Chapter Text
The sun glittered on the clear blue water as far as the eye could see, the horizon a clear line in the distance where cobalt met azure and the world appeared to end. Gimli tore his eyes away from the sight and focused back on honing the blade of his axe to a fine edge. He hadn’t had a chance to tend to it after the fight in Port Royal, and he had a feeling he was going to need it sharp in the near future, so he didn’t want to put the task off any longer. That, and it was a good distraction.
“You seem on edge, lad.”
Gimli looked up into the weathered, kindly face of Mr Balin, and tasted suspicion on the back of his tongue. He didn’t like how easily the man had turned on his fellows to help Oakenshield, and there were too many questions about Oakenshield for him to relax around either man. “Last time I was on a ship out at sea, I nearly drowned, and lost everything except the clothes on my back,” Gimli told him bluntly, going back to his axe. “I was nine.”
Mr Balin nodded gravely. “I remember, lad.”
Finally, Gimli realised where he knew the man from. They’d met on the Dauntless, on that fateful trip from England where Gimli had lost everything, including the only link he had to his father. The trip where he had met Legolas. It ached, to remember that now, with Legolas captured and far out of reach. They had been so young, and even though Gimli had been scared and alone, and had bristled and barked at everyone, and Legolas had been the only one to match him barb for barb, he still thought on those days with fondness. Legolas had seemed almost unreal to him then, but they’d been children, and Gimli had never hesitated to reach out to his first real friend. Not the way he’d learned to hesitate later, when he grew up and finally noticed the yawning chasm of the class difference stretched between them. When he realised what it meant that his heart always leapt and fluttered when Legolas was near, and just what society would do to him, to Legolas, if they ever realised.
“Ach, young love,” Mr Balin sighed, startling Gimli out of his memories. He shook the wisps of nostalgia off, and only then realised just what Mr Balin had said. He flushed a dull red, right to the tips of his ears, and tried to deny it. The words got all tangled up on his tongue, though, and Mr Balin only chuckled, and patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t bother, laddie. Most wouldn’t notice, because they’d never think to look, but any pirate worth their salt’d see it plain as day.”
Gimli swallowed down his embarrassment, and changed the subject. “A pirate?” he asked, fixing a scowl on Mr Balin.
That earned him a quizzical look. “Aye, a pirate.”
“How does a pirate come to be sailing in the King’s navy?” Gimli asked aggressively.
The good humour dropped off Mr Balin’s face for a moment, replaced by the sort of world-weary grief that could kill a man, if he let it. It made Gimli feel like a heel for asking, and he opened his mouth to try and steer the conversation onto a more productive track, but before he could, they were interrupted by Oakenshield. “His Captain fails him, and he wisely seeks better employment.”
Gimli turned to stare at him, because from Oakenshield’s attitude, he wouldn’t have thought he’d ever hear the man call the navy ‘better employment’. Mr Balin, too, seemed surprised, but then he smiled at Oakenshield. It was a twisted version of a smile, full of pain and sorrow and sympathy and hope. “I traded one mad Captain for one mad King. A slightly more distant evil, perhaps, but hardly what I’d call better circumstances, Captain.”
Oakenshield tipped his head in a way that wasn’t quite agreement, and his gaze drifted off into the middle distance. “I’m not mad anymore, thank my lucky stars,” he murmured wryly, as if to himself, which made Gimli doubt the content of his words.
“No,” Mr Balin agreed in a tone so mild it came right back around to being pointed. “Madness doesn’t leave room for quite that much guilt.”
Oakenshield’s gaze snapped back into focus as he levelled a hard, piercing look at Mr Balin. “Are you suggesting it is undeserved?” he demanded in a voice like thunder; an ominous growl that matched the lightning flare of temper in his eyes.
Mr Balin sighed heavily. “Self-flagellation serves no one but yourself, Thorin.”
For a moment, Gimli thought they might come to blows, but then Oakenshield reeled himself in, visibly tamping down his frustration. He offered Mr Balin a grim smile that hardly deserved the name, dragged down by the weight of emotion in his eyes. “Perhaps it is selfish, then, but I find I need the reminder, old friend.”
