#deliverthem.

"am i?" when you speak, you feel the split in your lip. reflexively, you bring a hand to your mouth to catch the blood that follows, a slow drip caught in the space between the thumb and index finger of your right hand. you lick blood off your upper lip, tonguing the broken skin, and then you notice flint's stare. he’s good at hiding his tells. not that good.

or maybe it’s just the getting shot, nearly drowned, and deposed from captaincy that has weakened his resolve. you eye him curiously, thinking of the monstrous visage that had crouched over the body of mr. gates. you haven’t seen that face again since that day, but you think of it, often. how closely it must linger behind the human mask.

a destructive, vicious part of you wants to see just how close. to tempt the beast out.

you smile at him. it’s charming and it splits your lip as intended. your own blood is warm and sour on your tongue. what would it taste like to someone like him?

“certain members of the crew took issue with this morning’s address.” you tilt your head, trying not to act like you’re cataloguing his reactions. “they wanted to make sure i was aware of that.”

the two of you are tucked away from the brilliant streetlights of an american city that had been in its infancy, if that, when you were born. it's still the nineties -- you think. the new millennium.

centuries ago, you'd have feared this closeness. feared it with him. not so ago, you'd buried him in an unmarked grave to cheat death. your death, madi's death. christ. you'd succeeded at one of those goals, but not in the way you'd intended.

he mouths at your bottom lip, nipping hard enough to break skin, spill the stolen blood that floods your veins between your mouths. YOU'LL RUIN ME, he says. haven't you already? haven't you both ruined each other beyond repair, lifetimes ago? like paint on a ruined canvas, or rot on a wound. there's no separating you now.

this time, you're the one sealing flint's gesture of devotion with an open mouthed kiss, taking his jaw in your hand to keep him tilted toward you. you hook the first two fingers of your other hand into the waist of his trousers, pulling him forward. he tastes of blood. he tastes familiar.

AND WHEN THE URCA'S OURS, WHAT'S TO STOP ME FROM KILLING YOU ANYWAY?

WELL, THAT'S A FEW WEEKS FROM NOW, ISN'T IT? WE MIGHT BE FRIENDS BY THEN.

"fuck you!" unasked for, unwanted, the oath bursts from your mouth anyway, like spitting blood. "fuck you, why would you --?"

flint looks haggard, near-skeletal among the mist and the trees of the island, but you know better than to be fooled. you see the blood on his sword, on his clothes. there are no others left alive who'd underestimated his competence. or his cruelty.

you knew that this moment would come. the inevitable parting of ways, where flint's hunger for his war would drive you and madi into that endless storm. where you'd outlive your usefulness as his tool, his right hand, and you'd end up in the ground for it. like gates, like mrs. barlow, like thomas hamilton. there had been a time when -- no. there had been a time you'd believed that you and he were truly partners. that there was nothing that could come between you, not the english in nassau, nor billy's pitiful attempts at manipulation. that since you'd revealed your scheme to him in that longboat, flint had finally come to see you as an equal. to listen to you, even.

surely that's what mr. gates had believed too, while flint's hands were closing around his neck.

you'd stared into those dark depths, and he'd looked back, and he'd seen something -- how empty you are, how base, your wretched, rotten heart. something. and now, cunning and desperate, he thinks to fashion this insight into a weapon to use, proclaiming love to prepare you for the killing blow? you aren't that naive.

flint's rough-hewn hands are warm where they steady your waist. flesh, not sainted marble. this isn't the first time his hands have been on you. it feels like the first, though. perhaps it's the first time he's touched you without violence: no knife to your throat against the wrecks; or without necessity, allowing you to lean on him as the crew was taken to the maroon camp. he doesn't say anything now. almost -- pauses, as if waiting for something.

for what? perhaps he expects you to anger at his touch; at whatever assumption you think he might make about the capabilities of a one-legged man. you half-expect it of yourself, but to your surprise it is easy to stay your tongue. here on this cliff, you find yourself not wishing to hurt this squirming, exposed, newborn thing between you both that has not yet seen daylight.

trust me. how many times have you said this to him? is this -- flint's grip on your waist, flint's sword in your hand -- is this him asking for the same sort of trust? and if so, how can you do anything but acquiesce?

