Chapter Text
"Now instead, you ought to forgive and comfort him, so that he will not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. I urge you, therefore, to reaffirm your love for him."
2 Corinthians 2:7&8
It was raining.
Of course it was bloody raining, Thomas Hamilton reflected. It wasn’t enough that he had been captured by pirates. It wasn’t enough that he stood to lose what few funds he had managed to scrape together for this journey. No. It had to rain as well. Just his luck, really - or lack thereof. If there was one thing the past ten years had taught him, it was that if it weren’t for bad luck, he wouldn’t have any at all. And now the pirates were looking his way, quite obviously taking in his clothing and the size of his purse against the prospect of further gains to be had by ransom.
“If I ever express a desire to travel again, I sincerely hope someone will cosh me over the head and drag me back to Bethlem. I must have been mad to attempt this in the first place,” he muttered, and the pirate standing nearest him flashed him an incongruously brilliant grin.
“Some might say so,” he agreed. “Although you don’t quite look the part of the poor mad wretch.” His voice sounded - oddly cultured, Thomas noticed. It was not what he would have expected, but then little about this voyage had been thus far. He snorted.
“That never stopped anyone the first time.”
The pirate’s blue eyes narrowed, and he considered Thomas more carefully.
“Bethlem, you say. I wonder - were you familiar with any of the other inmates?”
Thomas frowned. The man’s question had sounded deceptively casual, but he could see by the sudden scrutiny that it had been nothing of the sort. The man was fishing for something.
“Not many I’m afraid, no,” he answered, caution lending his words a certain stiffness. “Forgive me - who are you, sir?”
The pirate grinned again, and pushed himself away from the mast where he had been leaning. He gave a somewhat ridiculous bow, starting at the waist and sweeping his hands outward, and straightened again.
“I have the good fortune to serve as quartermaster aboard the Walrus. You’ve gotten lucky, friend. If you had to be captured by pirates, I would recommend Captain Flint over some others I could name.”
God, Thomas thought, was having a laugh at his expense. Nothing else could explain this odd coincidence.
“Captain Flint?”
“I take it you’ve heard the name.” The quartermaster still smiled, although it had turned to something like amusement now rather than an attempt to reassure or calm, and Thomas laughed, more out of some hysterical instinct toward humor than actual mirth.
“Fate has a strange way of tossing one about,” he answered, and the pirate cocked his head. “He killed my father,” Thomas clarified, and the quartermaster raised an eyebrow.
“You don’t seem very upset about that.”
“I hated my father. Apparently I wasn’t the only one.” The shorter man was staring at him now, a strange look on his face, and he licked his lips almost as if he were nervous.
“Might I ask your name?”
“So that you can see whether I’m worth ransoming?” The pirate flashed him a half grin.
“There is that, yes.”
Thomas sighed. He contemplated giving a false name. It was the smart thing to do - the thing that would ensure that his relatives heard nothing of this. It might even save his life if Captain Flint proved to have a grudge against his family rather than simply an entirely understandable loathing for his father, but on the off chance that the pirate decided to sink the entire ship and leave no survivors, he wanted at least one person to know where and when he had truly died, even if that person had no idea who he was beyond his name.
"Thomas Hamilton,” he said finally. He raised a hand to run it through his rain-sodden hair, and found the quartermaster suddenly much closer to him, his face less than a foot away from Thomas.
"Say that again." The man’s eyes had suddenly become bird-like, focused with all the intensity of a hawk studying its prey to the exclusion of all else.
"My name is Thomas Hamilton," he repeated, attempting to draw back away from the other man. "There is no one back in England willing to ransom me, so I will thank you not to -"
"And why is that?" The pirate's gaze had not shifted - if anything, it had grown more intense, and Thomas recoiled.
"Do we know each other?" he asked, and the pirate smiled, easy and amiable on the surface with all the intensity of a shark behind it.
"John Silver, at your service," he answered. "We haven't met, but I believe you know a friend of mine - unless I'm speaking to the wrong man."
"I'm quite sure you are," Thomas answered. "Especially if your friend claims to have met me in the past decade. I was only permitted to leave Bethlem recently because I promised never to darken my uncle's doorstep again."
Silver grinned, and Thomas drew back, uneasy at the gleam in the other man's eyes.
"Oh yes," he replied. "I know someone who is very much going to want to see you."
He stood.
“Cut this one loose,” he ordered. “We’re going to see the Captain.”