Ella's Oneshots

[Ella]

Fandom: -
Summary: for the prompt 'pirates'
Words: 2886

Yo Ho, Yo Ho, a Pirate's Life for Me

“What makes someone a pirate, then?” the little boy asked, frowning deeply, as if it was the most important question in the world. Perhaps it was.
He didn’t know what to answer. His own father had only started to consider him a pirate once he had successfully stolen something. He remembered the golden ring – the tiny little thing – that made his father look at him so differently. No longer was he the boy sweeping the floor clean – he now was a pirate, one of them, allowed to drink and stay up until it was too late to go to bed.
The boy knocked on the window. If he tried, he could probably break it with ease, but he wasn’t in a hurry. “What makes you a pirate? Why can you be a pirate and why can I not?”
He smiled. “You’re a bit young to be a pirate, matey,” he said, soon realising how patronising he must sound. He had once promised himself that he would never become like that. Then again, it wasn’t the first promise he had broken.

She smiled as he watched. He had watched her from a distance all his life, and even if she would survive to see the sun rise, he would continue to do so. He had promised his father a long time ago that he would stop pining for her. There were so many bigger fish in the sea. He had promised that she would be the one treasure he would never steal.

“You ready, Tye?” Gob breathed heavily next to him, holding one of his larger pistols ready for their attack on the Seven Harbours, which was rising into the night. They were like yin and yang, she on the clean, light ship which seemed to radiate a stronger light than the lighthouses they always carefully avoided, he on the ship his father had owned, and his father before him, barely visible in the cold December night. She emitted the light that he had never felt in his life.
“As I’ll ever be,” he smiled.

“But I’m this many years old already!” the boy shouted indignantly, holding up seven fingers, pushing them against the window, as close to the face of the older man as he could get, as if the mere proximity would make him understand.
“Sssh,” he whispered. He was afraid the boy’s nanny would hear them. That would ruin him.
“Why can’t I be a pirate?” the boy repeated, more quietly.
Tye peeked through the window to see the room a bit better. It was neat and clean, as was the boy himself. The child represented everything he disgusted, and sometimes secretly longed for – although he’d never admit it, not even to himself. His life was organised and simple. He had a perfect little set of parents, and probably more money than Tye could ever manage to steal. He closed his eyes. It was a life he could never have, not even if he wished for it. He had done too many wrong, there were too many people who wanted him dead. If he was successful tonight, he would be rich tomorrow. But settling would not be an option. He’d be dead within a day. “You know what,” he said to the boy. “I think you might make a good pirate.”
The boy’s eyes lightened up at that. It reminded him of something he’d never seen, but always imagined. A light in his eyes to match hers.
“Do you know what would make you an even better pirate?” he asked, grinning one of his golden teeth at the boy.
The boy shook his head. “Tell me,” he whispered, excited, but remembering to keep his voice down. The kid was smart, he had to give him that.
“You could let me in.”
The child shook his head. “My parents say I shouldn’t let strangers in.”
He got a little closer to the boy, as if he was going to share the biggest secret in the world. The boy realised that, and leaned towards the window, nearly pressing his face straight to the glass. “First rule of being a pirate: you don’t do what others tell you to do.”
“But they’re my parents,” the boy said, surprised. “Is that what makes you a pirate? Don’t you do what your parents tell you?”
He thought about his father, long gone, and what he would have said if he could see him here, sitting on the window sill of Governor of Spain, doing exactly the thing his father had told him not to do so many years ago.

