#this got starboarded on discord please laugh .

[2-wuv]

His wife filled the house with sentience. I can't fuck him like this his house is screaming

[queenbirbs]

the way home | Ch. 4 | Edward x MC

Pairing: Edward Mortemer x MC

Word count: 2,308

Warnings: language, violence, violence against women

Read from the beginning or continue on Read on AO3

Tag list: @writinghereandthere |  @not-sewell

------

By the next week, they’ve sailed across most of the northern Caribbean. 

Their crew hits a couple merchant ships and capsizes a few galleons. Captain Delaney is pleased when they manage to sink a frigate off the coast of New Providence, having some long-standing feud with the Royal Navy. Elena considers them to be kindred spirits in that regard. Attacking a royal vessel outright, though, paints a proverbial target on their back. 

They anchor inside a cove on St. Fisher, a hole-in-the-wall port among the long string of islands in the Bahamas. Delaney sends the crew off in a jolly boat to retrieve supplies before trying for Cuba to hide out amongst the Spanish. 

“He’s a moron for attacking them on their own turf,” Robert grumbles as they make their way through the town’s pastel-colored buildings. 

Elena, too busy scanning the shoppers in the market, hums her agreement. The stall up ahead sells gaudy-looking trinkets that catch the sunlight as they swing in the ocean breeze. She wishes she could send one to her sister, somehow. 

The cannonfire comes with no warning. 

Discordant blasts echo across the port again and again and again with not a single pause. Thick, billowing clouds of smoke rise over the palm trees, darkening the blue sky. While everyone rushes deeper into town, Elena and Robert race towards the cove, slicing through the flora and fauna that block their path. Seconds before they reach the flat stretch of sand, he seizes her elbow and covers her mouth, just in time to muffle her cry at the scene before them.

Little Death is keeled over, resting on its starboard side as flames consume what remains above the waterline. Delaney is nowhere to be found. The crew who made it to shore in time lay sprawled across the beach. The whites of their skulls gleam amongst the blood and brain matter coating the sand around them, each shot execution-style. 

“Their jolly boat’s missin’!” a navy officer calls out. “Search the island!” 

“Shit. Fuck. Shit.” 

“C’mon,” Robert growls as he swings her around and guides her back up their makeshift path. “We may not know this island, but--”

At the sound of men pushing down the path from town, he picks her up and bodily moves her into the forest’s thick foliage. 

“What the hell are you--”

“Shut up!” he hisses, shoving her down into the cover of wide-leafed bush. “Stay here.”

“What’s your plan then, to offer yourself up on a platter?!” Elena grabs his coat and holds tight, preventing him from moving off. “That’s the stupidest--”

“I can distract them, give you enough time to circle back and find a better place to hide. They’ll shove off with me, then another ship’ll come by soon and need an extra hand.” 

The sound of a pistol being cocked interrupts their hushed argument. In their crouched position, they both glance up to see swatches of dark blue uniforms peeking through the trees ahead. 

“Come on out, now, the both of ye!” one of the sailors taunts. 

Robert’s expression shutters as he rises to his feet and steps out onto the path. 

“If it isn’t Robert Cutter himself!” the officer crows. “Performed quite the disappearing act on us a few years back. Looks like fate caught up with you, though, hmm?”

“Looks like,” he mocks. Two of the lackeys grab hold of each arm; he bites back a grunt when the officer punches him in the stomach. 

“And where’s yer lady friend?” one of the sailors asks. “Come on out, miss. Don’t be shy!” 

Realizing that staying hidden is a hopeless tactic, Elena makes her way out of cover. Three of the men whistle at her, while the officer leers at her with something akin to delight. 

“I shoulda known the two of you would be mixed-up in this. Sinking a crown vessel, that’s child’s play for you two. Murdering a governor and an admiral is more yer style, idn’t it?” 

As one of the sailors strips her of her weapons, Elena glares at the officer. Though she can’t recall his name, he’s one of the men who stormed the beach while defending the Admiral.   

“We’re innocent of both those crimes,” she says. “Though I don’t expect you’ll believe me.” 

His shoulders shake with a sardonic chuckle. 

“No, I’m afraid not. Yer a pirate -- you only know how to do two things with that mouth of yers. The first is lying and the second is su--”

Elena grabs him by the shoulder and headbutts him. The officer caterwauls and clutches his nose. Blood trickles down his chin and drips onto his uniform in fat, red splotches. She hides her wince as Robert laughs long and hard, ignoring the sailors’ orders to shut up. “You bitch! I saw you make off with the Admiral. You dragged him inside that temple and sacrificed him to Satan himself!” 

