Chapter Text
It had been twenty years since Jim Hawkins had last seen Long John Silver, rowing away with but a handful of Flint’s great treasure. It hadn’t bothered Jim then- what treasure had remained was more than enough to rebuild the Benbow Inn and live a long and comfortable life. It hadn’t bothered him for the next thirteen years either, as Mister Hawkins built a respectable life for himself. He found himself a lovely wife, and they had themselves a couple of lovely children who loved nothing more than to hear their father tell the thrilling tale of the time he battled pirates and won a treasure.
Then one night, one clear, inconspicuous night after Jim had put the children to bed with yet another retelling of the tale of Flint’s treasure, the lovely Mrs. Hawkins asked Jim a simple, off-handed question.
“Darling,” she’d said. “Were Captain Flint and Long John Silver friends?”
He’d thought about it a moment before replying, “I don’t rightly know. Why?”
She’d yawned then, already half asleep. “Just seems like an awful lot of trouble to go through for someone you don’t care about.”
Jim had laid awake long after she fell into deep slumber. Friends? Long John Silver had been Flint’s quartermaster, that was all he remembered the old pirate saying. But what did being quartermaster to a pirate captain even mean? Was he a confidant? A partner? “Friend” did not feel like a word that would ever be applied to Long John Silver- but then again, it didn’t feel like a word that would ever be applied to Captain Flint either. Who better to be friends with than each other?
“Money!” Jim remembered the squire saying, all those years ago. “What were these villains after but money? What do they care for but money? For what would they risk their rascal carcasses but money?”
And it had made plenty of sense to Jim when he was a fourteen year old boy. But now, as a man grown, he knew there were things of far greater value than money, even to pirates. Now when he cast his memory back to the Hispaniola and Skeleton Island, he couldn’t help but remember the faraway looks and the strange melancholy that would occasionally fall over the old pirate.
It was those memories that kept Jim up that night, and the night after, and the night after that. For weeks he could hardly sleep, hardly eat, hardly work, for the thoughts of Long John Silver and Captain Flint. He refused to speak of the island or the treasure to his children anymore. His wife became frustrated with him. He knew he had to do something, or he would never find peace.
Finding peace might have been easier than finding Long John Silver. For six months, Jim busied himself writing letters, tracking down old contacts, trying to find anyone who may have known the old pirate.
He found himself at the door of Woodes Rogers, a tired old man in a run down house with deep scars across his eye and cheek. Jim explained that he wanted to ask him a few questions about Long John Silver, and Rogers promptly slammed the door in his face. But just as Jim began to walk away, the door opened again.
“Mister Hawkins,” Rogers called him back. “I have nothing to say about Long John Silver. I have nothing to say about Captain Flint or his wretched treasure, though I must admit, it gives me some measure of comfort to know that after all these years, that cache ended up in the hands of an honest man such as yourself. What I will say is this- Long John Silver is not a man you can find in letters or records. If not for yourself, I doubt anyone in the Old World would even know his name. But if you really want to find him, you must go to him. And the only place to start in the hunt for Long John Silver is Nassau.”
It was surprisingly easy for Jim to convince his wife to let him go. Perhaps not so surprising, considering the foul mood he’d brought into the house in recent months. Now that Jim had money of his own, getting on a ship to the New World was much easier than the last time he’d made the journey. He spent the entire voyage wondering what he would say to Silver once he found him. If he found him. He still didn’t have much of a plan for finding him once he reached New Providence Island.
It turned out to be easier than he thought. He found an inn and asked if anyone knew of a one legged man, likely very old by now. The barmaid vanished and returned with a startlingly beautiful woman whom she introduced as the owner.
More so than her beauty, on in her years though she was, he was taken aback by her presence. She walked as though she not only owned the inn, but the entire island, from the ground beneath her feet radiating outward all the way to the shoreline. She had a poise about her that balanced the knife’s edge between perfection and relaxation, never leaning farther one way than the other.
“I hear you are seeking Long John Silver,” she said. She spoke the name like it was a pronouncement.
“I am,” Jim said. “Do you know where I can find him?”
“I might,” she replied. She spoke softly, the French in her accent gracing the edge of each word. He fidgeted under her kohl-lined gaze, wondering what it was she was trying to discern from his face. “I wondered when you would come.”
