003 That Which Keeps Us Going
Corlissandro, Scarlette
- Corlissandro and Scarlette speak after the whirlpool incident, leading to a confrontation with Percy: 26 April 1690
After the events of #003 Circe’s Island
After the supernatural storm and whirlpool in session 3
The deck was almost as soaked as Corlissandro’s clothing, but at least the sea had grown calm again. He had been on the side of the boat, dangling precariously from a rope, when the magical light filled the air and quietened the ocean, and a million questions had filled his mind as he climbed back towards the deck. Sadly, Corlissandro had found little time to ask them, as the deck had been a whirlwind of activity when Scarlette hauled him back to the top.
Many things happened quickly, but the most notable was when David fell to his knees and thanked God for their survival. It brought a peal of laughter and mockery from Scarlette, leading to Corlissandro supporting David’s faith by acknowledging that God was present even in the Phantom Sea.
Finally the crew was being shuffled down, and Scarlette volunteered to remain above. Corlissandro lingered behind, letting all the young sailors go first, until only the two of them remained. He had at first planned to be rather forceful with her about making light of the crew in such public fashion, but something in that moment as he neared her to speak in the wordless void altered his intentions. A memory of a thought from her visit to him at the chapel in Tortuga resurfaced, a recognition that she looked worn compared to the woman he remembered in the past. Granted, it had been four years since they last spoke face to face, but she had seemed more alive even as they tried to kill each other three years prior. There was something about her that seemed to have taken a greater toll than a mere three years, and it only seemed to grow heavier as a burden over the past week.
Even then, Corlissandro would never describe Scarlette as anything short of attractive, but he realized he preferred the woman he had seen before–and not because of three years of youth.
“Captain,” he said at last, using her title to indicate this was a business discussion. He still had to say something, it was his duty as the quarter master to speak on behalf of the crew. However, his tone lacked any of the severity he originally planned it to have, but instead was tinged with concern. “I do not believe it is wise to mock David’s faith, if that is what keeps him going forward in this place.”
Scarlette wound a rope around her hand and bicep in a figure eight, a pattern she had done hundreds of thousands of times in her life that it was as easy as breathing at this point. Easier than breathing lately actually. She found herself forgetting to take a breath, the need to come up for air as she drowned in her thoughts.
“Captain.”
The voice made her bite her tongue so hard she could taste iron. Not that she was mad at him personally, but after surviving that storm, her ship being marked by who knows what fuckery now, and still a long way to go she found herself wearing thin. She needed the repetition of the work. Familiar and never changing, she needed to be alone.
“I do not believe it is wise to mock David’s faith, if that is what keeps him going forward in this place.”
“If he survives I will apologize.” She bit back, harsher than his tone or his words warranted.
He was technically correct, in another situation after another time with a different crew he would not only in the right to correct her but was being rather soft in his approach of it. However, it was not the time, situation, or crew – He didn’t understand what was so funny about what David did, the irony of it. And she had no way to tell him.
And that only made her angrier.
“But until then we are all on survival mode facing horrors beyond any tales or stories sailors have ever sung – I doubt me finding amusement in his words is the biggest problem he faces nor is his dislike of me the biggest I am facing.”
She finished wrapping the rope up so tight it bit into her hand and in tight jerking movements she wound it together so it was solid and began to secure it to the rigging mast. She felt the oil in her veins rise up, a slip of her magic leak out in response and the rope singed slightly, a light smoke coming off its oiled surface.
“Putain.” She muttered to herself as she put it out quickly with a slap of her hand.
“Listen.” She huffed, rubbing the little soot off onto her soaking wet pants and for the first time realized that she was soaking wet. She hadn’t felt the water at all until just now as she felt her body was burning alive in her rage and adrenaline. “I appreciate what you are trying to do, really, but go away.”
Corlissandro remained silent as she seethed, simmered, and even scorched. He was not always the best with people, but even he could see the palpable annoyance she had with him, the stark contrast from their interaction a few days prior. Scarlette both admitted he was correct and argued with him, which was a novel approach to the situation, but Corlissandro did not feel the need to argue back.
He watched her work, the smoke and smell of burning from the rope impossible to miss, and yet it had become something that seemed normal in the context of her. Corlissandro let that little detail pass by as idly as he did her working of the knots, finding it more difficult to restrain himself from helping than acknowledging the supernatural. He knew the look of a person who needed to lose themselves in doing–it was one he had worn many times.
His hazel green eyes flicked up, staring at her, and he decided to let the matter of her outburst against David die. There was a far more pressing concern.
“You look like shit.” Corlissandro said at last, though there was no insult in the words. It felt odd to use profanity, but truly there was no word that described it better. He would have wondered if Scarlette had been driven mad by the Phantom Sea, had he not known she was more than a little bit crazy long before it.