“She’s a witch?” one of the sailors asks.

“I thought she were a pirate,” another mutters.

“I’m not a witch,” Elena scoffs. “And, for the last time, I didn’t kill your admiral.” 

“I don’t care what you are!” The officer yanks a handkerchief from his coat and dabs it against his nose. “Right now, yer a means to an end. We’ve heard all about the bounty on yer head. We’ll use you to draw Mortemer out. Besides, what’s better than catching one pirate?”

“Two pirates!” one of the sailors cackles. 

“Well, technically,” Robert says, “you’ve already got two of us here--”    

“Oh, shut up, Cutter!” the officer spits. “Take them down to the beach, men.”

The bickering around her fades to an annoying buzz as she trudges along the path. If they do manage to get word to Edward, she knows there’s no force that will stop him from coming after her. That he would be walking straight into a trap would cross his mind, and then he would do it anyway. Elena can’t fault him for it, because she would do the same. And, if it weren’t for the high probability of being executed, she would go along with it. But she doesn’t want their long-awaited reunion to be side-by-side at the gallows.

She comes to a sudden stop. The caravan of men behind her scowl and curse.

“What’re you doin’? Keep movin’!”

She digs her boots into the sand, lurching when the sailor beside her shoves her hard. Turning to catch Robert’s eye, she snatches the sailor’s pistol from his holster and takes aim. 

“Run.” 

Robert yanks free as she fires. The sailor shouts and grabs his bleeding arm, falling back when the other two come rushing forward. She twirls the pistol in her grip and smacks it upside another’s head, using the momentum to shove him into the bushes. The third man tackles her from the side and they crash down onto the sand. Struggling for control, Elena manages to work her leg underneath his massive form and lands a solid kick between his legs. The officer rushes over just as the man rolls off, clutching his injured pride. 

“Restrain her, you fucking--” he cuts off his own order with a sharp cry. He collapses onto his ass, clutching his leg as blood soaks his white breeches. “She-- she shot me! Get that pistol from her, you idiots!” 

A massive weight crushes her from behind and shoves her down onto her stomach. The sailor she shot slams his fist into her side, knocking the wind out of her. Elena gasps for air, choking on bits of sand. He plucks the pistol from her loosened grip with ease. 

“Hold her down,” the officer demands. “She’ll be less trouble if she’s unconscious.” 

Fear pounds through her chest when the sailor’s hand seizes a chunk of her hair and yanks her up. The last thing she sees is the pistol coming down. 

Underneath him, her body goes limp. He waits a few more seconds before pulling a length of rope from his pocket. After tying her up with a decent-enough knot, he sits up to assess his arm and check on his crew. 

“Oi,” he grumbles as he glances down the path, “where’d Cutter go?”

------

The brig’s interior becomes a familiar sight by the second day. 

That’s how long Elena thinks she’s been down here. The solitary porthole above her head is caked with too much filth to let any proper light in. So, she calculates the hours by the sorry excuses for meals that they bring her. A few crumbs of hardtack and bits of dried mystery meat make up most of her diet. 

Waking up on a cell floor with her hands and feet bound wasn’t an enjoyable moment. If she could rate it, she’d give it a solid zero out of ten. Especially when that immediate rush of panic ebbed to allow a fresh wave to roll over her: she was being carted along to be killed. 

The one plus side of her new accomodations, though, is the cold wall of the hull. It’s as good as any cold compress against her injured body. What she wouldn’t give for one of those ibuprofens she stowed away in her duffel bag -- the bag that’s buried on the outskirts of town on Santo Domingo. 

She hopes that Robert was able to escape. She hopes that he was able to get word to Edward not to come after her. She hopes that when Edward inevitably ignores the warning and comes anyway, she manages to intercept him herself. What’s that old saying about if wishes were horses? 

Footsteps on the stairs tear Elena from her woolgathering. The slow, measured pace of them tells her who it is before he shows his face. 

“How’s the leg?” she asks when the officer steps in front of her cell door. 

Officer Horowitz levels a grimace at her, his lips turning inward with disgust. He drops the wooden plate in his hand and kicks it underneath the door with his good leg; the meager contents spill across the dirty planks. Elena glances down at her dinner and back up at him. “I’m giving your presentation a one out of five stars on Yelp.” 

“That nonsense yer spouting has gotten old,” he spats. “It’s a good thing, then, that we’re about to anchor. You and yer pirate captain’ll be dancin’ in the gallows soon enough.”

She bites back that daunting feeling of failure and settles back against the wall with a shrug. 