“Where is mom?” he had asked once. He had not yet reached the age where he was aware that that question was a mistake, where he not yet regretted having uttered a word as soon as his father’s eyes darkened. He was not afraid of his father, even though he knew that some others on the ship were.
“You don’t have a mother.”
He had simply laughed. “Gob told me that everyone has a mother, otherwise you can’t be born. Why is my mother not here?” His eyes were once again serious, and his father sighed.
“Your mother doesn’t like the sea.”
He knitted his brows. “How can anyone not like the sea?” His father didn’t answer that. “Gob says that his father was married to his mother before his mother died. Are you married to mom?”
His father sighed, cursing his son’s friend for talking so much, and his own kid for being too smart for his own good. “No,” he answered, truthfully. He wasn’t strange to lying, but he wouldn’t lie to his own son.
“Why not?”
He averted his eyes. “She is married to someone else.”
“Oh,” the boy said, disappointed. “Why didn’t she marry you when she got me? Gob said that that was why his mom married his dad.”
He pursed his lips, wishing for a drink, even though it wasn’t past eight in the morning. Rum would be good. Rum always was.
“Dad?” his son’s voice nagged.
“Your mother was already married to someone else when she got you.”
“But-” the boy started, pausing before he could finish his sentence, because he didn’t understand. “But what happened then?” he finally asked.
“I went back to the sea,” his father answered flatly. “And I took you with me.”
His son sent him a worried look. “Why didn’t she come with you? Didn’t she love me?”
He met his son’s eyes. How could he tell him that his mother had been long married to a richer man, a man of status, when he met her, that he didn’t know that when they shared that one night in the back of her parents’ garden, that she had lied to him about not being married, that she had lied to her husband about her pregnancy, that he had taken the child because she didn’t want it, telling her husband that the child had died… He felt for him too, sometimes. He had been deceived all the same. How could he tell his only son that his mother had abandoned him – the both of them, for that matter. That she, indeed, hadn’t loved them. So, despite his good intentions, he decided that he had no choice to lie, as the other had done to him. “Of course she did,” he said, his smile weak in the early morning. “But like I said, she didn’t like the sea.” It wasn’t a complete lie. She liked the sea, but she also liked her secure home, even if she lived there with a man she didn’t love. She liked the sea, but she took a dislike to what it represented. In the end, it turned out that she took a dislike to him, and even their new-born. To her own child.
“Perhaps it’s good that she’s not here, then. It would make her unhappy.”
His father smiled. He was a nice kid. Too nice, perhaps – but that would come later. For now he would enjoy the young child’s innocence, even if he couldn’t remember the time when he was like that himself. Even if all his smiles reminded him of his mother’s. “Perhaps it is,” he admitted, and he looked at his son. “Never fall in love with someone who doesn’t understand the sea,” he then said to the little Tye, who was nodding his head in understanding. He stroked the boy’s head, and told him to get himself some breakfast. Then the boy was gone, and silence returned to the captain’s cabin. He sighed, and returned to his work – but the thought of her golden hair didn’t leave him for a couple of days, if it had ever left him at all.

“That’s right, kid,” he admitted. “I don’t do what my parents tell me.”
The small boy giggled. “That’s very naughty,” he said.
Tye smiled. The child reminded him of himself, of the moments his father told him half-truths, perhaps more to protect himself than to protect his son. He missed him, but he knew his father would know a peace in death that he had never found in life. He had gone down with his ship, like a true captain does – a fate he sometimes feared for himself. “That’s what pirates are,” he said, leaning against the window. He wished that the kid would open it – the night was damp and clammy, and he betted that the house would be cooler, regarding the wealth of the owners. “But that’s not all they are,” he continued. “Do you know what the one thing is that pirates always do?”
The boy nodded, slightly agitated, as if this was a test he had to pass. In some ways it was. “They find treasures,” he said, his eyes gleaming in the light of the moon as he imagined chests full of gold. Gold the kid would never need. His father was the richest man in Spain, richer than the king, Tye thought.
“Wrong,” he said, pointedly. “Pirates steal treasures.”
“Is that what you’re here to do?” the kid asked.
Tye simply smiled. “What’s your name, kid?”
“William,” he answered.
“William,” he said, staring at the boy, seemingly pensive. “That could be a good pirate’s name. They could call you Will, or Billy. I’ve known many good pirates who go by the name of Billy.”
William smiled.
“Y’know what, William,” Tye said. “You don’t have to let me in, but I do want you to tell me something. I will trade it for one of my belongings, if that seems more fair to you.”
“But I thought pirates only steal?” William asked.
“It has recently come to my attention that people do not like to be robbed, hence my proposition. We can both walk away with something in our hands, sounds all right to you, mate?”
The boy looked at him, suddenly a bit wary. “What do you want, then?” He kept his hand on the handle that would presumably open the window, as if he was afraid Tye would suddenly enter. Apparently he decided he did like to keep the pirate at some distance. People usually did, so Tye didn’t blame him.
“Do you see this compass?” Tye asked, as he showed the boy one of his few possessions. “It has sailed across the world.”
Apparently that peaked the kid’s interest again. “Across all the seven seas?”
Tye nodded. “It’s yours, if you tell me what I want to know.”
The kid looked at him expectantly.
“I want to know where your mother is,” he said.
“Oh,” William said, sounding a bit disappointed, apparently expecting something grander. “She’s out with dad.”
“Where to?”
“They were going to some kind of party at the mayor’s house.”
Tye smiled. “Thanks, that’s all I needed to know.” He left the compass on the window sill and jumped down onto the wet grass. He heard the kid opening the window and yelling after him, he noticed the lights going on downstairs – the maid would have noticed him jumping down, would have noticed the boy yelling – but he didn’t look back. He never did.