Corlissandro held his hand up to her at last, splaying out his palm to show off the magical sigil she had put on it. “This may save you from the crew, but it is not saving you from yourself.”
“You look like shit.”
Scarlette had already turned back to the ropes and began to redo the knots on one of the sails anchors that had come loose during the storm.
“Well now I see how you are so popular with the ladies.” She ribbed at him now pulling herself up onto the sails foot, swinging her leg overtop of it and striding it at an angle as she continued to fix the tack.
“This may save you from the crew, but it is not saving you from yourself.”
Scarlette stopped her pulling of the sail and looked down at him with his hand out and her dark vision could clearly make out the markings she had laid upon him. On all of them. She stared down at the ancient and supposedly sacred runes, the black ink staring up at her, mocking her. Her own now danced across her skin, like a living thing beneath the surface she swore she could see her flesh move as they itched and burned.
These fucking tattoos.
She felt it spill over, that rage she lived as thick as oil bubbled past her restraint and into the flames setting it ablaze. With a scream she punched the mast as hard as she could, the sound of wood and water making a wet hard cracking sound. Her breathing was ragged as she took heaving breaths through her nose, her scream swallowed by this fucking blanket. This void of never-ending night and torment.
Scarlette watched blood start to trickle down the split skin across her knuckles and onto those davil’s marks on her left hand staining her rope red.
Red, all she saw was red, all she was was red. Red Jane, the blood pirate, the woman with the red hair. She was warned as a young child that one day her fury would consume her and in the ash she left behind there would be no memory of herself. Yet in the many times in her life this bloody haze took over her vision as it now started on her periphery, she found security in it. Like a king serpent she found her freedom in it, shedding the skin of a life that didn’t fit her, didn’t want her. She learned to use it, to unhinge her jaw and to go for the throat. To drink down all that stood in her way. She was never afraid of her rage, she relished it, and that was the problem.
“Go check the batten on the main sail.” Her voice was cold, distant, calm.
Unable to feel any pain in her hand, unable to feel if anything was broken she continued to work and tack down the sail. She whispered the only words that seemed to matter right now as her fingers moved without thought: “Si vis pacem, para bellum”
Scarlette was a red wave of rage and emotion, and Corlissandro stood against the tide with all the implacable resilience of stone. He watched as her eyes stared at the tattoo, and it was not until she screamed that he lowered his hand. Corlissandro’s expression tightened, and in that moment he regarded Scarlette Jane as he would a wild animal.
And really, he knew her as well as a wild animal, truth be told. Cordial was the nicest description one could ever say about their relationship with each other, and their first conversation that first night on the Night Wind was perhaps the closest they had ever come to being personable with each other.
She balled her fist, and he did not react, trusting her to be at least somewhat reasonable enough to not assault what precious few crew she had left. Corlissandro’s faith was rewarded when she punched the mast and not his face, but the audible crack brough a wince even to his battle-worn demeanor.
“Go check the batten on the main sail.” The words did not seem to match the action which preceded them, and yet Corlissandro recognized the cold rage.
“Damn fool,” he exclaimed in a gentle voice, though there was neither judgment nor malice to be found in the words. Corlissandro knew all too well how lonely and painful it was to be a captain. Sailors could talk to other sailors, lieutenants to other lieutenants, and so on–but the captain was where all problems ended, a lonely island which held the solutions to all other problems and never seemed to have any of its own.
And yet it was even worse to have all those problems stop. Corlissandro could only imagine how much it hurt to lose an entire crew, even among pirates.
He stepped closer to Scarlette, shaking his head as he grabbed at her hand. [Medicine: 19] He was no ship doctor, but he had spent a long life among fighting men–it was no difficulty at all to find the telltale signs of a broken hand. She would not be able to wrap it as effectively with just one hand, and no one else among the crew needed to see it.
“The main sail can wait a few minutes.”
Without hesitation, Corlissandro uncoiled the rope from among her hands, heedless of how much she wanted his intervention or not. He pulled a length of stout cloth from his belt, a thing he always kept on hand in case of grievous leg or arm injuries in battle, and began to wrap it around her hand. Her blood was quick to soak into it, but it hid away the runes as he applied enough pressure to alleviate the worst of her pain.
“How long has it been since you slept?”
“Damn fool.”
The words echoed and repeated, taunting. Damn Fool, damn fool, damn fool…
That she was. Her arrogance, her ignorance was costing her everything. Her breathing was slow and ragged as he climbed up the mast onto the foot moving her out of the way to examine her hand and began to wrap it in cloth, his hands moving deftly to stop the stem of blood and he wrapped the runes away, as if they weren’t even there.