“You… knew I was coming?” His fidgeting grew worse, and Jim found that he didn’t much like the idea of this woman knowing things about him. Her hands were empty, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that she was armed.
“He told me of a boy who took Captain Flint’s treasure out from under him,” she said with the ghost of a smile on her lips. “He would not admit it, but I think it had been so many years since he had been outsmarted that he couldn’t help but be impressed.”
“But how did you know I would come?”
“Because very few people can bear to encounter him only once,” she answered. She fell quiet again, those piercing eyes searching him once more.
“Then you do know him?” Jim leaned forward. Beautiful or not, this woman was beginning to frustrate him with her evasive talk.
“I do.”
“Do you know where to find him?”
“I do.”
“Where?”
She sat back, folding her hands in her lap in the practiced manner that proper ladies were trained to. Jim did not think she had received such training, yet her imitation of it was entirely without fault. “First you must tell me why you want to find him.”
“Why do you care? Are you old friends?”
She smiled. “Friend is not an easy thing to be with Long John Silver. We were many things to each other once, but to number “friend” amongst them may be stretching the truth farther than even he could stomach. That being said, if I feel you are a danger to him I will not allow you to go any further.”
“Me? A danger to him?” Now it was Jim’s turn to laugh. “I know he must be on in his years, but even so, I don’t like my odds against him.”
“He will be glad to know that at least one person still fears him. But you have not answered my question.”
“I come with questions of my own,” Jim replied. “There are things about that venture which have begun to trouble my mind, mysteries I had never considered until recently. I was young then, and blind to much, and it seems to me that there are parts of the story I have been missing.”
“More than you know. But very well.” She stood, smoothing out her deep gold skirt. “I will arrange a meeting. Until then you can stay at my inn here.”
Jim hurriedly stood up as well. “Yes ma’am. Thank you ma’am. Er, what-”
“Be ready when I call, James Hawkins. I will not do so twice.”
And so Jim settled into the inn on Nassau. He spent his days wandering the town and buying a drink for any man or woman old enough to remember the old days and willing to tell him of it. The stories were vast, dramatic, and conflicting in turn. Some claimed those days to have been the best of them, some the worst.
Three days he spent at this endeavor, and by the end of it, he felt as though he knew less about the old days than he did at the beginning. Long John Silver was either a pirate king or crippled coward. Captain Flint was either a feral monster ready to tear the throat out of civilization, or he was a fearless leader who had tried to bring Nassau into a new age. They were either entirely inseparable or the fiercest of enemies.
But on the fourth morning, the owner woke him early in the morning with a few short knocks.
“He will come tonight,” she told him briskly. “After dark. He asks that you wait for him at the table in the corner, and he says to have a cup of rum ready for him.”
Jim spent the day in knots. He feared to wander too far from the inn, lest he somehow get lost in that tiny town and miss his appointment. In the end, he was back at the inn the moment the sun began to brush the horizon and took his seat in the corner with two cups of rum. His own he tried to nurse slowly, but his nerves were such that he drained it within half an hour and called for another.
It had begun to rain, a downpour the likes of which Jim hadn’t seen since the Benbow Inn burned down. The memory did little to ease his nerves.
He had long since stopped turning around at the sound of the inn door opening, having been disappointed too many times. And so when the door opened again, he did not turn. At the first step of the man entering, he did not turn. But when the second step did not come, instead replaced by the heavy thud not of a boot, but a sturdy wooden crutch- then did he turn, as did most of the patrons of the inn.
It had been twenty years since Jim Hawkins had last seen Long John Silver, and yet even now he was unmistakable.
Silver searched the room for only a moment, his eyes landing on Jim almost immediately. Only once he took his first steps towards the booth in the corner did the hush over the inn break and conversation return, albeit more subdued than it had been before.
His face was crinkled with worry lines and laugh lines both. And although he leaned a little heavier on that crutch, grace and spryness still shone through his every movement. Water ran off of hair more silver than black in rivulets, but his spirits didn’t seem dampened in the slightest.
“Jim, my boy!” The old pirate grinned as he sat down. “I never thought I’d see ye’ again! What can a humble old cripple do for you?”
“I have some questions for you,” Jim replied. “Questions about Flint and his treasure.”