Gimli looked between the two of them, watching as expressions chased themselves across Mr Balin’s face too swiftly for him to read. In the end, he just sighed into his beard and shook his head, and Oakenshield turned and headed off towards the bridge to check their course. “What am I going to do with that boy?” Mr Balin muttered to himself once Oakenshield was out of earshot.
“Boy?” Gimli echoed dryly, although he made sure to keep his voice down so that Oakenshield wouldn’t hear him. “I thought he was your Captain.”
“Oh, that he is, lad, that he is. I’ve sailed under many a man, but there’s only one I’d follow to the edges of the world and beyond, and that’s Thorin Oakenshield,” Mr Balin informed him, all the apparent pain of the previous conversation washed away by a fiercely proud look. Then he glanced sideways at Gimli and winked. “But I’ve known him since he was a wee lad and that leaves an impression or three.”
That explained some of why Mr Balin was so willing to drop a career eight years or more in the making on Oakenshield’s say-so. He glanced back over at Oakenshield, who was stood at the helm of the ship. He made for a majestic sight like that, and Gimli couldn’t help but compare it to the sight of him in Port Royal’s prison cell, hollowed out and defeated until Gimli had offered him a deal. He’d been chewing on that moment ever since it had happened, and there was only one thing he could think of that could make that whole exchange make sense. He decided to test his suspicion with Mr Balin before he confronted Oakenshield on the subject.
“If you’ve known him for that long,” Gimli began idly, “you must have known my father, too.”
Mr Balin gave a full-body flinch, and stared at Gimli for a long moment before answering. “Aye, I did, lad,” he confirmed finally. Turning his eyes back to Oakenshield, he nodded. “Glóin was one of the most faithful, honourable men I’ve ever sailed with, and there’s no one better to have at your back in a fight.”
Gimli was distracted from the implied confirmation that Oakenshield had known his father by the other implication Mr Balin had made. He stared at the old sailor – old pirate – and willed it not to be true. “He was in the navy?” He asked mildly.
That got him a look that suggested Mr Balin was questioning his intelligence. “No, lad.”
“My father was a decent, law-abiding man.” Gimli insisted, hands balling into fists.
Mr Balin frowned. “That’s a bit of an oxymoron there,” he pointed out, and at Gimli’s expression of bewildered offence, he elaborated; “It’s hard to be a decent man and obey the law at the same time. Your father chose the harder path, and did what was right by him and his, even when society condemned and shunned him for it.” His tone was a gentle one, teacherly and kind, but Gimli found the words enraging.
“My father was not a pirate!” he insisted, loud in his anger.
Across the deck, Oakenshield’s head snapped around, attention drawn by the shout. Gimli bristled under the attention, suddenly very aware that he was in the middle of nowhere with two pirates who might take offence at his opinion of their profession. Mr Balin only looked disappointed, but when Oakenshield abandoned his post at the wheel to approach them, his glower was as dark as a thundercloud. “I’m afraid he was, lad,” Mr Balin corrected him patiently.
“No,” Gimli denied, shaking his head. He didn’t want to believe it, but he was desperately trying to recall what his mother had said about her husband, if at any point she’d called him something that could rule out pirate. She’d called him a sailor most often, but also sometimes a trader, or an explorer. All of which, he was beginning to suspect, had been euphemisms.
“Glóin Durinson, as he was on the official registers and to those fortunate enough to call him kin, was better known to the world as Glóin Fireforged.” Oakenshield announced, coming to a stop some several paces away from Gimli. Far enough that he would be able to evade an attack, should it come, Gimli realised, and he couldn’t deny that some part of him wanted to. “You may have heard the stories, though since you hadn’t heard of Erebor, I suspect you have not.”