“Sounds like I don’t have much time, then. I guess I should come clean with my sins and all that.”

“I haven’t the slightest interest in hearing about yer--”

“Really?” She tilts her head and studies him. “You don’t want to know what I did with the Admiral?” 

Horowitz bristles at the name, but shakes his head. 

“I don’t want to hear the gristly details of yer sick, ritualistic--” 

“For the last time,” Elena says with a dramatic sigh, “I didn’t kill him. I opened up a hole in the universe, and I put him in it.”

“That’s nonsense.”

“It’s not, really. It was as easy as tying your shoe. If you know how to do that, of course. I don’t like to presume.”

Crossing his arms across his chest, he scoffs. 

“Then where is he?” 

“I sent him to his worst nightmare: a place with no one to listen to him. There’s this remote island in the south Atlantic Ocean, about twelve-hundred miles from Argentina. Sorta like The Cask of Amontillado -- which you’ll sadly never get to read, it’s a great story -- but on forty square miles of uninhabited land. And without chaining him up or burning him alive.”

“You marooned him,” he surmises.  

“Marooning him implies that I gave him some food and a gun. But I didn’t. The island won’t be discovered until 1767. The Spanish explorers name it Isla de Aislamiento -- that means ‘Isolation Island.’ Upon arrival, they’ll find the oddest thing: a human skeleton, wearing what appears to be a British naval uniform and a few medals.”

“I don’t believe a word you say.” Clenching his hands along the cell door, he sneers at her. “Yer a filthy, goddamned liar. How are you to know the future?”

“I read about it.” 

Which is the truth, but Elena knows how little that will matter. After teaming up with Robert upon her first arrival back to her time, she found herself curious about Admiral Cochrane’s fate. After coming across a man with an identical rank and surname, she worried that she’d made a mistake and sent him farther into the future, that maybe he’d managed to escape and make something of himself. But the portrait of the other Admiral Cochrane, famed for losing the Battle of New Orleans, resembled nothing of the man she’d dealt with. 

Eventually, one of Robert’s many contacts sent her the diary entry of a Spanish explorer that detailed their unusual discovery. They left the corpse where it lay and pilfered the medals to melt down and mash into coins. The entry was as good as any death certificate. 

Judging by the look of disgust on his face, Horowitz doesn’t seem to find her explanation all that funny. 

“I knew you were a witch the first time I saw you. No matter how you spin it, I know that you killed the Admiral. Watching you two hang will be the highlight of my year.” 

He spits at her through the door and turns to go. Elena waits for the sound of his uneven footfalls to fade before she slumps back against the wall. Despite the heavy weight on her shoulders, she can’t help the small sliver of joy at knowing Edward is near. Horowitz had all but confirmed it, with his gleeful chatter about them hanging together. 

She just has to make sure that part doesn’t come to pass. 

------

References:

A few Uncharted ones, but they’re all very minuscule. Think of them like the hidden pictures puzzles in those Highlight Magazines they always had in waiting rooms when you were a kid.

[squidpro-quo]

Storm

AN: Because a pirate!au is always a necessity. And I like capes. 

Shirayuki clutched at the railing of the schooner, fighting to stay on her feet as the waves lashed at the hull with a thunder that shook her to her bones. The storm had snuck up on them, or at least had overtaken their escape and now proceeded to make the best of the opportunity to sink them right in sight of the coast. 

“Ma’am! Please get belowdecks! The commander is worried for your safety, he can’t be responsible for you if you’re in the men’s way!” The swab shivered in his ragged sailor’s uniform, soaked to the skin while he tried to pull her away back towards the hatch and its dry cabin. 

She was loathe to see the plush cage that the cabin really was—just another gilded box to transport a treasure in—when this voyage was her last chance to truly live without any shackles on her freedom, but she didn’t have time to do any more than shake her head before the cry came from the crow’s nest above. 

“Pirates! Off the starboard bow! The Maelstrom has come!”

If the soldiers had been frantic before, it was nothing compared to now. Shirayuki clambered to the front until she was underneath the flapping jib and watched the fast approaching ship through the howling wind and the storming sea. If this was to be the end of it all, maybe she’d have a chance at swimming to shore or die trying. At the very least, she doubted the jewels and gold weighing the ship down would make it to the illustrious, and demanding, high prince. 

The pirate ship was bigger than the Royal Decree by a good few meters, and noticeably faster too. Within the bare five minutes since it had been sighted, it had neared to little over a mile away as it squeezed the schooner against the cliffs in its attempt to flee. She’d expected a pirate ship to be black, and mostly ragged, but this one appeared to be a tinted silver, though that might have been the veil of the storm coloring the ship darker than it really was. Its prow boasted a figurehead in the shape of a bird she could have sworn was a peacock, with long flowing tail blending into the wood of the ship until it seemed the entire hull was carved from its feathers. 