But they were.
“The main sail can wait a few minutes.”
She didn’t look him in the eye as the runes disappeared under rapidly red cloth. She knew they were there, it still itched and crawled, but it felt easier, the pain and pressure now mounting in her hand all the better as it masked the unnaturalness of those markings. Scarlette took a deep breath she didn’t know she needed so badly.
“How long has it been since you slept?”
“I don’t know Corliss, how long have we been in the Phantom Sea?” She bit back.
She now met his gaze and shoved at him, still ignoring the injury in her hand she tried to press him against the mast or shove him off. The attempt was honest but poorly executed as her left hand was clear to everyone but her to be out of commission.
“Why the fuck are you here anyway? We’re not friends, we’re not even good enemies. Go below deck, wait til we get to the island.”
Scarlette’s blue eyes met his, and then she pulled her hand free of his grip and did her best to push him back. She would have done better to use her uninjured hand–a testament to how compromised her judgment was. Corlissandro shifted his body just a bit, denying her the ability to exert power against his center of mass, and her injured hand slid off him without much effect. He reached out and grabbed hold of her, bracing her from falling off the mast from the force of her own exertion.
“Why the fuck are you here anyway? We’re not friends, we’re not even good enemies. Go below deck, wait til we get to the island.”
“Right now we are crew, and you chose that.” His voice was firm, the reply laden with every bit of steel and certainty as an admiral could have. “You do not get to have buyer’s remorse until we are back on land.”
Corlissandro’s expression was taut as he held that stare into her eyes. There were only two people on the entire ship who had earned the right to tell Scarlette Jane she was spiraling out of control, and Corlissandro was one of them whether she liked it or not. Fortunately for Corlissandro, refusing to obey her order was merely insubordination and not mutiny.
“Five days without rest?” The words sounded as disappointed as they were incredulous. “Is your grand plan to work yourself to death then leave us stranded in this place?”
“Right now we are crew, and you chose that.”
He caught her injured hand and braced it, holding her steady even though she felt rock solid. This was her motherfucking ship, this was her ship.
“You do not get to have buyer’s remorse until we are back on land.”
“It’s not buyer’s remorse Corliss, bondye mwen - I don’t want you to die!”
She heaved, the confession coming out before her filter could catch it. She snapped her lips closed.
“Five days without rest? Is your grand plan to work yourself to death then leave us stranded in this place?”
“No, I will not die yet Corliss,” Her voice cold and murderous, “Not until I…” She hissed as her hand burned, he could feel the sudden burst of heat as if she had a fever on her skin from where he held her and the bandages on her hand began to leak more blood as if It torn open deeper.
She suddenly felt very lightheaded, her arm crushing under the pain.
“Not until I save them.” The words a whispered hiss as she tried to catch a breath, her vision going dark. She tried to grab onto the ropes, the wood, anything, but found nothing but air as suddenly she was falling.
“Oh dear, it appears our dear captain worked herself into a state.”
The cool voice carried over the darkness and looking down Corliss would see Percy had appeared without even a whisper of sound or notice. (stealth 31)
“If you want to drop her down to me I’ll make sure she makes it back to her cabin for some rest.”
He smiled politely, reserved but somehow still full of a swagger as if he knew something the rest of the world did not. He held out his arms ready to catch her.
A vital skill one needed as a sailor was to recognize when the wind had shifted against your course and adjusting tack–and the same was true of dealing with people and problems. Scarlette was reminiscent of a container packed too full then dropped, its contents bursting out and scattering all over the deck in chaotic fashion. Her emotions poured, shifted, swelled and raged like the turbulent sea. Corlissandro recognized that moment when he needed to either choose to tack into her storm and face it head on, or jib away and retreat from the tempest.
“Not until I save them.” Her words were a strained hiss, and Corlissandro recognized what was happening immediately. He had seen sailors lose control of their breathing before, exhaling before their body could absorb the breath of life it so badly needed, until they at last passed out and found peace in the black depths of oblivion. Scarlette scrambled for purchase, failed, and started to tip off the mast. It would have been a short fall of a few feet, but men had died from such heights. Corlissandro gripped her arm and hand, pulling her upright onto the mast against him, and he found enough purchase for the two of them.
“Jesus.” He whispered softly, but not to Scarlette. Moments dragged on as he debated whether to wait for the fainting to pass or to try to maneuver the both of them down, his thoughts occupied by how exactly he would do that. It was simply a few feet–yet utterly complicated by trying not to drop her unconscious body in the process. Corlissandro cradled her limp form in his arms then shifted backwards, scooting them both inch by inch until his back was against the main mast. He had never been a strong man–ever the more intellectual and nimble in his youth than brawny–and the exertion reminded him that time was doing his body no favors. He persevered, though, his dogged nature not allowing him to do anything short of succeed in the task.