In a flash, Gimli recalled that he had heard the epithet before. It had only been in passing, one of those few times Legolas’s starry-eyed wonder had overcome his respect for Gimli’s distaste for pirate stories. He’d been listing off various pirates of renown; Diamondheart and Ironfoot, Darkace and Oakenshield and Fireforged. Horror and denial surged up in Gimli’s throat like bile.
“You’re lying!” he spat, his temper getting the better of him.
“I am not,” Oakenshield denied coldly.
“My father was a good, honest man, not some scoundrel of a pirate!” Gimli burst out, as if saying it aloud might drive away the terrible fear lodged beneath his sternum. “He would never go around killing and stealing from other good, honest folk, and breaking the law and the peace! He would never destroy someone else’s life for his own greed-!”
The world lurched and twisted and tumbled around Gimli, and he yelped in alarm, the rest of his tirade lost. When the sudden blur of motion stopped, he realised he was hanging upside down, a coil of rope dangling from the mast looped and knotted clumsily about his ankle. Gimli gaped at the rope, and then at Mr Balin, who looked just as alarmed as he felt, and then at Oakenshield, who had his eyes closed in what looked like resignation.
Then his eyes snapped open, and he focused on Gimli. “You are quite correct,” he stated, and Gimli forgot all about the inexplicable thing that had just happened in favour of gaping at Oakenshield. “Glóin was a good, honest man, and I would scorn the man that dared to imply he was a scoundrel. That does not mean he didn’t ever kill, nor ever stole, nor sailed under a pirate flag.”
“But-” Gimli began, but he was interrupted when Oakenshield bent down to bring his face level with Gimli’s and met his gaze squarely.
“The laws of men mean little out here, Gimli Durinson. They were written by the rich, to protect their own interests, and they bear only a cheap facade of decency. The sea does not care for wealth, power, or even morality. The only rules that really matter are these; what a man can do, and what a man can’t do. Glóin found that he could not live within the laws of men when it meant his son might starve. I cannot go back on my word once I have given it. Can you, or can you not, accept that a man might be both good and a pirate?”
Gimli swallowed hard. “I suppose I must,” he capitulated, although there wasn’t much conviction behind it. His head was still spinning. For some reason, it had never occurred to him to wonder why a man might turn to piracy. Oakenshield had implied – as good as stated, really – that his father had turned pirate for him. He thought back to his childhood. He hadn’t thought they’d been particularly poor, for a working class family, but it certainly hadn’t been easy to make ends meet.
Oakenshield straightened, and called out; “Let him down!”
Gimli landed in a heap on the deck. He scrambled upright, watching the ropes above his head with a wary eye. “How did you do that?” he asked.
“I didn’t,” Oakenshield replied, giving Gimli a strong sense of deja vu. Suddenly, he knew exactly what was coming before Oakenshield said it. “The ship did.” Then the pirate’s expression lightened. It was nothing that could have been called a smile, but his scowl disappeared, at least. “Pippin is a little impulsive, but she was afraid you were going to strike me.”
“Pippin,” Gimli repeated.
“Aye, that is the name she chose herself, rather than the one humans gave her,” Oakenshield explained. The look he levelled at Gimli was patient, if a little weary, as though he was waiting for him to catch up, or perhaps to start with the obvious questions as to Oakenshield’s sanity. But if Oakenshield was mad, then Gimli must be too, because he had seen these impossible things that Oakenshield was attributing to the ship itself with his own eyes.
Perhaps Oakenshield had some sort of sorcery or witchcraft, but the man insisted it was the ship, not himself. And he had done it twice now, with two different ships. Gimli thought back to the Dauntless, and that moment when he first climbed aboard and Oakenshield had been speaking to the air, or perhaps, to the ship. He didn’t want to think it, the idea of supernatural forces working in the world unnerved him, but the only other logical explanation was that he was going mad, and that was an even more disturbing possibility.
“The ship is… sentient?” Gimli questioned carefully, looking about himself.
Oakenshield looked approving as he nodded. “All ships are. Anything that is big enough to house a man, to give him shelter and some small level of comfort, will grow a soul of its own, given time and enough care,” he explained. His gaze focused on a point a little way behind Gimli’s shoulder, but when Gimli looked, he saw nothing.