The mayor’s house was only a few blocks away. Important people somehow always make a point of it to live close together, much to Tye’s convenience. It doesn’t take him long to reach the house, and it doesn’t take him long to break in either. This time he doesn’t bother knocking. As he barges into the ballroom, holding up his father’s oldest and largest gun, people around him start to gasp in shock, and some start to scream, but no one stops him when he grabs Jane Robinson, expertly puts his left arm under her knees and sweeps her off the dancefloor, into his arms. Once her husband finally realises what has happened, Tye is long gone.
“Who are you? What do you want from me?” The young woman struggles as he pushes her against the wall a couple of blocks away. He had instantly recognised her in the ballroom, her eyes the same as her son’s, her hair the same as his own. He saw her, and he once again recalled the light.

“It’s the ship her husband owns,” his father had told him. “The Seven Harbours, standing for all the places he owns. He’s such a proud man,” his father scorned. His son didn’t say that his father was a proud man as well. “If you look through this, you can see the girl,” he said.
“My sister,” Tye had said.
“She’s no family of ours,” his father had bitten back, and Tye had never mentioned the subject again.

“What do you want from me?” The girl was crying – because that was what she was, a mere girl. She must be around his age, she was the mother of a child, and yet she looked so much younger than him. “What do you want?”
“I don’t want anything from you,” he finally spoke, his voice clear in the Spanish night. “That would not be fair, now would it?” he smiled. “You never wanted anything from me either.”

“Do you see the locket around her neck?” his father had asked. “That’s mine. I gave it to your mother, to remember me. It was a gift from my father before that. How he would hated to have it end up in her hands.”
“I will get it,” Tye said.
“No,” his father said, quickly. “Leave it. It’s unimportant. As soon as we attack the ship, there’ll be more important things to focus on.” He looked at his son. “More expensive things.”
“But isn’t this-”
“It’s not important, Tye,” his father said, regretting the decision to share this with his son. This had not been his intention. It was a stupid slipup of his old, sentimental heart. A sentiment he couldn’t afford. “Promise me you won’t do anything stupid.”
“But it’s not hers!”
“Sometimes a pirate can give too, even to people who don’t deserve it. We will take enough other gold from them tonight. Promise me.”
Disgruntled, his son promised. That was enough for now.

“I am going to take something which is not yours either.” He ripped the golden locket off her.
“That was my mother’s,” the girl said, her face struck with tears. “It doesn’t belong to you.”
He smiled at the girl. “You’re right, sister,” he said, feeling strange as he spoke the words, yet somehow they felt necessary. “But you’re wrong all the same.”

Tye ran through the darkness, not resting until he had reached the haven. Gob greeted him as he came aboard. He asked where his friend – his captain – had been, but Tye didn’t tell him. He simply ordered him to get the ship ready to sail, and within half an hour they had left the harbour of the small city – one of the Harbours, he presumed, which had belonged to his sister’s husband. To Jane’s husband. He retreated to his own cabin and opened the locket, the last possession of his father. He held her in his hands, the light he had seen on the Seven Harbours years ago, and imagined his father holding her in his hands as he gave her to his mother that one fateful night. He imagined his father thanking his own father for giving her to him. His eyes filled with tears as he read the inscription on the inside of the locket. For my son, Billy.
“I’m sorry, dad,” he said. “I broke your promise.” He took a gulp out of the open bottle on his desk, and then he opened the window, staring down into the sea. His sea; his father’s sea. He was a pirate, in every way his father had taught him from the moment he could hold a sword in his hands. Pirates don’t keep their promises. Pirates steal. He placed the locket against his chest, kissed her softly, and then tossed her into the sea that had taken his father, returning her to her rightful owner. He remembered his father’s words from so many years ago. “I gave it back to you, dad,” he whispered into the air. “You do deserve it.”