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The tide had the good manners to dump Long John Silver on the same stretch of beach where he had once led a pirate party across. He crawled ashore on his one leg and two hands, dripping salt water, cursing anything and everything, and much lighter in the purse than a man of his ambitions preferred.
The jolly boat had sunk with very theatrical timing, taking most of the gold to the bottom of the ocean and leaving Silver with a single doubloon, a very soggy and seaweed-entangled crutch, and the growing acceptance that the universe had a very particular sense of humor - and that its favorite target, for reasons Silver had never been able to identify, was him.
As he knocked half an ocean's worth of water from his ears, he began to hear that one of the talking stone heads on the beach was already mid-routine.
"Knock-knock."
Silver groaned and contemplated dunking his head back into the surf. "Not this again."
"Who's there?"
"I don't care."
"I don't care who? I don't care who either, mate, but you're stuck with me!" The head cackled, rock grinding against rock in what Silver could only assume was delight. "Don't you worry, I've got a million of 'em!"
"Providence spare me," Silver muttered, and limped inland to see about a fire before he had to hear whether that claim was true - muttering the whole way about mutinies, treasure, and the various betrayals he had endured.
Once the fire was going, he dried what was left of his coat and sat with his back against a rock and his bad leg stretched out before him, and stared at the single coin that remained of Flint's fortune. The firelight caught it, making it glitter brightly under the stars.
He thought of Jim, of course.
He thought of the look on the boy's face when Silver had let him go. He thought of the look on the boy's face when he, in turn, had let Silver go. There had been something in that exchange that felt heavier than any chest of gold. A kind of quiet understanding. A mercy that neither of them had truly expected from the other.
And he thought of Smollett's voice, carrying flat and clear across the water as the Hispaniola pulled away with Silver in a jolly boat behind her: Your father would be proud.
The words hadn't been meant for him, of course. Meant for Jim. But they had found Silver's ear anyway.
Silver had never been anyone's father.
He had been many things in his life: a cook, a quartermaster, a pirate, a liar, and once upon a time - before the black spots and the buried gold and the long list of men who had trusted him and regretted it - he had known how to be good. Or at least how to try.
But never a father, by blood or otherwise. He had never once been the thing present in Smollett's words to Jim, despite the many chances Silver had been given. Throughout their long journey he had taught Jim such things as how to gut a fish, how to read the stars, how to sing sea shanties, and mostly, in the end, he had served as an example of the kind of man Jim should not grow into.
He'd had the boy's whole trust, his friendship and care, in his hands, and he'd thrown it all away for his greed.
Silver's grip tightened around the lone doubloon.
As the fire burnt low, the heat of the island cooling as night truly settled in, Silver slept poorly.
But as dawn arrived, so too came the sound of oars.
As Silver shakily stepped out from the tree line, leaning heavily on his crutch as he rubbed the salt-crust from his eyes, he saw a jolly boat make ground onto the sand. From it stepped...
...Benjamina?
She was still dressed in the remnants of her island finery, her snout held high as she stepped onto the sands. Behind her trailed a small contingent of the wild-boar tribe, looking equal parts loyal and resigned to whatever this errand was going to cost them in dignity. Chief Spa'am, especially, looked profoundly unimpressed to see Silver again, arms crossed, the very picture of a creature who had personally voted against this venture and had been overruled. Flaubert ambled at her heels, snuffling at the wet sand.
Silver rose fully onto his crutch and attempted to run a hand through his salt-stiff and wild hair. He felt suddenly, absurdly aware of how he must look - salt-crusted, one-legged, reduced to a single coin and a bad joke for company.
Benjamina stopped ten paces away. She looked him up and down with the unhurried thoroughness of a critic about to demolish the thing she was examining, and would take her time enjoying it.
Silver gulped.
"Loooooong John," she said, drawing the word out until it became dangerous. "You look... rough."
"Benjamina." His voice cracked on the name then steadied as he pulled himself up straighter. "I was just... just thinking about you." He attempted a smile he'd once have called suave. Judging by her face, it landed somewhere closer to pathetic and desperate. "What brings you to this particular stretch of paradise?"
The stone head shouted from down the beach, "Why did the pirate go to the dentist? To get his buccaneers cleaned! Hah!"
Silver closed his eyes, and sighed. "Ignore him."
Something in Benjamina's expression eased by the smallest fraction - though it was clear Silver remained in extremely dangerous territory. "The Hispaniola sailed for England with the boy, the crew, and my former almost-husband. And it seems that he thought everything between us was simply resolved now. The nerve of that frog! As though a man can leave a woman standing at an altar in her mother's dress, and then earn it all back with a few good speeches and barely an apology."
"Oh, yes, outrageous," Silver agreed, because anything else would certainly lead to a verbal lashing. "Beneath contempt."
"As such, I decided to come and reclaim what was mine." She gestured at the jungle behind him. "The true sum of Flint's gold was never in my home, John. I moved it years ago. And Flint's treasure was never the only misplaced riches on this island - a smart queen always keeps a few nest eggs no one else knows to look for."