“Oh dear, it appears our dear captain worked herself into a state.” Percy’s voice seemed to come from nowhere at first, and even Corlissandro found himself startled by it. His gaze quickly shifted down at the foppish man below. “If you want to drop her down to me I’ll make sure she makes it back to her cabin for some rest.”
Corlissandro’s hazel green eyes studied Percy for a long moment, and he said nothing in reply. There was naked assessment there, yet even more obvious was the distrust and dislike that Corlissandro felt towards the man. [Acrobatics: 16] Corlissandro merely grunted in response then carefully maneuvered himself, standing then shifting so both legs hung to one side of the mast while simultaneously keeping Scarlette upright. He then moved down the mast carefully, shifting her weight just right so she did not fall. [Athletics: 11] It was not graceful–no, in fact, it was downright awkward–but Corlissandro managed to work it so that she slumped into his arms, the bulk of her form protected from hitting the deck.
Corlissandro lowered Scarlette down then stood and turned to face Percy. He positioned himself between Scarlette and the first mate, his eyes narrowing as he stared at Percy. “I am happy to see you are not allergic to the sea air, after all. You can take watch for once, and I will see to it that she gets some much needed rest.”
Percy watched Corliss work his way down from the foot and mast, now with his hands tucked into his pockets. No move to help either one down. As he set Scarlette down he watched the whole interaction with amusement on his lips.
“Well aren’t you just the protective little mutt.”
Percy evaluated Corliss as if he was gauging a piece of meat hanging at the butchers.
“You growl like one too, all teeth just like our captain over there.”
He nodded with his chin not taking his eyes off Corliss.
“I know it takes quite a toll traveling through the phantom sea, that storm was probably pretty scary for you,” He smiled smugly. “However, I’d hate to leave the deck empty of watch after all so why don’t you be the good little dog and stay patrolling. I’ll tuck her in and we can continue our merry way.”
Corlissando remained unwavering in the face of Percy’s comments and haughty movements. The memory of that cold, unnatural hand was ever present in the back of his mind, and something about this man set Corlissandro on edge. His muscles remained taught, and Corlissandro himself was as still as the waters of the Phantom Sea.
“I see, then you refuse the watch. I admit I also fear leaving the captain to you, because you strike me as a man who would take an unconscious woman back to her cabin just to pull her pants off.”
Corlissandro replied with tight, controlled words. Percy was as useless as he was smug–a man who did not deserve to even be aboard a ship, much less be called a first mate. Seeing a man refuse to help, refuse to protect, refuse to abide by the sacred bond that was being a crew–it brought a sense of disgust to Corlissandro. He had been cordial earlier, as it was bad for the crew to see fighting among officers, but there was no reason to be restrained in his feelings with just the two of them on deck.
“You may go back to your hole and hide. We will manage without you, as we have for the rest of this trip.”
With that, Corlissandro remained firm in his position between Percy and Scarlette.
There it was–a crack in his smug facade, a tightening of his expression, the hints of rage and anger as Corlissandro’s comments hit him. Percy leaned in, and for a brief second, Corlissandro thought they would come to blows then and there.
Then Percy seemed to return to being himself, the waters receding as the wave crested and crashed before reaching shore. “I prefer them to be awake and see them enjoy it.”
Percy’s presence upon Corlissandro receded in the same way his anger did. His posture returned to that casual superiority, his hands tucking into his pockets as he grinned. “You’re such an idiot, Corlis. You’d be dead without me.”
The first mate did not offer the opportunity to retort, choosing instead to slink away and retreat back down the stairs.
Corlissandro breathed for the first time in several seconds. His muscles relaxed, his body cooling from a boil to a mere simmer as the feeling of imminent threat passed.
He was left to handle Scarlette and the watch both, then. He could not, and would not, carry the unconscious captain below decks and risk the crew seeing her like that. Morale had to be managed carefully, and one of the most significant pillars of its foundation was holding a belief that the captain was near infallible.
Corlissandro picked her up in his arms and moved her to a spot where she would not be seen if someone came above deck. He then recovered a few odds and ends, bits of cloth and sail tucked away, which he rolled into a makeshift pillow and turned into a makeshift blanket. It would both provide comfort and keep her better hidden from prying eyes.
Then, without another word, Corlissandro went to work finishing up her work on the mast, tying the knots to the anchors before doing a methodical inspection of every other critical part of the ship. It was an old habit, one he sank into like a comfortable blanket, and he soon found himself resisting the urge to hum as he went about the work.
Corlissandro would hold the watch until she woke up.