“Why can’t I see…” Gimli paused, uncertain how to continue. To call the ship ‘it’ now that he’d learned the ship was sentient seemed rude, but could a ship have a gender? Would it be more or less rude to call the ship a woman, given that most referred to ships as ‘she’ even when they didn’t know that ships apparently had souls? “...them?” Gimli concluded awkwardly.
“Her,” Oakenshield offered, without rancour, before he explained; “I do not know exactly how it works. Ever since I discovered that ships had their own souls, I have been able to see the soul of every ship I have sailed in, but for most, it takes a certain degree of affection and care before they begin to see the truth of things. For some it comes easily, some only ever catch glimpses out of the corner of their eye of a strange little sailor, and some are blind no matter how long they spend at sea.”
Gimli digested that, giving the notion serious thought. “Affection and care?” he checked.
“Aye,” Mr Balin confirmed, smiling like a proud grandfather at the pair of them. “I once had it explained to me that it takes a rather rare sort to be able to treat a ship like a person, a person that one cares for and respects and even cherishes, but once one can do so, why, then of course one would be able to perceive the ship’s soul. For that is what a soul is, is it not?” the old sailor asked rhetorically. “It is the sum total of the care we have been shown, the reflection of our interactions with the world, a record of our history and future formed by the touch of the people we love.”
Oakenshield drew in a sharp breath like something about Mr Balin’s speech had shocked him. He cleared his throat abruptly. “Yes, thank you, Balin,” he snapped, looking away from both of them. Mr Balin grinned, and then winked mischievously at Gimli, who just felt lost. “We will be coming into Tortuga in a few hours,” Oakenshield continued, very pointedly shutting down the previous conversation, “and we should ensure we are prepared to take on a proper crew.”
“Tortuga?” Gimli questioned, distracted.
“Yes,” Oakenshield confirmed in a tone that defied argument.
Gimli argued anyway. “Why do we need a crew? If the ship itself can aid us, surely the three- or rather, four of us can manage by ourselves?” he pressed, jaw set and brows lowered and the glare he fixed on Oakenshield entirely stubborn.
Oakenshield opened his mouth, and then paused, listening to a voice only he could hear. Finally, he dipped his head in acknowledgement, and turned to Gimli with a hard look. “For one thing, as Pippin so rightly pointed out,” he began, “she is not beholden to any of us, and if she chooses to aid us, it is only ever as much as she wishes, and we have no right to demand anything more from her than we can achieve by our own labour.”
Gimli flushed a little, realising that it probably was rude to presume upon someone he couldn’t even see, but Oakenshield wasn’t finished yet. “For another thing, Pippin is young, and not at all used to the sort of exertion that is required in order for her to act independently. It takes massive focus and incredible will for a ship to sail entirely under her own power, and both of those require many years of practice to master. She would exhaust herself if she tried to get us all the way to Erebor without a crew to assist her.”
“Right,” Gimli acknowledged. “Sorry,” he added. Then he flushed deeper, feeling the heat race all the way up to the tips of his ears, and he turned to address the empty air where Oakenshield kept looking whenever he was speaking to the ship. “My apologies, Miss Pippin. I spoke in ignorance, which is no excuse for the assumptions I made, and I hope you can forgive me.”
After a beat, where Gimli tried to decide if it was the embarrassment from his earlier comment or the embarrassment of apologising to thin air that was the reason for his blush, Oakenshield chuckled. “You are forgiven, it seems, Mr Durinson,” he remarked with wry amusement. “You have quite the silver tongue when you put your mind to it.”
“Legolas has accused me of such many times,” Gimli agreed absently.
“Indeed?” Mr Balin inquired, smiling like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. It took Gimli a moment to realise what the man was implying, and then he turned as red as his hair. Mr Balin chuckled at his spluttering, and patted him on the shoulder. “Best get used to that sort of talk, lad, or you’ll not last five minutes in Tortuga.”