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Forgive me, she’d said. Forgive me.
Forgive me, that bastardly coward of a thief had pleaded with her voice. With her face, her cold, blackened blood running down from the gaping wound in her head.
“Christ,” Flint rasps, fists pressed to his lids hard enough to bruise, not quite a sob but close.
All is still, empty, the air of his cabin rancid and choking. No sound save his own shuddering breaths, and the occasional moan heard only distantly from one of his starving crew men languishing on deck under the waning sun.
It aches to sit as he does curled against his bookshelves, brittle knees pressed to his chest, his throat parched raw as though scrapped with sea glass, his eyes burning from hours of wracking sobs.
For now, he sits staring at nothing, devoid of all feeling. As much a ghost as the one relentlessly tethered to him.
There is nowhere to go, nothing to do save wait to dispose of the next rodent who compromises their survival.
He saw the faces of his men as both shots stuck true and the thieves fell to lay at their feet, listened as they named him mad, murderer, villain, monster, under their breaths, in whispers and terrorized murmurs when they thought he could not hear them.
Every man is a monster to someone. Since you are so convinced that I am yours, I will be it.
He knows should get up, if only to throw himself on his cot and truly fall into oblivion.
But Miranda’s screams and lifeless eyes, her blood and ocean-sodden gown, would only hound and taunt him there as they in do in every face, in every shadow hidden but just visible in the corner of his eye.
“The wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt,” as the prophet Isaiah had written. As the Father of the old stone chapel in Padstow would intone gravely from his pulpit when he was still a boy quivering in fear of divine retribution, the thick incense suffocating rather than comforting.
He wonders what the old priest would say to him now, what penance he would demand to absolve his soul. More likely, he would call him demon, sodomite, or cursed. Perhaps he would even tell him that this, his existence as Flint, is his own everlasting torment wrought early for the horror he has rained down on the colonists, the true, unblemished Children of God.
Dante spoke of the putrid waters that await those devoted to wrath. In a way, Flint finds it almost poetically fitting that he and his crew waste away from hunger and thirst on these silent waters.
He supposes he’ll be dead within a fortnight, or less, but there is no fear, not anymore. And why should there be?
He has borne greater losses, more excruciating pains, than any that could be awaiting him beyond.
He stiffens on instinct when his cabin door groans open, until he hears the familiar thump of iron rod against wood.
Thump-drag, thump-drag, thump-drag.
His shoulders sag, head heavy and pressed listlessly to the side of his shelves.
Not bothering to meet the eyes he feels boring into him, to see the disgust he knows lies in those fucking too-clear, too-perceptive blue irises.
Through his lashes, he sees the shutter in Silver’s movements, hears the muted whimper clenched behind his teeth, as the smaller man crouches down till he kneels before him.
Knows where his quartermaster’s pain lies and hates himself doubly, not for knowing but for caring enough to know.
“Perhaps if you removed that boot for more than an handful of moments–“
“Perhaps if you minded your own fucking business,” Silver cuts in, his already deep tone sounding no more than a ragged growl. “Instead of continually inserting yourself in mine.”
As if you, of all people, have any right to say so, Flint’s mind supplies.
And while Flint’s remaining physical strength may be more likened to a corpse than a living being at present, he suddenly feels as though he could bring Charlestown to the ground once more with nothing save his own two hands.
“I need a quartermaster who can manage what’s left of these men to ensure a remnant,” Flint growls back, with equal heat. “Not a goddamn fool who’d rather collapse from infection then allow his pride to be sullied–“
“My pride?”
When Silver laughs, it is as hallow and close to hysteria as Flint felt only hours prior. And were it not for the pain in what remains of his leg, Flint knows he’d be up and pacing the length of the room.
Or punching his fist into Flint’s jaw, whichever suited him better.
He feels the withering glare on him but continues to refuse to give Silver the satisfaction of looking up.
“My pride– oh you– you are incredible, aren’t you? No, no what you are, Captain, is fucking pathetic,” Silver continues, his fury scorching through his every word. “Half-starved, and still acting as though you’d rather execute two suspects before your entire crew rather than even bothering with a sentence, stirring up the fires of their hatred for you, and dividing them against each other and us in the process, all this and for what? So you can continue to puppet them, to play Caesar? So you can hold some semblance of power over them while it has already begun to evade your grasp?”
And oh, Flint almost meets Silver’s eyes then, almost, but stubbornly reels himself back.
“You want them, any of them, to survive?” he says. “This is how it’s done.”
“No.” And Silver has never, in all the time Flint has known him, sounded so resolved. “No, you may have Billy’s support in this and their fear, but as long as I breathe you will not become their butcher. I will not allow it, not after today. I will stand between you and them if need be, carrying out your orders while saving their lives and that, Captain, is how it will be done.”
