbehavin’ in whatever sodding excuse for a perfect world you’re whipping up. You may get your ass licked by everyone from Coerthas to Kugane, but do you think that gives you the bloody sanctimony to talk this— this treason against your own kith an’ kin—”
“Oh? An’ who in the seven hells are you to lecture me?” Remeraux interjected, striding towards Sicard and using every inch of her nearly seven feet of height to stare down at him.
“You, Sicard? The snot-nosed brat who couldn’t tie a knot until you were nine? Or the antique you’ve become? You think you’re such a big man, mouthin’ off about ‘sworn oaths’ an’ ‘duty’ like they’re some kind of trinkets you can just grip onto and wish the world away? Have ye any clue what’s happened out there in the past five years, or have ya just been standin’ here with your fingers in your ears? In case you haven’t heard: wake up. You’re a fossil, mate. A relic. Holdin’ onto a way of life there’s just no room for anymore!”
“Oh, a thousand pardons, your Highness! I didn’t mean for my presence to offend!” Sicard gave a mock, sweeping bow. “Of course ya think you’re too good for us now, don’t ya? Well, sorry if this isn’t tea time with the Sultana, but don’t you forget it built you from the floorboards the same as me. You can varnish your ship with piss yellow paint or Dalmud red or whatever the hell swill you’d like but that don’t change who you are. Who you really are.”
“Llymlaen’s tits; you really think I fancy myself too good for this life?” Remeraux chuckled, incredulously. “You think every memory from my sailing days don’t fill my heart to bursting? Of course it made me every malm the gal I am, and I loved every second of it! You think I’d forswear the old ways ‘cause what, I’m too silver spoon for it?”
“Well, you’re too chickenshit for it, then. Face it, you were a bloody corsair from the Squallbreaker; you could’ve had your pick of any crew in the Admiral’s bloody fleet after shit broke bad! But did you? No, of course not! One bad turn and you ran away; must’ve been pissing yourself every time you saw open water—”
Remeraux wheeled on him with that, eyes alive with fury burning like coals. She grabbed him by the throat and slammed Sicard against the cave wall, leaning in so close their noses were practically touching. He could feel anger radiating from her like heat coming off a furnace.
“They were my family, mate. You think that I could just replace that? Huh?” She pressed him harder into the rock, as he struggled in vain to free himself.
“You haven’t watched the folks who raised you—read you bedtime stories ‘n’ bandaged skinned knees ‘n’ taught you your fucking letters—die like dogs, pumped full o’ shrapnel an’ swallowed up by the sea! I lost nearly everyone in that storm!” Remeraux bore down on him, An’ even then—even then!— I kept my oaths. I served on’ that ship until it was torn to splinters, an’ I served my captain still as we starved on some rock in the middle of the Jade. I served her until there weren’t no bloody crew and there weren’t no bloody ship neither. I didn’t abandon that life, you miserable fuck, it ended, and at least I was smart enough to read the writing on the fucking wall when it did! How dare you, you sorry excuse for salt, you waste of fucking—”
“Remeraux, I can’t— I can’t—” Sicard gurgled, weakly clawing at Remeraux’s hand, color draining from his face. Remeraux scowled and released her grip, and Sicard tumbled to the ground like a tonze of bricks, coughing and sputtering as he desperately tried to refill his own lungs.
“Remeraux.” Sicard wheezed again, gulping in air and looking up with a mixture of fear and regret from where he sat.
“I didn’t know. Navigator’s own truth, I didn’t. An’ I’m sorry I called you a coward…. Sure, whatever, you didn’t break your oaths. But now you expect me to? Just like that?”
“This isn’t about me, Sicard!” Remeraux spat back. “Don’t talk to me about oaths! We all swore an’ oath to follow the Navigator’s lead, an’ she’s telling us enough’s enough!”
Remeraux stopped to take a slow breath in through her nose, to find whatever she could pass off as calm.
“Piracy’s writ of bloody execution was signed with the Galadian Accord, make no mistake. The only reason it didn’t get the axeman’s treatment right then and there was Garlemald. Preying on their ships was a lifeline, a mercy. An’ trust me, nobody loved it more than me ‘n’ mine. But even Garlemald is dying. Times are changing. And forgive me for saying so, but we’re not so young anymore either. We’re not immortal. And it’s high bloody time we start to plan our exits.” Remeraux crouched down to his level and looked him dead in the eye; the kind of look you give someone when you want them to burn what you were about to say next into their skull in bold letters.
“I want glory, Sicard. I want the names of every man on every crew what take Garlemald to live forever in the hearts of our countrymen. I want the world to remember us, those brave corsairs who broke her iron grip forever, filling the air with singing steel and ringing powder! We’re going to be fucking legends, mate! Our deeds on that day will be talked about with the kind of reverence that Mistbeard himself an’ all his fleet still commands, for as long as Limsans have lips to speak! Sicard, I want the end of all this to mean something!” Her voice almost cracked as she said it, tears beginning to well at the corners of her eyes. She didn’t let them fall.
“But fine. Fine! Stick to your childish rebellion. Keep going your way, and the only end you’re going to meet is the end of the hangman’s noose, dancing on air for petty banditry. An’ the only way you’ll be remembered is as a sad fucking footnote in a history that’s moved on without you.”
Remeraux stood back up, and walked away from Sicard without another word. Sicard knew better than to try and stop her.
“I take it negotiations didn’t go well, then?” Alphinaud observed, as Remeraux stormed out of the cave and into the La Noscean sun.
“No, Alphy, I daresay they did not.”