after his story, that night when you'd buried the cache, you'd thought nothing about flint could surprise you any longer. and again, he proves you wrong. (you cannot allow yourself to think on the carefulness of his coarse sailor's hands against the jut of your hipbones).

there is a strange newness to allowing his hands on you in this way; to allowing the idea that were you to fall, there'd be a chance he'd catch you before you hit the ground. it is terrifying, in its nascent infancy. you aim for a joke.

in silence, for once, james takes her hand in his. he’s warm, at least — sometimes, despite the constant heat of nassau, miranda feels chill down to her bones. london had been far colder, but she’d always been able to bear that without complaint. another reminder that she no longer belongs in england.

but she is no pirate murderess or farmer’s wife; she doesn’t delude herself into thinking of the small cottage in the island interior as anything more than a practical measure. miranda had always found home to be a state of mind, one found almost entirely in other people, and it should be clear to anyone looking in that whatever there is here is a pitiful imitation of human intimacy.

their coupling in the morning had been unsatisfying — that was what it was, for there was no reason to call it making love in a house with so little love. whatever love she and james shared had curdled and died in a cell in bedlam. it shouldn’t take fucking to make a home, but they do it anyway. miranda had at first to punish herself, to punish them both. now, she does it out of habit, like everything else in this life. like planting wheat in the autumn or making tea after church.

she turns over his hand in hers, studying it as she had once before, in a carriage in london. the callouses of a navy man; the scars of a pirate. if thomas could see this misshapen pair now, his wife and his lover, would he recognize either?

“i received a letter,” her voice sounds very distant, suddenly. she’d considered whether or not to tell james of this and decided not to. what was the point? it wouldn’t fix anything. it wouldn’t unspool ruinous time and bring them all back to a happy home in england. and yet, she continues.

“a girl who had been in our employ in london. she wanted me to know that she’d found new work, and that she was doing well.” she feels irrationally as though she’s casting some kind of spell. creating a prophecy, perhaps. after all, she knows how this will end and she cannot stop herself. does not want to stop herself.

you’ve been sure of this for the time you’ve spent in the makeshift bedding someone had set up for you on flint’s window-seat. you know his secret, after all — making you a liability. and unlike before, you can hardly attempt to bargain yourself as a useful tool. you’d seen it with randall: who the fuck has use for an one-legged man? a merciful captain might have landed you back on nassau a beggar. flint is… well. you don’t have the words for what flint is. your instincts tell you to run, but just like any animal caught in a trap, struggling will only succeed in hurting yourself, and you’ve about all the pain you can handle, thanks.

no, you’re useless to anyone but flint, now. under the blanket, what remains of your leg is bloody and bandaged. you’d thought yourself so clever, earlier: testing his limits, seeing if he could stand the scent of your blood without baring his fangs. you know a monster when you see one, and now, sequestered away from the crew, there’s no reason for this one to deny his appetite.

you watch flint. he’s reading, his back to you. what the fuck is he waiting for? can he hear the way your heart pounds, throwing itself against the cage of your chest? is he enjoying it, this slow realization of a death you can’t talk yourself out of? maybe he knew you were lying about having no role in the theft of the urca — maybe you said something in your sleep, weak and stupid, and gave it away. maybe he hasn’t forgiven you for the theft of the schedule, for making him dependent on your knowledge. maybe he just hates you for your weakness.

“i may not have been a cook for very long,” you break the silence with, your tone falsely bright. “but i am aware that leaving a meal out too long can spoil it. i assume the same is true of human blood, captain.” it is sickening, somewhat, to think of yourself as only this: blood and meat, some of you already so easily discarded with a surgeon’s axe. the low thrill of flint needing you, wanting something from you, has burnt to ash, leaving only this. (maybe he won’t even bite you. maybe you disgust him like this, crippled, feeble, stinking of a surgeon’s drug. you’ll die either way, you’re sure, by his blade or his bite, so why does the idea of that final rejection sting like shattered bone?) you shift slightly, attempting to turn further and better gage his mood. exhale sharply when, despite your best efforts, it jostles your — it jostles the stump. the fresh pain makes your tone shorter than intended, as you say, “what exactly are you waiting for?”