Brace yourself, but I'm the only person within a hundred miles of here who doesn't want to see you dead, the damned man’s own voice echoes from the far reaches of Flint’s memory.
And as quickly as the fire of his anger swept over him, he feels it deflate just as rapidly. All that remains is overwhelming exhaustion, as he turns into himself and waits for more berating.
What he isn’t expecting is a weighted pause, a silence that stretches for a moment, then two, then the deep-winded sigh he’s granted instead.
And what he certainly isn’t expecting are the too-rough, trembling hands that pull his forward, and place a tin of water and stale bit of dried eel inside his palms that he hadn’t noticed till now.
He bristles instantly, flinching back from the first gentle touch and offer he’s received in nearly half a year.
“Mr. Silver, I’ve already had my–“
“I am responsible for overseeing rations at this moment, so I know for a fact you’ve not been taking yours,” Silver bites out, so in contrast to the softened grip of him that Flint finally looks up, more disoriented than his nightmares and visions leave him.
Why do you care?
He’s so thin, and he looks every bit as breakable as Flint himself feels. Sun-blistered, and chafed, his clothes hanging limp on his slight frame, his dark curls lank and still tied back accenting the gauntness of his face.
It’s Silver’s eyes, though, that strike him, as they always manage to. So blue, so enlarged from days upon days of hunger, that pierce through and hold him fast.
There is the still-smoldering fury there that Flint expected, and that familiar hard stubbornness that all too often makes Flint want to slam him against, well, against something, something hard and preferably more than a bit painful, like that first night he caught him at the Wrecks.
But there’s something else there, something– something Flint has no words for as he has never seen Silver wear it so openly till now.
He supposes he’d call it fragile, or vulnerable, were it anyone else. But there’s something broken, almost feral in it, that Flint can’t decipher a meaning for.
He looks desperate, in the way a wounded animal would. Pleading, in the way a supplicant would.
More so, like he has been cut through and is spilling outward.
“You said-“ Silver trembles, cutting his own voice off, eyes flitting all over him rapidly, carrying none of the iron he held only moments ago.
And, Christ, those too-thinned hands of his are clutching, no, pushing the rations into Flint’s palms with such force he didn’t think Silver to be capable of.
“You said,” Silver repeats, once more finding his bearings. “You said, you told me before them all that if I was not strong enough to do what must be done, that you would– that you would do it. For me. Well, I can’t see how you expect to fucking do so if you can’t stay alive long enough to see this through. So, so…”
He trails off still clutching onto Flint as if he expects to be pulled away at any moment.
And, God, it has been some time since Flint has felt so utterly lost.
“You know,” Silver continues. “You’ve always known, you’ve seen it since the beginning that I’m not– but the men don’t, the men, but you– And I just–“
Silver sounds delirious now, and if he holds any tighter, Flint is sure he’ll break the bones of his wrists.
“Alright,” he finds himself murmuring back. “Easy, Silver, alright.”
And, some small part of him can’t help but marvel at how only moments ago he was sure Silver meant to throttle him, only now to be practically quaking like the goddamn earth is falling apart around them.
You’ve always known, you’ve seen it…
And Flint has, hasn’t he? Without meaning to, certainly without wanting to.
He saw it when Silver lied of the fate of the Urca’s gold, as he laid stretched out and pale, his leg newly sawn from him, his gaze for the first time since he’d known him evading his, and despite their understanding, despite their precarious unity, their partnership, he lied to him.
As he had seen it before, when Silver had spoken to him of the Home for Boys, of the child named Solomon Little whom he spoke of distantly, staring off as if he too could see ghosts.
Yes, he’s seen it, though he still cannot quite name it. Nor does he know if he even wants to.
All he knows now, in this moment, is that he’s tired. But the tired he feels is not so empty, not so desolate. So he makes a choice.
Slowly, tentatively, he extracts himself from Silver’s grip, and lifts the cup to his mouth. And watches.
Flint watches Silver as he drinks, then takes up the morsel, watches as Silver stares back, almost unblinking. As the other man continues to stare, not taking his eyes off him for moment, as he finishes every last bit.
Watches as all that seemed to be pouring out of Silver a moment ago, is pulled back inside him and shut away.
Watches as every bit of the frenzied intensity he showed only moments ago, seeps from his frame.
Watches as Silver crawls, then leans his back against the wall beside him, as he allows him to. Watches as Silver’s eyes flutter closed and his head slowly lulls till it rests fully against Flint’s side.
He watches, and stares, and then watches some more, never taking his eyes off the living enigma huddled against him.
And when he cannot watch anymore, he sleeps.
For the first time since Charlestown, his rest is quiet, dreamless, and undisturbed.