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It hadn’t been a good day from the beginning. That much was clear when Ace kept spacing out over breakfast. The familiar flat, distant look would come into his eyes until he shook himself out of it, speaking a little too quietly, smiling a little too shallowly.
He’d known then that it wouldn’t be a good day, but Deuce had hoped it would at least be a manageable day. There were lots of days like that, where the rest of the Spades quietly gave their captain a little extra attention. Deuce would read to him little pieces of his work, or Skull would launch into some loud story and thump him on the back a few times more than usual. They always made sure to take a little extra work on those days, made sure their captain found himself with a pleasantly calm evening and a lapful of purring Kotatsu.
It wasn’t a manageable day either. Deuce had known this for a few hours, ever since they’d gone to a market at the port town where they’d docked to stock up. The town and its little island was far behind them now, but it was clear their captain’s thoughts were still lingering there.
It hadn’t been much of anything, not really - not that it mattered. A little girl drawing back from the offered morsel of food, a wary I’m not supposed to talk to people like you, an adult’s grumbled stop being a menace and get back to your ship, can’t you see you aren’t welcome here? when the crew’s usual roughhousing had gotten a little too rowdy for the locals’ taste.
It wasn’t an uncommon response, nor one they could be faulted for. A mistrust for pirates was normal, Deuce had reassured him, especially in places that had more experience with the bad sort of pirates.
It was simply the wrong enough words on a wrong enough day, and now Ace had retreated to the Striker where it was moored behind them, bobbing in the calm water like some sort of drifting sea-bird. Deuce could barely make out his silhouette as he approached the little vessel. Mihal, taking the night watch, had tactfully chosen to ignore their captain’s presence in his usual haunt, which was as much privacy as anyone could get on the Spadille.
Deuce dropped over the ship’s railing, stepping lightly along the little craft he knew so well until he reached the narrow seat currently occupied by his captain.
“Shove over,” he whispered. “Not gonna let you sit out here by yourself, y’know.”
Ace didn’t answer, didn’t look up at all. After a slight hesitation he slid to his left against the Striker’s side, tucking his knees against his chest.
“If you wanna talk, I’ll listen. But don’t feel like you have to, yeah?” Deuce bumped his shoulder with his own.
Ace sniffed, drawing one hand across his face. After a moment he did speak, and Deuce had to strain to hear it. “…just want…everything to shut the hell up in here…” he dropped his head to thump against his bent knees. “…just want to feel normal, even if I shouldn’t…I want- to feel like it’s okay for…” he drifted off.
“Yeah?” Deuce prodded gently after a moment, pressing their shoulders together again.
Ace sniffled again, taking a shivering breath. The dim moonlight rippling over the calm waves caught his face at an angle as he raised his head and Deuce felt something in his chest hurt to see the spray of freckles covered with streaks of tears and hastily wiped-away snot and angry red nail-marks.
Where had he learned to cry so silently, to hurt without making a sound? Who had given him the idea that all of this was an annoyance to keep to himself?
Ace choked back another little sob into something uncomfortably close to a whimper and took another steadying breath, still looking at the water instead of meeting Deuce’s eyes.
“I just want to feel like it’s…like it’s okay for me to be alive, y’know?”
Deuce mirrored Ace in looking somewhere across the sea before them, at the stars’ shifting mirror images rippling on the waves. A familiar vise tightened in his chest like it had done the other times they’d shared similar conversations -
The other times Ace had said the same thing.
He forced a breath past it and hoped his voice didn’t shake, whether from anger he had no clue where to direct, or from something else, he wasn’t sure.
“Regardless of who your parents are, people don’t deserve or not deserve to be born. We just…are, I think, like animals, or something,” he tried. “Any morality you attach to it is just stuff people invent along the way for their own reasons.”
For a long moment Ace didn’t answer. He brought up a hand to brush at his eyes and nose, then closed his eyes and hugged his knees tighter.
“I…can’t believe that. Any time I start to feel…like it’s allowed, it just makes me feel more guilty about the whole thing. Like I’m not…allowed to feel okay, or something. Fuck, I don’t - I don’t know how to not be so in my head about this...”
Deuce considered for a moment. He draped both arms over his captain’s shoulders, leaning his head against his bare back: a forlorn and aching familiarity brought from long, cold nights on Sixis that seemed like a lifetime ago.
Deuce felt the furnace-heat of Ace’s skin against his own just the same as he had then.
If only this was enough to fix things… The further we go, the more he seems driven by this…idea of proving his own worth. To who - himself?
He willed himself to speak again instead of dwelling on the thought any longer.
“You’re allowed to exist just as much as any of us are. I promise it’s okay - you’re as normal as all of us, as anyone, for what it’s worth. I know it isn’t easy to let yourself believe it, so don’t feel bad because that’s hard, on top of the rest.”
He felt the tremble in Ace’s shoulders.
“I…there’s always these voices, since I was a kid - in my head, like y…you piece of shit, and there’s something wrong with you and you can’t fix it, a…and-“ he drifted off, hiding the catch in his voice with another sniffle, and Deuce felt the hurt in his chest sharpen to hear the bitterness and hate when Ace voiced his own thoughts, to imagine a child carrying the same view of himself he held now.
He felt Ace shift, realized he’d brought his hands up to hide his face. “How…I don’t know how to stop listening to it. I don’t know how to believe I should stop listening to it.”
“I’m sorry.” Deuce wasn’t a stranger to feeling a need to prove himself, after all, but he’d never felt like a failed career in medicine was any comparison. “I wish I could do more. It’ll get easier to tune out eventually, I think it just takes practice like anything else.”
“I just want it to not hurt-“ his voice caught in his throat as he lifted his head back from his hands. “Is it…is it okay for me to want that much?”
“Yes-“ Deuce whispered into his captain’s back, blinking back his own tears.
“Yeah, it’s - it’s okay, Ace. You don’t deserve to hurt, I promise, I…we’ll get to where you believe it. I don’t care how long it takes. None of us are going anywhere - you’re stuck with us, okay? You can’t get rid of a single person on this ship, because we all care about you, we all want you to be okay.”
That broke the floodgates all at once, and Ace ducked into his hands again, his fingers not sure whether to wipe away the snot and fast-falling tears or to claw at his skin again.
Deuce tightened his hold around the shoulders that jerked with silent sobs and willed his own hurt out of the way. There wasn’t anything else to say. The tempestuous current would eventually slow to a more manageable stream, and the thoughts would be more manageable then, at least for a while. All that was left was to wait out the night and hope the sun heralded in a day that hurt a little less to survive.
There were times, now and then, that Ace seemed to believe he couldn’t be loved. And yet Deuce - no, the whole crew - would follow their captain into whatever unknown seas to convince him otherwise.
The Striker creaked beneath their feet as the mooring line began to fall slack. The currents were changing, bit by bit.
I wish I could make it hurt less. I wish I could fix things. Maybe someday we’ll have everything figured out…that’s a nice thought.