"Very smart, yes!" Silver grinned, and felt a bead of sweat roll down his brow. "I've always said you're the smartest queen I know!"
Benjamina paused, her snout wrinkling as she scrunched up her face. "...you know other queens?"
"No, no-!" Silver backpedaled, nearly losing his crutch in the sand as he threw his hands up in a placating gesture. "I meant only that you're the shrewdest, most formidable - the only queen I've had the privilege of knowing, and I say that without a shred of comparison necessary, because there isn't a woman living, crowned or otherwise, who'd have outlasted Captain Flint the way you did, on his own island, with his own gold, and come out the other side of it richer than he was."
After a beat, Benjamina's snout lifted, satisfied. "Hm. You always did have such a way with words, Silver."
"So... you came back for the gold?"
"I came back," she said, "because a certain one-legged cook once told me that once you've had a certain kind of company, you never go back." She arched a perfectly shaped eyebrow. "Or something to that effect. The line was cut for time, I believe."
Silver barked a laugh, shaking his head. He took a limping step closer to his once-love. "I lost the gold. I lost the ship. I lost the boy's trust, near enough, and earned back only the barest sliver of it before he sailed off without me - which, I'll grant, is more than I deserved and less than I wanted."
Benjamina crossed her arms.
"I've lost a great many things over the years, Benjamina, most of them through no one's doing but my own. What I have left is this island, this one doubloon, this leg that never did grow back no matter how sternly I asked it to, and the memory of a woman who says my name like it's the sweetest song and the gravest threat all in the same breath."
She closed the distance between them. The tribe hung back, sensing the moment. Flaubert was busy ambling around the sand where the jolly boat had landed.
"You are still a scoundrel," she said, quieter now, and closer than the words alone would suggest. "Do not think, for one moment, that you'll ever get away with threatening me, or tying me up over a fire-pit, the way you did the last time you decided you wanted something on this island."
"My lady, rest assured I would sooner cut off my remaining leg," Silver said. "I was a different sort of fool then, Benjamina. The kind who mistook wanting a thing for having a right to take it. I believe I've sufficiently learned my lesson."
"Flattery will get you everywhere, but it will not get you the treasure." Benjamina narrowed her eyes at him. "Don't think you can pull a fast one on me, John. I'm not my once almost-husband."
"I don't think I want to be a man who takes things anymore, Benjamina," Silver admitted, suddenly feeling very, very tired. "I want to be a better man. I want to try."
"So?" Benjamina said. Just that.
"So I'm asking now," Silver said. "Late and empty-handed, but for one coin I'd rather give away than keep. I'm asking whether a woman who's had two men leave her holding nothing but the wreckage of what they'd promised would consider, against every scrap of good sense she owns, giving a third one the chance to be the exception."
He reached into his coat and produced the single remaining doubloon, held it out on his palm, and considered it a moment before offering it to her. "And as such, I ask that you take this. It's all that's left of Captain Flint's fortune that still belongs to me. The rest of it - the rest can stay where it rests, for all I care."
The wind stirred the palm fronds above them.
Benjamina looked at him for a long moment - long enough that Silver, who across the years had talked his way out of the noose, mutiny, imprisonment, and marooning alike, found he had nothing left to say.
Then she reached out and closed his fingers around the doubloon he still held between them.
"Keep it," she said. "Think of it as a reminder." She paused, and something wry crept back into her voice, welcome as an old friend after all that honesty. "A good reminder of what happens if you fall back into your old ways, John. We can always return it to the rest of the treasure - and you along with it. Step one single toe out of line, and I will personally see to it that Spa'am gets the pleasure of correcting you."
Spa'am grunted his enthusiastic agreement.
Silver's smile, when it came, was slow, and unguarded in a way none of his smiles had been in longer than he could rightly remember - a welcome difference from the wicked, practiced ones he'd been baring at the world for most of his adult life. "Hah, that feels like something I'd read in a children's storybook. Does this mean I get to live happily ever after?"
"It means," Benjamina replied, already looping an arm through his, "that you get to live with me. On my island. Following my rules. And being my Long John Silver."
Silver paused, and looked down at her. "...Your Long John Silver?"
"The years may have passed, John, but I never forgot what we shared." Benjamina huffed, looking away to the sea. "Before I fell in with Flint, I thought what we had would be..."
"As did I," Silver admitted. "As did I..."
"And?"
"And I suppose we'll give it another chance, eh?"
Benjamina smiled.
Silver leaned on his crutch and on her, equally. Followed by Flaubert and the rest of Benjamina's tribe, they began to make their way inland, towards Benjamina's settlement. All the while the sun climbed higher over what was, against all odds and several mutinies, beginning to look like a future.
Long John Silver, late of the Hispaniola, late of a dozen schemes, late of the pirate calling, looked at the pig beside him and decided that the real treasure had never been marked on any map after all.
And for the first time in his life, he did not feel the need to steal this treasure and sail away.
He simply wanted to stay.