I Hate the Way I Don't Hate You
A Black Sails Vignette • Cross-posted from AO3 • No warnings • Canon-compliant, between S2 & S3 • Charles Vane / Eleanor Guthrie • gifs my own
He did not know what he had planned to do when he returned to Nassau, that night that he had slipped away aboard the Fancy, her lamps doused, bound for Charleston. That night he had left a letter pinned to Richard Guthrie's battered corpse written in Charles' own haphazard hand.
But he had expected her to be here when he returned.
It was one of Flint's men who brought the news. The two captains had surprised both crews with their unexpected alliance: more than half the men had expected the two old rivals to be at each other's throats the moment the dust over Charleston settled. But instead, they'd remained civil, that civility even extending so far as the two captains sitting in the great cabin over a bottle of Madeira to divide the men into crews for the Fancy and Manowar as befit their skills. Vane couldn't speak for Flint, but he had seen what awaited them in Charleston, had understood the danger. That they needed this alliance was beyond question. Aside from that, he'd always found it easy enough to let the past remain in the past. With one very significant exception.
Clearly, Flint's man had expected something of a different reaction from Captain Vane. Jubilation, perhaps, or at least a grim satisfaction. Not the eerie stillness that fell over him. A muscle twitched at his temple as oft-punished teeth ground together, pale eyes growing cold and hostile as the sea in a squall. His voice, when he spoke, was not a yell: he didn't need it to be. No man in Nassau denied an order from Charles Vane.
He paid the sailor no mind at all after that; of course he departed as swiftly as his feet would carry him, but Charles was blind to it as he turned back to the charts he'd had laid out on the desk before him. Eleanor had been taken to London. He glanced at the chart beneath his hands; it held only these South Carolina waters - even Nassau was absent from the tidy marks of ink. England might as well be on the other side of the world. In chains. The cold weight of iron against his wrists returns to his mind unbidden, and he shivers in the privacy of his cabin, unsettled and unhappy to be so. He knew well enough the bite of iron against his skin, and she would certainly have had her fill of it by the time her ship made landfall.
For crimes against the crown. Funny. He'd never given much thought to the sum of her crimes, those times when they'd been younger and laughed together over Scott's dismay at their entirely inappropriate dalliances. His crimes, of course, where much of the reason their trysts were quite so explicitly forbidden. He'd always assumed that the law would not come for her: her crimes were so much less than his, than any of the pirates that brought goods for her to fence. What could the law know of the blood on her hands, since those slender fingers had never held the knife themselves?
He closes his eyes and steadies himself. This is good, he thinks, hating it, this saves you the trouble of dealing with her yourself. White-knuckled, he pulls a chair from its place behind the desk, sitting in it heavily as he pulls a well-worn piece of eight from his pocket. It walks across his fingers as he stares at a chart pinned to the wall: a small, decorative relic from God knows how many captains ago (Low did not strike him as a man who kept decorative items for vanity). A map of the world. Bereft of any details that a sailor might use, the drawing looked naked to Vane's eyes, a sketchy thing less than half realised. But his gaze fell on the tiny portion that represented the British Isles, before dragging themselves to the West Indies.
The coin stumbles in its path, its fall to teak boards accompanied by a rough curse. He couldn't do it, of course. Even if he could find a crew willing to undertake such a fool's errand. It would achieve nothing more than to pad the hangman's ledger. It was unlikely he could even reach London before she swung. His eyes sting and he swipes at them irritatedly as he fumbles for the coin beneath the desk.
He doesn't sleep that night, the recovered coin dancing a ceaseless path across weathered fingers as the captain lay in his berth, trying to ignore the tightness in his throat and the ache in his heart.
She betrayed you. She left you to die, he reminds himself, again and again. I don't care is always his reply.
Before long the bells ring to mark a change of watch, and the captain has mastered himself. For the first time he is glad of the absence of Rackham and Bonny, who would see the tightness in his shoulders, the stubborn set of his mouth. No, he does not wish to discuss... Whatever it was that he felt, when neither his feeling nor discussing it would make one jot of difference in the end.
The horizon greys with dawn, and he has not come any closer to knowing what to do about the news of Eleanor's capture: he supposed there was nothing to do. Of only one thing he was certain: whomever had handed her over had best not be in Nassau when he returns.