By now, it was close enough that she could see the pirates aboard it, most gathered at the side while two were climbing the ropes leading up to the top of the sail, their short capes fluttering in the wind like twin flags of black and white. 

“Ready cannons! Fire!” The commander’s order was heard throughout the schooner, a harsh discordance against the harmony of the storm. Shirayuki looked across at the pirate ship, torn between wonder at its sight and fear at who would come out the victor of their clash. Either way the tides of this battle turned, she would come out the loser, dragged to either the sea floor or to the court to be drowned in the confines of the kingdom's most stifling court. The cannons thundered in time to the storm’s thrashing and she watched as they tore through the sides of the Maelstrom, leaving splintering holes in its sides. 

The pirates endeavored to give as good as they got, their cannonfire sending shudders through the Royal Decree, accompanied by the whoops and hollers of those on the ropes. The two pirates up above let go, swinging onto the schooner’s deck to land amidships back-to-back like they were planning to take on the entire platoon’s worth of sailors and soldiers alike. 

Creeping closer until she could watch from behind the foremast, the scene that confronted her wasn’t what she’d been expecting. Like two mirror images, they stood so close together their shoulders brushed and their feet touched at the heels, each facing their respective side of a half-dozen armed sailors with a wild glint in their eyes.

“Surrender your jewels and we’ll let you live!” the one on the left shouted, hair so drenched it was like an inkstain, though that did nothing to dim the bright amber shine of his irises. He brandished his knives, small though they were when compared with the swords of the royal sailors, there were nevertheless many eyes following their gleaming path warily. 

“We’ll even help you to shore!” the other shouted, his white cape embroidered with swirls in the patterns of waves. His sabre was held in front of him, still sheathed, and his smile was so guileless and honest that Shirayuki almost forgot he was a pirate. 

“That would be stranding them, Zen.” Adjusting his grip on the daggers, the first one pointed up at the commander with a blade, taunting. “We wouldn’t do that for all the gold in the world.”

“Oh, we’d never go so far as to strand them,” Zen agreed, his gaze catching on Shirayuki’s as he surveyed the arrayed attackers. “That would be too cruel. We’ll just have to satisfy ourselves with robbing them, won’t we, Obi?”

Obi didn’t bother with a reply; he leaped forward to slash at his own semicircle of sailors right as the commander jumped from the aft deck by the shipwheel to enter the foray with his own bellow of anger. She’d seen him fight before, back at the fort they’d mercifully left behind, and she was under illusions as to who would win. 

“Do you mind?” Zen’s voice came from over her shoulder and she turned to find him wiping the rain from his face as he tugged her over to the railing without waiting for her answer. 

“What are you doing?” She looked back to the chaos of the fight. “He needs your help!” 

Zen followed her gaze, the cluster of gems dangling from his ear dripping onto his cape and he laughed. 

“He really doesn’t,” he said, pointing to where Obi whirled between the slashes of swords like the dark smoke from a fire, sinking first one and then another knife into the commander’s pristine uniform where it stretched over his bulging arms. “And besides, we’ve got what we came for.” 

“Me? The king won’t send a ransom for me. I’m merely to be one of his many concubines.”

“Well, not you specifically. I meant all these necklaces and bracelets you’re wearing. They’ve got to be awfully heavy.” Zen cut through the rope tied next to the railing and handed it to her. “Would you do me a favor and swing across? I can’t hope to carry those jewels myself and since you’re already here…”

“What if I don’t?” Shirayuki asked, even as she twisted the sodden line around her arm. 

“You’re welcome to stay. Though dare I say, a life of a pirate might be a bit more exciting than the life of a concubine.” 

She couldn’t exactly refute him there, but she still waited, looking back over her shoulder at the commander’s surprisingly difficult fight with his assailant. Obi held his own, largely by staying out of the commander’s reach, while the waves crashed over the edge and flooded the ship’s deck until they were wading more than they were attacking. 

“It was a pleasure doing business with you!” Zen called out as he hopped up onto the railing to grab a loose line of rigging, giving a short, sharp whistle. “Till next time!” 

Obi seemed to take that as his cue, spinning on his heel to splash across the sodden deck before grabbing Zen’s hand to jump, dragging them both out into the gap between the ships. 

Shirayuki spared one last glance back at the staggering sailors and made her choice. The short swing across to the Maelstrom was all she needed to know she’d made the right one.